CHAPTER EIGHT

Diana emerged from the great red-brick building which constituted the headquarters of the newspaper. She had been back some weeks, and spent the whole forenoon working in the office as before. Now, in her simple summer frock she was walking leisurely down the drive. Other young ladies, eager to catch a bus or to rejoin a lover round the next corner, overtook her, and scurried on their way. Diana seemed to see herself again, making her entry here that first day, ignorant of all these faces, scrutinized by the huge janitor at the door, a man she was subsequently to greet with such studied dignity; and as she dwelt on that time in reminiscent mood, it occurred to her that she was older now by two whole years. Was not this very day the anniversary? She took her way along the Friedrich Strasse, musing as she went.

"Yes, it was the fourteenth of May, the same date, I remember it well, for I started work the next morning, and on the last of the month I got my two weeks' pay, a hundred and twenty marks. Am I happier now that I get ten times as much? J'aime l'argent, parce que j'aime la liberté. Are those the words of the sage of Geneva, who had them from Voltaire? Or have I read them somewhere in Voltaire's works? ... Liberté! There's a flavour of gasconade about the French word. Libertà! That rings truer. Freedom has a hollow sound. Freiheit is beautiful. And yet it is an ancient word! At one time I could rattle off the libertatem concedere, desiderio libertatis flagrare; but the most lovely of all was the libertas innata! And then eleutheria! I remember when I was seventeen I read the definition in my Greek lexicon: 'eleutheros--1) free, independent; 2) self-disciplined, candid, also inconsiderate, unceremonious.' Yes, inconsiderate.... How the young toss the word in the air and never realize its implications! One just begins to understand it by the time one is twenty-five. The day has come when I can say: Ten years ago..."

Her attention was attracted to a pair of laughing young lovers crossing the street, and then coming to a halt in front of a great plate-glass window full of goods; she saw the girl point a tiny gloved finger at a little box containing the coveted knives and forks, and press this same finger against the window.

"They all seek out some brick-built den, and then they mate, and breed, and feed, and die. I have brought too high an ideal of the perfect from a previous life, too much presumption, too keen a demand for the princely.... Even this word will have to disappear before long. As soon as one sees a thing near at hand, it becomes meaningless. How hard it is for Eduard that his excessive seriousness should always make him misconceive the present. Ten days since we bade farewell.... Why does he leave me with never a word? I know his heart is in a fever, his head is throbbing; always grubbing in the mines of the future! ... Oh these men who are for ever practising renunciation, these architects of life, these Scherers, and Eduards, and Russians.... The Russian? He at least occasionally sends all his theories to the right about, so that they retire trembling into a dark corner!"

She turned into Unter den Linden.

"The lime trees are in flower, and their sickly-sweet perfume is wafted to me. I'm always driven to seek out Germany in May. Has one ever enough of it? Libertas? With seven hours at the office? It's lost its savour ... not only because of Scherer ... and yet... It used to be so jolly in the old days when he came towards three every afternoon to discuss things with me; and the paper he held in his hand had the appearance of a battle ground. With what evident pleasure he'd let me get the better of him in one round, though in the end he was still more delighted when he pinked me! Now it is nothing but recriminations; or he will beseech, or play the meek and humble.... Meanwhile, kindliness, such as we hoped to establish in our relations, murmurs deprecatingly: 'I am kindliness: let us try to understand one another.' ... How stately and white the library looks over there. It is peaceful, because it contains all the wisdom of the world. Had I not better once more go through its portals and start learning anew? Sometimes the game seems too ridiculous for words; the feverish activity to get the latest news, merely time lost."

She stopped before a travel agency, looking at a map of the world on whose oceans tiny ships sailed. An arm suddenly stirred the curtain from within the office, a huge hand gripped one of the tiny vessels which had nearly reached the Azores, and set it down again one degree farther westward. Then, another boat, nearing Cape Town, would suffer a similar fate.

"Just like the gods. Without that sleeve and cuff, one might take it for Neptune's arm. Thus, it is only Mercury's. How small are the seas: how swiftly the little ships travel across them! The 'Excelsior' could make no more than eleven knots; without a breath of wind to help them, these have made twenty-three.... Ought one not ... I could..."

