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Title: Viennese medley

Author: Edith O'Shaughnessy

Release date: November 17, 2024 [eBook #74757]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: B. W. Huebsch

Credits: MWS, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIENNESE MEDLEY ***





                            Viennese Medley

                        By Edith O'Shaughnessy

         Author of "A Diplomat's Wife in Mexico," "Diplomatic
                Days," "Alsace in Rust and Gold," etc.

                     "'S giebt nur a Kaiserstadt,
                         'S giebt nur a Wien."

                  (There's only one right royal town,
                       There's only one Vienna.)

                              _New York_
                         _B. W. Huebsch, Inc._
                               _Mcmxxiv_

                          COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY
                          B. W. HUEBSCH, INC.

                          ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

                          PRINTED IN U. S. A.


                                  To
                       COUNTESS MITON SZÉCHÉNYI
                                  and
                       COUNTESS GLADYS SZÉCHÉNYI
                        FRIENDS OF THEN AND NOW




                               CONTENTS


                           I _Their Aunt Ilde_

                          II _Liesel and Otto_

                         III _Anna and Pauli_

                          IV _Hermann and Mizzi_

                          V _The Eberhardts_

                         VI _Corinne_

                        VII _Fanny_




                                   I

                            THEIR AUNT ILDE

_Adagio assai._

                "Sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier days."


War and Peace had stripped Frau Ildefonse Stacher, born von Berg,
of everything except her physical being, leaving her quite naked in
another but certainly not better world.

As the widow of a Viennese Kommerzienrath, dead after thirty years of
service in the Finance Ministry, she had enjoyed a comfortable pension.
She had been considered rich herself at the time of her marriage for
she had had as dowry some shares in a beet-root industry in Bohemia,
but when the Republic of Czecho-Slovakia was formed she found herself
mysteriously and without appeal separated from those shares, which
had been as much a part of her life as her hands and feet, and the
separation though swift was to prove fatal, at least to her use and
dignity.

During the long, pleasant years of her widowhood she had had a little
house at Baden near Vienna, where her only brother, an official in the
Northern Railways, and his various wives and many children had been in
the habit of spending holidays and convalescences. If any child were
ailing it was promptly sent to Tante Ilde, who could always be counted
on to receive such gages of affection with open arms.

When her brother, accompanied by one or the other of those quickly
succeeding wives, went off on his annual walking tour through the
Semmering, as many as could be got into the little house were deposited
there for safe-keeping. The family Christmas and New Year's dinners
took place at Tante Ilde's, and on the 18th of August, the Emperor's
birthday, they were all to be found again sitting about that well-laden
table.

She was the first to know their joys and griefs, and "I'm going to tell
Tante Ilde about it," was a familiar expression in the family.

A pleasant lady to look at, too, with a bit of lace flung over her
shining white hair, a bit of it always about her neck. Her skin had a
lustrous smoothness, the many tiny wrinkles no more disfiguring than
the fine crackings in old ivory. Her nose was delicately arched and her
lips kept long their agreeable red. But it was her eyes, more than all
of these, that caught the attention. They were very large and were set
quite flatly, shallowly in her face, pale blue lakes of indefectible
innocence, and while time had wrought some changes in the areas
surrounding them,--a wrinkle, a dent, a falling in or away,--their
placidity had gently endured. They opened widely and though sometimes
they had been obliged to gaze upon one or the other wicked spectacle of
a wicked world, no shadow of its evil remained upon them. That wide,
blue, child-like gaze from that aging face was what was first noticed
about her and last forgot. The startled expression that appeared upon
her countenance at the beginning of her misfortunes, towards the end
was changed into one of almost formidable submission.

She had always been slender and graceful with a way of holding herself
that verged on elegance and her clothes were put on with a pleasant
precision. She had worn a long gold chain around her neck since any
of them could remember, holding a little gold watch tucked in at her
neat belt; she always wore, too, a pair of round gold bracelets that
successive baby nephews and nieces had grasped at, leaving fine marks
of little teeth upon them. Tante Ilde loved those tiny dents. There
was often a gentle tinkle as she played with her chain with the hand
bearing her wedding ring and a quite inconspicuous one of amethyst and
pearls. Just as inconspicuous was Frau Stacher's being, her situation
and her works, as that pale stone, those little, lustreless pearls.
None save a doubly-blindfolded Fate, striking recklessly about at
millions would have found so unimportant a mark.

Corinne, her best-loved niece, always called her "my Dresden china
Auntie." There was between them some natural affinity, as well as
special affection; though Tante Ilde loved them all, Corinne was the
true child of her heart, what the best of daughters might have been.
She had never had any children and her life had revolved beneficently
about the family of her brother,--only her half-brother to be sure, but
then they never thought of that. When he married for the third time,
quite superfluously the family considered, the ostensible reason he
gave was that it would be a pity to leave no one to enjoy the pension
due whoever was fortunate enough to be his widow. His sister had smiled
at this, her fine, soft smile, and even Heinie himself had been obliged
to laugh though he cared little about jokes concerning his somewhat
solemn being; and he had married the bright-cheeked, shining-eyed,
full-figured, not over-intelligent young Croatian of his desire, Irma
Milanovics, and they had had three sons in the four years he lived to
be her husband. It made him the father of eleven children, all living
at the time of the outbreak of the war, together with an adopted
daughter, the child of a dead friend,--(one more, it couldn't matter
where there were so many). He had always enjoyed the patriarchal
feeling which would come over him as he sat at that big oval table,
serving the most generous of portions, or when out buying objects
by the half-dozen or dozen. In many other ways, too, that numerous,
good-looking family had flattered his persistent paternity.

Two sons had been lost in the war, one last seen at the fall of the
Fortress of Prszmysl, then traced to a prison camp in Siberia. After
two years a card came through the Red Cross informing them of his death
from typhus. The other had been killed in the last mad scuttle across
the Piave. A daughter, too, had died of a wasting malady in the winter
of 1915 after the death of her lover at the taking of Schabatz from the
Serbs that first August of the war. But there were still eight of them
in the thick of the fight for survival in post-war Vienna. Irma's three
boys, nine, eleven and twelve years of age were not yet ready for the
combat, but all the others were in it for victory or death.

To return to their aunt Ilde. The first two years of the peace had not
been so bad. With some difficulty she got through and succeeded in
keeping that roof that showed such unmistakable signs of collapse from
falling about her head. Still in a small way she received them all on
New Year's Day of 1921. For the customary roast pork was substituted
a less expensive "Rindfleisch garniert" the classic boiled beef and
vegetables, and there had been an Apfelstrudel, delight of all
Viennese. Tradition maintained itself in a world now obviously composed
of wreckage. But Frau Stacher had had an uneasy feeling as she sat, for
what was indeed the last time, at the head of her table surrounded by
her nieces and nephews. A week later she found, quite suddenly, that
never again would she get anything from those Bohemian investments
handed down from her father, the revered von Berg. She made some
desperate, useless efforts, but she was always brought up round by the
fact, once so pleasant, now disastrous, that she was the widow of an
Austrian, and herself an Austrian. That sudden cleaving of things that
she had supposed indissoluble, opened a gaping void in front of her,
into which she was inevitably to fall. Behind her, far behind her lay
the shining, solid, comfortable years, like another person's life, when
she was Frau Kommerzienrath Stacher, born von Berg. That providential
"von" had incredibly embellished her life. There was, indeed, all the
difference in the world between being born a "von" or not a "von." She
had always regretted that her mother's somewhat hasty second marriage
to handsome Heinrich Bruckner, some years her junior, had not had the
more sustaining qualities of a "von,"--then all Heinie's children
too....

Now it appeared that nothing made any difference. Every landmark
was gone. Authority was gone. Gone beauty, reverence, faith. All
that warm, imperial lustre in which the middle classes had burnished
themselves, proud and content that such things were, had faded into the
night with Vienna's setting sun. Sweet things were gone not only out of
her life, but out of the nation's, leaving black misery, or a crushing
commercialism which, though it lent money, lent neither beauty nor
honor.

It was all symbolized to Frau Stacher in the ruin of her own life,
epitomized in the blank, useless loneliness of her downlyings and her
uprisings. Life, once dear life, had become quite simply a monster that
threatened to devour her and then spit her into the grave.

       *       *       *       *       *

One warm, golden January Sabbath set like a jewel in the silver of
the Baden winter, Frau Stacher had sat hour after hour at her window
in chill, stark dismay, watching without seeing the soft afternoon
light sift through the bare, velvety branches of the chestnut tree
in front of her door. She was waiting for Corinne; but the moon had
already risen and its silver glimmer had taken the place of the gold
of afternoon before she heard a light step on the gravel. That light
step carried the heaviest of hearts for Corinne had come out to discuss
baldly matters till then not even thinkable....

But whichever way they turned and twisted and tried to avoid it, they
were always finding themselves back at a certain dark spot. Finally
they very quietly owned to each other, even saying the unthinkable
thing aloud, that the Baden house would have to be given up. Then
Corinne braced herself to meet those pale eyes, out of which the color
had been suddenly washed.

"You can get quite a sum from the sale of the furniture," she ventured
after a long silence in which she had looked as through a blur at the
familiar appointments of the room. They sat knee to knee holding each
other's hand tightly; Corinne felt as if she were watching her aunt
drown in the Danube; she wanted to cry "Help," but she only said:

"Of course you must keep enough of your best things for a nice room
near us all,--if we can find one."

The housing problem was beginning to loom up blackly, overshadowing
quite a number of things already dark enough. She leaned closer and
pressed her aunt's head against her loving young heart. There Frau
Commercial Advisor Stacher, born von Berg, wept her only tears. She had
a fine spirit which even then was not broken, but hurt, bent and vastly
astonished. During the long hours that followed they mingled their pity
and their love, which bore in the end a thin hope that "something would
happen"; but all the same, when early the next morning Corinne went
away she knew that the first stone had been cut for the sepulchre of
her aunt's existence.

       *       *       *       *       *

That "nice room near us all" proved indeed unobtainable. In a city
that had once offered every imaginable sort of pleasant shelter, there
didn't seem to be a single "nice, unfurnished room" to offer a homeless
old lady,--and it was said so many had died in or because of the
war,--no, Frau Stacher couldn't understand.

A few bits of furniture left from the sale were finally distributed
about among the various nieces and Frau Stacher went to board, just as
a makeshift--"till things get better" Corinne had assured her, at the
house of an acquaintance, who in the palmier days had partaken of her
easy bounty. There nights of aching, sleepless homesickness followed
days of empty, useless longing for all that had once been hers, for her
little situation in life that had enabled her, childless as she was to
be a center of pleasure and comfort to the only beings she loved. It
was finished, done with, that was quite clear. She sat more and more
alone in her room. The clack of Frau Kerzl's tongue and her invectives
at Fate, quite justified though they were, got finally and intolerably
on her nerves. She thought she could not bear to hear another time that
things were as they were because the Hapsburgs had taken all the gold
out of Austria when they went, and left the "others" sitting with the
paper money.

Frau Stacher was no intellectual and had attempted no mental
appraisement of the national calamities. Even in the good days her most
enjoyable reading had been the _Salon Blatt_, where what the Imperial
and Royal family and the "Aristokraten" did, said, wore, and where and
how they showed themselves was duly recorded for the delectation of an
appreciative people. A morning paper had always been brought to the
house, it is true, but she would only run quickly over world-events
which had never so slightly modified her life, whereas the doings of
the First Society lent it both lustre and interest.

She knew that Frau Kerzl, whose grief had dyed her political feelings
a deep red, was going on in a stupid, even wicked, manner, when she
so unjustly and blasphemously spoke of the Hapsburgs, but she had no
satisfactory answer to make, so after her way she was silent, spending
the long evenings alone in her room. She couldn't see to sew in it,
nor indeed to do anything more complicated than move about. The single
light was placed high up in the center of the ceiling and was reflected
but dimly from the dark walls, the pieces of heavy furniture and the
brown porcelain stove that was never lighted.

Fortitude was, seemingly, the only virtue that Frau Stacher, gentle,
easy-going, unheroic, was called upon to practise.

But the thing couldn't last forever. Often she was glad she was
seventy. It made the outlook easier. There couldn't be more than twenty
years of treading up other people's stairs. The instinct of home was
almost as strong in her as the instinct to live. No, there couldn't
be more than twenty years of it.... Then, too, in a month, a day, an
hour even, it might all be over. But one evening sitting in the shadowy
room, her little, white, knitted shawl drawn about her shoulders, her
hands crossed under it on her breast, she was suddenly and terrifyingly
aware of the beating of her heart,--almost as if for the first time.
She found she was as much afraid of death as of life--and that was a
great deal....

Sometimes one or the other of "the children" remembered to come to see
"poor Tante Ilde" and often Corinne, in her moonbeam way, would slip in
and out, still and pale indeed like a ray of reflected light, and every
Sunday after dinner she and Corinne would meet at Irma's. She went
frequently to Kaethe's, too, that is, whenever she had anything to take
to the children. It wasn't a place where one could go empty-handed.

But all, in one way or another, were caught up in the struggle for
survival. In a starving, freezing city, not starving, not freezing,
took the last flow of everybody's energy, so she was mostly alone. But
solitude, for which nothing in her life had prepared her, had no charms
for her. She had an almost unbearable longing to be in crowds, in
happy, busy crowds, where people jostled each other as they went about
little, pleasant errands.

But there was another thing beside being certain--vaguely--that
she wouldn't live forever, which had come to make her sojourn at
Frau Kerzl's not only endurable but desirable ... a cold, creeping
premonition concerning the not distant time when even that measure
of independence would be denied her. The money from the sale of the
furniture was going, was gone.

One morning in that terrible "little hour before dawn" when anxiety had
done its worst, she got up and counted and recounted the thin packet of
crowns left in her purse. Then in panic she made a mental survey of her
other remaining "values," of those things her nieces were "keeping" for
her. The result had sent her shivering back to bed, where frightened
by a fear beyond any she had ever known, even in nightmare, she had
pulled the bedclothes up over her head. She was afraid, afraid. It was
grinning at her....

She dozed finally. But she only knew she had been asleep when she
found herself throwing the sheet aside with a start, thinking she
heard Corinne's voice calling up the stairs in the house at Baden....
Perhaps something would happen.

But little can happen to women of seventy except more of the same,
whatever it is....

When in that chill December twilight she first found her way to the
pawnshop, to "Tante Dorothea's," familiar to her all her life as a sure
object for humorous sallies, and left there her gold bracelets, that
old life dropped finally and forever from her almost as if it had never
been, leaving her unticketed, unbilleted, between time and eternity.
Truly she found that there is no greater sorrow than in adversity
remembering happier days.

She hadn't spoken to any of the children about that fatally impending
visit to "Tante Dorothea's," though she had thought of consulting
Pauli; Pauli who always gave the impression that nothing human was
foreign to him. But he would have given her the money. Humbly she
deplored the burden of her existence on that younger generation, that
dead wood of her fate among those green trees, bent themselves in the
blast of misery that swept over the city. Every day, every hour one
had to look out, or one was quite certainly blown over. But Pauli was
away. Corinne, dear, lovely Corinne, she couldn't bear to think of
her pale light flashing in through the door of that pawn shop in the
Spiegelgasse, that fatal "Tante Dorothea's," whom the mention of in
the good old days, had always raised that ill-considered laugh. Once
or twice her thoughts had played glimmeringly about Fanny instead of
"Tante Dorothea,"--to go out in a sudden, chilly little gust blowing
from the terra ignota of Fanny's life. In the end it was her business,
not another's, that was in question. She realized for the first time
the solitariness of her fate, of everybody's fate, so long hidden from
her under the pleasant details of her daily existence which had seemed
to bind it in a thousand ways to other lives.

When she finally slipped out, looking fearfully and guiltily about her
long before she got to her destination, as if her shameful errand had
been stamped in red upon her face, she was further intimidated rather
than reassured to discover, as she turned into the Spiegelgasse, that
she was by no means alone of her kind. All the human scrapings and
combings of the Inner Town seemed to have been blown there too. Old
women like herself with arched noses and deeply-circled, tearless eyes,
thin, wan women, in once-good, now threadbare clothes, whose gentle
mien, like her own, recalled unmistakably happier days,--how many of
them there were! Pale spectres of that middle class whom the War and
then the Peace had stripped of everything save their sorrows. The war
loans they had invested in had gone up in the smoke of battle, or down
in the bitter waters of Peace; the thousands, the tens of thousands
of comfortable little incomes, left them by fathers, by husbands, had
soundlessly, untraceably disappeared, and they were learning the way
to "Tante Dorothea's."

       *       *       *       *       *

The Dorotheum, if one's business there is not vital is one of the most
interesting buildings of its kind in Europe. Five of its seven stories
rise above ground, the other two are in deep subterranean spaces,
reaching to the old catacombs, and where household and personal effects
of the Viennese middle class are now stored so thickly and so high,
once Roman mercenaries of the Xth Legion lay buried....

But Frau Stacher knew nothing of the Dorotheum in its historical aspect
and had she known, it would have been of little interest to her.

A motley, miserable throng was pressing in at the doors, for many, like
herself, chose the dusk for such an errand. She found herself pressed
close to a young mother with an anxious, withered face who had a pallid
baby sleeping on one arm, while under the other she carried a small
bundle of linen, that last of all possessions to be offered to "Tante
Dorothea." Behind her stood a former officer. It was easy to see what
he had been. He was still erect, but he was very thin, with deep pits
under his cheek bones, his coat was buttoned up to his chin and he kept
his hand in his pocket.

The pale baby on the woman's arm waked up as they stood in line, and
began a wretched wailing. The mother tried to quiet it as she passed
up to the counter, where a being, necessarily without bowels, looked
quickly at the poor contents of the bundle, gave her a ticket and a
few bits of paper money. Silently she received them and made way for
Frau Stacher, who in a distress that moistened her brow and dried her
mouth, tremblingly produced her bracelets. She was brusquely pointed to
another counter for precious objects, as also was the officer. There
she found herself behind a woman selling a worn wedding ring, not much
heavier than the money she got in exchange.

The bulging-eyed man, giving Frau Stacher a quick, circular look that
further chilled the thin blood in her veins, proceeded to weigh the
bracelets in the little scales on the counter. On their last golden
gleam was borne in a flash by Frau Stacher those bright, warm years
in which she had worn them. The dull ticket she received was the true
symbol of her state. The money would soon be gone and she would have
neither money nor bracelets, just nothing. As she turned away she saw
that the officer was offering a small medallion and a miniature. Again
she thought of the foolish jokes about "Tante Dorothea." This stark,
final misery was what it really was.... This doomlike end of everything.

Two short weeks after, Frau Kerzl again showed signs of nervousness
and talked loudly and significantly, or what Frau Stacher, who
had got timid even about leaving her room, thought was loudly and
significantly, concerning the price of food; and how money, even
an hour over-due, represented in those days of falling currency, a
fabulous loss. That afternoon she took out her watch and chain and her
amethyst and pearl ring. It was less frightening the second time, but
she felt much sadder, and she was unspeakably depressed by the old man
just ahead of her who fainted as he stood waiting.

By January Frau Stacher's situation became finally and visibly
desperate. She could obviously no longer pay to remain in Frau Kerzl's
house and quite as obviously Frau Kerzl could not keep her just for the
pleasure of it. The link in their lives got thinner day by day until
it broke squarely in two that morning of the sixth of January when
Frau Kerzl plainly hinted at the possibility, nay probability of being
able to wrest from the black heavens that star of first magnitude,--a
foreign lodger. No trouble, out all the time, solid, certain pay.
She didn't cease to paint the foreigner in ever brighter colors. He
stood out attractively, even flashily against the grey tenuity of her
present boarder. Though she had feared that something of the kind was
impending, it fell on Frau Stacher like a blow on a bruised spot;
indeed she found she was one vast bruise. Anything that touched her
nowadays was sure to hurt unspeakably, but being "turned out," as she
called it, had about it an ultimate ignominy, not at all befitting
the day. She had always loved the sixth of January, that noisy feast
of the Three Kings, and though she had been wont to complain that she
hadn't been able to sleep a wink because of the tooting of the horns,
the blowing of the whistles, the beating of drums and countless other
noises announcing their arrival, that racket had really appealed to
her sentimental soul, heralding as it did three royal beings bringing
gold and myrrh and frankincense. As she lay awake through the cold,
dark night, though there had been no noise at all in the streets she
suddenly remembered that it was Epiphany; a few thin, salty tears
moistened her cheeks as she realized that in a world once seemingly
full of gold and myrrh and frankincense she now possessed naught save
the breath in her body and the remnants of raiment covering it.

She was clearly, unless "something happened," among the serried ranks
of that middle class fated to disappear. Thousands, hundreds of
thousands of them had disappeared, been absorbed in one or the other
appalling manner into something nameless and then lost from the ways
of men. The "aristocrats" were vaguely "away" economizing and waiting
in their castles, living, as well or as ill as might be, from their
lands. The working classes, much in evidence, were not at all badly
off. Brawn had still some market value. But the middle classes, upper
and lower? They could not all have died, the streets would have been
heaped with bodies. There was some painful absorption of them into the
life of those persisting, and this is what, for a very little while,
happened to Frau Ildefonse Stacher, born von Berg; but one variation on
the ubiquitous theme of genteel old age and sudden penury in post-war
Vienna.

On the wet, black afternoon following the wet, black morning of which
we have spoken, Frau Stacher and her niece Corinne might again have
been seen, discussing whisperingly in the chilly room at Frau Kerzl's,
the evident extremity of the situation. The eye in the ceiling that saw
rather than was seen by, revealed them sitting even closer together
than usual. Frau Kerzl had developed out of her former friendliness and
respect, strange, spying, key-hole ways. She was as well aware of what
Frau Stacher had done with her bracelets and her watch and chain and
her ring as Frau Stacher herself. She hadn't noticed the disappearance
of the bracelets, but when she no longer saw the gold chain and when
her boarder incautiously asked her the time of day she knew the Stacher
jig was up, and she wanted to know, further, to just what tune she
herself was stepping. She had her own troubles,--the son who had gone
off to the war, fat Gusl he was then called, so jolly, so full of
Wiener quips and quirks, always humming about the house or playing his
zither. He had been invalided home that last September of the war and
was now coughing his life out in the room that was supposed to be to
the South, but that the sun was really unacquainted with. A dark room
in a dark, side street, one among hundreds of dark, windy side streets
in Vienna where consumption has its breeding ground; the "Viennese
malady," it is sometimes called....

The light had found and gleamingly mingled the pale gold of Corinne's
hair and the silver of her aunt's; their hands were tightly clasped as
they considered ways and means. There seemed to be few of one and none
of the other.

"I've lived too long," Frau Stacher said at last, and in her heart was
distilled a sudden but final grief that found its stinging way to her
so-long untroubled eyes.

Corinne leaned swiftly over and embraced her.

"Why I can't think of life without you!" she cried suddenly and so
glowingly that for a fleeting instant her aunt found herself warm in
the fire of that love. The salt was even dried momentarily out of that
bread and water of charity which was now so evidently to be her only
nourishment.

Corinne had come with a scheme of existence, the barest draft of a
scheme of existence, she knew it to be, for her precious Tante Ilde.
For all she looked elusive, shadowy, with that one light hanging
uncertainly above, her hair the brightest thing in the room, she was,
in accord with a strangely practical streak in her make-up, considering
the matter that engaged them in its true aspect. The sight terrified
her, but she was there to give courage, not to get it....

She sat quite motionless in long, slim, graceful lines, (the family
liking more substantial contours didn't know how handsome Corinne was,
"flat as a pancake" being no recommendation to them). Familiar with
those fireless, post-war rooms and their creeping, paralyzing chill
she was still wrapt in her sheath-like black coat. Her little grey,
fur-trimmed hat had been laid on the bed for Tante Ilde always liked
to have her take it off, it made the visits seem less hurried; her
dripping umbrella had been placed in the pail near the iron washstand
with its diminutive bowl and pitcher; its handkerchief-like towel was
folded across the little rack above it. With a disturbing, child-like
confidence her aunt's wide, full gaze had followed every movement.
Apparently mistress of herself and of the plunging situation, Corinne
had been conscious of the most horrible feeling in the pit of her
stomach when she finally met it full as she sat down and began to
caress that thin hand in the uncertain light which seemed, however,
bright enough to reveal the next step in all its horrid indignity.

Corinne was a tall, small-headed, blond woman with a finely-arched
nose and shell-like ears lying close to her head. Between her very
blue eyes with a recurring oblique look that could veil her thoughts
more effectually than dropped lids, was a slanting line that of late
had perceptibly deepened. "Very distinguished," was always said of
Corinne in the family; always, too, that she was "different," not
quite indeed of their own easy-going, somewhat irresponsible Viennese
kind which knows so well, in a somewhat unanalytical way, how to get
something out of life,--with half a chance, with a quarter of a chance.
So little was really needed for happiness with a basis of enough to
eat. Humming a new waltz, remodelling a pair of sleeves, getting hold
of a bit of fat or sugar for the women; for the men sitting in a warm
café drinking beer or black coffee, turning over the _Lustige Blätter_,
smoking a Trabuco or a Virginia,--joy was still as easy as that when
momentarily far enough from the abyss not to be dizzy and sick with the
fear of falling in. Corinne had had in common with Fanny a North German
grandmother and though that explained, in a way, a lot of things, still
there remained something about her that the family hadn't been able to
label satisfactorily. Sometimes they called it cold, sometimes hard,
they had all come up against it in one way or another in those days of
elemental issues, but terribly clever, they conceded that. She could
generally be counted on to find some little door in the thickest wall.

Since their father's death and the consequent breaking up of the home,
Corinne had been safely, solidly and enviably, it seemed to the rest
of them, employed in the Depositen Bank, whose personnel even in those
uncertain days, was not doing badly; an expanding wage as the times
demanded and at a place run by the bank an eatable midday meal at a
possible price.

If it had been a matter of her aunt Ilde alone, Corinne could have
managed, after a fashion, to keep that existence, so dear to her, from
falling to pieces, though what she earned was not yet enough for two;
but all whose heads were above water had not one but many drowning
persons clinging tightly, stranglingly about their necks. Corinne was
conscious of a finally sinking sensation as she proceeded to unfold the
plan which appeared to her more and more what it really was--a last
monstrous attack on her aunt's existence--pushing it nearer and nearer
to the fatal edge. She had no single illusion as to what she was doing,
and her voice was very soft in contrast to the hard, stark meaning of
her words.

"I've spoken to them all, darling, you don't have to do a thing
about it. Tomorrow you are to move to Irma's. It will be a sort of
combination arrangement. You'll be paying, of course. It's a way to
help Irma and the boys as well."

Now the famous pension on account of which Herr Bruckner had charitably
made that third marriage, had shrunk in buying properties to such
pigmy-like proportions, that they didn't count it any more when Irma's
needs and necessities were being discussed. Yet Irma and the boys had
to live, that establishment in one way or another had to be kept up a
while longer.

"But I don't see where Irma can put me," Frau Stacher answered after a
long silence.

Corinne flushed:

"Dear treasurekin ... the alcove.... It'll only be till I can look
about, perhaps something will turn up; it's to get you out of here
and remember you'll be paying Irma for it, you'll feel perfectly
independent. I've talked it over with her. She's glad enough to be
helped out. Don't forget the alcove has got that plush divan of yours
that we've all slept on at Baden. It's upholstered, thick and soft,
with happy memories. I think you've had a beautiful life," she ended
tenderly, desperately.

Her aunt smiled, a ghost of a smile, at the mention of Baden, and
the upholstery of the divan, and then her thin, broad lids closed
flutteringly over the expanse of her blue eyes to keep the tears from
falling, but she made no answer. There wasn't really anything to say.

"I felt of the curtains yesterday when I was there," continued Corinne
in a voice that had quite lost its resonance, "they're good and thick
and Irma sewed a big hook and eye on right in the middle, and when
they're fastened you'll be almost by yourself," she ended but with a
sudden quiver of her lips, as her aunt continued to look at her with
her soft, wide, pale eyes in which the distaste she felt for the alcove
in particular and the arrangement in general was clearly mirrored. She
had never cared for Irma. Irma had something hard and strange, almost
rough about her, that had never fitted into their own easy, pleasant
ways. She did her duty, yes, but they were used to a pleasanter
fulfillment of duty. However, it was too true that she was the only one
of them having a living room with an alcove.... Life was like that.

"It won't be forever," pursued Corinne, "and I'll be there on Sundays
for dinner."

She spoke cheerfully but she felt as if she were pointing her dear
treasurekin to the winter road instead of to shelter. Could she but
have lodged her really in her heart!

"I've been thinking about you all this week and planning ever since
that hateful Kerzl woman" ... here Corinne was pulled up short by the
sudden flush on her aunt's face, she couldn't bear to hear of _that_
even from Corinne.... Frau Kerzl who once had been grateful for a smile
or even for advice, to whom she'd sent broth a whole long winter.

Corinne continued gently as flowing water--but as inevitably as water
seeking its own level:

"Darling,--and this is how I have arranged for your dinner every day,"
she spoke even more gently and her touch was soft, the softest touch
that thin, trembling hand had ever known. A brightness beyond tears was
in her eyes. What was she offering really to her precious, her fragile,
her Dresden china aunt?

"On Mondays," she proceeded, striking the simplest chord at first,
"Liesel wants you to take dinner with her. She said she'd love to have
you."

This wasn't quite exact. What her sister Liesel, married since two
years to a young official in the Finance Ministry, Liesel who was very
happy, had really said was:

"Of course, I don't mind Tante Ilde coming once a week, we certainly
ought to do what we can for her, ... but when Otto comes in he does
like to find just me. However, we've got to look out for her, poor
dear,--she was always so good to us."

Otto was one of some half or three quarters of a million government
employees in Vienna and was doing fairly well, that is well enough for
two. He was an expert accountant and as prices went up, so mercifully
did his salary. They got along very comfortably in the tiny,
three-roomed apartment that Liesel in her smiling way had conjured up
out of the abyss of the housing crisis. It sufficed amply for their
needs. They lived almost in the style that would have been theirs had
they lived and loved a decade earlier. Sometimes in the evening they
even went to the theatre, or to a moving picture. What use in keeping
money when the next day's fall in exchange made it act like ice in hot
water? So with many shrugs of her plump, handsome shoulders Liesel
continued to wrest an immediate happiness from the miserable city, and
with a special sapience born of love pursued her daily and absorbing
round of making her Otto and herself comfortable. They cared a great
deal for each other, though the family thought Otto rather a stick and
wondered how he had come to find such favor in Liesel's soft, dark
eyes. As a husband he had turned out to be vigilant and exclusive as
well as loving, a sort of little Turk. Having small natural faith in
men and still less in women, from the first he had set about guarding
his treasure. It somehow suited Liesel. "But jealous!" she would boast,
casting her eyes up delightedly, a finger at her red lip. They were so
young too, that they could hope that something, in the many years they
expected to live, would happen to place their upset world on its proper
feet again, and while awaiting that miracle they were very happy.

Otto sometimes remembered Galicia.... When a certain look came into
his face it was because he was hearing those terrible machine guns.
He limped slightly, his right knee having been smashed by a ricochet
bullet, and he had had his feet frozen in an Italian prison camp
and lost the toes of the left foot.... Oh, that mountain camp, that
terrible cold, that tiny blanket! If he didn't pull it up about his
shoulders he shivered and shook with that deadly central cold and if
he did pull it up his feet froze. Sometimes he dreamed of it in that
warm bed with Liesel and would awake with a start to find her there,
and drawing the feather-bed up higher would sink again into a blessed
slumber. He knew that he had been lucky.

It was because Liesel was so happy that to her Corinne had first gone
with her plan for Tante Ilde. Liesel had spent summer after summer in
the house at Baden. Her aunt had always spoiled her. Everybody spoiled
Liesel, so evidently made for happiness. As a little girl she was
forever rummaging in the attic for bits of silk and lace for her dolls,
and would turn out the nattiest things. Now for herself she did the
same. She was round-faced, fresh-skinned and smiles played easily about
her somewhat wide, very red mouth;--she would have been attractive in
rags. But she had that peculiar Viennese talent for wearing clothes,
a jaunty manner of pulling her belt in snugly that made the observer
conscious of her very small waist under a full bust, above broad hips,
a way of pressing her hat down upon her head at the most becoming
angle; and her high-heeled shoes were always bright and neatly tied.
These and a lot of other details of an extremely feminine sort added
undeniably to her natural charms. Pauli said that though her soul was
but a centimeter deep, you looked to the bottom through the clearest
of waters. If in her happiness she sometimes forgot other people's
miseries, it was but natural, and when she was reminded she was all
solicitude and self-reproach.

"That will be nice," Tante Ilde was saying slowly after another long
pause, and she was gladder than ever that she had added the knife-rests
and napkin rings to the spoons when Liesel was married. Then as a
sudden thought came to her, she quite brightened up, "I can do the
dishes," she cried, "Liesel always used to hate to do anything that
would spoil her hands."

"Well, she doesn't seem to mind spoiling her hands for Otto," answered
Corinne rather drily.

"They're in love," returned Tante Ilde gently, glimmeringly.

A shadow fell over Corinne's face at the answer as if a ray of
light had been interrupted, or as if something had been muted for a
moment. Her aunt, who was not one to break into silent places, waited
patiently, though she was wondering who and what was coming next.

"Pauli," the shadow was followed by a light in Corinne's face as she
spoke the name lingeringly, "Pauli," she repeated, "wants you to go to
Anna's on Tuesday. It's one of their meat days--when they can get it."

"Perhaps I better not go there then. It looks," she hesitated and there
were sudden tears in her eyes, "so greedy."

"Not at all," cried Corinne. "Pauli wants you to go on Tuesday just
because of that. He said he'd try to be there himself, that first time
anyway. Anna and Hermine are quite worked up about it and wondering
what they can give him to eat."

"Poor Anna," said her aunt very gently.

Corinne flushed. Again they were silent.

Frau Stacher bewildered at her own fate, felt quite incapable in that
moment of picking up the threads of any other life, even of Corinne's.
But her confidence awakened warmly at mention of Pauli. Pauli had a
heart and was always showing it. Pauli understood, she felt sure,
anything, everything.... Even poverty-stricken old aunts by marriage
who had lived too long. Even to such Pauli was kind.

       *       *       *       *       *

Pauli Birbach, the husband of her eldest niece Anna, had got through
the war without a scratch or an illness,--of an unbelievable luck.
When a bomb burst where he and his comrades were sitting or lying, he
was certain to be unhurt and soon to be seen carrying the wounded in
gently or burying the dead deeply. Typhus and dysentery alike avoided
him. He was naturally a debonair and laughing soul, and his easy
resourcefulness had endeared him to both officers and men. "As lucky
as Pauli Birbach" was a phrase among his comrades. And even in little
ways. Wasn't he always turning up with a handful of cigarettes or a
bottle of wine or a chicken, got, heaven knew how, in a country picked
bare as a bone? An excellent cook, too, he could instruct the warrior
presiding over the pot how to make the very most of what little he had.
Hot water and an onion under Pauli's direction became a delectable if
not nourishing soup.

And the way he played the zimbalon he discovered in a castle they were
quartered in during an interminable winter in the Carpathians, the
Russians, millions of them it seemed, just opposite,--only half hidden
by the snowy hill that some dark morning they must charge....

He had seen terrible things, terrible things to a laughing,
soft-hearted man, things that knocked the laughter out of him like
a blow on the chest.... The time he went out with a patrol at day
break, the thermometer 40 below, and they thought they were coming to
a tent or a little hovel in the grey half light.... But it was a dozen
Kossacks huddled together, frozen stiff, their heavy boots sticking
out....

And other things that had turned his pleasure-loving soul black with
horror.... Christian Zimmermann, they'd been at the High School
together, ... Christian, his comrade, three days in agony, hanging on
that barbed wire and no one able to get at him and when Pauli finally
did bring him in ... oh, no, you didn't think of such things.

And the Peace that stuck in his throat and lay on his chest, and the
fierce angers it aroused, beyond, far beyond the blood-angers of the
War ... Five years to repair the damages of the War--a century those
of the Peace.... Still Pauli often laughed, even in that cold, grey
Vienna, scarcely recognizable ghost of what had once throbbed and
glowed, that funeral urn among cities; for he was naturally a man of
hot hope, in spite of the fact that Fate at her most capricious had
married him to Herr Bruckner's eldest daughter, a horse-faced, quite
inarticulate woman, all of one color, with a solemn, brooding look in
her eyes. She was so different from the glowing-eyed, sparkling-faced
damsels about him that marriage with Anna Bruckner came to seem like
the solving of some deep mystery. What lay behind those heavy, brooding
eyes, with their curtain-like closing? She had rather fine broad
shoulders, something long and big about her body, built in majestic
proportions, or so it seemed to him. He got into a state where he
had to know what it all meant--or die. He had been inexplicably mad
about her all through his lyric years.... Anna his Sybil. Anna had
been conscious of a flattered wonder, and her chill, slow blood had
known its only warmth and quickening when she married Pauli Birbach.
Then so soon.... Yes, Anna had gone through every hell, and there are
many, reserved for stupid, jealous, ugly, virtuous women. She loved him
more year by year. She was obsessed by the thought of Pauli, doggedly,
uselessly obsessed, for early Pauli had passed to the contemplation of
other mysteries.

It was a tribute to his humanity, however, that Tante Ilde felt not
the slightest distaste at going to his house ... even in "that way" as
she called it to herself. He gave more freely than he received, and he
did both easily. Probably for all his good intentions he would not be
at dinner on Tuesday, he had an airy, dissolving way with him, akin to
atmospheric changes,--brightness into cloud, cloud into sun and you
never knew.... But Anna with her joylessness and her one ugly daughter
as like her as the eighteen years between them permitted, Anna was her
own flesh and blood, and she had been at Baden with her aunt during
innumerable infantile illnesses. She was always catching something and
when her hair came out after the measles Tante Ilde had faithfully
brushed it back to a shining, brown abundance. It was even now Anna's
one beauty. They had, after all, so many memories in common--she
couldn't have forgotten all, everything.... On Tuesdays then.

"On Wednesdays you're to go to Mizzi's," Corinne was saying.

"To Mizzi's!" exclaimed her aunt in astonishment, throwing back her
thin shoulders and sitting up very straight.

"Yes ... Fanny," here Corinne made the habitual pause that followed
any mention of Fanny in the family,--"Fanny has arranged it. You know
Mizzi's anxious to please her."

