The Song Of Songs Part 6

He pa.s.sed his exquisitely cherished left hand over his shining bald pate and straw-coloured beard, beneath which a worldly mouth half concealed an epicurean smile.

"My wards all make their way in the world," he continued. "It's my pride to have them succeed. The way they do it--well, that's my affair, a business secret, so to say. I am convinced, my child, that you, too, will get along. If I didn't think so, I should not be so interested in you probably. The first thing is to get the young ladies the right positions. The homely ones give most trouble, unless they happen to possess a certain measure of self-abnegation. It pays them to a.s.sume the so-called Christian virtues. But of course you don't belong in that category--you probably know it yourself--I tell you merely that you may learn with time to make demands. I must explain--the main art in life is to determine the boundary line between demands justifiable and demands unjustifiable. That is, you must have a feeling for exactly how far your powers will reach in each circ.u.mstance as it arises. A girl like you--"

The managing clerk, a tall, bony fellow, suddenly appeared at the lawyer's side shoving a bundle of doc.u.ments at him.

"At four o'clock the Labischin divorce case. At quarter past five Reimann--Reimann _vs._ Fa.s.sbender--get everything ready, and have someone here to accompany this young lady--the papers will tell you where. That will do."

The managing clerk vanished.

"Well," Lilly's guardian resumed, "the time I have to spare for you is nearly gone. You cannot continue with your schooling, that's plain.

There's no money for it. But even if you had the means, I'm not certain whether in view of your future--however, a governess may make a brilliant match--it sometimes occurs, chiefly, to be sure, in English novels--but there's the danger, too, that you might--excuse me for the word--on the spur of the moment I can't think of another--besides, it's the right one--that you might be seduced. What I'd rather see you than anything else is the lady in a large photographic establishment who receives customers. But it seems to me you haven't enough self-confidence as yet for that. One must make a deep impression at first sight, because people who leave an order have to have some inducement for coming back to call for their pictures. I've selected something else for you, for the purpose more of giving you a short period of trial than of providing you with a permanent position.

It's in a circulating library. It will give you plenty of opportunity--discreetly, you know--not to hide your light under a bushel. The remuneration, I need scarcely say, will be moderate--free board and lodging and twenty marks a month. You will have a chance to let your fancy--I suppose you're not yet _blase_--let your fancy roam at will in the fields of general literature. There you are, young lady!

Mercy on us! Why are you crying?"

Lilly quickly dried the tears from her eyes and cheeks.

"I've just come from the hospital," was the only excuse she could find.

"I'm still a little--I beg your pardon."

The prominent lawyer shook his head. His bald spot looked as petted and pampered as a lovely woman's cheeks.

"You must get out of the habit of crying, too, if you want to make your way in the world. Tears are not in place until you are 'settled.' Oh, yes, something else--the things your poor mother owned must be sold. The proceeds will serve as a small capital. I lay stress on having such a sum, no matter how insignificant. Now you will go back to your home with my man--the key was deposited at my office--and select what you think you absolutely need or"--he smiled a little--"what filial devotion leads you to prize. Good-by, my dear. In six months come to me again."

Lilly felt a cool, soft hand, which seemed incapable of bestowing a pressure, lie in her own for an instant; then she found herself staggering down the dark steps behind a clerk who had been waiting for her outside the door with the key to her home.

She wanted to speak to him, ask him questions, beg him for something.

But for what? She herself knew not.

When the clerk opened up the musty room, where the twilight was broken by shafts of light, as in a tomb, the tomb of her life, the tomb of her youth, Lilly felt that now everything was over and all left her was to fall asleep here and die.

The clerk threw the shutters back and raised the windows.

The clothes were still lying on the bed, the underwear and bed-linen on the floor, and close by were two brown stains, the blood that had flowed from her wound. The knife, too, was still there.

Lilly restrained her desire to cry, shamed by the presence of the clerk, who stood there stupidly, whistling, with his lower lip thrust out.

Lilly threw her clothes into the basket-trunk which her mother had intended to use in moving to the nine-room apartment, added a few pieces of underwear and some books chosen at random, and then looked around for mementos. Her brain was befogged. She saw everything and recognised nothing. But there on the table, there, bound with rubber bands, soaked in her blood, untouched because no one knew its value, lay the Song of Songs.

Lilly s.n.a.t.c.hed it up, shut down the trunk lid, and with the score under her arm, stepped out into the new life, hungry for experience.

CHAPTER VI

Mrs. Asmussen's two daughters had run away from home again. The whole neighbourhood knew it. Lilly had scarcely set foot in the dusky room smelling of dust and leather, where soiled volumes on pine shelves reached to the ceiling, when she, too, became acquainted with the fact.

Mrs. Asmussen was a dignified dame, whom nature had endowed with gracious rotundity. She received Lilly at the entrance to her circulating library, and amid kisses and tears declared that even before seeing Lilly she had conceived a love for her such as she would cherish for a child of her own; and now that she had met her face to face she was completely bewitched.

"And people speak of the cold world," thought Lilly, whom this sort of reception pleased very well.

