Part 12

Things were always happening to Resl,--pleasant things. Those bright-dark eyes of hers, that round, smiling face that somehow kept its roundness through all those terrible winters, had something compelling about it. An American woman on one of the relief committees had seen Resl on a windy day looking into a delicatessen shop, and had taken a fancy to her. She had given her a meal a day for two months, and shoes and other things, often something to take home, then she had passed out of Resl's orbit into new circles of want. Another time coming home from school, Resl had stopped to swell the crowd around a smashed taxicab, and some one had cried, "Do look at that bright-eyed little girl!" and had given her a ten shilling note,--just like that! She hadn't understood what they said, but their smiles that she promptly returned and the money that she dashed home with were perfectly intelligible. Once she had found a gold piece in the street, when she and Lilli were going along together; of course she had been the one to find it. Lilli when she saw Resl pick it up, had hoped that it had been dropped by some very rich person, instead of by some one who hadn't anything else. To Resl, however, such fears were unknown, she would always take unquestioningly whatever goods the gods provided.

Tante Ilde was telling them about the woman who had grabbed the milk out of her very hand, and Hansi was saying with his chest out and his eyes ablaze,

"I'd have beaten her well, Tante Ilde," when they heard a scream from the next room,--a terrible scream, despair and supplication were in it.

Eberhardt and Tante Ilde rushed in followed by the children, Marichi stayed behind, cowering again. That scream had something frighteningly familiar about it.

Kaethe was holding Carli up to the window, where the light shone full on his baby face ... quite gently, quite easily, Carli had slipped from them leaving only his little waxen image.

* * * * *

Throughout that long night Tante Ilde kept miserably repeating to herself: "A child came in, a child went out," finding herself in a confusion of faith and doubt dark as the night that lay about her.

Irma was confirmed in her opinion that charity was dangerous.

VI

CORINNE

_A la Sourdine_

Das Herz ist ein weites Land.

But towards morning Frau Stacher's heart threw off its sorrow; she had suddenly felt its weight leaving her breast, why or how she did not know, for there in that distant house whence Carli had forever gone one she loved was still weeping. Perhaps she was done with grief,--long grief.

She was strangely all love that morning after the night of tears. Love emanated from her with a gentle radiance and played about her warmly. She loved even Irma. Even Irma who on account of her nerves couldn't bear to see that fine, soft light in her sister-in-law's eyes. An unreasonable, unseasonable light given the fact that one child had been reft away and another might as easily be taken. She should properly have been creeping about with her spirit quenched, instead of looking almost happy. It struck Irma, who was inaccessible to metaphysical changes, even as unseemly, and she proceeded to extinguish it, somewhat as a wet finger on the flame of a candle.

"Corinne today, but who's taking you tomorrow?" she asked flatly, meanly. Irma had a way, well tabulated in the family, of getting over pleasant spots at the quickest pace possible.

"Tomorrow," Tante Ilde answered, the light in her eye indeed put out, but her face quite pink as she stepped into the kitchen to put the broom, worn down to its wooden handle, back in its dingy corner, "Tomorrow," she continued resolutely as she reappeared, "I'm going to Fanny's."

"To Fanny's!" echoed Irma blankly and started to cry "I find it disgraceful!" But she stopped quite short as a thought came to her.... The easy way to do a hard thing. A little more of _that_ money! What did she care? She wanted Ferry to live.

"Won't you tell Fanny about Ferry?" she began again, but gently, almost imploringly.

There was a long pause, in which the thick-boned figure of the woman her brother had loved loomed up before her in an imperative, almost menacing attitude as she waited for the answer. She had been bending closely over the hemstitching she was to finish that day for Mizzi. She had large, square-shaped hands, but she held deftly and delicately the diaphanous trifle that Mizzi would sell to some thick lady. Now she laid it down and took off her glasses, showing her eyes very strained. Her face seemed to broaden, her cheek bones to get higher, the spot of color on her cheeks was dyed deeper, harder. Everything was accented about Irma in that minute. Even the red of the little, fringed, three-cornered shawl was like life-blood spilled over her shoulders as she waited for her sister-in-law to answer and there was something increasingly minatory about her.

Strange, Frau Stacher was thinking, that Heinie should have desired her, Heinie almost an old man. But she couldn't really reason about such things, certainly not in that pause. Her thoughts had wandered because she was feeling quite dizzy and then, of course, she would do it. Irma might have known that. Those three boys had to be helped somehow into manhood, according to their needs. A generation lay between the two women, yet for a moment Irma, with that ancient mother-fierceness in her face, seemed the elder. She continued staccato:

"Ferry's got to go to the mountains. Fanny can send him if she will. Fanny's rich. Fanny's in the only good business for women in Vienna."

