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Title:      The Captain's Doll (1923)
Author:     D. H. Lawrence
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.:  0200841.txt
Edition:    1
Language:   English
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Date first posted:          November 2002
Date most recently updated: November 2002

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A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

Title:      The Captain's Doll (1923)
Author:     D. H. Lawrence





I


'Hannele!'

'Ja--a.'

'Wo bist du?'

'Hier.'

'Wo dann?'

Hannele did not lift her head from her work.  She sat in a low
chair under a reading-lamp, a basket of coloured silk pieces beside
her, and in her hands a doll, or mannikin, which she was dressing.
She was doing something to the knee of the mannikin, so that the
poor little gentleman flourished head downwards with arms wildly
tossed out.  And it was not at all seemly, because the doll was a
Scotch soldier in tight-fitting tartan trews.

There was a tap at the door, and the same voice, a woman's,
calling:

'Hannele?'

'Ja--a!'

'Are you here?  Are you alone?' asked the voice in German.

'Yes--come in.'

Hannele did not sound very encouraging.  She turned round her doll
as the door opened, and straightened his coat.  A dark-eyed young
woman peeped in through the door, with a roguish coyness.  She was
dressed fashionably for the street, in a thick cape-wrap, and a
little black hat pulled down to her ears.

'Quite, quite alone!' said the newcomer, in a tone of wonder.
'Where is he, then?'

'That I don't know,' said Hannele.

'And you sit here alone and wait for him?  But no!  That I call
courage!  Aren't you afraid?'  Mitchka strolled across to her
friend.

'Why shall I be afraid?' said Hannele curtly.

'But no!  And what are you doing?  Another puppet!  He is a good
one, though!  Ha--ha--ha!  HIM!  It is him!  No--no--that is too
beautiful!  No--that is too beautiful, Hannele.  It is him--exactly
him.  Only the trousers.'

'He wears those trousers too,' said Hannele, standing her doll on
her knee.  It was a perfect portrait of an officer of a Scottish
regiment, slender, delicately made, with a slight, elegant stoop of
the shoulders and close-fitting tartan trousers.  The face was
beautifully modelled, and a wonderful portrait, dark-skinned, with
a little, close-cut, dark moustache, and wide-open dark eyes, and
that air of aloofness and perfect diffidence which marks an officer
and a gentleman.

Mitchka bent forward, studying the doll.  She was a handsome woman
with a warm, dark golden skin and clear black eyebrows over her
russet-brown eyes.

'No,' she whispered to herself, as if awe-struck.  'That is him.
That is him.  Only not the trousers.  Beautiful, though, the
trousers.  Has he really such beautiful fine legs?'

Hannele did not answer.

'Exactly him.  Just as finished as he is.  Just as complete.  He is
just like that: finished off.  Has he seen it?'

'No,' said Hannele.

'What will he say, then?'  She started.  Her quick ear had caught a
sound on the stone stairs.  A look of fear came to her face.  She
flew to the door and out of the room, closing the door to behind
her.

'Who is it?' her voice was heard calling anxiously down the stairs.

The answer came in German.  Mitchka immediately opened the door
again and came back to join Hannele.

'Only Martin,' she said.

She stood waiting.  A man appeared in the doorway--erect, military.

'Ah!  Countess Hannele,' he said in his quick, precise way, as he
stood on the threshold in the distance.  'May one come in?'

'Yes, come in,' said Hannele.

The man entered with a quick, military step, bowed, and kissed the
hand of the woman who was sewing the doll.  Then, much more
intimately, he touched Mitchka's hands with his lips.

Mitchka meanwhile was glancing round the room.  It was a very large
attic, with the ceiling sloping and then bending in two handsome
movements towards the walls.  The light from the dark-shaded
reading-lamp fell softly on the huge whitewashed vaulting of the
ceiling, on the various objects round the walls, and made a
brilliant pool of colour where Hannele sat in her soft, red dress,
with her basket of silks.

She was a fair woman with dark-blond hair and a beautiful fine
skin.  Her face seemed luminous, a certain quick gleam of life
about it as she looked up at the man.  He was handsome, clean-
shaven, with very blue eyes strained a little too wide.  One could
see the war in his face.

Mitchka was wandering round the room, looking at everything, and
saying:  'Beautiful!  But beautiful!  Such good taste!  A man, and
such good taste!  No, they don't need a woman.  No, look here,
Martin, the Captain Hepburn has arranged all this room himself.
Here you have the man.  Do you see?  So simple, yet so elegant.  He
needs a woman.'

The room was really beautiful, spacious, pale, soft-lighted.  It
was heated by a large stove of dark-blue tiles, and had very little
furniture save large peasant cupboards or presses of painted wood,
and a huge writing-table, on which were writing materials and some
scientific apparatus and a cactus plant with fine scarlet blossoms.
But it was a man's room.  Tobacco and pipes were on a little tray,
on the pegs in the distance hung military overcoats and belts, and
two guns on a bracket.  Then there were two telescopes, one mounted
on a stand near a window.  Various astronomical apparatus lay upon
the table.

'And he reads the stars.  Only think--he is an astronomer and reads
the stars.  Queer, queer people, the English!'

'He is Scottish,' said Hannele.

'Yes, Scottish,' said Mitchka.  'But, you know, I am afraid when I
am with him.  He is at a closed end.  I don't know where I can get
to with him.  Are you afraid of him too, Hannele?  Ach, like a
closed road!'

'Why should I be?'

'Ah, you!  Perhaps you don't know when you should be afraid.  But
if he were to come and find us here?  No, no--let us go.  Let us
go, Martin.  Come, let us go.  I don't want the Captain Hepburn to
come and find me in his room.  Oh no!'  Mitchka was busily pushing
Martin to the door, and he was laughing with the queer, mad laugh
in his strained eyes.  'Oh no!  I don't like.  I don't like it,'
said Mitchka, trying her English now.  She spoke a few sentences
prettily.  'Oh no, Sir Captain, I don't want that you come.  I
don't like it, to be here when you come.  Oh no.  Not at all.  I
go.  I go, Hannele.  I go, my Hannele.  And you will really stay
here and wait for him?  But when will he come?  You don't know?  Oh
dear, I don't like it, I don't like it.  I do not wait in the man's
room.  No, no--Never--jamais--jamais, voyez-vous.  Ach, you poor
Hannele!  And he has got wife and children in England?  Nevair!
No, nevair shall I wait for him.'

She had bustlingly pushed Martin through the door and settled her
wrap and taken a mincing, elegant pose, ready for the street, and
waved her hand and made wide, scared eyes at Hannele, and was gone.
The Countess Hannele picked up the doll again and began to sew its
shoe.  What living she now had she earned making these puppets.

But she was restless.  She pressed her arms into her lap, as if
holding them bent had wearied her.  Then she looked at the little
clock on his writing-table.  It was long after dinner-time--why
hadn't he come?  She sighed rather exasperated.  She was tired of
her doll.

Putting aside her basket of silks, she went to one of the windows.
Outside the stars seemed white, and very near.  Below was the dark
agglomeration of the roofs of houses, a fume of light came up from
beneath the darkness of roofs, and a faint breakage of noise from
the town far below.  The room seemed high, remote, in the sky.

She went to the table and looked at his letter-clip with letters in
it, and at his sealing-wax and his stamp-box, touching things and
moving them a little, just for the sake of the contrast, not really
noticing what she touched.  Then she took a pencil, and in stiff
Gothic characters began to write her name--Johanna zu Rassentlow--
time after time her own name--and then once, bitterly, curiously,
with a curious sharpening of her nose: Alexander Hepburn.

But she threw the pencil down, having no more interest in her
writing.  She wandered to where the large telescope stood near a
farther window, and stood for some minutes with her fingers on the
barrel, where it was a little brighter from his touching it.  Then
she drifted restlessly back to her chair.  She had picked up her
puppet when she heard him on the stairs.  She lifted her face and
watched as he entered.

'Hello, you there!' he said quietly, as he closed the door behind
him.  She glanced at him swiftly, but did not move or answer.

He took off his overcoat with quick, quiet movements, and went to
hang it up on the pegs.  She heard his step, and looked again.  He
was like the doll, a tall, slender, well-bred man in uniform.  When
he turned, his dark eyes seemed very wide open.  His black hair was
growing grey at the temples--the first touch.

She was sewing her doll.  Without saying anything, he wheeled round
the chair from the writing-table, so that he sat with his knees
almost touching her.  Then he crossed one leg over the other.  He
wore fine tartan socks.  His ankles seemed slender and elegant, his
brown shoes fitted as if they were part of him.  For some moments
he watched her as she sat sewing.  The light fell on her soft,
delicate hair, that was full of strands of gold and of tarnished
gold and shadow.  She did not look up.

In silence he held out his small, naked-looking brown hand for the
doll.  On his fore-arm were black hairs.

She glanced up at him.  Curious how fresh and luminous her face
looked in contrast to his.

'Do you want to see it?' she asked, in natural English.

'Yes,' he said.

She broke off her thread of cotton and handed him the puppet.  He
sat with one leg thrown over the other, holding the doll in one
hand and smiling inscrutably with his dark eyes.  His hair, parted
perfectly on one side, was jet black and glossy.

'You've got me,' he said at last, in his amused, melodious voice.

'What?' she said.

'You've got me,' he repeated.

'I don't care,' she said.

'What--You don't care?'  His face broke into a smile.  He had an
odd way of answering, as if he were only half attending, as if he
were thinking of something else.

'You are very late, aren't you?' she ventured.

'Yes.  I am rather late.'

'Why are you?'

'Well, as a matter of fact, I was talking with the Colonel.'

'About me?'

'Yes.  It was about you.'

She went pale as she sat looking up into his face.  But it was
impossible to tell whether there was distress on his dark brow or
not.

'Anything nasty?' she said.

'Well, yes.  It was rather nasty.  Not about you, I mean.  But
rather awkward for me.'

She watched him.  But still he said no more.

'What was it?' she said.

'Oh, well--only what I expected.  They seem to know rather too much
about you--about you and me, I mean.  Not that anybody cares one
bit, you know, unofficially.  The trouble is, they are apparently
going to have to take official notice.'

'Why?'

'Oh, well--it appears my wife has been writing letters to the
Major-General.  He is one of her family acquaintances--known her
all his life.  And I suppose she's been hearing rumours.  In fact,
I know she has.  She said so in her letter to me.'

'And what do you say to her then?'

'Oh, I tell her I'm all right--not to worry.'

'You don't expect THAT to stop her worrying, do you?' she asked.

'Oh, I don't know.  Why should she worry?' he said.

'I think she might have some reason,' said Hannele.  'You've not
seen her for a year.  And if she adores you--'

'Oh, I don't think she adores me.  I think she quite likes me.'

'Do you think you matter as little as that to her?'

'I don't see why not.  Of course she likes to feel SAFE about me.'

'But now she doesn't feel safe?'

'No--exactly.  Exactly.  That's the point.  That's where it is.
The Colonel advises me to go home on leave.'

He sat gazing with curious, bright, dark, unseeing eyes at the doll
which he held by one arm.  It was an extraordinary likeness of
himself, true even to the smooth parting of his hair and his
peculiar way of fixing his dark eyes.

'For how long?' she asked.

'I don't know.  For a month,' he replied, first vaguely, then
definitely.

'For a month!'  She watched him, and seemed to see him fade from
her eyes.

'And will you go?' she asked.

'I don't know.  I don't know.'  His head remained bent, he seemed
to muse rather vaguely.  'I don't know,' he repeated.  'I can't
make up my mind what I shall do.'

'Would you like to go?' she asked.

He lifted his brows and looked at her.  Her heart always melted in
her when he looked straight at her with his black eyes and that
curious, bright, unseeing look that was more like second sight than
direct human vision.  She never knew what he saw when he looked at
her.

'No,' he said simply.  'I don't WANT to go.  I don't think I've any
desire at all to go to England.'

'Why not?' she asked.

'I can't say.'  Then again he looked at her, and a curious white
light seemed to shine on his eyes, as he smiled slowly with his
mouth, and said:  'I suppose you ought to know, if anybody does.'

A glad, half-frightened look came on her face.

'You mean you don't want to leave me?' she asked, breathless.

'Yes.  I suppose that's what I mean.'

'But you aren't sure?'

'Yes, I am, I'm quite sure,' he said, and the curious smile
lingered on his face, and the strange light shone in his eyes.

'That you don't want to leave me?' she stammered, looking aside.

'Yes, I'm quite sure I don't want to leave you,' he repeated.  He
had a curious, very melodious Scottish voice.  But it was the
incomprehensible smile on his face that convinced and frightened
her.  It was almost a gargoyle smile, a strange, lurking,
changeless-seeming grin.

She was frightened, and turned aside her face.  When she looked at
him again, his face was like a mask, with strange, deep-graven
lines and a glossy dark skin and a fixed look--as if carved half
grotesquely in some glossy stone.  His black hair on his smooth,
beautifully-shaped head seemed changeless.

'Are you rather tired?' she asked him.

'Yes, I think I am.'  He looked at her with black, unseeing eyes
and a mask-like face.  Then he glanced as if he heard something.
Then he rose with his hand on his belt, saying:  'I'll take off my
belt and change my coat, if you don't mind.'

He walked across the room, unfastening his broad, brown belt.  He
was in well-fitting, well-cut khaki.  He hung up his belt and came
back to her wearing an old, light tunic, which he left unbuttoned.
He carried his slippers in one hand.  When he sat down to unfasten
his shoes, she noticed again how black and hairy his fore-arm was,
how naked his brown hand seemed.  His hair was black and smooth and
perfect on his head, like some close helmet, as he stooped down.

He put on his slippers, carried his shoes aside, and resumed his
chair, stretching luxuriously.

'There,' he said.  'I feel better now.'  And he looked at her.
'Well,' he said, 'and how are you?'

'Me?' she said.  'Do I matter?'  She was rather bitter.

