Part 14

An old servant from her father's house had followed her along that flowery path that had proved to have its own peculiar and very sharp thorns. She'd been witness to Fanny's wounds and bleedings as well as to her successes. She scolded, flattered and adored. Those watchful eyes were worth their weight in the legendary gold to her mistress. It was old Maria who gathered up the remains when Fanny gave her suppers and took them the next day to the Herr Professor's; it was she who brushed and took stitches in garments before they were given to Kaethe. It was she who said to herself "Kaethe can do so and so with this or that." Nothing was lost really in that seemingly wasteful house. Then, too, Maria had her own relatives, who nearly or quite starved in dark, distant streets. The chain of misery was endless; here and there a little place of plenty, like Fanny's house off the Kaerntner Street.

Fanny's post-war principle was simple: "der Tag bringt's, der Tag nimmt's," the day brings it, the day takes it. Who would be such a donkey as to save money that a week after would have halved or quartered, even if it did not quite lose, its value? No, spend and make others spend. Those were wonderful days for succeeding in a profession like Fanny's. Paper money? Easy. Vienna lived to spend, not only spent to live. That paper money went stale, dead on their hands if they didn't spend it. Jew and Christian alike knew that. Wonderful days, indeed, for Fanny and her kind.

Fanny always went to the Hotel Bristol for her midday meal, sitting at a little table not far from the door. Everybody that came in saw her and she saw everybody. She was one of the hotel's brightest treasures, above Princesses of blood, who now so often had a way of looking like their own maids. She was always smartly, beautifully dressed in her somewhat quiet style. She gave a light, bright touch to the dark, too-heavily decorated room, shone in it gleamingly, reposefully, like a crystal vase.

Foreigners generally beckoned to the head-waiter and asked who the lady was sitting alone at the table near the door. And according to the questioner so was the answer. The head-waiter, profoundly versed in human nature, made no mistakes.

Fanny's manners like her clothes, were impeccable. She spoke to no one and no one spoke to her and she certainly didn't look about her the way the green Americans or the ripe Jews did. She went in and out like a queen, haughtily, gracefully, her round hips swaying gently, her head erect, her beautiful, blue eyes impersonal. But then Fanny was always careful, not only in mien and gesture but in words. She was not accustomed to tell, even at her suppers, the sort of stories which, she heard quite authentically, ladies of the whole world told. It would have taken the distinction from her situation in the half world.

That luncheon at the Bristol was her regular public appearance. She occasionally nodded to a slender, distinguished-looking, dark woman, without her beauty but very chic. She was the friend of a Persian prince who, in pre-war days had ruined himself for her, but was now fast remaking a fortune in rugs. Extraordinary how many people there were in Vienna who wanted to buy expensive rugs! People who had mostly never seen a rug before,--suddenly Vienna was full of them. They came easily to the surface of the dark, troubled waters of the Kaiserstadt, like rats swimming strongly, surely against the current of disaster; and they wanted quickly all the things that "the others" had always had. These two women sometimes joined each other in the ante-chamber and went out together. The dark woman had once been somebody's wife; but Fanny had stood at no altar save the one she served. She would take a couple of hours for her toilette for those luncheons, for her seemingly simple toilette that no woman of the world with less exclusive and wider demands upon her time could hope to rival. She dressed sometimes for the weather, sometimes according to her mood, sometimes in consonance with the national misfortunes. After the Treaty of St. Germain she dressed for two months in black, fine, shining, smooth, silky black, and then because of the Count she dressed again in black after the signing of the Treaty of Trianon. Her face, in those dark days and dark deeds, shone out of her sombre raiment like a rift from black storm heavens. But after all in her blue gowns, blue of every shade, from nearly green to nearly purple, lay her greatest successes. That is why Kaethe and her children were almost entirely robed in blue--and Maria's relatives too.

Fanny's own expenses, as will be guessed, were large. She had to spend money,--a lot of it,--to make money, to keep steady her situation, somewhat inverted, in the social body. Seven years of it and though she was handsomer she was older. She had an extraordinary canniness for all the sweet innocence of her blue eyes and pouting red lips.

Her ways were irregularly regular. In the evening unless she went to the theatre she was always at home. And there had never been any falling off in those evenings. Good business was often done then, other than by the châtelaine. Princes of the old style had there the desired opportunity to meet the new lords of Austria,--men that they would scarcely have saluted on the street in the old days, men that then they only knew in their money-lending capacity, having their habitat in small inner offices; beings with money in safes behind their desks, who gave it out at usurious rates to temporarily or permanently embarrassed scions of noble houses. Then these "Aristokraten" had had the fine steel of birth with which to defend themselves, a shining sword that had made such dealings profitable and pleasant on both sides. Now that sword was gone dull in their hands, or broken at the hilt. Life was a different kind of tilting ground. Gloves were thrown down in counting houses and then promptly picked up and pocketed. Those whose only occupation had once been to lend money now had further pretensions.

