didn’t hear him. He held her head firmly so that it could not be moved, but as soon as he let go, it started to toss about again and moan.
The doctor shrugged his shoulders and stood waiting at the window, observing the dismal weather. It was not a consoling prospect, nor were the girl’s cries of pain consoling; besides, after a difficult morning, the doctor was hungry. It was time the landlady came.
And at last she did. It had been awkward for her to leave the kitchen, and she was very much in a hurry. “Thank God, doctor, that you’re here at last. What is the matter with the girl?”
Which was exactly what the doctor would have liked to know.
“Yes, and now the father’s disappeared. Rittmeister von Prackwitz, from Neulohe; you know, the son-in-law of that old skinflint, Teschow. He drank three bottles of port and has gone out in the rain without his hat or coat, quite tipsy. I’ve sent out to look for him. What a business! Some days everything happens at once. What do you think of doing about the lass? The mother’s on her way by car; she can be here in one or two hours.”
“What has happened to the little Fraulein?”
The landlady didn’t exactly know, and the waiter was sent for. “My whole establishment is upside down; of course, it would happen today, when we have so many for lunch!”
But the waiter, too, had nothing more to report than that there had been some sort of argument with a young man.
“A love affair, then,” said the doctor. “Probably a bad nervous shock. I’ll give the girl something to make her sleep first—and then, when the mother’s here, I’ll call in again.”
“Yes, do see that she sleeps, doctor. I really can’t listen any longer to that moaning, and I can’t have someone sitting up here with her all the time. We’ve got our work to do, too—we’re not a hospital.” It was the sort of thing the doctor had to listen to a hundred times a day. He had never ceased to wonder why people did not get tired of explaining that, at the particular moment, they hadn’t the slightest time for illness; that illness was not a welcome guest. People, however, keep on telling their doctors such things.
He now drew up a mild narcotic into his syringe. The girl, when he stuck the needle into her forearm, twitched and for a moment stopped moaning.
The doctor looked thoughtful. He hadn’t yet pressed down the piston in his syringe. That twitch, that interruption, didn’t fit in with such a bad nervous shock; she oughtn’t to have felt the prick at all—yet she had done so. Therefore she was conscious; she was only simulating unconsciousness.
It was not a young doctor who stood by the sick-bed of Violet von Prackwitz, but an elderly man who was no longer annoyed when his patients humbugged him. So many people had passed through his hands—oh, heaps of them, heaps! He no longer had any didactic, educational, or moral purposes. If this young girl, this child of good family, could moan like that, seeking refuge thus in illness and unconsciousness, then an overwhelming fear of something evil must possess her—perhaps only because of an argument, perhaps because of something worse. The doctor knew how greatly people in their fear of the dark powers of life seek nirvana, and he also knew that a dreamless, all-forgetting slumber can give the new strength to bear what has been unbearable.
Gently he removed the syringe from its needle. He had intended to give the child rest for two or three hours; but it would be better to let her have a long deep sleep, so that she might thoroughly repose and evade the evil hours.
He filled a larger syringe. Before all the injection had entered the arm, her moans stopped. Violet von Prackwitz’s head fell to one side, she stretched herself, put one arm under her head and fell asleep.
It was a little after half-past twelve.
“There,” said the doctor to the landlady, “now she will sleep soundly for ten or twelve hours. So when the mother comes give me a ring.” He left.
One and a half hours later Herr Finger and Frau Eva arrived. The lunches were over, the landlady had time, the waiter, too, had a little time.
Many were the things Frau Eva was told—of an unknown young man, of a glass of port emptied in his face, of an argument. Her daughter had called out: “Fritz, oh, Fritz!” Her husband had drunk a little, on an empty stomach, gone out and not returned. No, he had not left word where he was going. The doctor considered it was a nervous shock. He would be rung up at once.… Yes, he had left his hat and overcoat behind; he had been away at least two hours now. Had he gone to a friend’s, perhaps?