Again Frau Stacher showed no especial enthusiasm for the arrangement.
It was getting into quite another category. After all Liesel and Anna
were her own brother's children, but when you went into houses,--in
that way,--kept up by nieces-in-law, it was quite a different matter.
Mizzi was the family dragon too. Mizzi with a look or a word could
quite ruthlessly devour aged aunts, superfluous children. A monster
really, with a mouth and stomach, but no entrails. They all had come to
know about Mizzi--in one way or another.

"Perhaps I better go without dinner on Wednesday," Frau Stacher
suggested with a slight quiver of her lips, though not because of the
food.

"You could perfectly well if you had too much or even enough at other
times. But we've got to keep your strength up through the winter.
You've just got to live," Corinne repeated sweetly, warmly, "and then
think of poor Manny--he'll love having you."

"Oh, Manny," her aunt responded, "poor Manny's got nothing to say," but
her voice had a note of loving compassion.

"Poor Manny, dear Manny," repeated Corinne slowly in the same tone,
adding, "It isn't any of it forever,--next year I'll be making more
money, and perhaps we can get a tiny, tiny apartment somewhere."

Now the "tiny, tiny apartment," even as she spoke, seemed to Corinne
the mirage it truly was. People had been known to die of joy on getting
a tiny, tiny apartment. That very morning in the newspaper she had read
of a man who had fallen dead when he heard he was at last to have a
certain apartment he had long needed for himself and his family, and a
rich man too. Everybody was talking about it.

"I can't leave Elschen," continued Corinne, "it's a miracle anyway
sharing that pleasant room with her while her sister's away."

"It makes me so happy to know you're there," said her aunt warmly, for
Corinne was of the race of homeless ones, and her address apt to be
uncertain. Then for all her patience, she couldn't help wondering about
Thursday.

"On Thursday," continued Corinne, having got to the fourth of her
slender fingers, "you're going to dear Kaethe's." Kaethe and Corinne
were half sisters by Aunt Ilde's brother's first and second wife.

"To Kaethe's!" she interrupted, "but they're all starving. I couldn't
eat a mouthful there."

"It's just because of that, that it's easy. When you go there on
Thursday you are to take the whole dinner--for all of them. It'll be
quite like old times when you always brought us things."

Though delicacy was an essential attribute of Frau Stacher, she could
not, at this point, restrain a slightly inquiring look at her niece
Corinne, who answered after the thinnest of pauses:

"It'll be all right ... Fanny's going to see about it. She does
everything for them anyway that _is_ done."

Frau Stacher closed her eyes rapidly once or twice, but made no remark.
It was, undeniably, Fanny whichever way you looked....

The contemplation of the Thursday arrangement however, induced a long
silence. They had a sort of hopeless, trapped feeling when they thought
of Kaethe.

Some thirteen years before she had married a brilliant young professor
of biology at the University, who now, as he accurately and baldly
stated, earned far less than the women who kept the toilets at the
Railway stations....

They had seven children,--lovely, white-skinned, pansy-eyed,
golden-haired children, or glowing-faced, starry-eyed, brown-haired.
Kaethe's was indeed a terrible situation, one that made her relatives
sad or angry according to their various temperaments and philosophical
reactions to life. Three of those children had been born, illadvisedly,
during the War and another since the Peace. Mizzi had soundly aired her
opinion of that last arrival, ending with her usual "dumm, but dumm!"
and casting her eyes up.

Out of the thick fog of his practical inexperience Professor Eberhardt
had gropingly tried various and mostly unsuccessful ways of providing
for his family, ways unrelated to his brains and his technical skill,
which suddenly seemed not of the slightest value. Time apparently
was the only thing he had and he was directly, unpleasantly aware of
its useless passage. He'd lived mostly in a blessed, timeless world
of theory and experiment. Courses were only intermittently held at
the University, in half empty aula reached through dusty, echoing
corridors. There was no money to keep up the laboratories and the
few students were apt to be as listless from undernourishment as the
professors themselves, or fiercely, disturbingly, redly subversive of
everything and everybody; and anyway the struggle to keep life in the
body was so terrible that it quite chilled any desire to know how it
came to be there in the first place. Nature's secrets, except of the
harvests, were at an entire discount.

He had duly tried several forms of those manual labors that alone
seemed to be worth money. The summer before he had helped with the
crops on a farm in Styria that a brother professor of geology, whose
case somewhat resembled his own, had told him about. At first he had
dreadful backaches and his long, delicate hands that could hold a
microscope or a retort so steadily, would shake after the day's work
and his thin palms were one great blister. Horrified he would hold
them out at evening and watch them tremble and wonder would they ever
be steady again for use in the laboratory. He had, however, made what
seemed to his inexperience quite a lot of money for that sort of work,
and he never knew what the peasants really thought of him. Some of the
money unfortunately had been stolen from him that last Sunday when
he had been incontinently dreaming about a certain theory that could
always, if he didn't look out, captivate his attention.... Still he
brought home enough to get them through the autumn ... and with what
Fanny would do....

But suddenly, or so it seemed to him, the crown began to fall. He would
sit flushing and paling as he read the descending quotations of the
national currency and the rising prices of food. In a few weeks that
money was gone. The Eberhardts had, relatively, gorged when they saw
it shrinking--next week it would be worth only half and the week after
only a quarter. They laughed a good deal, too, Kaethe and the children.
Kaethe even taught Lilli and Resl to waltz, humming "The beautiful,
blue Danube" as they spun around. The professor allowed himself to
think again of certain combinations ... once quietly back in the
laboratory.... Then came the collapse.

In desperation he tried street-cleaning. A late November morning on
looking out of the window he saw that it had snowed heavily during the
night. In spite of himself the beauty of the little crystals lying
against the panes entranced him. He shook himself free, however, of
such luxurious and wasteful thoughts and decided to try for a chance to
shovel off snow. He said nothing to Kaethe about it as he went briskly
out. But it proved not to be much of an idea after all, for he got a
heavy chill late that afternoon waiting in line to be paid, and when
he passed by his brother-in-law's office feeling very ill, Hermann had
administered a potion to him and told him to go immediately to bed and
stay there.

About Christmas time he was put wise by another colleague, a professor
of botany, to a certain address near the Stephansplatz where a midday
meal of a sort was provided by foreign benevolence for starving
university professors. A cup of cocoa, rice and a slice of bread;
a cup of cocoa, beans and a piece of zwieback. It was not designed
to fatten any of them; it was only meant to keep as many of them as
possible above ground ... keeping the sciences alive.... The calories
were carefully marked on each menu and the men of learning could take
their choice without paying.

Professor Eberhardt went there every day, but with his own physical
necessities ever so meagrely provided for, it was pure agony to go back
to those rooms where seven hungry children and a pale wife awaited his
return. He was always asked what he had had and how it had tasted. He
was often able to slip the bread or the zwieback into his pocket, but
there was no way of handling the cocoa and beans and rice except to eat
them.

Kaethe kept his only suit brushed and darned. Indeed it was getting to
be one large darn with areas of the original cloth making patterns. She
kept him in clean collars too, for a long time, but even at the last,
with his coat collar turned up, he had the unmistakable air of a man of
learning and a gentleman.

He loved his wife and children greatly. But it was a terrible life, a
cold, damp, undernourished life, the things of the brain and the spirit
slipping farther and farther from his sight. Brawn was indeed what
was wanted.... Unless one had that strange, mysterious but apparently
essential thing called money,--that some had and some hadn't.
Professor Eberhardt had never been fanned, even gently, by any breeze
of commercialism....

They had all been so proud of Leo and Kaethe in the old days; sometimes
Leo's name was mentioned in the newspapers and though they cared little
and knew less about the congresses held in Vienna, they would quickly
run their eyes over names and subjects, hunting for Leo's and "as proud
as dogs with two tails," according to Hermann, when they discovered it.

The plight of Leo and Kaethe and their lovely children kept the two
women silent a long time. Just as the thought of Hermann had made them
very still.... In fact viewed from any angle, the family fortunes were
now apt to engender silence.

"Oh yes ... if Fanny ..." said Tante Ilde at last, picking up the
thread where they had somewhat charily dropped it, "if Fanny...."

She had to concede that going to Kaethe's with something of the old
familiar gesture of giving to those she loved rather than receiving
from them, when obviously, they had none too much, put Thursday in
quite a different light.

"What do you think I could get to take them? How much do you think,"
she paused musingly, "Fanny will send?"

"I don't know, but it will be enough. You can look around and see what
you can get the most of for the money. There are so many of them," she
ended, the familiar phrase losing itself in a sigh.

Too many of them, doubtless, and yet those lovely children,--each one a
treasure, looking at you so confidingly with their big eyes in shades
of blue, except Resl's and Hansi's darkly flashing,--which one of them
would you not want? Not want Elsa who had a way of snuggling close and
seeking your hand as she looked up with those heaven-blue eyes? Not
want Carli, that gold and white angel of three summers, who couldn't
yet walk, his little legs would crumple up under him when he tried to
stand up, but he could smile in a way that went to your heart, and as
for the baby, a thing of such sweetness that one wanted to eat her up.
She was still at pale Kaethe's breast; rosy and fat, though heaven
alone knew how or why; and all the others. Lilli whose beauty made you
hold your breath; Resl to whom something nice was always happening, and
Maxy with his plans for supporting the family when he grew up. Any one
of them would have been the pride and joy of a childless home....

Tante Ilde felt herself pleasantly excited at the thought of
Thursday,--relieving want--no matter how--instead of adding to it. Her
eyes got quite bright.

Corinne, seeing the change, continued gayly, almost.

"And Friday, now guess," she paused, "Friday you'll have dinner with
me. I'll let you know where and we'll talk everything over. What fun
it will be! Saturday, I haven't arranged for Saturday yet but I'll
tell you in time. Sunday we don't have to plan about. I'll come as
usual with the meat for the boys' stew, and we'll have a nice time
all together. Perhaps in a few months we can arrange something quite
different. It's only to get you over the winter ... and you'll have
courage," she ended entreatingly. Courage, that angel, she was thinking
miserably to herself, as the unalterableness of her aunt's doom became
more and more apparent.

But suddenly it all seemed quite possible, even easy to Tante Ilde.
Yes, she would, she _could_ be brave. She had Corinne ... as long as
she had Corinne.... Corinne was so clever too, anything might happen
when Corinne took the reins in her slim, elfin way, guiding life
quickly, lightly along over the roughest spots.

"Now, dearest, don't worry about a single thing," Corinne repeated
faintly, the iron very deep in her soul as at last she got up and
stood lingeringly by her aunt's chair. She had again that horrible
realization of something irreparable being in process. It sharpened her
features and muffled her voice. "I'll see Frau Kerzl on the way out and
pay her up till tomorrow morning, and you can leave early." For all her
glimmering smile and close embrace she was increasingly consternated
at the collapse of her aunt's existence, not even slightly concealed
behind their words. She loved her more than ever in her final and
inevitable rout, for pity was swelling abundantly her love. But the
world! It cared little for old ladies in flight before Fate....

That courage momentarily imparted to Frau Stacher by her niece's
loving nearness fell heavily with the dragging hours in which more
and more miserably she went about the dim, chilly room, emptying the
bureau and wardrobe of their scanty contents and laying them in her
shabby valises. The very old brown leather one dated from her wedding
trip, for Frau Stacher had never been a traveller; it had always been
pleasanter to stay at home or go only to very near places for the day.
Now strangely she was become a pilgrim, and when she was hungry she was
to eat of other people's bread and she must go up other people's stairs
for shelter. The realization of the power of those nieces over her life
terrified her. It was complete if they chose to exercise it. Withdrawal
of their protection, she starved, she froze--just the not having those
few thousand crowns a year put her at the world's mercy....

Even Frau Kerzl's quite unctuous attentions at that last supper of
cabbage-turnip soup failed to dispel the deepening gloom of her
heart. Frau Kerzl was obviously though politely rejoicing. She had
indeed through an incredible bit of luck secured that foreigner, an
Englishman too, who would pay in shillings, in the magic "Devisen,"
for that room in which the very next night he was to sleep,--as soon
as that,--Frau Kerzl already basked and expanded in the approaching
light and heat of those shillings. The long Englishman strangely,
hated short, square feather beds and was bringing his own blankets. It
appeared, too, that he was in the commissary department of a certain
relief society. Anything could grow out of such a situation,--condensed
milk, butter, oatmeal.... The arrangement was undeniably of a marvelous
fertility.

Though Frau Stacher was truly glad of Frau Kerzl's good luck, it
but emphasized her own impending homelessness. She had been quite
miserable there, but at least her living-space had been provided with
a door, and blessed with a key,--ultimate desirabilities as she now
saw, and tomorrow she would move into the uncertain privacy of the
alcove. Then, too, in some way that she couldn't define Irma, her young
sister-in-law, terrified her.

Yes, homeless, in a new sense, she realized herself to be when she went
back into the luxury of her solitude for the last time, and as she
closed the door she knew, indeed, that she had "lived too long."...

In that bed, abundantly salted by the tears of her uncertainties, so
soon to know the deep slumbers of a care-free Englishman, Frau Stacher
lay long awake thinking of those homes, over whose thresholds, day by
day, week by week, she was to step.... She would love them so much, she
would be so grateful, she would hold so sacred the joys and sorrows
which might be disclosed....

But they seemed to her tired body to live, those nieces of hers, at the
ultimate points of the Viennese compass. Her feet and back ached at the
bare thought of those endless, cobbly streets, windswept, wet by rain
and snow. All roads led to Calvary. Those once charming streets of the
Imperial City were now but so many ways to the hill of charity, and it
was a hill that old age crept up timidly, anxiously. The cross was so
surely at the top.... Then she bethought herself how the days of the
week came only one at a time, the way after all that life was tempered
to mortality, one day, one thing at a time....

But it wasn't only troubles of food and raiment, of shelter; Frau
Stacher had grave theological difficulties as well, encrusted
confusingly about the admonition: "Be not solicitous for your life,
what you shall eat or for your body what you shall put on ... for your
Father knoweth that you have need of all these things." No, she had no
slightest understanding; and faith was but the dimmest of night-lights,
flickering so uncertainly that the dark masses of her difficulties
alone were apparent. She seemed to be caught terrifyingly between her
needs reduced though they were, really only a bed and enough food
to keep her alive, and the Divine withholding of those things. No,
she couldn't understand, and all through that last long night at Frau
Kerzl's she hung shiveringly over the dim puzzle of her life, which
once had fallen so easily into its bright and pleasant pattern....

For the dozenth time she pulled the little, hard, square feather-bed,
disdained of the Englishman, about her shoulders and drew her knees
up under it. At last out of her chill bewilderment she began to think
of Kaethe, of taking her the Thursday dinner, of what she could get,
in a world now filled mostly, it seemed, with inedible substances.
The thought of giving, even vicariously, lighted in her a glowing
eagerness. She found herself suddenly quite warm, even to her ankles
and feet, and as the late January light began to filter in through the
cracks of the brown rep curtains she fell, mercifully, into a deep
slumber.




                                  II

                            LIESEL AND OTTO

                            _Allegretto amoroso._

                            Sorgen sind für
                            Morgen gut.



When belated and hurriedly Frau Stacher finally got away from Frau
Kerzl's, it was somewhat as a little war-bark after its time is up,
leaves an unpleasant port, but still a port, and puts out to sea in
sure signs of rough weather.

The once fat and merry Gusl had had one of his worst nights; spasms of
coughing were coming through the open door of the so-called south room
as the two women stood together for a last time in the sombre little
hallway, sadly stencilled in terra cotta on dark blue. The haggard
agony on that mother's face gave Frau Stacher a deep stab accompanied
by the first and only realization in her childless heart of the pain
mothers know for doomed children. It was something so sudden, so
poignant, as she stood saying a somewhat lifeless goodbye, (she hadn't
yet pulled herself together after being abruptly awakened out of that
timeless, death-like sleep by Frau Kerzl's loud knock,) that had it
remained with her an instant longer she would have fallen in a heap. It
seemed to her that now she was always running full tilt into griefs she
had never even suspected in the veiled and pleasant years.

The ring of the hungry colonel, only incompletely disguised as a
porter, who came to get her folding straw basket and her two lean
valises, broke in on the distress of the two women. Frau Kerzl
forgetting for a moment the blessings that would so surely follow
the Englishman into the house, embraced her, suddenly regretful, in
a rush of hot tears; Frau Stacher's sympathy was so immediate, so
real that it seemed to stand there with them. They hung a moment lip
on cheek murmuring to each other "courage" and again and again "auf
Wiedersehen;" then turned to their now separate paths, Frau Kerzl
running back to her son's room at a faint and gurgling sound and Frau
Stacher to continue what she called, (though no one knew it,) her
"March among the Ruins," walking close behind the porter, sweating
a neurasthenic sweat, in the raw January air under his unaccustomed
load. She felt safer quite near him for those once cosy, familiar
streets seemed now to converge to the unknown, to infinity even, and
the proximity of her valises somewhat steadied her. With genteel,
restrained little steps, her elbows pressed to her sides, her hands
clasped in front holding her umbrella and her shabby little bag that
always came unfastened if she didn't look out and somebody would tell
her it was open, she proceeded to the street off the Hoher Markt where
Irma, her brother's widow, half starved with her three boys on the
famous pension, together with what various members of the family gave
her and what she herself made by her beautiful "petit point," dimming
every year a little more those once hard, bright eyes.

Irma knowing that hunger stalked just around the corner, yet desiring
to live alone with her boys, had been immensely relieved and at the
same time almost uncontrollably irritated at the thought of the
arrangement by which Tante Ilde was to be given the very relative
freedom of the alcove. She had gone about the simple preparations for
her taking possession in the best obstructionist manner. The alcove
already contained the old brown plush divan, relic of the house in
Baden, but Irma had shown an amazing unwillingness to clear out a
certain little green and yellow chest of drawers which had "always"
been between the windows in her living room and contained an unrelated
accumulation of objects.

"But she's got to have something to keep her things in!" Corinne had
cried, at the time the fatal arrangement was being made.

This was so obvious that Irma had made no further demur than to say: "I
didn't think she had that much left."

"You've never heard about the lilies of the field?" Corinne asked with
her most oblique look, but it was lost on Irma who said:

"What?" as she noisily dragged the chest of drawers into the alcove.

"How these little pebbles hurt my feet," murmured Corinne further, and
when Irma answered: "What hurts your feet?" she turned aside. Irma was
clearly impervious. But she had emptied the drawers--all except the
top one--quite ostentatiously. Various blessings flowed from Corinne,
who brought their Sunday dinner and who could be counted on to get
the often expensive materials for her needlework; she knew, too, that
Corinne from time to time gave Mizzi a finely-pointed thrust of truth
about what Irma called "jewing her down" in her prices. Corinne could
quietly cut to the bone. Irma had been a skillful needlewoman even in
the old days, now through Mizzi she kept abreast of the latest styles.
That season the rage was for motifs of "petit point" which were being
inserted in Suède handbags, making one of the famous Viennese leather
novelties. She had once received 80,000 crowns, when 80,000 was
something, for a tiny medallion, so fine that she had only been able to
work on it on warm summer mornings with the window open, even the glass
panes seemed to blur it somewhat, though that north window up those
five flights of stairs was certainly as good a place as one could have
for working.

Irma being without sensibility, unconnected with her boys, had said
further to Corinne on that same occasion:

"Business is business," at which Corinne had ineffectually protested
that it was just what it wasn't,--business.

"You know how I am situated with the three boys," Irma had answered,
in the same tone she would have used to give new information rather
than to discuss a situation already threadbare, "so much for a cup of
coffee in the morning and you know what bread costs, then the soup in
the evening--a plateful--she won't need the thick part of it," she
proceeded baldly, "the boys are growing and so hungry. She'll only need
something to warm her up and when you think that she will have eaten
well every day at noon, she'll get on all right."

The family had never been able to accustom themselves to the shock of
certain unexpected thoughts appearing quite unclothed and without the
least shame from Irma's most intimate being. A chill visited Corinne's
backbone at the reference to the thin part of the soup, and a white
point appeared in her eyes, glacial as an iceberg in blue water, which,
however, did not attract Irma's attention nor reduce her temperature.
She was, anyway, a woman who easily got red in the face and was always
saying how hot she was when others were half frozen.

Having thus delivered herself of her inner thoughts she had proceeded
to draw, not uncheerfully, two nails out of the kitchen wall and drive
them neatly, loudly, deafeningly into two light-grey roses in the brown
wall-paper of the alcove, near the curtain where they wouldn't be seen,
and just a little too high to be reached comfortably. She had then
duly sewed the hook and eye on the curtains under Corinne's very gaze
and zealously, inexpensively flicked away any possible dust from the
gilt-framed engraving of Haydn leading the young Mozart by the hand,
and the flat white and gilt vase on the little bracket underneath,
sole embellishments of the alcove. But all the same in order to feel
the least bit amiable about it Irma had to keep reminding herself that
her sister-in-law would be paying for that same alcove. Indeed, with a
second bare, arctic look also lost on Irma, Corinne had put the money
for it for a whole month in advance into her hand. She had felt like
snatching her treasure up in her arms, conveying her a hundred, a
thousand miles and setting her down in some warm and pleasant spot. And
this, this was what she had prepared for her, this quite evident place
of tribulation. She made no answer to Irma's last words beyond drawing
her lips thinly together. They had all learned that they couldn't get
at their father's widow except through her sons, but just as soon as
she could turn around she'd get another niche for her Dresden china
auntie....

No one, not even Corinne was ever to know what Frau Stacher's thoughts
or rather feelings were, as soundlessly, in the narrow confines of the
alcove, she unpacked her few possessions. When those designed for the
lower drawer of the little chest were laid in, it stuck obstinately in
a three cornered way as she tried to close it. The upper one had proved
to be still full of old letters, postcards and photographs. A faded
reminder of Heinie and Irma with knapsacks and alpenstocks off on their
honeymoon in the Dolomites, caught her eye, which was further held by a
likeness of her unsuspecting self staring at her from under an oak in
the Stadtpark at Baden, with Anna's baby, the first-born grandchild on
her knee. And _this_ was to what it was all leading up she thought in
unaccustomed irritation, as she gave another push to the lower drawer,
which went in with a jerk that left her breathless. When she wanted to
hang up her coat she found that she had to stand on the divan to reach
the nail. Her eyes taking in the details of that very evident tent of
a night were at their palest, scarcely a trace of blue left in them.
She was quite alone. Irma waiting impatiently to open the door for
her sister-in-law's belated arrival had almost immediately departed
to engage in the protracted and militant operation of marketing. The
three boys were at school. Irma's welcome had been hasty and without
warmth. The room itself was cold with the insidious chill of a room
in a damp climate that has not had a fire in it since the day before.
The white porcelain stove, as Frau Stacher stepped shiveringly over
to it possessed not even a reminder of heat, though she put her hands
knowingly on certain tiles, hoping possibly to find one still warm from
the previous evening. Irma never lighted the fire till the boys got
back in the afternoon. She herself would sit at her embroidery frame
with a round, grey, stone bottle of hot water, wrapt in a piece of old
flannel, in her lap. Frau Stacher tried to think that the place would
be warmer in many ways when the boys came home.

Then the cuckoo clock struck eleven hollow strokes and hurriedly she
began to lay out her very best things to wear to Liesel's. Liesel
adored good clothes and always noticed what people wore. A large part
of her conversation was about making over old things or the possibility
of getting new ones, and the discussion of what was being worn that
season and might be worn the next could induce in her sensations
bordering on rapture.

Frau Stacher was still wearing for "best" with a measure of decency,
some stancher remnants of the years of plenty. She now proceeded to put
on her black cloth suit with the embroidered black and white lapels,
the last thing she had bought before her "crac," arranging softly
about her neck, which was already encircled by a bit of narrow black
velvet, a certain piece of oft-washed and much-mended old lace that
she had worn for twenty years, pinning it with an oxydized silver bar
pin on which was stamped "Karlsbad," unlosable, valueless relic of a
journey in the happier days. She carefully brushed her black hat, with
its purple velvet knot faded into grey, giving it a few supplementary
pinches and pats before putting it on, instinctively at an angle that
was dignified, even becoming; then she rolled tightly her black cotton
umbrella and drew on her neatly darned black gloves. She paused on
the threshold to give a strange, pale glance about the familiar room
become suddenly not only unfamiliar, but odious. The cold north light
lay whitely upon it, bringing out every thread in the worn spots of the
old rug, by the door, under the table, as you went into the kitchen;
she remembered that Heinie's feet had had their part in wearing them
threadbare, Heinie now seven years in his grave. There by the window
was the unwieldy, red upholstered armchair that he had sat in all
through that last winter of his life, with smooth, shining, dark spots
on the arms and at the top. She shivered again but this time it was
not from the cold of the room. As she passed out, her arms held more
closely than ever to her sides, her head very erect, her little pride
all indeed that she had left to her out of a whole life full of things,
she still looked the Frau Commercial Advisor Stacher, born von Berg.
Her gentility was ineffaceable.

       *       *       *       *       *

Liesel was busy in the tiny kitchen when her aunt rang gently,
apologetically. As she opened the door an entrancing smell,
unmistakably of fresh noodles in fresh butter, was wafted on the air.
It wasn't the sort of scent that hung around Frau Kerzl's apartment
nor about Irma's. Frau Stacher found herself sniffing it up eagerly,
and certainly Liesel's warm welcome fittingly accompanied it. Where
on earth did Liesel get the butter? she was thinking as she felt her
niece's bright cheek against hers and her soft breast warmly near. Her
spirits began to rise. She was momentarily out of sight and hearing of
the combat for food, enveloped sustainingly in that delightful union of
scents--above lilies and roses--fresh flour, fresh, warm butter! Her
heart was suddenly flooded with an immense gratitude, not alone for the
food, as she returned the soft embrace.

It was a comfortable little living room into which she then stepped,
crowded with furniture, mostly Biedermayer, that had belonged to Otto's
mother and his grandmother before her. Mellow, pale brown furniture
decorated here and there with a black motif. A writing desk, with high
shelves and glass doors destined for books, now held a mauve and
white tea-set in old Vienna ware. A green porcelain stove stood in one
corner and was beginning to give forth its gentle heat. Liesel lighted
it about an hour before Otto returned and then all day long into the
evening it could be depended on to give out generously its pleasant,
even warmth. Between it and the window were Otto's armchair and his
special stool for his lame leg, near it a little table with a rack for
his pipes, his wallet of tobacco and a box of Trabucos. Otto _had_ to
have his cigar after supper and when luxuriously he had smoked it he
would pull at his pipe and read the _Wiener Journal_ or perhaps get out
his flute. They talked of renting a piano when things got better and
then Liesel could play his accompaniments. After busy days, pleasant
evenings. Liesel's deft fingers were always at work salvaging something
old,--her darning was famous in the family, or smartly fashioning
something new. She had a way of standing in front of him and asking
him if the stripes were more becoming across or up and down, or she
would sit in his lap and ask him if his treasure could wear her dress
as short as _that_, only so much stuff, every centimeter counted, that
enchanted his uxorious soul. He would pinch her ankles and say that
anybody who wore a 35 shoe could do as she liked, or as far up as the
police permitted, and Liesel would be delighted and laugh and laugh.
After hearing what had happened at the Ministry, she would tell of
those even more vitally interesting visits to provision shops, where
evidently the tradespeople liked to see her, and as far as was wise she
would let him into the secret of her ways of ferreting out the little
that was hidden; her ready smile, those two soft dimples and her even
softer brown eyes counting for much in such operations. Once, but that
was in the very beginning, she had started to tell Otto of the quite
fresh remarks of the cheesemonger--a good-looking fellow--but he'd
pouted for two days and though secretly Liesel was gratified by these
signs of jealousy--once in awhile, like that--in the end she wisely
kept the not at all displeasing personal attentions she received while
marketing to herself.

Liesel had no books and never dreamed of opening the
newspaper,--world-events were nothing to her. After supper as she
sewed, Otto would sometimes read her amusing bits under the caption
"Around about the Globe": "A dangerous Don Juan," "The most useful
tree in the world," "The Adonis of the American film world," "Solemn
mourning for a cat," and such like. Liesel adored cats. She wanted a
cat, a piano and a baby; otherwise she had really little left to wish
for.

Occasionally they followed a case through the criminal courts,
especially if it had an amusing side. Liesel loved to laugh and laugh
she often did in the weeping city.... And a jewel robbery made her
eyes shine. But Liesel's real use for newspapers was to soak them in
water, then roll them into tight balls and set them to dry. They made
excellent fuel, one or two, put knowingly into the porcelain stove
with a couple of briquets. There were always a few drying on the
window-ledge in the kitchen.

Otto's own reactions to the problems of the Fatherland as set forth in
the Press were not much more vigorous than his wife's. When he read of
a new difficulty he would in his mind straightway blame some far-off,
unreachable individual or circumstance for the national misfortunes in
general and particular. He had then done all that could be required of
him; effort was ended and he was quits with the situation. He didn't
blame openly the Republic, he got his living and his Liesel's from it
as from the Monarchy, and he rarely used the now familiar expression
"Dos homma von da Republik," (that's the fault of the Republic) but he
thought it. It was, further, a source of evils, that he, Otto Steiner,
could not be expected to purify. What, indeed, could he do about the
Republic, about the Jews, about the Freemasons, about the Exchange?
Nothing, quite evidently nothing, and it let him comfortably out of all
responsibility. He just kept on at his work, came home to his Liesel,
who in turn pursued her agreeable and busy round of making him happy.
So endless were the combinations and strategies involved in this once
simple matter that she had her hands and time full.

She felt very sorry for her Tante Ilde, losing her money and being
old and alone, for Kaethe and her children, for Irma and the boys,
and sometimes she took them things to eat. Quite often she found her
way to Mizzie's shop where she was always sure of a warm welcome, for
undeniably Liesel understood the niceties of Mizzi's business. She
sometimes even thought of going in with her, but she felt that she
was, momentarily at least, better employed in using Otto's salary
to the fullest advantage, and "with things as they are," (which was
Liesel's nearest approach to intellectual participation in the national
misfortunes) _that_ took all her time and thought. Standing in those
everlasting cues, running as she said, "from Pontius to Pilatus,"
bringing everything home herself, though the aged porter at the corner
of the Kohlmarkt and the Wallnerstrasse always helped when it was a
question of coals, glad to serve once more a handsome woman,--handsome
in the traditional way he so thoroughly understood. Liesel would
listen, quite truly interested, as they walked along to his tales of
other days when gentlemen were "cavaliers" and ladies hard to win; of
whilom young attachés at the not distant Foreign Office, that imposing
Ballplatz, who had been wont to send him with love letters and flowers
and bonbons. The telephone had given the first blow to such romantic
expressions of love; and as for the War and the Peace, they were
equally and finally calamitous....

She could well afford to greet her aunt lovingly, and her "dearest
aunties" and her "how sweet you look" and her "I'm so glad to have
you," came gushingly out of the abundance of her heart. She was so
happy that she could add cheer to her food without the slightest effort.

The table was already spread. Aunt Ilde's involuntary though delicate
glance showed her three places set, just the same for all; three wine
glasses, three plates, three knives even, (on those knife-rests that
she had so fortunately added to the coffee spoons and napkin rings when
Liesel was married,) knives meant meat, but she then and there made up
her mind not to take any--perhaps a little wine. The carafe stood on
the table filled with a Voslauer, a pleasant, light, open wine, gently
quite gently warming to the stomach. It grew on those very slopes about
Baden.

Then she bethought herself cheerfully of the moment, when she would say
to Liesel: "Now you stay with Otto, I'm going to do the dishes, but I
must have an apron."

She had taken her things off and hung them up on one of the pegs in
the little hallway. She had wished even as she did so that she didn't
have to leave them there. They'd be the first things Otto would see and
perhaps ... But such misgivings and some others had given way before
that delicious odor and Liesel's warm welcome. She looked so pretty,
so appetizing, in that big, pink apron. As she went back into the
kitchen her aunt could hear her singing an old waltz from the "Graf von
Luxenburg," "Bist meine liebe, kleine Frau."

Frau Stacher had for a moment the illusion that she was still living at
Baden and that she had only come in for the day. There, too, was her
little inlaid worktable that had belonged to her own mother and that
Liesel had taken for safe-keeping when the house was given up. She'd
always kept her wools and her fine darning in it and Liesel did the
same.

"Can't I help?" she asked, as she continued to look at it, rent by a
sudden, terrible homesickness, that made her voice quite weak.

"No, you just sit quiet and rest. Everything is ready. It's time for
Otto to come, anyway," Liesel answered with a look at her wrist watch.
"He's always to the minute. He only has an hour for dinner and must
find everything ready."

Indeed as she spoke the rattle of a key was heard at the front door.
She flew to it. There were the unmistakable, immemorial sounds of
embracing and then a whispered word from Liesel.

"Ach, yes, yes," Tante Ilde heard him answer.

He had hung up his green plush hat with the little grey feather at the
back on its own invariable peg, had divested himself of his overcoat,
with its rather high, tight belt and hung it up on the next by Tante
Ilde's hat and coat, just as she had known he would, but without the
inhospitable thoughts her humility had attributed to him. As he entered
he was combing his hair and moustache with his little pocket comb and
smiling his somewhat fatuous smile.

Otto Steiner was the son of a small government official, the grandson
of one. He had gone into the Ministry of Agriculture when he was
eighteen, and had been there seven years, when at a certain hour the
war found him, in a certain room, at a certain desk, bending over
a certain big ledger. And out of that secure and dusty routine, as
natural to him as breathing, he had been thrown to the Russian front,
then to the French front where he had been wounded. He had been healed
and thrown to the Italian front, every nerve in his body making its
agonized appeal against going through certain perfectly definite
horrors again. He was thankful when his knee, which was supposed to
be quite cured, began once more to stiffen and swell, when in a short
time quite certainly he wouldn't be able to get about and they'd have
to send him home. Then before he could be demobilized he had been taken
prisoner and put in that Italian camp where his feet had frozen. Such
strange things to happen to one who found his pleasure as well as his
daily bread in those dusty ledgers, and whose conversation was largely
made up of references to "Das Ministerium." It was one of the first
words he remembered from his childhood days, as familiar as "guten
Morgen."

Now after all the agonies, the incredible agonies, it had been
granted to him, out of so many who had been heaped in nameless graves
everywhere in Europe, to be coming into his own home from that very
same Ministry, greeted by that delightful odor of food, prepared by a
beloved, loving and lovely wife. "I'm certainly lucky," he often said
to himself and asked no further grace of heaven than to grow old in the
Ministry, moving slowly, as his forbears had moved, up through various
rooms, indicative of various grades.

He was pale and wore eye-glasses. His face was the somewhat
round-cheeked face of the average Viennese, with rather small nose and
rather full lips under a brown moustache. Unmistakably a government
employee who would set no river on fire but could be depended on to go
his serviceable little way, hour by hour, day by day, year by year ...
the traditional "rond de cuir."

There were always rumors of reducing the number of employees, but
Steiner's work was so exact, his handwriting and figures so beautifully
neat, that he was as safe as anybody in those unsafe days. He could,
furthermore, answer any question put to him by any superior, even
the strange questions of new men, who, momentarily "protected," came
into the Ministry in the upper grades, passing in and then out. The
administration was fairly snowed under by employees. It was reckoned
often, (not, however, by those employed, they kept such statistics as
much as possible to themselves) that 750,000 out of the 2,500,000 lived
on and by the different departments of government. But mostly their
positions were no more secure than yellowing leaves in Autumn. A gust
of zeal on the part of some one high up and they fell in showers from
the governmental tree, disappearing into the dark, wet, windy streets
of hyemal Vienna. The question with each and every one was how to hang
on....

Hydrocephalous Austria, with that terrible will to live! A mangled
trunk supported its great head, Vienna. The members through which the
blood should have circulated had been lopped off, the head was growing
bigger, sicker....

But Otto Steiner wasn't thinking of any of these things as he greeted
his aunt Ilde. He saluted her affectionately; some not very urgent
realization that she "had had it hard" put an additional cordiality
into his voice. He was further melted by the odor of those fresh
noodles and hot butter just as she had been.

A sizzling sound, like sweetest music, coming from the kitchen, next
fell on their ears. Liesel disappeared anxiously.

"What have you got today?" he cried through the door, "do I really
smell noodles and butter? I'm just dying of hunger!"

A moment after, Liesel, divested of her pink apron, in the neatest
one-piece dark blue dress, a red leather belt holding it snugly about
her waist, appeared rosily bearing a smoking black and white checkered
soup tureen. Little tendrils of dark hair lay softly, damply about her
brow, her dimples were very deep, her eyes very bright. She was sure of
that soup, cunningly made of left-over crusts of black bread, roasted
crisply in the oven and then ground up with a bountiful seasoning of
onions and various other more discreetly sustaining herbs. On that dark
January day it put heart into them all. Their spoons clicked joyously.
Then those shining noodles! Liesel had strewn over them the crispest
little heaps of fried crumbs. A very, very small golden-brown veal
cutlet was put closely, significantly by Otto's plate. Generally he and
Liesel halved their small bits of meat, but today she set the example
of taking none. It was plainly fitting that the wage-earner, the master
should have it all and more especially in those days when nourishment
was the first need, the last preoccupation. Above saving one's soul for
eternity was that of saving one's body for a span.

When the pale wine was poured out Liesel said sweetly:

"We must drink to Tante Ilde's health!" and Otto cried promptly,
"Prosit" looking at her affectionately through his pince-nez, across
the brim of his glass.

She began to feel herself a new woman. Food, youth, love, happiness,
the taste, the sight, the feeling of it all! Paradise in some way
regained. She forgot that she was there as a poor old relative, who
for decency's sake, had to have her breath kept yet awhile in her body
by the efforts and sacrifices of those of her blood; no, she was again
Tante Ilde of Baden who would soon say:

"Well, children, are you coming out to me for dinner on Sunday, and
will you have an Apfelstrudel or an apricot tart?"

Then Otto began to tell about the hard case of his friend, Karl
Schober, who though a war-cripple had been inexplicably dismissed
that very day. There were four cripples in Otto's room, for that is
where,--in the rooms of some Ministry, with a little "protection,"
they mostly and justly landed. After they had called it a shame, and
unbelievable, and had given a shudder, (being dismissed in those times
was like being condemned to death without the preliminary security of
prison) insensibly they fell to talking of other days. Tante Ilde, who
had forgotten nothing that had ever happened to any of the children,
began to tell the most interesting things about Liesel when she was
little. How she had fallen from the apple tree in the garden of the
Baden house and broken her wrist, and how Tante Ilde had held her other
hand when the doctor was setting the bone and that Liesel had been so
brave and hadn't cried, at which Otto leaned over and gave his wife
a pat on the arm. And the time she had taken Liesel to the races so
conveniently near; Liesel remembered that well, that was the day she
had first put her hair up and wore the lovely wine-colored dress with
little pleated ruffles and had gone out with her aunt Ilde as Fräulein
Bruckner instead of "die Liesel." They had put money on a certain Herr
Hafner's four year-old and Liesel had actually won 20 Krones!

