Part 11

Kaethe got up a moment after her aunt had greeted her and laid the sleeping baby in a battered crib in the next room, filled with beds of all sizes and sorts. _That_ child was nourished. She would have felt quite exhausted herself, but for the thought of the dinner Tante Ilde had brought. She was still a handsome woman, in the early thirties,--even treading up that Calvary to which every road she knew now lead her, those seven roads of anguish for her seven children and for Leo whom she adored. Once, not indeed so long before, she had been softly, sweetly alight with a kindly inner warmth, that flamed easily, attractively in her face, in those sparkling eyes, in those bright cheeks, hanging about that wide, red-lipped mouth with its irregular white teeth. And then those quick, generous, outward gestures! Now that soft fire was banked and her movements were often listless. But as she stood by the kitchen table, she became animated even gay, because of that natural gift which neither time, nor wars, nor miseries could quite destroy, and clapped her hands, as her aunt had known she would, and talked about the great feast they were going to have. The water was boiling and bubbling forecasting near, delicious moments and Tante Ilde had begun to grate the cheese which was sending up its sharp, appetizing odor.

Carli had been put on the table in the very beginning, that he might be nearer than anybody else to the goodies, as Tante Ilde took one package after the other out of the string bag and made them guess what was in it. Kaethe opened the can of milk to prepare a drink for him.

"Hungry," he said turning his blue eyes somewhat languidly towards her and shaking his shining curls about his crystal face. They all cried lovingly in one or another way:

"Yes, gold child, yes, angel, yes, little lamb, you'll have some soon!"

"I bought a whole half kilo of rice," said Tante Ilde grandly, "suppose," she went on dashingly, "we cook it all at once? We're seven to eat it and we'll put the cheese on thick!"

Kaethe gave a gasp. But she, too, was no saver.

"Magnificent," she cried. She was faint with hunger herself. Yes, for once ... then she turned to Carli.

"Carli must drink his mimi," she said, as she held the cup tenderly to his lips.

The other children looked on absorbed in the spectacle. Resl cried, drawing her breath in:

"Carli's having such a wonderful drink!" and Hansi with his eyes very big, asked,

"Carli, does it taste good?" and they all hung close about him as he drank in tiny not very hungry sips.

"I'd show Carli how to drink if I had the chance!" continued Hansi, moving his feet up and down in famished impatience.

"I do wish Leo were here to see the children," said Kaethe to her aunt, "but he won't be back till past one o'clock, though he goes as early as he can to the Stephansplatz. It's just wonderful to think they're going to have enough. It's seeing them after they've had their dinner that is sometimes the worst."

A long, impatient ring was heard at the door. Resl ran to open it and Lilli came in with a dash in spite of the broken handle of her basket of briquets. She threw off the disfiguring coat she wore and revealed herself in a very worn, sea-blue dress of some smooth, silky material. It lay beautifully about the white column of her young neck, it repeated the blue of her wide eyes, it heightened the fine pallor of her cheeks, it burnished the pale gold of her hair. There were gleaming bits of embroidery in places meant to accent the curves of a more mature figure. Quite evidently made-over, too, was the elaborate, dark blue cloth dress that Resl wore. Indeed, they all wore garments or parts of garments quite patently not fulfilling their original _raison d'être_, that struck a note of gay luxury in the large, shabby room.

Lilli's objective was the kitchen. She was greeted with shouts. The rice was boiling briskly, the odor of the cheese was in the air. The package of "feinste Keks," made of a combination of ersatz substances meant to deceive the palate and annoy the stomach, looked gayly, impudently at them beside the little pile of apples. As Lilli took it all in, a tiny line that sometimes showed itself between those lovely eyes was quite smoothed out.

Then Hansi made a diversion by being discovered with the thin rind of the cheese that his mother had put aside for the seasoning of another day's dish.

"What are you doing, Hansi?" she cried and took it from his chubby, six year old hand.

"But, Mama, I'm so hungry, I can't wait for the rice," and tears rose to his eyes, "I didn't mean anything bad!"

"I know, I know," his mother answered, those stupid tears that were always ready springing to her own eyes, "mother didn't mean anything bad either, but whatever we have is for all of us."

Hansi had dark curls and soft eyes and seemed like the merest baby as he stood looking at her, great round tears rolling down his cheeks. But there was something sturdy about his thinness and pallor, something resistant; Hansi, like Resl, was one who would survive.

Lilli and Resl followed about by Else had put the plates and forks and spoons on the table and drawn up the motley collection of chairs.