"What did I say--a child of my _own_? Nonsense! I love you more, much more, ever and ever and ever so much more. Daughters are venomous serpents, on whom love is wasted. They are parasites to be torn from one's breast--torn--"

She stopped because the stupid clerk, who had accompanied Lilly in a cab, was shoving her trunk over the threshold. After he left Mrs.

Asmussen continued:

"Do you think I loved my daughters, or didn't love them? Did I, or did I not, say to them every day: 'Your father's a blackguard, a cur, and may the devil take him'? How do you think they rewarded me? One morning I get up and find they're gone--mind you, absolutely gone--beds empty--and a note on the table: 'We're going to father. You beat us too much, and we're sick and tired of that eternal mush.' Look at me, my dear. Am I not goodness itself? Do I look as if I could beat _any_body, much less my own daughters? And do you suppose this is the first time they did it, the first time they overwhelmed me with shame and disgrace in the eyes of the whole world? What would you say if I were to tell you it's the _third_ time--twice before I pardoned them and took them to my bosom. I found them lying outside my door in tears and rags. Yes, yes, that's the way it was, that's the way it is, the way it is. But if they dare to return _again_, here's a broom, here, look, behind the door--I put it there the instant I found out they had gone, and there it will remain until I take hold of it and beat them out, beat them out through the door to the street, this way, this way, this way--"

With a gesture of ineffable disgust Mrs. Asmussen swept an invisible something through the hall, and let it lie outside, giving it a look of unspeakable contempt.

"The poor, poor woman," thought Lilly. "How she must have suffered!" And she registered a silent vow to do her utmost to replace the faithless children in the abandoned mother's heart.

At this point a young man entered, a customer, who wanted to exchange a book. He asked for one of Zola's works, and looked at Lilly triumphantly, as if to say, "You see, that's the kind I am!"

Mrs. Asmussen went to fetch the book, shaking her head softly in deprecation. The customer took it hastily without paying the least attention to the look of warning with which she handed it to him.

"Look, my dear," she said after he left, "that's the way youth goes to its ruin, and I myself am condemned to point the way."

"How?" queried Lilly, who had been listening with the keenest interest.

"Do you know what's inside an apothecary's shop?"

Lilly said she had often been in an apothecary's shop, but could not itemise the contents.

Her mistress continued:

"One closet is marked 'Poisons.' It contains the most awful poisons mankind knows. That's why it's always locked and only the owner and his a.s.sistant may have the key to it. Now look about you. Half of what you see here is poison, too. Everything written these days vitiates the soul and lures it to its destruction. Yet I must keep the wicked books, and though my heart bleeds I must hand them over to any and everybody who asks for them. Oh, I need but to think of my undutiful daughters. No use my telling them not to--they read at any rate. They read and read the whole night long, and when they were crammed full of impudence and corruption, they didn't like the food I prepared for them, and all they wanted to do was to go out walking. On top of it all they went sneaking off to their father, that miserable cur, that common cheat, that pock-marked sc.u.m of the earth. Child, I warn you against that man.

Should you ever meet him, lift your skirts and spit, the way I'm spitting now."

Lilly shuddered at the man's frightful vileness, but took some courage in the thought that she had found her natural protector in this excellent woman.

An hour later they went to supper, which consisted of mush and sandwiches, with nothing but clarified fat between. Lilly, whose palate had not been pampered, was easily persuaded that n.o.body in the world knew how to prepare such dainty mush, and that the emperor himself was seldom served with more delicious sandwiches. Had a little ham been added to the repast, such as she had gotten for supper every evening at the hospital, the acme of earthly enjoyments in her opinion would have been attained.

Going to bed provided her with another pleasure. The books of the circulating library were kept in a large room with three windows, divided into four compartments by two bookcases running from the windowed wall deep into the room and by a counter opposite the door leading into the hall. A pa.s.sageway along the wall dividing the library from the inner room was the only means of getting from one compartment to another.

When bedtime came Mrs. Asmussen had Lilly carry to the compartment farthest from the hall door two bench-like pieces of furniture and mount a spring-mattress on them. This completely blocked the s.p.a.ce crosswise, so that, to get into bed, Lilly had to jump over the bottom rail of the benches. She thought it great sport.

Wedged in between perpendicular bookcases, the window-sill at her head, a chair holding her impedimenta at her feet, the Song of Songs clasped in her arms, Lilly fell asleep.

The next morning her apprenticeship began.

Lilly was instructed as to the system according to which the thousands of volumes were ranged on the shelves. As she knew her A B C's, she would have been able to fetch any book from its place at the end of five minutes if only Mrs. Asmussen had followed her own scheme and not produced utter confusion by disposing the books arbitrarily.

Still harder a task was finding records in the large ledger. Here, too, the plan was supposed to be alphabetic; but some customers filled the s.p.a.ce allotted to them more rapidly than others, and when there was no more room Mrs. Asmussen had simply turned to the next blank page regardless of alphabetic succession. The result was such a jumble that finally neither Mrs. Asmussen nor her decamped daughters knew where to look for what they wanted.

Inspired by holy zeal Lilly began the great task of getting order out of chaos. This const.i.tuted her entire life.