Frau Stacher felt the blood rush to her face. But it was pity for Irma that suddenly reddened her cheeks rather than shame for Fanny. All the pity of her heart for a moment spent itself lavishly on that unloved sister-in-law.

"It's one of the reasons I'm going--for Ferry. I'd thought of it too, and tomorrow you know it is Fanny who is taking us all--with Carli, to the cemetery," she answered finally with an immense gentleness. In her heart she handed that business of Fanny's to God, and she hoped He wouldn't take His price for it.

Irma suddenly broke into wild weeping.

"Don't speak to me about Carli again. I can't bear it. _My_ Ferry, _my_ son, _my_ first born, _he_ must live."

Then she tried to stop weeping. Those hot, salty tears that were scalding and dimming her eyes were an indulgence she could ill afford.

"Tell Fanny everything about Ferry, help him not to go where Carli has gone," and she stepped quite close to her sister-in-law, her hands clasped. "You are truly good," she found herself unexpectedly, even softly, ending.

Then Frau Stacher, warm with a love that was not for Irma, but whose warmth spread infinitely, embraced her, saying:

"Don't weep, Irma, we'll surely arrange about our Ferry."

The two women spoke no more. Irma's sobs turned into long, quivering sighs and her sister-in-law soon after slipped out.

Somewhat reproachfully the thought came to Irma that Tante Ilde did, perhaps, bring a blessing into the house and that she, Irma, had needlessly wiped away the look of happiness on her face. They all knew that she adored Corinne. Why couldn't she have let her have her pleasure, which was certainly not costing her, Irma, anything? And she remembered how broken her look and voice had been as she told about Carli the day before. Then repentantly almost, she thought that, after all, Tante Ilde couldn't be comfortable in that little alcove, though as she didn't know about the need of being alone, she couldn't understand just how uncomfortable. Then she thought that she would not ask her to draw back the curtains. She even fell to planning how when Ferry went away she would put Gusl to sleep in the alcove and give the little room to his aunt. Hermann had terrified her by saying that Gusl ought not to sleep any longer with Ferry,--was it really as bad as that? That was one of the things that made it a further nuisance having Tante Ilde. Then suddenly with the whole wild strength of her being, the strength of untamed generations living by the wild Plitvicer Lakes, she thrust her arms out and would have burst the too-narrow walls of that dwelling, made room, room, the way one had room there where she was born--out of the terrible city.

* * * * *

Frau Stacher got out to find the sun shining on the slippery streets, still covered, from the cold rain of the night, with a thin, glass-like substance. She went cautiously, slowly along. From St. Stephen's half-past eleven was sounding. She had plenty of time. Then she became aware again of a new and evil discomfort that had made itself felt from time to time that morning; not at all the usual undernourished, discouraged feeling, but as if something inimical, foreign to her body, had got into her circulation; unpleasant little shivers kept running up and down her back. She was relieved, however, for the moment of the weight of her penury. Corinne truly loved her. Corinne truly wanted her to live. She knew _that_, knew it as she knew that she existed. Corinne, lovely, loving Corinne. She could have sung a hymn to her. She crossed the Revolutionsplatz. It was still a little too early to go to the restaurant Zur Stadt Brunn where she was to meet Corinne at noon,--and perhaps find herself alone in the restaurant with her empty purse, if anything happened to prevent Corinne from coming. No, she couldn't have borne any such "blamage." She was timid about so many of the most usual things. She then crossed the Lobkowitz Place, looking, for an unrelated instant, up at the Lobkowitz Palace--long the French Embassy. She had once been used to read eagerly about Royalty and the "First Society" going to receptions there, their titles, their decorations, their gowns, and how their jewels shone in the great marble ballroom;--now past, all past--both for them to do and for her to enjoy. She slipped falteringly down the street to go into the Augustinian Church. She wanted to pray for Corinne,--that Corinne might have her happiness. But Corinne's happiness was a tangled affair. Corinne's happiness could only come through Anna's death, and how wish the death of any being? As she knelt down she found that she had to put from her the thought that human destinies resemble hot peas jumping about in a pan,--no more meaning than that. Then her heart repented the wickedness of her thought and she was able to put it from her, and to pray that, as it was quite evident that she, Ildefonse Stacher, could not be trusted with a little happiness, the Lord might in some way trust Corinne with it. Then she prayed for Carli, though Carli, bright among the angels, needed no prayers ... for Kaethe, Leo, Hermann, Ferry--Fanny.

Her knees were trembling as she knelt, and she felt a deathly cold, a grey cold, it seemed to her, like that of the stones of the high-vaulted church. She got up stiffly. Noon was sounding from the tower as she passed the marble tomb of one of Maria Theresia's daughters, so beloved by her sorrowing husband. She herself might well have taken position among the carved, grey, mourning figures that stood before the entrance to the tomb, so drooping, so shade-like was she.