Frau von Prackwitz heard this, item by item, but she could not give it a proper meaning. She was an active person; her family was in distress, the husband wandering about tipsily in the rain, the daughter in some unknown danger, yet sound asleep. She wanted to be doing something, changing things, improving them. But she had to sit inactive by the bedside and wait for a doctor, who could, of course, tell her nothing.
She stood at the window and looked out at the sad, rainswept hotel yard, its flat shining bitumin roofs. The porter greased the wheels of his trolley. With infinite slowness and pauses between each movement, he took a wheel from the axle and leaned it against the wall. He fetched a copper box with grease, put it next to the axle, then looked at the axle. Then he fetched a flat wooden stick, took some grease out of the box, and looked at the grease on the stick.—And then he slowly began to grease the axle.… And that’s how we fritter our life away, thought Eva bitterly. So it was a love affair! “Fritz! Oh Fritz!”—I was right. But what good does it do me to be right—and, above all, what good does it do her?
Eva turned round and looked at the sleeping girl. A frenzy of impatience seized her. She would have liked to grab her by the shoulders, shake her awake, question, advise, deliberate, do something. But by her pallid brows and her deep, somewhat noisy breathing she saw that shaking Violet would be in vain, that the girl was as much removed from her impatience and energy as that person who alone could still have given information—Achim.
Why isn’t Studmann here? she thought angrily. What’s the good of being reliable if he is never there when one really needs him? I can’t run all over town looking for Achim, I can’t peep into every public-house; I can’t even ring up our friends. Perhaps he’s not drunk at all and I should only shame him.
But at last she had an idea; she rushed downstairs and ordered the chauffeur to drive slowly through the streets and look out for the Rittmeister. Perhaps she was mistaken, but it seemed as if Herr Finger looked at her a little doubtfully. She was still not altogether sure whether Herr Finger was a proper chauffeur or more of an agent sent by the motor firm to keep an eye on their unpaid car, a man who would suddenly present a bill. In either case, the Rittmeister’s home must appear out of the ordinary to him, and a little disturbed; a lot had certainly happened in the bare two days he had been with them.
Frau Eva remained in the rain on the hotel steps. Finger took his dignified place at the wheel. The car rumbled and slowly drove off. Eva went back into the hotel. She ran back upstairs feeling that something must have happened in the meantime. Her heart beat faster. Ah, if only something had happened, if only Violet had waked up, so that one might talk with her! She could talk with her now.…
But Violet was sleeping soundly.
The mother sat by the bed, looking at her child—she ought to be able to explain to her—she had suddenly understood in how much she had acted wrongly. She could not understand now how she had descended to such undignified prying, which more than anything had alienated her daughter. This mistake she would never make again. She had learned that her child had her own interests, entrance to which was forbidden the mother, because she was not only mother but also woman.
There was a knock at the door.
The doctor had come then. He was a gaunt, elderly man with remarkably pale eyes behind impossible nickel spectacles, and a very awkward manner, obviously a bachelor. She grew impatient as soon as she saw him so precisely feeling the pulse, with such contented nods, as if he were God, responsible for its powerful throbbing. Obviously he didn’t know a thing. He was saying something about a shock, the necessity of sleeping a long time, of allowing the girl an interval, and not asking her any questions when she awoke, so as to spare her wounded feelings. What did this tiresome old fool know about her daughter’s wounded feelings? He had only seen her in a swoon! As it turned out, he hadn’t even spoken with Achim. About him, too, he had no information to give.
How long would Violet sleep? Till midnight, perhaps till tomorrow? Really, so that was all this booby had been able to do, to withdraw Vi from her mother in that very hour when she most needed her mother’s love!
Could one at least take the girl home today, away from this horrible hotel room? When? Well, as soon as her husband was back. That would be all right? She would not wake up in the car? “Very well. Then we will go as soon as Herr von Prackwitz is back. Thank you, doctor. Shall I pay your fee now, or will you send your account?”
“It all depends on the moment of awakening, madam,” said the doctor, sitting down without being invited.