'Do you matter?' he repeated, without noticing her bitterness.
'Why, what a question!  Of course you are of the very highest
importance.  What?  Aren't you?'  And smiling his curious smile--it
made her for a moment think of the fixed sadness of monkeys, of
those Chinese carved soapstone apes.  He put his hand under her
chin, and gently drew his finger along her cheek.  She flushed
deeply,

'But I'm not as important as you, am I?' she asked defiantly.

'As important as me!  Why, bless you, I'm not important a bit.  I'm
not important a bit!'--the odd straying sound of his words
mystified her.  What did he really mean?

'And I'm even less important than that,' she said bitterly.

'Oh no, you're not.  Oh no, you're not.  You're very important.
You're very important indeed, I assure you.'

'And your wife?'--the question came rebelliously.  'Your wife?
Isn't she important?'

'My wife?  My wife?'  He seemed to let the word stray out of him as
if he did not quite know what it meant.  'Why, yes, I suppose she
is important in her own sphere.'

'What sphere?' blurted Hannele, with a laugh.

'Why, her own sphere, of course.  Her own house, her own home, and
her two children: that's her sphere.'

'And you?--where do you come in?'

'At present I don't come in,' he said.

'But isn't that just the trouble,' said Hannele.  'If you have a
wife and a home, it's your business to belong to it, isn't it?'

'Yes, I suppose it is, if I want to,' he replied.

'And you DO want to?' she challenged.

'No, I don't,' he replied.

'Well, then?' she said.

'Yes, quite,' he answered.  'I admit it's a dilemma.'

'But what will you DO?' she insisted.

'Why, I don't know.  I don't know yet.  I haven't made up my mind
what I'm going to do.'

'Then you'd better begin to make it up,' she said.

'Yes, I know that.  I know that.'

He rose and began to walk uneasily up and down the room.  But the
same vacant darkness was on his brow.  He had his hands in his
pockets.  Hannele sat feeling helpless.  She couldn't help being in
love with the man: with his hands, with his strange, fascinating
physique, with his incalculable presence.  She loved the way he put
his feet down, she loved the way he moved his legs as he walked,
she loved the mould of his loins, she loved the way he dropped his
head a little, and the strange, dark vacancy of his brow, his not-
thinking.  But now the restlessness only made her unhappy.  Nothing
would come of it.  Yet she had driven him to it.

He took his hands out of his pockets and returned to her like a
piece of iron returning to a magnet.  He sat down again in front of
her and put his hands out to her, looking into her face.

'Give me your hands,' he said softly, with that strange, mindless,
soft, suggestive tone which left her powerless to disobey.  'Give
me your hands, and let me feel that we are together.  Words mean so
little.  They mean nothing.  And all that one thinks and plans
doesn't amount to anything.  Let me feel that we are together, and
I don't care about all the rest.'

He spoke in his slow, melodious way, and closed her hands in his.
She struggled still for voice.

'But you'll HAVE to care about it.  You'll HAVE to make up your
mind.  You'll just HAVE to,' she insisted.

'Yes, I suppose I shall.  I suppose I shall.  But now that we are
together, I won't bother.  Now that we are together, let us forget
it.'

'But when we CAN'T forget it any more?'

'Well--then I don't know.  But--tonight--it seems to me--we might
just as well forget it.'

The soft, melodious, straying sound of his voice made her feel
helpless.  She felt that he never answered her.  Words of reply
seemed to stray out of him, in the need to say SOMETHING.  But he
himself never spoke.  There he was, a continual blank silence in
front of her.

She had a battle with herself.  When he put his hand again on her
cheek, softly, with the most extraordinary soft half-touch, as a
kitten's paw sometimes touches one, like a fluff of living air,
then, if it had not been for the magic of that almost indiscernible
caress of his hand, she would have stiffened herself and drawn away
and told him she could have nothing to do with him, while he was so
half-hearted and unsatisfactory.  She wanted to tell him these
things.  But when she began he answered invariably in the same
soft, straying voice, that seemed to spin gossamer threads all over
her, so that she could neither think nor act nor even feel
distinctly.  Her soul groaned rebelliously in her.  And yet, when
he put his hand softly under her chin, and lifted her face and
smiled down on her with that gargoyle smile of his--she let him
kiss her.

'What are you thinking about tonight?' he said.  'What are you
thinking about?'

'What did your Colonel say to you, exactly?' she replied, trying to
harden her eyes.

'Oh, that!' he answered.  'Never mind that.  That is of no
significance whatever.'

'But what IS of any significance?' she insisted.  She almost hated
him.

'What is of any significance?  Well, nothing to me, outside of this
room at this minute.  Nothing in time or space matters to me.'

'Yes, THIS MINUTE!' she repeated bitterly.  'But then there's the
future.  I'VE got to live in the future.'

'The future!  The future!  The future is used up every day.  The
future to me is like a big tangle of black thread.  Every morning
you begin to untangle one loose end--and that's your day.  And
every evening you break off and throw away what you've untangled,
and the heap is so much less: just one thread less, one day less.
That's all the future matters to me.'

'Then nothing matters to you.  And I don't matter to you.  As you
say, only an end of waste thread,' she resisted him.

'No, there you're wrong.  You aren't the future to me.'

'What am I then?--the past?'

'No, not any of those things.  You're nothing.  As far as all that
goes, you're nothing.'

'Thank you,' she said sarcastically, 'if I'm nothing.'

But the very irrelevancy of the man overcame her.  He kissed her
with half discernible, dim kisses, and touched her throat.  And the
meaninglessness of him fascinated her and left her powerless.  She
could ascribe no meaning to him, none whatever.  And yet his mouth,
so strange in kissing, and his hairy forearms, and his slender,
beautiful breast with black hair--it was all like a mystery to her,
as if one of the men from Mars were loving her.  And she was heavy
and spellbound, and she loved the spell that bound her.  But also
she didn't love it.


II


Countess zu Rassentlow had a studio in one of the main streets.
She was really a refugee.  And nowadays you can be a grand-duke and
a pauper, if you are a refugee.  But Hannele was not a pauper,
because she and her friend Mitchka had the studio where they made
these dolls, and beautiful cushions of embroidered coloured wools,
and such-like objects of feminine art.  The dolls were quite
famous, so the two women did not starve.

Hannele did not work much in the studio.  She preferred to be alone
in her own room, which was another fine attic, not quite so large
as the captain's, under the same roof.  But often she went to the
studio in the afternoon, and if purchasers came, then they were
offered a cup of tea.

The Alexander doll was never intended for sale.  What made Hannele
take it to the studio one afternoon, we do not know.  But she did
so, and stood it on a little bureau.  It was a wonderful little
portrait of an officer and gentleman, the physique modelled so that
it made you hold your breath.

'And THAT--that is genius!' cried Mitchka.  'That is a chef
d'oeuvre!  That is thy masterpiece, Hannele.  That is really
marvellous.  And beautiful!  A beautiful man, what!  But no, that
is TOO real.  I don't understand how you DARE.  I always thought
you were GOOD, Hannele, so much better-natured than I am.  But now
you frighten me.  I am afraid you are wicked, do you know.  It
frightens me to think that you are wicked.  Aber nein!  But you
won't leave him there?'

'Why not?' said Hannele, satiric.

Mitchka made big dark eyes of wonder, reproach, and fear.

'But you MUST not,' she said.

'Why not?'

'No, that you MAY not do.  You love the man.'

'What then?'

'You can't leave his puppet standing there.'

'Why can't I?'

'But you are really wicked.  Du bist wirklich b�s.  Only think!--
and he is an English officer.'

'He isn't sacrosanct even then.'

'They will expel you from the town.  They will deport you.'

'Let them, then.'

'But no!  What will you do?  That would be horrible if we had to go
to Berlin or to Munich and begin again.  Here everything has
happened so well.'

'I don't care,' said Hannele.

Mitchka looked at her friend and said no more.  But she was angry.
After some time she turned and uttered her ultimatum.

'When you are not there,' she said, 'I shall put the puppet away in
a drawer.  I shall show it to nobody, nobody.  And I must tell you,
it makes me afraid to see it there.  It makes me afraid.  And you
have no right to get me into trouble, do you see.  It is not I who
look at the English officers.  I don't like them, they are too cold
and finished off for me.  I shall never bring trouble on MYSELF
because of the English officers.'

'Don't be afraid,' said Hannele.  'They won't trouble YOU.  They
know everything we do, well enough.  They have their spies
everywhere.  Nothing will happen to you.'

'But if they make you go away--and I am planted here with the
studio--'

It was no good, however; Hannele was obstinate.

So, one sunny afternoon there was a ring at the door: a little lady
in white, with a wrinkled face that still had its prettiness.

'Good afternoon!'--in rather lardy-dardy, middle-class English.  'I
wonder if I may see your things in your studio.'

'Oh yes!' said Mitchka.  'Please come in.'

Entered the little lady in her finery and her crumpled prettiness.
She would not be very old: perhaps younger than fifty.  And it was
odd that her face had gone so crumpled, because her figure was very
trim, her eyes were bright, and she had pretty teeth when she
laughed.  She was very fine in her clothes: a dress of thick
knitted white silk, a large ermine scarf with the tails only at the
ends, and a black hat over which dripped a trail of green feathers
of the osprey sort.  She wore rather a lot of jewellery, and two
bangles tinkled over her white kid gloves as she put up her fingers
to touch her hair, whilst she stood complacently and looked round.

'You've got a CHARMING studio--CHARMING--perfectly delightful!  I
couldn't imagine anything more delightful.'

Mitchka gave a slight ironic bow, and said in her odd, plangent
English:

'Oh yes.  We like it very much also.'

Hannele, who had dodged behind a screen, now came quickly forth.

'Oh, how do you do!' smiled the elderly lady.'  I heard there were
two of you.  Now which is which, if I may be so bold?  This'--and
she gave a winsome smile and pointed a white kid finger at Mitchka--
'is the--?'

'Annamaria von Prielau-Carolath,' said Mitchka, slightly bowing.

'Oh!'--and the white kid finger jerked away.  'Then this--'

'Johanna zu Rassentlow,' said Hannele, smiling.

'Ah, yes!  Countess von Rassentlow!  And this is Baroness von--von--
but I shall never remember even if you tell me, for I'm awful at
names.  Anyhow, I shall call one Countess and the other Baroness.
That will do, won't it, for poor me!  Now I should like awfully to
see your things, if I may.  I want to buy a little present to take
back to England with me.  I suppose I shan't have to pay the world
in duty on things like these, shall I?'

'Oh no,' said Mitchka.  'No duty.  Toys, you know, they--there is--'
Her English stammered to an end, so she turned to Hannele.

'They don't charge duty on toys, and the embroideries they don't
notice,' said Hannele.

'Oh, well.  Then I'm all right,' said the visitor.  'I hope I can
buy something really nice!  I see a perfectly lovely jumper over
there, perfectly delightful.  But a little too gay for me, I'm
afraid.  I'm not quite so young as I was, alas.'  She smiled her
winsome little smile, showing her pretty teeth and the old pearls
in her ears shook.

'I've heard so much about your dolls.  I hear they're perfectly
exquisite, quite works of art.  May I see some, please?'

'Oh yes,' came Mitchka's invariable answer, this exclamation being
the foundation-stone of all her English.

There were never more than three or four dolls in stock.  This time
there were only two.  The famous captain was hidden in his drawer.

'Perfectly beautiful!  Perfectly wonderful!' murmured the little
lady, in an artistic murmur.  'I think they're perfectly
delightful.  It's wonderful of you, Countess, to make them.  It is
you who make them, is it not?  Or do you both do them together?'

Hannele explained, and the inspection and the rhapsody went on
together.  But it was evident that the little lady was a cautious
buyer.  She went over the things very carefully, and thought more
than twice.  The dolls attracted her--but she thought them
expensive, and hung fire.

'I do wish,' she said wistfully, 'there had been a larger selection
of the dolls.  I feel, you know, there might have been one which I
JUST LOVED.  Of course these are DARLINGS--darlings they are: and
worth every PENNY, considering the work there is in them.  And the
art, of course.  But I have a feeling, don't you know how it is,
that if there had been just one or two more, I should have found
one which I ABSOLUTELY couldn't live without.  Don't you know how
it is?  One is so foolish, of course.  What does Goethe say--"Dort
wo du nicht bist. . ."?  My German isn't even a beginning, so you
must excuse it.  But it means you always feel you would be happy
somewhere else, and not just where you are.  Isn't that it?  Ah,
well, it's so very often true--so very often.  But not always,
thank goodness.'  She smiled an odd little smile to herself, pursed
her lips, and resumed:  'Well now, that's how I feel about the
dolls.  If only there had been one or two more.  Isn't there a
single one?'

She looked winsomely at Hannele.

'Yes,' said Hannele, 'there is one.  But it is ordered.  It isn't
for sale.'

'Oh, do you think I might see it?  I'm sure it's lovely.  Oh, I'm
dying to see it.  You know what woman's curiosity is, don't you?'--
she laughed her tinkling little laugh.  'Well, I'm afraid I'm all
woman, unfortunately.  One is so much harder if one has a touch of
the man in one, don't you think, and more able to bear things.  But
I'm afraid I'm all woman.'  She sighed and became silent.

Hannele went quietly to the drawer and took out the captain.  She
handed him to the little woman.  The latter looked frightened.  Her
eyes became round and childish, her face went yellowish.  Her
jewels tinkled nervously as she stammered:

'Now THAT--isn't that--' and she laughed a little, hysterical
laugh.

She turned round, as if to escape.

'Do you mind if I sit down,' she said.  'I think the standing--'
and she subsided into a chair.  She kept her face averted.  But she
held the puppet fast, her small, white fingers with their heavy
jewelled rings clasped round his waist.

'You know,' rushed in Mitchka, who was terrified.  'You know, that
is a life picture of one of the Englishmen, of a gentleman, you
know.  A life picture, you know.'

'A portrait,' said Hannele brightly.

'Yes,' murmured the visitor vaguely.  'I'm sure it is.  I'm sure it
is a very clever portrait indeed.'

She fumbled with a chain, and put up a small gold lorgnette before
her eyes, as if to screen herself.  And from behind the screen of
her lorgnette she peered at the image in her hand.