Otto listened with his somewhat full lips parted, entranced by these
tales of his treasure's earliest youth, and all of a sudden they found
they had eaten everything there was on the table and drunk every drop
of wine, but they continued to sit for a while longer, pleasantly
engaged in picking their teeth and sucking in their tongues. Liesel
always did things well and kept the two little blue glass toothpick
holders filled. They had been given by Mizzi, who went so far and no
further in the matter of presents, even to some one she liked, on the
occasion of Liesel's marriage. When shown to the various members of the
family they had, one and all, wondered how Mizzi had had the face....

Then when Otto lighted his Trabuco, Tante Ilde found herself saying
just as she had planned:

"I'm going to do the dishes. You stay with Otto, but I must have an
apron."

Liesel had been very dear and had said:

"But no, Tante Ilde, you mustn't work when you come to us."

Suddenly her aunt's eyes had filled with tears:

"It would make me so truly happy," she entreated. Then Otto had cried:

"But yes, little goose, let Tante Ilde do as she will!"

So Liesel stayed with Otto and as Tante Ilde went in and out she could
hear them talking as if they hadn't seen each other for a week, trying
to decide if they would go, that very evening, to a cosy little cabaret
in the Annagasse, a stone's throw from their house and Liesel wear her
new pink dress; or whether they would go to the Circus Busch movie in
the Prater Stern, where it didn't matter what you wore and where they
were giving a wonderful moral drama in six acts called "Sinful Blood,"
and where they would hold hands in the dark just as if they weren't
going to spend the night together.

Tante Ilde herself even began to hum that waltz tune from the Graf von
Luxenburg, though she had long been nobody's "dear little wife."

When she was putting tenderly away in the tiny cupboard the white
plates with the gold "S" that Liesel was also "keeping" for her, she
got suddenly a quite unexpected whiff of the once familiar salami,
proceeding irrepressibly from a tightly-tied up little package.

"Sausage for Otto's supper!" she murmured to herself, and then wondered
if she were mistaken, though Liesel _was_ equal to anything ... but
all without any envy. She'd had a good meal, flavored with love and
happiness, and suddenly a thousand other thoughts and feelings pressed
in upon her that she'd forgotten existed. She was increasingly glad of
Liesel's youth and love, that out of the starving, mourning city she
had grasped her comfortable joy....

Finally Otto saying warmly, "auf Wiedersehen, Auntie," had given her a
sounding kiss on both cheeks, and placing several on Liesel's red lips
had contentedly limped off to the Ministry.

Then Liesel had proceeded to initiate her into some of the secrets of
her wonderful management, but as they were inseparable from her youth
and dimples and shining eyes, they were of little practical use to
her aged aunt. The fortune-teller whom Liesel had just consulted had
assured her that she would have good luck in all her undertakings. One
glance at Liesel's open, happy face, framed in that glossy abundance
of waving dark hair was enough to start the least gifted of seers off
in the right direction. She had, further, informed her that a blond,
blue-eyed woman was to be avoided. Liesel _had_ stared at that, but
when she told her aunt about it they avoided each other's eyes, though
Tante Ilde did murmur something about its being "singular." Liesel was
dying to keep the conversation on lines that would inevitably have
led to the enthralling and inexhaustible topic of Fanny, but there
were certain matters that you just couldn't talk about with Tante
Ilde, not when you could see her eyes, so Liesel only said that the
fortune-teller had further told her that she had the exclusive love of
a man with dark hair and eye-glasses who had been wounded in the war.
Well, you had to admit that there was something in it all, when they
hit so many nails on the head, (even though, as Tante Ilde couldn't
help thinking, those nails were positively sticking up asking to be
hit).

Liesel found that having Tante Ilde for dinner wasn't at all bad. On
the contrary she had thoroughly enjoyed it. At the end she gave her
some macaroni and a few spoonsful of brown sugar to take home to Irma,
also a couple of Otto's old shirts; he had to look a certain way at the
Ministry and she had darned those till they weren't decent any more,
but for the boys.... And Liesel had been so sweet when she kissed her
goodbye, saying, "Now, Auntie, don't forget you're to come next Monday
and I'll see about getting something extra nice for dinner. What about
a Schmarrn?"

Frau Stacher had positively tripped from the Annagasse to the Hoher
Markt, in unaccustomed light-heartedness. "Happiness,--it's even more
contagious than misery," she thought, grateful to have been exposed to
the dear infection, and forgot that she'd been timid about going.

But the extraordinary part about it all was that that good meal,
instead of making her less hungry, seemed to engender an intolerable
desire for another. She was just wild for more noodles and butter when
night came, ready for a whole cutlet for herself. As they sat round the
supper-table, the three hungry boys with their eyes on the soup-tureen,
and Irma dipping the ladle in so carefully for Tante Ilde's share that
the few bubbles of life-giving fat would not slip into it, yet so
shallowly that none of the thick part came up, then Tante Ilde was, for
once, not faint for food, not at all. She was just wild for food. This,
however, she was able to keep hidden in her breast. Indeed she was
greatly ashamed of her sudden access of gluttony, and the next time she
went to confession....

When under the stimulating effect of the pleasant meal at Liesel's, she
had smilingly, but as it proved unwisely told Irma about the noodles
and butter, Irma, taking some last stitches by the waning light of her
north window, had listened with that intent expression the habitually
undernourished have in their faces when food is being talked about,
but her only answer had been:

"Well, with a meal like that you certainly won't be able to eat any
supper." She had fairly snatched the sugar and macaroni from her
sister-in-law's hands, then she had held the shirts, embellished with
their lace-like darns, up to the light, which had no difficulty in
getting through, saying:

"I should think she would send them! They're on their last legs."

No, Irma couldn't be gracious, she'd always been that way, even when
she was young and pretty and sheltered; and since the Peace....

But when Frau Stacher finally dipped her spoon into that watery soup,
after having broken into it the thin slice of bread pushed towards
her by Irma's careful yet resolute hand, she suddenly found that she
didn't really want even that, the boys ought to have every drop, every
crumb. She felt old, tired, completely superfluous, and she would have
loved above all things, even above food, to have had a room of her own
wherein she could hide the shame of her superfluity, shut the door on
it, turn the key and drop a few secret tears over it....

After the meal consumed with lightning rapidity by the hungry boys and
more slowly cleared away by their mother and aunt, they all placed
themselves around the table with its heavy red felt cover, and the
boys began to do their lessons for the next day in the light of the
swinging lamp pulled down very low. Irma took out those shirts of
Otto's, holding them again up to the light and making a clicking sound
with her tongue against her teeth as she did so.

Then there was silence except for the rubbing of the boys' feet on the
chair rungs and floor, the turning of the pages of their theme books
and the ticking of the brown cuckoo clock with its long, swinging
pendulum.

Frau Stacher sat just outside the circle of light, in deep shadow; if
she had put her hand out she could have touched the curtain of the
alcove. She felt increasingly useless and lonely. They would be sitting
there just the same if she were dead.

Irma was continually taking off her glasses and wiping them on the
piece of old linen she kept by her for that purpose. She knew her eyes
were getting worse and sometimes she was very frightened. The light
caught her big, capable hands, fell on the heap of white linen in
her lap, glowed about the fringe of the little, red, three-cornered
shawl crossed over her low, heavy breasts. She had brought it from
Agram in those days that as the calendar ran were not so far away,
but might have been, for all their resemblance to the present, of
another century. Her face was left in deep shadow which did not soften
something roughhewn about it. It was broad through the forehead and
her cheeks with their deep-dyed spots of color had very prominent
bones, her nose alone was the rather formless kind that escapes memory
or description. Above her short, full upper lip was a dark duvet, like
a thick smudge put on with a careless finger and getting darker every
year. Twisted about her head were heavy coils of rather oily black
hair that anxiety had neither greyed nor thinned, though her eyes,
once so bright under that low, full forehead with those two other
wide, black smudges for eyebrows, had got quite dull. It gave her a
strange expression at times, all except the eyes keeping its freshness
that way. She _had_ good looks, the family had to admit it, in a
bright, square, hard way, like a strongly-outlined, heavily-colored
poster; like a poster of a peasant woman binding sheaves that one
might come across in a Railway station, meant to be looked at from a
distance and to encourage travel. But somehow Irma hadn't worked out
comfortably in the shorter perspectives of a city. Why Heinie had
been mad about her, his sister had never understood. But Heinie had
been a marrier. She couldn't think of Heinie not married, though why
just Irma, uncomplaisant, worrying Irma strayed into that Viennese
world of theirs, familiar and dear to them as their own breath, with
its comfortable, care-free ways. There had been so many attractive
young women about with easy smiles and pleasant habits who would have
flavored his lengthening years. Now the family were, one and all,
horribly bored by Irma, left heavily on their hands. They forgot that
Pauli had said when his father-in-law married that she reminded him
of a late harvest, with vermilion melons and stacks of yellow grain
against black earth, and that Heinie knew winter was near.

There in the shadow, her useless hands lying folded in her thin lap,
her colorless head bent, her pale lids dropped close over her eyes,
Frau Stacher shivered, suddenly remembering that phrase about winter
being near. In the warm haze of the protracted Indian summer of her
life she hadn't in the least understood what it meant. She fell to
thinking of that and of other long past things; of present things she
had no thoughts, only confused, painful sensations, which were cutting
deeper wrinkles and scars in her face than all the living through of
her pleasant three-score years and ten.

Ferry, the eldest boy, thin and tall for his years, with very long
black lashes shadowing his blue eyes and falling upon his thin cheeks
with their tiny spot of bright color, had closed his books and taken a
rattling, illy-jointed knife out of one coat pocket and a little figure
in wood that he was working on out of the other. Even with that poor
blade he had given it a touch of life,--a woman with her arms hanging
at her sides.

"I'm going to make two little buckets to put into her hands, one for
apples and one for pears," he whispered to his mother as he held it
up,--"see how she's already bending under the weight," he added with
his slight but persistent cough.

He had, for all his pale adolescence, a strong resemblance to his aunt
Ilde. She had always cared a lot for Ferry; he'd been a snuggling,
affectionate baby, something inexpressibly dear and unexpected in her
elderly life; they had, in a way, she and her brother, forgotten such
things. Now she was aware of a hot yearning to give him a new knife.
From somewhere that knife must come.

Gusl, the next, was formed in his mother's image: thick-set, short
with a certain roughness in his ways and those same bright, hard eyes
under a full brow and shaggy dark hair.... The peasant caught in the
city, and what he would do with the city or it with him was still
tightly rolled on the lap of the gods. Ferry's future was easier to
foretell--he would betake himself and his talent to some garret and
starve, after the immemorial way of poverty, youth and genius. Gusl
hated desperately his books and he was always hungry. Any meal that his
mother set out he could have eaten alone. Calories were nothing to him.
He wanted lots, lots. But Ferry was always dreaming, sometimes even
over his food.

Little Heinie had almost immediately fallen asleep, leaning against
the table, a ring of brown curls and two big ears catching the light as
it played about his bent head.

Yes, that was the way they would be sitting if she were not there,
if she were dead. She felt thinly miserable, like something that had
been and no longer was ... like her own ghost. Irma was wiping her
spectacles again.

"Give me the mending," said her sister-in-law, but somewhat timidly,
she never quite knew what Irma would do, "I haven't used my eyes today."

Irma passed it over to her silently and changed places with her. She
felt a little less useless then; coming into the circle of light with
the boys seemed to take her out of that shadowy, unpleasant world where
superfluous, dependent old women were waiting uncertainly, wretchedly,
to get into the cold grave. No, Irma's ways were not comfortable ways,
and it was all a part of the general misfit of things that it was Irma
who was the widow and had the alcove and the three sons and needed help.

When from time to time Ferry coughed, just a tiny cough, but quite
regular, almost like the slow, sure tick of the clock, his mother's
black brows would contract at that spectre of the "Viennese malady"
which had found its way into her home. Her sister-in-law wasn't the
only ghost there.

Irma was from the Plitvicer Lakes, beyond Agram, now become Serb.
There was always that something rough, even fierce about her, not at
all like the easy-going Viennese, not like the fiery Hungarians, not
like anything Frau Stacher was familiar with. Perhaps it was what had
attracted Heinie. But she was vaguely afraid of it.

Irma had at one time tried to go back to her own country, to her
people, with her sons--a woman bringing sons would be welcome. Then
the extraordinary, the unbelievable thing revealed itself. She found
she didn't exist there any more, no more than if she were dead; less
than that even, for then she would have had a grave. Austrian papers
were of no use to her and Servian papers she could not get. The little
town where she was born, on the wild Milanovac Lake was no longer a
Crownland. Her people were no longer her people; even her brother was
no longer her brother. The white house with the warm brown roof and
the vine growing over the door that got so red in the autumn, and the
chestnut tree that got so yellow, there in front with the circular
seat--all that, their father's legacy to them--she no longer had any
share in it. There were, it appeared, many of these spots, these
veritable no man's lands, where children had no rights and strange
people went over thresholds worn by parental feet and strange people
slept in the beds they were born in. If only she could have gone back
there with her boys and wrested her living in some way from the wild
soil, ... and Ferry in the mountain air! No wonder Irma was sombre,
was fierce, and bore her sorrows heavily.

Frau Stacher kept reminding herself of all this, but what could she
or anybody do about it? They were all caught in a trap ... simple and
terrible as that. As she sat measuring the tuck in a shirt sleeve, she
was suddenly aware of being worn to exhaustion with the changes and
excitements of the new order of her days. Such desperate exertions
just to keep the breath in her body! She wanted to get her clothes
off, lie down, shut her eyes, be in darkness with the effortless night
before her. But she sat on silently, drawing the thread weakly in and
out of the thin stuff and now and then looking up at the boys. They
were pale, but they were young. They could--even Ferry--expect more
brightly-colored, fuller years. But for herself!... With difficulty she
kept the tears from falling over her work, but only when Irma said:

"Now, boys, to bed, you've studied enough," did she feel free to lay it
aside.

Then Irma quite ostentatiously told the children to say good night,
though Ferry was already leaning affectionately, after his way, against
his aunt and saying that he would help make up the divan, but Irma
who suffered terribly from jealousy and could ill endure these signs
of love, told him it was late and that she would help Tante Ilde. The
three then kissed her resoundingly, but sleepily. When she felt the
nearness of those young bodies, their adolescent strength held in leash
by that sapping undernourishment, she realized all the more that she
was useless, her sands run. She forgot that she was paying for the
alcove and wondered if this was the way things would always be, as she
finally laid herself down on the old brown divan, on that divan that
had for years been in the sitting room at Baden, and when all the beds
were in use had offered a pleasant night's rest to the last-come child.
Now she was sleeping on it herself, but as an intruder, fitfully,
unquietly, from time to time hearing Ferry cough and turn in his bed,
and always Irma's loud, empty snore.




                                  III

                            ANNA AND PAULI

_Innig, lebhaft._

                                     Du meine Seele, du mein Herz,
                                     Du meine Wonn', O du mein Schmerz.


Pauli Birbach especially disliked the Mariahilferstrasse, an endless
street. Here and there a century-old peasant house caught up in the
tide of the growing city; here and there some rococo palais in a side
street visible from a corner; here and there a great department store.
But mostly there were little shops, little businesses connected with
little lives, the lives of the middle and lower middle classes that
crowded its interminability. The true motive power of every one in that
street in those post-war years, and in every one of the side streets,
no matter what their condition in life, was the desire for food.
Indescribable meannesses were practised, crimes even, were committed
for a bit of fat, a little sugar or molasses. Those who weren't
actually confronted with starvation had that terrible hunger for fats,
for sweets, a hunger that touched the brain, that could arouse in
the gentlest soul cruel, predatory thoughts. Now and then the rumor
would get about that a certain delicatessen shop had cheese or salami.
It would be stormed by those who had money to buy, and the entrance
encumbered by those who could only see, or others more fortunate, who
could get near enough to smell. Those who had reason to get in were few
in comparison to the many who remained outside. Indeed the only peace
in Vienna was that which reigned inside certain expensive provision
shops.

Pauli's dislike of the Mariahilfer street was profound and
temperamental. He liked things diversified and grandiose. Mariahilfer
street was neither. Now it was more than ever depressing in that drab,
monotonous struggle for survival. Any one of the indwellers knew
how near the potter's field was, the hospital, the asylum. A little
sagging of endeavor and they would find themselves in one or another
of those undesirable places. Anna had stupidly, tactlessly taken that
apartment during the war, when her husband was away, and before the
housing problem had come to add the difficulty of shelter to that of
nourishment. He had said to himself when he learned of the new address:
"Now isn't that just like Anna--the one street I hate in Vienna."

She had crowded their furniture, but uncosily, into the restricted
space. There were three sofas in the living room and various tables
besides the one they used for their meals. No books in Anna's home any
more than in Liesel's. A similar glass compartment above a somewhat
similar desk held an accumulation of bric-à-brac of purely family
interest. Two white and gilt cups bearing the words "dem lieben
Vater," "der lieben Mutter" that had been Hermine's first gifts to
her parents for their morning coffee; several solemn vases that on
various occasions the women had presented to each other, and in whose
narrow necks outraged flowers always wilted; a slab of wood with the
Castle of Salzburg painted on it against a blue background; a group
of carved wooden bears from Innsbruck and other souvenirs of the days
when they travelled. Some gay Dresden china figures in minuet postures
immediately struck the eye, that Pauli had given Anna when they were
first married, now extraordinarily out of keeping with the paralysis of
their conjugal life.

The sofa cushions were in dull linen, worked in dull colors and bore
the usual mottoes: "Nur ein viertel Stuendchen," "Traeume suess" and
the like.

The once too-bright pattern of the Brussels rug had faded into browns
and greys. The various chairs carried on their backs and arms their
ugly, witless, crocheted doilies.

Even over Tante Ilde's gay little brass-bound chest, containing dear
but unsalable odds and ends, Anna had thrown a brown cloth cover
worked sparsely in white and yellow daisies.

There was something dead about it all and about the two dull women the
expression of whose being it was.

To Pauli, gay, sparkling, eager, passionate Pauli, it was as pleasant
to visit his home as it would have been to visit the cemetery. In one
corner was the table on which, wrapped in a scarlet cloth, was Pauli's
zimbalon. It was the only thing in the dwelling that spoke of its
master. It was the bright flower on the grave, and too, he visited his
home not much oftener than he would have visited Anna had she been
lying in the Central Cemetery.

One of those stupid, fatal marriages. Anna had never understood
anything about it, either the making or the unmaking of it. But she
continued to love him with all the force of her poor being, and
accepted, because she had to, his now habitual absence.

Pauli's mother had been a Hungarian and in his bright Magyar way he had
long since put the dots on the "ies" of the conjugal situation: "Anna?
Dead since years. She ought to wear a bead wreath."

That sombre flame in her eyes that from time to time he was
unpleasantly aware of was, indeed, no more attractive to him than the
phosphorescence shining about something decayed.

Sometimes he felt a brief pity for Hermine, his daughter, so young,
so unattractive, so mirthless. "The poor girl" he would think, and
then his thoughts would turn to fairer, brighter maids who might have
been called poor for quite other reasons. To be a woman and not have
beauty, grace--more or less--was in Pauli Birbach's eyes her one real
misfortune. Women's beauty was, indeed, the central point in his world,
that artistic, pleasure-loving, pleasure-giving world in which he was
at home. He used to think that if he had married any one of Heinrich
Bruckner's daughters save Anna he could have managed,--but just Anna.
He sometimes thought too, that if he could have explained why he had
sighed to possess Anna he could have explained any and all of the
puzzles of the Universe. It held indeed all riddles within itself.

But for the last year it had not been any one of Herr Bruckner's
handsome daughters. Since a certain day when he had gone with Corinne
to Kaethe's ... since that day when the simplest yet mightiest thing
had happened....

They had been standing at a window waiting for the rain to stop. They
were very near as they looked out. Suddenly Pauli had been aware of a
profound commotion in his being ... something hot and sweet and cruel
and his own. He was seeing Corinne as he had never before seen any
woman. She was deadly pale, her eyes were closed, her dark lashes
lying heavily upon her cheeks. When she opened them and looked back at
him the hovering magic, descending upon them had worked its purpose.

He was done suddenly and forever with the pluckable maids,
perpetually ripe fruit, all seasons being theirs, that abound in
Vienna; inaccessible too, to the sentiments that he had periodically
experienced for one or another woman who had crossed his susceptible
and magnetic orbit, whom he had possessed or not possessed, as the case
might have been. It was different from everything else under the sun
and was growing, growing. It was hope and image in his brain, greed and
hurry in his body. He was mad for Corinne, Corinne earning unnaturally
yet competently her daily bread in a bank when she should have been
holding court under some oak at the change of the midsummer moon.
Corinne placing endless, neat zeroes across broad, white pages when she
should have been plucking simples or brewing potions. That elfin brood
that crowded her pale heart overpowered his being, held it captive. One
would have said he needed something brighter, hotter.... Yet,
Corinne ... out of the whole world.... But that none of them knew as
yet save Tante Ilde in her shy, sure way. Anna, who never got things
straight, had a deep, dull jealousy of Fanny, a sentiment, however,
that she had been familiar with since her earliest childhood, and when
indirectly she learned that Pauli had seen Fanny, she was miserable
for days, after her chill, slow habit, miserable unto death almost.
She suspected Fanny of having made that arrangement about Tante Ilde;
Fanny, though one never saw her, was always everywhere it seemed to
Anna. Two dull fires had burned in Anna's eyes, two sombre red spots
had darkened her cheeks, excitement never lighted up her face, when she
learned not only that her aunt Ilde was to come and regularly, every
Tuesday, but that Pauli himself would cast his bright shadow over his
own dark threshold on that day. She and Hermine began straightway to
plan as attractive a menu as lack of talent and materials permitted....

When Corinne had asked Pauli if Anna couldn't take Tante Ilde once a
week for her midday meal, he had responded warmly, not simply to give
Corinne pleasure, but because he was made that way.

"But of course! The poor, dear Tanterl, I'll tell Anna to get the best
she can, you know she's not very clever at it, and I'll try to be there
myself."

Pauli was doubtless various kinds of a sinner, but his humanity
was always to be counted on. It wasn't because Corinne was looking
obliquely at him, with the look that stirred him hotly, madly....

Anna and Hermine talked ceaselessly of the possibilities or rather the
impossibilities of the meal. Hermine even went into her mother's bed
two successive nights and stayed there late. The various Hungarian
dishes he was so fond of presented immense difficulties. Those that
didn't need a lot of sugar, milk and eggs, needed a lot of butter, lard
or fat of some kind. Even love did not make Anna inventive and people
never sold her anything as they did to Liesel because they wanted to
see her smile when she got it. They passed in review one by one those
tantalizing dishes, pulling up round at a Paprikahuhn, chicken in
paprika. It rose up and clucked a ghostly cluck out of happier kitchen
days. But where to get that chicken in the flesh? It was no easier than
getting a tropical bird of bright plumage and stripping it. He liked
sweet things too, Kaiserschmarrn with a lot of powdered sugar on it, or
Palatschinken, those traditional pancakes, filled heavily with jam.

During the earlier years of Anna's married life, when Pauli saw how
things culinary were going, a young Hungarian servant had been sent him
by one of his sisters. She was an excellent cook and had taught Anna in
a way, a lot of things, but she had been landed, like all good cooks,
in the net of marriage, and was succeeded in the Birbach household by
various maids of varying and inferior talents. But Anna really didn't
know good food from bad, and she got careless too. Pauli was oftener
and longer absent, and then the War came and then the Peace. Pauli by
no means let them starve, but he didn't see his way to keeping those
two ghosts, who unnaturally bore his name, supplied with the delicacies
or, to be more exact, the relative delicacies of post-war Vienna, that
oftener than not they would spoil in the cooking.

He had his two sisters, widowed on the same day of the war, and their
broods of little children to support. It had not been so difficult
to care for them at first for they had taken their children and gone
back to the house of their mother near Groswardein, that comfortable
Landhaus that they had all three inherited with its acres bearing wine
and grain. But when they thought the war was over they suddenly found
themselves one dark night fleeing with the rest of the inhabitants
before an unexpected army. After days they got into Budapest and when
the panic had abated and they wanted to go back, they found to their
consternation that though they were still Hungarian their lands had
become Roumanian. Some dark, transmuting evil had been worked. Suddenly
they had no civil state there where they were born and no longer
possessed what their parents had bequeathed them ... as unbelievable as
that.... Pauli enabled them to eke out a reduced existence with their
many children in some rooms on the outskirts of Pesth.

The comfortable Landhaus with its pink walls, its green shutters, its
sloping roof, the grapevine growing up over the door, the great plane
tree in the garden, became as a lost paradise to be described to
children at the knee,--with hints of recovery when they were old enough
to fight for their own.

Though Anna suspected that Pauli supported his sisters and in her
heart was bitter about it, she had no courage and less opportunity to
reproach him with it.

Pauli loved his sisters very much, especially his sister Mimi, and
he had never told her the tale of Geza's death brought back by his
comrade. How they were to charge a certain hill in Galicia one chilly
autumn dawn in the face of the enemy, waiting millions of them, it
seemed, after the Russian way of lavish cannon-food. How Geza naturally
a laughing man had been leaden-hearted as they went up side by side;
even the schnapps served out to the troops had not put heart into him.
He had said, "I'm going up because I must, but it's quite useless--I'll
never come down again."... Geza loved life ... and when they got up to
the top immediately a great splinter of shell struck him in the chest
and he looked a last reproachful look at his comrade as he fell against
him.... The end of Geza who loved life.

No, Pauli couldn't bear to think of that. Some day he meant to tell
Mimi of those cruel last moments, when Geza knew, knew that his end was
near.

... Perhaps he never would, and then again the day might come when it
wouldn't hurt Mimi so much. The children would never understand. And
it would be as if Geza, heavy with premonition, had never charged that
hill and said those last words,--as if he had never been at all. That
was the way of life, but Pauli didn't like to think of it ... all that
being no more ... as if you had never been; his bright, strong flesh
rejected it.

He was, somewhat vaguely to his wife, in business that brought with
it frequent mention of the Travel Bureau in the Kaerntnerring and
entailed many absences. They had grown accustomed to his travels,
and anyway the thoughts of his wife and daughter ran, with that of
the rest of the population on what they were going to eat and how
they were going to get it, rather than on the coming or going of any
non-edible, even husband and father. So, though they were among the
relatively well-to-do in the starving city, the two women talked almost
entirely of what they had eaten or were going to eat and Hermine was to
experience her greatest enthusiasms when scurrying home with a bit of
fat or a can of jam.

       *       *       *       *       *

The difficulty of getting to Anna's from the Hoher Markt was occupying
Frau Stacher's thoughts as she lay awake in the early dawn, watching
the day grow stronger, till she could see Haydn leading the young
Mozart by the hand, and the gilt of the flat, white vase on the bracket
underneath began to glisten faintly in the dull light coming in over
the top of the curtains.

The trolley that she could take at the Opernring was itself far off and
the fares had jumped up to prohibitive prices. Foreigners, workmen and
Jews alone had the wherewithal. She decided finally as she proceeded,
soundlessly as possible, to make the limited toilet the alcove
permitted, that she would walk. The hot cup of ersatz coffee with the
ersatz sugar and the thin slice of gritty bread seemed somehow quite
sufficient. She had entirely lost that wild hunger of the night before,
so curiously the result of the tasty meal at Liesel's. She made up her
divan, put her things in order and carefully pulled back the curtains
of the alcove. She had been made aware, the morning before, that Irma
liked to have them drawn back early and tight, and certainly it did
give a more spacious aspect to the living room, off which were the two
little bed chambers, one occupied by Irma with her youngest boy and the
other by Ferry and Gusl. Except for the fading photograph, on the chest
of drawers, of the long dead Commercial Advisor in its wooden frame of
carved Edelweiss, got when he and his bride had gone to Switzerland,
his widow was completely wiped out of that living space. She felt no
more at ease there than if she were suspended in mid-air, or pressed
into some shadowy yet too-narrow dimension,--in a word horribly
uncomfortable....

The boys had had their cocoa, their thick slices of bread so carefully
measured and cut, and had gone off to school. Heinie would get a midday
meal at a relief station near the seat of learning, which provided for
one scholar out of each needy family each day. The three boys took
turns, coming home for dinner on alternate days. There was a fierceness
about Irma where food for the boys was in question. When they had
licked their spoons and looked about at the empty plates on the table,
with their eyes a trifle too big, and Ferry with those bright spots on
each cheek, Irma's jaw would set and her brow darken. Not long before
she had discovered however, a way of adding to their nourishment ...
the "Friends" in the Singerstrasse ... you received a ticket there
and then you went to the Franzensplatz to get the package. But as the
endeavor of the various foreign relief societies was not to fully
nourish any one family or quarter at the expense of other families and
quarters, but to the best of their limited ability to keep as large a
part as possible of the two and one half millions from actually dying
of hunger, that relief in any one case was only palliative....

When Tante Ilde set out on that tramp to Anna's dressed again
in her best things,--Pauli always noticed what women wore, even
old women,--she left Irma planning the midday meal. Irma in an
extraordinarily fortunate way had got hold of some chicken legs,--it
would never happen again she was sure, being inclined to pessimism.
She had scraped and washed them, and was going to cook them with the
rice. Furthermore into the rice she was going to put a little of the
evaporated milk that had come in the thrice blessed package from the
Franzensplatz, it would be nearly equal to meat. Enough for three
plates full, two large ones for Gusl and for little Heinie and a
smaller one for herself. A box of zwieback had come in the package too,
and a piece for each would be dipped into some of the milk. It was a
good day and she warmly returned Tante Ilde's farewell and told her
she hoped Anna would have something fit to eat. She had a feeling that
she couldn't get rid of, that some day Tante Ilde would have a cold or
something and wouldn't be able to get out. However sufficient unto the
day, and that morning she was almost affectionate.

When Frau Stacher got down into the street a great puff of wind
caught her and slapped her dress about her legs, but she disentangled
herself and stepped, not unbriskly, into the Rotenthurm Street. The
day was cold and overcast, but the rain had not yet begun to fall.
She passed St. Stephen's, crossing herself as she did so and got into
the Kaerntner Street. In spite of the chill dampness and the great
slaps of wind doing full honor to the reputation of the windiest of
cities, (the Windobona of the Romans, that name on which generations of
windswept inhabitants have made their jokes and puns), she felt more at
home than in the alcove. After all the pavement was free to everybody,
just as much hers, when you came down to it, as anybody's. Quite unlike
the alcove which in some pervasive, though not at all indefinite way,
seemed not to be hers. She tried to comfort herself with the thought
that she was paying for it, just as Irma decently tried to remember
that fact. But Irma clearly wanted to be alone with her children.
Irma's nerves, for all her seeming bodily health, were certainly in a
bad way....

Passing down the Kaerntner Street Frau Stacher stood a moment looking
in at Zwieback's windows, such warm stuffs in such bright colors were
displayed, gay knitted Jerseys and scarves,--a purple one that would
have lain consolingly against her pale thinness. There were silk
stockings too, beribboned underwear and in another window incredible
evening dresses. Who on earth wore evening dresses--now? She remembered
how she had got her grey silk dress there for Kaethe's wedding. In the
old days she had shopped just like anybody else, buying things she
didn't need and would soon forget she had....

Then suddenly she found that her heart was beating thickly. She was
passing Fanny's corner, timidly looking away from it, magnetically
drawn to it; the pavement seemed somehow alive under her feet.... She
longed yet feared to meet Fanny; Fanny wrapped to her sea-blue eyes in
her scented furs, Fanny young and beautiful, Fanny who knew neither
cold nor hunger, nor about being unwanted. Fanny's desirability, though
it brought no images with it, sent the blood pounding up darkly to her
face....

But she was white again as she passed the Hotel Erzherzog Johann,
remembering with a sudden stab how she had always driven there in a
drosky when she came to Vienna from Baden for a day's shopping, and
how pleasant that great, laughing, singing city had seemed. Now the
iridescence had gone out of it. It was drab where once it had gleamed
with a thousand vivid tints; beggarly where it had dispensed with a
lavish unconcern.

She had been in the habit of taking her dinner at the Erzherzog
Johann's, the proprietor had been a friend of her husband's. The old
head waiter would always greet her warmly as a friend of the house
he had served so long, and he would recommend a quarter of a roast
chicken, the wing and breast, of course, and tell her how the noodles
had been made fresh in the hotel that very morning, and then wind up by
singing the merits of a Linzer or Sacher tart.

She'd leave her bundles there and come back at four o'clock for her
coffee with whipped cream, and he'd cut her a slice of the fresh
gugelhupf. Such happy days. She hadn't really had the slightest idea
how happy they were; she thought how she had often worried about the
stupidest things. She became conscious of an increasing sadness as
she passed on down the street, realizing miserably how little human
beings make of their actual blessings, whatever they may be, and
she found herself sending up a prayer to be trusted with a little
happiness,--just once more. She thought how never, never again, should
they miraculously be hers, would she take as rightful dues her three
meals a day, her comfortable bed, her clothes befitting the seasons,
but that always, up from her heart would well thanks to the mysterious
Giver or Withholder of these things.

She felt a little faint as she hurried past the delicatessen shop on
the corner. There wasn't much in the windows; food wasn't kept in
windows in those days, but inside there would doubtless be a maddening
smell of cheese and sausage.

A one-legged young man, his leg gone to the thigh, in a tattered
combination of military and civil coverings, stood always on that
corner selling his miserable shoe laces....

But there was another note, quite another, that rang lustily out from
the Kaerntner Street, for there the new feudal lords of Vienna, (which
inevitably has lords of some kind), walked with ringing tread in the
triumph of their plenty. That mushroom aristocracy come out of Israel
and the war had pushed into some shadowy, scrawny underbrush of life
that once great, powerful "First Society."

As Frau Stacher got near the Bristol the flooding crowd seemed almost
entirely made up of large, showily-dressed women and bright, alert,
stout men, whose prosperity was immediate and inescapable. Before it
her seventy years of gentility were swept up, a bit of dust, into her
otherwise bare corner. What had she to do with that new princedom
arisen from the ruins of the war, or it with her? Their ways, their
gestures, their looks were alien, inimical to those of the Princes,
Counts and Barons of that old world; that old world the pride and joy
even of those not of it. What the new Lords did and how they lived was
a mystery to Frau Stacher that she had no desire to solve. Her fear
increased. She felt but a bit of pallid wreckage in the flooding of
that active, highly-colored element. It beat against her suffocatingly,
frighteningly, that new blood flowing vehemently in Vienna's veins, its
only blood indeed. In the familiar street she was both stranger and
outcast daughter. She couldn't even look at the Bristol, whither so
many of those new lords seemed bent, there where people still crumbled
their bread at dinner instead of eating it.... It was Fanny's world.
Perhaps even now Fanny would be on her way there with her light,
straight, flying step, like a bird in the air. They all knew that walk
of Fanny's....

That first comfortable feeling of owning the pavement, of independence
had gone. She was increasingly confused by the myriad signs and symbols
of money of which she had none. Everywhere "Cambio-Valute," "Devisen"
in gilt letters, and banknotes laid out in patterns in the windows ...
exchange bureaux, in which unholy rites were performed by those chosen
men standing fatly, firmly on gold, while the rest of Vienna tottered
and fell on paper. She was exhausted too, by the buffeting of the
everlasting wind, and she suddenly and recklessly decided to take the
three hundred crowns remaining in her purse and get on the trolley.
There was one at the very corner that, mercifully, would take her up
the interminability of the Mariahilfer Street. After lunch the wind
would perhaps have fallen and she could walk back. She tried not to
think how far it would be. She was too spent for thought by her impact
with that new world, that world that suddenly had too much, trampling
to death the world that almost as suddenly had too little or nothing.
Outcast indeed.

The crowd was thickly waiting at the stopping place. In the rush
for seats as the trolley slowed down, she was pushed frighteningly
but fortunately along and up the high step and in a second found
herself sitting, breathless and hidden between a man with a large
sack of something that had, to the eager eyes of the other occupants,
the interesting appearance of flour, and a pale young woman with a
spindle-legged, big-eyed child of four or five in her arms. In her
sympathy with the young mother and the doomed child and her relief
at being seated Frau Stacher forgot her hunger and her fatigue and
delivered herself up to the delightful sensation of being borne
clangingly, powerfully along. She descended quite lightly at the
crowded stopping place, though she was jostled and jammed again by the
crowd fighting to get in. Crossing over she turned into a grey little
street and entering a sombre doorway went up to the apartment where
Anna was awaiting her husband and her aunt.

There was an air of expectancy about the room as Frau Stacher entered
that somewhat relieved its terrible dullness. On the table was a fresh,
fine linen cloth, from the days of comfort, and four places were set; a
bottle of pale Tokay, like a streak of sunlight caught the eye. There
was something sadly festive about it.

"I thought it was Pauli when I heard you outside in the hall," were
Anna's words as she opened the door. But her aunt accepted the
vicarious greeting without indeed noticing it. They all knew about
Anna. That was the way she was.

Her heavy dark hair that Tante Ilde had once so faithfully brushed
back into beauty was braided in a thick braid and twisted twice around
her head; but when you had said that about Anna, that was all there
was to be remarked. The rest was long, faded, shadowy. From those once
noticeably broad, fine shoulders, now simply gaunt, her thin breast
fell away into her flat waist above her bony hips. There was not one
single thing about Anna Birbach to cause anyone to suspect that she
belonged to a smiling, art-loving, easy-going, fatalistic race, with
something of the West and much of the East in its make-up. Indeed the
broad highway that leads east from the city is the straight road to the
Orient, is already the Orient. Something only vaguely diagnosable, but
highly-colored, slips in through that Eastern Gate to tint more deeply
the Viennese population, a happy enough mixture when only a tenth of
them, not nine-tenths, are starving. Hunger there has always been in
Vienna. Even in the days of plenty there were thousands who, palely
shadowing the street corners had nothing,--the bare, spectral want of
the East without its sun and leisure....