"Is everything laid on nice and straight? Tante Ilde has brought us such a good dinner!" their mother called out as she came in with the great smoking platter of rice sending up its maddening odor and placed it heavily on the table. But she turned and kissed her aunt before she began to serve it.

Frau Stacher was conscious of the softest, warmest pleasure. One moment like this and hard things were forgotten. Kaethe's very expansiveness, that could so easily be released, communicated joy. And Kaethe never minded how much noise the children made, so others were undisturbed. Kaethe never fussed though she sometimes wept and often silently despaired. But now that full platter, those clattering spoons! Though mortals were certainly composed of spirit as well as flesh, hot food, even one meal of it, could change everything. Yes, everything. The children got uproariously gay, and Tante Ilde and Kaethe began to feel sure something would soon happen to make things all right again....

Then Tante Ilde heard how Lilli instead of her mother, now went out early every morning, too early for her thirteen years, and stood in the bread-line at the bakery, (her father had tried it but had proved singularly inept at holding his place,) and how you just had to keep your wits about you or you would find that some one had sneaked in ahead, and it was such a trouble getting back your place.

There was a certain protocol observed even at those bread-lines. No one with impunity was caught taking another's place, that is unless there was a stampede by those behind if the news got out that there was very little left. Then what a pushing and hurtling! Something terrible, hard, relentless would suddenly come up out of the crowd that had seemed composed of pale, exhausted men and women and underfed, listless children. That precious loaf that Lilli generally managed to bring home, would, with some of the equally precious cocoa that was in the heavenly package they got from the "Friends" in the Franzensplatz be the backbone, somewhat weak, it is true, of their day. The package and the wonders it contained,--the little tin of lard, the little box of sugar, the little bag of flour, the coffee, though it could not fatten a family of nine people, dulled noticeably the sharpest edge of their hunger and helped to get them through the week. It was really equal to several meals if you counted that way. Then sometimes a raven in the shape of old Maria, tapping, flew in at the door. As for the other meals, the Eberhardts went without them.

It was a mystery to the Professor, surpassing any he had ever before tried to solve, that he could no longer make a living out of his grey matter. Being a "genius" was plainly a misfortune. It was the working classes, fortunate possessors of muscle, that frequented butcher and delicatessen shops, while the intellectuals and their families starved. It made science look like something seen through the big end of a telescope. Biology? Eberhardt got so that he hated the very word. The only science of life that was of any use was knowing how to get something to put into your family's stomach and your own. Naturally mild as summer dew, Eberhardt had been getting bitter.

Those radiant years lay far behind, when a word, a thought would set his brain on fire, startling into instant action those secret springs of his talent; when the imponderable why and whence of man's being was the paramount interest of life. The ponderable things necessary to sustain that life came naturally, undisturbingly in the train of work. Now his gifts were useless; the world in which they had once functioned so easily, so shiningly, was in some chill, shadowy abeyance. Again and again came from his lips nostalgically: "Süsses Leben! Schöne, freundliche Gewohnheit des Daseins und Wirkens! von dir soll ich scheiden!" "Sweet life, sweet, pleasant habit of being and activity! Must I part from thee?"

He went to his classes, but with the laboratory completely run down, sometimes even the electric light didn't work, and that listless, stupid look on the faces of a handful of hungry students, or that wild look, and everywhere the word "revolution," there was certainly little incentive and less chance for successful inquiry into those whys and whences, the indulgence in which was gone with other luxuries. The great thing was to keep out of the cemetery or the streets or worse places of last despair, where the broken but undying went. It all seemed a nightmare from which he must awake, some tight and vicious circle out of which he must soon break. Yet this was the seventh year and all that he was, all that he had, those once sweet furnishings of his mind, those pleasant uses of his faculties were as worthless to himself and his family as diamonds to a man on the rack.

The children got taller and thinner. Lilli was obviously too pretty to be out alone, unwatched. A terrible beast had lately followed her from the Singerstrasse to the Franzensplatz and then all the way home. Lilli hadn't quite known what he meant or wanted, but she had been desperately frightened and had trembled and wept in her mother's arms.

There were, truly, devils prowling about, seeking whom they might devour, and Lilli, bright and beautiful, like a taper in the dull, grey streets, was one to catch their greedy eyes.

Dark tales were whispered too, of hunger-mad mothers who sent their girl-children into the streets where such devils awaited them. Hunger,--dying of it,--made even mothers mad.

Doctor Steier had told him unbelievable things of children in his clinic, things that the bare mention of had enveloped him in a thick, hot, pricking misery. Doctor Steier was not yet forty, but his eyes were deeply sunken and his hair gone white. They had once been colleagues at the University.... Lilli's beauty,--it made her father's heart both sad and glad....

