“I am sure,” he said, with more or less feeling, “that there is plenty to do in getting dinner ready. But it seems that it’s left to the mistress to do by herself?”
This sufficed for the finely attuned ears of persons who had once belonged to the middle classes. With a sense of genuine injury they removed themselves, being mocked at in addition by Xavier as they swept through the doorway. For Xavier happened to be born of low estate to start with, and the condition of the fallen dames was a source of perpetual amusement to him.
“Dear, darling Lorie,” said Cornelius in a strained voice, as he folded the suffering little thing in his arms and sat down in a chair beside her small bed. “What’s the matter with my little girl?”
Her tears were falling on his face.
“Abel—Abel,” she sobbed and stammered, “why—isn’t—Max—my brother? Max—ought—to be my brother.”
What a catastrophe, what wretchedness! All the result of the dance and its dangerous psychological possibilities! thought Cornelius, as he glanced up at Blue Anna, who, with her hands folded upon her apron, stood, the very picture of dignified limitation, at the foot of the cot.
“It’s a case,” she said, severely and oracularly, drawing in her under lip, “of that there child having her feminine instincts so strongly developed.”
“Hold your tongue!” answered Cornelius, greatly troubled. He was forced to be content that Lorie did not draw away from him, or thrust him from her, as she had done before in the hall, but clung to him as though seeking help, while she repeated her foolish, distraught wish that Max might be her brother, and desperately demanded to be allowed to go down to him, to the hall, that he might dance with her. But Max was dancing in the hall with the Plaichinger girl, who was a fully developed valkyrie and had legitimate rights to him—whereas Lorie, to the compassionate heart of the professor, had never seemed so frail or so birdlike as just then, pressing herself against him, helpless and shaken by sobs, unaware of what had invaded her poor little soul. She knew nothing of this. It was not clear to her that the plump, full-grown, and duly authorized Plaichinger girl was the cause of her sufferings—the girl that was permitted to dance with Max Hergesell, while Lorie, though incomparably the more lovely of the two, had been permitted to do so only once and that once only in sport. But it was impossible to reproach young Hergesell for that, for it would have implied an insane imputation. Lorie’s grief was incurable and without rights and should have hidden itself. But as it was a grief without understanding, it was also a grief without inhibition, and this produced a great pain. Blue Anna and Xavier were not at all concerned about this pain; they showed that they were impervious to it, either out of stupidity or a matter-of-fact naturalness. But the paternal heart of the professor was lacerated by this misery, by the humiliating terrors of this passion, without rights and without cure.
There was no use in telling poor Lorie that she had a splendid little brother in the person of Biter, who was sleeping so strenuously close by. Through her tears she merely threw a contemptuous and painful look at the cot beside her own and called for Max. Nor was there any use in promising her an extensive “five-gentlemen” promenade round the dining-room, nor was there consolation in the glowing description he gave of the wonderful thoroughness with which the cushion game would be carried out before lunch. She refused to listen to any of this, refused to consider all admonitions to lie down and go to sleep. She did not want to go to sleep, she wanted to sit up and suffer.—And then both of them, Abel as well as Lorie, suddenly caught themselves listening to something wonderful that was now happening, something that was approaching the nursery step by step, double step by double step, and which then overpoweringly put in appearance.
It was Xavier’s work—that was clear at once. Xavier had not remained standing in the doorway, after he had mocked the two expelled lady-helps. He had got under way, he had become enterprising, he had made his arrangements. He had gone down into the hall, had plucked Max Hergesell by the sleeve, whispered something to him with his thick lips, and begged him to do something. And there they both were. Xavier once more took up his station at the door, for he had done his part; but Max Hergesell came straight through the rooms towards Lorie’s bed, clad in his dinner-jacket, with his dark little sideburns by his ears, and his handsome black eyes—came like one visibly conscious of his role as a bearer of happiness, a fairy prince and Lohengrin, as one who says: “Well, here I am, all trouble will now be over.” Cornelius was almost as amazed as Lorie.
“Just
