“What sort of picture? Annoyed you—why?” she broke in.
“Well, it was a picture representing Goethe, the poet Goethe, you know. But it was not in the least as he really looked. That, of course, nobody can know exactly. He has been dead a hundred years. However, some artist of today had painted his portrait as he imagined him to have been and prettified him, and this picture annoyed me. It made me perfectly sick. I don’t know whether you can understand that.”
“I understand all right. Don’t you worry. Go on.”
“Before this in any case I didn’t see eye to eye with the professor. Like nearly all professors, he is a great patriot, and during the war did his bit in the way of deceiving the public, with the best intentions, of course. I, however, am opposed to war. But that’s all one. To continue my story, there was not the least need for me to look at the picture—”
“Certainly not.”
“But in the first place it made me sorry because of Goethe, whom I love very dearly, and then, besides, I thought—well, I had better say just how I thought, or felt. There I was, sitting with people as one of themselves and believing that they thought of Goethe as I did and had the same picture of him in their minds as I, and there stood that tasteless, false and sickly affair and they thought it lovely and had not the least idea that the spirit of that picture and the spirit of Goethe were exact opposites. They thought the picture splendid, and so they might for all I cared, but for me it ended, once and for all, any confidence, any friendship, any feeling of affinity I could have for these people. In any case, my friendship with them did not amount to very much. And so I got furious, and sad, too, when I saw that I was quite alone with no one to understand me. Do you see what I mean?”
“It is very easy to see. And next? Did you throw the picture at them?”
“No, but I was rather insulting and left the house. I wanted to go home, but—”
“But you’d have found no mummy there to comfort the silly baby or scold it. I must say, Harry, you make me almost sorry for you. I never knew such a baby.”
So it seemed to me, I must own. She gave me a glass of wine to drink. In fact, she was like a mother to me. In a glimpse, though, now and then I saw how young and beautiful she was.
“And so,” she began again, “Goethe has been dead a hundred years, and you’re very fond of him, and you have a wonderful picture in your head of what he must have looked like, and you have the right to, I suppose. But the artist who adores Goethe too, and makes a picture of him, has no right to do it, nor the professor either, nor anybody else—because you don’t like it. You find it intolerable. You have to be insulting and leave the house. If you had sense, you would laugh at the artist and the professor—laugh and be done with it. If you were out of your senses, you’d smash the picture in their faces. But as you’re only a little baby, you run home and want to hang yourself. I’ve understood your story very well, Harry. It’s a funny story. You make me laugh. But don’t drink so fast. Burgundy should be sipped. Otherwise you’ll get hot. But you have to be told everything—like a little child.”
She admonished me with the look of a severe governess of sixty.
“Oh, I know,” I said contentedly. “Only tell me everything.”
“What shall I tell you?”
“Whatever you feel like telling me.”
“Good. Then I’ll tell you something. For an hour I’ve been saying ‘thou’ to you, and you have been saying ‘you’ to me. Always Latin and Greek, always as complicated as possible. When a girl addresses you intimately and she isn’t disagreeable to you, then you should address her in the same way. So now you’ve learnt something. And secondly—for half an hour I’ve known that you’re called Harry. I know it because I asked you. But you don’t care to know my name.”
“Oh, but indeed—I’d like to know very much.”
“You’re too late! If we meet again, you can ask me again. Today I shan’t tell you. And now I’m going to dance.”
At the first sign she made of getting up, my heart sank like lead. I dreaded her going and leaving me alone, for then it would all come back as it was before. In a moment, the old dread and wretchedness took hold of me like a toothache that has passed off and then comes back of a sudden and burns like fire. Oh, God, had I forgotten, then, what was waiting for me? Had anything altered?
“Stop,” I implored, “don’t go. You can dance of course, as much as you please, but don’t stay away too long. Come back again, come back again.”
She laughed as she got up. I expected that she would have been taller. She was slender, but not tall. Again I was reminded of someone. Of whom? I could not make out.
“You’re coming back?”
“I’m coming back, but it may be half an hour or an hour, perhaps. I want to tell you something. Shut your eyes and sleep for a little. That’s what you need.”
I made room for her to pass. Her skirt brushed my knees and she looked, as she went, in a little pocket mirror, lifted her eyebrows, and powdered
