“Yes — yes — ” cried the Baroness, knitting her brows and crooking her fingers — ”‘I’ll cling to you.’“
“Yes, like ivy,” cried Louise, laughing till tears came to her eyes.
“On an old wall, ach yea!” cried the Baroness, also shaking with laughter.
“Constantly true!” cried Louise, suffocated.
“Constantly true!” repeated the Baroness, her fine, mephi- stophelian white eyebrows going up her forehead in sardonic laughter as her sides shook.
“Constant and true,” said Gilbert.
“Oh — I am wrong — I am wrong. Mama — Constant and true, do you hear,” and after making a mock-solemn face, she again laid her hand on the arm of her chair and sat weak with laughter, while the Baroness rocked behind her tea-table.
The men were more uneasy.
“Really comic,” Ludwig was murmuring in German, looking cross.
“Silly! Silly! They are too silly” said Alfred.
And Gilbert sat and looked with round eyes at the two women.
“Yes, yes,” sighed Louise. “It is too silly “ Then she changed her tone. “But you don’t mind, Mr Noon, if we laugh. Ah, one must laugh sometimes. Does it matter what at?”
“Not a bit,” said Gilbert.
“No, I think not.”
The conversation now lapsed into German, and Gilbert followed with a little difficulty. The big professor theorised on the one hand, the little professor theorised on the other, and they wrangled with a noise like tearing calico, whilst the Baroness sat in impatience, throwing in a curt phrase now and then, and Louise sat in her low chair like a lovely Athena balancing the professorial scales first this way, then that, and seeming passionately interested and looking very beautiful. Gilbert watched with wondering eyes. It all seemed so strange. And why did Louise care whether the immature manuscript of Faust, which the great Goethe had commanded to be burnt and which his tender friend had not burnt, why should anyone care whether the world saw this manuscript or did not see it? Care ethically, at least. Why should this moral debate be raging between the two professors, balanced by the beautiful woman who was all the time stealing from Athena to give to Aphrodite, or stealing from Aphrodite to give to Athena.
Gilbert sat on ignored, and began not to hear. The women were soon sensitive of this.
“Now — enough! Enough!” put in the Baroness. “Goethe should burn his own old papers. And if he didn’t, then let him not mind who scrubs the pans out with them. Let every man burn his own rubbish.”
“No, Mama, it is a genuine question,” said Louise.
“Yes, Mother-in-law,” said the little professor. “My work is my intimate property — etc. etc. etc.” We won’t hear them out, as we agree with the Baroness.
“Oh yea, one can say so much about nothing,” protested the Baroness. “Are you eating here?”
“No,” cried Louise, rising. “We must go.”
“No thank you,” cried Alfred. “We must catch the seven- fifteen train. Louise, how are you going home?”
“We came in a motor-car,” said Louise, whilst Ludwig stood with drawn brows, his little eyes darting from side to side.
A maid was sent to summon the car. Alfred and Gilbert watched Louise drive away with Professor Sartorius. Then they two prepared to catch the train for Munich.
“Ah, the Sartorius,” sang the Baroness in her high, lament- voice, “he talks so much. Alfred, when you come to tea with me please do not climb up from the ivy on the wall to the godlike Goethe. Goethe is so beautiful in himself, but not when he is torn to pieces between you and the Sartorius. Let the sartor stick to his patching, or we will call him snipper and Schneider — Sartorius.”
It was unfortunate that the “ius” of the Bonn professor’s name should always get on the nerves of the Baroness: but so it did.
Chapter XIV.
Snowflower.
Looking back over the last chapter, I become aware of an unkept promise. No one will have noticed it but myself, and nobody will care a straw even when it is pointed out. Confess, gentle reader — I call you gentle, as a child says “Nice doggie” because it is so scared of the beast; — confess that you don’t know what promise I mean. Oh, I am not offended.
But I am exact. Now my critic in the Observer of December 1920 says I am out on the quest of some blotched lily of beauty, some fleur du mal, like the defunct Aubrey Beardsley. We live and learn, and I am very pleased indeed to shake hands with the outre-tombe Monsieur Beardsley. On the other hand, I am told that I am not like Swift. I am not out on the search for truth. So the infernal Dean can call me a Yahoo if he likes. I parade with my spangled lily down the avenues of time.