Hermine was in the kitchen. She had no more knack at cooking than
her mother, but the War had caught her in her earliest youth and the
Peace had taught her a few lessons of culinary survival,--though her
omelettes would always be hard and her pancakes tough.

The smell of the onions in the potato soup had its own peculiar charm,
however. Tante Ilde found that she was very hungry and she was quite
ashamed of certain uncontrollable, rolling sounds that proceeded from
the empty region beneath her belt.

Anna began immediately to tell her that they had finally decided on
a goulash,--it was safer and simpler to make than anything else.
Both Hermine and her mother had an uneasy knowledge that Pauli was
critical in regard to food, though he wouldn't say a word if a dish
hadn't turned out right; only he wouldn't be seen again for a couple
of months. Instinctively desiring to flatter him they had kept as far
as possible along Hungarian lines; the potato soup had been a second
choice, for Hermine's imagination had played at first opaquely about
a Halászle, a fish soup that he loved, but she had no fish and she
didn't know how to make it, so she slumped back on the potato soup as
offering least resistance. She was hoping for great things from the
Palatschinken, however, she had the batter prepared for cooking at the
physiological moment and the can of gluey apricot jam (ersatz) was
already open. Both women were obviously quite excited. Anna had those
dull, maroon spots on her cheeks; Hermine was paler than usual and kept
running into the kitchen and coming back and changing something on the
table. It was a quarter of an hour later when they heard the somewhat
rusty sound of the master's key in the door. He still kept that key
hanging on his chain, though for all the use he made of it the bell
would have sufficed. "The key of the cemetery" he called it to himself
and was thankful as he went in that he would find Tante Ilde there
among the graves.

He was a very handsome man of forty in a full-colored, ample way,
inclining slightly to embonpoint. His brown eyes were forever flashing
and going out as he lifted or let fall his pale, heavy lids. A rosy
shade lay upon his cheeks contrasting pleasantly with the clear olive
of his skin. A dark moustache did not conceal his white teeth when he
laughed, which was often, and they gave an additional accent to the
whole, the color scheme becoming even blinding when he wore, as on that
day, one of his favorite red neckties.

Immediately he filled the grey room, or perhaps it dissolved about
him.... Life, life. He brought the life of his pleasant, easy-going,
musical Viennese father; the life of his impetuous, fiery, musical
Hungarian mother, that strong, active element which the Magyars infuse
so happily into the more "gemuetlich" qualities of the Austrians.
Whenever anything happened in Vienna for good or evil in the old
days, it was generally traceable to the more dynamic qualities of the
Hungarians,--and doubtless will be so again.

There was no hint of war or post-war days on Pauli's face, rather some
astounding avoidance of their ills, some unimpaired eagerness for life.
His wife and daughter were unacquainted with a pale shadow that of late
often dimmed it.

The women, except Tante Ilde, were blotted out. She felt the
exhilaration, the immediate electrization of the air and sat up quite
straight, her elbows elegantly pressed against her waist and began
to smile her fine, sweet smile. Her presence lay about Pauli as a
wreathing mist about a mountain on a sunny day. Again he was thankful
to find her there.

Dutifully he gave Anna a robust but empty kiss on both cheeks, with a
"Well, how goes it?" and the same to Hermine, standing close by her
mother. He thought fleetingly for the thousandth time that it was a
calamity for women to be ugly.

Then he turned the full blaze of his countenance on Tante Ilde:

"Ach, the dear, lovely Auntie," he cried, "she must also have a
Busserl," and he proceeded to kiss each pale cheek and even to press
her against his thick, warm breast.

"Not lovely, only loving," she returned, but she smiled, suddenly quite
happy and Pauli felt his words had not been in vain. He liked to have
happy faces about him and laughter and jokes, and if it were women who
were being made happy all the better.

"I smell something good," he next said amiably sniffing in the air,
"and I'm quite ready. In the Cafés," he continued, "it's 3,000 crowns
for a piece of bread, 10,000 for a glass of beer and 5,000 for a smell
of roast pork from the next table!" Again he sniffed gayly. Even when
he barked his shins against a hard, low bench that stood unnaturally
near the dining table, he gave no sign of the impatience that always
possessed him when with Anna. But in spite of his remarks about his
hunger, he took very little of the lukewarm soup which Hermine had
poured out too soon. And when she dragged her sleeve in the goulash
as she put it on the table, he indulgently recounted a joke he had
seen in the _Meggendorfer Blätter_. How a certain woman going into a
cheesemonger's had skilfully passed her long sleeve through a dish of
white cheese, in that way removing an appreciable quantity, and how the
cheesemonger in a rage made her come back to pay for it, threatening to
have her up for theft.

Sallow Hermine was greatly in awe of her highly-colored father, who
expected from her, she uncomfortably felt, something that she could not
offer, but now she was giggling girlishly, and even Anna's face seemed
less formless.

Yes, Pauli was doing his best to make it pleasant for the quite
accidental beings who bore his name. Dispensing smiles that, after
all, were so rightly, though so strangely, theirs. Life was truly
mysterious; they were human beings too, come out of nothing, hurrying
as fast as Time could take them, to the same end. It produced
undeniably at moments a feeling of comradeship,--though Pauli intended
to avoid Anna in the other world....

Tante Ilde was indeed making things easier, suaver; Tante Ilde was
really an alabaster box of precious ointment, broken anew each time she
went into one of those homes not hers, diffusing sweet odors about her.
They would mostly, (perhaps not Pauli), have thought: "It's poor old
Tante Ilde and we've got to do something for her," not dreaming that
all the time it was she who was doing something priceless for them.

Now he was in a fever of longing to hear a beloved name. But she told
them first about Liesel and Otto, everything she could without making
Anna jealous; not, of course, about the sausage. Meat twice a day would
have scandalized Anna, and anyway Tante Ilde would never have been
guilty of the indelicacy of speaking about that sausage, wrapped up and
put away too. The fresh noodles in fresh butter were all that Anna and
Hermine could really stand; they would talk about them for days; but
she described in detail the package from the "Friends" at which Anna
and Hermine pricked up their big ears and cried: "You don't say!" and
Hermine ran and got an inch-long pencil and a piece of newspaper and
wrote the address on the margin. Then she and her mother nodded their
heads significantly at each other. They were both thinking that Irma
should have let them know immediately, and that some afternoon late,
when it was dark and they wouldn't be seen, they'd go for one of those
packages....

As Tante Ilde was talking Pauli noticed the white lace about her neck
and how genteel she contrived to look in spite of age and disaster.
Then his eyes travelled to his daughter, seeing her really for the
first time that day. Hermine had on a chocolate-colored dress with
trimmings of an unpleasant blue. Pauli turned his eyes again to Tante
Ilde's cameo face, from which the broad eyes seemed to look out more
and more bluely as the dinner went on. Pleasure, even a little, was
apt to put the color back into her eyes. Then he looked again at his
daughter. He was thinking that the devil could take him if he knew
what color would be becoming to his only child. Something, anything to
emphasize her, to put her on the chart, so he followed out his natural
taste as he said:

"I must give you a new dress, Hermine, pink or red or a good bright
blue?"

Hermine was delighted at this mark of paternal affection and Anna
astonished. When a long time after he saw the hard and vapid blue she
chose he was finally and forever discouraged. No, Hermine had no flair,
she always went wrong on colors, like Anna. His wife and daughter
were beyond Pauli. Just those two women out of all Vienna he could
rightfully go home to; Hermine was even named for his mother. "Na,
dos ist kein Leben," it's no life, he often thought in his broadest,
most expressive Viennese. Pauli who could speak perfectly half a dozen
languages, always chose that in which to clothe satisfactorily certain
unsatisfactory thoughts.

At last when Hermine was out in the kitchen smearing up with her finger
the bit of jam that remained on the platter from the Palatschinken,
Tante Ilde spoke the name Pauli had come to hear ... Corinne ... and
stupid Anna didn't care. It was the mention of Fanny that she could not
have borne. Anna never caught the truth about anything.

"I'm going to have dinner with Corinne on Friday," Tante Ilde said
finally, a soft radiance spreading over her face, and turned her eyes,
suddenly a lovely azure, full upon him. "Corinne is an angel."

Perhaps Tante Ilde shouldn't have said that right there before Anna, in
Anna's own house, but Anna created an unendurable vacuum about herself,
it made people want to throw something, anything into it to fill the
horrible void.

"She thinks you are one," answered Pauli with a sudden deep breath, and
there was a note in his voice that his wife, or at least his daughter,
standing at the kitchen door, should have noticed.

Then his eye wandered to the only bit of color in the room,--the
scarlet cloth covering his zimbalon.

"Shall I make a bit of music, Tante Ilde?" he suddenly cried with an
indecipherable gesture, and laid his cigarette down on his plate, where
wastefully in Anna's eyes, it smoked its life away. He pushed his chair
back from the table and getting up uncovered the instrument without
another word. He was suddenly one vast flame of love for Corinne. He
knew the feeling well,--consuming, he was really beside himself ...
in an instant ... like that. He began to play a wild Czardas of his
mother's land. The light grew brighter in his eyes, the color deepened
in his face, but it was of a moonbeam woman, shadow-thin, that he was
thinking.

The music beat mercilessly upon the three listeners, with its cruel,
splendid life-throb, with its piercing intimation that even a thousand
years of love would be all too short for the longing heart. From time
to time he emitted a wild cry and his nostrils would dilate; his body
swayed rhythmically above the instrument. He was indeed "thirsty in the
night and unslaked in the day."...

Anna remembered the short love-madness Pauli had once wrapped her in
and pressed her hand against her flat breast.

Tante Ilde thought, too, of things forever gone,--not of love, that was
too far off, but of her lost dignity and use, of all that would not,
could not be again; she had no time to wait upon events.

Hermine was possessed by vague, youthful expectations of what life
could so easily bring her, out of its whole long length, a life wherein
someone would surely love her,--for want of another the thin young
man she sometimes met on the stairs, who gave violin lessons to keep
a passionate soul in a delicate body. Perhaps, sensitive, artistic,
he would indeed be goaded on by that lurking, tricking spirit of the
will-to-live to take Hermine, dull Hermine for wife, wrapping her for
the brief moment necessary for the act in his own passion which would
so perfectly conceal her essential poverty....

Suddenly Pauli stopped, the blood had gone from his face, leaving him
very pale, but his eyes were full of a dark fire and in his bones was
a grinding pain. He was in a mad hurry to be gone from that house of
ghosts where he couldn't hold his being together.

"I'm rushed this afternoon, heaps of things to attend to," he cried as
he lay down his batons and threw the scarlet cloth over the zimbalon.
To his goodbye to Tante Ilde he added the reminder loudly, distinctly:

"It's understood, Tante Ilde, you're coming every Tuesday?" Then
suddenly he was gone leaving the room dim and chill.

Anna went over to the window and stood by it, though she couldn't see
into the street. Hermine almost immediately began to clear off the
table.

But Tante Ilde sat quite still. She was thinking, "poor Anna, poor
Anna." There was something very tender in her leave-taking, something
that Anna gratefully, dumbly accepted without knowing what it was that
was offered her, and then Tante Ilde slipped away to walk those several
miles back to the Hoher Markt.

She had vaguely, diffidently hoped that she might go away when Pauli
did, be carried along on his momentum. But he had gone so suddenly,
there hadn't been time for any little arrangement or suggestion.

It was beginning to rain. The wind blew flat, cold drops against her
face. She stood a moment looking at the trolleys clanging up and down
the Mariahilfer Street. Why hadn't she walked in the morning?




                                  IV

                           HERMANN AND MIZZI

_Staccato_

                                    Hin ist hin! Verloren ist verloren.


When Doctor Hermann Bruckner was suddenly called from the security of
his civil practice to take charge of a field-hospital, so great was the
joy of his secret heart that even his wife became aware of it, and in
her rustiest and most contentious tone asked him what on earth he was
so pleased about, he was going out to the "olly" front where he was
certain to be either killed or mutilated, and walking as if on air at
the idea of getting there!

Skilful in diagnosis, resourceful in treatment, compassionate
concerning the imponderable ailments of his patients as well as those
visible, he had, it is true, bestowed a brief anxiety on certain of
them left to the care of the diminishing number of proportionately
overworked physicians in Vienna; but for himself.... Home where his
heart was not, where Mizzi nagged and scolded, was icily disdainful or
loudly reproachful, had long been a place in which he was desperately
uncomfortable.

The day he left for the front his aunt Ilde had come in from Baden to
say goodbye to this much-loved, and as she knew, much-tried nephew.
Looking out of the window she had seen him settle back into his seat in
the motor, laughing in a gay, new way with the colleagues beside him as
he opened his cigarette case.

Hermann had indeed, been delivered by the war from something from
which he had thought never to escape. For years, almost his only
happy hours had been spent in his office, or hurrying about on his
sick calls. He had a particular and personal regard for each patient,
and the professional affection they awakened in him had a magnetic,
communicable warmth, even the uninteresting old women, the chronic
cases, received impartially, glowingly their share. His bedside manners
were truly consoling and his warm handclasp, his reassuring pat on
the shoulder made a visit to his office something to look forward to.
In fact just seeing Doctor Bruckner made his patients feel that with
his help they were not in any immediate danger of leaving this vale
of tears for a world which, though they had always been assured was
a better one, they had a singular distaste to entering. And then his
gentle way with suffering children. Doctor Hermann Bruckner, specialist
for women and children, was born to do just what he was doing.

But when he got home that flowing, busy life of his would suddenly
stop, turn back chokingly upon itself, obstructing his every thought
and feeling; for though Mizzi was unspeakably bored by him, she
couldn't let him alone. The very sight of his pleasant face, the easy
way he had of letting his six feet settle into an armchair, the slow
smoking of his Trabuco, in some extraordinary, always unexpected way,
would give rise to reproaches; never a moment when he could sit at
ease after a hard day's work and talk about pleasant things, little,
unimportant things. He never could tell just what would unbind Mizzi's
tongue or uncork her temper. He made an easy living and they could have
had many pleasures, but Mizzi was always wanting the one thing that the
hour had not brought. It was considered by the family that Hermann had
a hard time of it, that it was unfortunate that Mizzi was as she was,
and Hermann, for reasons in the beginning not at all related to his own
being, was now generally called by his relations "poor Manny."

They didn't realize any of them, that Mizzi was a woman of great
natural energy which had no outlet, and that that was one of the
reasons why the small supply of the milk of human kindness with which
her Maker had provided her, had early soured. She got quite stout, but
in her smart Austrian way, and each year became more easily annoyed
and controlled her irritation less. Even the war which opened out
activities to so many women had helped Mizzi not at all. She hated
misery, disorder in any form and the sight of blood made her sick. She
was inexpressibly bored by the whole thing and always spoke of it as
"dumm."

When the War claimed Doctor Bruckner he was a very tall,
broad-shouldered, deep-chested man. His mobile, smiling face was
ennobled by his prominent, but finely-formed nose and his very
black beard and moustache gave his whole person a last significant
accent. When the War had no further use for him and passed him into
the still more pitiless arms of the Peace, he was broken, disabled,
derelict, meaningless even. He reminded himself of a train wreck he
had seen near Lodz in the beginning, the telescoped cars, the messy,
shapeless débris.... That last month at Gorizia a bomb had fallen into
his field-hospital. It had solved effectually the problems of his
wounded, but it had increased his own. His right arm which had been
shattered and hurriedly attended to, now hung nerveless in his sleeve.
Mizzi's heart and temper had been briefly softened at the sight of
his misfortunes; they were so evidently complete. His helplessness,
however, soon induced a new note in her voice; one of condescension and
later of hard, unveiled impatience.

Finally neurasthenia, on the track of so many, claimed him for its
own. He developed a bad case of agoraphobia--could scarcely ever go
through open spaces without a discomfort that amounted at times to
agony, and Vienna seemed full of wide, open places. He would creep
along walls, close to houses and doors, but when it came to crossing
the street, unless, indeed, it were full of vehicles his eyes would
sink and darken, his nostrils get blue and pinched. It was but one
of various things,--that intolerably stupid going back and touching
objects a second even a third time on his bad days, that continual
putting on and taking off his coat when he was dressing, sometimes he
was hours getting into his clothes, and other equally asinine matters.
He still went to his office, across the hall,--but a one-armed,
neurasthenic doctor! Half the patients who came needed something done
that could only be done with two hands. His clientèle dwindled till
mostly the poor alone came. To them he was an angel of mercy. But they
made another complication. Mizzie hated the poor in any form, even the
new poor, who had once been rich and whom she had envied in the old
days, and when the quite thin pity engendered by his futile return had
evaporated, she was constantly reproaching him for having a clientèle
to whom he couldn't or wouldn't send bills. Hermann's life became a new
kind of hell from which there seemed to be no more escape than from
the final place of punishment. But for all Mizzi's unpleasant conjugal
traits she was, as we have indicated, a woman of ability. She stepped
out, on his return, when her practical sense showed her that the family
fortunes in Hermann's hand would inevitably go from bad to worse, to
retrieve them; and she did.

She boldly opened a lingerie shop, and with her good taste, her
industry, her heartlessness and her voice soft as honey to customers,
she soon began to do quite well. Fanny had advanced the necessary loan
and sent her the first customers who brought others in their train.
She developed an unsuspected talent for selling. Naturally impatient
she was accommodating to the last degree in her shop. She took back
things that had been paid for and returned the money with a smile. She
exchanged things, she adjusted things. She could always be counted
on to have extra sizes for the dark, stout, often bearded ladies who
patronized her in increasing numbers. They generally had the most
elemental of underwear, thick, machine-made garments, with machine-made
lace and terrible pink bows; some had none at all.

Mizzi initiated them into the pleasant mysteries of transparent
"dessous," real lace-trimmed and beribboned in delicate shades. And
they had money. "Jesus, Marie, Joseph!" Mizzi would often exclaim,
"what money! Great wads of it!"

Mizzi had a way of loosening their thick, high corsets and pulling them
down, thereby dropping those shelves of flesh from under their chins,
and with her cunningly-made brassières, those famous "Bustenhalter"
that reduced the mountains of fat, or at least distributed them towards
the back where the owners themselves couldn't see them, she was
especially successful. "Taktvoll kaschieren," tactfully conceal, was
what she modestly claimed to do with superfluous fat. Being inclined to
embonpoint herself, fostered by her love of the truly tempting sweet
dishes of her native land, yet having that smart, pleasing figure, she
could say confidently to the stoutest:

"I'm a good deal thicker than you are, and look at me!"

They looked at Mizzi in her impeccable loose black dress over her
snugly-worn corset and were both delighted and convinced. Mizzi's
business was inevitably destined to go from good to still better, just
as Hermann's was dwindling to those so begrudged office hours for the
very poor, now his only treasure.... His aunt Ilde, thought secretly
that Hermann must be greatly loved by his Creator to have been found
worthy of so many misfortunes.... He only occasionally took money
for his services and except for a few crowns spent in a certain café
sitting before his beer or his coffee, reading the newspaper, talking
to a chance acquaintance, or oftener just thinking, thinking, he
turned what little he did make back again, a pitiful drop, into the
river of black and fatal misery that flowed through his office.

Mizzi had something quite ruthless about her. Openly and cordially
disliking the poor in general and poor relatives in particular, the
last thing she would have thought of was having one of these latter
come to her regularly for a meal. But when Fanny sent old Maria to ask
if she could have Tante Ilde for dinner on Wednesday, or to choose
some other day if that wasn't convenient, though she had thought it a
monstrous nuisance, that day being no more convenient than any other of
the days of the week, she had said "Yes" in a voice gone quite white
from lack of enthusiasm. But, Fanny,--she couldn't afford to offend
Fanny....

The establishment once known as "Hermann's" was now known as "Mizzi's."
She had suggested his giving up his office and renting out the rooms to
Americans who would pay in dollars. They could make a "heathen money"
that way. But so strange, so terrifying was the look that had come into
his face that Mizzi for once had quailed before it. She hadn't felt
safe and anyway Fanny probably wouldn't have stood for it.

Her dream was to have a smart shop at Carlsbad. She had awakened to
a brief political interest when she found that almost overnight the
Czechs had become, unaccountably, the darlings of those against whom
they had so recently fought, and later she discovered that Carlsbad
was filled with victorious foreigners who turned their gold joyfully
into Czechish crowns and she was forever comparing the rising Czech
currency with the descending Austrian, and was visibly impatient
at the senseless fact that the war had left her, a perfectly good
Czecho-Slovak, high and dry in Vienna as the wife of a crippled
Austrian. There wasn't any sense in anything, and Mizzi vented
mercilessly her dissatisfaction on Hermann.

She was always thinking to herself and often proclaiming openly that
Hermann was "dumm, but dumm," as little of a "Nutznieser" as anyone
ever had the bad luck to be married to. With even the slightest sense
of values, he ought to have got something out of the war. Privately
Mizzi adored profiteers. But Hermann wasn't made that way.

In the end, he got tired of hearing what his father-in-law would
have done in this, that or the other case. That canny Czech, Ottokar
Maschka, had, unfortunately for Mizzi, died just as he was about
to gather in the fruits of his labors, and when Mizzi married the
promising young Viennese doctor the only visible goods she brought with
her was the furniture with which they furnished their home; large,
solid, comfortable pieces of mahogany and maple, and a lot of linen.
But all that Mizzi had long since changed. Mizzi was a forward looker
and liked to keep up with, when she couldn't run ahead of, the styles.
She had a flair about novelties that was to stand her in good stead.

Hermann had ineffectually protested when she got rid, bit by bit, of
the furnishings of the parental house. The only good thing about it
all was that it kept her busy. But when he found himself sleeping in
a narrow grey bed with conventionalized lotus flowers in low relief,
one at the head and one at the foot, he felt himself completely and
forever a stranger in that house. Then, too, the new chairs were
extraordinarily uncomfortable, the tables small, while the pale mauve
upholstery gave him a continual sense of being in a warehouse glancing
over things he had no intention of buying....

The small shop in the Plankengasse, with the tiniest but smartest of
show windows, was near enough the thoroughfares to be accessible and
not as expensive as the Graben, the Kärntnerstrasse or the Kohlmarkt.
Little by little Mizzi was wriggling her way into that world of the
new dispensation, peopled by the acquisitive wives, daughters, and
"friends" of profiteers,--that full, loud, clanking, overfed world,
that world of people mad to possess at last what "the others" had so
long possessed. Theirs was the world of plenty. The promised land
indeed. She was happier than she had ever been before. Her activities
had full scope. She had no heart to bleed over the miseries of the
starving city and she felt herself getting a really firm foothold in
that "Schieber" world of every tradesman's desire. That "First Society"
in whose uprisings and outgoings she had once delighted, in the
reflection of whose splendors she, with the rest of the worthy burghers
of Vienna, had once proudly shone, was gone, its glory the bare shadow
of a shade. For thin, ruined countesses, for economical princesses
Mizzi had no use, only in as much as she could say to the wife of one
of the new lords of creation:

"That's the very dressing gown the poor Countess Tollenberg was so
enchanted with, but not a kreutzer to bless herself with, only such
taste! It made me sad not to let her have it, but now I'm consoled, for
you, dear, gracious lady, it's just the thing." And the "dear, gracious
lady" would fall for it with a golden crash.

Yes, Mizzi was doing well and intended to do better. When she wasn't
selling, she was buying, like others in Vienna, who had little or much
cash in their pockets, trying to imprison the vanishing value of money
into objects that would remain visible, buying anything in fact that
wouldn't melt before their eyes. They called all this "Sachwerthe,"
real value. For the antics of money were extraordinary, no one realized
that better than Mizzi. No matter how carefully you guarded it, the
next day it was less, was gone. You couldn't store it up any more than
you could daylight.

       *       *       *       *       *

As Tante Ilde that Wednesday noon was about to cross the
Revolutionsplatz, once the Mozartplatz, overlooked by the Jockey Club,
the Archduke Friedrich's Palace, the Opera and Sacher's Hotel, (the
last two alone continuing to fulfill their ancient uses) she caught
sight of a tall, familiar form hesitating by a lamp post. It was her
nephew Hermann, evidently about to cross the street. He stood so long
by the post that she easily caught up with him.

"Manny!" she cried and touched him on the arm, but he turned towards
her a face so strange that she was suddenly very frightened. Great
beads of perspiration stood on his brow, about his mouth; his eyes were
sunken, his nostrils blue and pinched.

"Auntie dear, you've come at the right moment. I can't," he hesitated,
a look of agony and shame on his face, "get across alone. Give me your
arm. I was waiting till some wagons came along. It's easier then. Don't
say anything about it to Mizzi. She doesn't understand," he ended
entreatingly. Bending, he passed his hand through her arm and with a
tightening of his body, slowly crossed the street, then kept close by
the houses, as far away from the curb as possible.

"You see," he said with difficulty, "I'm quite done for," tears stood
in his dark, kind eyes. "And I'm not going to die either," he added,
"I've seen so many others go just where I'm going."

"Manny, Manny, you'll get better. You must get better. Think of all
the good you do!" his aunt cried at last out of her grief for him. She
hadn't been able to say a word at first, only pressed more closely
against his side.

"All the good I do!" he laughed bitterly and stood quite still in the
street and couldn't seem to stop laughing.

What was happening to Manny, dear, kind, loving Manny? He made her even
sadder than Kaethe. Where could he get help? Perhaps Fanny ... they'd
been such a loving brother and sister. Perhaps if he could take a trip,
somewhere, anywhere....

They were proceeding at a snail's pace. Hermann's step had no life in
it. Frau Stacher began to be afraid they would be late and tried to
hurry him a little, but he continued to move mechanically with that
sort of heavy dip, and didn't seem to notice her hurry.

As they reached the house he pointed to his name in black letters on
the white porcelain sign, and then looked at her with a trembling of
the lips just as he used to do when he was a little boy and had some
childish grief.

"When I remember all the happy years ... why, I thought I was going
to heal the world," he said slowly, "and now"--then he added, suddenly
anxious too, "I hope we're not late."

Tante Ilde gladly quickened her step and they almost ran in at the
doorway. It would be a calamity to be late. Mizzi could generate about
her a thick, cold, opaque atmosphere when she was displeased that could
take away the appetite or impede the digestion of a starving person.
They both knew that it wouldn't at all do to be late, and in spite of
age and disabilities they made quite a dash up the stairs.

Mizzi kept a servant and kept her busy. No "Faulenzers" in her house.
Gretl instantly opened the door, then quickly resumed her occupation
of setting the table, putting a pleasant, soft-looking little bread at
each place.

Mizzi, sitting up very straight in a mauve arm chair, was measuring
with a tape measure lengths of pale shining French ribbons, billowing
over a little grey table. She was a woman in the early thirties, with
dark eyes inclining to opacity, abundant dark hair and an agreeable,
smooth, rather bright complexion, pleasant enough to look at, though
her features were negligible. She held herself very erect, even as
she sat there was no lolling or relaxing, and when she stood that
full, smart figure of hers was impressive, even commanding. Pauli who
detested her, said she ought to have been a midwife, though perhaps
in that he was unjust to the profession; but it was undeniable that
Mizzi had an eye that in a few years would, as he had further remarked,
have no more expression than a hard boiled egg confronted with arriving
mortality.

The little table was drawn up by the window with its lavender hangings
striped yellow by light and years, and held back by faded ribbons. It
was all quite different from the smart freshness of the shop where was
Mizzi's heart. Between the windows was a picture of the Prague Gate and
in rummaging about she had unearthed, for less than a song, a fine old
engraving of Wallenstein conspiring at Pilsen. Where could one find a
more loyal Czecho-Slovak than Mizzi Bruckner, bound hand and foot to
Austria?--Till she got to that little shop in Carlsbad, over how many
dead bodies she cared not--that little shop especially designed for
easing foreigners of their golden loads, that she was unswervingly
headed towards and would inevitably reach.

As they entered aunt and nephew gave each other an involuntary look of
relief. They had made it.

"Well, Tante Ilde, how are you?" Mizzi asked amiably enough as she
looked up, but there was something steely in her tone. She had no
objection to Tante Ilde, except that Tante Ilde was so definitely, and
it was easy to prophesy, permanently in the class of poor relations,
and to such a certain tone came spontaneously to her voice. No trace
of the sugary accents that she used in speaking to the large, dark
women who made commerce take its only steps in the paralyzed city. She
was polite, but she was cold beyond the power of any thermometer to
register. Of her husband, Mizzi took not the slightest notice.

Frau Stacher felt something shrink and shrivel in her. A shameful
consciousness of being very poor, of being very old, of being very
useless tinted her pale cheeks.

She hadn't wanted to come to Mizzi's. She had known that she would feel
just that way if she did. They all knew about Mizzi, hard as a rock,
somebody for the old, the feeble, the dependent to steer clear of.

Then a thick, smoking lentil soup was put on the table. Some pleasing
suggestion of having been cooked with a ham-bone came from it. In a
quite definite way it changed the atmosphere. Good food in Vienna that
winter could work miracles. Natural and unnatural antipathies would
melt as dew before the morning sun when enemies found themselves seated
together at a full table.

Mizzi herself underwent a subtle change and she was nearly smiling as
they sat down. Hermann was still pale, but the blue look had gone from
his nostrils, the sweat about his brow and mouth had dried. Tante Ilde
was permeated by the delightful sensations of the hungry person about
to be filled.... The nose, the eyes, then the first mouthful....

The soup quite fulfilled the expectations awakened by its odor. Mizzi
never had materials wasted through poor cooking in her house. She
always got the best available and this last maid had a light hand.
Mizzi had turned one girl after another away till she got the pearl for
which she was looking.

The repast, as far as her own feelings went, proved a surprise to
Mizzi, though she didn't analyze the increasingly pleasant sensation
that animated her as the conversation got easier and easier. Mizzi
didn't for an instant, suspect that that despised, poor relation was
distilling about her an odor suaver than that of the lentil soup, even
with its suggestion of ham-bone.

By the time the herrings, and the potatoes boiled in their skins, and
actually served with butter were put on, Mizzi was in full flood of
conversation; her tongue was hung easily anyway, quite in the middle.
During the soup, she had been distinctly grand with Tante Ilde, the
immensely superior lady bountiful dispensing mercies, but Tante Ilde
was so greatly and so genuinely interested in the shop and asked such
tactful questions, just the sort Mizzi was delighted to answer, that
things got pleasanter and pleasanter. She showed signs of irritation,
howeven when Hermann, not too successfully, tried with his left hand
to separate the meat of his herring from its backbone, and gave an
impatient click of her tongue and cried harshly, "give it here." But
that passed and when the Apfelstrudel was put on, she fell to telling
amusing stories of the unbelievable ways of the various stupid geese,
those wives of profiteers who had, all the same, lead her, Mizzi, out
of the captivity of hunger and cold. She made fun of their horrible
underclothes and told how she changed all that, opening their eyes
to a lot of other things to which they'd evidently been born blind.
Even Hermann got less pale and from time to time looked affectionately
across at his aunt. When they were having their coffee, just as they
used to in the good old days, real mocha, that one of those very
"Schieberinnen" had given her, Mizzi even said quite gently to Hermann:
"Aren't you going to smoke?" Hermann was surprised and grateful
beyond measure. Very little would once have made so soft-hearted a
man as Hermann unduly and permanently grateful. Mizzi, though she
hadn't the slightest idea of it, was continuously responding to the
pleasant harmonies struck from the gentle being of her poor old aunt
by marriage, and when they had drunk the last drop of coffee and were
still enjoying the pleasant memories of the Apfelstrudel, she found
herself saying, somewhat to her own surprise:

"Tante Ilde, come with me, I want to show you the shop. It's time for
me to get back. The girls don't take a stitch while I'm away!"

Then she stepped into the kitchen to put on a plate, for Gretl's
dinner, a head of one of the herrings and two potatoes (the others were
to be saved for salad that evening), and to the amazement of Gretl, she
added a bit of the Strudel, casting at the same time an appraising eye
over what was left and which she certainly expected to find intact on
her return.

Tante Ilde longed to stay with Hermann whose plight was more and more
engaging her thought and sympathy. She had had time while Mizzi was in
the kitchen to press his hand lovingly and to tell him she was going
to Kaethe's tomorrow, and to try to get there too, Kaethe was worrying
about Carli. He had answered listlessly,

"Yes, if I have a fairly decent day. You've seen how hard it is for me
to get about."

Instinctively she had not mentioned the Eberhardts in Mizzi's presence.
It would have darkened her brow and salted unduly the repast. People
that couldn't get a living somehow! Mizzi had no use at all for them.
In some mysterious, but certain way, it was their own fault. Even the
Peace was no excuse in Mizzi's eyes.

When she came back from the kitchen saying briskly, and they realized,
without appeal:

"Well, are you ready, Tante Ilde?" Frau Stacher hastily put on
her coat, that is as hastily as possible. It had tight sleeves and
they always stuck on the little white shawl she wore underneath for
warmth. Mizzi came to the rescue, gave it a poke down the back, a pull
about the shoulders and crossed it over the frail chest with a final
energetic punch that left Frau Stacher breathless. Then she slipped
easily into her own ample coat and turned up its large beaver collar.
But after all Mizzi pleased, Mizzi on the road to success, was not
so terrifying. She was safely diverted out of family discontent by
the pleasantly exciting difficulties and triumphs of her business.
Then, too, those thin, pale girls who sat by the window at the back
of the shop, and worked without looking up when Mizzi was there, were
continual escape-valves.

Even little Tilly with fingers like a fairy, got her share. No one
could tie a bow like Tilly, not even Mizzi herself, and then those
diaphanous garments that she turned out, delicate bits of nothing, the
very stitches themselves were like trimming. Mizzi knew first class
work when she saw it, and she further saw that she got the greatest
amount possible done in the day.

Tilly's mother was dying in a back room, reached by a third stairway
in the court of an old house, and Tilly never answered Mizzi back,
was never "fresh" and it was quite evident that she never dreamed of
giving notice but only of giving satisfaction.

In face of Mizzi's pleasant, flowing briskness that could, however, so
easily curdle into thick displeasure, Tante Ilde, though she longed to
stay, could but say goodbye to Hermann, with a secret pressure of his
hand. For a moment she felt the encircling warmth of his great chest
and shoulders as he bent down to kiss her. Then he sank heavily back
into his chair. She turned at the door for a last sight of him, but
already he was plunged in his thoughts and did not look up again. She
could have wept for Hermann then and there.

As she followed Mizzi down the stairs, they met two young-old women
with pale, head-heavy babies in their arms.

"Manny's patients," said Mizzi who was really a terrible woman, an
abysmal contempt in her voice, "I don't know how I put up with it."

"Manny is very ill," answered Tante Ilde gently.

"Nerves," returned Mizzi promptly, finally. "We'd starve if I hadn't
started in."

"You are a wonder," said Tante Ilde, and quite honestly she thought it
was little short of a miracle, how Mizzi in that dreadful city had not
only wooed but won fortune.

Of course, they all knew that Fanny had started her, but even so she
was a wonder, making money that way. She would survive. It was beings
like Hermann who went under,--gentle, loving, wise, once-strong Hermann.

Her thoughts clung tenaciously to Hermann, slumped down into his chair,
Hermann who hadn't looked back at her. She couldn't know that he had,
for quite a while, been conscious of her loving touch on his arm, and
that he was thinking, "sometime I'll tell Tante Ilde about Marie." Yes,
while he was still able to talk clearly of precious things. It was one
of his worst days. Often on such days he didn't keep his office
hours ... the uselessness of the terrible struggle. In that city of
misery, let a few more die in those black hours before dawn, without
warmth or food or even a match to strike a light that those who loved
them could see them go. He was losing, and was conscious of its
slipping from him, that strong professional feeling of saving life, any
life, just to save it, fulfilling a deep instinct, working according
to habit that was as natural to him as breathing. Sometimes nothing
mattered, not even Mizzi's lash-like tongue on his bare nerves. On
other days, difficult as it was to get over the open places, he would
leave the house quite early in the morning, trying to shake off its
devitalizing atmosphere. There was a café off the Opernring, he didn't
have to cross the Ring itself to get to it, where they knew him and
his little ways; sometimes he would sit for hours at a certain table
watching the coming and going.

But that morning he'd got there too early; it was still deserted and
he had been witness to certain dismal preparations for the day. A
pale woman in damp, thin garments was washing up the floor, ends of
burnt-out matches and cigarettes were piled in a corner, in a little
heap on a chair were a few carefully collected cigar ends. The pikkolo
under the emphatic direction of a waiter was brushing off the billiard
table, the Tarok games were being laid out, the newspapers put into
their holders. The pikkolo, who put one in upside down, had forthwith
received a box on the ear from the waiter, supplemented by a kick on
that part of his undersized person where, however, it would be least
injurious; but his reaction was not against the donor of these morning
favors, but rather induced the consoling thought that if he ever got to
be head-waiter he would return it with interest to whatever pikkolo was
then about.

The arrival, a bit late, of the buffet Fräulein, with her blond hair
too tightly crimped, too thickly puffed, started things at a more
lively gait. A pale lavender tint lay over her face--the hair bleach,
the rice powder, the long hours in the crowded room. Energetically she
proceeded to count out a few lumps of sugar, unlocked noisily from
behind the counter; then she looked scrutinizingly at the liqueur
and fruit-juice bottles, holding them up to the light, her pale eye
appraising the exact condition of their contents.

One by one frequenters of the café began to come in, dissipating more
and more the forlornness of the place, wiping their feet on the wire
mat, putting their bulging umbrellas into the stand, hanging up their
dull hats, sitting down in their overcoats, taking packages of paper
money from their pockets and putting them on the table just as if it
weren't money. Finally the café was quite full and Hermann sitting
before his empty cup, smoking and watching apathetically the familiar
sights, became conscious of the passage of time. He remembered that
Tante Ilde was coming to dinner that day and he wondered what Fanny
could have said to make the arrangement possible, it was so unlike
Mizzi. Then he looked at his watch and saw with immense relief that
he still had a little time, ... a calamity to be even that short
distance from home, ... he hoped he'd get back, ... sometime probably
he wouldn't. He had been thinking all that morning with an obsessing,
nightmarish horror of something that had happened to him in his own
office the day before.... Because a pale, uncertain-yeared woman
had had nose-bleed, he had been overcome by a horrible nausea, an
intolerable, hitherto unknown feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Why, he had seen blood, felt blood, smelt blood, worked swiftly,
calmly in blood against time and death--and now a pale woman with
a nose-bleed.... He'd had to go into the inner office.... It was
unbelievable that just _that_ could happen to him. Then after she had
gone, after they all had gone, he sat thinking about it and he had
laughed terribly, loudly, and then trembled and wept and Mizzi on the
other side of the landing knew nothing about it, no one knew, no one
must ever know just _that_. Yes, he was going very fast. He knew it
himself; knew that he was headed for the madhouse, as straight even as
towards death. Some day he'd do something of a sort that nobody had any
right to do. Often he would awake, icy cold, at the fear of what he
might do. He couldn't imagine at all what it would be, but something
that people who were dwelling freely among their fellowmen were not
allowed to do--and rightly....

