There was something strange about Percy Hill. He had been a poor invalid, and yet his character had been so free from any mean fears that even long after his death his memory acted as a sedative. As Hedvig sat there her heart filled with quiet gratitude that she had been given the joy of sacrificing some years of her life to him. She no longer suffered for having lied to him and cheated him in his last wish. She had only been the nurse who prevented her poor patient from injuring himself. Her conscience closed its eyes to the circumstances attending her patient’s death.
No, there was no danger in sitting there whispering to her memory, that sentimental liar. Her egoism was not frightened of the past, but of the future.
What a challenge to all the powers of the spirit, this feeble, mute, half-concealing lie in the midst of the clear sunshine! It seemed as if the light in sudden anger had surged around her with increased intensity; had sent a fresh wave of burning restlessness through her body. She rose and seemed to grope after the receding shadows. Then with dazzled, burning eyes she staggered along the cemetery path. Outside the gate her motor hummed, impatient to rush her back to all that waited for her … business … Levy … the future … !
“I won’t change,” Hedvig thought in the car. She found there was something safe, reassuring, in the fact that she did not intend to put on different clothes. But when she came home she did so all the same. And she sat long before the mirror. And then she stood in the window looking down the road.
At last there came a car and Levy got out.
“Taxi,” thought Hedvig, as if she could blunt the point of a threat with that prosaic reflection. Levy ran quickly up the stairs. “Jew,” she thought, as if by doing so she had kept something at bay. But all the same she had to force herself to walk slowly, really slowly, out into the hall to receive her guest.
Levy had brought some yellow roses.
“If there were black roses, I should give you them instead,” he said.
Hedvig forgot the roses on a table in the hall on purpose. She had a sensation that he flushed up for a moment beneath his even pallor.
There were primroses and lilac on the dining-table.
“Those flowers don’t suit you,” he said with a quick bitter smile. Then he turned to the maid who was serving: “Take away those flowers and fetch my roses out of the hall!”
He seemed quite at home.
Then Levy threw himself into business and made good progress from the start.
Levy had made money live for Hedvig, too much so! At first she had regarded her large fortune as a safe protection against all the demands and dangers of life. She sat huddled up in the middle of her gold heap where nothing could reach her. But Levy had thrown out his hands:
“Good God, what money! What a heavy shapeless mass! What an old, moss-grown stump of a fortune! For twenty years it has had to take care of itself. For twenty years not a single experienced hand has touched it. It looks like a fund for widows and orphans.”
“You mean that the investments are safe as a rock,” mumbled Hedvig. “But surely that is a good thing!”
“Yes, but the interest, Mrs. Hill, the interest! You don’t get much more than three and a half percent and you could get six. You allow a hundred thousand a year to run through your fingers. That is to make yourself a laughing stock to God and man. As an expert I can’t bear to see such an absurdity. Allow me to make some dispositions for you. You can submit them for the approval of your brothers.”
Hedvig worried and pondered long before she said yes. But the hundred thousand were stronger than her fears. And thus Levy had lured her into his world, the money-world. She began by questioning him on all occasions in a woman’s way, ignorantly, persistently, suspiciously. And he would reply. He answered not only patiently but willingly, quickly, ardently, enthusiastically. He explained the whole economic mechanism of credits, bills, mortgages, debentures, shares. The whole of this finely balanced system of suspicion and confidence made a deep impression on Hedvig. To her overcautious spirit it seemed like balancing on the edge of the abyss. His quick purposeful assurance seemed to her something supernatural, almost creepy. But she had to hear more and more. Oh, it was deliciously exciting to hear Levy talk of money. It was only now she began to grasp what money was. And she felt as if she were in a swing, feeling giddy at the fact of owning so much.
Yes, Levy’s interest became more and more eager. Hedvig had already been lured from her gold-heap where she had enjoyed the twilight. Her money was no longer like a wall protecting her against the world. No, it was instead a medium in which she moved about. It formed the thousand connections, the tentacles and nerves thanks to which she at once felt what was happening in the town, in the country, in Europe, in the whole world.
Levy tore Hedvig with him halfway into life, at least into that kind of life which consists of movement and business. He showed to her confined and numbed egoism another kind of egoism that was world-embracing, intensely awake and technically brilliant. He was the personification of that egoism. It was something different from Percy’s laissez-aller and cool, submissive irony. It was wheels that rolled. It was diamond cut diamond. It was power, destiny. Hedvig sometimes became quite frightened at his passionate discourse, frightened as if she had come out into the strong daylight without a dark corner to which to retreat. And she no longer had her money to protect her. It had become his confederate, it betrayed