It was known that at Fanny's almost any one might be met. The men who came were expected to have an entrance ticket of some kind--money, wit or birth. They didn't get a chance to sit around in those deep chairs, smoking those delicate cigarettes, just because it was so pleasant. Many a poor devil whose birth or wit was his only asset was mercifully splashed by the plenty that surged about Fanny. Though each Schieber really felt, according to the expressive Viennese phrase, that each prince could "ihm gestohlen sein," the aureole, though thin, still hung about the heads of the titled gentlemen who frequented the little flat off the Kaerntner Street.

Fanny was both hard and soft-hearted. In her bargains she was merciless. Her beauty and her arrogance were worth wagon loads of that paper money and she knew it. But then how lavishly she could give! For her family she was as a horn of abundance. Indeed Fanny was a sort of clearing house for the relief of their miseries. When you came right down to it she supported in some sort of a way a good half of the less resourceful and more virtuous relatives with whom Providence had so richly endowed her. Without Fanny they would have succumbed to their miseries. Instead of half starving they would have entirely starved. Fanny who hadn't held out, sometimes wondered what on earth would have happened to the others if she had,--Kaethe and the children, Irma's boys, Tante Ilde and a lot more. She wasn't always thinking of them, it is true. But when she was lonely she did it passionately, extravagantly, and would send expensive, ribbon-tied boxes of sweets to Kaethe's children or to the boys. When Maria would find it out she would scold dreadfully and say that what they needed was flour and a lot of it, and that Fanny herself was headed for the poorhouse and Fanny would go off in a huff leaving a hard word behind her for Maria. But then Fanny was like that. All or nothing. Too much or not enough; beyond the goal or short of it. In her avoidance of the middle course lay Fanny's successes and her mishaps. Maria was more reasonable and more constant; but "we can't do everything, too many of them," she would reflect, and "weiss der kuckuk," the cuckoo knows, her favorite expression when in doubt, where they would have got what they did get, if Fanny hadn't been Fanny.

The reactions of the various members of the family to her methods had been at first purely temperamental, but according as their misfortunes increased, her spasmodic though continuous generosity had modified their sentiments as well as their miseries. Indeed they were, all of them, in one way or another, continually running beneficently into Fanny, though as she was mostly invisible in the flesh, the "bumps" they got were apt to be of the soft and pleasant order.

Fanny, who couldn't bear Irma, a "sour stick," sent the boys their winter boots, their woollen stockings and jerseys. Irma eagerly yet acidly received these reminders of relationship while in her heart condemnatory of the relative. Mizzi, on the contrary, admired Fanny extravagantly and if she had had the necessary "talent" and what she also called "Fanny's luck," would have asked nothing better than to work out her problems along Fanny's lines. She mostly kept her admiration locked in her breast, however, and generally so harsh in her judgments she never uttered a word of reproach where Fanny was concerned. Then, too, it might have got back to her and that wouldn't have done at all. Fanny was too useful. She knew that Hermann sometimes went to see his sister, and she thought it a good thing. He might pick up something there,--which he never did,--but she considered it one of his least useless acts.

As for Liesel, Otto had grandly and early signified that it was no place for an honest woman like his Liesel. But then they didn't need Fanny and could indulge in their virtuous segregation, though the reports Liesel heard of Fanny's clothes were tantalizing in the extreme and she was truly sorry that things "were as they were."

As for Anna she hated Fanny with a cold, terrible hatred, too cold and terrible for the light of day. A sombre jealousy was its chief ingredient, back from their childhood days, but Anna had forgotten that and thought it was detestation of Fanny's ways. She and Hermine could get along without her too. And then, deadliest of sins, she was convinced, though she had no definite way of finding out, that Pauli had a soft place in his heart for her. Fanny here, Fanny there, she was sick of it. Fanny doing what was done for the Eberhardts, Fanny doing what was done for Irma and the three little stepbrothers, Fanny paying, she could bet, for Tante Ilde's alcove. Ah! Bah!

Kaethe loved her sister very much and Eberhardt, from the clouds, was apt to fall as a dew of mercy alike on the just and the unjust. Pauli and Hermann never mentioned her, though 'twas true that Pauli frequented the flat assiduously and Hermann would have gone oftener but for the terror of those open places.

