Magdalen (Machar)/Chapter 7
VII
AT the corner of the common, there stood a low, clean, little brown house with latticed windows. The passers-by (provided they rallied about the banner of the ruling party) politely and, apparently without seeing anybody, bowed towards the corner window. The Free Citizen aimed its wit at it every two weeks, and its partisans grinned maliciously and provokingly at it, though it was quiet within and not a human face appeared there the whole day long, and two curved wings of lace curtains hung undisturbed to the very floor.
Hidden behind them, however, the lady of the house sat all day over a stocking. She seemed to have grown into her armchair, like a malicious old sphinx; she neither rose, nor bent, but her fat fingers moved the fleet knitting needles, Over the broad nose of her ruddy face, thick eyeglasses were saddled, and under the glasses two grey eyes flitted about like two drops of mercury. She watched the common to the right and to the left, up and down, and nothing escaped her: no man, no beast, no sheet of paper carried by the wind, no window facing the common, no dormer window on the roofs. . . .
That aged widow, whose husband, a presiding alderman, had been killed in the autumn by an awkward hunter who emptied a full charge into his abdomen, had a daughter whom thirty summers were making as bitteras meadow-saffron. A modest income from the house and the fields barely permitted them to lead an existence proper for patrician women, and thus life enraged them against their own fate, and filled them with hatred for the whole human race. Like that Merlin of old, of whom the Romanticists sing, the widow passed her days at the window, where with her quick glance she watched the rise and fall of life. In her head were deposited all the past and future events, all the most secret deeds of her weak town neighbors,—and all that was as balsam to her angry soul.
It was the day after the picnie. Early in the morning, about eight o’clock, when the children of the town were disporting themselves with their book bags on the common, the burgomistress walked out of her house, at an unusually fast gait. In a long coffee-colored cloak, which, as she walked, showed her white petticoat, without powder on her face, her hair evidently not combed and not curled, with trembling nostrils, she went straight to the little house in the corner of the common.
She entered the room. On the elevation near the window sat the dignified lady of the house, knitting her stocking. Frau von Fischmeister was sitting near her in a straight military pose. Further away, in a semicircle, sat the wife of the commissary, a woman covered with freckles and cross-eyed, the wife of the postmaster, a thin woman with a waxen face, and Frau von Janík, a poor widow, the owner of four houses,—all of the women in cloaks, beneath which their white petticoats showed, and all with their hair done up in a hurry. Towards one side, resting her arm upon the piano, stood the thin, faded daughter of the lady of the house.
The burgomistress stopped in the middle of the room, without saying a word. Her eyes met in a twinkle the eyes of all the ladies, and she knowingly shook her head three times, as if to say: “There we have it! A nice affair!” and she silently placed her chair in the semicircle.
“A scandal!” suddenly exclaimed Frau von Fischmeister, and all shook their heads. The full bosom of the burgomistress heaved high: “I said so! I am always right,—I have a good nose! Now we are all disgraced! The whole town is disgraced! Only the doctor will be rubbing his hands in glee! His yellow paper will have something to chew on for half a year! Scandal! Scandal!”
“One of Jiří’s escapades!” said Fran von Janík. “Well, Prague! That is life at Prague!”
The lady of the house motioned to her daughter: “Clotild, you had better go to the kitchen. This is not for your ears.”
“But, Mamma!”
“Clotild!”
And Clotild went out, slamming the door.
“The whole family is like that,” dryly and solemnly began the lady of the house. “His father . . .” and from the treasury of her recollections she drew immoral, shameless stories about Jiří’s father. The ladies interrupted now and then with: “Schrecklich!” “Scandal!” The burgomistress; “I declare! That’s what I always say!” The lady of the house happened to recall another incident about his grandfather. Again those exclamations, again wonderment. She finished. A small pause.
“The poor councilloress!” now sighed the burgomistress, “I wonder with what sly pretext he deceived her?”
“The councilloress is a little off,” the commissary’s wife moved the fingers of her right hand about her forehead, “that’s what I mean.”
“And that father of hers,—Kavka has reported to me early this morning about him,” explained the burgomistress (Kavka, the town watchman, was in the habit of calling early in the morning at the burgomaster’s kitchen, and the burgomistress would listen at breakfast to his report, when any one had gone home in the night, in what condition, from what inn, and so forth), “went at seven o’clock to their house, and returned again in a few minutes. Kavka, I tell you, is a shrewd fellow. He started a conversation with him, and that old man began to praise his daughter, the old lady, Jiří, and our town—thanks! Kavka soon found out that Jiří had lined his pockets with money,—you see, pleasure is expensive. The old fellow has gone back to Prague. He told Kavka that he would be back, that there were good people here, that nothing would please him better than to settle here,—a pleasant outlook!”
