Part 15

The Turks left other things there than coffee and ruins. They dropped some seed of Eastern magic into this only half Western soil and a dark flower, like no other dark flower of the earth, sprang up abundantly. Its color for a time has been washed out in the sombre waters of War and Peace; it has been trampled by the slow tread of cripples, its growth suspended in starvation. But another generation that has not seen these things and died of pity or hunger will arise, other "Flowers of Love" will blossom. The sagging portico of that stately pleasure-palace, Vienna, will be again upheld by Caryatides with glowing eyes, with bright cheeks, with thick, shining coils of dark hair, with full, soft figures and tireless, round, white arms. And in through the portico, coming from their dark side streets, will pass "allegro con fuoco," passionate, gifted young men, worshipers of the arts and devotees of the graces, with their Frauenlieb and their Frauenlob apostrophes, their lovely, tragic hymns to Spring and Hope and Love--till the sun and the moon and the stars shall have done with them.

* * * * *

When Frau Stacher got up that Saturday morning she found that her legs were trembling weakly and that only with the greatest effort could she stand. Her chest seemed bound in iron, too, and she was breathing quite noisily.

"I've got a terrible cold after all," she thought appalled at the idea of being ill at Irma's--in the alcove. "It just can't be," she thought desperately. Up and out was the word, though down and all in was what she felt. She was momentarily comforted by the cup of ersatz coffee that Irma always served very hot, but she had a vast repugnance to the piece of hard bread. Gusl, with his sharp eyes out had been watching it as it lay untouched at her plate.

"Tante Ilde, you're not eating your bread," he observed finally.

"No, I don't want it. I'm not hungry," and she pushed it towards him.

"Not hungry!" he exclaimed and his voice was hopeful.

At that Ferry who always noticed things said: "You're not ill, Tante?"

Irma glanced up quickly. But her sister-in-law always looked that way in the morning, pale and spent and a hundred years old, so she turned to the more agreeable consideration of the slice of bread. Being impartial was one of Irma's many virtues and that slice was cut into three bits, the thin end larger than the two thicker pieces. It was a pleasant sight, though no more durable than a flash of lightning, to see the boys eat it, in an instant, one chew, one swallow. Then they began to get ready for school and Irma lingeringly wrapped Ferry's knitted scarf about his neck, she was strangely tender with her sons, and they all clattered down the bare steps.

Frau Stacher always rather dreaded that moment of being alone with Irma, but this morning she was glad of the sudden quiet in the apartment. She would have lain down again but for Irma's inevitable question if she did so. Clearly Irma's wasn't a house to relax in. You got up and went on. So instead of lying down, as usual she helped to wash the cups and saucers and put the room in order.

Then when Irma sat down to her work by the window, she went back to her alcove and in its semi-obscurity, leaned heavily on the yet unmade divan, trying not to cough. She could hear Irma drawing the stitches of her embroidery in and out, and the little click when she picked up or lay down her scissors. She was no more alone than that. It suddenly seemed to her that the most intolerable of all her misfortunes was never, never to be alone. She started up uncomfortably as Irma called out, speaking more gently, however, than was her wont:

"You're going surely to Fanny's today?" and then she heard Irma lay down her work and cross the room. As she pulled the curtain aside Frau Stacher stood up guiltily. Irma even in her preoccupation could not but see that her sister-in-law was ailing. There was no mistaking it. But Irma was determined, more determined than she had ever been about anything that she should go to Fanny's that day, that very day. Virtue or vice, 'twas all the same in Irma's eyes, all run together. Ferry had to be saved, saved that day and not another.

"Hermann says that if Ferry gets over this coming year, he'll be all right."

Something familiarly, sombrely fierce lay in her eyes as impatiently she looked at the frail messenger of her desire.

"Yes, I'm going, Irma, you can count on me, I won't forget," she answered almost humbly. "Don't worry, we'll arrange it," and then her eyes fell on the little figure of the woman bending over waiting to have the two buckets, one filled with apples and the other with pears, put into her hands.

"I'll just take it with me--to show Fanny," she continued.

Irma's eyes filled with tears as she took the little carving from the table and started to wrap it in a piece of newspaper.

"No, give it to me just as it is. I'll carry it in my bag," and she put it into her worn reticule that never stayed clasped and now promptly fell open as she laid it on the divan.

"You won't lose it," questioned Irma anxiously, seeing her put it into the precarious keeping of the bag, but her sister-in-law didn't answer, only pulled the curtains together again. Irma went slowly back to her embroidery, but after a moment or two not hearing any sounds of moving about, she asked in a tone whose irritation was but half-suppressed:

"Don't you think you had better begin to get ready?" This having to push her sister-in-law up and along, out of the house, filled her with a sickening impatience.