Yet, gentle reader — don’t bite then, don’t bite — I am really quite fond of truth: and even of keeping my word. Which is more than can be said of a certain Dean. And therefore, I recall to you a promise I made.
I said I would indicate, in the following conversation, — or conversations, I forget which — what was the reason of the tenuity of the scarlet thread of human feeling binding the little professor Alfred Kramer to his fellows. That scarlet thread is thin: very thin: spider-web thin. And why? — In professor Alfred, I mean —
Why? That’s what I promised to reveal in further conversations. As a matter of fact I thought the professor was going to unbosom to Gilbert Noon. And he never unbosomed, which is rather a let-down for me.
Pray excuse the unbecoming word let-down, gentle reader. That’s what it is to come of humble origin: these abominable hyphenations rear their flattened heads from among the nettles of the unchastened vocabulary. How a Times critic dropped on me for using the word toney!I’m sure I never knew it wasn’t toney any more to say toney. Because once it was quite toney, I’m sure. Perhaps I even meant then. But now I’m being almost modern, so I shall eschew toney, and yet not eschew let-down. I tell you, gende reader, it was a let-down.
In the Orient Express, which in those paradisal days ran to the Morgenland via Munich and Vienna, sat a lady who ought to have got out at Frankfort. Why then is she spinning on towards the Austrian frontier?
The answer is simple. At dinner, on the train, she sat at a tiny table face to face with a little Japanese. The lady was fair and fresh-faced and just over thirty: the Japanese was a Japanese, presumably about the same age as herself, discounting the aeons of his ancestors. Over the Moselle wine, the two talked in English. Useless to repeat what they said. Sufficient that they talked in English, and as they talked, the face of the woman shone like a flower in the sun, and flashes of strange light seemed to go over the little Japanese face opposite her. Why this strange and electric connection should suddenly have started across a tiny table in an express train, who knows. Suffice that by the time the oranges and apples and nuts were bounced on to the table, the woman had felt a quiet, strangely powerful, hand grip her knee under the board, and linger with a slow, intense, magnetic pressure. She was so startled that her will-power deserted her for the moment, and she sat gazing with transfixed bright eyes into the face of the little Japanese, which was bent down near the white cloth, as the young man stooped ostensibly to pick up his table-napkin.
The sad, almost saurian eyes of the Oriental gazed fixedly into the green-grey eyes of the woman, till she felt she would do anything, anything for him. Then came coffee, and the soft voice of the stranger inviting her to drink a liqueur with him. She would take a Benedictine. Yes, she would take a Benedictine. And as the waiter filled her little glass she felt the two legs of the stranger pressing her knees between his own, under the table, a long, slow, invidious pressure, with all the Japanese magnetic muscular force, while the sad, saurian, oriental face still watched hers. She drank her Benedictine in a little throatful, and by the time it was swallowed she had lost all sense of her surroundings.
The Japanese invited her to go down with him to the saloon car. She went, and sat by him, and he talked to her with his slow quiet voice, and she answered with her bright voice. And the train fl
ew on, and still they sat side by side in the saloon, and still they talked.
Till she felt the jar of the brakes: and she heard the porters yelling Munchen. Munchen — how was that possible? She gave a cry, and collected her wraps and her valise.
“Are we in Munich?”
“Yes, in Munich.”
In dazed bewilderment she was climbing out of the train, and the Japanese was following in his slow oriental fashion, watching. He decided not to leave the train.
And so it was that Gilbert, reading in bed just after midnight, heard the bell ring in the distant kitchen — and ring again — and again. Till he became uneasy, and went into the passage. And heard a desperate peal. So he shouted for Julie: and got no answer.
The Herr Professor was away: so, apparently, was Julie, in this carousing city of Munich. So Gilbert, who didn’t possess a dressing-gown, went in his pyjamas and opened the door of the flat. And there stood the above-mentioned lady, bright- faced, with her furs and wraps and her valise.
“Ist der Herr Professor Kramer nicht zu Hause?”