As she went out the terrible, mumbling old man with sore eyes held open the door for her; the pale, young cripple who stood by him didn't move when he saw that spectre of genteel poverty. So many just like that went in and out of the church. They had no more to give than he himself....

The sun for a moment was fairly flooding the winter streets; they shone in bright splashes of wetness. She stepped across the road into the doorway of the restaurant. To enter a restaurant again! Such a simple thing, she'd been doing it all her life. She felt like a fish suddenly thrown back into its own waters.

Corinne was crossing the street. The light was very white and dazzlingly enveloped her slender, swaying figure. How sweetly, softly her blue eyes shone as she approached.

"My little Dresden china Auntie!" she cried and kissed her right there in the doorway. Then they passed in and made their way to a table.

"For three," said Corinne, "a gentleman is coming. Shall we wait a moment, Auntie dear, before ordering?" she asked as they sat down.

Now the smell of the small, fresh rolls that the waiter was counting out, somewhat as he would once have counted gold, and three of which he had put on their table made Frau Stacher suddenly quite faint, but the feeling was so familiar and she was so happy to be there with Corinne that she only said:

"But naturally," knowing, too, for whom they waited, and her eyes looked more deeply into Corinne's than she herself was aware of.

Corinne glanced away with that oblique glance that could veil her thoughts more completely than fallen lids. She flushed slightly.

When Tante Ilde spoke again it was to say:

"I just missed you last night. I was again at Kaethe's, only a few minutes after you had gone.... Fanny was there." She leaned heavily against the table and continued, "I couldn't bear not to go back. We mustn't weep for Carli," but all the same tears filled her eyes and Corinne's own were wet.

No, truly she knew one needn't weep for Carli, but she felt so stupidly weak, there in that warm room with an abundant repast about to be served to her; she leaned more heavily against the table, she wanted terribly her soup, but after her way she said nothing and was able to continue, as she broke off a piece of her roll and began to eat it:

"Kaethe's grieving for Carli just as if he were her only child," and both childless women, soft as their hearts were, looked at each other not quite understanding.

"You ought to see the wreath of white roses that Fanny brought and coffee and cake. She was so sweet. She kissed Kaethe, in that way of hers ... you know, and when she knelt by Carli she wept as if her heart was going to break. She was always so fond of children when she was a girl. She would kneel awhile by Carli and then she would come back to Kaethe. She kept saying she should have done more, that she was a wretch, a monster, you know how she is, and it ended by Kaethe's comforting _her_. I made coffee for them all."

"I thought she'd go when she knew," began Corinne slowly, to add suddenly as a child, with a wondering look: "Tante Ilde, I don't understand anything about anything."

Though her aunt returned her gaze there was no answer in it. She didn't understand the least beginning of anything either.

"I'm going to Fanny's for dinner tomorrow," she said at last picking up the thought at its only concrete point. And this time there was no blush in her face. Why always blush about Fanny?

"To Fanny's tomorrow?" Corinne echoed quickly and turned a deep scarlet, the color flooding her face to disappear under the low brim of her hat. Tante Ilde at Fanny's! It was the ultimate disorder in their upset world, the rest of them, yes, any, all of them if need be, but not Tante Ilde. There was something snow-white about Tante Ilde. Three score years and ten in a grimy world had left on her no slightest smirch, and even now in the process of her despoilment she was at times blindingly white. That whiteness was the one ornament she still wore and became her exceedingly.

"You can't, you mustn't," said Corinne slowly after a moment.

"I can, I must," answered Tante Ilde firmly, finding herself suddenly in a new position, far the other side of both good and evil. "She didn't want me to--at first,--but I begged her so. She brought me back from Kaethe's in a taxi last night. Corinne, I _knew_ when I went there again that I was going to be brought back, that I wouldn't have to walk, though I couldn't know it would be Fanny.... She threw her arms around me and wept and said she was miserable herself, that she would be better off dead."

Neither of the two women let themselves wonder what her griefs were ... Fanny's griefs....

"I thought tomorrow you would go to some nice little café or just buy something for yourself and eat it at Irma's," continued Corinne lamely for one so generally adequate.

"Perhaps another time," answered her aunt with an involuntary gesture of putting the chalice from her as Corinne spoke of Irma. It was her nearest approach to complaint, but Corinne quite knew what it meant.

"Except for Carli it hasn't _all_ been too bad?" she questioned entreatingly.

"No, no, indeed, truly. Only I've seen so much, Inny," she answered saying the baby name for Corinne, so long unused, "so much of--of human beings," she ended quite detachèdly and her eyes got very wide and wandered a little.