"Yes, perhaps I had better," Frau Stacher answered obediently, "though it isn't far."

And then Irma hearing those soft, slow movements of dressing behind the curtain said no more. She was really only thinking of the moment of her sister-in-law's return, with the money in her purse or perhaps enough to be prudently pinned into her dress.

Frau Stacher was thinking of nothing. All the forces of her being were employed in that act of clothing her body. After she was dressed she noticed that she had on the wrong skirt, but she felt she couldn't change--and then she _had_ put the velvet around her neck. One thing she didn't do that morning, she only remembered it when she got out into the street--she hadn't pulled back the curtains.

But Irma, as she saw her ready to depart, though she noticed that the curtains weren't drawn, only said again:

"You won't lose the little figure?" and Frau Stacher with that formidable submission in her eyes, even Irma got it, answered again:

"No, I'll be very careful." Then she turned and inexplicably to herself embraced Irma and said, "Farewell" just as if she didn't expect to be back in a few hours. Irma heard her steps getting fainter and fainter, as she went down the resounding stairway, until they were lost forever.

* * * * *

Frau Stacher felt very weak, and her feet seemed made of lead, as she turned into the Rotenthurm Street, then that pain between her shoulders. But she was thankful that she had been able to get out and Fanny, mercifully, lived near. A pale, uncertain sun that gave no warmth, lay momentarily over the city.

There was an undeniable excitement about going to Fanny's, something adventurous, like going into exotic lands, that stimulated her momentarily and in that sick confusion of her being she did not try to analyze her varied and commingled sentiments. Bashfulness, timidity, the gentlest curiosity, gratitude, affection, she was conscious of,--together with that increasing pain between her shoulders....

She was admitted by Maria whose small black eyes were snapping pleasantly, whose wide mouth wore the most affectionate of smiles; Maria, part of their lives since twenty-five years, Maria, who had always opened to her ring when she went to see her brother.

"Ach, dear, gracious lady, how good of you to come to us!" she cried warmly and bending kissed Frau Stacher's hand with all the old time reverence and affection.

She felt like a storm-tossed little craft that has at last made port. She hadn't thought it would be that way. It was, indeed, "just like any other place, only much nicer."

"Fanny is making her toilette, I'm just getting her into her things," Maria continued easily.

"I'll be there in a minute, Tante Ilde, dear," called another welcoming voice from the next room, then in quite a different tone:

"You old hag, you've forgotten to take that stitch in my sleeve."

"Coming, coming," called back Maria cheerfully and winked at Frau Stacher, "She doesn't mean a thing. Just her little way," she whispered admiringly; then aloud:

"If the dear lady will lay her things aside," and as Maria spoke she proceeded to help her remove the old coat, peeling off the narrow sleeves and pulling down the little woolen shawl that Frau Stacher wore underneath; she then put her into a comfortable chair, a cushion at her back, and with solicitous inquiries about her health, (Frau Stacher's looks didn't please Maria) "now you just rest while I finish getting Fanny ready," she ended with a pat of her fat hand on the thin shoulder.

"What are you talking about?" called her mistress, "Perhaps I'm not going out."

Maria disappeared through the door and Frau Stacher heard her say something about "stupid caprices."

Before the fine, even warmth of the porcelain stove Frau Stacher forgot how chilly she had been in the street; and the deep armchair with its soft cushion, how it engulfed yet sustained her! She was quite happy and almost comfortable. She felt more at ease, more at home than at any time since leaving Baden.

Over a card-table was spread a white cloth and on it a service for one. She felt unreasonably disappointed;--if Fanny could have stayed. Once in, it certainly was like any other place and truly it was nicer.

Her heart had beat a little thickly as she dragged herself up the stairs with those leaden feet. Certain mysterious things you didn't do the first time without a feeling ... but she saw herself often in future coming quietly up those very steps. She would always let Maria know first, though why she would let Maria know first, instead of just ringing at the door, she didn't try to explain.

Plenty lay again about her, the dear, familiar forms of Fanny and Maria were ready to minister to her. She breathed in, as deeply as the constriction in her chest permitted, the warm comfort of it all, plenty, affection, in a starving world of old, unwanted women in garrets--in alcoves.

From above the door Franz Joseph continued to smile paternally down upon her, opposite him his beautiful and luckless Empress. The banished Zita and her children struck a further absolving note of innocence and misfortune. Frau Stacher returned gratefully the benevolent look her Emperor was bending upon her, remembering that he too, had "had it hard." As she slipped deeper into that comfortable chair she was conscious of being so tired, so spent that she feared she could never again get up. Yet it was almost delicious, the sense of languor--in that deep chair--in that warm room.