"Virtue, what is virtue?" Fanny had once cried to Pauli when some thorn or other had pressed deeply into her white flesh. And what _was_ virtue in that starving city? Generous giving in the end assumed the supreme mien of virtue, had, indeed, usurped the place of all virtues, theological and human. It was all, to the family, whichever way they looked, confusingly the triumph of Fanny's sins over their own virtues. Fanny was inclined, too, to be pious,--in her way and at her time. She was apt to enter any church she was passing; what the prayers she offered up, who shall say? Not entirely of thanksgiving that in the starving city she had plenty. Perhaps she begged not to reach old age,--to have time on her deathbed. That was what she hated to think of. Old age! Alone! Death! Judgment! Whom the gods love of Fanny's kind they certainly snatch young.

Yet, how gay she could be! What life was in her! Even above her beauty was that sense of flooding life in her veins. 'Tis true her temper easily ran high. Maria knew well the signs of rising choler; blasts of that temper blew about impartially. Indeed she was more apt to administer a box on the ear than to bestow a kiss. It was often said by the recipients of the first-mentioned gift that never was she so handsome as when lightnings were flashing from her deep eyes. It was all part and parcel of poor Fanny. It was extraordinary how the family got used to her in their hearts, though sometimes in words they still condemned her--and ah, if Fanny hadn't been _their_ Fanny!

However, there she was and apparently as bright as one of those American dollars to be gazed upon in the windows of exchange bureaux, shedding their radiance over the dull waste of paper money.

Obviously they couldn't be seen with her, nor she with them,--in the end no one could have said just which way it was. However, from her all blessings flowed. Pauli called her the family Doxology, and once when he had run into her coming out of St. Stephen's, he had said, with his wide, flashing smile:

"Na, Fanny, thanking the Lord God for his manifold blessings, that you will later pass on to the rest of us?"

And Fanny had called him a "stupid ox," and smiled and blushed and flicked him ever so lightly with the tail of her silver fox.

It was one of Fanny's many gifts, that way of blushing that she still had, would perhaps always have. It was indeed a confusing situation. The yard-sticks of the old days were broken or mislaid and anyway few had the energy to use them.

When Fanny had been very ill with grippe in November, Corinne and Kaethe, summoned by Maria, had gone to see her for the first time; they had let it be known afterwards that it was just like any other place only much nicer, and that Fanny had been saying her rosary. Nothing hung together somehow.

Tante Ilde, whose judgments were innately of the order abounding in mercy had had at first only the most uncomfortably confused sensations at the mention of Fanny,--sensations rather than thoughts. A flush would, at such moments, mantle her cheek. It was when she still lived at Baden and Anna and Irma would come out and tell her of certain things that to them, Anna and Irma, were nothing short of shameful, an honest family, etc. Her father would have turned in his grave, etc., and they, especially Irma, would soon have to think of the boys, etc., etc. Tante Ilde had been wont to listen in a sort of confused silence. She didn't understand things "like that" anyway, was the general opinion. She would think glimmeringly of what happened in the end in novels and on the stage to women of Fanny's ways, and she would feel alarmed for Fanny rather than condemnatory.

But when the races began again at Baden and they heard, necessarily indirectly, that Fanny, in two shades of blue, had been the sensation of the day, they were increasingly puzzled, but a touch of pride crept in to give a new tone to their feelings. So Fanny's scarlet sins, if not washed whiter than snow in the miseries of War and Peace, had undeniably been getting paler and paler in the family eye.

Now poor Tante Ilde shared with the others a certain miscellaneous satisfaction, all sorts of things composed the secret mixture, that came inevitably from the knowledge that Fanny was doing very well. Indeed what would they do if Fanny didn't do well? It was the world upside down. But they were all living in that same upside-down world and the relativity of their misfortunes was so dependent on the absolute of Fanny's fortunes that certain chalky lines and demarcations were fast disappearing. Though none of the women went to Fanny's they all saw Maria, that messenger of hopes and fulfilments, that faithful _officier de liaison_ between two worlds.