The question came in German.
“Isn’t Professor Kramer at home?”
“No — he is in Gottingen for three days.”
“And is no one there? Julie?”
“She doesn’t seem to be here.”
“Oh dear!” A hesitation on the doorstep. “Professor Kramer is my cousin. I forgot to get out at Frankfort, and it took all my money. Can you lend me ten Mark for the taxi?”
“Yes,” said Gilbert.
“Oh dear,” said the woman, “I am such a fool.” And sighing wearily she came into the hall and threw her wraps and valise on to a seat, whilst Gilbert, in his faded flannel pyjamas, went into his room for the money.
“Ah thank you,” she said. “I must go down and pay! Ah me, I am such a fool.”
Whereupon she ran down the stairs, and Gilbert heard her speaking first to the night-porter, then outside to the taxi- man. He remained in the doorway, and saw her rise like a Wagner Goddess through the floor, in the lift.
“Oh danke!” she cried to the night-porter, and came rushing into the flat again. She shut the door behind her.
“Ah Gott sei dank! Aren’t I hopeless? But who are you? I don’t know you, do I?”
All this in German.
“No,” said Gilbert. “I am staying with Professor Kramer.”
“But are you German?”
“No — ”
“Ah, you are English — !” and here the conversation breaks into English. “I come from America. I am going home to my parents — they are in Frankfort expecting me now. Ach, what a fool I am, I came straight through. Poor papa — I know he is at the station. Oh dear, I hate myself. I just slept and didn’t wake.”
This, as we see, is a complete lie: but then how can a woman confess to a knee-pressing Japanese in a dining car?
Poor Gilbert still stood in the hall in his pyjamas, and felt not so frightfully uncomfortable.
The woman was already so flustered, he did not matter very much. She took off her hat and dropped it unheeding on the couch in the hall, and lifted her soft, dark-fair hair from her brow with her fingers.
“Poor Papa, he will be in such a rage.”
“Perhaps I can telegraph to him,” said Gilbert.
“Can one telegraph now? — Or telephone perhaps? But I don’t know the number. Perhaps we could find it. Oh yes.”
The two went into the study and hunted the telephone books. They found the address — and succeeded after a while in getting the connection.
“Ach Papa — is it you? Oh, I’m in Munich. Think of it. Yes, I slept! Yes! And you were there all the while! Oh dear! No — no — I didn’t have any dinner. I was so tired. No — no. Ach, I hate myself. What? What? Yes. Tomorrow. But I must sleep. When? Yes. No — no, it’s no good. No — he’s not here — only the servant. — Ach, Papa, you dear Papa, I hate myself. No, but I could cry. And were you fearfully disappointed — no — no — you? — yes. Dear Papa, and how are you? And Mama? — Good — Good! I’m awfully glad. — I’m dying to be with you — dying. — Yes. — ” A pause. “Ah Mama, are you there? Ah, what am I for a stupid ass! Yes, yes, I know how you’ll scold me. Never mind, I deserve it. I do. What? What? You can’t be as cross as I am. Yes, good. No, only Julie. You were in bed — yes — Papa still waiting? Oh dear. No, don’t be too cross. No — you’re not surprised. No — No — No “
The conversation drifted to an end, and the woman hung up the receiver. Then she rose from the chair, and for the first time looked at Gilbert. He, for modesty’s sake, had put on his overcoat. She was wearing a dark-blue coat and skirt.
“Well!” she said, in English, scrutinising him.
“Are you hungry?”
“Rather. But where is Julie.”
He spread out his hands in a faint gesture.
“When the cat is away the mouse will play. Is that it?” said the woman. “Poor Julie, she will feel dropped on. I shall have to promise not to tell Alfred. What did you say your name was?”
“Gilbert Noon” — and he spelled it.
“Gilbert Noon — rather nice,” she said. “Mine is Mrs Johanna Keighley. My husband is an American doctor, and I am just come home to see my mother and father. And this is how I bring it off.”
“Bad luck,” he said.
“Isn’t it! And just like me.”
“Like you, or your luck?” asked Gilbert.