"Irma is hard, I know," and Corinne put her hand out to find her aunt's, to hold her attention, "but she has that alcove and I thought, too, it would be a way to help the boys. I'm always worrying about the boys, and then it's almost impossible to find a place to lay one's head."

"The foxes of the earth," began Tante Ilde with a still stranger look on her face and then stopped.

Corinne was overcome by a quick anguish. Something was hurting her terribly though she couldn't have said which one of many things, and her aunt was suddenly as someone she had never known.

Tante Ilde had always had her little phrases and mottoes--but not like that. "Time brings roses," she would say consolingly to any child who was unhappy in the old days. "Hard work in youth is sweet rest in old age," when the boys wouldn't study; and she often reminded the girls that "Beauty goes, but virtue stays."

"You're looking so pale, darling, you're not ill, are you?" Corinne asked, after a moment breaking anxiously into that new, disturbing silence.

"No, just a little cold, my shoulders ache a bit,--then all the tears," she answered, "nothing more."

"Are you warmly enough dressed?" pursued Corinne, after another pause during which her eyes had wandered again to the door.

"Oh, yes, I have on two waists," and she smiled weakly.

"I believe you're faint for food," said Corinne at last, with a strange, burning look on her face, "we won't wait for Pauli, we'll have our soup right now," and she called the waiter.

It was still early and few people were in the restaurant, the waiters mostly standing idly around, smoothing their hair or flicking their serving napkins about as they talked, but it seemed to Frau Stacher an eternity before the order was taken and another endless period till the soup was brought and the waiter poured it hotly, appetizingly from the smoking metal cup into her plate. The first spoonful did its blessed work and the palest shade of pink came into her face. It seemed more delicious than anything she had ever tasted and she pitied all poor creatures who felt as she had been feeling and were not, like her, sitting before a steaming plate of bean soup.

"It's the tears and the fatigue, and perhaps a bit of a cold coming on," thought Corinne as she, too, partook gratefully of her soup, quite ready for it after her three hours at the bank, working at those interminable billions that threatened to run into trillions. Life at the bank was now composed of seemingly countless zeros, orgies of zeros, and often a fine headache after.

As they took their soup, with what remained of their rolls, they ceased to mourn for Carli, ... something bright and beautiful that had been and was no more.... They didn't try either, to look into the wherefores and whys of Fanny's existence, neither its splendors nor its miseries, though as Tante Ilde was taking her last spoonful of soup, she leaned across the table and said, a confidential note in her voice, something deprecatory too:

"Last night the boys didn't wake up, but Lilli and Resl kept peeping in at the door while Fanny was there. They followed me into the kitchen when I was making coffee and asked about 'Tante Fanny;' if I'd noticed how sweet her furs smelt and if I'd heard how her bracelets tinkled, she wears a lot of bracelets, broad bands of jewels that jingle and glitter. Lilli wanted to know who her husband was and Resl said, 'Ssh, she hasn't any,'" ended Tante Ilde with a sigh. But Corinne had ceased to listen, inherently fascinating as the theme of Fanny's bracelets was, for behind that pale waiting she was in a turmoil. Suddenly she flushed and then as suddenly grew white.

Pauli was standing at the door looking about. In a moment he was beside them and as he sat down in that eager way of his, life seemed to stream from him, more than he needed for himself, something overflowing, always something to give.

He was just as kind to Tante Ilde as to Corinne. She didn't feel a bit in the way ... for once ... like that. She was again in a world where given enough to eat and a warm place to eat it in, human beings still loved and longed for each other, not simply for food and shelter. A whole cityful of human beings with hearts and brains as well as stomachs thinking solely about what they were going to eat! It suddenly seemed a terrible waste to her ... in a world where there was love, beauty, wisdom, hidden, lost though they might be.

The waiter was standing by them with his pad in his hand waiting for the ladies to decide or for the gentleman to decide for them. Nothing like that had happened to Frau Stacher since the winter before she lost her income. The soup had put new life into her, and if it hadn't been for that vaguely evil thing she felt in her veins, she would have been almost her own gentle, pleasing, easy self again.

"Don't look only at the prices, Tanterl," Pauli was saying with his smile that so easily became a laugh. "How about half a young chicken with rice for each?" he suggested lavishly, surprised to find it there on the otherwise meagre list.

"Oh, Pauli, how reckless! If we're going to have _meat_, boiled beef would be nice." Indeed to Frau Stacher, desperately needing the stimulus of meat--any kind would have done, though the boiled beef she humbly suggested didn't inhabit the Paradise where young chickens abided, eternally cut in two waiting to be cooked and eaten.

"But not at all!" he cried, "we're going to have a feast," and he gave the order for the chicken and asked for the wine-card, selecting an Arleberger, that a friend in Budapest made a specialty of.