But nobody was thinking of any of these things as Tante Ilde opened the package of "finest cakes." Stripped of its saucy, colored paper, it proved to contain twelve tiny, oblong, dry, sweetish biscuits. She gayly apportioned out two to each child. They were seized upon covetously, the very thought of sweets could awaken, in old and young, mad, selfish, exclusive longings.

But Carli didn't want his and leaned his head heavily against his mother's breast.

"Carli not hungry any more," he whispered. He hadn't eaten his rice either, though his mother had taken him on her knees and tried to coax him with little tricks and stories; the girls and Hansi had finally divided it into the most even portions possible.

His mother made another cup of milk for him and soaked one of his "Keks" in it; he had taken a tiny mouthful, then again leaned his head heavily against her breast and seemed to go to sleep. She got up gently and bearing him into the other room laid him on a cot near the rosebud Anny's crib. So dear he was to her as she laid him down, that her heart seemed to come out of her breast in a great beat of love. The only color in his face was those violet eyes, which now were veiled so thinly by his transparent lids, that standing back from his bed, she thought for an instant they had opened, and that he was looking at her. But he lay so still that in anguish she bent over him to see if the breath were really fluttering from his waxy lips....

When she got back into the living room that look, mask-like, antique, of mother-fear still lay upon her face.

Tante Ilde softly rose from the table and stood by her without a word. "It will be all right in a moment," Kaethe said looking up at her gratefully. "It is silly, of course, to be so frightened," and she kissed the thin hand that hung over her shoulder.

A moment later there was heard the well-loved sound of the latch key, but somewhat slow, uncertain even. Lilli ran quickly to open the door.

Her father was not, as she expected, alone. A miserable little girl of five or six was clinging to his hand, a pale, anxious child that the wintry monster Life had been grimacing at and frightening terribly.

Professor Eberhardt gave his wife one look, but he knew his Kaethe, and it was a look of confidence rather than anxiety that he bent upon her as he stood in the doorway,--a tall, once very handsome man, who had been mangled by the War, then stamped on by the Peace till he had lost all semblance to his former imposing self. His grey eyes were sunken into deep pits on either side of his thin, pinched nose. The blond beard and moustache had had the yellow taken out of them by the early grey of his griefs and anxieties. But as he stood there, his shabby overcoat buttoned up to his chin, some brightness lay about his face; it seemed for the moment quite filled out.

"I met Koellner coming back," he said to his wife, and then he bent gently over the child, "This is his dear, good little girl come to make the children a visit."

Something rose up in Kaethe admonishing her to defend her own. Another child! no, no, no.... But turn that frightened, shivering mite away? It was equally impossible to the elastic kindness of her heart.

It was a situation that in the end beings like the Eberhardts meet in but one way. When that which they have not has been taken from them, they find that they have still something left that they must give.

There was no doubt about its all being a shock to Kaethe, rather than a surprise. She couldn't be surprised by another sight of misery, even though brought up round before it.... Her eyes filled with those weak, ever-ready tears, then she smiled quiveringly. At that smile for which he had waited, entirely trustful, Eberhardt turned to Lilli:

"Take Marichi into the kitchen, darling, and find her a bite of something."

The children suddenly quite still, had been looking at the little girl. Resl thought she wasn't too dirty, and Hansi that she was of a convenient age to order about. Else didn't understand.

Lilli's thoughts were confused, only out of that confusion seemed to come some sudden, new understanding. In that moment, indeed, Lilli grew from childhood into adolescence. She silently reached out her hand and received the little girl from her father. She gave him a long look as she did so. Something quite beyond the scope even of her new understanding, though within reach of her new feelings was happening. Something hard to do, yet in another way fluidly, hotly easy. As she was turning away the child's hand in hers, she hesitated then went back and threw her arms about her father's neck. Eberhardt had a moment almost of ecstasy as he pressed his lovely daughter close to him in some suddenly opened heaven on earth. Then she withdrew herself from his embrace and took the child out of the room.

"It's a desperate case," Eberhardt said to his wife after a moment's silence, "her mother has just died,--consumption--and he's starving himself. He knows a waiter at the Hotel Imperial who gives him some bread every day ... poor fellow, I was all broken up, so talented too; his clothes, only hanging on him, no overcoat, just buttons his jacket up to his neck. I told him about the Stephansplatz. He had a look on his face I didn't like. He was so worried for his little girl. They've lost their rooms, I didn't quite understand how. Anyway they've nowhere to go. Kaethe, I couldn't but say to him, 'Let us take the little one for awhile,' we _have_ a home," he ended.