An immense gilt basket in which was planted a young fruit tree in full blossom stood near one of the windows. It was tied with bright, blue ribbons, but its flowers were very pale in the hard January light. What was it doing there in mid-winter? She breathed in the faint scent of the forced blossoms hovering about the warm air. Ah, how indeed could she move out of that chair, how close that door behind her on that atmosphere of welcoming abundance?

She was sitting near the little table on which stood Fanny's collection of elephants. One in pink jade with ruby eyes seemed to be looking compassionately at her. Then she wondered, but without impatience, why Fanny didn't come.

Fanny _was_ taking longer than necessary, but suddenly she had found that she could not bear to meet her aunt's eyes. Oh, those eyes! They would gaze at her as children's eyes gaze and she dreaded the feeling she knew she would have when she met them, right out, in daylight, in her own house. Behind that closed door Fanny was in a blue funk, Fanny who would have faced armies without turning a hair, and she fussed nervously with the objects on her dressing table and kept looking quite unnecessarily at her shining, softly-rolled back hair with her hand-glass....

"Why doesn't Fanny come?" her aunt began to ask herself again somewhat anxiously and in her humility feared it was something connected with herself. Just then the front door bell rang and she jumped in her chair, a flush mounting to her face. She couldn't at all have said what it was she feared might be impending but whatever it was, that ring made a genteel old lady start up when she was too tired really to move and blush the bright blush of her long lost youth. Maria ran out of Fanny's room, in what seemed to her an anxious way, to open the door. But she only took in a box, a large, flat, pleasant-looking box, the sort of box Frau Stacher remembered from her own shopping days. She saw the name Zwieback on it as Maria took it in to the other room. Another long wait ensued. She could hear whispers and the rustling of tissue paper.

Then all of a sudden the bedroom door was flung open and Fanny appeared, holding high up, so that it hid her face, a long, black coat. In a flash, before a word could be said, Tante Ilde knew that coat was for her....

Fragrantly, warmly Fanny was bending over her, embracing her; a sudden, flaming color that had come out of no box was in her cheeks.

"Stand up, Auntie," she was saying in her silver voice, more embarrassed than she had ever been in any other of the seemingly more formidable moments of her life.

Tante Ilde turned her wide, soft glance upon her. In a pale, silken wrapper Fanny was looking as fresh as lilies who have neither sowed nor spun. It was the same bright, dawnlike face that Tante Ilde knew so well, there in the cold, grey light of the January day, it recalled somehow early morning clouds in summer....

She got up as her niece spoke and in another minute that warm, soft wool, that smooth, satiny lining were enfolding her. It must have cost a monstrous sum.

"Oh, Fanny," she protested weakly, "to spend all that money on me!"

"Money, what is money?" returned Fanny blithely, her aplomb completely restored. "You can't keep it nowadays. It just rots if you try. No more old stocking!" And then she proceeded to throw that practiced eye of hers over the coat.... Any niece with a beloved aunt.

"Come here," she next cried to Maria and pointed out a button that needed changing, Tante Ilde was even thinner than they thought, "bring some pins."

Down on her silken knees she went and put the pin where the button was to be sewed on again.

Tante Ilde quite forgot that the family instinctively lowered their voices when speaking of Fanny. She was her brother's child again, her own little Fannerl, the sweet, soft, laughing, incredibly, brightly, beautiful maiden of those far away days. Ah, she should have married a prince!

"You are an angel," she said tremulously keeping back with difficulty some tears that lay heavily just behind her eyes.

"'Angel' is going a bit far," answered Fanny modestly, though really delighted in her heart, and she wondered for the thousandth time what on earth they would have done without her.

"I'm not going out," she said crisply to Maria, "the devil can take the Bristol. I'm going to stay with Tante Ilde. Bring another cover, and quick, I'm sure she's hungry,--I'm nearly starved." This last wasn't quite true, for not so very long before Maria had taken in Fanny's tray with coffee and cream and a glossy, buttery gipfel, got, Maria and the cuckoo alone knew from where.

"You look so tired, Auntie dear," said Fanny next.

Her aunt's face was, indeed, quite pinched and very pale in spite of the fresh glow of her heart, near which, between her shoulders was that increasingly unpleasant, stabbing sort of pain. But she was a game old lady. She hadn't yet complained about anything, so she only answered:

"A bit of a cold coming on, that's all."

"I don't think you ought to go to the cemetery with us this afternoon," Fanny pursued somewhat anxiously.

"But going in a carriage, and if I wear my warm, new coat?" she questioned eagerly.

The new coat made the effort seem possible. Not, oh, not at all through vanity, but a new coat, her own,--she enjoyed, too, in anticipation, showing it to Irma, though Irma would be sure to say something about it designed to dim its glory.