'But,' she said, 'none of the English officers, or rather Scottish,
wear the close-fitting tartan trews any more--except for fancy
dress.'

Her voice was vague and distant.

'No, they don't now,' said Hannele.  'But that is the correct
dress.  I think they are so handsome, don't you?'

'Well.  I don't know.  It depends'--and the little woman laughed
shakily.

'Oh yes,' said Hannele.  'It needs well-shapen legs.'

'Such as the original of your doll must have had--quite,' said the
lady.

'Oh yes,' said Hannele.  'I think his legs are very handsome.'

'Quite!' said the lady.  'Judging from his portrait, as you call
it.  May I ask the name of the gentleman--if it is not too
indiscreet?'

'Captain Hepburn,' said Hannele.

'Yes, of course it is.  I knew him at once.  I've known him for
many years.'

'Oh, please,' broke in Mitchka.  'Oh, please, do not tell him you
have seen it!  Oh, please!  Please do not tell anyone!'

The visitor looked up with a grey little smile.

'But why not?' she said.  'Anyhow, I can't tell him at once,
because I hear he is away at present.  You don't happen to know
when he will be back?'

'I believe tomorrow,' said Hannele.

'Tomorrow!'

'And please!' pleaded Mitchka, who looked lovely in her pleading
distress, 'please not to tell anybody that you have seen it.'

'Must I promise?' smiled the little lady wanly.  'Very well, then,
I won't tell him I've seen it.  And now I think I must be going.
Yes, I'll just take the cushion-cover, thank you.  Tell me again
how much it is, please.'

That evening Hannele was restless.  He had been away on some duty
for three days.  He was returning that night--should have been back
in time for dinner.  But he had not arrived, and his room was
locked and dark.  Hannele had heard the servant light the stove
some hours ago.  Now the room was locked and blank as it had been
for three days.

Hannele was most uneasy because she seemed to have forgotten him in
the three days whilst he had been away.  He seemed to have quite
disappeared out of her.  She could hardly even remember him.  He
had become so insignificant to her she was dazed.

Now she wanted to see him again, to know if it was really so.  She
felt that he was coming.  She felt that he was already putting out
some influence towards her.  But what?  And was he real?  Why had
she made his doll?  Why had his doll been so important, if he was
nothing?  Why had she shown it to that funny little woman this
afternoon?  Why was she herself such a fool, getting herself into
tangles in this place where it was so unpleasant to be entangled?
Why was she entangled, after all?  It was all so unreal.  And
particularly HE was unreal: as unreal as a person in a dream, whom
one has never heard of in actual life.  In actual life, her own
German friends were real.  Martin was real: German men were real to
her.  But this other, he was simply not there.  He didn't really
exist.  He was a nullus, in reality.  A nullus--and she had somehow
got herself complicated with him.

Was it possible?  Was it possible she had been so closely entangled
with an absolute nothing?  Now he was absent she couldn't even
IMAGINE him.  He had gone out of her imagination, and even when she
looked at his doll she saw nothing but a barren puppet.  And yet
for this dead puppet she had been compromising herself, now, when
it was so risky for her to be compromised.

Her own German friends--her own German men--they were men, they
were real beings.  But this English officer, he was neither fish,
flesh, fowl, nor good red herring, as they say.  He was just a
hypothetical presence.  She felt that if he never came back, she
would be just as if she had read a rather peculiar but false story,
a tour de force which works up one's imagination all falsely.

Nevertheless, she was uneasy.  She had a lurking suspicion that
there might be something else.  So she kept uneasily wandering out
to the landing, and listening to hear if he might be coming.

Yes--there was a sound.  Yes, there was his slow step on the
stairs, and the slow, straying purr of his voice.  And instantly
she heard his voice she was afraid again.  She knew there WAS
something there.  And instantly she felt the reality of his
presence, she felt the unreality of her own German men friends.
The moment she heard the peculiar, slow melody of his foreign voice
everything seemed to go changed in her, and Martin and Otto and
Albrecht, her German friends, seemed to go pale and dim as if one
could almost see through them, like unsubstantial things.

This was what she had to reckon with, this recoil from one to the
other.  When he was present, he seemed so terribly real.  When he
was absent he was completely vague, and her own men of her own race
seemed so absolutely the only reality.

But he was talking.  Who was he talking to?  She heard the steps
echo up the hollows of the stone staircase slowly, as if wearily,
and voices slowly, confusedly mingle.  The slow, soft trail of his
voice--and then the peculiar, quick tones--yes, of a woman.  And
not one of the maids, because they were speaking English.  She
listened hard.  The quick, and yet slightly hushed, slightly sad-
sounding voice of a woman who talks a good deal, as if talking to
herself.  Hannele's quick ears caught the sound of what she was
saying:  'Yes, I thought the Baroness a perfectly beautiful
creature, perfectly lovely.  But so extraordinarily like a
Spaniard.  Do you remember, Alec, at Malaga?  I always thought they
fascinated you then, with their mantillas.  Perfectly lovely she
would look in a mantilla.  Only perhaps she is too open-hearted,
too impulsive, poor thing.  She lacks the Spanish reserve.  Poor
thing, I feel sorry for her.  For them both, indeed.  It must be
very hard to have to do these things for a living, after you've
been accustomed to be made much of for your own sake, and for your
aristocratic title.  It's very hard for them, poor things.
Baroness, Countess, it sounds just a little ridiculous, when you're
buying woollen embroideries from them.  But I suppose, poor things,
they can't help it.  Better drop the titles altogether, I think--'

'Well, they do, if people will let them.  Only English and American
people find it so much easier to say Baroness or Countess than
Fr�ulein von Prielau-Carolath, or whatever it is.'

'They could say simply Fr�ulein, as we do to our governesses--or as
we used to, when we HAD German governesses,' came the voice of HER.

'Yes, we COULD,' said his voice.

'After all, what is the good, what is the good of titles if you
have to sell dolls and woollen embroideries--not so very beautiful,
either.'

'Oh, quite!  Oh, quite!  I think titles are perhaps a mistake,
anyhow.  But they've always had them,' came his slow, musical
voice, with its sing-song note of hopeless indifference.  He
sounded rather like a man talking out of his sleep.

Hannele caught sight of the tail of blue-green crane feathers
veering round a turn in the stairs away below, and she beat a hasty
retreat.


III


There was a little platform out on the roof, where he used
sometimes to stand his telescope and observe the stars or the moon:
the moon when possible.  It was not a very safe platform, just a
little ledge of the roof, outside the window at the end of the top
corridor: or rather, the top landing, for it was only the space
between the attics.  Hannele had the one attic room at the back, he
had the room we have seen, and a little bedroom which was really
only a lumber room.  Before he came, Hannele had been alone under
the roof.  His rooms were then lumber room and laundry room, where
the clothes were dried.  But he had wanted to be high up, because
of his stars, and this was the place that pleased him.

Hannele heard him quite late in the night, wandering about.  She
heard him also on the ledge outside.  She could not sleep.  He
disturbed her.  The moon was risen, large and bright in the sky.
She heard the bells from the cathedral slowly strike two: two great
drops of sound in the livid night.  And again, from outside on the
roof, she heard him clear his throat.  Then a cat howled.

She rose, wrapped herself in a dark wrap, and went down the landing
to the window at the end.  The sky outside was full of moonlight.
He was squatted like a great cat peering up his telescope, sitting
on a stool, his knees wide apart.  Quite motionless he sat in that
attitude, like some leaden figure on the roof.  The moonlight
glistened with a gleam of plumbago on the great slope of black
tiles.  She stood still in the window, watching.  And he remained
fixed and motionless at the end of the telescope.

She tapped softly on the window-pane.  He looked round, like some
tom-cat staring round with wide night eyes.  Then he reached down
his hand and pulled the window open.

'Hello,' he said quietly.  'You not asleep?'

'Aren't YOU tired?' she replied, rather resentful.

'No, I was as wide awake as I could be.  ISN'T the moon fine
tonight!  What?  Perfectly amazing.  Wouldn't you like to come up
and have a look at her?'

'No, thank you,' she said hastily, terrified at the thought.

He resumed his posture, peering up the telescope.

'Perfectly amazing,' he said, murmuring.  She waited for some time,
bewitched likewise by the great October moon and the sky full of
resplendent white-green light.  It seemed like another sort of day-
time.  And there he straddled on the roof like some cat!  It was
exactly like day in some other planet.

At length he turned round to her.  His face glistened faintly, and
his eyes were dilated like a cat's at night.

'You know I had a visitor?' he said.

'Yes.'

'My wife.'

'Your WIFE!'--she looked up really astonished.  She had thought it
might be an acquaintance--perhaps his aunt--or even an elder
sister.  'But she's years older than you,' she added.

'Eight years,' he said.  'I'm forty-one.'

There was a silence.

'Yes,' he mused.  'She arrived suddenly, by surprise, yesterday,
and found me away.  She's staying in the hotel, in the Vier
Jahreszeiten.'

There was a pause.

'Aren't you going to stay with her?' asked Hannele.

'Yes, I shall probably join her tomorrow.'

There was a still longer pause.

'Why not tonight?' asked Hannele.

'Oh, well--I put it off for tonight.  It meant all the bother of my
wife changing her room at the hotel--and it was late--and I was all
mucky after travelling.'

'But you'll go tomorrow?'

'Yes, I shall go tomorrow.  For a week or so.  After that I'm not
sure what will happen.'

There was quite a long pause.  He remained seated on his stool on
the roof, looking with dilated, blank, black eyes at nothingness.
She stood below in the open window space, pondering.

'Do you want to go to her at the hotel?' asked Hannele.

'Well, I don't, particularly.  But I don't mind, really.  We're
very good friends.  Why, we've been friends for eighteen years--
we've been married seventeen.  Oh, she's a nice little woman.  I
don't want to hurt her feelings.  I wish her no harm, you know.  On
the contrary, I wish her all the good in the world.'

He had no idea of the blank amazement in which Hannele listened to
these stray remarks.

'But--' she stammered.  'But doesn't she expect you to make LOVE to
her?'

'Oh yes, she expects that.  You bet she does: woman-like.'

'And you?'--the question had a dangerous ring.

'Why, I don't mind, really, you know, if it's only for a short
time.  I'm used to her.  I've always been fond of her, you know--
and so if it gives her any pleasure--why, I like her to get what
pleasure out of life she can.'

'But you--you YOURSELF!  Don't YOU feel anything?'  Hannele's
amazement was reaching the point of incredulity.  She began to feel
that he was making it up.  It was all so different from her own
point of view.  To sit there so quiet and to make such statements
in all good faith: no, it was impossible.

'I don't consider I count,' he said na�vely.

Hannele looked aside.  If that wasn't lying, it was imbecility, or
worse.  She had for the moment nothing to say.  She felt he was a
sort of psychic phenomenon like a grasshopper or a tadpole or an
ammonite.  Not to be regarded from a human point of view.  No, he
just wasn't normal.  And she had been fascinated by him!  It was
only sheer, amazed curiosity that carried her on to her next
question.

'But do you NEVER count, then?' she asked, and there was a touch of
derision, of laughter in her tone.  He took no offence.

'Well--very rarely,' he said.  'I count very rarely.  That's how
life appears to me.  One matters so VERY little.'

She felt quite dizzy with astonishment.  And he called himself a
man!

'But if you matter so very little, what do you do anything at all
for?' she asked.

'Oh, one has to.  And then, why not?  Why not do things, even if
oneself hardly matters.  Look at the moon.  It doesn't matter in
the least to the moon whether I exist or whether I don't.  So why
should it matter to me?'

After a blank pause of incredulity she said:

'I could die with laughter.  It seems to me all so ridiculous--no,
I can't believe it.'

'Perhaps it is a point of view,' he said.

There was a long and pregnant silence: we should not like to say
pregnant with what.

'And so I don't mean anything to you at all?' she said.

'I didn't say that,' he replied.

'Nothing means anything to you,' she challenged.

'I don't say that.'

'Whether it's your wife--or me--or the moon--toute la m�me chose.'

'No--no--that's hardly the way to look at it.'

She gazed at him in such utter amazement that she felt something
would really explode in her if she heard another word.  Was this a
man?--or what was it?  It was too much for her, that was all.

'Well, good-bye,' she said.  'I hope you will have a nice time at
the Vier Jahreszeiten.'

So she left him still sitting on the roof.

'I suppose,' she said to herself, 'that is love � l'anglaise.  But
it's more than I can swallow.'


IV


'Won't you come and have tea with me--do!  Come right along now.
Don't you find it bitterly cold?  Yes--well now--come in with me
and we'll have a cup of nice, hot tea in our little sitting-room.
The weather changes so suddenly, and really one needs a little
reinforcement.  But perhaps you don't take tea?'

'Oh yes.  I got so used to it in England,' said Hannele.

'Did you now!  Well now, were you long in England?'

'Oh yes--'

The two women had met in the Domplatz.  Mrs Hepburn was looking
extraordinarily like one of Hannele's dolls, in a funny little cape
of odd striped skins, and a little dark-green skirt, and a rather
fuzzy sort of hat.  Hannele looked almost huge beside her.

'But now you will come in and have tea, won't you?  Oh, please do.
Never mind whether it's de rigueur or not.  I ALWAYS please myself
WHAT I do.  I'm afraid my husband gets some shocks sometimes--but
that we can't help.  I won't have anybody laying down the law to
me.'  She laughed her winsome little laugh.'  So now come along in,
and we'll see if there aren't hot scones as well.  I love a hot
scone for tea in cold weather.  And I hope you do.  That is, if
there are any.  We don't know yet.'  She tinkled her little laugh.
'My husband may or may not be in.  But that makes no difference to
you and me, does it?  There, it's just striking half past four.  In
England, we always have tea at half past.  My husband ADORES his
tea.  I don't suppose our man is five minutes off the half past,
ringing the gong for tea, not once in twelve months.  My husband
doesn't mind at all if dinner is a little late.  But he gets--
quite--well, quite "ratty" if tea is late.'  She tinkled a laugh.
'Though I shouldn't say that.  He is the soul of kindness and
patience.  I don't think I've ever known him do an unkind thing--or
hardly say an unkind word.  But I doubt if he will be in today.'