Sometimes his thoughts would turn with nostalgic longing to the gay,
full years of his student-life; those busy years as intern at the
Allgemeine Krankenhaus. The luck he'd had when old Professor Schulrath
but a year before his death, had taken him as assistant.... The eager
beginnings of his own private practice; that unforgettable thrill the
first time he had seen his shingle hanging outside his own door....
Pride bound up with a hot intention to conquer misery, pain, death
even. Soon he had found himself fully launched on the tide of an
ever-swelling general practice. Then one Sunday at Pauli's he had met
Mizzi,--full-bosomed, soft-voiced Mizzi, underneath as hard as a rock,
as cruel as the grave, crueller than the grave....

That whole first year of the war he had been among those detailed for
general duty in the great city. Afterwards, the civilian population
was left to be born or die as best it could. Every available physician
was rushed to the front. The mortality among the wounded had become
too great. Poor fellows sent back from one or the other fronts would
sometimes have been two or three weeks in their uniforms, still in
their first-aid bandages, or not bandaged at all; and when they got to
Vienna after the torture of their transport in springless luggage-vans,
there was often little to be done for them except bury them in those
great mounds that grew and grew as the hospitals eased themselves of
their dead. It had to be managed less wastefully. Lives were to be
saved that they might be thrown again into the struggle....

He had partaken of the tragic, senseless exaltation that able-bodied
men everywhere were experiencing on starting for the front.... Then
deliverance from the carping tongue of Mizzi; the simplest things more
and more caused her to fly unexpectedly up in the air like a rocket;
there would be a sputtering and something would darken and go out.
These were among the reasons why Hermann had settled back in the
motor that day and with a laugh set out for the front. But there was
something else that none of them had known about, that then, that now,
was always in his mind, in his heart, in every fibre of his being. Even
when he was watching the most indifferent things, such as the buffet
Fräulein that very morning,--he didn't need to be alone--suddenly _she_
would be with him and fling her lost radiance around him once again,
and wrap him up into that magnetic world of longing for the might have
been. He wouldn't hear the "wer giebt," "Pagat," "an' dreier" of the
Tarok players, or the rustling of newspapers being turned on their
sticks, or the "Sie, Ober," or the "Pikkolo, du dummer,"--_she_ was
always more real than anything else, ... even at the café, when he
would be holding the _Neue Freie Presse_ and pretending to read. She
was everywhere and all. Even as he dropped back in that chair, with
Tante Ilde's touch still warm upon his arm and his eyes apparently
fixed on the quite uninteresting enlarged and colored photograph of
Mizzi's dead father, (Mizzi, year by year was getting to be his very
image, with that hint of moustache) he was thinking only of her--Marie.

       *       *       *       *       *

That January of 1915, one windy, icy twilight, he had had a hurry call
from the Elizabethspital and had put off many patients still waiting
and closed his office.

Before he got to the gate of the hospital grounds, out in the street
even, he found row upon row of stretchers laid down low upon the earth,
bearing shattered forms whose silence was more terrible than groans;
their grey cloaks were wrapped about them, their poor boots, in which
they had marched to destruction at the word of command, were mostly
tied to the handles.... Pale faces, bandaged heads, arms crossed on
their breasts or inert by their sides, under their capes.... Raised but
a foot from the ground where the stretcher bearers had deposited them
they looked already like their own graves, as grey, as voiceless. Yet
the biting cold of that windy twilight was heavily charged with their
unuttered groans.

Within the hospital it was still the same. The corridors were blocked.
Outside the douche rooms they waited for their turn. At last clean,
sheet-covered, they waited again at the door of the operating room.

He had met Marie von Sternberg that very evening ... so quiet, so deft,
her pale blue eyes so compassionate under her heavy, dark brows and
lashes, her jaw so nobly strong, her hands so beautiful in spite of the
discoloration of acids and disinfectants. He had suddenly noticed her
hands as she was passing him a probe.

But he hadn't looked at her face then, it was only some hours
after,--not even in a pause, for still the men were being brought
in,--when a young, yellow-haired Tirolese had been put on the table.
As Doctor Bruckner bent over him, he had cried out in a loud voice
"Mother" and had suddenly given up his youthful ghost. Then Doctor
Bruckner found that he was looking full into the blue eyes, so heavily
lashed, so darkly circled, of the woman at his side. He saw there a
spark of the same everlasting pity that flamed in his own. They hadn't
said anything even then, for quickly the youth had been carried away
and his place had been filled by a swarthy family man from one of the
Slavic Crownlands, his wedding ring still hanging about the finger of
his mangled hand. Hermann had never forgotten either of those two men,
for in between them was set, like a jewel in death and pain, that look
that he and Marie von Sternberg had exchanged.

All that winter, that winter of his content, of his happiness, they
breathed the same air, did the same work, to the same end. Those
afternoon hours had been, quite strangely, enough for happiness. In
the early summer she had been sent to the Russian front. When he was
mobilized she was still there, and that was the true reason why he was
laughing the day he left Vienna. A thousand miles of battle-field and
ruined towns might lie between them; then again she, like himself,
might be sent where the need was greatest, their roads could easily
converge. He hoped blindly, confidently from the war; all his hope was
in its vicissitudes.

Then one evening, after the fiery setting of a hard, red sun over a
scorched, interminable plain, the dim air thick with odors of blood
and death, cut now and then feebly by disinfectants used not too
generously, as he stood outside that hospital tent, thinking of her,
longing desperately for her, a quick, light step approached, he heard
her voice:

"Hermann, it is I."

And all the dust and fatigue, the blood and agony that covered his
body and his spirit fell away and turning he had cried out her name in
straining passion.

They had embraced in such deep longing that they seemed to be lost out
of time and space ... to be together, even for that minute ... even in
that way....

The battle-field with its dreadful débris had seemed to Hermann
Bruckner like some paradisaical garden.... And those glorified days of
September, October that followed, the unit keeping up as best it could
with the great army throwing its roads and bridges across the Pripet
marshes....

Then one day she had had fever; two degrees only, but suddenly she
had sickened terribly, sickened hopelessly, and died immediately of
typhus.... Hermann who had hung over her hadn't taken it, but he
hadn't been able to live or die since. He'd just gone from bad to
worse; he'd done his work, yes, that was what was left; she would have
been doing hers if he had died....

But after Gorizia, he had known it was all over with him, as a man that
is; as a poor hulk of flesh and blood and bones and nerves, oh, there
were perhaps many years waiting for him. Sometimes when he looked at
his nerveless arm he remembered how warm and firm his clasp had been in
hers, hers in his.... There were so many things to think of before he
ceased to remember.... Rarely her spirit visited him in that house of
Mizzi's.... But in his office continually he found her, sometimes in
each ailing, miserable body he seemed to find her, beautiful and of an
endless pity. Oh, he needed her. Even without his arm, _that_ way it
would have been all right. Something could always be done if the will
is there.... But without her he no longer willed anything.

Yes, he was very ill, but not in a way to die. Death might not come to
him till he had forgotten everything, even Marie....

Mizzi was like a sharp point in his being. She had worn sore spots all
over him, and strangely from Mizzi he must receive that which would
keep his will-less breath in his useless body....

But Mizzi really knew nothing about her husband, indeed never had known
anything about him, beyond his name and age and personal appearance
and a few of his habits. Now he weighed a thousand tons upon her life.

When with her aunt in tow she turned into the Plankengasse, she was
in the usual pleasingly expectant state with which she was wont to
approach her shop. As they neared it they saw a dark, stout, ponderous
female dressed in a thick, brown cloth suit, a heavy black hat with
waving ostrich plumes, a long sable scarf hung inelegantly about her
heavy shoulders, projecting herself cumbersomely from a much bebrassed
auto.

"That's one of them," said Mizzi, eagerly, greedily, "it's Frau Fuchs.
You'll die laughing, she doesn't know beans about anything, but that
big bag of hers is full of banknotes."

In a moment, Mizzi, in velvety accents was greeting Frau Fuchs as if
she were a queen. She touched appreciatively the sable scarf, lauded
its beauty, saying, "You certainly get the best of everything." Then
she turned and presented her aunt, Frau Kommerzienrath Stacher, born
von Berg. Mizzi laid it on thick, resting some of her 75 kilos on the
Kommerzienrath, adding the full weight of the others to the "von."
Then she proceeded to show Frau Fuchs a certain red velvet jacket
with a little gold border, and Frau Fuchs had gone into raptures over
it, and had said she must have it, and then her eye had lighted on a
leather hand bag ornamented with Irma's medallion of "petit point."
Though Frau Stacher recognized it, she was somehow not surprised to
hear Mizzi, as she drew attention to its workmanship, say that it had
been made by a certain Archduchess, positively starving, and Frau Fuchs
sniffing up the subtle perfume of royalty that Mizzi's words caused
to rise from the bag, had taken it eagerly. "No, is it true?" she had
cried in ecstasy, and had drawn her glove from her thick, beringed hand
and opened her humpy alligator skin bag with its loud green and gilt
clasp and counted out a sheaf of banknotes. Mizzi herself had wrapped
the bag and the dressing sack up in her finest paper and sent one of
the girls (the one who did the least good work) out to put the parcels
into Frau Fuchs' Mercedes.

"Isn't she awful?" said Mizzi when they were alone, "but without her
and a lot more like her, we'd starve. Her husband is stone-rich, has an
Exchange Bureau in the Kärntnerring. How she used to hate to pay out
the money! But I changed that, she's a bit afraid of me."

There was indeed something awe-inspiring at moments about Mizzi,
something that she could invoke to decide wavering purchasers. Then
still under the charm of Tante Ilde's gentle but quiet appreciation,
also under that of good business dispatched, Mizzi gave her a little
handkerchief. It had a yellow stain on it that they hadn't been able
to get out, still it was a handkerchief and a gift, and Tante Ilde
gratefully receiving the attention for much more than it was worth,
thought perhaps she had misjudged Mizzi.

It hadn't been at all bad going to her for dinner, except for that
terrible depression when she thought of Hermann. No, it hadn't been at
all bad that first time, and she repulsed certain lurking suspicions
that every week might prove too much for Mizzi's longanimity.

Then, too, she had good news to take back to Irma; the bag had been
sold, Mizzi had counted out the money that she had promised Irma for
the medallion, and though it didn't in the slightest correspond to the
price Mizzi had received for the bag, Tante Ilde could be trusted to
keep that hidden in her breast. Indeed Mizzi said it had cost her a
monstrous amount of money to get the bag mounted, that she didn't know
how she could afford to take anything else from Irma, she hadn't made
a kreutzer on that bag, she only did it to help Irma, etc., etc. No,
Tante Ilde didn't repeat from one to the other. Those little households
that day by day were spilling their secrets before her whom they
received in charity,--out of their goodness, out of their pity,--were
sacred to her.

That night, as she lay awake hearing Ferry's hacking little cough, she
was thinking almost entirely of the plight of Manny. Nothing had ever
been too much for Manny, when it came to doing something for some one
else and now.... If the time did come for Manny to be put somewhere,
Mizzi would have money to pay for him, and what she didn't do, why
Fanny, there was always Fanny. Down which ever miserable road of their
misfortunes they looked, Fanny glitteringly stood, Fanny dispensing
benefits generously, easily, not always wisely, after her own special
way. Tante Ilde suddenly felt she didn't understand the first thing
about life, and she had filled the three-score and ten of the allotted
span. When did one begin to understand?




                                   V

                            THE EBERHARDTS

_Rallentando_

                      "Süsses Leben! Schöne, freundliche Gewohnheit des
                       Daseins und Wirkens! von dir soll ich scheiden!"


Frau Stacher had folded up the light brown camel's hair blanket with
the dark brown Greek border that she had slept under for years and
the sheets with the von B-S monogram and put them, together with the
equally familiar pillow on which her head now so uneasily lay, into
the divan and shut it down. Then she stood up on it and dusted the
flat white and gilt vase under the picture of Haydn leading the young
Mozart by the hand. Finally she pulled back the curtains of the alcove,
which last gesture always seemed to wipe her completely from the room,
somewhat as if she had been carried out in the final box. Her movements
were brisk, with a businesslike dispatch about them. She looked years
younger than when she had stood that afternoon gazing at the trolleys
clanging down Mariahilfer Street, and which, striking out their
noisy, powerful flashes of light, had seemed like heavenly chariots,
conveying certain fortunate ones, strongly, swiftly over immeasurable
cobbly and asphalt stretches to their homes, to their alcoves even, out
of sight and touch of the damp, cold misery of the streets.

She had put on her oldest suit, with the black and white stripes
without once thinking that it had always been a failure.
Business--pleasant business was engaging her attention. But she stood
at the door a moment too long, holding in one hand her umbrella, in the
other a large, brown, string bag. In her worn pocket-book was money to
buy wherewith to fill it. Her eyes were bright; in her cheeks was the
faintest pink. Irma was irritated in spite of herself at the sight of
that brisk fervor. She knew perfectly well the chronically desperate
situation of the Eberhardts, yet to see her sister-in-law stepping
lightly over the threshold with that bag in her hand, going out to
buy food that she, Irma, could well have used for her own children,
provoked an unreasoning envy. Frau Stacher had not dallied in face of
that sombre look, that terrible look, born of the brooding solicitude
about food, food, that seemed to hold but slightly in leash unnamable
things. She fled hastily before it. Only Irma's nerves. But she had
come to know a lot about Irma's nerves in those few days. Irma was
a beast of prey for her children. No one and nothing that came into
conflict with their interests had the slightest chance with her.
Ferry's cough seemed suddenly from one day to the other to get worse.
She had taken him to his Uncle Hermann, and his Uncle Hermann had said
to Irma in the back office, while Ferry turned over a sport journal of
eight years before in the front room:

"What's the use, Irma, he needs milk, eggs, high air."

Had he said pearls, diamonds, rubies, it would have been the same
to Irma. How not to sink to irrecoverable depths with that sinking
population of which they were a part, was Irma's one thought. The rent
was a small matter. For a long time she hadn't paid anything. At least
the "crazy government" prohibited turning families into the streets,
even if they didn't pay. All the government really wanted to know was
that every room of every apartment was filled to overflowing with
samples of the Viennese populace.

In that back office Hermann had further said, tentatively:

"Perhaps ... Fanny would send him away for a while."

Irma had tartly answered: "Fanny, it's always Fanny."

But all the same the suggestion, though annoying, had fallen on
fertile soil. She had been turning over certain possibilities, or
rather methods of approach for twenty-four hours and she was terribly
jumpy, ... if that slender, aging figure had stood a moment longer on
the threshold with that string bag, sign and symbol of marketing....
Nerves, nerves. After a moment Irma had gone on with her petit
point. She was putting the pale brown background around the delicate
moss-roses,--really quite lovely. Mizzi, for all she'd hum and haw,
would take it, but at her own price, Irma was reflecting bitterly. She
pulled the red shawl closer about her and bit off absent-mindedly a
piece of silk on a tooth that needed filling, then miserably, with a
groan, she continued her work. Tante Ilde had said something about her
own teeth that morning,--she had a loose front one that was beginning
to hurt unmercifully every time she took anything hot. But at _that_
age, Irma had thought disdainfully, what did it matter if they all fell
out? Money for a dentist at that age, in such times! Now she was full
of Ferry's need, of plans for him. She hadn't yet decided how to go
about the matter which presented certain undeniably delicate points.
Even Irma, obsessed by mother-love and mother-fear, was aware of their
delicacy.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Eberhardts still lived in the apartment they had taken when they
married, on a street in the Alsergrund, near the University. It had
once seemed very big, magnificent even for two people,--now their
handsome, hungry children overflowed it.

The family had been very proud of Kaethe's distinguished young husband;
"a genius" they would always say impressively to less fortunate friends
when speaking of him, and dwell delightedly on Kaethe's relations with
the University and with certain distinguished people who visited Vienna
when the Kaiserstadt was a font of wisdom. Her husband was indeed
well-embarked on a brilliant career, any and all honours were possible;
Privy Counselor certainly, and later perhaps a "von" to his name. When
scientific Congresses met in Vienna, he was always called on to read
papers, and colleagues from other cities were eager to confer with
him. He often used to bring one or the other home with him for coffee,
proud of his smiling, soft-eyed, bright-cheeked wife, of his lovely
babies, his comfortable house. When things began to get bad, Kaethe
would tell the children what she used to have for the "Jause," that
extraordinary, incredible meal that came in the afternoon, _between_
other meals,--coffee and chocolate, with thick whipped cream, (the
now quite legendary "Schlagobers"), apple tarts with butter dough,
the fresh coffee cake, and certain little crescents that would fairly
melt in the mouth. The children were in the habit of asking their
exact color, shape and taste, they seemed quite unrelated to the War
and Peace bread that alone they were acquainted with, and certainly
they never could have sprung from the same harvest field. The real
difference between milk and cream, too, was an absorbing topic, and
they all loved Resl's joke that if it rained milk instead of water she
would be out all the time looking up with her mouth open, though Maxy
invariably reminded her that it would be better to take a pail and
bring a lot home and then everybody could have some. When Lilli learned
at school about the milky way, she taught them a game called living at
number 1 Milk Street. But lately they hadn't talked much of the "Jause"
of the old days, nor made so many little jokes. They were tired when
they got home from school and only errands connected with food had any
interest.

Though all of Herr Bruckner's family were musical in their easy way,
Kaethe had a real talent; she could not only play through by ear the
latest operette, but Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, with a sure yet fiery
touch. Eberhardt had played the 'cello since his boyhood. Sometimes
Kaethe, her fingers tapping out a measure on the table after the piano
went, would think with hot longing of certain quartettes to which those
walls of hers had once resounded. Poor Amsel who led them ... his
songs, written during a protracted period of starvation in a garret,
were now being sung everywhere; but he had been killed on the Eastern
front that very first month of the war,--he'd scarcely had time to
send back a postcard,--and had been buried with his talent and a half
a hundred luckless fellows in a huge mound, that had been promptly
flattened and all trace of it obliterated by a retreating army. And
Koellner, with his Amati violin. Kaethe often hummed a motif of that
Mozart trio and thought of herself at the piano, Koellner swaying
slimly, his eyes closed and the long black lock falling over his
forehead,--they hadn't seen him after the signing of the Peace. As for
Rosetti from Triest who played the viola, he hadn't been heard of since
the day before the mobilization, certain rumors got around about him....

But all these things were really as distant to the Eberhardts as the
Tertiary Period; they themselves had been thrown up by the convulsions
of War and Peace into strangely diversified, completely unrelated
strata.

For a long time, however, those bright days had left the glow of their
setting on the sombre war period. And then wars didn't last forever,
and when over, except for mourning mothers, things would doubtless be
as they had been. No one foresaw the Peace....

It had lasted four years, that first full, happy life, during which
time Kaethe had had three children,--Lilli a pansy-eyed, pale-haired
little girl, now grown too beautiful for safe adolescence, another
clever, dark child, Resl, and Maxy who had been a "sugar baby"
something to eat up, as he lay gurgling and cooing in his mother's arms.

The pendulum of Eberhardt's life had swung unvaryingly between that
beloved home and the equally beloved laboratory, where daily he pursued
hotly, closely, certain secrets of nature, always enchantingly about
to be caught; or with a warm note in his vibrant voice and a light in
his grey, speculative eye, communicated to eager students those he had
already seized....

On the 28th of June came the news of the assassinations at Sarajevo.
Unbelievable news; the Dual Monarchy shaken to its foundations. Its
heir, its keystone gone like that, in a foul moment. Still everybody
talked of the Emperor's grief, not dreaming that each, in one way or
another, would partake of that grief. They counted his many sorrows,
scarce one save poverty was missing; the Emperor's sorrows had always
been an absorbing theme; it had got so that there weren't enough
fingers on both hands to record them. This, and this, and this and
still this, had he suffered. Had not his son miserably perished by his
own hand--or another's? Had not his lovely Empress been assassinated?
Had not his brother been put to death in far off Mexico? Had not his
sister-in-law been burned to death in a Charity Bazaar? Had he not been
obliged to exile another brother from his court for nameless sins? Had
not another heir died of a dread disease? And other, other griefs. Now
this last, this fatal blow in his old age, personal, dynastic. Those
catastrophic griefs, heaped high with the years, in a way had become
a matter of pride to happy Austrians, and the unhappy ones because
of them, had a feeling of kinship with their beloved "Franzerl." Who
could have foretold that in five years they would seem remoter, less
interesting than those of some Roman Emperor?...

For a few weeks things seemingly went on just the same. Suddenly Europe
was in flames and from the conflagration no one could flee....

The first two years hadn't been so bad for the Eberhardts. The
Professor had been detailed for laboratory work in Vienna, and things
went on somewhat as they had been going. Two more children were born.
Then unexpectedly, through some tragedy of errors, Eberhardt found
himself in a delousing station on the Eastern front. By that time,
everybody was talking about hygiene as well as victory. But he was only
gone a few months, returning gaunt and white, a startled look in his
once thoughtful eye, and evidently quite unfit for further service.
He had been side-tracked for days with a dozen others, suffering from
dysentery, heaped together in a luggage van. No food, and worst of
all, no water. The whole first week after he had tottered in over the
threshold of his home he had said nothing, except repeat the word
"schrechlich"--terrible. Then, strangely, he got better, even well, and
went to the nearly empty University every day, trying to knot the torn
threads of learning. Then the terrible peace broke out. The war had
been bad enough, but it was war and unless one was killed one knew how
to take it. The peace was quite another matter, a starving, freezing
matter for women and children in city streets. The civilian population
was suddenly plunged into it, up to the neck in it.... That collapse
of the winter of 1919, ... that terrible food-blockade over half
Europe.... There was nothing to hope for, nothing to fight for except
bread, bread, bread, in ever-diminishing quantities. More were going
down in that battle in the windy city than before machine guns. Each
street was a battle-field, heaped mostly with children's bodies or the
bodies of the very old.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Eberhardt's apartment was far, too, from the Hoher Markt, but not
far like the Mariahilfer street, Frau Stacher kept reminding herself as
she trudged along, her string bag full and her purse empty, and at the
end of the walk there would be darling Kaethe and the lovely, hungry
children.

It had not been easy, buying the most usual things, and the thin soup
of the night before, and the ersatz coffee of the early breakfast had
prepared her but illy for the venture. She had gone into various shops
where unholy prices or empty shelves confronted her, for Vienna had
mostly done its buying for the day when she started forth. It was late
when at last she found herself, quite worn out, hesitating in a certain
provision shop, between rice and lentils. One got a lot more of the
latter, but what were they unless cooked with a bit of bacon or fat
of some kind? And she was further confused by the sudden memory of a
certain smoking dish of lentils, with shining bits of pork laid around
the edge of the platter, that she had often served in the old Baden
days.

There were a good many people in the shop and not much time for
hesitating old ladies to make a final choice. Suddenly, tremblingly,
she decided to take the rice, while it was there to take, for quite
close to her, overtopping her, stood a large, hook-nosed, hard-eyed,
befurred woman who was evidently ready to swoop down upon it all.
Indeed, she was looking about her with an unmistakable look that could
only come from money, a lot of it, in her pocket, as if, indeed, she
could buy everybody as well as everything. No eggs, no butter, no fats
of any kind were in that shop, but as Frau Stacher was paying for the
rice, she suddenly saw on a lower shelf behind the counter an object
that, had it been set in gold, could not have been more attractive:
a tin of Nestlé's milk. She stammeringly asked for it, but as the
man, placing his hand almost affectionately on it named the exorbitant
price, and as trembling with excitement she was about to take it, the
large, befurred female cried out harshly:

"I'll give you double what the old woman is paying!"

The man,--what decency could be left in that fight for food, for
existence?--took it out of Frau Stacher's unresisting hand. A murmur
went up from those watching the unseemly operation. But the shop-keeper
only shrugged his shoulders, muttered something about the "pig" war,
the still piggier peace, and the stout woman, hastily paying for it,
departed to unmistakable allusions to "pig profiteers." That was the
kind of world gentle Frau Stacher was living in. It would have been a
frightening experience for her, but she, too, was armoured in that grim
determination to get food. The great city's fight was for food, not
against the enemy at the gates, but for the food that was at the gates,
and shoulder to shoulder in serried lines, they fought for it against
each other. She, Frau Stacher, once "rentier" in Baden, was fighting
for it. She was lucky to have got even the rice. Leaving the shop
she espied on the street corner a small fruit stand. Some shrivelled
apples, so evidently grown in the four winds, were being offered in
little piles of five, by a raw-boned peasant woman, whose hands were
wrapped under her small, three-cornered grey shawl, while she stamped
from foot to foot.

Frau Stacher remembered longingly the beautiful Tirolese fruit that had
filled the Vienna markets in the days of plenty. Corinne had lately
had a letter from the adopted daughter Jella, married to her tall,
blue-eyed, yellow-haired, square-headed Tiroler, now Italian, saying
that the fruit that autumn had lain rotting on the ground. There was no
way of getting it over the frontiers, those invisible but none-the-less
impregnable walls that had been suddenly built up around Vienna, north,
south, east and west. Fruit and grain, sugar and fats could not pass
over them nor get through them.

Now those little apples, even on that raw day, had a strange
fascination for Frau Stacher, out of all proportion to their merits.
They certainly resembled in no way the full, rosy-cheeked specimens she
had been wont to pass out to visiting nieces and nephews and into which
white teeth would promptly, juicily crunch, but they were a reminder, a
symbol of them. She longed foolishly once more to see white teeth dig
into apples. She bought hesitatingly a little pile, obviously she had
lost her nerve about shopping for food since it had become a matter of
life or death; in the old days she had been a lavish provider.... Not
much more than a mouthful in each apple, and certainly they wouldn't
be nourishing, but Frau Stacher was of a sentimental nature, and the
pale, innocent eye she turned upon the fruit grew bluer, softer in
expression. The woman, saving her crumpled bits of newspaper, dropped
the apples into the string bag and quickly put her hands, swollen with
chilblains, again under her shawl.

Then Frau Stacher began to think anxiously of little Carli, the next
to the last of Kaethe's children, beautiful, smiling, little Carli who
had no strength in his legs and whose face was alabaster. Fanny did
send condensed milk for Carli, but there was always an urgent reason
why one or the other of the children, with a cold or a sore throat or
a stomach-ache, should have some of it. She wanted above all things
to get a can of milk for Carli. Thinking desperately "Saint Anthony
_must_ help me," she found herself outside a small grocery shop. Few
of the usual articles for sale in such shops were visible in the dusty
window,--varnish, boot-blacking, washing-soda and other inedibles
safely showed themselves behind the grimy panes. Somewhat dizzily she
went in and asked for the milk. She wanted that can of milk more than
she had ever wanted anything, wanted it enough it seemed, to create
it out of empty air. The man, to her relief rather than her surprise,
reluctantly reached down under the counter and passed it silently out
to her, doubtless thinking of his own undernourished children.

"I knew it," said Tante Ilde under her breath, and she suddenly found
herself delightfully warm as she exercised a truly à propos gratitude
to the Heavenly Powers. She was emboldened too, and almost loftily
asked him if he had a can of green peas, she wanted them to put into
the rice to make the "risi-bisi" that the children so loved. Of course
he didn't have it and scarcely answered her foolish question. But she
espied a very small piece of hard cheese under a very large glass,--it
was extraordinary how many things there were in the world that you
couldn't eat, and how much of them! Then she saw a small package of
"feinste Keks", with its picture in blue and red of a child eating one
in rapture. She took recklessly both cheese and cakes. She knew she had
lost her head, and besides she was feeling quite faint. Buying food
in those days, even when one of the Saints visibly stood by, was an
exhausting matter. She brightened up, however, as she went out of the
shop at the thought that another twenty minutes of putting one foot
before the other would inevitably bring her to Kaethe's door and the
heavier the bag the better....

Frau Stacher's ring brought a scurry of young feet to the door, she
heard welcoming shouts, "Tante Ilde's come! Tante Ilde's come!" even
before it was opened with a rush. She was smiling a breathless smile,
after the stairs and the blessedly heavy bag, as she went in. It was
known that she was coming with the dinner, but _what_ had she brought?
They surrounded her, they embraced her, they overwhelmed her. They were
all there save Maxy whose turn it was to eat his midday meal at the
Bellevue Palace, and Lilli not yet back from fetching a few briquets.

Kaethe was nursing that youngest, rosiest of her children who knew, as
yet, only the sweet fullness of her mother's breast. Carli was sitting
at her feet, his head hanging listlessly against her knee. He hadn't
run with the others to meet Tante Ilde because he couldn't even stand.
He would laugh, a sweet, somewhat surprised little laugh when he tried
to pull himself up by a chair and would fall down; but his mother
always wanted to weep when she heard the soft little thud as he slipped
to the floor. Carli was an angel. Carli, quite evidently to any but
a mother's eye, was not to pass another winter on earth. Even in the
week since Tante Ilde had seen him he had become more and more like
something made of crystal, so smooth, so shining, so transparent was
his little face. But she concealed the sudden fear that came over her
as she looked from him to his mother.

"I'm nursing the baby earlier so I can be ready to help with the
dinner," Kaethe said as her aunt bent over to kiss her and Anny,--one
fat little hand spread out over her mother's breast, and making soft,
contented noises,--little Anny, the last, she must be the last of
Kaethe's children, Tante Ilde was thinking....

Kaethe wore a frayed but evidently once expensive, wadded, blue silk
wrapper. It struck an unexpected note in that denuded room, whose
immediate air of indigence was inescapable. Not only was the piano
gone, and long since Eberhardt's 'cello, but gone one after the other
the pleasant, superfluous tables and the little objects once set out
upon them. Even the bookcases.... What remained of the books was piled
in a corner and received many a careless kick from romping children.

Whenever Frau Stacher entered that room she was confronted by a quite
flashy portrait of her mother in the Winterhalter style. It had been
sent to Kaethe's for safe-keeping and now hung frameless on the
wall. A dealer at the time she sold her furniture had offered her a
surprising and unrefusable price for the frame. The young face that
looked out at the aging daughter, though like her in many ways, had
a point of competent malice in the wide, blue eyes, that was neither
in her daughter's eyes nor in her heart. Sometimes, too, from under
that broad, floppy, rose-trimmed hat with the long, pink streamers she
seemed to look reproachfully, severely at her daughter,--leaving her
elegant prettiness thus unset in so cold a world. Frau Stacher had
never felt easy about selling that frame, and she sometimes had useless
little night thoughts, or equally useless morning thoughts of getting
another. But it had been hanging just like that since she gave up the
house in Baden, near an enlarged photograph, (whose pressed wood frame
picked out with gilt no one had wanted) of the departed Commercial
Advisor. She would gladly have been unfaithful to the memory of her
husband, now become exceedingly hazy anyway, and replaced his image
by that of her mother. But her mother's portrait was square, and his
photograph unprophetically had been taken in oblong form. Things were
like that now. Nothing fitted....

Kaethe got up a moment after her aunt had greeted her and laid the
sleeping baby in a battered crib in the next room, filled with beds
of all sizes and sorts. _That_ child was nourished. She would have
felt quite exhausted herself, but for the thought of the dinner
Tante Ilde had brought. She was still a handsome woman, in the early
thirties,--even treading up that Calvary to which every road she knew
now lead her, those seven roads of anguish for her seven children and
for Leo whom she adored. Once, not indeed so long before, she had been
softly, sweetly alight with a kindly inner warmth, that flamed easily,
attractively in her face, in those sparkling eyes, in those bright
cheeks, hanging about that wide, red-lipped mouth with its irregular
white teeth. And then those quick, generous, outward gestures! Now
that soft fire was banked and her movements were often listless. But as
she stood by the kitchen table, she became animated even gay, because
of that natural gift which neither time, nor wars, nor miseries could
quite destroy, and clapped her hands, as her aunt had known she would,
and talked about the great feast they were going to have. The water
was boiling and bubbling forecasting near, delicious moments and Tante
Ilde had begun to grate the cheese which was sending up its sharp,
appetizing odor.

Carli had been put on the table in the very beginning, that he might be
nearer than anybody else to the goodies, as Tante Ilde took one package
after the other out of the string bag and made them guess what was in
it. Kaethe opened the can of milk to prepare a drink for him.

"Hungry," he said turning his blue eyes somewhat languidly towards her
and shaking his shining curls about his crystal face. They all cried
lovingly in one or another way:

"Yes, gold child, yes, angel, yes, little lamb, you'll have some soon!"

"I bought a whole half kilo of rice," said Tante Ilde grandly,
"suppose," she went on dashingly, "we cook it all at once? We're seven
to eat it and we'll put the cheese on thick!"

Kaethe gave a gasp. But she, too, was no saver.

"Magnificent," she cried. She was faint with hunger herself. Yes, for
once ... then she turned to Carli.

"Carli must drink his mimi," she said, as she held the cup tenderly to
his lips.

The other children looked on absorbed in the spectacle. Resl cried,
drawing her breath in:

"Carli's having such a wonderful drink!" and Hansi with his eyes very
big, asked,

"Carli, does it taste good?" and they all hung close about him as he
drank in tiny not very hungry sips.

"I'd show Carli how to drink if I had the chance!" continued Hansi,
moving his feet up and down in famished impatience.

"I do wish Leo were here to see the children," said Kaethe to her aunt,
"but he won't be back till past one o'clock, though he goes as early as
he can to the Stephansplatz. It's just wonderful to think they're going
to have enough. It's seeing them after they've had their dinner that is
sometimes the worst."

A long, impatient ring was heard at the door. Resl ran to open it
and Lilli came in with a dash in spite of the broken handle of her
basket of briquets. She threw off the disfiguring coat she wore and
revealed herself in a very worn, sea-blue dress of some smooth, silky
material. It lay beautifully about the white column of her young neck,
it repeated the blue of her wide eyes, it heightened the fine pallor
of her cheeks, it burnished the pale gold of her hair. There were
gleaming bits of embroidery in places meant to accent the curves of a
more mature figure. Quite evidently made-over, too, was the elaborate,
dark blue cloth dress that Resl wore. Indeed, they all wore garments or
parts of garments quite patently not fulfilling their original _raison
d'être_, that struck a note of gay luxury in the large, shabby room.

Lilli's objective was the kitchen. She was greeted with shouts. The
rice was boiling briskly, the odor of the cheese was in the air. The
package of "feinste Keks," made of a combination of ersatz substances
meant to deceive the palate and annoy the stomach, looked gayly,
impudently at them beside the little pile of apples. As Lilli took it
all in, a tiny line that sometimes showed itself between those lovely
eyes was quite smoothed out.

Then Hansi made a diversion by being discovered with the thin rind of
the cheese that his mother had put aside for the seasoning of another
day's dish.

"What are you doing, Hansi?" she cried and took it from his chubby, six
year old hand.

"But, Mama, I'm so hungry, I can't wait for the rice," and tears rose
to his eyes, "I didn't mean anything bad!"

"I know, I know," his mother answered, those stupid tears that were
always ready springing to her own eyes, "mother didn't mean anything
bad either, but whatever we have is for all of us."

Hansi had dark curls and soft eyes and seemed like the merest baby as
he stood looking at her, great round tears rolling down his cheeks. But
there was something sturdy about his thinness and pallor, something
resistant; Hansi, like Resl, was one who would survive.

Lilli and Resl followed about by Else had put the plates and forks and
spoons on the table and drawn up the motley collection of chairs.

"Is everything laid on nice and straight? Tante Ilde has brought us
such a good dinner!" their mother called out as she came in with the
great smoking platter of rice sending up its maddening odor and placed
it heavily on the table. But she turned and kissed her aunt before she
began to serve it.

Frau Stacher was conscious of the softest, warmest pleasure. One moment
like this and hard things were forgotten. Kaethe's very expansiveness,
that could so easily be released, communicated joy. And Kaethe never
minded how much noise the children made, so others were undisturbed.
Kaethe never fussed though she sometimes wept and often silently
despaired. But now that full platter, those clattering spoons! Though
mortals were certainly composed of spirit as well as flesh, hot food,
even one meal of it, could change everything. Yes, everything. The
children got uproariously gay, and Tante Ilde and Kaethe began to feel
sure something would soon happen to make things all right again....

Then Tante Ilde heard how Lilli instead of her mother, now went out
early every morning, too early for her thirteen years, and stood in
the bread-line at the bakery, (her father had tried it but had proved
singularly inept at holding his place,) and how you just had to keep
your wits about you or you would find that some one had sneaked in
ahead, and it was such a trouble getting back your place.

There was a certain protocol observed even at those bread-lines. No one
with impunity was caught taking another's place, that is unless there
was a stampede by those behind if the news got out that there was very
little left. Then what a pushing and hurtling! Something terrible,
hard, relentless would suddenly come up out of the crowd that had
seemed composed of pale, exhausted men and women and underfed, listless
children. That precious loaf that Lilli generally managed to bring
home, would, with some of the equally precious cocoa that was in the
heavenly package they got from the "Friends" in the Franzensplatz be
the backbone, somewhat weak, it is true, of their day. The package and
the wonders it contained,--the little tin of lard, the little box of
sugar, the little bag of flour, the coffee, though it could not fatten
a family of nine people, dulled noticeably the sharpest edge of their
hunger and helped to get them through the week. It was really equal
to several meals if you counted that way. Then sometimes a raven in
the shape of old Maria, tapping, flew in at the door. As for the other
meals, the Eberhardts went without them.

It was a mystery to the Professor, surpassing any he had ever before
tried to solve, that he could no longer make a living out of his grey
matter. Being a "genius" was plainly a misfortune. It was the working
classes, fortunate possessors of muscle, that frequented butcher
and delicatessen shops, while the intellectuals and their families
starved. It made science look like something seen through the big end
of a telescope. Biology? Eberhardt got so that he hated the very word.
The only science of life that was of any use was knowing how to get
something to put into your family's stomach and your own. Naturally
mild as summer dew, Eberhardt had been getting bitter.