“Me! Me! I’m afraid it’s me. I’m awful, I really am. My husband would be so disgusted. Ach, but it’s lovely to be back. We live in Boston, and I hate it. So dull, so dull. I’m always pining to be here again. I’m German, and I love Germany Do you know where the pantry is? My husband is an Englishman too, but we went to America the first year I was married. — Oh America — I don’t know what to say to it.”
Gilbert in his overcoat, the full-breasted woman in her delicate, dark-coloured blouse went down to the kitchen quarters, switching on lights till the whole flat was aglare. As they were making a collection of cold meat and sausages and cheese and sweets a form suddenly appeared in the open doorway. It was the truant Julie.
“Ach, Frau Doktor — !”
“Ja, Julie! Ja! Yes! What time is this to be coming in, you? I come from the train and the strange gentleman must let me in. Good for you that the Herr Professor is far enough away. But I want to eat — I am so hungry. Make me an omelette, will you — with four eggs: or with six, and the gentleman will eat some.”
“No,” protested Gilbert. “No.”
Julie, who looked flushed and guilty, with her hair astray, flung off her things and darted into her apron. Her kitchen was spotless: not only clean, but of that purity of texture as if the very cast iron of the stove had never known the common, contaminating earth, but had been born out of a black, clean cloud of the sky.
When the two returned to the long drawing-room, Julie darted round switching off the lights. Whatever would the Herr Professor have said to such a mass of brilliance.
“And what are you doing in Munich?” Johanna asked of Gilbert. Whereupon he told her, as briefly as possible. He looked rather a comic figure, sitting there buttoned up in a thick dark-brown overcoat, which would keep sliding apart and exposing his pyjamad knees, so that he was as self- conscious as an elderly woman with short skirts.
“And are you happy here?” asked Johanna.
“Oh yes — very.”
“And is Alfred nice with you, and not too fussy?”
“Very nice.”
“And do you have a good time with the Hebers and the Wolfstangels and Alastair and all those?”
“Yes — quite. I’ve got no money you see, except the little bit I make one way and another — nothing. So I have to go gendy, you know.”
“Oh, but in Munich one doesn’t need money. It’s the loveliest town [in] the world for that. Don’t you think? You can be at court and have a pink flannelette petty, and nobody minds.”
“Why should they?
” said Gilbert.
“Well it is rather horrid, pink flannelette. Oh, but if it weren’t for my children, I’d come and live in Munich like a shot.”
“Have you children?”
“Two lovely little boys. They are dears.”
“In America.”
“Yes — so far away.”
“Couldn’t you bring them?”
“No, it’s such a bother dragging children about.”
“Don’t you miss them frightfully?”
“No — not unless I start thinking about them. They’re there, you know — like the sun or the Frauenkirche.”
“Yes, I suppose they’re all right.”
“Yes. I’ve got a perfect German nurse for them. I believe she’s much better with them than I am, though I rather hate her bossy little ways. Let’s go and eat.”
They returned to the dining-room, and Julie carefully switched off the light after them.
So, instead of facing the little white-bearded professor, Gilbert sat facing a young and lovely, glowing woman. His double-breasted overcoat was buttoned over his breast, his fresh face and pouting lips perched above inquiringly. The woman was glowing with zest and animation, her grey-green eyes laughed and lighted, she laughed with her wide mouth and showed all her beautiful teeth. Her hair was soft and brownish and took glints, her throat, as it rose from the fine texture of her blouse, that was dark blue-and-red frail stuff transparent over white, rose like a lovely little column, so soft and warm and curd-white. She was full-bosomed, and full of life, gleaming with life, like a flower in the sun, and like a cat that looks round in the sunshine and finds it good.
Now Gilbert was an impressionable young man, who never left off being smitten. Whether it was the fluff and cuddliness of Emmie, or the ivory irony and slowness of Patty, or the dark-browed peasant passivity of the catholic Marta, or the glow of the learned and wistful and uncertain Louise, he was sure to be smitten. Now he was struck all of a heap, so much so that he did not even know he was smitten at all, but only watched and listened, was all eyes and ears and soul- attentiveness, with no saving afterthought to steady him.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 281
