“Frightful. Seventeen.”
“Seventeen hundred? That’s not so much for a swell car.”
“My dear Vi! Seventeen thousand!”
“At any rate, Papa, for that we have the finest car in the district.”
“You think so? That’s what I say. If you’re going to buy something, it may as well be something decent.”
“I suppose Mamma is not quite in agreement?”
“Not yet. But she’ll change her mind, you see, when she’s been out in it.”
“Papa?”
“Yes …? What?”
“When can I go in it? Today?”
“Oh!” Both children were equally delighted. The nursemaids were absent, in the office.
“I know, Papa! Suppose we go quickly through the forest? The gendarmes are searching there for the convicts. We might catch the fellows. Our car’s so silent and fast! And then we could drop in at Birnbaum. Uncle Egon and the cousins will burst with envy.”
“I don’t know,” said the Rittmeister doubtfully. “Perhaps Mamma would like to come.”
“Mamma? She’d rather be in the office.”
“Oh? What’s the chauffeur doing now?”
“He’s having something to eat in the kitchen. But he can’t be long now. Shall I call him?”
“All right. By the way, Vi, guess whom I met in the train today.”
“Who then? How can I tell, Papa? All the neighbors might have been there. Uncle Egon?”
“What are you talking about? I shouldn’t have asked you to guess about him. No. Our Lieutenant!”
“Who?” Violet turned crimson and lowered her head. Confused, she pressed the knob of the horn and the car hooted loudly.
“Don’t make that noise, Vi, please. You know, the Lieutenant who was so rude …” In a whisper: “The one with the weapons.”
“Oh, him!” She still kept her head down, and played with the wheel. “I thought you meant someone we knew.…”
“No, that ruffian.… You remember? ‘Such things are not discussed in the presence of young ladies.’ ” The Rittmeister laughed. “Well, to do him justice, Vi, he seems to be a big pot, however young he is. And damned clever.”
“Yes, Papa?” she said very softly.
“As a matter of fact, he’s responsible for my buying the car.” Very low and mysteriously: “Violet, they’ve got a big thing on hand—and your Papa’s in it.” This was only the third time that Rittmeister von Prackwitz had let out his secret; and for that reason he was still enjoying himself.
“Against the Socialists, Papa?”
“The Government’s to be overthrown, my child.” (This very solemnly.) “So the day after tomorrow, on October the first, I am going with this car to Ostade.”
“And the Lieutenant?”
“Which Lieutenant? Oh, the Lieutenant! Well, he’ll be with us, naturally.”
“Will there be fighting, Papa?”
“Very likely. Highly probable. But, Violet, you are not afraid, surely? An officer’s daughter! I survived the World War; a few small street fights like that won’t harm me.”
“No, Papa.”
“Well, then. Stiff upper lip, Violet. Nothing venture, nothing win. I think the chauffeur ought to have finished his meal by now. Call him. We want to get back before it’s quite dark.”
He watched his daughter get out of the car and go into the house, slowly, thoughtfully, her head down. She really loves me, he thought proudly; what a shock it was when she heard there would be fighting. But she pulled herself together marvelously. He thought thus, not out of joy in his daughter’s love, but so that he could, mentally at least, upbraid a wife who had not thought for a moment of the dangers to which he was about to expose himself, but only of buying cars, financial difficulties, rent, and questions of trust.…
And while he, proud of a daughterly love which fully appreciated his worth, got ready for the drive, Vi stood as if paralyzed in the small hall, with only one thought in her heart. The day after tomorrow! We have not seen one another again, and he may be killed. The day after tomorrow!
XI
Immediately after the quarrel with her husband Frau von Prackwitz had gone up to her room. She felt she had to cry. In the mirror over the wash-basin she saw a woman no longer young but still quite good-looking, with slightly bulging eyes which now had rather a torpid look. It seemed as if all life had gone out of her; she felt icy cold, her heart was dead as a stone.…
Then she forgot she was standing in front of the mirror looking at herself. What is the good of it all? she asked herself once more. There must have been something which made me love him. What could I have seen? For so long!
An endless series of pictures swirled by her, memories of the past when they were first married. The young first lieutenant. A call from the garden. His charmingly foolish behavior at Violet’s birth. The first intoxicating homecoming after the banquet. A garden party in the garrison town—they had endangered position and reputation when a sudden and overwhelming passion had united the married pair in a park crowded with visitors. The discovery of his first gray hair—already at thirty he had begun to turn gray—a secret she alone knew. His affair with that Armgard von Burkhard; how he had brought her a basket of delicatessen and she had suddenly known that what she had cried about so much was at last definitely over.
A thousand memories, speeding by, happy or sad, but all in a faded, calamitous light. When love goes and the eyes are suddenly opened, and the once-loved is seen as others see him—an average person without special merits—seen with the merciless eyes of a woman who has lived beside him for two decades, knowing beforehand every word he will say, to whom every pettiness and fault is familiar—then arise the perplexed questions: Why? What is the good? Why have I borne so much, retrieving, forgiving? What was in him to make me sacrifice myself so?
No answer. The form to which love alone gave breath has become lifeless without it, a scurrilous figure made up of buffooneries, whims and misbehavior, an insupportable marionette, all its strings known!
Frau Eva heard the sound of feet on the stairs, and came to herself with a start. Two men were talking. It would be Hubert coming down from the attic with the chauffeur. For a moment she was seized with the idea of being truly her father’s daughter, cunning and subtle.…
Oh, let him go ahead and manage! He insists on being the master here, she thought. Let him see how far he can get without me and—Studmann. The money for the car, the rent.… I will tell Studmann not to go tomorrow, not to look for money, not to make any arrangements about hands for the potato harvest. He’ll find out in a week how irretrievably he’ll be stuck in the mud. I’m really tired of having to beg him for permission to do what is right.… This
She examined her face in the mirror. There was a trace of self-righteousness about the mouth which she didn’t like. Her eyes were bright, but neither did she care for that. The fires of malice shine thus.
No, she told herself resolutely, not that way. I don’t want that. If, as it now appears to me, everything is really finished, it will collapse without my assistance. I shall go on doing everything I can. That won’t be much; there’s no longer any enthusiasm, any love in it, only duty. But I have always been as honest as I could, and all these years I have nothing grave with which to reproach myself.…
Once again she examined the mirror. Her face had a strained expression; the skin round the eyes looked drawn, heavily wrinkled and dry. Promptly she took up her pot of cream and greased her face. Massaging the skin gently, she thought: I’m not finished yet; I’m in the prime of life. And if I’m more careful with myself and what I eat, I can easily lose fifteen or twenty pounds—then I shall have exactly the right figure.…
Five minutes later Frau von Prackwitz was sitting in the office with Herr Studmann. Studmann, of course, hadn’t the slightest notion of how she was feeling. Frau Eva, who in a quarter of an hour had discovered that she no longer loved her husband, who had decided that she would remain honest in all circumstances, but who had