Those radiant years lay far behind, when a word, a thought would set
his brain on fire, startling into instant action those secret springs
of his talent; when the imponderable why and whence of man's being
was the paramount interest of life. The ponderable things necessary
to sustain that life came naturally, undisturbingly in the train
of work. Now his gifts were useless; the world in which they had
once functioned so easily, so shiningly, was in some chill, shadowy
abeyance. Again and again came from his lips nostalgically: "Süsses
Leben! Schöne, freundliche Gewohnheit des Daseins und Wirkens! von dir
soll ich scheiden!" "Sweet life, sweet, pleasant habit of being and
activity! Must I part from thee?"

He went to his classes, but with the laboratory completely run down,
sometimes even the electric light didn't work, and that listless,
stupid look on the faces of a handful of hungry students, or that wild
look, and everywhere the word "revolution," there was certainly little
incentive and less chance for successful inquiry into those whys and
whences, the indulgence in which was gone with other luxuries. The
great thing was to keep out of the cemetery or the streets or worse
places of last despair, where the broken but undying went. It all
seemed a nightmare from which he must awake, some tight and vicious
circle out of which he must soon break. Yet this was the seventh year
and all that he was, all that he had, those once sweet furnishings of
his mind, those pleasant uses of his faculties were as worthless to
himself and his family as diamonds to a man on the rack.

The children got taller and thinner. Lilli was obviously too pretty
to be out alone, unwatched. A terrible beast had lately followed her
from the Singerstrasse to the Franzensplatz and then all the way home.
Lilli hadn't quite known what he meant or wanted, but she had been
desperately frightened and had trembled and wept in her mother's arms.

There were, truly, devils prowling about, seeking whom they might
devour, and Lilli, bright and beautiful, like a taper in the dull, grey
streets, was one to catch their greedy eyes.

Dark tales were whispered too, of hunger-mad mothers who sent their
girl-children into the streets where such devils awaited them.
Hunger,--dying of it,--made even mothers mad.

Doctor Steier had told him unbelievable things of children in his
clinic, things that the bare mention of had enveloped him in a thick,
hot, pricking misery. Doctor Steier was not yet forty, but his eyes
were deeply sunken and his hair gone white. They had once been
colleagues at the University.... Lilli's beauty,--it made her father's
heart both sad and glad....

But nobody was thinking of any of these things as Tante Ilde opened
the package of "finest cakes." Stripped of its saucy, colored paper,
it proved to contain twelve tiny, oblong, dry, sweetish biscuits.
She gayly apportioned out two to each child. They were seized upon
covetously, the very thought of sweets could awaken, in old and young,
mad, selfish, exclusive longings.

But Carli didn't want his and leaned his head heavily against his
mother's breast.

"Carli not hungry any more," he whispered. He hadn't eaten his rice
either, though his mother had taken him on her knees and tried to coax
him with little tricks and stories; the girls and Hansi had finally
divided it into the most even portions possible.

His mother made another cup of milk for him and soaked one of his
"Keks" in it; he had taken a tiny mouthful, then again leaned his
head heavily against her breast and seemed to go to sleep. She got up
gently and bearing him into the other room laid him on a cot near the
rosebud Anny's crib. So dear he was to her as she laid him down, that
her heart seemed to come out of her breast in a great beat of love. The
only color in his face was those violet eyes, which now were veiled so
thinly by his transparent lids, that standing back from his bed, she
thought for an instant they had opened, and that he was looking at her.
But he lay so still that in anguish she bent over him to see if the
breath were really fluttering from his waxy lips....

When she got back into the living room that look, mask-like, antique,
of mother-fear still lay upon her face.

Tante Ilde softly rose from the table and stood by her without a word.
"It will be all right in a moment," Kaethe said looking up at her
gratefully. "It is silly, of course, to be so frightened," and she
kissed the thin hand that hung over her shoulder.

A moment later there was heard the well-loved sound of the latch key,
but somewhat slow, uncertain even. Lilli ran quickly to open the door.

Her father was not, as she expected, alone. A miserable little girl of
five or six was clinging to his hand, a pale, anxious child that the
wintry monster Life had been grimacing at and frightening terribly.

Professor Eberhardt gave his wife one look, but he knew his Kaethe, and
it was a look of confidence rather than anxiety that he bent upon her
as he stood in the doorway,--a tall, once very handsome man, who had
been mangled by the War, then stamped on by the Peace till he had lost
all semblance to his former imposing self. His grey eyes were sunken
into deep pits on either side of his thin, pinched nose. The blond
beard and moustache had had the yellow taken out of them by the early
grey of his griefs and anxieties. But as he stood there, his shabby
overcoat buttoned up to his chin, some brightness lay about his face;
it seemed for the moment quite filled out.

"I met Koellner coming back," he said to his wife, and then he bent
gently over the child, "This is his dear, good little girl come to make
the children a visit."

Something rose up in Kaethe admonishing her to defend her own. Another
child! no, no, no.... But turn that frightened, shivering mite away? It
was equally impossible to the elastic kindness of her heart.

It was a situation that in the end beings like the Eberhardts meet in
but one way. When that which they have not has been taken from them,
they find that they have still something left that they must give.

There was no doubt about its all being a shock to Kaethe, rather than
a surprise. She couldn't be surprised by another sight of misery, even
though brought up round before it.... Her eyes filled with those weak,
ever-ready tears, then she smiled quiveringly. At that smile for which
he had waited, entirely trustful, Eberhardt turned to Lilli:

"Take Marichi into the kitchen, darling, and find her a bite of
something."

The children suddenly quite still, had been looking at the little
girl. Resl thought she wasn't too dirty, and Hansi that she was of a
convenient age to order about. Else didn't understand.

Lilli's thoughts were confused, only out of that confusion seemed to
come some sudden, new understanding. In that moment, indeed, Lilli
grew from childhood into adolescence. She silently reached out her
hand and received the little girl from her father. She gave him a long
look as she did so. Something quite beyond the scope even of her new
understanding, though within reach of her new feelings was happening.
Something hard to do, yet in another way fluidly, hotly easy. As she
was turning away the child's hand in hers, she hesitated then went back
and threw her arms about her father's neck. Eberhardt had a moment
almost of ecstasy as he pressed his lovely daughter close to him in
some suddenly opened heaven on earth. Then she withdrew herself from
his embrace and took the child out of the room.

"It's a desperate case," Eberhardt said to his wife after a moment's
silence, "her mother has just died,--consumption--and he's starving
himself. He knows a waiter at the Hotel Imperial who gives him some
bread every day ... poor fellow, I was all broken up, so talented too;
his clothes, only hanging on him, no overcoat, just buttons his jacket
up to his neck. I told him about the Stephansplatz. He had a look on
his face I didn't like. He was so worried for his little girl. They've
lost their rooms, I didn't quite understand how. Anyway they've nowhere
to go. Kaethe, I couldn't but say to him, 'Let us take the little one
for awhile,' we _have_ a home," he ended.

Kaethe met his gaze quite clearly now. Those stupid, weak tears were
gone. She was thinking, and he knew it as if she had spoken the words:
"Every crumb that child eats will be taken from our own children." But
Kaethe, inflammable herself, had caught from her husband some of that
light that shone about his face and after a second she was saying and
warmly:

"But naturally, she can stay here till things get better."

Both Eberhardt and his wife were very beautiful in that moment wrapt in
the bright flame of their charity.

Just why he had met his old friend Koellner in the street that noontide
was quite clear. It wasn't for anything that he, in his own great need
was to get out of it, but rather for what the child whose Father in
Heaven knew that she had "need of all these things" was to get--in that
hour and in that way.

Then Tante Ilde, who had been both entranced and troubled at the scene,
spoke for the first time and very gently:

"She'll bring a blessing into the house, Leo."

At that Eberhardt turned and greeted her affectionately.

"Ah, Tante Ilde, pardon, it's good to see you." And as he embraced
her his act of compassion was still so warm about him that she was
conscious of some gentle heat, almost corporeal, emanating from him.

Though his now constant preoccupation as to ways and means was added
to those temperamental fits of abstraction, suddenly in that moment he
saw distinctly the shape and substance of Tante Ilde's hard destiny.
That frail figure, in that worn striped gown, Eberhardt who never
knew what women wore, was suddenly conscious of its old-fashioned
cut, its threadbareness, perhaps it was its symbolic sense working
on his imagination that saw at times both more and less than the run
of men. He perceived, as under a microscope, in all its magnified
significance, not alone that sagging face, that furrowed brow, that
thinning hair, those broad, pale, colorless eyes reflecting something
immeasurably patient under the double burden of old age and penury,
but it was old age itself, in all its component parts that separated,
as if under his glass, on his table, resolving themselves sharply into
their elements. He was aghast at what he saw--those diminutions, those
withdrawals--more horrified than at the accidental tragedy of the
Privatdozent Koellner. This was integral, final. She could hope for
nothing more from time, that was clear,--time that brings so surely
both good and evil, that very time that was his hope had nothing more
for her. He repressed a cry....

Then suddenly, or so it seemed, they all got very gay again, with an
infectious gayety. The children were tumbling about noisily after their
good meal. The little stranger kept looking from one to the other. That
desperate apprehension was wiped from her face. This that was happening
was clearly good. She hadn't seen anyone smile for a long time, except
so sadly that they might as well have wept. She had entirely forgotten
about laughing. But all this was good, good, that she knew out of her
six years.

Then Hansi climbed up on his father's lap and asked him what he had had
for dinner.

"A fine cup of cocoa, so hot it burnt my tongue, and a heaping plate
of very good beans, only I didn't feel hungry today," he paused on the
familiar phrase, and from his pocket he produced two pieces of zwieback.

Kaethe had been watching him, suspecting his next gesture.

"Eat it yourself, Leo," she interposed quickly, almost sternly, "we've
had all we can possibly eat. Tante Ilde brought _so_ much."

But Eberhardt with no hesitation in his hand or heart, or at least none
that one could have noticed, said to the strange child, the child of
whose existence he had been unaware an hour before:

"Come, dear child, come, Marichi," and handed her the zwieback. That
grimy, claw-like little hand closed over it. In spite of her hunger she
was too dazed to eat. She looked from her hand up to her protector with
the mysterious glance of childhood.

"It's good, eat it," he said. She put it in her mouth, one piece and
then, very quickly, the other. Hunger, she knew about it, all about it.
This was something different and she was getting warm.

The silence that fell somewhat heavily upon the room, was broken by
Hansi recounting to his father, boastfully, stoutly, what they had had
for dinner and smacking his lips and showing him the colored picture
from the package of "feinste Keks"; then how Carli hadn't wanted his
rice and how they had had that too.

"Carli isn't well today," said Kaethe, "he seems so languid, but he's
asleep now. He dropped off as soon as he had had his milk."

"I'm coming every Thursday," put in Tante Ilde comfortably at this
point. She was feeling quite happy, almost joyous. "Fanny," she added
in an aside, "sent word by Maria that I was always to get enough for
everybody!"

Eberhardt flushed slightly but made no answer. Lilli and Resl were
getting on their coats. As Lilli again put on her mother's old black
cloak over her blue dress it was as if a snuffer had been put over
a light,--a white, blue and gold light. Her father was content that
it was so. About Resl they didn't worry. There was something strong,
inevitable about her, even in those young years. She was clearly one
who would get through. She was very like her mother, but behind that
soft, dark resemblance was something steely that Kaethe had never had.

Things were always happening to Resl,--pleasant things. Those
bright-dark eyes of hers, that round, smiling face that somehow kept
its roundness through all those terrible winters, had something
compelling about it. An American woman on one of the relief committees
had seen Resl on a windy day looking into a delicatessen shop, and had
taken a fancy to her. She had given her a meal a day for two months,
and shoes and other things, often something to take home, then she
had passed out of Resl's orbit into new circles of want. Another time
coming home from school, Resl had stopped to swell the crowd around a
smashed taxicab, and some one had cried, "Do look at that bright-eyed
little girl!" and had given her a ten shilling note,--just like
that! She hadn't understood what they said, but their smiles that
she promptly returned and the money that she dashed home with were
perfectly intelligible. Once she had found a gold piece in the street,
when she and Lilli were going along together; of course she had been
the one to find it. Lilli when she saw Resl pick it up, had hoped that
it had been dropped by some very rich person, instead of by some one
who hadn't anything else. To Resl, however, such fears were unknown,
she would always take unquestioningly whatever goods the gods provided.

Tante Ilde was telling them about the woman who had grabbed the milk
out of her very hand, and Hansi was saying with his chest out and his
eyes ablaze,

"I'd have beaten her well, Tante Ilde," when they heard a scream from
the next room,--a terrible scream, despair and supplication were in it.

Eberhardt and Tante Ilde rushed in followed by the children, Marichi
stayed behind, cowering again. That scream had something frighteningly
familiar about it.

Kaethe was holding Carli up to the window, where the light shone full
on his baby face ... quite gently, quite easily, Carli had slipped from
them leaving only his little waxen image.

       *       *       *       *       *

Throughout that long night Tante Ilde kept miserably repeating to
herself: "A child came in, a child went out," finding herself in a
confusion of faith and doubt dark as the night that lay about her.

Irma was confirmed in her opinion that charity was dangerous.




                                  VI

                                CORINNE

_A la Sourdine_

                                          Das Herz ist ein weites Land.


But towards morning Frau Stacher's heart threw off its sorrow; she had
suddenly felt its weight leaving her breast, why or how she did not
know, for there in that distant house whence Carli had forever gone one
she loved was still weeping. Perhaps she was done with grief,--long
grief.

She was strangely all love that morning after the night of tears. Love
emanated from her with a gentle radiance and played about her warmly.
She loved even Irma. Even Irma who on account of her nerves couldn't
bear to see that fine, soft light in her sister-in-law's eyes. An
unreasonable, unseasonable light given the fact that one child had been
reft away and another might as easily be taken. She should properly
have been creeping about with her spirit quenched, instead of looking
almost happy. It struck Irma, who was inaccessible to metaphysical
changes, even as unseemly, and she proceeded to extinguish it,
somewhat as a wet finger on the flame of a candle.

"Corinne today, but who's taking you tomorrow?" she asked flatly,
meanly. Irma had a way, well tabulated in the family, of getting over
pleasant spots at the quickest pace possible.

"Tomorrow," Tante Ilde answered, the light in her eye indeed put
out, but her face quite pink as she stepped into the kitchen to put
the broom, worn down to its wooden handle, back in its dingy corner,
"Tomorrow," she continued resolutely as she reappeared, "I'm going to
Fanny's."

"To Fanny's!" echoed Irma blankly and started to cry "I find it
disgraceful!" But she stopped quite short as a thought came to her....
The easy way to do a hard thing. A little more of _that_ money! What
did she care? She wanted Ferry to live.

"Won't you tell Fanny about Ferry?" she began again, but gently, almost
imploringly.

There was a long pause, in which the thick-boned figure of the woman
her brother had loved loomed up before her in an imperative, almost
menacing attitude as she waited for the answer. She had been bending
closely over the hemstitching she was to finish that day for Mizzi. She
had large, square-shaped hands, but she held deftly and delicately the
diaphanous trifle that Mizzi would sell to some thick lady. Now she
laid it down and took off her glasses, showing her eyes very strained.
Her face seemed to broaden, her cheek bones to get higher, the spot of
color on her cheeks was dyed deeper, harder. Everything was accented
about Irma in that minute. Even the red of the little, fringed,
three-cornered shawl was like life-blood spilled over her shoulders
as she waited for her sister-in-law to answer and there was something
increasingly minatory about her.

Strange, Frau Stacher was thinking, that Heinie should have desired
her, Heinie almost an old man. But she couldn't really reason about
such things, certainly not in that pause. Her thoughts had wandered
because she was feeling quite dizzy and then, of course, she would
do it. Irma might have known that. Those three boys had to be helped
somehow into manhood, according to their needs. A generation lay
between the two women, yet for a moment Irma, with that ancient
mother-fierceness in her face, seemed the elder. She continued staccato:

"Ferry's got to go to the mountains. Fanny can send him if she will.
Fanny's rich. Fanny's in the only good business for women in Vienna."

Frau Stacher felt the blood rush to her face. But it was pity for Irma
that suddenly reddened her cheeks rather than shame for Fanny. All the
pity of her heart for a moment spent itself lavishly on that unloved
sister-in-law.

"It's one of the reasons I'm going--for Ferry. I'd thought of it too,
and tomorrow you know it is Fanny who is taking us all--with Carli,
to the cemetery," she answered finally with an immense gentleness. In
her heart she handed that business of Fanny's to God, and she hoped He
wouldn't take His price for it.

Irma suddenly broke into wild weeping.

"Don't speak to me about Carli again. I can't bear it. _My_ Ferry, _my_
son, _my_ first born, _he_ must live."

Then she tried to stop weeping. Those hot, salty tears that were
scalding and dimming her eyes were an indulgence she could ill afford.

"Tell Fanny everything about Ferry, help him not to go where Carli has
gone," and she stepped quite close to her sister-in-law, her hands
clasped. "You are truly good," she found herself unexpectedly, even
softly, ending.

Then Frau Stacher, warm with a love that was not for Irma, but whose
warmth spread infinitely, embraced her, saying:

"Don't weep, Irma, we'll surely arrange about our Ferry."

The two women spoke no more. Irma's sobs turned into long, quivering
sighs and her sister-in-law soon after slipped out.

Somewhat reproachfully the thought came to Irma that Tante Ilde did,
perhaps, bring a blessing into the house and that she, Irma, had
needlessly wiped away the look of happiness on her face. They all
knew that she adored Corinne. Why couldn't she have let her have her
pleasure, which was certainly not costing her, Irma, anything? And
she remembered how broken her look and voice had been as she told
about Carli the day before. Then repentantly almost, she thought that,
after all, Tante Ilde couldn't be comfortable in that little alcove,
though as she didn't know about the need of being alone, she couldn't
understand just how uncomfortable. Then she thought that she would not
ask her to draw back the curtains. She even fell to planning how when
Ferry went away she would put Gusl to sleep in the alcove and give the
little room to his aunt. Hermann had terrified her by saying that Gusl
ought not to sleep any longer with Ferry,--was it really as bad as
that? That was one of the things that made it a further nuisance having
Tante Ilde. Then suddenly with the whole wild strength of her being,
the strength of untamed generations living by the wild Plitvicer Lakes,
she thrust her arms out and would have burst the too-narrow walls of
that dwelling, made room, room, the way one had room there where she
was born--out of the terrible city.

       *       *       *       *       *

Frau Stacher got out to find the sun shining on the slippery streets,
still covered, from the cold rain of the night, with a thin, glass-like
substance. She went cautiously, slowly along. From St. Stephen's
half-past eleven was sounding. She had plenty of time. Then she became
aware again of a new and evil discomfort that had made itself felt
from time to time that morning; not at all the usual undernourished,
discouraged feeling, but as if something inimical, foreign to her body,
had got into her circulation; unpleasant little shivers kept running
up and down her back. She was relieved, however, for the moment of the
weight of her penury. Corinne truly loved her. Corinne truly wanted
her to live. She knew _that_, knew it as she knew that she existed.
Corinne, lovely, loving Corinne. She could have sung a hymn to her.
She crossed the Revolutionsplatz. It was still a little too early to
go to the restaurant Zur Stadt Brunn where she was to meet Corinne
at noon,--and perhaps find herself alone in the restaurant with her
empty purse, if anything happened to prevent Corinne from coming. No,
she couldn't have borne any such "blamage." She was timid about so
many of the most usual things. She then crossed the Lobkowitz Place,
looking, for an unrelated instant, up at the Lobkowitz Palace--long the
French Embassy. She had once been used to read eagerly about Royalty
and the "First Society" going to receptions there, their titles, their
decorations, their gowns, and how their jewels shone in the great
marble ballroom;--now past, all past--both for them to do and for
her to enjoy. She slipped falteringly down the street to go into the
Augustinian Church. She wanted to pray for Corinne,--that Corinne might
have her happiness. But Corinne's happiness was a tangled affair.
Corinne's happiness could only come through Anna's death, and how wish
the death of any being? As she knelt down she found that she had to put
from her the thought that human destinies resemble hot peas jumping
about in a pan,--no more meaning than that. Then her heart repented the
wickedness of her thought and she was able to put it from her, and to
pray that, as it was quite evident that she, Ildefonse Stacher, could
not be trusted with a little happiness, the Lord might in some way
trust Corinne with it. Then she prayed for Carli, though Carli, bright
among the angels, needed no prayers ... for Kaethe, Leo, Hermann,
Ferry--Fanny.

Her knees were trembling as she knelt, and she felt a deathly cold,
a grey cold, it seemed to her, like that of the stones of the
high-vaulted church. She got up stiffly. Noon was sounding from
the tower as she passed the marble tomb of one of Maria Theresia's
daughters, so beloved by her sorrowing husband. She herself might well
have taken position among the carved, grey, mourning figures that stood
before the entrance to the tomb, so drooping, so shade-like was she.

As she went out the terrible, mumbling old man with sore eyes held
open the door for her; the pale, young cripple who stood by him didn't
move when he saw that spectre of genteel poverty. So many just like
that went in and out of the church. They had no more to give than he
himself....

The sun for a moment was fairly flooding the winter streets; they shone
in bright splashes of wetness. She stepped across the road into the
doorway of the restaurant. To enter a restaurant again! Such a simple
thing, she'd been doing it all her life. She felt like a fish suddenly
thrown back into its own waters.

Corinne was crossing the street. The light was very white and
dazzlingly enveloped her slender, swaying figure. How sweetly, softly
her blue eyes shone as she approached.

"My little Dresden china Auntie!" she cried and kissed her right there
in the doorway. Then they passed in and made their way to a table.

"For three," said Corinne, "a gentleman is coming. Shall we wait a
moment, Auntie dear, before ordering?" she asked as they sat down.

Now the smell of the small, fresh rolls that the waiter was counting
out, somewhat as he would once have counted gold, and three of which he
had put on their table made Frau Stacher suddenly quite faint, but the
feeling was so familiar and she was so happy to be there with Corinne
that she only said:

"But naturally," knowing, too, for whom they waited, and her eyes
looked more deeply into Corinne's than she herself was aware of.

Corinne glanced away with that oblique glance that could veil her
thoughts more completely than fallen lids. She flushed slightly.

When Tante Ilde spoke again it was to say:

"I just missed you last night. I was again at Kaethe's, only a few
minutes after you had gone.... Fanny was there." She leaned heavily
against the table and continued, "I couldn't bear not to go back. We
mustn't weep for Carli," but all the same tears filled her eyes and
Corinne's own were wet.

No, truly she knew one needn't weep for Carli, but she felt so stupidly
weak, there in that warm room with an abundant repast about to be
served to her; she leaned more heavily against the table, she wanted
terribly her soup, but after her way she said nothing and was able to
continue, as she broke off a piece of her roll and began to eat it:

"Kaethe's grieving for Carli just as if he were her only child," and
both childless women, soft as their hearts were, looked at each other
not quite understanding.

"You ought to see the wreath of white roses that Fanny brought and
coffee and cake. She was so sweet. She kissed Kaethe, in that way of
hers ... you know, and when she knelt by Carli she wept as if her heart
was going to break. She was always so fond of children when she was
a girl. She would kneel awhile by Carli and then she would come back
to Kaethe. She kept saying she should have done more, that she was
a wretch, a monster, you know how she is, and it ended by Kaethe's
comforting _her_. I made coffee for them all."

"I thought she'd go when she knew," began Corinne slowly, to add
suddenly as a child, with a wondering look: "Tante Ilde, I don't
understand anything about anything."

Though her aunt returned her gaze there was no answer in it. She didn't
understand the least beginning of anything either.

"I'm going to Fanny's for dinner tomorrow," she said at last picking
up the thought at its only concrete point. And this time there was no
blush in her face. Why always blush about Fanny?

"To Fanny's tomorrow?" Corinne echoed quickly and turned a deep
scarlet, the color flooding her face to disappear under the low brim
of her hat. Tante Ilde at Fanny's! It was the ultimate disorder in
their upset world, the rest of them, yes, any, all of them if need be,
but not Tante Ilde. There was something snow-white about Tante Ilde.
Three score years and ten in a grimy world had left on her no slightest
smirch, and even now in the process of her despoilment she was at times
blindingly white. That whiteness was the one ornament she still wore
and became her exceedingly.

"You can't, you mustn't," said Corinne slowly after a moment.

"I can, I must," answered Tante Ilde firmly, finding herself suddenly
in a new position, far the other side of both good and evil. "She
didn't want me to--at first,--but I begged her so. She brought me back
from Kaethe's in a taxi last night. Corinne, I _knew_ when I went there
again that I was going to be brought back, that I wouldn't have to
walk, though I couldn't know it would be Fanny.... She threw her arms
around me and wept and said she was miserable herself, that she would
be better off dead."

Neither of the two women let themselves wonder what her griefs were ...
Fanny's griefs....

"I thought tomorrow you would go to some nice little café or just buy
something for yourself and eat it at Irma's," continued Corinne lamely
for one so generally adequate.

"Perhaps another time," answered her aunt with an involuntary gesture
of putting the chalice from her as Corinne spoke of Irma. It was her
nearest approach to complaint, but Corinne quite knew what it meant.

"Except for Carli it hasn't _all_ been too bad?" she questioned
entreatingly.

"No, no, indeed, truly. Only I've seen so much, Inny," she answered
saying the baby name for Corinne, so long unused, "so much of--of
human beings," she ended quite detachèdly and her eyes got very wide
and wandered a little.

"Irma is hard, I know," and Corinne put her hand out to find her
aunt's, to hold her attention, "but she has that alcove and I thought,
too, it would be a way to help the boys. I'm always worrying about the
boys, and then it's almost impossible to find a place to lay one's
head."

"The foxes of the earth," began Tante Ilde with a still stranger look
on her face and then stopped.

Corinne was overcome by a quick anguish. Something was hurting her
terribly though she couldn't have said which one of many things, and
her aunt was suddenly as someone she had never known.

Tante Ilde had always had her little phrases and mottoes--but not like
that. "Time brings roses," she would say consolingly to any child who
was unhappy in the old days. "Hard work in youth is sweet rest in old
age," when the boys wouldn't study; and she often reminded the girls
that "Beauty goes, but virtue stays."

"You're looking so pale, darling, you're not ill, are you?" Corinne
asked, after a moment breaking anxiously into that new, disturbing
silence.

"No, just a little cold, my shoulders ache a bit,--then all the tears,"
she answered, "nothing more."

"Are you warmly enough dressed?" pursued Corinne, after another pause
during which her eyes had wandered again to the door.

"Oh, yes, I have on two waists," and she smiled weakly.

"I believe you're faint for food," said Corinne at last, with a
strange, burning look on her face, "we won't wait for Pauli, we'll have
our soup right now," and she called the waiter.

It was still early and few people were in the restaurant, the waiters
mostly standing idly around, smoothing their hair or flicking their
serving napkins about as they talked, but it seemed to Frau Stacher an
eternity before the order was taken and another endless period till the
soup was brought and the waiter poured it hotly, appetizingly from the
smoking metal cup into her plate. The first spoonful did its blessed
work and the palest shade of pink came into her face. It seemed more
delicious than anything she had ever tasted and she pitied all poor
creatures who felt as she had been feeling and were not, like her,
sitting before a steaming plate of bean soup.

"It's the tears and the fatigue, and perhaps a bit of a cold coming
on," thought Corinne as she, too, partook gratefully of her soup,
quite ready for it after her three hours at the bank, working at those
interminable billions that threatened to run into trillions. Life
at the bank was now composed of seemingly countless zeros, orgies of
zeros, and often a fine headache after.

As they took their soup, with what remained of their rolls, they ceased
to mourn for Carli, ... something bright and beautiful that had been
and was no more.... They didn't try either, to look into the wherefores
and whys of Fanny's existence, neither its splendors nor its miseries,
though as Tante Ilde was taking her last spoonful of soup, she leaned
across the table and said, a confidential note in her voice, something
deprecatory too:

"Last night the boys didn't wake up, but Lilli and Resl kept peeping in
at the door while Fanny was there. They followed me into the kitchen
when I was making coffee and asked about 'Tante Fanny;' if I'd noticed
how sweet her furs smelt and if I'd heard how her bracelets tinkled,
she wears a lot of bracelets, broad bands of jewels that jingle and
glitter. Lilli wanted to know who her husband was and Resl said, 'Ssh,
she hasn't any,'" ended Tante Ilde with a sigh. But Corinne had ceased
to listen, inherently fascinating as the theme of Fanny's bracelets
was, for behind that pale waiting she was in a turmoil. Suddenly she
flushed and then as suddenly grew white.

Pauli was standing at the door looking about. In a moment he was beside
them and as he sat down in that eager way of his, life seemed to stream
from him, more than he needed for himself, something overflowing,
always something to give.

He was just as kind to Tante Ilde as to Corinne. She didn't feel a bit
in the way ... for once ... like that. She was again in a world where
given enough to eat and a warm place to eat it in, human beings still
loved and longed for each other, not simply for food and shelter.
A whole cityful of human beings with hearts and brains as well as
stomachs thinking solely about what they were going to eat! It suddenly
seemed a terrible waste to her ... in a world where there was love,
beauty, wisdom, hidden, lost though they might be.

The waiter was standing by them with his pad in his hand waiting for
the ladies to decide or for the gentleman to decide for them. Nothing
like that had happened to Frau Stacher since the winter before she lost
her income. The soup had put new life into her, and if it hadn't been
for that vaguely evil thing she felt in her veins, she would have been
almost her own gentle, pleasing, easy self again.

"Don't look only at the prices, Tanterl," Pauli was saying with his
smile that so easily became a laugh. "How about half a young chicken
with rice for each?" he suggested lavishly, surprised to find it there
on the otherwise meagre list.

"Oh, Pauli, how reckless! If we're going to have _meat_, boiled beef
would be nice." Indeed to Frau Stacher, desperately needing the
stimulus of meat--any kind would have done, though the boiled beef
she humbly suggested didn't inhabit the Paradise where young chickens
abided, eternally cut in two waiting to be cooked and eaten.

"But not at all!" he cried, "we're going to have a feast," and he gave
the order for the chicken and asked for the wine-card, selecting an
Arleberger, that a friend in Budapest made a specialty of.

Tante Ilde felt vaguely, pleasantly like a woman in a romance,
interesting but unreal. It wasn't only the food, but that looking at
the menu and ordering right out of the heart of it, without other guide
than what was the best. It conjured up the agreeable ghosts of those
far-off comfortable years; and then to be carried along on that stream
of love and immediate affection. She blessèdly forgot the dark depths
of those waters that surged about Pauli and Corinne....

"Next week, if you insist, we can be less grand," Pauli was saying,
"boiled beef then, and the week after no meat at all. That's the way it
goes in Vienna now," he continued cheerfully. And then Corinne in her
pleasant way of alluding to pleasant things said:

"Auntie, you remember the 'marinierter' carp you used to give us at
Baden on Friday?"

Frau Stacher flushed at this that was like a blow on memory, but she
only said with a retrospective look,

"Yes, Frieda did do it well,--and the Fogosch too," she added. In those
days the beautiful blue Danube had seemed to fill one of its natural
uses in supplying her table with that, her favorite fish. But it all
seemed strangely uninteresting to her. She was trying vainly to keep
her thoughts, so unaccountably, so uncomfortably wandering, close
within her body, within that pleasant room from which all three of them
must too soon depart.

Pauli's love was almost visibly enfolding Corinne, just as his
affection was flowing about Tante Ilde. So different the two, as
different and distinct as two primary colors, yet blending. She felt
wrapt in something warm and many-colored, and what its pattern was she
no longer tried to see. Then suddenly and anxiously she was aware that
there was still the transparency about Corinne that, as she watched her
approach that morning, she thought had come up from the wet, shining
streets, but there in the warm, dark restaurant it was the same....

Her likeness to Fanny, too, was very apparent, there were but two years
in time between them, ... though so many other things.... She had never
noticed it so clearly, not even when they were children. The same blue
eyes, with their sudden oblique look; in Corinne it was disturbing,
in Fanny devastating. The same pale, shining hair, the same fine nose;
only in Fanny all was more accented, more complete. Her eyes were
bigger and bluer, her hair yellower and thicker, her complexion more
dazzling, the oval of her face more perfect. Yet Corinne ... her face
had not indeed the glitter of Fanny's blinding, noonday beauty, but its
moonbeam charm was forever working its own pale magic....

Then the half chicken for each with its little round mound of rice was
brought on, and though Pauli took out his glass to look at his, and
speculated on the evidently not distant hour of its hatching, still it
was quite delicious, and that shining gravy over the rice!

"I'm speculating in everything," he continued vigorously, "I've joined
the Black Bourse Brigade, it's where you pick up trillions," and with
an airy gesture he pulled out a wallet and showed Tante Ilde some
magic-working dollars and some potent English pounds, but which last in
a subtle way gave place to the noisier charm of the dollars.

"Everybody speculates," he went on, "the lift boys in the hotels, the
porters at the stations, the old women selling newspapers. Everybody.
It's in the air."

Then as they were finishing the last of the rice and gravy, with little
crumbs of bread added so that not a bit should be lost, Corinne gave
voice slowly to what she had in mind, looking narrowly, slantingly at
Pauli:

"Tante Ilde is going to Fanny's tomorrow for her dinner."

"To Fanny's tomorrow?" he questioned in an astonishment that caused
Tante Ilde's face to flush a deep rose. To Pauli's way of thinking
though a good many things were done, certain others weren't. Tante
Ilde's going to Fanny's clearly fell under the latter head. Saints and
sinners were mostly all the same to him. One could rarely tell which
was which anyway, but somehow this....

"Fanny is so good to us--I don't think she always has it,--as easy as
it seems," she faltered, feeling quite uncomfortable, not because she
was going, but because of Pauli's strange look.

"Fanny _is_ a good fellow," he answered slowly, reflectively, but he
looked at neither of the women as he spoke. The fact was that for all
his experience of men and matters Pauli himself had come to a point
where he didn't understand anything anymore than they did. Life was
for him, as for them, one great confusion. Except his terrible need
for Corinne, clear, urgent, urgent beyond any words.... But now this
picture of Tante Ilde at Fanny's! Tante Ilde shining white, Tante Ilde
who thought that all wolves were lambs inside and even in process
of being devoured scarcely perceived their true nature. Life was,
indeed, presenting itself in its most unreasonable and confounding
aspect. "Much will be forgiven her because she has loved much," was all
right for everything except just this ... or if a daughter had been
in question. Then he tried honestly to think, not according to that
feeling that had leapt up in him at Corinne's words, but according to
his usual way of easy judgment.

"Fanny has a gold heart, I can't tell you not to go," he hesitated,
"she deserves it," he finished at last, but evidently against the
grain. Pauli was really very ill at ease at that special manifestation
of the disorder of their world. _Where_ were your feet and where your
head? Tante Ilde at Fanny's! What after all did it mean? All kinds of
saints in the world, he knew. Still it was a pity, among a thousand
other pities. Indeed Pauli was shocked in a way that neither of the
women were. Pauli, to whom nothing human was foreign, was shocked at
a little thing like Tante Ilde's going to Fanny's, when everybody,
everywhere was up against real death and destruction--a detail like
that and he who had seen everything was not only shocked but horrified.
Riddle. Riddle. Then suddenly he changed the conversation and pulled
out his wallet again, crying, without any noticeable preamble:

"Tante Ilde must have a presentli!"

Uncomfortably he felt that the special problem confronting them
had grown out of material ruin; lack of security was, after all,
regulating that situation. In a word when you didn't have money you did
a lot of things that you didn't do when you had it. It was as plain and
as stupid as that.... It put decency on an indecent footing or vice
versa. And morality, why morality positively had its legs in the air.

What little he could do for Tante Ilde wouldn't be enough to give her
existence a basis. He knew what he could do for her and what not.
Life was now a small sheet on a big bed and whichever end was pulled,
somebody was left bare.

Corinne gave Pauli one of her palely flashing looks that always left
him blinded as he laid those bank notes by Tante Ilde's plate, almost
in among the bare bones of the chicken. He had a strange expression on
his face, something final that made Tante Ilde suddenly and terribly
anxious, as he returned it.

"Oh, Pauli dear, you spoil me," she only said tremulously, glancing
from him to Corinne, whose look like some slow-turning beacon was now
shining upon her. But still she was anxious with a grim, new anxiety.
Corinne's danger was so clearly imminent.

Then that fear too, passed; her existence seemed but a long street,
with figures appearing and disappearing, signs and symbols were quickly
flashed before her and too quickly gone for understanding. It was
the processional of life that she was aware of for the first time.
Then again things shifted and passed, and she found she was happy, not
because of the money, though that was pleasant enough, but quite simply
because she was warm and nourished and loved. She couldn't, in that
moment, accept further calamities, nor even look at the shadows they
cast before them....

Then with that money on the table, they turned quite inevitably to the
everlasting subject of Exchange, which was plunging to unfathomable
depths, and the whole population headlong after it.

But Frau Stacher for the moment continued to feel pleasantly distant
from the abyss, and as the sounds of those once almost unreckonable
sums flowed over her ears, she caught again the agreeable "rentier"
feeling of happier days. Corinne could talk in figures, too, from the
vantage ground of the Depositen Bank. She was doing well; next year she
expected to be doing better. "Then," she looked lovingly at her aunt,
"I will hunt for that tiny, tiny apartment."

"Next year!" interrupted Pauli, not included in the heaven Corinne's
words evoked, and so deep was the longing in his voice, in his words
that Frau Stacher bent her eyes quickly upon her plate.

He put his hand out over Corinne's. She was flushing and paling under
his touch; his dark, unexpectedly small hand had, on the little finger,
a thick gold ring in which was sunk a turquoise turned very green.
That ring was somehow like Pauli. Color, Pauli loved it--and yet in
moonbeam Corinne with no more color than the palest opal, than a pearl,
lay all his desire.

Frau Stacher had long since forgotten what being in love was like,
the love of man for woman, perhaps she had never known, but suddenly
it seemed clear, the pulsing mystery of such love, and she was very
frightened. Just Pauli's hand over Corinne's made it clear, much
clearer than his words, than his tone even, as he cried:

"Oh, Corinne if everything were different, save you and I--and Tante
Ilde! If I could only take you and care for you, never let you go to an
office again--and always dress you in silver, Corinne, Corinne!"

"Next year," Corinne was repeating slowly. Her look was very oblique
and distant, and her face was suddenly pale, though quite bright--as if
consumed to pale, hot ashes in the look Pauli bent upon her, consumed
to last resistance.

Between these two looks Frau Stacher was suddenly crushed; she could
scarcely breathe, another intolerable distress came to join that pain
in her chest.