Maria was bringing in the oatmeal soup that she had fully intended since the evening before to make for Frau Stacher ... she knew Fanny. It was steaming up pleasantly from its little blue and white tureen and Fanny proceeded to ladle it out generously. She had pushed the card-table close to her Tante Ilde's chair and drawn up a little stool for herself on the other side. Frau Stacher took a few mouthfuls,--delicious, there was certainly some milk in it. Tired as she was she couldn't be mistaken about there being milk in it, but all the same she found she wasn't hungry. She forced it down however, to the last drop; Fanny mustn't think she didn't like it.

Fanny had jumped up restlessly after watching her take the first spoonful and lighted a cigarette and then sat down again, bending forward, her elbows on her knees, and her white hand, with its immense sapphire ring, just one big, square stone, putting the cigarette up to her red mouth, her rosily manicured finger tips flickering the ash from it on to the floor. The pale silken sleeves would ripple back and show Fanny's dimpled elbows. She took a little soup herself, but, like her aunt, showed no enthusiasm when Maria brought in a cutlet and some fried potatoes.

Frau Stacher knew well Maria's fine kitchen hand. So many years she had sat at her brother's table and seen Maria put just such cutlets on with those unrivalled fried potatoes. Frau Stacher was pierced cruelly for a moment by the memories these familiar things evoked; the children sitting around the table, talking and laughing, and her brother Heinie, who had loved them all impartially, looking indulgently from one to another. Indeed it seemed the most natural of things to each of the three women; a thing they'd done a thousand times together.

But after her first mouthful of the cutlet Frau Stacher knew she wasn't going to be able to eat it. Its odor was delicious, the edges of the tender veal were goldly brown, and towards the middle of the piece it could easily be seen how white the meat was.

"I believe you're ill, Tanterl," said Fanny again looking sharply at her. "You rest here while I take Kaethe and Leo."

"But I want to go with you," she returned imploringly, "I don't want to leave you."

Tante Ilde couldn't have told why she was so determined to go with Fanny, but the longing took her out of her usual gently acquiescent ways.... As if Fanny was to do something solemn, important for her, and she mustn't be separated from her. As if she had been warned that by keeping close to Fanny she would avoid some last, some ultimate horror. It was suddenly as clear as that.

"It's only a little cold I've got," she repeated beseechingly, like a child imploring some permission.

"As you will," said Fanny sweetly, "I'm only afraid you'll take more cold at the cemetery."

But Frau Stacher felt again that sudden, almost fierce cleaving to Fanny, to Kaethe ... to little Carli. Where they went, there she wanted to go. It seemed to her, too, that she wasn't feeling quite so ill, but rather afraid to be left alone, even with Maria, nice as that would be; Maria who would come in and talk about the old, the happy days, and show her Fanny's things,--Fanny's jewels and gowns. But even so she wanted to be with her own, her very own. She forced down a morsel of the cutlet and took a bit of the fried potatoes on her fork but it was evident to Fanny, and Maria, watching from the door, that she was eating with difficulty. She had an unbelievable, astonishing repugnance to the meat, to the fatty smell; then too, she was worrying about Ferry, thinking all the time that now she must speak of him. It seemed a mountainous exertion, one she was quite unequal to. But she could never go back to Irma's unless she did and then, too, she wanted to help Ferry. But it seemed beyond her strength. Anything except sitting still and being ministered to was beyond it. Then suddenly as she sat there toying with her cutlet, she knew that her work was done; though whence the assurance had come she could not have told. It came, a sort of glimmering presence, bringing its dim, sweet promise that effort was ended. Her attention was quite engaged by that lovely, unexpected presence, and it was as if from a long distance that she heard Fanny say:

"I think a good, strong cup of coffee, right now, would be the best thing for you," and then she called to Maria to make it quickly and make it strong.

The very suggestion acted as a stimulant on Frau Stacher, and she was able to pull herself together sufficiently to look gratefully at her niece. Then her eyes wandered again and were caught by that flowering tree, so spring-like to her age. It's thin fragrance foretold a true spring that she too old, and it too young, would never see. It was palely, tenderly confused in her mind with that gleaming presence. She felt that she must recognize its beauty by some word--perhaps afterwards she would get around to Ferry. She experienced a slight timidity at mentioning that plant, however, though why it should awaken timidity, with that other sentiment of reverence for its beauty, she could not have told.

"What lovely things grow on the earth!" she ventured finally, indicating it with the slightest of gestures.

"Yes," answered Fanny indifferently, she was thinking how changed her aunt was, "but you should see the donkey that sent it."

Frau Stacher thought no more of the plant.

Fanny herself was only toying with the veal cutlet and potatoes. If the truth be told she was aware of a slight excitement, following on her first embarrassment, just enough to cut her appetite ... having Tante Ilde there ... that way.