Kaethe met his gaze quite clearly now. Those stupid, weak tears were gone. She was thinking, and he knew it as if she had spoken the words: "Every crumb that child eats will be taken from our own children." But Kaethe, inflammable herself, had caught from her husband some of that light that shone about his face and after a second she was saying and warmly:

"But naturally, she can stay here till things get better."

Both Eberhardt and his wife were very beautiful in that moment wrapt in the bright flame of their charity.

Just why he had met his old friend Koellner in the street that noontide was quite clear. It wasn't for anything that he, in his own great need was to get out of it, but rather for what the child whose Father in Heaven knew that she had "need of all these things" was to get--in that hour and in that way.

Then Tante Ilde, who had been both entranced and troubled at the scene, spoke for the first time and very gently:

"She'll bring a blessing into the house, Leo."

At that Eberhardt turned and greeted her affectionately.

"Ah, Tante Ilde, pardon, it's good to see you." And as he embraced her his act of compassion was still so warm about him that she was conscious of some gentle heat, almost corporeal, emanating from him.

Though his now constant preoccupation as to ways and means was added to those temperamental fits of abstraction, suddenly in that moment he saw distinctly the shape and substance of Tante Ilde's hard destiny. That frail figure, in that worn striped gown, Eberhardt who never knew what women wore, was suddenly conscious of its old-fashioned cut, its threadbareness, perhaps it was its symbolic sense working on his imagination that saw at times both more and less than the run of men. He perceived, as under a microscope, in all its magnified significance, not alone that sagging face, that furrowed brow, that thinning hair, those broad, pale, colorless eyes reflecting something immeasurably patient under the double burden of old age and penury, but it was old age itself, in all its component parts that separated, as if under his glass, on his table, resolving themselves sharply into their elements. He was aghast at what he saw--those diminutions, those withdrawals--more horrified than at the accidental tragedy of the Privatdozent Koellner. This was integral, final. She could hope for nothing more from time, that was clear,--time that brings so surely both good and evil, that very time that was his hope had nothing more for her. He repressed a cry....

Then suddenly, or so it seemed, they all got very gay again, with an infectious gayety. The children were tumbling about noisily after their good meal. The little stranger kept looking from one to the other. That desperate apprehension was wiped from her face. This that was happening was clearly good. She hadn't seen anyone smile for a long time, except so sadly that they might as well have wept. She had entirely forgotten about laughing. But all this was good, good, that she knew out of her six years.

Then Hansi climbed up on his father's lap and asked him what he had had for dinner.

"A fine cup of cocoa, so hot it burnt my tongue, and a heaping plate of very good beans, only I didn't feel hungry today," he paused on the familiar phrase, and from his pocket he produced two pieces of zwieback.

Kaethe had been watching him, suspecting his next gesture.

"Eat it yourself, Leo," she interposed quickly, almost sternly, "we've had all we can possibly eat. Tante Ilde brought _so_ much."

But Eberhardt with no hesitation in his hand or heart, or at least none that one could have noticed, said to the strange child, the child of whose existence he had been unaware an hour before:

"Come, dear child, come, Marichi," and handed her the zwieback. That grimy, claw-like little hand closed over it. In spite of her hunger she was too dazed to eat. She looked from her hand up to her protector with the mysterious glance of childhood.

"It's good, eat it," he said. She put it in her mouth, one piece and then, very quickly, the other. Hunger, she knew about it, all about it. This was something different and she was getting warm.

The silence that fell somewhat heavily upon the room, was broken by Hansi recounting to his father, boastfully, stoutly, what they had had for dinner and smacking his lips and showing him the colored picture from the package of "feinste Keks"; then how Carli hadn't wanted his rice and how they had had that too.

"Carli isn't well today," said Kaethe, "he seems so languid, but he's asleep now. He dropped off as soon as he had had his milk."

"I'm coming every Thursday," put in Tante Ilde comfortably at this point. She was feeling quite happy, almost joyous. "Fanny," she added in an aside, "sent word by Maria that I was always to get enough for everybody!"

Eberhardt flushed slightly but made no answer. Lilli and Resl were getting on their coats. As Lilli again put on her mother's old black cloak over her blue dress it was as if a snuffer had been put over a light,--a white, blue and gold light. Her father was content that it was so. About Resl they didn't worry. There was something strong, inevitable about her, even in those young years. She was clearly one who would get through. She was very like her mother, but behind that soft, dark resemblance was something steely that Kaethe had never had.