He WAS in, however, standing with his feet apart and his hands in
his trouser pockets in the little sitting-room upstairs in the
hotel.  He raised his eyebrows the smallest degree, seeing Hannele
enter.

'Ah, Countess Hannele--my wife has brought you along!  Very nice,
very nice!  Let me take your wrap.  Oh yes, certainly . . .'

'Have you rung for tea, dear?' asked Mrs Hepburn.

'Er--yes.  I said as soon as you came in they were to bring it.'

'Yes--well.  Won't you ring again, dear, and say for THREE.'

'Yes--certainly.  Certainly.'

He rang, and stood about with his hands in his pockets waiting for
tea.

'Well now,' said Mrs Hepburn, as she lifted the tea-pot, and her
bangles tinkled, and her huge rings of brilliants twinkled, and her
big ear-rings of clustered seed-pearls bobbed against her rather
withered cheek,' isn't it charming of Countess zu--Countess zu--'

'Rassentlow,' said he.  'I believe most people say Countess
Hannele.  I know we always do among ourselves.  We say Countess
Hannele's shop.'

'Countess Hannele's shop!  Now, isn't that perfectly delightful:
such a romance in the very sound of it.  You take cream?'

'Thank you,' said Hannele.

The tea passed in a cloud of chatter, while Mrs Hepburn manipulated
the tea-pot, and lit the spirit-flame, and blew it out, and peeped
into the steam of the tea-pot, and couldn't see whether there was
any more tea or not--and--'At home I KNOW--I was going to say to a
teaspoonful--how much tea there is in the pot.  But this tea-pot--I
don't know what it's made of--it isn't silver, I know that--it is
so heavy in itself that it's deceived me several times already.
And my husband is a greedy man, a greedy man--he likes at least
three cups--and four if he can get them, or five!  Yes, dear, I've
plenty of tea today.  You shall have even five, if you don't mind
the last two weak.  Do let me fill your cup, Countess Hannele.  I
think it's a CHARMING name.'

'There's a play called Hannele, isn't there?' said he.

When he had had his five cups, and his wife had got her cigarette
perched in the end of a long, long, slim, white holder, and was
puffing like a little Chinawoman from the distance, there was a
little lull.

'Alec, dear,' said Mrs Hepburn.  'You won't forget to leave that
message for me at Mrs Rackham's.  I'm so afraid it will be
forgotten.'

'No, dear, I won't forget.  Er--would you like me to go round now?'

Hannele noticed how often he said 'er' when he was beginning to
speak to his wife.  But they WERE such good friends, the two of
them.

'Why, if you WOULD, dear, I should feel perfectly comfortable.  But
I don't want you to hurry one bit.'

'Oh, I may as well go now.'

And he went.  Mrs Hepburn detained her guest.

'He IS so charming to me,' said the little woman.  'He's really
wonderful.  And he always has been the same--invariably.  So that
if he DID make a little slip--well, you know, I don't have to take
it so seriously.'

'No,' said Hannele, feeling as if her ears were stretching with
astonishment.

'It's the war.  It's just the war.  It's had a terribly
deteriorating effect on the men.'

'In what way?' said Hannele.

'Why, morally.  Really, there's hardly one man left the same as he
was before the war.  Terribly degenerated.'

'Is that so?' said Hannele.

'It is indeed.  Why, isn't it the same with the German men and
officers?'

'Yes, I think so,' said Hannele.

'And I'm sure so, from what I hear.  But of course it is the women
who are to blame in the first place.  We poor women!  We are a
guilty race, I am afraid.  But I never throw stones.  I know what
it is myself to have temptations.  I have to flirt a little--and
when I was younger--well, the men didn't escape me, I assure you.
And I was SO often scorched.  But never QUITE singed.  My husband
never minded.  He knew I was REALLY safe.  Oh yes, I have always
been faithful to him.  But still--I have been very near the flame.'
And she laughed her winsome little laugh.

Hannele put her fingers to her ears to make sure they were not
falling off.

'Of course during the war it was terrible.  I know that in a
certain hospital it was quite impossible for a girl to stay on if
she kept straight.  The matrons and sisters just turned her out.
They wouldn't have her unless she was one of themselves.  And you
know what that means.  Quite like the convent in Balzac's story--
you know which I mean, I'm sure.'  And the laugh tinkled gaily.

'But then, what can you expect, when there aren't enough men to go
round!  Why, I had a friend in Ireland.  She and her husband had
been an ideal couple, an IDEAL couple.  Real playmates.  And you
can't say more than that, can you?  Well, then, he became a major
during the war.  And she was so looking forward, poor thing, to the
perfectly lovely times they would have together when he came home.
She is like me, and is lucky enough to have a little income of her
own--not a great fortune--but--well--Well now, what was I going to
say?  Oh yes, she was looking forward to the perfectly lovely times
they would have when he came home: building on her dreams, poor
thing, as we unfortunate women always do.  I suppose we shall never
be cured of it.'  A little tinkling laugh.  'Well now, not a bit of
it.  Not a bit of it.'  Mrs Hepburn lifted her heavily-jewelled
little hand in a motion of protest.  It was curious, her hands were
pretty and white, and her neck and breast, now she wore a little
tea-gown, were also smooth and white and pretty, under the medley
of twinkling little chains and coloured jewels.  Why should her
face have played her this nasty trick of going all crumpled!
However, it was so.

'Not one bit of it,' reiterated the little lady.  'He came home
quite changed.  She said she could hardly recognize him for the
same man.  Let me tell you one little incident.  Just a trifle, but
significant.  He was coming home--this was some time after he was
free from the army--he was coming home from London, and he told her
to meet him at the boat: gave her the time and everything.  Well,
she went to the boat, poor thing, and he didn't come.  She waited,
and no word of explanation or anything.  So she couldn't make up
her mind whether to go next day and meet the boat again.  However,
she decided she wouldn't.  So of course, on that boat he arrived.
When he got home, he said to her:  "Why didn't you meet the boat?"
"Well," she said, "I went yesterday, and you didn't come."  "Then
why didn't you meet it again today?"  Imagine it, the sauce!  And
they had been real playmates.  Heart-breaking isn't it?  "Well,"
she said in self-defence, "why didn't you come yesterday?"  "Oh,"
he said, "I met a woman in town whom I liked, and she asked me to
spend the night with her, so I did."  Now what do you think of
that?  Can you conceive of such a thing?'

'Oh no,' said Hannele.  'I call that unnecessary brutality.'

'Exactly!  So terrible to say such a thing to her!  The brutality
of it!  Well, that's how the world is today.  I'm thankful my
husband isn't that sort.  I don't say he's perfect.  But whatever
else he did, he'd never be unkind, and he COULDN'T be brutal.  He
just couldn't.  He'd never tell me a lie--I know THAT.  But callous
brutality, no, thank goodness, he hasn't a spark of it in him.  I'm
the wicked one, if either of us is wicked.'  The little laugh
tinkled.  'Oh, but he's been perfect to me, perfect.  Hardly a
cross word.  Why, on our wedding night, he kneeled down in front of
me and promised, with God's help, to make my life happy.  And I
must say, as far as possible, he's kept his word.  It has been his
one aim in life, to make my life happy.'

The little lady looked away with a bright, musing look towards the
window.  She was being a heroine in a romance.  Hannele could see
her being a heroine, playing the chief part in her own life
romance.  It is such a feminine occupation, that no woman takes
offence when she is made audience.

'I'm afraid I've more of the woman than the mother in my
composition,' resumed the little heroine.  'I adore my two
children.  The boy is at Winchester, and my little girl is in a
convent in Brittany.  Oh, they are perfect darlings, both of them.
But the man is first in my mind, I'm afraid.  I fear I'm rather
old-fashioned.  But never mind.  I can see the attractions in other
men--can't I indeed!  There was a perfectly exquisite creature--he
was a very clever engineer--but much, much more than THAT.  But
never mind.'  The little heroine sniffed as if there were perfume
in the air, folded her jewelled hands, and resumed:  'However--I
know what it is myself to flutter round the flame.  You know I'm
Irish myself, and we Irish can't help it.  Oh, I wouldn't be
English for anything.  Just that little touch of imagination, you
know . . .'  The little laugh tinkled.  'And that's what makes me
able to sympathize with my husband even when, perhaps, I shouldn't.
Why, when he was at home with me, he never gave a thought, not a
thought to another woman.  I must say, he used to make ME feel a
little guilty sometimes.  But there!  I don't think he ever thought
of another woman as being flesh and blood, after he knew me.  I
could tell.  Pleasant, courteous, charming--but other women were
not flesh and blood to him, they were just people, callers--that
kind of thing.  It used to amaze me, when some perfectly lovely
creature came, whom I should have been head over heels in love with
in a minute--and he, he was charming, delightful; he could see her
points, but she was no more to him than, let me say, a pot of
carnations or a beautiful old piece of punto di Milano.  Not flesh
and blood.  Well, perhaps one can feel too safe.  Perhaps one needs
a tiny pinch of salt of jealousy.  I believe one does.  And I have
not had one jealous moment for seventeen years.  So that, REALLY,
when I heard a whisper of something going on here, I felt almost
pleased.  I felt exonerated for my own little peccadilloes, for one
thing.  And I felt he was perhaps a little more human.  Because,
after all, it is nothing but human to fall in love, if you are
alone for a long time and in the company of a beautiful woman--and
if you're an attractive man yourself.'

Hannele sat with her eyes propped open and her ears buttoned back
with amazement, expecting the next revelations.

'Why, of course,' she said, knowing she was expected to say
something.

'Yes, of course,' said Mrs Hepburn, eyeing her sharply.  'So I
thought I'd better come and see how far things had gone.  I had
nothing but a hint to go on.  I knew no name--nothing.  I had just
a hint that she was German, and a refugee aristocrat--and that he
used to call at the studio.'  The little lady eyed Hannele sharply,
and gave a breathless little laugh, clasping her hands nervously.
Hannele sat absolutely blank: really dazed.

'Of course,' resumed Mrs Hepburn, 'that was enough.  That was quite
a sufficient clue.  I'm afraid my intentions when I called at the
studio were not as pure as they might have been.  I'm afraid I
wanted to see something more than the dolls.  But when you showed
me HIS doll, then I knew.  Of course there wasn't a shadow of doubt
after that.  And I saw at once that she loved him, poor thing.  She
was SO agitated.  And no idea who I was.  And you were so unkind to
show me the doll.  Of course, you had no idea who you were showing
it to.  But for her, poor thing, it was such a trial.  I could see
how she suffered.  And I must say she's very lovely--she's very,
very lovely, with her golden skin and her reddish amber eyes and
her beautiful, beautiful carriage.  And such a na�ve, impulsive
nature.  Give everything away in a minute.  And then her deep
voice--"Oh yes--Oh, please!"--such a child.  And such an
aristocrat, that lovely turn of her head, and her simple, elegant
dress.  Oh, she's very charming.  And she's just the type I always
knew would attract him, if he hadn't got me.  I've thought about it
many a time--many a time.  When a woman is older than a man, she
does think these things--especially if he has his attractive points
too.  And when I've dreamed of the woman he would love if he hadn't
got me, it has always been a Spanish type.  And the Baroness is
extraordinarily Spanish in her appearance.  She must have had some
noble Spanish ancestor.  Don't you think so?'

'Oh yes,' said Hannele.'  There were such a lot of Spaniards in
Austria, too, with the various emperors.'

'With Charles V, exactly.  Exactly.  That's how it must have been.
And so she has all the Spanish beauty, and all the German feeling.
Of course, for myself, I miss the RESERVE, the haughtiness.  But
she's very, very lovely, and I'm sure I could never HATE her.  I
couldn't even if I tried.  And I'm not going to try.  But I think
she's much too dangerous for my husband to see much of her.  Don't
you agree, now?'

'Oh, but really,' stammered Hannele.  'There's nothing in it,
really.'

'Well,' said the little lady, cocking her head shrewdly aside, 'I
shouldn't like there to be any MORE in it.'

And there was a moment's dead pause.  Each woman was reflecting.
Hannele wondered if the little lady was just fooling her.

'Anyhow,' continued Mrs Hepburn, 'the spark is there, and I don't
intend the fire to spread.  I am going to be very, very careful,
myself, not to fan the flames.  The last thing I should think of
would be to make my husband scenes.  I believe it would be fatal.'

'Yes,' said Hannele, during the pause.

'I am going very carefully.  You think there isn't much in it--
between him and the Baroness?'

'No--no--I'm sure there isn't,' cried Hannele, with a full voice of
conviction.  She was almost indignant at being slighted so
completely herself, in the little lady's suspicions.

'Hm!--mm!' hummed the little woman, sapiently nodding her head
slowly up and down.  'I'm not so sure!  I'm not so sure that it
hasn't gone pretty far.'

'Oh NO!' cried Hannele, in real irritation of protest.

'Well,' said the other.  'In any case, I don't intend it to go any
farther.'

There was dead silence for some time.

'There's more in it than you say.  There's more in it than you
say,' ruminated the little woman.  'I know HIM, for one thing.  I
know he's got a cloud on his brow.  And I know it hasn't left his
brow for a single minute.  And when I told him I had been to the
studio, and showed him the cushion-cover, I knew he felt guilty.  I
am not so easily deceived.  We Irish all have a touch of second
sight, I believe.  Of course I haven't challenged him.  I haven't
even mentioned the doll.  By the way, WHO ordered the doll?  Do you
mind telling me?'

'No, it wasn't ordered,' confessed Hannele.

'Ah--I thought not--I thought not!' said Mrs Hepburn, lifting her
finger.  'At least, I knew no outsider had ordered it.  Of course I
knew.'  And she smiled to herself.

'So,' she continued, 'I had too much sense to say anything about
it.  I don't believe in stripping wounds bare.  I believe in gently
covering them and letting them heal.  But I DID say I thought her a
lovely creature.'  The little lady looked brightly at Hannele.

'Yes,' said Hannele.

'And he was very vague in his manner, "Yes, not bad," he said.  I
thought to myself:  Aha, my boy, you don't deceive me with your NOT
BAD.  She's very much more than not bad.  I said so, too.  I
wanted, of course, to let him know I had a suspicion.'

