confounded by the change in his manner. “Listen,” she said once more, but the threat in her voice had lost its vigor.
“Let’s go,” suggested Pagel. “Come along. Don’t be silly, come a part of the way with me, Lina, Trina, Stina. I can’t do anything to you in the street and I’m not crazy either.”
“I’ve no time. I ought to have been home by now. My mistress …”
“Tell your mistress Schnapps ran away, and listen. I’ve just been with that fine fellow in the villa there, a school friend of mine, trying to borrow some money.…”
“And then you put your money in my dog’s …”
“Don’t be a goose, Mitzi.”
“Liesbeth.”
“Listen, Liesbeth. Naturally, I didn’t get anything with you standing outside with my money. A fellow can’t get any money as long as he has any left, and that’s the reason I stuck what I had in the dog’s collar. Do you get me?”
It took her quite a while, however. “So you haven’t been running after me for a week, then, and you haven’t put in a letter either. I thought the dog had lost it.…”
“No, no, Liesbeth.” Pagel grinned impudently, but was nevertheless feeling abject. “No letter—and I didn’t want to buy your chastity with the money, either. But the question I want you to answer is this: what am I to do now? I haven’t got a penny. I have a dirty hole in Alexanderplatz for which the rent isn’t paid, and my girl’s sitting there as a kind of pledge, dressed in nothing but my summer overcoat. And I sold all our things to get here.”
“Serious?” asked the girl. “No more kidding?”
“No more kidding. Dead serious.”
She looked at him. She gave the impression of being unbelievably fresh and clean, in spite of the heat—she smelled, so as to speak, of Sunlight Soap. Perhaps she wasn’t as young as he had at first thought, and in addition she had a rather determined chin.
She realized now that it was indeed serious, looked at him, then at the money in her hand.
Will she give it back to me? he wondered. Then I’ll have to go to Peter and do something. But what I’d better do I really don’t know. I’m not keen on anything. She shall tell me.
The girl had smoothed out the money and put it in her pocket.
“There,” she said, “you must come with me first. I’m going home now—and you look quite done—in to me and as if you could do with a bit of lunch in our kitchen. The cook won’t mind, nor the mistress. But to think that your friend’s sitting in your room in your summer overcoat and perhaps nothing in her stomach, either, with a rude landlady into the bargain! And a chap like you puts money in dog collars and wants to pick up another girl right away—you men are rotters, upon my word you are.”
She was talking faster and faster, dragging at the dog, walking more and more hurriedly, not doubting for a moment that the young man was coming with her.
And follow her he did, he, Wolfgang Pagel, son of a not-unknown painter, former second lieutenant, and gambler at the end of his tether.
IX
The letter had come by the second post at eleven o’clock, but Frau Pagel was still out attending to various details, so Minna had put the letter on the console table under the mirror in the hall. There it lay, a gray envelope of embossed, rather imposing handmade paper; the address written in a bold, stiff handwriting, and every free space on the front and back covered with 1,000-mark postage stamps of various denominations, although it was merely a local letter.
When Frau Pagel returned from town, somewhat late and hot, she cast only a fleeting glance at the letter. Ah, from cousin Betty, she thought. But I must first see about the lunch. I’ll know soon enough what the old gossip wants.
Not till she was sitting at table did the letter come to her mind and she sent Minna for it—Minna who, as always, was standing behind her in the doorway, while as usual the cover was laid for Wolfgang at the other end of the table. “From Frau von Anklam,” she said to Minna over her shoulder and tore open the envelope.
“Goodness, it can’t be so urgent, madam, that you should let your food get cold.”
But from the silence, the rigid attitude, the flabbergasted way in which Frau Pagel stared at the letter, she guessed that it was important after all. Silently, without moving, Minna waited quite a long time; then she coughed, and at last said meaningly: “The food is getting cold, madam.”
“What?” Frau Pagel almost shouted, turning round and staring at Minna as if she were a total stranger. “Oh, yes.” She recovered herself. “It’s only … Minna, Frau von Anklam writes me.… It’s only—our young master is getting married today.” And then it was all up. The head with its white hair lay on the table; that back which will power had kept erect was now bent—and the old woman wept.
“Good God!” said Minna. “Good God!
She came nearer. Certainly she did not consider this marriage to be so very bad, but she understood the pain, grief and desolation of her mistress. Cautiously she put her work-worn hand on Frau Pagel’s shoulder and said: “It needn’t be true, madam. Not everything that Frau von Anklam says is true by a long way.”
“This time it is,” whispered Frau Pagel. “Somebody read the banns after they had been put up and told her about it. Today at half-past twelve.”
She raised her head and looked as if for help at the walls, recollected herself, and glanced at the watch on her wrist. “It’s half-past one,” she cried. “And the letter has been waiting a long while. I could have known of it in time!”
True suffering finds food in everything, even in the unreasonable. That she had not known in time, that at half-past twelve she had not been thinking, Now they are being married … this increased Frau Pagel’s grief. With streaming eyes and quivering lips she sat there, looked at her Minna and said: “Now we needn’t lay a place anymore; Wolf is gone forever, Minna. Oh, that terrible woman. And now she is Frau Pagel, just as I am.”
She recalled the path she had traveled under this name, a stormy, hurried, flowery path at first. Then the endlessly long years at the side of her paralyzed husband who, growing more and more of a stranger, had painted contentedly while she pursued the health which he no longer seemed to crave. Finally she remembered the awakening, the resurrection of the man with the graying temples, who had entangled himself in the most absurd coxcombry and had been carried home shamefully killed.…
Every step on this long road had been painful; no year had passed without trouble; sorrow had been her bedfellow and grief her shadow. But out of that she had become a Pagel; out of the sweet illusions of youth there had arisen the determined woman who now and forever was Frau Pagel. In heaven she would still be a Pagel; it was impossible that God would ever make her anyone else. But all for which she had fought so hard, this metamorphosis, this agonizing fulfillment of her destiny, had fallen into the lap of that young thing as though it were nothing. As casually as they had met, so were they united. “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge. My people shall be thy people, and thy God my God: where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.” Yes, so it was written; but they knew nothing of that. To be Frau Pagel was not merely a name, it was a destiny. They, however, had stuck up a notice, had the words “half-past twelve” inserted, and that was all there was to it.
Minna said, to console her (but she was right all the same) : “It will only be at a registry office, madam, not a church.”
Frau Pagel sat up. “Isn’t that so, Minna; you think so too? Wolfgang hasn’t properly considered the matter, he does it only because the girl’s forced him. He too doesn’t consider a registry office sufficient; he wouldn’t cause me that pain.”
“It’s no doubt,” explained the inflexibly honest Minna, “because the registry office is compulsory, while church is not. He’ll be short of money, the young master.
“Yes,” said Frau Pagel and heard only what pleased her. “And those who have come together so hurriedly will just as lightly part.”
“The young master,” ventured Minna, “has always had too easy a time. He’s no idea of how a poor man earns money. First you made it easy for him, madam—and now the girl does. Some men are like that—all their life they need a nursemaid—and what’s so extraordinary, they always find one.”
“Money,” repeated the old woman. “They will have hardly any money. A young thing is vain, likes to dress