She scrutinized the map, which was becoming more and more full of life as she looked. She planned, cast away her plans, and then pursued her meditations:

"Another fortnight, and Father will be taking the train through the Simplon, to Paris and London... Macdonald once promised me he'd keep a place for me in the British Museum.... The time has come when I should make another dive, experience new freedoms and unfreedoms...."

Now a jeweller's window caught her eye. She stopped to inspect.

"How old-world those diadems appear. If they were antiques, it would not be so bad. But to think that they are still made and still find purchasers! Eduard is perhaps the only one from that world who really feels deeply.... Yes, those are huge pearls, shaped like pears, a grey chain--I should not mind having that. They come from the sea, and he whom the gods permit to find the right shell has merely to open it and there the pearl lies in all its beauty. A gift from the depths, heavy with melancholy--not like these sparkling diamonds which it has taken thousands of black hands to hew from the earth with the aid of horrible machines bringing death in their train...."

"Do you like those glittering headbands?"

She turned abruptly at the sound of the deep voice, and found Kyril beside her.

"How do you do, Mademoiselle?"

Diana gazed into the earnest blue eyes; she felt the strong hand clasping hers.

"At the moment my mind was drifting so vaguely among thoughts of diamonds and princely crowns and what not, that they would ultimately have wandered to you had you not yourself spoken before I got there!"

"Then I may as well continue on my way, for it is probably far better for us to think of each other than to talk to each other."

"Why do you think that?"

"Because our talks have never yet led to anything. Are you going through the Tiergarten?"

"I'm on my way home," said Diana moving ahead, while Kyril--by chance or through an impish spirit of contradiction--remained on her right.

"How much nicer he looks in this old-fashioned get-up," she thought, "than he did in his soft hat and elegant clothes on the yacht."

"She's dressed herself with great simplicity today," he was thinking; "she seems more serious," he added to himself, having watched her for some time from a distance before he spoke to her.

Their conversation turned to questions as to what each had been doing since they had parted, and then Kyril asked for news of the prince. They passed by Diana's door, before she answered:

"I had thought you would be able to tell me something about him--you made the journey together."

"I've only had one letter since then. And you?"

"Nothing," said Diana quietly.

"She's lying," thought Kyril.

"I wonder what Eduard wrote to Sergievitch," thought Diana. Then she said: "Did he appear to be finding things hard towards the end?"

"No, he seemed all right during the train journey. We talked politics. With a wise head to guide him, he'll do well, I fancy. He has excellent intentions."

"Undoubtedly. Admirable disposition."

Unconsciously Diana had adopted Eduard's very tone and manner as she uttered the words, and Kyril was unpleasantly impressed: "How they snap at one when they have anything to hide, people of this class," he thought. "Oh, I'll clear out!"

He stopped when they reached the corner. Diana asked tentatively:

"Perhaps we shall meet at Herr Scherer's?" But her thoughts were: "He ought to come in with me and play the 'cello the whole evening!" She did not, however, even ask him to call.

"Maybe we shall," he said frigidly.

She had fallen into a brown study, and did not hear him when he spoke, saying absent-mindedly:

"And you'll play that sonata with him--the one you played alone in the Palazzo Tiepoletto."

"And you would be criticizing the time of day.... You want nocturnes at night!"

The mocking tone of his voice brought her back to the present.

"Good-bye," she said, merely nodding her head to him, and never raising her hand in farewell.

When she got home, she found her brother waiting for her. He had come to see her once before since her return, had asked after their father, had given no news of himself, and as he left had said casually that he might be going on a journey. She was pleased, and at the same time not overjoyed to see him here today, for she had looked forward to being alone and to thrashing her own problems out with herself.

"Forgive me," he said. "Am I disturbing you? I hope my cigarette... Is it too strong? A little opium.... Shall we open the windows?"

"Why's he talking so much and so unsteadily?" The question agitated her as she took a chair beside him.

"Won't you sit down?" she asked civilly.

"I'm just off...."

"What makes you so restless?"

"Can't help it. I know I am a trifle..."

"Do you need my help?"