Would they hold out, those two who loved each other so, hold out in
the dark, grim city that now took heed of little save food? Would they
build themselves a house without foundations, in a nameless street,
above ruins? Or would Corinne wander alone till her sunset, homeless as
a cloud?...

Then Frau Stacher became aware of a great exhaustion. The life-force
had done with her, was slipping from her body, she could feel it
retreating, something finally, inexorably destructive taking its
place.... But those two in whom it surged so high, so hot?...

It was over. And how is anyone to know that something has happened for
the last time until the irrecoverable afterwards? Corinne had, indeed,
sweetly said goodby to her aunt, brightly, warmly, visibly leaving
her, as always, the gift of her love. But every fibre was straining
towards Pauli as she slipped away, a shadow palely-gold about the head,
attenuated to last expression in the black sheathe of her coat. Pauli,
(how pale, too, as he watched her disappear), was going back to the
Travel Bureau he so ably managed, seeing to it that "Protection" and
favoritism were practiced to their fullest extent for those travellers
who could pay for them.... Pauli who spoke all known languages; Pauli
who could conjure up special trains from the void; Pauli who smoothed
the way incredibly for foreign millionaires come to see for themselves
how things really were in Vienna, or for indigenous exchange lords who
knew the time had come to travel; Pauli, to whom almost everything
seemed easy.... "Get Birbach to attend to it" was the peace phrase
that replaced the references to his luck during the war. Nothing was
too good--or too bad--for those that could pay for it. On the other
hand Pauli was often impelled to do something for those who couldn't
pay. Lately, too, he had been drawn into politics, trying to help leash
those dogs of destruction let loose upon his country. He was found to
have something hotly convincing in his talk, or he could pierce an
adversary with a thin point of ridicule that would make his listeners
laugh till their sides ached. It wasn't a meal, but it certainly warmed
them and Pauli was always sure of a full house. But now that love
for Corinne had begun to waste him, to crumble his other interests
and activities. His strength, his time were mostly spent madly,
hotly hoping for something, anything, out of the void whence events
come,--the void known to every longing heart. Pauli was temperamentally
aware of the fluidity of life--for all except the very old, _they_ were
caught like fragile shells in the hard stratum of age. It was one of
the reasons for his tenderness towards Tante Ilde, and his farewell had
in it much of the love of a son, and the pity of the very strong for
the very weak. So many out of her little world, in their several ways,
had been saying their farewells to her. Of them all, Pauli's alone had
it been knowingly the last, could scarcely have been more tender.

       *       *       *       *       *

Then she found herself once more alone in the Augustinerstrasse. You
were always, when you were old, finding yourself alone like that.
She went on, suddenly forlorn to desperation. The sun had long since
disappeared behind some leaden clouds hanging over the Capuchin Church,
the rain was coldly falling and the streets were getting slippery
again. The warmth in her veins was gone, the color departed from her
face. Those unpleasant, sick shivers were passing thickly up and down
her back, and that point of pain stuck between her shoulders. She
pressed her umbrella, needing a stitch at one of the points, the cloth
had slipped quite far up--when it happened she couldn't think--close
down about her head. The damp, hurrying crowds were jostling her
unbearably, carelessly poking their umbrellas into hers. She finally
turned in at one of the less frequented streets to get back to the
Hoher Markt, a little longer, but out of the relentless pressure of
the crowd. She kept thinking about Pauli's hand over Corinne's, on the
table; the crumpled paper napkins, the few tiny bread crumbs, the wine
glasses with their deep, red lees, Pauli's dark hand with the gold
and turquoise ring over the slim, unringed whiteness of Corinne's....
She wanted suddenly there in the cold streets to weep for Corinne,
for Pauli. She was conscious of some faint, wordless prayer that went
up out of her weakness, just frightened supplication rather than
thinking, and "Oh, my little, _little_ Inny!"...

Then her eyes were caught and held by the fatal, antique symbol of
ultimate, entire misery that was inescapably presenting itself.

There, creeping along the walls of the houses, under their eaves, was
a very tall, pale, heavy-eyed woman with a child in her arms covered
by an end of her tattered, colorless shawl. She was soon, very soon,
perhaps that very night, to bring another into that wintry world.
At her skirts dragged a rachitic little boy of four or five.... Das
Elend.... Misery.

Suddenly Frau Stacher's heart grew so big, so big with a desolate pity
that she thought it would burst the thin walls of her aching chest. It
was indeed the symbol, the living, cruel symbol of the misery of that
wintry, starving city. It was all caught up into that wretched group,
to which so soon that other, unwanted and unwanting, would be added,
that child still safe in the womb.... She caught her breath stickingly,
sharply.

Where did charity begin? She no longer knew. She had meant to take Irma
the money Pauli had given her, that she might use it for those children
of their own blood. But no, it was for this, so clearly for this,
for beings whom she had never seen until that very instant and never
would again. She was saying to herself--aloud though she did not know
it--"Let them eat once." Then she accosted the woman who turned dull,
unexpectant eyes upon her, while the little boy who knew only hard,
cold, empty things clung tighter to his mother's damp skirts.

"Take this. Eat. Get warm for once before your time comes. Feed the
children," she cried hoarsely, her voice still thick with her anguish.

The woman's claw-like hand closed over the money. Some stammered words
of thanks, some muttered "Vergelt's Gott," fell on Frau Stacher's ears.
She turned hastily away. She couldn't bear to look even for a moment
longer into that hopeless face.

But she turned back after a few steps. The woman was walking almost
quickly away in the direction whence she had come. She knew, doubtless,
the miserable entrance to some very relative heaven where if she had
money she could get food, and if she had money she could get warm and
sit or perhaps even lie flat on something however hard,--out of the icy
drizzle of the streets....

Then suddenly Frau Stacher became tremblingly afraid that there, so
near the house, Irma, out on some little errand might have seen her.
And never, never could she have made Irma understand. She didn't
understand herself, only that it was something, however ill-considered,
that she had had to do, out of that sudden feeling of the oneness of
life....

But as she entered, there in the fading light Irma was unsuspectingly
taking some last stitches standing with her work held up close to the
window. She turned, not unexpectantly, as her sister-in-law entered;
blessings often flowed in through Corinne. She carried no parcel, but
it might so easily be that she would open her old black bag with its
uncertain clasp and say:

"See what Corinne has sent!"

But Frau Stacher, quite pale and spent said not a single word even of
greeting. She seemed to Irma very old and broken, quite different from
the smiling woman who had gone out a few hours before. She wondered
again in alarm if she were going to fall ill on her hands and need
taking care of? But for once she didn't say all this, nor do more than
frown when her sister-in-law dropped her wet umbrella on the floor.
When she did speak it was only to ask:

"Well, what did Corinne give you to eat today?"




                                  VII

                                 FANNY

_Allegro con fuoco_

                                                    The Viennese Waltz.


Fanny had a cosy little apartment just off the Kaerntnerstrasse, a
pleasant corner apartment only up one flight of stairs, easy to drop
into. Her sitting room had windows looking down two ways, a south
window and a west window. Superfluity was its especial note. It had
been done up in varying styles at varying times,--French, English,
Italian according to the vagaries of its mistress. The spring of 1915
had found it Italian, but when on that soft, May day the Italians
declared war, Fanny had cried: "out with it!" and had got rid of all
her transalpine furnishings. The room had then settled down permanently
to its more logical expression of Viennese "Gemuethlichkeit," that was
accented by the miseries of the once gay city that surged blackly about
it. On the walls were reproductions of pictures of various well-known
beauties, Helleu's etchings of the Duchess of Marlborough and of Madame
Letellier, a copy of the Marchesa Casati in pastel by some one else.
Fanny being quite sure that they and various others hanging on her
walls, had no more than she herself to do with the war, had left them
there. Between the two first-mentioned ladies was Ingres' "Source"
which Fanny was thought to resemble.

The ill-fated Empress-queen hung over the door leading into Fanny's
bedroom,--the picture of her in profile with her heavy coronet of black
hair high above her imperial and beautiful brow, while the rest fell, a
dark cascade, down her slender back. The Emperor, blue-uniformed, his
breast a mass of decorations, smiled pleasantly and paternally from
above the entrance door opposite.

The Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the Duchess of Hohenburg, head against
head in a medallion, hung between the windows. Above them was a gilt
laurel branch tied with crêpe.

On one of the tables was the Empress Zita, sitting with four of her
children, the Emperor Karl standing behind her. Fanny was through and
through monarchical. The new princelings, not of the blood, had their
uses, but in her heart she despised them ... what they were, that is,
not what they had.

Fanny's own portrait by a certain renowned Hungarian painter of lovely
women, on an easel, showed her in one of the blue gowns for which she
was so famous. Her sea-blue eyes looked beautifully, innocently from
under her plainly-parted, pale yellow hair; one long curl, falling
from the simple knot behind, lay on her white shoulder. Fanny's hair
was stranger to hot tongs or curl papers.

The room was full to overflowing with bibelots of every
description,--cigarette and cigar boxes, smoking sets, leather and
enamel objects from the smart shops in the Graben and the Kohlmarkt.

On the table on which stood the photograph of the Empress Zita, was a
collection of elephants in every imaginable precious or semi-precious
stone. For a time Fanny let it be known that the elephant brought her
luck and it rained elephants; but those animals, mostly with their
trunks in the air, had been superseded as mascots by rabbits and on
another table was an array of these rodents, also in every possible
stone; jade, crystal, lapis lazuli, carnelian, amber, with jeweled eyes
of varying sizes according to the pocket and the mood of the donor.
The collection of rabbits being nearly completed Fanny had begun one
of birds. Two little jade love-birds pecking at each other on a coral
branch had lately flown in to join a pale amber canary with diamond
eyes.

Fanny was an expert in the matter of getting gifts. There was a
pleasant, compelling air of expectancy about her, and a pleasant
child-like rejoicing when a gift was offered that induced giving. And
then when she was out of temper those animals were an unfailing and
resourceful subject of conversation, playing often useful as well as
ornamental rôles.

There were deep leather chairs, and between the windows a pale blue
silk divan, that symbol of Fanny herself, piled with every conceivable
sort of blue cushion, cushions with ribbon motifs, with silver flowers,
with lace flouncings, painted, embroidered, of every shape and style.
The carpet was blue and thick and soft and covered the floor entirely.
In one corner was a large, cream-colored porcelain stove that once
lighted in the morning gave throughout the day its soft and genial
heat. A comfortable room indeed. No books but some piles of fashion
journals on a little table by some piles of the inevitable _Salon
Blatt_. Fanny did like to know what the "Aristokraten" were about,
dimmed and attenuated as their doings now were. She quite frankly said
that she never read; indeed the book of life took all her time and she
had turned some pages that she didn't care to remember.

An old servant from her father's house had followed her along that
flowery path that had proved to have its own peculiar and very sharp
thorns. She'd been witness to Fanny's wounds and bleedings as well as
to her successes. She scolded, flattered and adored. Those watchful
eyes were worth their weight in the legendary gold to her mistress. It
was old Maria who gathered up the remains when Fanny gave her suppers
and took them the next day to the Herr Professor's; it was she who
brushed and took stitches in garments before they were given to Kaethe.
It was she who said to herself "Kaethe can do so and so with this or
that." Nothing was lost really in that seemingly wasteful house. Then,
too, Maria had her own relatives, who nearly or quite starved in dark,
distant streets. The chain of misery was endless; here and there a
little place of plenty, like Fanny's house off the Kaerntner Street.

Fanny's post-war principle was simple: "der Tag bringt's, der Tag
nimmt's," the day brings it, the day takes it. Who would be such
a donkey as to save money that a week after would have halved or
quartered, even if it did not quite lose, its value? No, spend and make
others spend. Those were wonderful days for succeeding in a profession
like Fanny's. Paper money? Easy. Vienna lived to spend, not only spent
to live. That paper money went stale, dead on their hands if they
didn't spend it. Jew and Christian alike knew that. Wonderful days,
indeed, for Fanny and her kind.

Fanny always went to the Hotel Bristol for her midday meal, sitting at
a little table not far from the door. Everybody that came in saw her
and she saw everybody. She was one of the hotel's brightest treasures,
above Princesses of blood, who now so often had a way of looking like
their own maids. She was always smartly, beautifully dressed in her
somewhat quiet style. She gave a light, bright touch to the dark,
too-heavily decorated room, shone in it gleamingly, reposefully, like a
crystal vase.

Foreigners generally beckoned to the head-waiter and asked who the lady
was sitting alone at the table near the door. And according to the
questioner so was the answer. The head-waiter, profoundly versed in
human nature, made no mistakes.

Fanny's manners like her clothes, were impeccable. She spoke to no one
and no one spoke to her and she certainly didn't look about her the
way the green Americans or the ripe Jews did. She went in and out like
a queen, haughtily, gracefully, her round hips swaying gently, her
head erect, her beautiful, blue eyes impersonal. But then Fanny was
always careful, not only in mien and gesture but in words. She was not
accustomed to tell, even at her suppers, the sort of stories which, she
heard quite authentically, ladies of the whole world told. It would
have taken the distinction from her situation in the half world.

That luncheon at the Bristol was her regular public appearance. She
occasionally nodded to a slender, distinguished-looking, dark woman,
without her beauty but very chic. She was the friend of a Persian
prince who, in pre-war days had ruined himself for her, but was now
fast remaking a fortune in rugs. Extraordinary how many people there
were in Vienna who wanted to buy expensive rugs! People who had mostly
never seen a rug before,--suddenly Vienna was full of them. They came
easily to the surface of the dark, troubled waters of the Kaiserstadt,
like rats swimming strongly, surely against the current of disaster;
and they wanted quickly all the things that "the others" had always
had. These two women sometimes joined each other in the ante-chamber
and went out together. The dark woman had once been somebody's wife;
but Fanny had stood at no altar save the one she served. She would
take a couple of hours for her toilette for those luncheons, for
her seemingly simple toilette that no woman of the world with less
exclusive and wider demands upon her time could hope to rival. She
dressed sometimes for the weather, sometimes according to her mood,
sometimes in consonance with the national misfortunes. After the Treaty
of St. Germain she dressed for two months in black, fine, shining,
smooth, silky black, and then because of the Count she dressed again
in black after the signing of the Treaty of Trianon. Her face, in
those dark days and dark deeds, shone out of her sombre raiment like a
rift from black storm heavens. But after all in her blue gowns, blue
of every shade, from nearly green to nearly purple, lay her greatest
successes. That is why Kaethe and her children were almost entirely
robed in blue--and Maria's relatives too.

Fanny's own expenses, as will be guessed, were large. She had to spend
money,--a lot of it,--to make money, to keep steady her situation,
somewhat inverted, in the social body. Seven years of it and though she
was handsomer she was older. She had an extraordinary canniness for all
the sweet innocence of her blue eyes and pouting red lips.

Her ways were irregularly regular. In the evening unless she went
to the theatre she was always at home. And there had never been any
falling off in those evenings. Good business was often done then, other
than by the châtelaine. Princes of the old style had there the desired
opportunity to meet the new lords of Austria,--men that they would
scarcely have saluted on the street in the old days, men that then they
only knew in their money-lending capacity, having their habitat in
small inner offices; beings with money in safes behind their desks, who
gave it out at usurious rates to temporarily or permanently embarrassed
scions of noble houses. Then these "Aristokraten" had had the fine
steel of birth with which to defend themselves, a shining sword that
had made such dealings profitable and pleasant on both sides. Now that
sword was gone dull in their hands, or broken at the hilt. Life was a
different kind of tilting ground. Gloves were thrown down in counting
houses and then promptly picked up and pocketed. Those whose only
occupation had once been to lend money now had further pretensions.

It was known that at Fanny's almost any one might be met. The men who
came were expected to have an entrance ticket of some kind--money, wit
or birth. They didn't get a chance to sit around in those deep chairs,
smoking those delicate cigarettes, just because it was so pleasant.
Many a poor devil whose birth or wit was his only asset was mercifully
splashed by the plenty that surged about Fanny. Though each Schieber
really felt, according to the expressive Viennese phrase, that each
prince could "ihm gestohlen sein," the aureole, though thin, still hung
about the heads of the titled gentlemen who frequented the little flat
off the Kaerntner Street.

Fanny was both hard and soft-hearted. In her bargains she was
merciless. Her beauty and her arrogance were worth wagon loads of that
paper money and she knew it. But then how lavishly she could give! For
her family she was as a horn of abundance. Indeed Fanny was a sort of
clearing house for the relief of their miseries. When you came right
down to it she supported in some sort of a way a good half of the less
resourceful and more virtuous relatives with whom Providence had so
richly endowed her. Without Fanny they would have succumbed to their
miseries. Instead of half starving they would have entirely starved.
Fanny who hadn't held out, sometimes wondered what on earth would
have happened to the others if she had,--Kaethe and the children,
Irma's boys, Tante Ilde and a lot more. She wasn't always thinking of
them, it is true. But when she was lonely she did it passionately,
extravagantly, and would send expensive, ribbon-tied boxes of sweets
to Kaethe's children or to the boys. When Maria would find it out she
would scold dreadfully and say that what they needed was flour and a
lot of it, and that Fanny herself was headed for the poorhouse and
Fanny would go off in a huff leaving a hard word behind her for Maria.
But then Fanny was like that. All or nothing. Too much or not enough;
beyond the goal or short of it. In her avoidance of the middle course
lay Fanny's successes and her mishaps. Maria was more reasonable and
more constant; but "we can't do everything, too many of them," she
would reflect, and "weiss der kuckuk," the cuckoo knows, her favorite
expression when in doubt, where they would have got what they did get,
if Fanny hadn't been Fanny.

The reactions of the various members of the family to her methods had
been at first purely temperamental, but according as their misfortunes
increased, her spasmodic though continuous generosity had modified
their sentiments as well as their miseries. Indeed they were, all of
them, in one way or another, continually running beneficently into
Fanny, though as she was mostly invisible in the flesh, the "bumps"
they got were apt to be of the soft and pleasant order.

Fanny, who couldn't bear Irma, a "sour stick," sent the boys their
winter boots, their woollen stockings and jerseys. Irma eagerly yet
acidly received these reminders of relationship while in her heart
condemnatory of the relative. Mizzi, on the contrary, admired Fanny
extravagantly and if she had had the necessary "talent" and what she
also called "Fanny's luck," would have asked nothing better than
to work out her problems along Fanny's lines. She mostly kept her
admiration locked in her breast, however, and generally so harsh in
her judgments she never uttered a word of reproach where Fanny was
concerned. Then, too, it might have got back to her and that wouldn't
have done at all. Fanny was too useful. She knew that Hermann sometimes
went to see his sister, and she thought it a good thing. He might pick
up something there,--which he never did,--but she considered it one of
his least useless acts.

As for Liesel, Otto had grandly and early signified that it was no
place for an honest woman like his Liesel. But then they didn't need
Fanny and could indulge in their virtuous segregation, though the
reports Liesel heard of Fanny's clothes were tantalizing in the extreme
and she was truly sorry that things "were as they were."

As for Anna she hated Fanny with a cold, terrible hatred, too cold
and terrible for the light of day. A sombre jealousy was its chief
ingredient, back from their childhood days, but Anna had forgotten
that and thought it was detestation of Fanny's ways. She and Hermine
could get along without her too. And then, deadliest of sins, she was
convinced, though she had no definite way of finding out, that Pauli
had a soft place in his heart for her. Fanny here, Fanny there, she was
sick of it. Fanny doing what was done for the Eberhardts, Fanny doing
what was done for Irma and the three little stepbrothers, Fanny paying,
she could bet, for Tante Ilde's alcove. Ah! Bah!

Kaethe loved her sister very much and Eberhardt, from the clouds,
was apt to fall as a dew of mercy alike on the just and the unjust.
Pauli and Hermann never mentioned her, though 'twas true that Pauli
frequented the flat assiduously and Hermann would have gone oftener but
for the terror of those open places.

"Virtue, what is virtue?" Fanny had once cried to Pauli when some
thorn or other had pressed deeply into her white flesh. And what _was_
virtue in that starving city? Generous giving in the end assumed the
supreme mien of virtue, had, indeed, usurped the place of all virtues,
theological and human. It was all, to the family, whichever way they
looked, confusingly the triumph of Fanny's sins over their own virtues.
Fanny was inclined, too, to be pious,--in her way and at her time.
She was apt to enter any church she was passing; what the prayers she
offered up, who shall say? Not entirely of thanksgiving that in the
starving city she had plenty. Perhaps she begged not to reach old
age,--to have time on her deathbed. That was what she hated to think
of. Old age! Alone! Death! Judgment! Whom the gods love of Fanny's kind
they certainly snatch young.

Yet, how gay she could be! What life was in her! Even above her beauty
was that sense of flooding life in her veins. 'Tis true her temper
easily ran high. Maria knew well the signs of rising choler; blasts
of that temper blew about impartially. Indeed she was more apt to
administer a box on the ear than to bestow a kiss. It was often said
by the recipients of the first-mentioned gift that never was she so
handsome as when lightnings were flashing from her deep eyes. It was
all part and parcel of poor Fanny. It was extraordinary how the family
got used to her in their hearts, though sometimes in words they still
condemned her--and ah, if Fanny hadn't been _their_ Fanny!

However, there she was and apparently as bright as one of those
American dollars to be gazed upon in the windows of exchange bureaux,
shedding their radiance over the dull waste of paper money.

Obviously they couldn't be seen with her, nor she with them,--in the
end no one could have said just which way it was. However, from her all
blessings flowed. Pauli called her the family Doxology, and once when
he had run into her coming out of St. Stephen's, he had said, with his
wide, flashing smile:

"Na, Fanny, thanking the Lord God for his manifold blessings, that you
will later pass on to the rest of us?"

And Fanny had called him a "stupid ox," and smiled and blushed and
flicked him ever so lightly with the tail of her silver fox.

It was one of Fanny's many gifts, that way of blushing that she still
had, would perhaps always have. It was indeed a confusing situation.
The yard-sticks of the old days were broken or mislaid and anyway few
had the energy to use them.

When Fanny had been very ill with grippe in November, Corinne and
Kaethe, summoned by Maria, had gone to see her for the first time; they
had let it be known afterwards that it was just like any other place
only much nicer, and that Fanny had been saying her rosary. Nothing
hung together somehow.

Tante Ilde, whose judgments were innately of the order abounding in
mercy had had at first only the most uncomfortably confused sensations
at the mention of Fanny,--sensations rather than thoughts. A flush
would, at such moments, mantle her cheek. It was when she still lived
at Baden and Anna and Irma would come out and tell her of certain
things that to them, Anna and Irma, were nothing short of shameful, an
honest family, etc. Her father would have turned in his grave, etc.,
and they, especially Irma, would soon have to think of the boys, etc.,
etc. Tante Ilde had been wont to listen in a sort of confused silence.
She didn't understand things "like that" anyway, was the general
opinion. She would think glimmeringly of what happened in the end in
novels and on the stage to women of Fanny's ways, and she would feel
alarmed for Fanny rather than condemnatory.

But when the races began again at Baden and they heard, necessarily
indirectly, that Fanny, in two shades of blue, had been the sensation
of the day, they were increasingly puzzled, but a touch of pride crept
in to give a new tone to their feelings. So Fanny's scarlet sins, if
not washed whiter than snow in the miseries of War and Peace, had
undeniably been getting paler and paler in the family eye.

Now poor Tante Ilde shared with the others a certain miscellaneous
satisfaction, all sorts of things composed the secret mixture, that
came inevitably from the knowledge that Fanny was doing very well.
Indeed what would they do if Fanny didn't do well? It was the world
upside down. But they were all living in that same upside-down world
and the relativity of their misfortunes was so dependent on the
absolute of Fanny's fortunes that certain chalky lines and demarcations
were fast disappearing. Though none of the women went to Fanny's they
all saw Maria, that messenger of hopes and fulfilments, that faithful
_officier de liaison_ between two worlds.

       *       *       *       *       *

When, after her habit of recounting everything to Maria, Fanny had told
her all about Carli and meeting Tante Ilde at Kaethe's, they had first
wept over Carli, mingling their tears as they embraced. Then they had
a conversation concerning the proprieties, concerning Tante Ilde's
coming to Fanny for dinner on the very next Saturday,--before the
funeral. At first the thing had seemed impossible, just couldn't be.
Certain things weren't done, and Tante Ilde--so devoted, so genteel,
so innocent. Of Tante Ilde's indestructible innocence there were no
two opinions. Something to be cherished. It wouldn't be "anstaendig,"
decent, a word used with more shades of meaning in Viennese than in
English. Equally Fanny couldn't take Tante Ilde to the Hotel Bristol.
Yet Fanny was suddenly very lonely for Tante Ilde, she had a hunger
for her and Fanny generally gave herself the things she wanted....
Tante Ilde, so loving, so unfortunate, the only one left of the older
generation. Why if Tante Ilde died, Fanny herself, all of them, would
be, dreadful thought, the older generation! She positively boo-hooed,
wiping her handsome nose noisily on her filmy handkerchief. But for
once Fanny didn't see her way quite clear to gratifying her desire.
There were things, a lot of them, that weren't done and this seemed
quite definitely one of them.

She had her code and it was rigorous. But Maria had been saying that
she noticed, too, how white and thin Tante Ilde looked when she had
gone to take Irma the woollen stockings, just as if her life were being
pressed out of her, though not a word of complaint, only a smile and
just faint and tired, as if she didn't have a place to rest her feet
or to lay her head, "and I'll bet she has it hard with Frau Irma,"
finished Maria shrewdly.

"About like sitting on pins," answered Fanny with conviction, "but
Pauli told me Corinne hoped it would do for awhile, on account of the
boys, too."

"I could make her comfortable here for once," pursued Maria
insinuatingly, "a little table drawn up by the stove and a good oatmeal
soup."

Maria, too, had her doubts as to the propriety of the proceeding. She
was quite feeling around in the dark where you might run into all sorts
of things. In ordinary times there would have been no question of such
an arrangement or even during the War, but the Peace had levelled the
ranks of the Viennese with the same efficiency as death--what, indeed,
was virtue?

"I feel so sorry for the poor, dear old lady," said Maria meditatively,
repeating, "I could make her comfortable for once."

"Well, you'll probably have your way, but I'm against it, it just isn't
suitable," answered Fanny flatly. Her aunt's life was broken into bits
but there was a whiteness about the remaining pieces that they all,
according to their natures, felt must not be diminished.

"But, Lord God!" at last cried Maria, whose voice could rise too, "they
all take the money!"

"They can't starve, the poor things!" answered Fanny immediately up in
arms for the family, her voice rising above Maria's.

Maria familiar with the signs of trouble, lowered her own.

"It's different her coming here," Fanny began after a pause with an
unexpected quiver of the lips.

Maria melted instantaneously, this was so painfully, undeniably the
fact, and pressed Fanny's head against her ample bosom.

"It's different," Fanny repeated and wished it wasn't different.
Suddenly the hunger for Tante Ilde became very insistent, rising up
from far out of those happy days when she had been the prettiest girl
that any one had ever seen, and had picked daisies in Tante Ilde's
garden at Baden and pulled off the petals: "He loves me--loves me
not--not."... And _this_ was what Life was.... Maria could do any
blessed thing she pleased about Tante Ilde. She, Fanny, washed her
hands of the matter.

And even the next morning things weren't any better, and she made
her toilet snapping crossly at Maria, with the corners of her mouth
drawn down, looking fully her age, which though it wasn't great, she
couldn't afford to do ... considering.... And then she had gone out
to the Bristol to the tinkle of her bracelets, and the slightest
rustle of silk, (just enough to let one know somebody was passing,)
her eyes stormily sombre under the drooping plume of her hat, her furs
enveloping her softly, odorously--all in a not unfamiliar, black sea
of depression. That black sea, with no slightest light, that sometimes
threatened to flood up above her red, full mouth, above her small, flat
ears, above her wide, blue eyes, till she was drowned, till she was
dead.... What was the matter that Tante Ilde couldn't walk right in to
her own niece's home? And then, it must be confessed, as she walked
slowly along, she used some expressions in regard to life and living
that she hadn't learned in her father's house.

       *       *       *       *       *

Fanny had been likened by a foreign friend to one of her own
waltzes,--beautiful and hot, gay and sad, for beneath the passion
and beauty they embody is that ever-recurrent note of melancholy,
woven through each sparkling melody, to be caught up swiftly into the
inevitable coda that for so many of Fanny's kind is the end indeed.

Vienna laughs and weeps to her waltz music, loves and dies to its
measures, to a continual "allegro con fuoco." Weber thus annotated
one of the glowing movements of "Blumen der Liebe:" "Breast against
breast he confesses his love and receives from her the sweet avowal of
love returned."... Breast against breast indeed, giving and receiving,
myriads of maidens in each generation embody the brief and tragic
triumph of passion and beauty over the lengthier security of duty. In
that very heart of Europe is a perpetual, warm, fermenting desire for
love, an instant sensibility to the arts--to all beauty in its visible
forms; but "swiftly with fire" these are forever consuming themselves,
for they have little to do with material success or personal continuity.

The Turks left other things there than coffee and ruins. They dropped
some seed of Eastern magic into this only half Western soil and a dark
flower, like no other dark flower of the earth, sprang up abundantly.
Its color for a time has been washed out in the sombre waters of War
and Peace; it has been trampled by the slow tread of cripples, its
growth suspended in starvation. But another generation that has
not seen these things and died of pity or hunger will arise, other
"Flowers of Love" will blossom. The sagging portico of that stately
pleasure-palace, Vienna, will be again upheld by Caryatides with
glowing eyes, with bright cheeks, with thick, shining coils of dark
hair, with full, soft figures and tireless, round, white arms. And
in through the portico, coming from their dark side streets, will
pass "allegro con fuoco," passionate, gifted young men, worshipers of
the arts and devotees of the graces, with their Frauenlieb and their
Frauenlob apostrophes, their lovely, tragic hymns to Spring and Hope
and Love--till the sun and the moon and the stars shall have done with
them.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Frau Stacher got up that Saturday morning she found that her legs
were trembling weakly and that only with the greatest effort could she
stand. Her chest seemed bound in iron, too, and she was breathing quite
noisily.

"I've got a terrible cold after all," she thought appalled at the idea
of being ill at Irma's--in the alcove. "It just can't be," she thought
desperately. Up and out was the word, though down and all in was what
she felt. She was momentarily comforted by the cup of ersatz coffee
that Irma always served very hot, but she had a vast repugnance to the
piece of hard bread. Gusl, with his sharp eyes out had been watching it
as it lay untouched at her plate.

"Tante Ilde, you're not eating your bread," he observed finally.

"No, I don't want it. I'm not hungry," and she pushed it towards him.

"Not hungry!" he exclaimed and his voice was hopeful.

At that Ferry who always noticed things said: "You're not ill, Tante?"

Irma glanced up quickly. But her sister-in-law always looked that way
in the morning, pale and spent and a hundred years old, so she turned
to the more agreeable consideration of the slice of bread. Being
impartial was one of Irma's many virtues and that slice was cut into
three bits, the thin end larger than the two thicker pieces. It was a
pleasant sight, though no more durable than a flash of lightning, to
see the boys eat it, in an instant, one chew, one swallow. Then they
began to get ready for school and Irma lingeringly wrapped Ferry's
knitted scarf about his neck, she was strangely tender with her sons,
and they all clattered down the bare steps.

Frau Stacher always rather dreaded that moment of being alone with
Irma, but this morning she was glad of the sudden quiet in the
apartment. She would have lain down again but for Irma's inevitable
question if she did so. Clearly Irma's wasn't a house to relax in. You
got up and went on. So instead of lying down, as usual she helped to
wash the cups and saucers and put the room in order.

Then when Irma sat down to her work by the window, she went back to
her alcove and in its semi-obscurity, leaned heavily on the yet unmade
divan, trying not to cough. She could hear Irma drawing the stitches
of her embroidery in and out, and the little click when she picked up
or lay down her scissors. She was no more alone than that. It suddenly
seemed to her that the most intolerable of all her misfortunes was
never, never to be alone. She started up uncomfortably as Irma called
out, speaking more gently, however, than was her wont:

"You're going surely to Fanny's today?" and then she heard Irma lay
down her work and cross the room. As she pulled the curtain aside Frau
Stacher stood up guiltily. Irma even in her preoccupation could not
but see that her sister-in-law was ailing. There was no mistaking it.
But Irma was determined, more determined than she had ever been about
anything that she should go to Fanny's that day, that very day. Virtue
or vice, 'twas all the same in Irma's eyes, all run together. Ferry had
to be saved, saved that day and not another.

"Hermann says that if Ferry gets over this coming year, he'll be all
right."

Something familiarly, sombrely fierce lay in her eyes as impatiently
she looked at the frail messenger of her desire.

"Yes, I'm going, Irma, you can count on me, I won't forget," she
answered almost humbly. "Don't worry, we'll arrange it," and then her
eyes fell on the little figure of the woman bending over waiting to
have the two buckets, one filled with apples and the other with pears,
put into her hands.

"I'll just take it with me--to show Fanny," she continued.

Irma's eyes filled with tears as she took the little carving from the
table and started to wrap it in a piece of newspaper.

"No, give it to me just as it is. I'll carry it in my bag," and she put
it into her worn reticule that never stayed clasped and now promptly
fell open as she laid it on the divan.

"You won't lose it," questioned Irma anxiously, seeing her put it into
the precarious keeping of the bag, but her sister-in-law didn't answer,
only pulled the curtains together again. Irma went slowly back to her
embroidery, but after a moment or two not hearing any sounds of moving
about, she asked in a tone whose irritation was but half-suppressed:

"Don't you think you had better begin to get ready?" This having to
push her sister-in-law up and along, out of the house, filled her with
a sickening impatience.

"Yes, perhaps I had better," Frau Stacher answered obediently, "though
it isn't far."

And then Irma hearing those soft, slow movements of dressing behind the
curtain said no more. She was really only thinking of the moment of her
sister-in-law's return, with the money in her purse or perhaps enough
to be prudently pinned into her dress.

Frau Stacher was thinking of nothing. All the forces of her being were
employed in that act of clothing her body. After she was dressed she
noticed that she had on the wrong skirt, but she felt she couldn't
change--and then she _had_ put the velvet around her neck. One thing
she didn't do that morning, she only remembered it when she got out
into the street--she hadn't pulled back the curtains.

But Irma, as she saw her ready to depart, though she noticed that the
curtains weren't drawn, only said again:

"You won't lose the little figure?" and Frau Stacher with that
formidable submission in her eyes, even Irma got it, answered again:

"No, I'll be very careful." Then she turned and inexplicably to herself
embraced Irma and said, "Farewell" just as if she didn't expect to be
back in a few hours. Irma heard her steps getting fainter and fainter,
as she went down the resounding stairway, until they were lost forever.

       *       *       *       *       *

Frau Stacher felt very weak, and her feet seemed made of lead, as
she turned into the Rotenthurm Street, then that pain between her
shoulders. But she was thankful that she had been able to get out and
Fanny, mercifully, lived near. A pale, uncertain sun that gave no
warmth, lay momentarily over the city.

There was an undeniable excitement about going to Fanny's, something
adventurous, like going into exotic lands, that stimulated her
momentarily and in that sick confusion of her being she did not try to
analyze her varied and commingled sentiments. Bashfulness, timidity,
the gentlest curiosity, gratitude, affection, she was conscious
of,--together with that increasing pain between her shoulders....

She was admitted by Maria whose small black eyes were snapping
pleasantly, whose wide mouth wore the most affectionate of smiles;
Maria, part of their lives since twenty-five years, Maria, who had
always opened to her ring when she went to see her brother.

"Ach, dear, gracious lady, how good of you to come to us!" she cried
warmly and bending kissed Frau Stacher's hand with all the old time
reverence and affection.

She felt like a storm-tossed little craft that has at last made port.
She hadn't thought it would be that way. It was, indeed, "just like
any other place, only much nicer."

"Fanny is making her toilette, I'm just getting her into her things,"
Maria continued easily.

"I'll be there in a minute, Tante Ilde, dear," called another welcoming
voice from the next room, then in quite a different tone:

"You old hag, you've forgotten to take that stitch in my sleeve."

"Coming, coming," called back Maria cheerfully and winked at Frau
Stacher, "She doesn't mean a thing. Just her little way," she whispered
admiringly; then aloud:

"If the dear lady will lay her things aside," and as Maria spoke she
proceeded to help her remove the old coat, peeling off the narrow
sleeves and pulling down the little woolen shawl that Frau Stacher wore
underneath; she then put her into a comfortable chair, a cushion at her
back, and with solicitous inquiries about her health, (Frau Stacher's
looks didn't please Maria) "now you just rest while I finish getting
Fanny ready," she ended with a pat of her fat hand on the thin shoulder.

"What are you talking about?" called her mistress, "Perhaps I'm not
going out."

Maria disappeared through the door and Frau Stacher heard her say
something about "stupid caprices."

Before the fine, even warmth of the porcelain stove Frau Stacher
forgot how chilly she had been in the street; and the deep armchair
with its soft cushion, how it engulfed yet sustained her! She was quite
happy and almost comfortable. She felt more at ease, more at home than
at any time since leaving Baden.

Over a card-table was spread a white cloth and on it a service for one.
She felt unreasonably disappointed;--if Fanny could have stayed. Once
in, it certainly was like any other place and truly it was nicer.

Her heart had beat a little thickly as she dragged herself up the
stairs with those leaden feet. Certain mysterious things you didn't
do the first time without a feeling ... but she saw herself often in
future coming quietly up those very steps. She would always let Maria
know first, though why she would let Maria know first, instead of just
ringing at the door, she didn't try to explain.

Plenty lay again about her, the dear, familiar forms of Fanny and
Maria were ready to minister to her. She breathed in, as deeply as
the constriction in her chest permitted, the warm comfort of it all,
plenty, affection, in a starving world of old, unwanted women in
garrets--in alcoves.

From above the door Franz Joseph continued to smile paternally down
upon her, opposite him his beautiful and luckless Empress. The banished
Zita and her children struck a further absolving note of innocence
and misfortune. Frau Stacher returned gratefully the benevolent look
her Emperor was bending upon her, remembering that he too, had "had
it hard." As she slipped deeper into that comfortable chair she was
conscious of being so tired, so spent that she feared she could never
again get up. Yet it was almost delicious, the sense of languor--in
that deep chair--in that warm room.

An immense gilt basket in which was planted a young fruit tree in full
blossom stood near one of the windows. It was tied with bright, blue
ribbons, but its flowers were very pale in the hard January light. What
was it doing there in mid-winter? She breathed in the faint scent of
the forced blossoms hovering about the warm air. Ah, how indeed could
she move out of that chair, how close that door behind her on that
atmosphere of welcoming abundance?