'And do you think he knew?'

'Of course he did.  Of course he did.  "She's much too dangerous,"
I said, "to be in a town where there are so many strange men:
married and unmarried."  And then he turned round to me and gave
himself away, oh, so plainly.  "Why?" he said.  But such a haughty,
distant tone.  I said to myself:  "It's time, my dear boy, you were
removed out of the danger zone."  But I answered him:  Surely
somebody is bound to fall in love with her.  Not at all, he said,
she keeps to her own countrymen.  You don't tell ME, I answered
him, with her pretty broken English!  It is a wonder the two of
them are allowed to stay in the town.  And then again he rounded on
me.  Good gracious! he said.  Would you have them turned out just
because they're beautiful to look at, when they have nowhere else
to go, and they make their bit of a livelihood here?  I assure you,
he hasn't rounded on me in that overbearing way, not once before,
in all our married life.  So I just said quietly:  I should like to
protect OUR OWN MEN.  And he didn't say anything more.  But he
looked at me under his brows and went out of the room.'

There was a silence.  Hannele waited with her hands in her lap, and
Mrs Hepburn mused, with her hands in HER lap.  Her face looked
yellow, and VERY wrinkled.

'Well now,' she said, breaking again suddenly into life.  'What are
we to do?  I mean what is to be done?  You are the Baroness's
nearest friend.  And I wish her NO harm, none whatever.'

'What can we do?' said Hannele, in the pause.

'I have been urging my husband for some time to get his discharge
from the army,' said the little woman.  'I knew he could have it in
three months' time.  But like so many more men, he has no income of
his own, and he doesn't want to feel dependent.  Perfect nonsense!
So he says he wants to stay on in the army.  I have never known him
before go against my real wishes.'

'But it IS better for a man to be independent,' said Hannele.

'I know it is.  But it is also better for him to be AT HOME.  And I
could get him a post in one of the observatories.  He could do
something in meteorological work.'

Hannele refused to answer any more.

'Of course,' said Mrs Hepburn, 'if he DOES stay on here, it would
be much better if the Baroness left the town.'

'I'm sure she will never leave of her own choice,' said Hannele.

'I'm sure she won't either.  But she might be made to see that it
would be very much WISER of her to move of her own free will.'

'Why?' said Hannele.

'Why, because she might any time be removed by the British
authorities.'

'Why should she?' said Hannele.

'I think the women who are a menace to our men should be removed.'

'But she is NOT a menace to your men.'

'Well, I have my own opinion on that point.'

Which was a decided deadlock.

'I'm sure I've kept you an awful long time with my chatter,' said
Mrs Hepburn.  'But I did want to make everything as simple as
possible.  As I said before, I can't feel any ill-will against her.
Yet I can't let things just go on.  Heaven alone knows when they
may end.  Of course if I can persuade my husband to resign his
commission and come back to England--anyhow, we will see.  I'm sure
I am the last person in the world to bear malice.'

The tone in which she said it conveyed a dire threat.

Hannele rose from her chair.

'Oh, and one other thing,' said her hostess, taking out a tiny lace
handkerchief and touching her nose delicately with it.  'Do you
think'--dab, dab--'that I might have that DOLL--you know--?'

'That--?'

'Yes, of my husband'--the little lady rubbed her nose with her
kerchief.

'The price is three guineas,' said Hannele.

'Oh indeed!'--the tone was very cold.  'I thought it was not for
sale.'

Hannele put on her wrap.

'You'll send it round--will you?--if you will be so kind.'

'I must ask my friend first.'

'Yes, of course.  But I'm sure she will be so kind as to send it
me.  It is a little--er--indelicate, don't you think!'

'No,' said Hannele.  'No more than a painted portrait.'

'Don't you?' said her hostess coldly.  'Well, even a painted
portrait I think I should like in my own possession.  This DOLL--'

Hannele waited, but there was no conclusion.

'Anyhow,' she said, 'the price is three guineas: or the equivalent
in marks.'

'Very well,' said the little lady, 'you shall have your three
guineas when I get the doll.'


V


Hannele went her way pondering.  A man never is quite such an
abject specimen as his wife makes him look, talking about 'my
husband'.  Therefore, if any woman wishes to rescue her husband
from the clutches of another female, let her only invite this
female to tea and talk quite sincerely about 'my husband, you
know'.  Every man has made a ghastly fool of himself with a woman
at some time or other.  No woman ever forgets.  And most women will
give the show away, with real pathos, to another woman.  For
instance, the picture of Alec at his wife's feet on his wedding
night, vowing to devote himself to her life-long happiness--this
picture strayed across Hannele's mind time after time, whenever she
thought of her dear captain.  With disastrous consequences to the
captain.  Of course if he had been at her own feet, then Hannele
would have thought it almost natural: almost a necessary part of
the show of love.  But at the feet of that other little woman!  And
what was that other little woman wearing?  Her wedding night!
Hannele hoped before heaven it wasn't some awful little nightie of
frail flowered silk.  Imagine it, that little lady!  Perhaps in a
chic little boudoir cap of punto di Milano, and this slip of frail
flowered silk: and the man, perhaps, in his braces!  Oh, merciful
heaven, save us from other people's indiscretions.  No, let us be
sure it was in proper evening dress--twenty years ago--very low
cut, with a full skirt gathered behind and trailing a little, and a
little leather erection in her high-dressed hair, and all those
jewels: pearls of course: and he in a dinner-jacket and a white
waistcoat: probably in an hotel bedroom in Lugano or Biarritz.  And
she?  Was she standing with one small hand on his shoulder?--or was
she seated on the couch in the bedroom?  Oh, dreadful thought!  And
yet it was almost inevitable, that scene.  Hannele had never been
married, but she had come quite near enough to the realization of
the event to know that such a scene WAS practically inevitable.  An
indispensable part of any honeymoon.  Him on his knees, with his
heels up!

And how black and tidy his hair must have been then! and no grey at
the temples at all.  Such a good-looking bridegroom.  Perhaps with
a white rose in his button-hole still.  And she could see him
kneeling there, in his new black trousers and a wing collar.  And
she could see his head bowed.  And she could hear his plangent,
musical voice saying:  'With God's help, I will make your life
happy.  I will live for that and for nothing else.'  And then the
little lady must have had tears in her eyes, and she must have
said, rather superbly:  'Thank you, dear, I'm perfectly sure of
it.'

Ach!  Ach!  Husbands should be left to their own wives: and wives
should be left to their own husbands.  And NO stranger should ever
be made a party to these terrible bits of connubial staging.  Nay,
thought Hannele, that scene was really true.  It actually took
place.  And with the man of that scene I have been in love!  With
the devoted husband of that little lady.  Oh God, oh God, how was
it possible!  Him on his knees, on his knees, with his heels up!

Am I a perfect fool? she thought to herself.  Am I really just an
idiot, gaping with love for him?  How COULD I?  How could I?  The
very way he says:  'Yes, dear!' to her!  The way he does what she
tells him!  The way he fidgets about the room with his hands in his
pockets!  The way he goes off when she sends him away because she
wants to talk to me.  And he knows she wants to talk to me.  And he
knows what she MIGHT have to say to me.  Yet he goes off on his
errand without a question, like a servant.  'I will do whatever you
wish, darling.'  He must have said those words time after time to
the little lady.  And fulfilled them, also.  Performed all his
pledges and his promises.

Ach!  Ach!  Hannele wrung her hands to think of HERSELF being mixed
up with him.  And he had seemed to her so manly.  He seemed to have
so much silent male passion in him.  And yet--the little lady!  'My
husband has ALWAYS been PERFECTLY SWEET to me.'  Think of it!  On
his knees too.  And his 'Yes, dear!  Certainly.  Certainly.'  Not
that he was afraid of the little lady.  He was just committed to
her, as he might have been committed to gaol, or committed to
paradise.

Had she been dreaming, to be in love with him?  Oh, she wished so
much she had never been.  She WISHED she had never given herself
away.  To him!--given herself away to him!--and so abjectly.  Hung
upon his words and his motions, and looked up to him as if he were
Caesar.  So he had seemed to her: like a mute Caesar.  Like
Germanicus.  Like--she did not know what.

How had it all happened?  What had taken her in?  Was it just his
good looks?  No, not really.  Because they were the kind of staring
good looks she didn't really care for.  He must have had charm.  He
must have charm.  Yes, he HAD charm.  When it worked.

His charm had not worked on her now for some time--never since that
evening after his wife's arrival.  Since then he had seemed to her--
rather awful.  Rather awful--stupid--an ass--a limited, rather
vulgar person.  That was what he seemed to her when his charm
wouldn't work.  A limited, rather inferior person.  And in a world
of Schiebers and profiteers and vulgar, pretentious persons, this
was the worst thing possible.  A limited, inferior, slightly
pretentious individual!  The husband of the little lady!  And oh
heaven, she was so deeply implicated with him!  He had not,
however, spoken with her in private since his wife's arrival.
Probably he would never speak with her in private again.  She hoped
to heaven, never again.  The awful thing was the past, that which
had been between him and her.  She shuddered when she thought of
it.  The husband of the little lady!

But surely there was something to account for it!  Charm, just
charm.  He had a charm.  And then, oh, heaven, when the charm left
off working!  It had left off so completely at this moment, in
Hannele's case, that her very mouth tasted salt.  What DID it all
amount to?

What was his charm, after all?  How could it have affected her?
She began to think of him again, at his best: his presence, when
they were alone high up in that big, lonely attic near the stars.
His room!--the big white-washed walls, the first scent of tobacco,
the silence, the sense of the stars being near, the telescopes, the
cactus with fine scarlet flowers: and above all, the strange,
remote, insidious silence of his presence, that was so congenial to
her also.  The curious way he had of turning his head to listen--to
listen to what?--as if he heard something in the stars.  The
strange look, like destiny, in his wide-open, almost staring black
eyes.  The beautiful lines of his brow, that seemed always to have
a certain cloud on it.  The slow elegance of his straight,
beautiful legs as he walked, and the exquisiteness of his dark,
slender chest!  Ah, she could feel the charm mounting over her
again.  She could feel the snake biting her heart.  She could feel
the arrows of desire rankling.

But then--and she turned from her thoughts back to this last little
tea-party in the Vier Jahreszeiten.  She thought of his voice:
'Yes, dear.  Certainly.  Certainly I will.'  And she thought of the
stupid, inferior look on his face.  And the something of a servant-
like way in which he went out to do his wife's bidding.

And then the charm was gone again, as the glow of sunset goes off a
burning city and leaves it a sordid industrial hole.  So much for
charm!

So much for charm.  She had better have stuck to her own sort of
men.  Martin, for instance, who was a gentleman and a daring
soldier, and a queer soul and pleasant to talk to.  Only he hadn't
any MAGIC.  Magic?  The very word made her writhe.  Magic?
Swindle.  Swindle, that was all it amounted to.  Magic!

And yet--let us not be too hasty.  If the magic had REALLY been
there, on those evenings in that great lofty attic.  Had it?  Yes.
Yes, she was bound to admit it.  There had been magic.  If there
had been magic in his presence and in his contact, the husband of
the little lady--But the distaste was in her mouth again.

So she started afresh, trying to keep a tight hold on the tail of
that all-too-evanescent magic of his.  Dear, it slipped so quickly
into disillusion.  Nevertheless.  If it had existed it did exist.
And if it did exist, it was worth having.  You could call it an
illusion if you liked.  But an illusion which is a real experience
is worth having.  Perhaps this disillusion was a greater illusion
than the illusion itself.  Perhaps all this disillusion of the
little lady and the husband of the little lady was falser than the
illusion and magic of those few evenings.  Perhaps the long
disillusion of life was falser than the brief moments of real
illusion.  After all--the delicate darkness of his breast, the
mystery that seemed to come with him as he trod slowly across the
floor of his room, after changing his tunic--Nay, nay, if she could
keep the illusion of his charm, she would give all disillusion to
the devils.  Nay, only let her be under the spell of his charm.
Only let the spell be upon her.  It was all she yearned for.  And
the thing she had to fight was the vulgarity of disillusion.  The
vulgarity of the little lady, the vulgarity of the husband of the
little lady, the vulgarity of his insincerity, his 'Yes, dear.
Certainly!  Certainly!'--this was what she had to fight.  He WAS
vulgar and horrible, then.  But also, the queer figure that sat
alone on the roof watching the stars!  The wonderful red flower of
the cactus.  The mystery that advanced with him as he came across
the room after changing his tunic.  The glamour and sadness of him,
his silence, as he stooped unfastening his boots.  And the strange
gargoyle smile, fixed, when he caressed her with his hand under the
chin!  Life is all a choice.  And if she chose the glamour, the
magic, the charm, the illusion, the spell!  Better death than that
other, the husband of the little lady.  When all was said and done,
was he as much the husband of the little lady as he was that queer,
delicate-breasted Caesar of her own knowledge?  Which was he?

No, she was NOT going to send her the doll.  The little lady should
never have the doll.

What a doll she would make herself!  Heavens, what a wizened jewel!


VI


Captain Hepburn still called occasionally at the house for his
post.  The maid always put his letters in a certain place in the
hall, so that he should not have to climb the stairs.

Among his letters--that is to say, along with another letter, for
his correspondence was very meagre--he one day found an envelope
with a crest.  Inside this envelope two letters.


Dear Captain Hepburn,

I had the enclosed letter from Mrs Hepburn.  I don't intend her to
have the doll which is your portrait, so I shall not answer this
note.  Also I don't see why she should try to turn us out of the
town.  She talked to me after tea that day, and it seems she
believes that Mitchka is your lover.  I didn't say anything at all--
except that it wasn't true.  But she needn't be afraid of me.  I
don't want you to trouble yourself.  But you may as well KNOW how
things are.

JOHANNA Z. R.


The other letter was on his wife's well-known heavy paper, and in
her well-known large, 'aristocratic' hand.