* * * * *

When, after her habit of recounting everything to Maria, Fanny had told her all about Carli and meeting Tante Ilde at Kaethe's, they had first wept over Carli, mingling their tears as they embraced. Then they had a conversation concerning the proprieties, concerning Tante Ilde's coming to Fanny for dinner on the very next Saturday,--before the funeral. At first the thing had seemed impossible, just couldn't be. Certain things weren't done, and Tante Ilde--so devoted, so genteel, so innocent. Of Tante Ilde's indestructible innocence there were no two opinions. Something to be cherished. It wouldn't be "anstaendig," decent, a word used with more shades of meaning in Viennese than in English. Equally Fanny couldn't take Tante Ilde to the Hotel Bristol. Yet Fanny was suddenly very lonely for Tante Ilde, she had a hunger for her and Fanny generally gave herself the things she wanted.... Tante Ilde, so loving, so unfortunate, the only one left of the older generation. Why if Tante Ilde died, Fanny herself, all of them, would be, dreadful thought, the older generation! She positively boo-hooed, wiping her handsome nose noisily on her filmy handkerchief. But for once Fanny didn't see her way quite clear to gratifying her desire. There were things, a lot of them, that weren't done and this seemed quite definitely one of them.

She had her code and it was rigorous. But Maria had been saying that she noticed, too, how white and thin Tante Ilde looked when she had gone to take Irma the woollen stockings, just as if her life were being pressed out of her, though not a word of complaint, only a smile and just faint and tired, as if she didn't have a place to rest her feet or to lay her head, "and I'll bet she has it hard with Frau Irma," finished Maria shrewdly.

"About like sitting on pins," answered Fanny with conviction, "but Pauli told me Corinne hoped it would do for awhile, on account of the boys, too."

"I could make her comfortable here for once," pursued Maria insinuatingly, "a little table drawn up by the stove and a good oatmeal soup."

Maria, too, had her doubts as to the propriety of the proceeding. She was quite feeling around in the dark where you might run into all sorts of things. In ordinary times there would have been no question of such an arrangement or even during the War, but the Peace had levelled the ranks of the Viennese with the same efficiency as death--what, indeed, was virtue?

"I feel so sorry for the poor, dear old lady," said Maria meditatively, repeating, "I could make her comfortable for once."

"Well, you'll probably have your way, but I'm against it, it just isn't suitable," answered Fanny flatly. Her aunt's life was broken into bits but there was a whiteness about the remaining pieces that they all, according to their natures, felt must not be diminished.

"But, Lord God!" at last cried Maria, whose voice could rise too, "they all take the money!"

"They can't starve, the poor things!" answered Fanny immediately up in arms for the family, her voice rising above Maria's.

Maria familiar with the signs of trouble, lowered her own.

"It's different her coming here," Fanny began after a pause with an unexpected quiver of the lips.

Maria melted instantaneously, this was so painfully, undeniably the fact, and pressed Fanny's head against her ample bosom.

"It's different," Fanny repeated and wished it wasn't different. Suddenly the hunger for Tante Ilde became very insistent, rising up from far out of those happy days when she had been the prettiest girl that any one had ever seen, and had picked daisies in Tante Ilde's garden at Baden and pulled off the petals: "He loves me--loves me not--not."... And _this_ was what Life was.... Maria could do any blessed thing she pleased about Tante Ilde. She, Fanny, washed her hands of the matter.

And even the next morning things weren't any better, and she made her toilet snapping crossly at Maria, with the corners of her mouth drawn down, looking fully her age, which though it wasn't great, she couldn't afford to do ... considering.... And then she had gone out to the Bristol to the tinkle of her bracelets, and the slightest rustle of silk, (just enough to let one know somebody was passing,) her eyes stormily sombre under the drooping plume of her hat, her furs enveloping her softly, odorously--all in a not unfamiliar, black sea of depression. That black sea, with no slightest light, that sometimes threatened to flood up above her red, full mouth, above her small, flat ears, above her wide, blue eyes, till she was drowned, till she was dead.... What was the matter that Tante Ilde couldn't walk right in to her own niece's home? And then, it must be confessed, as she walked slowly along, she used some expressions in regard to life and living that she hadn't learned in her father's house.

* * * * *

Fanny had been likened by a foreign friend to one of her own waltzes,--beautiful and hot, gay and sad, for beneath the passion and beauty they embody is that ever-recurrent note of melancholy, woven through each sparkling melody, to be caught up swiftly into the inevitable coda that for so many of Fanny's kind is the end indeed.

Vienna laughs and weeps to her waltz music, loves and dies to its measures, to a continual "allegro con fuoco." Weber thus annotated one of the glowing movements of "Blumen der Liebe:" "Breast against breast he confesses his love and receives from her the sweet avowal of love returned."... Breast against breast indeed, giving and receiving, myriads of maidens in each generation embody the brief and tragic triumph of passion and beauty over the lengthier security of duty. In that very heart of Europe is a perpetual, warm, fermenting desire for love, an instant sensibility to the arts--to all beauty in its visible forms; but "swiftly with fire" these are forever consuming themselves, for they have little to do with material success or personal continuity.