She was sitting near the little table on which stood Fanny's collection
of elephants. One in pink jade with ruby eyes seemed to be looking
compassionately at her. Then she wondered, but without impatience, why
Fanny didn't come.

Fanny _was_ taking longer than necessary, but suddenly she had found
that she could not bear to meet her aunt's eyes. Oh, those eyes! They
would gaze at her as children's eyes gaze and she dreaded the feeling
she knew she would have when she met them, right out, in daylight, in
her own house. Behind that closed door Fanny was in a blue funk, Fanny
who would have faced armies without turning a hair, and she fussed
nervously with the objects on her dressing table and kept looking
quite unnecessarily at her shining, softly-rolled back hair with her
hand-glass....

"Why doesn't Fanny come?" her aunt began to ask herself again somewhat
anxiously and in her humility feared it was something connected with
herself. Just then the front door bell rang and she jumped in her
chair, a flush mounting to her face. She couldn't at all have said what
it was she feared might be impending but whatever it was, that ring
made a genteel old lady start up when she was too tired really to move
and blush the bright blush of her long lost youth. Maria ran out of
Fanny's room, in what seemed to her an anxious way, to open the door.
But she only took in a box, a large, flat, pleasant-looking box, the
sort of box Frau Stacher remembered from her own shopping days. She saw
the name Zwieback on it as Maria took it in to the other room. Another
long wait ensued. She could hear whispers and the rustling of tissue
paper.

Then all of a sudden the bedroom door was flung open and Fanny
appeared, holding high up, so that it hid her face, a long, black coat.
In a flash, before a word could be said, Tante Ilde knew that coat was
for her....

Fragrantly, warmly Fanny was bending over her, embracing her; a sudden,
flaming color that had come out of no box was in her cheeks.

"Stand up, Auntie," she was saying in her silver voice, more
embarrassed than she had ever been in any other of the seemingly more
formidable moments of her life.

Tante Ilde turned her wide, soft glance upon her. In a pale, silken
wrapper Fanny was looking as fresh as lilies who have neither sowed
nor spun. It was the same bright, dawnlike face that Tante Ilde knew
so well, there in the cold, grey light of the January day, it recalled
somehow early morning clouds in summer....

She got up as her niece spoke and in another minute that warm, soft
wool, that smooth, satiny lining were enfolding her. It must have cost
a monstrous sum.

"Oh, Fanny," she protested weakly, "to spend all that money on me!"

"Money, what is money?" returned Fanny blithely, her aplomb completely
restored. "You can't keep it nowadays. It just rots if you try. No more
old stocking!" And then she proceeded to throw that practiced eye of
hers over the coat.... Any niece with a beloved aunt.

"Come here," she next cried to Maria and pointed out a button that
needed changing, Tante Ilde was even thinner than they thought, "bring
some pins."

Down on her silken knees she went and put the pin where the button was
to be sewed on again.

Tante Ilde quite forgot that the family instinctively lowered their
voices when speaking of Fanny. She was her brother's child again, her
own little Fannerl, the sweet, soft, laughing, incredibly, brightly,
beautiful maiden of those far away days. Ah, she should have married a
prince!

"You are an angel," she said tremulously keeping back with difficulty
some tears that lay heavily just behind her eyes.

"'Angel' is going a bit far," answered Fanny modestly, though really
delighted in her heart, and she wondered for the thousandth time what
on earth they would have done without her.

"I'm not going out," she said crisply to Maria, "the devil can take the
Bristol. I'm going to stay with Tante Ilde. Bring another cover, and
quick, I'm sure she's hungry,--I'm nearly starved." This last wasn't
quite true, for not so very long before Maria had taken in Fanny's tray
with coffee and cream and a glossy, buttery gipfel, got, Maria and the
cuckoo alone knew from where.

"You look so tired, Auntie dear," said Fanny next.

Her aunt's face was, indeed, quite pinched and very pale in spite of
the fresh glow of her heart, near which, between her shoulders was that
increasingly unpleasant, stabbing sort of pain. But she was a game old
lady. She hadn't yet complained about anything, so she only answered:

"A bit of a cold coming on, that's all."

"I don't think you ought to go to the cemetery with us this afternoon,"
Fanny pursued somewhat anxiously.

"But going in a carriage, and if I wear my warm, new coat?" she
questioned eagerly.

The new coat made the effort seem possible. Not, oh, not at all through
vanity, but a new coat, her own,--she enjoyed, too, in anticipation,
showing it to Irma, though Irma would be sure to say something about it
designed to dim its glory.

Maria was bringing in the oatmeal soup that she had fully intended
since the evening before to make for Frau Stacher ... she knew
Fanny. It was steaming up pleasantly from its little blue and white
tureen and Fanny proceeded to ladle it out generously. She had
pushed the card-table close to her Tante Ilde's chair and drawn up a
little stool for herself on the other side. Frau Stacher took a few
mouthfuls,--delicious, there was certainly some milk in it. Tired as
she was she couldn't be mistaken about there being milk in it, but all
the same she found she wasn't hungry. She forced it down however, to
the last drop; Fanny mustn't think she didn't like it.

Fanny had jumped up restlessly after watching her take the first
spoonful and lighted a cigarette and then sat down again, bending
forward, her elbows on her knees, and her white hand, with its immense
sapphire ring, just one big, square stone, putting the cigarette up
to her red mouth, her rosily manicured finger tips flickering the ash
from it on to the floor. The pale silken sleeves would ripple back and
show Fanny's dimpled elbows. She took a little soup herself, but, like
her aunt, showed no enthusiasm when Maria brought in a cutlet and some
fried potatoes.

Frau Stacher knew well Maria's fine kitchen hand. So many years she
had sat at her brother's table and seen Maria put just such cutlets on
with those unrivalled fried potatoes. Frau Stacher was pierced cruelly
for a moment by the memories these familiar things evoked; the children
sitting around the table, talking and laughing, and her brother Heinie,
who had loved them all impartially, looking indulgently from one to
another. Indeed it seemed the most natural of things to each of the
three women; a thing they'd done a thousand times together.

But after her first mouthful of the cutlet Frau Stacher knew she wasn't
going to be able to eat it. Its odor was delicious, the edges of the
tender veal were goldly brown, and towards the middle of the piece it
could easily be seen how white the meat was.

"I believe you're ill, Tanterl," said Fanny again looking sharply at
her. "You rest here while I take Kaethe and Leo."

"But I want to go with you," she returned imploringly, "I don't want to
leave you."

Tante Ilde couldn't have told why she was so determined to go with
Fanny, but the longing took her out of her usual gently acquiescent
ways.... As if Fanny was to do something solemn, important for her, and
she mustn't be separated from her. As if she had been warned that by
keeping close to Fanny she would avoid some last, some ultimate horror.
It was suddenly as clear as that.

"It's only a little cold I've got," she repeated beseechingly, like a
child imploring some permission.

"As you will," said Fanny sweetly, "I'm only afraid you'll take more
cold at the cemetery."

But Frau Stacher felt again that sudden, almost fierce cleaving to
Fanny, to Kaethe ... to little Carli. Where they went, there she wanted
to go. It seemed to her, too, that she wasn't feeling quite so ill, but
rather afraid to be left alone, even with Maria, nice as that would
be; Maria who would come in and talk about the old, the happy days,
and show her Fanny's things,--Fanny's jewels and gowns. But even so
she wanted to be with her own, her very own. She forced down a morsel
of the cutlet and took a bit of the fried potatoes on her fork but it
was evident to Fanny, and Maria, watching from the door, that she was
eating with difficulty. She had an unbelievable, astonishing repugnance
to the meat, to the fatty smell; then too, she was worrying about
Ferry, thinking all the time that now she must speak of him. It seemed
a mountainous exertion, one she was quite unequal to. But she could
never go back to Irma's unless she did and then, too, she wanted to
help Ferry. But it seemed beyond her strength. Anything except sitting
still and being ministered to was beyond it. Then suddenly as she sat
there toying with her cutlet, she knew that her work was done; though
whence the assurance had come she could not have told. It came, a sort
of glimmering presence, bringing its dim, sweet promise that effort
was ended. Her attention was quite engaged by that lovely, unexpected
presence, and it was as if from a long distance that she heard Fanny
say:

"I think a good, strong cup of coffee, right now, would be the best
thing for you," and then she called to Maria to make it quickly and
make it strong.

The very suggestion acted as a stimulant on Frau Stacher, and she was
able to pull herself together sufficiently to look gratefully at her
niece. Then her eyes wandered again and were caught by that flowering
tree, so spring-like to her age. It's thin fragrance foretold a true
spring that she too old, and it too young, would never see. It was
palely, tenderly confused in her mind with that gleaming presence.
She felt that she must recognize its beauty by some word--perhaps
afterwards she would get around to Ferry. She experienced a slight
timidity at mentioning that plant, however, though why it should awaken
timidity, with that other sentiment of reverence for its beauty, she
could not have told.

"What lovely things grow on the earth!" she ventured finally,
indicating it with the slightest of gestures.

"Yes," answered Fanny indifferently, she was thinking how changed her
aunt was, "but you should see the donkey that sent it."

Frau Stacher thought no more of the plant.

Fanny herself was only toying with the veal cutlet and potatoes. If the
truth be told she was aware of a slight excitement, following on her
first embarrassment, just enough to cut her appetite ... having Tante
Ilde there ... that way.

A pause ensued. They could hear Maria in the kitchen. On an important
occasion like that Maria didn't intend to be alone, behind a closed
door, and miss what they were saying. Maria herself was quite worked
up. She hoped it would be decided for Frau Stacher not to go to the
cemetery and then she would relieve her bosom of a lot of things
pleasant and unpleasant, that really Fanny's aunt, when you had a fine
aunt like that, should know, and besides she longed to show her Fanny's
things. Then she carried in the coffee, an immense cup, its aroma
filled the room, drowning the thin, sweet scent of the forced flowers.

"Just what I needed, Fanny," Tante Ilde said in what seemed to be a
loud tone, with that hammering in her ears; it was really not much more
than a whisper. From the very first swallow she felt herself being
renewed, and as she continued to sip it, a delightful feeling of actual
strength regained came to her. Not go with her dear ones to lay Carli
away? The thought was foolish ... and being driven there and back and
wearing her new coat? She was beginning to feel equal to anything.

"It's _so_ good," she murmured between her genteel little sips and when
Fanny dropped an extra lump of sugar in without asking her, it was
still more sustaining to both body and soul and she drank in longer
swallows the sweet, dark strength.

Then Maria replaced the cutlet by two pieces of Sacher tart, one for
her and one for Fanny. And that, too, was dark and sweet and she was
able to eat it. A bite, a sip of coffee and then another bite, another
sip. She got on really well with it, though for all its pleasing taste
each bite had a way of stopping for a while in her chest.

Then suddenly she knew it was time to speak about Ferry, quite time,
before she took the last swallows.

She reached down by her chair where lay her poor bag and picking it up
she took out the little wooden statue of the woman bent over waiting
for Ferry to put the full pails in her hands.

"Ferry has a lot of talent," she began musingly rather than
informingly, as she passed it across the table to Fanny, "and such an
old knife too, that he did it with. I'd like to give him a new one."

"But naturally, we'll get him the best, with six or eight blades!"
cried Fanny very pleased. Anything they needed except that eternal food
and raiment and fuel was a welcome suggestion. Fanny did love to give
people things they _could_ live without, not just bread and coal and
shoes. It got monotonous to one of her temperament. Even such a little
thing as a knife for a boy struck an agreeably releasing note. She kept
looking at the delicate figure. It imparted a pleasant sensation to her
fingers as she touched it. It was quite evident that Ferry had talent.
All was coming around as Tante Ilde had hoped.

"But Ferry is ill," she continued with her gentlest look. "He has
night-sweats sometimes, and always a little cough."

"Ach, the poor Buberl!" cried Fanny warmly.

"How easy Fanny makes things," her aunt was thinking, yet somehow she
still hesitated.

Fanny was passing her hand again over the little figure which kept
inviting the caress of her long, white fingers, of her soft, rosy palm.

"Hermann says he must go to the country,--a bit high,--if he is to be
saved and at his age one can't delay."

So it was done--as easy as that after all. That little wooden peasant
woman cried out not alone of young talent but of fresh air, the fruits
of the field, you couldn't get away from it, not that Fanny was trying
to; further more the familiar story of family needs, now one thing now
another, chased away the last trace of embarrassment. She was on the
firmest of grounds _there_, only she was thinking again how old and ill
her aunt was looking and did not answer immediately. When she did it
was to exclaim warmly again:

"But naturally! Of course we must send him to the country. Manny will
tell us where." Then Fanny, who was, indeed, as Pauli said, "a good
fellow" and no fool either added, "Don't you want to take the money to
Irma yourself?"

So that was all it was--that stone-heavy act! Light as thistledown
really--because Fanny was Fanny.

Then suddenly as she sat there looking at her, for she knew not how
long, with still unspent treasures of love in her look, she saw that
Fanny's eyes were wet, not because of Ferry either, he could be helped,
but because of other things, things that she, her poor aunt, didn't
know about. She saw that for all Fanny's gayety there were rings around
her lovely eyes and that she was pale under that merest touch of rouge.
The merest touch was all she ever used. She was too wise as well as too
lovely to be the painted woman. Fanny hung out no signs.

Then Frau Stacher found herself saying to her niece who lived just off
the Kaerntner Street:

"Fanny, precious one, you too, have some grief."

Frau Stacher was seeing all things from a great but clear distance.
Things stood out very sharply now that that feverish blur seemed
suddenly to have been wiped from her eyes. It was as if she, Ildefonse
Stacher, stood on a mountain and saw the world, a valleyed plain,
spread out before her. Mortals dwelt in it, doing their little best or
their little worst. Sharp as their figures were it was still too far
to see what exactly was their best and what their worst. Legions of
them. Hosts of them. She saw Fanny fighting under deep-dyed colors,
in an innumerable army of women, drawn up in array against the sons
of other women. The look she bent upon her niece as she turned from
the contemplation of the armies in the plain became more tender, more
grave.

Fanny's eyes flooded with tears under that look; hanging crystal a
moment about her dark lashes, they fell slowly leaving smooth, shining,
white little roads down her cheeks with just that touch of rouge. Such
a little thing as that Frau Stacher could focus her eyes on,--even
after the immensity of the plain.

Fanny went over and knelt by her aunt who had always loved her--who
loved her now--and put her shining head against that thin breast and
wept. Fanny hadn't wept, except in rage, for a long time, and there
were many tears to fall.

"I can't bear it, I can't bear it," she whispered, but she didn't say
what she couldn't bear and Tante Ilde didn't ask her, only pressed that
gleaming head more closely to her. And Fanny should have noticed how
strangely her aunt was breathing when she had her head there against
her breast. But suddenly she got up and said something about her nerves
being "total kaput" and went into her bedroom and closed the door.

Maria crept in from the kitchen.

"It's the Count," she whispered, "I'm afraid we're going to lose him.
Fanny adores the ground he walks on. A fine gentleman, a Cavalier,"
(Maria pronounced it "cawlier" in her soft, thick Viennese) "but not a
kreutzer to bless himself with and a South American girl whose Papa has
more head of cattle than in all Europe, is crazy about him and wants
to marry him. Whatever we'll do, I don't know. She's that jumpy when
the bell rings, she's afraid it's bad news coming in at the door. His
family is ruined by the Peace and his father commanding and his mother
praying him to save them, and four unmarried sisters too. A bad mess
we're in and what will be the end? I went to the fortune-teller a week
ago,--a wonder,--and she saw cattle, cattle everywhere and told me I
was to beware of them, but how can I beware of stupid cattle stamping
about in South America?" asked Maria helplessly, resentfully. "I knew
all the time what she meant--and saying, too, that she saw a letter
coming. Oh, I've been that worried! Naturally I haven't told Fanny, but
I've been waiting for that letter ever since. You don't know Fanny,"
Maria's eyes filled with tears, "one day she says she will kill herself
and another that she's going into a convent," she whispered dismally,
after a cautious look at the closed door; "and if Fanny ever gets
started _that_ way, she'll make Maria Magdalena look about like this,"
and she proceeded to measure a negligible quantity of the surrounding
atmosphere between her thumb and forefinger. There was, however, pride
in her voice.

Frau Stacher was listening vaguely. For all her deep interest in Fanny,
she was finding it difficult to focus her thoughts. Things were getting
blurred again.

Maria kept on, a warning note in her voice, "I'll feel sorry for the
family if Fanny doesn't hold out," (Maria, it will be seen, was at
the other side of "holding out"--the far side.) "She bought the villa
at Moedling last year and we put a lot of money in England through a
Jew," here Maria was quite contemptuous ... "but," she added in another
and fondly indulgent tone, "we had to let the Count, his people were
starving, have a lot of that. We still get some income from it, but
there are so many of us, and if Fanny should lose her nerve,"--Maria
broke off; only she didn't use the ordinary word for "nerve" but the
famous Vienna expression "Hamur," which means, beside nerve, a lot of
things that are both more and less.

Tears overflowed her small, dark, friendly eyes. There was no nonsense
about Maria. She adored Fanny, she was proud of Fanny and to have
the revered aunt sitting there made a priceless occasion on which to
relieve her feelings. Crossing her arms over her ample bosom she went
on:

"She gives everything away, not only to the family and naturally to
the Count, but yesterday--will you believe it,--to a shameless hussy,
no better than she should be, she gave a heap of money to keep her out
of the hospital, where she truly belongs. I told Fanny where I thought
she'd end herself if she didn't look out, but Fanny" ... she broke off
suddenly as the bedroom door opened.

"What are you gossiping about?" Fanny cried sharply to her, "Didn't
you hear the door bell ring?" Then as it rang again a contraction
passed over her face and she started to the door herself.

But Maria, in spite of her avoirdupois, was out like lightning. After a
moment's parleying in the hall she was back.

"Nothing," she said looking fondly, relievèdly at Fanny, "It's only to
say the carriage is there."

Fanny went slowly back into her room followed by Maria who shut the
door. Frau Stacher left alone, almost immediately fell into a doze; her
eyes closed heavily and she slipped deeply into the big chair. But she
couldn't quite lose herself for she had a feeling that it would soon be
time to go and kept trying to keep herself awake.

She sat up sharply, with a start, when Fanny reappeared, how long after
she could not have told, in a black costume whose long, fur-trimmed
cape fell smartly about her form. A tiny black velvet hat from which
she had just torn the cunningly, expensively placed blue aigrette, put
her eyes in a becoming, melancholy shadow. She had an extra pair of
black gloves in her hand and a fine dark leather bag that she had done
with, to replace the "horror" as she called it to herself that her aunt
was using.

"You've got such dear little hands," she was saying as she held out the
gloves, "These ar'n't big enough for me. I paid a heathen price for
them, and this bag's a bit handier than yours." But in spite of her
pleasant words, her pallor was so extreme as she held out the gloves
and bag, that her aunt whose eyes were again very bright and not alone
with fever, noted it anxiously.

"Oh, my little, little Fanny," she cried in quite a strong voice,
and even held out her arms. She shared, in a way she could not have
expressed, Fanny's grief whatever it was. She didn't want Fanny, dear,
gold Fanny to suffer. Fanny _mustn't_ suffer. Fanny _mustn't_ weep. She
wanted to live a long, long time, even uncomfortably, denudedly, so
that out of the whole careless world, Fanny might always have someone
who truly loved her.

Then she became aware, for the first time, of something that intimately
concerned herself. The shape and color of her own life.... Loving the
children of three other women had been _her_ life. Her middle class
life, undisturbing and for so long undisturbed. One day, one year, like
another, always loving the children of three other women ... looking
through the same windows at the same things. And suddenly now Fanny's
world, Fanny's strange world.... It had other horizons, red horizons
behind dark mountains with their secrets. But of these secrets her
aunt was not thinking. She only knew, as she stood close to Fanny,
that it was her own flesh and blood that was suffering,--beautiful and
suffering.

How Fanny's beauty threw a bright, blinding cloud about everything that
concerned her! She said again:

"My darling child, my beautiful child, don't weep," as Fanny pressed
against her, and she comforted her as she might have done in the far
off years for girlish griefs. Had she reflected she might have changed
her old motto into "Beauty stays, Virtue goes."

She was breaking in Fanny's house for a last time her alabaster box of
precious spikenard. From it, in the blue room, a strong fragrance came,
over-powering the scent of lily of the valley from an expensive shop in
the Graben that hung about Fanny's clothes, and the thin perfume of the
too-early blossomed plant. She was thinking only of Fanny's generosity
and why she could indulge those many generous impulses she thought not
at all,--just as if the family didn't lower their voices when speaking
of Fanny and look around to see that the children weren't there. She
felt, too, intimately joined to Fanny. Deeply beneath consciousness was
that feeling that Fanny was yet to give her something essential, had
some ultimate gift for her, that she must be there to receive.... That
it was to be her deathbed she didn't know. She only felt that something
final and priceless would come through Fanny.

And truly 'tis a great thing to give any one. For mostly each one, no
matter how he wanders or is denuded, has, in some strange way, his own.

       *       *       *       *       *

They were driving slowly up over the noisy cobble stones of the
Jacquingasse on their way to the cemetery, Kaethe and Fanny and Tante
Ilde on the back seat of the big, black mourning coach. Kaethe, wedged
between them, was holding on her lap the white wreath. Opposite sat the
Professor. On his knees for a last time was Carli; Carli in his little
white box; Carli on his first and only journey.

The sable horses struck the cobble stones with their slow, accustomed
beat. It seemed to Frau Stacher the loudest sound she had ever
heard, and "some day for you, some day for you" seemed cadenced
unmistakably....

In the dark Minorite church Fanny had been a model of piety and
recollection. She crossed herself so slowly, so devoutly. She buried
her face in her hands and knelt long without fidgeting on the hard,
uncomfortable stool. She took holy water and held a tip of her finger
to Kaethe as they went out and then to Tante Ilde and to Leo. She and
Kaethe had always loved each other very much. Fanny after her wont was
going through the afternoon without stint or sloppiness. It would be,
in her hands, an "entire" matter.

As they drove along Kaethe rested her head on her sister's warm,
scented shoulder. Her eyes were dry, but her face was haggard from the
night.

No one noticed that Tante Ilde didn't say a word. Kaethe and Leo were
with their child a last time and Fanny, who generally selected pleasant
things to do, was finding it more wearing than she had thought and
was plunged in her own reflections. At one moment she said to herself
"I'm not going to be able to stick it out," and forgot their griefs
and miserably let her thoughts turn to the man she truly loved, and
if everything in the world, every last thing, had been different....
Then suddenly she fell to cursing in her heart a certain predatory
gentleman whom she had known in the "beginning," no, before the
"beginning," but she pulled herself up round, that carriage was no
place for curses, neither was it the moment. Then she caught sight of
her face above Eberhardt's right shoulder. It was distinctly mirrored
in the reflecting surface of the glass at his back, formed by the heavy
black flaps of the driver's coat. It was white, white as the coffin
on Eberhardt's lap, and the eyes were deep, dark pits, almost as if
the flesh had fallen away from them. She was horribly frightened. What
was the warm thing that went out of you and after it went out you were
put in a box?... She jerked her head so that it slipped from view. But
she got Tante Ilde's instead.... It was just dreadful.... All right as
long as you lived, but there came a time when beauty, which had been
so helpful, was clearly of no avail.... The activities of family and
town were concentrated on getting you into a box and then ... Fanny who
believed in hell and damnation, drew in her breath shudderingly. She
was thankful to feel Kaethe's warm, living head against her shoulder.
She wasn't dead yet--she was suddenly sure, too, that she'd have "time
to repent." She quite brightened up, and as she never did anything by
halves was apparently entirely herself by the time they got to the
cemetery.

Fanny in the bosom of her family, for once taking charge of things in
person, not just paying from a distance, was really worth seeing. Fanny
at last visibly the source of whatever mercies they received. Fanny,
as Pauli so truly called her, the family Doxology ... according to the
mysterious permissions of God the source of their only blessings.

Fanny weeping and praying by the little grave, supporting the stricken
mother--her sister, and laying on it the big wreath. Fanny taking them
to the café near the cemetery and giving them hot coffee after their
cold grief....

It was Fanny, too, who, when some extraordinarily stubbly semmels were
served with it, bearing not the slightest resemblance to the anciently
far-famed Viennese rolls, scolded the shambling, flat-footed waiter
and said loudly it was a "shame" and "disgusting," and ended by going
over to the desk and saying something in a lower tone to the gaunt
woman who sat there. The woman had promptly produced some coffee cake
and some crescents kept only for rich grief. She was used to pale,
tear-washed faces. Every day, every day, they came in and went out.
She had seen many a strange alteration in their looks after that hot
coffee, even after ersatz coffee. People kept on living for all they
had that momentary feeling that they couldn't. She had sat at that desk
for twenty years. Grief, she knew it, all kinds, ... and they kept on
living.

Even Kaethe, though her throat was stiff and dry with mother-grief,
even Kaethe had taken her coffee.

But Tante Ilde made no pretense at drinking hers, not even a sip.
Those little shivers had changed into a continuous trembling. She felt
both hot and cold. Her eyes were filmy. The only thing she wanted to
do really was to lie down, never to move again, to give way to that
over-powering lassitude that she could no longer struggle against.
She was only vaguely worried because she'd lost the new bag; dropped
it at the grave probably, though when Eberhardt went back to get it,
immediately when she noticed its loss, on coming out of the cemetery,
it had already vanished from the earth. After her first dismay, she
had strangely not cared, and now she was murmuring something about the
alcove, not at all what any of the others were thinking or talking of.

Suddenly Kaethe, startled out of her own grief at a trembling motion of
her aunt's shoulders, had looked at her in alarm.

"But what is the matter, Tante Ilde?" she asked.

"Why, she's really ill!" cried Fanny sharply, "we've got to get her
home."

Her aunt hearing the word home muttered once more something about the
alcove. Her face was ashen, but her pale, wide eyes shone strangely
through the film that again threatened to veil them.

"We must go right away," Fanny cried and hastily paid for the coffee.

Her aunt didn't even hear her. All her strength was engaged in getting
totteringly to the door, the professor's arm about her.

"I'm going to take her with me," Fanny whispered to Kaethe as they
followed out to get into the coach.

Kaethe looked at her deeply, there was much love in her glance, but she
only said:

"I don't think she likes it at Irma's. Irma's so fierce and she's so
gentle."

"Sour stick," said Fanny as usual when referring to her step-mother.
"I'll just keep her with me, for a day or two, till she's better," she
continued thinking boldly, swiftly, "Maria can look after her."

It seemed suddenly the most natural thing in the world to have Tante
Ilde with her for a day or two.

"Fanny, how good you are to us all," Kaethe whispered to her sister.

"Good--nothing!" said Fanny. But virtue was, all the same, its own
quite sufficient reward at that moment, though she felt horribly
self-reproachful at the thought that sometimes she'd let them go for
months ... suppose they had all died!

Tante Ilde kept slipping down between her nieces in the carriage,
though they were supporting her as well as they could. Her head was
hanging over her breast. She wanted to sleep, even bumping along over
those cobble stones. They all watched her anxiously. Once Fanny, her
nerves quite on edge, leaned out of the window and screamed to the
driver in a horrible voice that the others didn't recognize: "You,
sheepshead! Get along!"

Then somewhat restored she drew her head in and after a few minutes,
opening her immense gold bag gave Kaethe some money. No, Fanny wasn't
doing things by halves that day.

"Get something nice for supper,--for the children," she added with
sudden tears that were for the living children--no more for Carli who
was really forever safe, though they seemed to have left him alone, in
that chill Vienna earth, under that darkening January sky....

Frau Stacher scarcely knew how they got her upstairs. Only as from a
great distance she heard Maria's "Jesus, Marie, Josef!" as they went
in. She was beyond any more definite impression than that she had
ceased to struggle. Fortitude, cruel virtue, were no longer demanded of
her.

When she was gently laid on Fanny's bed she was conscious at first
of its soft comfort under her aching body. They were taking off her
clothes. She wished, but not anxiously, nor even ashamedly, that her
chemise had not been so old or so grey from being always washed out in
her little basin, but it didn't really matter she knew, and she quite
forgot about it when something fresh and silken and scented took its
place, lying smoothly against her back with its hot point of pain.

"Alcove," she continued to mutter from time to time between stertorous
breathings.

"Why's she talking so much about an alcove?" whispered Fanny to Maria
as they sat by the bed waiting for Hermann, whom Eberhardt was to get
and send back in the mourning coach.

"It's where she sleeps at Frau Irma's,--a sort of alcove, off the
living room. She's got her old brown divan in it, you remember in
Baden, but she needs a room of her own. When you get old you need to
have a door to close, and then Frau Irma is not always easy."

"Easy? A porcupine," Fanny whispered back and added something about
Croatians in general not complimentary to that former Crownland. Then
she looked restlessly at her watch.

"Why doesn't he come? Maria, I'm afraid," she ended with a break in her
voice.

"It _is_ going badly with her," nervously admitted Maria, who had once
been a great one at sick beds and who, when it was not so personal,
loved to be in at a death.

Frau Stacher's breathing was indeed very noisy. It whistled through her
thin chest, it came in gasps from her blue mouth.

"Do you think she's going to die?" cried Fanny suddenly in panic. "We'd
better get a priest anyway, only the poor heathen die without one!"

Fanny had always been interested in foreign missions and was in the
habit of giving propitiatory sums to the church when she got panicky,
for the purpose of conversions....

A ring at the door, a firm, long ring caused Maria to jump up.

It was Hermann, Hermann of the old days, despite his right arm hanging
straight, Hermann completely professional, quiet, strong, but loving
too.

He gave one look at his Tante Ilde.

"Pneumonia," he said, "she's been ill for a couple of days," and he
started to do the little there was to be done.

"But she never said anything except that she had a bit of a cold, the
angel, and going to the cemetery too!" answered Fanny aghast.

"To the cemetery in such a state!" he echoed in astonishment, "why she
won't get through the night. Fanny--I'm glad she's here."

As the brother and sister looked at each other their eyes filled with
tears. The way life was....

"I'm afraid she's already begun her agony," he whispered a few minutes
later, "dear, good, sweet Tante Ilde."

But he wrote a prescription for Maria to take out.

"It may last longer than we think. It's sometimes so hard for them to
go, even when they've nothing to stay for, but we can try to make it
easy for her."

Fanny ran out of the room after Maria.

"Go to the Kapuziners and bring some one back and quick," she whispered
imperatively.

Then she returned to the bedside. Hermann was bending over his aunt,
raising her up and Fanny ran again and got some of the softest cushions
from the blue divan, to put high, high under her head.

Suddenly Tante Ilde opened her eyes.

"Manny, dear, good Manny!" she cried, quite loud, then, "Fanny,
darling, you won't forget little Ferry?"

And then she called for Corinne, and called again and again. She loved
them all equally, but the flavor of Corinne's being was the flavor
of her own, Ildefonse Stacher's being, and that made a strange, an
essential difference at the end....

But at that very minute Corinne was sitting in a little restaurant
with Pauli, close together on a narrow, leather bench in a corner,
and Pauli's dark, small hand lay closely, hotly over hers. After they
had eaten he was going to take her to Kaethe's,--not to Fanny's where
a more merciful Fate would have lead them. And that is why stupidly,
horribly, Corinne was always to think, she wasn't at home when Maria
came to get her....

As Tante Ilde lay calling for Corinne, with her blue eyes widely open,
neither Fanny nor Hermann could know that flashingly, she was seeing,
as the day before, Pauli's dark, turquoise-ringed hand clasped tightly
over the slim whiteness of Corinne's, and that she was very frightened
for Corinne. She closed her eyes flutteringly several times, but still
she saw their hands. Then suddenly the cavities under her brow grew
very deep and she gave a long, whistling gasp.

"Not yet," whispered Hermann, seizing Fanny's hand, for at the sight
she had burst into wild weeping, "but soon,--dear, dear Auntie,"
and from his voice there was momentarily released all the pent-up
tenderness of his great heart. It flooded the room. It surged warmly
about his sister, about his dying aunt....

Then Frau Ildefonse Stacher, born von Berg, began to pluck at the sheet
and talk in snatches of Baden and of Heinie, her brother, their father.
Once she smiled, but they didn't know that it was because the bed was
so soft and she was so comfortable, quite knowing that she would never
have to move again.... And certainly if this was dying it wasn't at all
what people thought.

       *       *       *       *       *

Maria's key was in the door ... Maria's voice was respectfully ushering
someone into that silk-hung chamber,--a dark-bearded, deep-eyed
Capuchin monk. He threw back widely his brown-hooded cloak, and as he
did so glanced enfoldingly at the dying woman without a single other
look about the room. His work lay there....

Frau Stacher had fallen into a last unconsciousness, but her breathing
was still terribly loud, like wind through a vacant room. Fanny on her
knees by the bed, was weeping and praying and kissing her aunt's thin
hand rather extravagantly, after her way.

The monk's eyes, accustomed to the sight of death, knew without a
word from Hermann that the end was very near. On the little, white,
lace-covered table by the bed, on which Maria had placed a lighted
candle, a basin of water and a towel, he laid the Blessed Oils, those
final oils with which he was to anoint Frau Stacher's noisy tenement,
commending it to mercy....

Her broad-lidded blue eyes, that through tears would look no more on
misery, no more on starving children, no, never anymore....

Her ears, that would hear no further cries of woe, nor any unprofitable
discourse....

Her nostrils, that would no more weakly dilate at smell of needed
food....

Her tongue, that would frame no more its words of gentle, helpless
pity....

Her hands, that had once given so freely, would be held out no more to
receive. Never again would she have to suffer humble uncertainty for
the gifts of food and raiment. The body, no longer needing food, was
itself become as raiment, cast off....

Her feet, that had forever fallen away from the ranks of those who in
aged misery still flitted through the wintry streets of Vienna seeking
their midday meal of charity ... the Mariahilferstrasse, endless, the
Alserstrasse separated from the Hoher Markt by so many wide, open
places, the narrow, crowded Kaerntnerstrasse and all those other
streets that had sounded a last time to her diminished step....

Irma would never again give her the thin part of the soup, and never
again would she watch to see that her sister-in-law drew back the
curtains of the alcove. Alcove! Ildefonse Stacher, born von Berg, in
the name of Principalities and Powers, in the name of the Cherubim and
Seraphim, was about to take possession of her whole heavenly mansion,
her very own from all time unto all time, and big and beautiful.

       *       *       *       *       *

Fanny not only buried her aunt decently, but splendidly as such things
in such times were rated. A Requiem Mass was sung at the Capuchin
Church. Expensive wreaths were ordered in the name of each niece for
which Fanny herself paid; (except for Mizzi's, Mizzi got the bill,
unjustly, she considered, and she ran into the office and said some
horrible things to Hermann when it came)....

They were but more tokens of Fanny, those many flowers, Fanny
inescapably, confusingly beneficent to the end. Wet with the dew of the
Church's blessing, they almost concealed Tante Ilde's coffin, as to the
sound of those sable horses over the cobbly streets she was carried to
her grave ... at last to be alone behind the heaviest door known to
mortals....

As they drove back, each was saying in one or another tone, "what a
pity," that Tante Ilde couldn't have been there to enjoy it in her
fine, gentle way, and that if they had known she was going to die so
soon they would have arranged differently. They had spoken of Baden,
too, and of childhood things. They had mourned, yes, but their
mourning, as would have been any cheer, was after their several and
varying natures.

Anna had not gone to Fanny's to see her aunt laid out. No, indeed! She
and Hermine went only to the church and cemetery, as likewise did four
of Kaethe's children and Irma and her boys. Hermine had been all eyes
for her veiled, but still discernibly lovely aunt, whose crisp, deep
black stood out cypress-like against the greyer, cheaper hues of the
other mourning figures, and she had been pleasantly conscious of a sort
of pricking interest in some one in her very own family who, by all
accounts, would go straight to Hell when she died.

Ferry had wept over-much for his strength and years, but Resl in her
high, true voice had sung "In Paradise, In Paradise" about the house
for days.

Liesel, after a long discussion with Otto, who was born knowing what
happened to husbands who didn't look after their wives, had gone,
safely and properly accompanied by him, to take a last look at her aunt
as she lay in Fanny's darkened salon, candles at her head and feet, and
all those flowers,--in January. So great was the majesty clothing the
features of "poor, old Tante Ilde," that fear suddenly entered into
Liesel's rippling, shallow soul, and she got confused, and afterwards,
to her annoyance, she could only remember vaguely that everything was
blue and that over the divan was a silken cover picked out in what
seemed to be silver rose-buds. Donkey that _she_ was, she hadn't
noticed the jeweled elephants either, nor the rabbits of which she had
heard so much. Otto couldn't help her out in the slightest,--no more
than a blind man. No, Liesel decidedly hadn't had her pleasant wits
about her that day and she keenly regretted not having taken better
advantage of her one opportunity.

Fanny had not shown herself. Maria robed fittingly in deepest black,
the expression on her face almost as sombre as her garb, saw through,
competently and proudly, the visits of the sorrowing nieces.

Mizzi had been all honey, though she thought Fanny was decidedly
over-doing things, and had given Maria a present of money, which Maria
considered long due and took with small thanks. She couldn't abide
Mizzi anyway.

Leo and Kaethe slipped in grievingly to continue their weeping by that
second bier; Kaethe was greatly comforted by thinking that Carli and
Tante Ilde were, even then, together.

Hermann came no more. Beloved dead,--he couldn't bear it--the cold
body--and all he knew about it. No, no.

Corinne whose sorrow was as deep as her being, spent two nights
watching by her Dresden china aunt, now done in palest ivory. She felt
as if she herself had destroyed her. When you had a fragile treasure
like that and threw it literally into the streets....

But Fanny mingled her bright tears so healingly with her sister's
that the last night, as they sat near their Tante Ilde, they found
themselves talking softly, smilingly even, of familiar little things
that once had made her smile. The flickering light of the candles at
her head and feet met the silver crucifix on her breast, shimmered on
the silver hair flat above the still, pale forehead.... The same light
caught with a greedy, leaping flame the young, living gold of the two
bowed heads....

But after a while except for the memory of the splendid funeral Fanny
gave her, getting dimmer even that, in the hearts of those she had
truly loved, it would soon be to everyone except Tante Ilde herself,
busied timelessly in one of many mansions, as if she had never been.





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