My dear Countess,

I wonder if there has been some mistake, or some misunderstanding.
Four days ago you said you would send round that DOLL we spoke of,
but I have seen no sign of it yet.  I thought of calling at the
studio, but did not wish to disturb the Baroness.  I should be very
much obliged if you could send the doll at once, as I do not feel
easy while it is out of my possession.  You may rely on having a
cheque by return.

Our old family friend, Major-General Barlow, called on me
yesterday, and we had a most interesting conversation on our
Tommies, and the protection of their morals here.  It seems we have
full power to send away any person or persons deemed undesirable,
with twenty-four hours' notice to leave.  But of course all this is
done as quietly and with the intention of causing as little scandal
as possible.

Please let me have the doll by tomorrow, and perhaps some hint as
to your future intentions.

With very best wishes from one who only seeks to be your friend.
Yours very sincerely,

EVANGELINE HEPBURN.


VII


And then a dreadful thing happened: really a very dreadful thing.
Hannele read of it in the evening newspaper of the town--the
Abendblatt.  Mitchka came rushing up with the paper at ten o'clock
at night, just when Hannele was going to bed.

Mrs Hepburn had fallen out of her bedroom window, from the third
floor of the hotel, down on to the pavement below, and was killed.
She was dressing for dinner.  And apparently she had in the morning
washed a certain little camisole, and put it on the window-sill to
dry.  She must have stood on a chair, reaching for it when she fell
out of the window.  Her husband, who was in the dressing-room,
heard a queer little noise, a sort of choking cry, and came into
her room to see what it was.  And she wasn't there.  The window was
open, and the chair by the window.  He looked round, and thought
she had left the room for a moment, so returned to his shaving.  He
was half-shaved when one of the maids rushed in.  When he looked
out of the window down into the street he fainted, and would have
fallen too if the maid had not pulled him in in time.

The very next day the captain came back to his attic.  Hannele did
not know, until quite late at night when he tapped on her door.
She knew his soft tap immediately.

'Won't you come over for a chat?' he said.

She paused for some moments before she answered.  And then perhaps
surprise made her agree: surprise and curiosity.

'Yes, in a minute,' she said, closing her door in his face.

She found him sitting quite still, not even smoking, in his quiet
attic.  He did not rise, but just glanced round with a faint smile.
And she thought his face seemed different, more flexible.  But in
the half-light she could not tell.  She sat at some little distance
from him.

'I suppose you've heard,' he said.

'Yes.'

After a long pause, he resumed:

'Yes.  It seems an impossible thing to have happened.  Yet it HAS
happened.'

Hannele's ears were sharp.  But strain them as she might, she could
not catch the meaning of his voice.

'A terrible thing.  A VERY terrible thing,' she said.

'Yes.'

'Do you think she fell quite accidentally?' she said.

'Must have done.  The maid was in just a minute before, and she
seemed as happy as possible.  I suppose reaching over that broad
window-ledge, her brain must suddenly have turned.  I can't imagine
why she didn't call me.  She could never bear even to look out of a
high window.  Turned her ill instantly if she saw a space below
her.  She used to say she couldn't really look at the moon, it made
her feel as if she would fall down a dreadful height.  She never
dared to more than glance at it.  She always had the feeling, I
suppose, of the awful space beneath her, if she were on the moon.'

Hannele was not listening to his words, but to his voice.  There
was something a little automatic in what he said.  But then that is
always so when people have had a shock.

'It must have been terrible for you too,' she said.

'Ah, yes.  At the time it was awful.  Awful.  I felt the smash
right inside me, you know.'

'Awful!' she repeated.

'But now,' he said, 'I feel very strangely happy about it.  I feel
happy about it.  I feel happy for her sake, if you can understand
that.  I feel she has got out of some great tension.  I feel she's
free now for the first time in her life.  She was a gentle soul,
and an original soul, but she was like a fairy who is condemned to
live in houses and sit on furniture and all that, don't you know.
It was never her nature.'

'No?' said Hannele, herself sitting in blank amazement.

'I always felt she was born in the wrong period--or on the wrong
planet.  Like some sort of delicate creature you take out of a
tropical forest the moment it is born, and from the first moment
teach it to perform tricks.  You know what I mean.  All her life
she performed the tricks of life, clever little monkey she was at
it too.  Beat me into fits.  But her own poor little soul, a sort
of fairy soul, those queer Irish creatures, was cooped up inside
her all her life, tombed in.  There it was, tombed in, while she
went through all the tricks of life that you have to go through if
you are born today.'

'But,' stammered Hannele, 'what would she have done if she HAD been
free?'

'Why, don't you see, there IS nothing for her to do in the world
today.  Take her language, for instance.  She never ought to have
been speaking English.  I don't know what language she ought to
have spoken.  Because if you take the Irish language, they only
learn it back from English.  They think in English, and just put
Irish words on top.  But English was never her language.  It
bubbled off her lips, so to speak.  And she had no other language.
Like a starling that you've made talk from the very beginning, and
so it can only shout these talking noises, don't you know.  It
can't whistle its own whistling to save its life.  Couldn't do it.
It's lost it.  All its own natural mode of expressing itself has
collapsed, and it can only be artificial.'

There was a long pause.

'Would she have been wonderful, then, if she had been able to talk
in some unknown language?' said Hannele jealously.

'I don't say she would have been wonderful.  As a matter of fact,
we think a talking starling is much more wonderful than an ordinary
starling.  I don't myself, but most people do.  And she would have
been a sort of starling.  And she would have had her own language
and her own ways.  As it was, poor thing, she was always arranging
herself and fluttering and chattering inside a cage.  And she never
knew she was in the cage, any more than we know we are inside our
own skins.'

'But,' said Hannele, with a touch of mockery, 'how do you know you
haven't made it all up--just to console yourself?'

'Oh, I've thought it long ago,' he said.

'Still,' she blurted, 'you may have invented it all--as a sort of
consolation for--for--for your life.'

'Yes, I may,' he said.  'But I don't think so.  It was her eyes.
Did you ever notice her eyes?  I often used to catch her eyes.  And
she'd be talking away, all the language bubbling off her lips.  And
her eyes were so clear and bright and different.  Like a child's
that is listening to something, and is going to be frightened.  She
was always listening--and waiting--for something else.  I tell you
what, she was exactly like that fairy in the Scotch song, who is in
love with a mortal, and sits by the high road in terror waiting for
him to come, and hearing the plovers and the curlews.  Only
nowadays motor-lorries go along the moor roads and the poor thing
is struck unconscious, and carried into our world in a state of
unconsciousness, and when she comes round, she tries to talk our
language and behave as we behave, and she can't remember anything
else, so she goes on and on, till she falls with a crash, back to
her own world.'

Hannele was silent, and so was he.

'You loved her then?' she said at length.

'Yes.  But in this way.  When I was a boy I caught a bird, a black-
cap, and I put it in a cage.  And I loved that bird.  I don't know
why, but I loved it.  I simply loved that bird.  All the gorse, and
the heather, and the rock, and the hot smell of yellow gorse
blossom, and the sky that seemed to have no end to it, when I was a
boy, everything that I almost was MAD with, as boys are, seemed to
me to be in that little, fluttering black-cap.  And it would peck
its seed as if it didn't quite know what else to do; and look round
about, and begin to sing.  But in quite a few days it turned its
head aside and died.  Yes, it died.  I never had the feeling again
that I got from that black-cap when I was a boy--not until I saw
her.  And then I felt it all again.  I felt it all again.  And it
was the same feeling.  I knew, quite soon I knew, that she would
die.  She would peck her seed and look round in the cage just the
same.  But she would die in the end.  Only it would last much
longer.  But she would die in the cage, like the black-cap.'

'But she loved the cage.  She loved her clothes and her jewels.
She must have loved her house and her furniture and all that with a
perfect frenzy.'

'She did.  She did.  But like a child with playthings.  Only they
were big, marvellous playthings to her.  Oh yes, she was never away
from them.  She never forgot her things--her trinkets and her furs
and her furniture.  She never got away from them for a minute.  And
everything in her mind was mixed up with them.'

'Dreadful!' said Hannele.

'Yes, it was dreadful,' he answered.

'Dreadful,' repeated Hannele.

'Yes, quite.  Quite!  And it got worse.  And her way of talking got
worse.  As if it bubbled off her lips.  But her eyes never lost
their brightness, they never lost that faery look.  Only I used to
see fear in them.  Fear of everything--even all the things she
surrounded herself with.  Just like my black-cap used to look out
of his cage--so bright and sharp, and yet as if he didn't know that
it was just the cage that was between him and the outside.  He
thought it was inside himself, the barrier.  He thought it was part
of his own nature to be shut in.  And she thought it was part of
her own nature.  And so they both died.'

'What I can't see,' said Hannele, 'is what she would have done
outside her cage.  What other life could she have, except her
bibelots and her furniture, and her talk?'

'Why, none.  There IS no life outside for human beings.'

'Then there's nothing,' said Hannele.

'That's true.  In a great measure, there's nothing.'

'Thank you,' said Hannele.

There was a long pause.

'And perhaps I was to blame.  Perhaps I ought to have made some
sort of a move.  But I didn't know what to do.  For my life, I
didn't know what to do, except try to make her happy.  She had
enough money--and I didn't think it mattered if she shared it with
me.  I always had a garden--and the astronomy.  It's been an
immense relief to me watching the moon.  It's been wonderful.
Instead of looking inside the cage, as I did at my bird, or at her--
I look right out--into freedom--into freedom.'

'The moon, you mean?' said Hannele.

'Yes, the moon.'

'And that's your freedom?'

'That's where I've found the greatest sense of freedom,' he said.

'Well, I'm not going to be jealous of the moon,' said Hannele at
length.

'Why should you?  It's not a thing to be jealous of.'

In a little while, she bade him good-night and left him.


VIII


The chief thing that the captain knew, at this juncture, was that a
hatchet had gone through the ligatures and veins that connected him
with the people of his affection, and that he was left with the
bleeding ends of all his vital human relationships.  Why it should
be so he did not know.  But then one never can know the whys and
the wherefores of one's passional changes.

He only knew that it was so.  The emotional flow between him and
all the people he knew and cared for was broken, and for the time
being he was conscious only of the cleavage.  The cleavage that had
occurred between him and his fellow-men, the cleft that was now
between him and them.  It was not the fault of anybody or anything.
He could neither reproach himself nor them.  What had happened had
been preparing for a long time.  Now suddenly the cleavage.  There
had been a long, slow weaning away: and now this sudden silent
rupture.

What it amounted to principally was that he did not want even to
see Hannele.  He did not want to think of her even.  But neither
did he want to see anybody else, or to think of anybody else.  He
shrank with a feeling almost of disgust from his friends and
acquaintances, and their expressions of sympathy.  It affected him
with instantaneous disgust when anybody wanted to share emotions
with him.  He did not want to share emotions or feelings of any
sort.  He wanted to be by himself, essentially, even if he was
moving about among other people.

So he went to England to settle his own affairs, and out of duty to
see his children.  He wished his children all the well in the
world--everything except any emotional connexion with himself.  He
decided to take his girl away from the convent at once, and to put
her into a jolly English school.  His boy was all right where he
was.

The captain had now an income sufficient to give him his
independence, but not sufficient to keep up his wife's house.  So
he prepared to sell the house and most of the things in it.  He
decided also to leave the army as soon as he could be free.  And he
thought he would wander about for a time, till he came upon
something he wanted.

So the winter passed, without his going back to Germany.  He was
free of the army.  He drifted along, settling his affairs.  They
were of no very great importance.  And all the time he never wrote
once to Hannele.  He could not get over his disgust that people
insisted on his sharing their emotions.  He could not bear their
emotions, neither their activities.  Other people might have all
the emotions and feelings and earnestness and busy activities they
liked.  Quite nice even that they had such a multifarious commotion
for themselves.  But the moment they approached him to spread their
feelings over him or to entangle him in their activities a helpless
disgust came up in him, and until he could get away he felt sick,
even physically.

This was no state of mind for a lover.  He could not even think of
Hannele.  Anybody else he felt he need not think about.  He was
deeply, profoundly thankful that his wife was dead.  It was an end
of pity now; because, poor thing, she had escaped and gone her own
way into the void, like a flown bird.


IX


Nevertheless, a man hasn't finished his life at forty.  He may,
however, have finished one great phase of his life.

And Alexander Hepburn was not the man to live alone.  All our
troubles, says somebody wise, come upon us because we cannot be
alone.  And that is all very well.  We must all be ABLE to be
alone, otherwise we are just victims.  But when we ARE able to be
alone, then we realize that the only thing to do is to start a new
relationship with another--or even the same--human being.  That
people should all be stuck up apart, like so many telegraph-poles,
is nonsense.

So with our dear captain.  He had his convulsion into a sort of
telegraph-pole isolation: which was absolutely necessary for him.
But then he began to bud with a new yearning for--for what?  For
love?

It was a question he kept nicely putting to himself.  And really,
the nice young girls of eighteen or twenty attracted him very much:
so fresh, so impulsive, and looking up to him as if he were
something wonderful.  If only he could have married two or three of
them, instead of just one!

Love!  When a man has no particular ambition, his mind turns back
perpetually, as a needle towards the pole.  That tiresome word
Love.  It means so many things.  It meant the feeling he had had
for his wife.  He had loved her.  But he shuddered at the thought
of having to go through such love again.  It meant also the feeling
he had for the awfully nice young things he met here and there:
fresh, impulsive girls ready to give all their hearts away.  Oh
yes, he could fall in love with half a dozen of them.  But he knew
he'd better not.

At last he wrote to Hannele: and got no answer.  So he wrote to
Mitchka and still got no answer.  So he wrote for information--and
there was none forthcoming, except that the two women had gone to
Munich.

For the time being he left it at that.  To him, Hannele did not
exactly represent rosy love.  Rather a hard destiny.  He did not
adore her.  He did not feel one bit of adoration for her.  As a
matter of fact, not all the beauties and virtues of woman put
together with all the gold in the Indies would have tempted him
into the business of adoration any more.  He had gone on his knees
once, vowing with faltering tones to try and make the adored one
happy.  And now--never again.  Never.