"Yes."

"Money?"

"Of course."

Diana was pleased that he should come to her in his strait, rather than try to raise the wind among his friends. But this was the first time for two years that he had asked her for any pecuniary assistance, whence she concluded that he must be passing through a crisis.

"Only too pleased to let you have what I can...."

"Thanks. But it's rather a lot...."

"How much?"

"Four thousand."

She had completely regained her composure by now, and got up quickly to go over to the window. It was as one young man addressing another that she said:

"Absolutely necessary?"

"Urgent."

"Soon?"

"At once."

"I've only got five at the bank. You could have your four by tomorrow."

"Sunday tomorrow. Banks closed."

"By Monday, then."

"Too late."

"What on earth are we to do?"

"Borrow meanwhile."

"No!"

The word shot out so coldly that he became alarmed, for it sounded final.

"Well, for the present, a note of hand will do."

"Gladly."

She sat at her table, writing. Then she said:

"What name?"

"I'd--rather write that in myself."

Slowly she turned, and looked at him. As he stood there, so elegant and handsome and pale, she suddenly felt a loathing for him and his way of living. Yet there was also a little envy too; she envied him for being able to keep the secret of his life so completely.... Turning back to the table, she wrote, signed, and handed him the paper in an open envelope.

"I have no more. Besides, I am going to resign my post...."

He did not seem to hear. Thanking her, he took his departure. She pressed the button of the bell.

"Mary, please make me a pot of tea. No, I'd rather have some fruit."

"There's none to be had. Oranges are finished, and strawberries not yet in season."

"I saw a basket of strawberries at the florist's over the way."

"Ah, those!"

"Yes, those. Please go and fetch them."

"Silly old slow-coach," thought Diana petulantly as the old woman disappeared to do the commission. "She must come to cap my worries. The last straw! ... What a day! Cooped up in a stuffy office, business letters, trouble with the records, lunch in the office among unattractive persons, one of whom makes noises as he chews.... A note from Scherer, politely begging for a fresh statement of accounts, and remaining 'your...' Mine? ... Longing eyes cast in the direction of the library ... resistance to the lure of those diadems... A peasant, anarchist and 'cello player, who reviles me in his heart, because I annoyed him one evening in Venice when he had been playing Bach ... A servant who considers early strawberries too good for me... And yet ... hold on, Diana! Did you not see a huge hand manipulating ships upon the seas? True, the hand was only the hand of Mercury; still, it was the hand of a god... There's no way out of it... I'll have to start afresh..."

She held the little basket lovingly in both her hands, and carried it to her writing-table. Setting it down, she picked out the ripest, and nodded appreciatively as she ate. Gregor's face flashed upon her, and she remembered how they always inverted the order of the breakfast dishes.... She dug her teeth into the fruit, and sucked in her lips. Then she took another. At last squaring her elbows, she wrote:

"Two years ago, this very day, Paula Linke, in answer to an advertisement, stepped through the portals of your office. You read my reports, dear Herr Scherer; then you sent for me, and discovered Diana Wassilko.

"The fact that my eyes happened upon that advertisement, was not due to any skill on your part or on mine. Where you showed your mettle, was in being so quick to discover the merits of a stranger. I have to thank you primarily for all the experience I have gained in your service, in the matter of travel, of things, and of personalities; secondarily I owe my good fortune to a kindly fate.

"Above all what I value in you is the man, the teacher, and the friend. Don't take it amiss that I should leave you at such short notice. You will soon find a substitute. I am in urgent need of a change. The whole earth is open to me. I hope to get everything straight by June 1st, and to hand you over my final reports and accounts.

"Wherever life will take me I shall always look back with pleasure to the days I spent within the white walls of your office, shall never forget your round dining table, and the 'Excelsior.'

"DIANA."

She read the letter through, placed it in an envelope, stretched her hand out for her seal. The telephone bell rang.

"Scherer speaking. Good evening."

"I've just finished a letter to you."

"To me? That's something new! So far I've only received one card."

"Well, what's the news?"

"I've this moment had a telephone message to say that old Prince Heinrich died at four this afternoon. I thought you might be interested...."