look,” he said feebly, “who’s here. Isn’t it nice of Herr Hergesell?”
“It isn’t nice of him at all!” said Hergesell. “It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that I should have another look at my partner and want to say good night to her?”
Then he stepped up to the cot, within which the now silent Lorie sat. She smiled blissfully through her tears. A tiny, high little note, a half-suppressed sob of happiness, came from her lips, and then she gazed silently up at her noble knight-errant, gazed at him with her golden eyes, which, though red and swollen, were so incomparably more beautiful than those of the buxom Plaichinger damsel. She did not lift her arms to embrace him. Her happiness, like her sorrow, was without understanding, but that she did not do. Her pretty little hands remained quietly resting upon the counterpane, while Max Hergesell leaned his arms upon the rail of the cot, as upon the balustrade of a balcony.
“ ‘Just so she need not,’ ” he said, “ ‘sit weeping on her lonely bed throughout the sorrow-laden nights.’ ” And he stole a glance at the professor, that he might win applause for this highly apropos quotation from Goethe. “Ah, ha, ha!” He laughed outright. “At her age! ‘Lovely maiden, don’t repine!’ You are a dear! You’ll do, little one. You need only remain as you are. Ha ha! At this age! You see, I’ve come now. You go to sleep, little Lorie. And don’t you cry any more.”
Lorie looked at him, transfigured. Her small birdlike shoulder was bare; the professor pulled the little lace hem over it. He was forced to think of a sentimental story, of a dying child to whom a clown is brought, one she had remembered with inexpugnable ecstasy from the circus. The clown, clad in his costume, came to the child in its dying hour, a clown embroidered with silver butterflies before and behind, and the child died happy. Max Hergesell was not embroidered, and Lorie, thank God, was not about to die—she had merely “gone to pieces”; but otherwise there was a certain pertinence to the story, a certain relation, and the emotions which the professor felt for young Hergesell, who stood there and gabbled idiotically, more for the father than the child—something which Lorie, however, did not notice—were a strange mixture of gratitude, embarrassment, hatred, and admiration.
“Good night, my little Lorelei!” said Hergesell and held out his hand across the railing of the bed. Her tiny, pretty, white little hand vanished within his large, strong, reddish one. “Sleep well,” he said. “Pleasant dreams! But not about me! Heaven forbid! At your age! Ha, ha, ha, ha!” And thus he concluded his fairy-clown visit and was escorted by Cornelius to the door.
“Don’t mention it,” he said. “Not another word!”—such was his polite, magnanimous way of warding off the professor’s thanks on the way to the door. Xavier followed him, in order to start serving the Italian salad downstairs.
Doctor Cornelius went back to Lorie, who had now snuggled down, resting her cheek upon her flat little pillow.
“Well, that was nice!” he said, as he gently smoothed the coverlet over her, and she nodded with a deep half-sobbing intake of breath. He sat there for at least a quarter of an hour longer and watched her go to sleep, watched her drop off the way her little brother had gone to sleep, though so much sooner. Her silken, brown hair took on the lovely tumble of ringlets which it always fell into when she slept; the long lashes lay close upon her eyes, from which so much grief had streamed; the angelic mouth with the arched and curving upper lip was open in sweet contentment, and only an occasional tiny, half-suppressed after-sob trembled through her slow, even breathing.
Her little hands, her rosy-white, flower-like hands—how still they lay there, the one upon the blue coverlet of the bed, the other in front of her face on the pillow! The heart of Doctor Cornelius was surcharged with tenderness, as with wine.
How fortunate, he thought, that every breath she draws in sleep lets Lethe pour into her little soul—that the night of a child establishes so broad and deep an abyss between one day and the next! Tomorrow, he knew, young Hergesell would be only a pale shadow to her, powerless to cause her heart a tremor, and her joy, disembarrassed of memories, would be perfect as she played at the “five-gentlemen” promenade and the fascinating cushion game with Abel and Biter.
Thank Heaven for that!
Mario and the Magician
The atmosphere of Torre di Venere remains unpleasant in the memory. From the first moment the air of the place made us uneasy, we felt irritable, on edge; then at the end came the shocking business of Cipolla, that dreadful being who seemed to incorporate, in so fateful and so humanly impressive a way, all the peculiar evilness of the situation as a whole. Looking back, we had the feeling that the horrible end of the affair had been preordained and lay in the nature of things; that the children had to be present at it was an added impropriety, due to the false colours in which the weird creature presented himself. Luckily for them, they did not know where the comedy left off and the tragedy began; and we let them remain in their happy belief that the whole thing had been a play up till the end.
Torre di Venere lies some fifteen kilometres from Portoclemente, one of the most popular summer resorts on the Tyrrhenian Sea. Portoclemente is urban and elegant and full to overflowing for months on end. Its gay and busy main street of shops and hotels runs down to a wide sandy beach covered with tents and pennanted sand-castles and sunburnt humanity, where at all times a lively social bustle reigns, and much noise. But this same spacious and inviting fine-sanded beach, this same border of pine grove and near,