The temptation this time was to be adored.  One of those fresh
young things would have adored him as if he were a god.  And there
was something VERY alluring about the thought.  Very--very
alluring.  To be god-almighty in your own house, with a lovely
young thing adoring you, and you giving off beams of bright
effulgence like a Gloria!  Who wouldn't be tempted: at the age of
forty?  And this was why he dallied.

But in the end he suddenly took the train to Munich.  And when he
got there he found the town beastly uncomfortable, the Bavarians
rude and disagreeable, and no sign of the missing females, not even
in the Caf� St�phanie.  He wandered round and round.

And then one day, oh heaven, he saw his doll in a shop window: a
little art shop.  He stood and stared quite spellbound.

'Well, if that isn't the devil,' he said.  'Seeing yourself in a
shop window!'

He was so disgusted that he would not go into the shop.

Then, every day for a week did he walk down that little street and
look at himself in the shop window.  Yes, there he stood, with one
hand in his pocket.  And the figure had one hand in its pocket.
There he stood, with his cap pulled rather low over his brow.  And
the figure had its cap pulled low over its brow.  But, thank
goodness, his own cap now was a civilian tweed.  But there he
stood, his head rather forward, gazing with fixed dark eyes.  And
himself in little, that wretched figure, stood there with its head
rather forward, staring with fixed dark eyes.  It was such a real
little MAN that it fairly staggered him.  The oftener he saw it,
the more it staggered him.  And the more he hated it.  Yet it
fascinated him, and he came again to look.

And it was always there.  A lonely little individual lounging there
with one hand in its pocket, and nothing to do, among the bric-�-
brac and the bibelots.  Poor devil, stuck so incongruously in the
world.  And yet losing none of his masculinity.

A male little devil, for all his forlornness.  But such an air of
isolation, or not-belonging.  Yet taut and male, in his tartan
trews.  And what a situation to be in!--lounging with his back
against a little Japanese lacquer cabinet, with a few old pots on
his right hand and a tiresome brass ink-tray on his left, while
pieces of not-very-nice filet lace hung their length up and down
the background.  Poor little devil: it was like a deliberate
satire.

And then one day it was gone.  There was the cabinet and the filet
lace and the tiresome ink-stand tray: and the little gentleman
wasn't there.  The captain at once walked into the shop.

'Have you sold that doll?--that unknown soldier?' he added, without
knowing quite what he was saying.

The doll was sold.

'Do you know who bought it?'

The girl looked at him very coldly, and did not know.

'I once knew the lady who made it.  In fact, the doll was ME,' he
said.

The girl now looked at him with sudden interest.

'Don't you think it was like me?' he said.

'Perhaps'--she began to smile.

'It was me.  And the lady who made it was a friend of mine.  Do you
know her name?'

'Yes.'

'Gr�fin zu Rassentlow,' he cried, his eyes shining.

'Oh yes.  But her dolls are famous.'

'Do you know where she is?  Is she in Munich?'

'That I don't know.'

'Could you find out?'

'I don't know.  I can ask.'

'Or the Baroness von Prielau-Carolath.'

'The Baroness is dead.'

'Dead!'

'She was shot in a riot in Salzburg.  They say a lover--'

'How do you know?'

'From the newspapers.'

'Dead!  Is it possible.  Poor Hannele.'

There was a pause.

'Well,' he said, 'if you would inquire about the address--I'll call
again.'

Then he turned back from the door.

'By the way, do you mind telling me how much you sold the doll
for?'

The girl hesitated.  She was by no means anxious to give away any
of her trade details.  But at length she answered reluctantly:

'Five hundred marks.'

'So cheap,' he said.'  Good-day.  Then I will call again.'


X


Then again he got a trace.  It was in the Chit-Chat column of the
M�nchener Neue Zeitung: under Studio-Comments.  'Theodor
Worpswede's latest picture is a still-life, containing an
entertaining group of a doll, two sunflowers in a glass jar, and a
poached egg on toast.  The contrast between the three substances is
highly diverting and instructive, and this is perhaps one of the
most interesting of Worpswede's works.  The doll, by the way, is
one of the creations of our fertile Countess Hannele.  It is the
figure of an English, or rather Scottish, officer in the famous
tartan trousers which, clinging closely to the legs of the lively
Gaul, so shocked the eminent Julius Caesar and his cohorts.  We, of
course, are no longer shocked, but full of admiration for the
creative genius of our dear Countess.  The doll itself is a
masterpiece, and has begotten another masterpiece in Theodor
Worpswede's Still-life.  We have heard, by the way, a rumour of
Countess zu Rassentlow's engagement.  Apparently the Herr
Regierungsrat von Poldi, of that most beautiful of summer resorts,
Kaprun, in the Tyrol, is the fortunate man--'


XI


The captain bought the Still-life.  This new version of himself
along with the poached egg and the sunflowers was rather
frightening.  So he packed up for Austria, for Kaprun, with his
picture, and had a fight to get the beastly thing out of Germany,
and another fight to get it into Austria.  Fatigued and furious he
arrived in Salzburg, seeing no beauty in anything.  Next day he was
in Kaprun.

It was an elegant and fashionable watering-place before the war: a
lovely little lake in the midst of the Alps, an old Tyrolese town
on the water-side, green slopes sheering up opposite, and away
beyond a glacier.  It was still crowded and still elegant.  But
alas, with a broken, bankrupt, desperate elegance, and almost empty
shops.

The captain felt rather dazed.  He found himself in an hotel full
of Jews of the wrong, rich sort, and wondered what next.  The place
was beautiful, but the life wasn't.


XII


The Herr Regierungsrat was not at first sight prepossessing.  He
was approaching fifty, and had gone stout and rather loose, as so
many men of his class and race do.  Then he wore one of those
dreadful full-bottom coats, a kind of poor relation to our full-
skirted frock-coat: it would best be described as a family coat.
It flapped about him as he walked, and he looked at first glance
lower middle class.

But he wasn't.  Of course, being in office in the collapsed
Austria, he was a republican.  But by nature he was a monarchist,
nay, an imperialist, as every true Austrian is.  And he was a true
Austrian.  And as such he was much finer and subtler than he
looked.  As one got used to him, his rather fat face, with its fine
nose and slightly bitter, pursed mouth, came to have a resemblance
to the busts of some of the late Roman emperors.  And as one was
with him, one came gradually to realize that out of all his baggy
bourgeois appearance came something of a grand geste.  He could not
help it.  There was something sweeping and careless about his soul:
big, rather assertive, and ill-bred-seeming; but, in fact, not ill-
bred at all, only a little bitter and a good deal indifferent to
his surroundings.  He looked at first sight so common and parvenu.
And then one had to realize that he was a member of a big, old
empire, fallen into a sort of epicureanism, and a little bitter.
There was no littleness, no meanness, and no real coarseness.  But
he was a great talker, and relentless towards his audience.

Hannele was attracted to him by his talk.  He began as soon as
dinner appeared: and he went on, carrying the decanter and the
wine-glass with him out on to the balcony of the villa, over the
lake, on and on until midnight.  The summer night was still and
warm: the lake lay deep and full, and the old town twinkled away
across.  There was the faintest tang of snow in the air, from the
great glacier-peaks that were hidden in the night opposite.
Sometimes a boat with a lantern twanged a guitar.  The clematis
flowers were quite black, like leaves, dangling from the terrace.

It was so beautiful, there in the very heart of the Tyrol.  The
hotels glittered with lights: electric light was still cheap.
There seemed a fullness and a loveliness in the night.  And yet for
some reason it was all terrible and devastating: the life-spirit
seemed to be squirming, bleeding all the time.

And on and on talked the Herr Regierungsrat, with all the witty
volubility of the more versatile Austrian.  He was really very
witty, very human, and with a touch of salty cynicism that reminded
one of a real old Roman of the Empire.  That subtle stoicism, that
unsentimental epicureanism, that kind of reckless hopelessness, of
course, fascinated the women.  And particularly Hannele.  He talked
on and on--about his work before the war, when he held an important
post and was one of the governing class--then about the war--then
about the hopelessness of the present: and in it all there seemed a
bigness, a carelessness based on indifference and hopelessness that
laughed at its very self.  The real old Austria had always
fascinated Hannele.  As represented in the witty, bitter-
indifferent Herr Regierungsrat it carried her away.

And he, of course, turned instinctively to her, talking in his
rapid, ceaseless fashion, with a laugh and a pause to drink and a
new start taken.  She liked the sound of his Austrian speech: its
racy carelessness, its salty indifference to standards of
correctness.  Oh yes, here was the grand geste still lingering.

He turned his large breast towards her, and made a quick gesture
with his fat, well-shapen hand, blurted out another subtle, rough-
seeming romance, pursed his mouth, and emptied his glass once more.
Then he looked at his half-forgotten cigar and started again.

There was something almost boyish and impulsive about him: the way
he turned to her, and the odd way he seemed to open his big breast
to her.  And again he seemed almost eternal, sitting there in his
chair with knees planted apart.  It was as if he would never rise
again, but would remain sitting for ever, and talking.  He seemed
as if he had no legs, save to sit with.  As if to stand on his feet
and walk would not be natural to him.

Yet he rose at last, and kissed her hand with the grand gesture
that France or Germany have never acquired: carelessness, profound
indifference to other people's standards, and then such a sudden
stillness, as he bent and kissed her hand.  Of course she felt a
queen in exile.

And perhaps it is more dangerous to feel yourself a queen in exile
than a queen in situ.  She fell in love with him, with this large,
stout, loose widower of fifty, with two children.  He had no money
except some Austrian money that was worth nothing outside Austria.
He could not even go to Germany.  There he was, fixed in this
hollow in the middle of the Tyrol.

But he had an ambition still, old Roman of the decadence that he
was.  He had year by year and without making any fuss collected the
material for a very minute and thorough history of his own
district: the Chiemgau and the Pinzgau.  Hannele found that his
fund of information on this subject was inexhaustible, and his
intelligence was so delicate, so human, and his scope seemed so
wide, that she felt a touch of reverence for him.  He wanted to
write this history.  And she wanted to help him.

For, of course, as things were he would never write it.  He was
Regierungsrat: that is, he was the petty local governor of his town
and immediate district.  The Amthaus was a great old building, and
there young ladies in high heels flirted among masses of papers
with bare-kneed young gentlemen in Tyrolese costume, and
occasionally they parted to take a pleasant, interesting attitude
and write a word or two, after which they fluttered together for a
little more interesting diversion.  It was extraordinary how many
finely built, handsome young people of an age fitted for nothing
but love-affairs ran the governmental business of this department.
And the Herr Regierungsrat sailed in and out of the big, old room,
his wide coat flying like wings and making the papers flutter, his
rather wine-reddened, old-Roman face smiling with its bitter look.
And of course it was a witticism he uttered first, even if Hungary
was invading the frontier or cholera was in Vienna.

When he was on his legs, he walked nimbly, briskly, and his coat-
bottoms always flew.  So he waved through the town, greeting
somebody at every few strides and grinning, and yet with a certain
haughty reserve.  Oh yes, there was a certain salty hauteur about
him which made the people trust him.  And he spoke the vernacular
so racily.

Hannele felt she would like to marry him.  She would like to be
near him.  She would like him to write his history.  She would like
him to make her feel a queen in exile.  No one had ever QUITE
kissed her hand as he kissed it: with that sudden stillness and
strange, chivalric abandon of himself.  How he would abandon
himself to her!--terribly--wonderfully--perhaps a little horribly.
His wife, whom he had married late, had died after seven years of
marriage.  Hannele could understand that too.  One or the other
must die.

She became engaged.  But something made her hesitate before
marriage.  Being in Austria was like being on a wrecked ship that
MUST sink after a certain short length of time.  And marrying the
Herr Regierungsrat was like marrying the doomed captain of the
doomed ship.  The sense of fatality was part of the attraction.

And yet she hesitated.  The summer weeks passed.  The strangers
flooded in and crowded the town, and ate up the food like locusts.
People no longer counted the paper money, they weighed it by the
kilogram.  Peasants stored it in a corner of the meal-bin, and mice
came and chewed holes in it.  Nobody knew where the next lot of
food was going to come from: yet it always came.  And the lake
teemed with bathers.  When the captain arrived he looked with
amazement on the crowds of strapping, powerful fellows who bathed
all day long, magnificent blond flesh of men and women.  No wonder
the old Romans stood in astonishment before the huge blond limbs of
the savage Germana.

Well, the life was like a madness.  The hotels charged fifteen
hundred kronen a day: the women, old and young, paraded in the
peasant costume, in flowery cotton dresses with gaudy, expensive
silk aprons: the men wore the Tyrolese costume, bare knees and
little short jackets.  And for the men, the correct thing was to
have the leathern hose and the blue linen jacket as old as
possible.  If you had a hole in your leathern seat, so much the
better.

Everything so physical.  Such magnificent naked limbs and naked
bodies, and in the streets, in the hotels, everywhere, bare, white
arms of women and bare, brown, powerful knees and thighs of men.
The sense of flesh everywhere, and the endless ache of flesh.  Even
in the peasants who rowed across the lake, standing and rowing with
a slow, heavy, gondolier motion at the one curved oar, there was
the same endless ache of physical yearning.


XIII


It was August when Alexander met Hannele.  She was walking under a
chintz parasol, wearing a dress of blue cotton with little red
roses, and a red silk apron.  She had no hat, her arms were bare
and soft, and she had white stockings under her short dress.  The
Herr Regierungsrat was at her side, large, nimble, and laughing
with a new witticism.

Alexander, in a light summer suit and Panama hat, was just coming
out of the bank, shoving twenty thousand kronen into his pocket.
He saw her coming across from the Amtsgericht, with the Herr
Regierungsrat at her side, across the space of sunshine.  She was
laughing, and did not notice him.

She did not notice till he had taken off his hat and was saluting
her.  Then what she saw was the black, smooth, shining head, and
she went pale.  His black, smooth, close head--and all the blue
Austrian day seemed to shrivel before her eyes.

'How do you do, Countess!  I hoped I should meet you.'

She heard his slow, sad-clanging, straying voice again, and she
pressed her hand with the umbrella stick against her breast.  She
had forgotten it--forgotten his peculiar, slow voice.  And now it
seemed like a noise that sounds in the silence of night.  Ah, how
difficult it was, that suddenly the world could split under her
eyes, and show this darkness inside.  She wished he had not come.

She presented him to the Herr Regierungsrat, who was stiff and
cold.  She asked where the captain was staying.  And then, not
knowing what else to say, she said:

'Won't you come to tea?'

She was staying in a villa across the lake.  Yes, he would come to
tea.

He went.  He hired a boat and a man to row him across.  It was not
far.  There stood the villa, with its brown balconies one above the
other, the bright red geraniums and white geraniums twinkling all
round, the trees of purple clematis tumbling at one corner.  All
the green window doors were open: but nobody about.  In the little
garden by the water's edge the rose trees were tall and lank, drawn
up by the dark green trees of the background.  A white table with
chairs and garden seats stood under--the shadow of a big willow
tree, and a hammock with cushions swung just behind.  But no one in
sight.  There was a little landing bridge on to the garden: and a
fairly large boat-house at the garden end.

The captain was not sure that the boat-house belonged to the villa.
Voices were shouting and laughing from the water's surface, bathers
swimming.  A tall, naked youth with a little red cap on his head
and a tiny red loin-cloth round his slender young hips was standing
on the steps of the boat-house calling to the three women who were
swimming near.  The dark-haired woman with the white cap swam up to
the steps and caught the boy by the ankle.  He cried and laughed
and remonstrated, and poked her in the breast with his foot.

'Nein, nein, Hardu!' she cried as he tickled her with his toe.
'Hardu!  Hardu!  H�r' auf!--Leave off!'--and she fell with a crash
back into the water.  The youth laughed a loud, deep laugh of a lad
whose voice is newly broken.

'Was macht er dann?' cried a voice from the waters.  'What is he
doing?'  It was a dark-skinned girl swimming swiftly, her big dark
eyes watching amused from the water surface.

'Jetzt Hardu h�r' auf.  Nein.  Jetzt ruhig!  Now leave off!  Now be
quiet.'  And the dark-skinned woman was climbing out in the
sunshine onto the pale, raw-wood steps of the boathouse, the water
glistening on her dark-blue, stockinette, soft-moulded back and
loins: while the boy, with his foot stretched out, was trying to
push her back into the water.  She clambered out, however, and sat
on the steps in the sun, panting slightly.  She was dark and
attractive-looking, with a mature beautiful figure, and handsome,
strong woman's legs.

In the garden appeared a black-and-white maid-servant with a tray.

'Kaffee, gn�dige Frau!'

The voice came so distinct over the water.

'Hannele!  Hannele!  Kaffee!' called the woman on the steps of the
bathing-house.

'Tante Hannele!  Kaffee!' called the dark-eyed girl, turning round
in the water, then swimming for home.

'Kaffee!  Kaffee!' roared the youth, in anticipation.

'Ja--a!  Ich kom--mm,' sang Hannele's voice from the water.

The dark-eyed girl, her hair tied up in a silk bandana, had reached
the steps and was climbing out, a slim young fish in her close dark
suit.  The three stood clustered on the steps, the elder woman with
one arm over the naked shoulders of the youth, the other arm over
the shoulders of the girl.  And all in chorus sang:

'Hannele!  Hannele!  Hannele!  Wir warten auf dich.'

The boatman had left off rowing, and the boat was drifting slowly
in.  The family became quiet, because of the intrusion.  The
attractive-looking woman turned and picked up her blue bath-robe,
of a mid-blue colour that became her.  She swung it round her as if
it were an opera cloak.  The youth stared at the boat.

The captain was watching Hannele.  With a white kerchief tied round
her silky, brownish hair, she was swimming home.  He saw her white
shoulders and her white, wavering legs below in the clear water.
Round the boat fishes were suddenly jumping.

The three on the steps beyond stood silent, watching the intruding
boat with resentment.  The boatman twisted his head round and
watched them.  The captain, who was facing them, watched Hannele.
She swam slowly and easily up, caught the rail of the steps, and
stooping forward, climbed slowly out of the water.  Her legs were
large and flashing white and looked rich, the rich, white thighs
with the blue veins behind, and the full, rich softness of her
sloping loins.

'Ach!  Sch�n!  'S war sch�n!  Das Wasser ist gut,' her voice was
heard, half singing as she took her breath.  'It was lovely.'

'Heiss,' said the woman above.  'Zu warm.  Too warm.'

The youth made way for Hannele, who drew herself erect at the top
of the steps, looking round, panting a little and putting up her
hands to the knot of her kerchief on her head.  Her legs were
magnificent and white.

'Kuck de Leut, die da bleiben,' said the woman in the blue wrap, in
a low voice.  'Look at the people stopping there.'

'Ja!' said Hannele negligently.  Then she looked.  She started as
if in fear, looked round, as if to run away, looked back again, and
met the eyes of the captain, who took off his hat.

She cried in a loud, frightened voice:

'Oh, but--I thought it was TOMORROW!'

'No--today,' came the quiet voice of the captain over the water.

'TODAY!  Are you sure?' she cried, calling to the boat.

'Quite sure.  But we'll make it tomorrow if you like,' he said.

'Today!  Today!' she repeated in bewilderment.'  No!  Wait a
minute.'  And she ran into the boat-house.

'Was ist es?' asked the dark woman, following her.  'What is it?'

'A friend--a visitor--Captain Hepburn,' came Hannele's voice.

The boatman now rowed slowly to the landing-stage.  The dark woman,
huddled in her blue wrap as in an opera-cloak, walked proudly and
unconcernedly across the background of the garden and up the steps
to the first balcony.  Hannele, her feet slip-slopping in loose
slippers, clutching an old yellow wrap round her, came to the
landing-stage and shook hands.

'I am so sorry.  It is so stupid of me.  I was sure it was
tomorrow,' she said.

'No, it was today.  But I wish for your sake it had been tomorrow,'
he replied.

'No.  No.  It doesn't matter.  You won't mind waiting a minute,
will you?  You mustn't be angry with me for being so stupid.'

So she went away, the heelless slippers flipping up to her naked
heels.  Then the big-eyed, dusky girl stole into the house: and
then the naked youth, who went with sang-froid.  He would make a
fine, handsome man: and he knew it.


XIV


Hepburn and Hannele were to make a small excursion to the glacier
which stood there always in sight, coldly grinning in the sky.  The
weather had been very hot, but this morning there were loose clouds
in the sky.  The captain rowed over the lake soon after dawn.
Hannele stepped into the little craft, and they pulled back to the
town.  There was a wind ruffling the water, so that the boat leaped
and chuckled.  The glacier, in a recess among the folded mountains,
looked cold and angry.  But morning was very sweet in the sky, and
blowing very sweet with a faint scent of the second hay from the
low lands at the head of the lake.  Beyond stood naked grey rock
like a wall of mountains, pure rock, with faint, thin slashes of
snow.  Yesterday it had rained on the lake.  The sun was going to
appear from behind the Breitsteinhorn, the sky with its clouds
floating in blue light and yellow radiance was lovely and cheering
again.  But dark clouds seemed to spout up from the Pinzgau valley.
And once across the lake, all was shadow, when the water no longer
gave back the sky-morning.

The day was a feast day, a holiday.  Already so early three young
men from the mountains were bathing near the steps of the
Badeanstalt.  Handsome, physical fellows, with good limbs rolling
and swaying in the early morning water.  They seemed to enjoy it
too.  But to Hepburn it was always as if a dark wing were stretched
in the sky, over these mountains, like a doom.  And these three
young, lusty, naked men swimming and rolling in the shadow.

Hepburn's was the first boat stirring.  He made fast in the hotel
boat-house, and he and Hannele went into the little town.  It was
deep in shadow, though the light of the sky, curdled with cloud,
was bright overhead.  But dark and chill and heavy lay the shadow
in the black-and-white town, like a sediment.

The shops were all shut, but peasants from the hills were already
strolling about in their holiday dress: the men in their short
leather trousers, like football drawers, and bare brown knees and
great boots: their little grey jackets faced with green, and their
green hats with the proud chamois-brush behind.  They seemed to
stray about like lost souls, and the proud chamois-brush behind
their hats, this proud, cocky, perking-up tail, like a mountain-
buck with his tail up, was belied by the lost-soul look of the men,
as they loitered about with their hands shoved in the front pockets
of their trousers.  Some women also were creeping about: peasant
women, in the funny little black hats that had thick gold under the
brim and long black streamers of ribbon, broad, black, water-wave
ribbon starting from a bow under the brim behind and streaming
right to the bottom of the skirt.  These women, in their thick,
dark dresses with tight bodices and massive, heavy, full skirts,
and bright or dark aprons, strode about with the heavy stride of
the mountain women, the heavy, quick, forward-leaning motion.  They
were waiting for the town-day to begin.

Hepburn had a knapsack on his back, with food for the day.  But
bread was wanting.  They found the door of the bakery open, and got
a loaf: a long, hot loaf of pure white bread, beautifully sweet
bread.  It cost seventy kronen.  To Hepburn it was always a mystery
where this exquisite bread came from, in a lost land.

In the little square where the clock stood were bunches of people,
and a big motor-omnibus, and a motor-car that would hold about
eight people.  Hepburn had paid his seven hundred kronen for the
two tickets.  Hannele tied up her head in a thin scarf and put on
her thick coat.  She and Hepburn sat in front by the peaked driver.
And at seven o'clock away went the car, swooping out of the town,
past the handsome old Tyrolese Schloss, or manor, black-and-white,
with its little black spires pricking up, past the station, and
under the trees by the lakeside.  The road was not good, but they
ran at a great speed, out past the end of the lake, where the reeds
grew, out into the open valley mouth, where the mountains opened in
two clefts.  It was cold in the car.  Hepburn buttoned himself up
to the throat and pulled his hat down on his ears.  Hannele's scarf
fluttered.  She sat without saying anything, erect, her face fine
and keen, watching ahead.  From the deep Pinzgau Valley came the
river roaring and raging, a glacier river of pale, seething ice-
water.  Over went the car, over the log bridge, darting towards the
great slopes opposite.  And then a sudden immense turn, a swerve
under the height of the mountain-side, and again a darting lurch
forward, under the pear trees of the high-road, past the big old
ruined castle that so magnificently watched the valley mouth, and
the foaming river; on, rushing under the huge roofs of the
balconied peasant houses of a village, then swinging again to take
another valley mouth, there where a little village clustered all
black and white on a knoll, with a white church that had a black
steeple, and a white castle with black spires, and clustering,
ample black-and-white houses of the Tyrol.  There is a grandeur
even in the peasant houses, with their great wide passage halls
where the swallows build, and where one could build a whole English
cottage.

So the motor-car darted up this new, narrow, wilder, more sinister
valley.  A herd of almost wild young horses, handsome reddish
things, burst around the car, and one great mare with full flanks
went crashing up the road ahead, her heels flashing to the car,
while her foal whinneyed and screamed from behind.  But no, she
could not turn from the road.  On and on she crashed, forging
ahead, the car behind her.  And then at last she did swerve aside,
among the thin alder trees by the wild riverbed.

'If it isn't a cow, it's a horse,' said the driver, who was thin
and weaselish and silent, with his ear-flaps over his ears.

But the great mare had shaken herself in a wild swerve, and
screaming and whinneying was plunging back to her foal.  Hannele
had been frightened.

The car rushed on, through water-meadows, along a naked, white bit
of mountain road.  Ahead was a darkness of mountain front and pine
trees.  To the right was the stony, furious, lion-like river,
tawny-coloured here, and the slope up beyond.  But the road for the
moment was swinging fairly level through the stunned water-meadows
of the savage valley.  There were gates to open, and Hepburn jumped
down to open them, as if he were the footboy.  The heavy Jews of
the wrong sort, seated behind, of course did not stir.

At a house on a knoll the driver sounded his horn, and out rushed
children crying Papa! Papa!--then a woman with a basket.  A few
brief words from the weaselish man, who smiled with warm, manly
blue eyes at his children, then the car leaped forward.  The whole
bearing of the man was so different when he was looking at his own
family.  He could not even say thank you when Hepburn opened the
gates.  He hated and even despised his human cargo of middle-class
people.  Deep, deep is class hatred, and it begins to swallow all
human feeling in its abyss.  So, stiff, silent, thin, capable, and
neuter towards his fares, sat the little driver with the flaps over
his ears, and his thin nose cold.

The car swept round, suddenly, into the trees: and into the ravine.
The river shouted at the bottom of a gulf.  Bristling pine trees
stood around.  The air was black and cold and forever sunless.  The
motor-car rushed on, in this blackness under the rock-walls and the
fir trees.

Then it suddenly stopped.  There was a huge motor-omnibus ahead,
drab and enormous-looking.  Tourists and trippers of last night
coming back from the glacier.  It stood like a great rock.  And the
smaller motor-car edged past, tilting into the rock gutter under
the face of stone.

So, after a while of this valley of the shadow of death, lurching
in steep loops upwards, the motor-car scrambling wonderfully,
struggling past trees and rock upwards, at last they came to the
end.  It was a huge inn or tourist hotel of brown wood: and here
the road ended in a little wide bay surrounded and overhung by
trees.  Beyond was a garage and a bridge over a roaring river: and
always the overhung darkness of trees and the intolerable steep
slopes immediately above.

Hannele left her big coat.  The sky looked blue above the gloom.
They set out across the hollow-sounding bridge, over the
everlasting mad rush of ice-water, to the immediate upslope of the
path, under dark trees.  But a little old man in a sort of sentry-
box wanted fifty or sixty kronen: apparently for the upkeep of the
road, a sort of toll.

The other tourists were coming--some stopping to have a drink
first.  The second omnibus had not yet arrived.  Hannele and
Hepburn were the first two, treading slowly up that dark path,
under the trees.  The grasses hanging on the rock face were still
dewy.  There were a few wild raspberries, and a tiny tuft of
bilberries with black berries here and there, and a few tufts of
unripe cranberries.  The many hundreds of tourists who passed up
and down did n