Again a pause. The commissary’s wife, seeing now a favorable moment for an effective speech, coughed, her eyes looking more cross-eyed than ever, and with a subdued voice she began to speak of that category of girls to which Lucy belonged, and she told of those houses where, they say, they are to be found, in tens and twenties, of those small rooms, of how they are furnished, of those orgies which are celebrated there in the hours of the night. The burgomistress looked all the time with a side glance at her: the commissary’s wife seemed to her, as she spoke, like a starved person that pictures to himself savory dishes; the other ladies listened attentively, as one listens to old, long familiar speeches, which, however, one likes to hear again,—the commissary’s wife continued speaking, choosing full, pregnant words, now elaborating the story with jests, and now winking.
The subject was more universally discussed, and Frau von Janik could add many a beautiful detail.
Then Frau von Fischmeister arose: “Did you notice yesterday how persistently Jiří clung to Anda, the tax collector’s daughter? Anda is a clever girl, but it would be well to give the tax collector’s wife a hint. Such a bird as he ought to be kept away from her.”
“If one only knew what the councilloress thinks of it,” said the postmaster’s wife, returning to the old theme.
The lady of the house allowed the stocking to fall into her lap: “We know her foolish affection for her nephew. In the end she will give in, and will be glad that Mr. Jiří has his fair magnet at home.”
“Scandalous! Scandalous!” confirmed Frau von Janík.
“Did you notice yesterday how this our pure dove kept on refusing to play?” started again the burgomistress, “and how she ran away? She had bites of conscience in decent society. She found the Jacobin somewhere in the woods. Birds of a feather . . .”
Just then the clock began to whirr, like a sick man who is about to cough, and then it struck eleven.
“Oh, it is already eleven!” The burgomistress jumped up. “Dinner time!” The ladies all jumped up. The burgomistress opened the door. Clotild, with burning face and sparkling eyes wide open, almost fell into the room. The burgomistress smiled.
“Adieu!” the ladies bid good-bye and went out.
“Clotild, that is not proper. You must not listen behind the door,” began the lady of the house.
Lucy stepped out of the gate about two o’clock in the afternoon, with a book in her hand. The old lady was taking a nap after dinner. The room was hot and oppressive, and the troublesome flies were everywhere,—they seemed to be most annoying at just that time of the day.
At dinner Jiří ironically gave her her father’s regards. Oh, that father! She shook in disgust, and did not ask any farther, when or how he had come, or whether he had left again. She had that moment a feeling as if a bony hand had stretched ont from somewhere in her past, as if it drew her back and down by the hem of her garment. She ate little, and did not speak.
She was walking slowly, in a bright striped gown and with her parasol open, towards the castle park. She walked in the sun, for in the street there was no shade. She happened to look at the sunlit wall from which the heat was reflected in a burning stream. A feeling of inexplicable anxiety was upon her, and she was not thinking of anything. She watched the swarms of flics that were warming themselves upon the wall; frightened by her steps, they rose in a semicircle, flashed their metal-colored bodies, and fell like arrows further away.
Suddenly she loocked up. Frau von Fischmeister and the commissary’s wife were coming from the opposite direction. Lucy stepped more firmly, but the two ladies crossed on the other side . . . they came nearer . . . they were in one line . . . Lucy bowed politely . . . they did not answer the greeting . . . they were looking sidewise, deep in a lively conversation . . . they passed. . . .
Again, as before, Lucy walked more leisurely; she felt a stinging sensation, as if some one were looking at her from behind. She turned around: both the ladies were standing and looking at her. Lucy bowed once more, rather timidly and undecidedly,—they did not answer, but sharply turned around, and walked on. Lucy at once blushed; hosts of instinetive fears surrounded her. . . . She allayed them with this and that, but the sting had entered deep into her heart.
She walked into the park. A mixture of different odors reached her. On the left were many-colored pinks: somewhere nearby she scented bird cherries, and the first roses. The smell of walnut leaves was stronger than all, as she entered into a gigantic avenue. A footpath to the left led to the old rococo part. Near the road an ousel softly hopped from time to time in the rank grass, and looked queerly at her with its blinking eyes. . . . A finch called loudly over her very head. The bees buzzed about her ears,—otherwise everything was quiet, solemnly quiet.
She walked down some stone steps where the posts of the former banister rails were still standing, into the old park. Here ash-trees, planes, and old birches cast impenetrable shadows upon the ground. The air was fresher and moister, In an old fountain, where a moss-covered, armless nymph had long ago ceased to pour forth water, lay a heap of rotting leaves. Here and there a broken bench clung in the shade of the foliage. The tree-tops trembled with a melancholy noise.
Lucy walked softly, warily, as if afraid to disturb the dreams of that dead past.
“Walk more softly!” she suddenly heard some one say.
She stopped, frightened. The branch of a hornbeam was moved aside, and there, on a bench, sat the consumptive man, that strange acquaintance of hers of the previous day. He looked peacefully at her, his right eye was turned away,—the green shade lay upon his sunken cheeks. Lucy stood still, something kept her back,—and she looked at his bony hand. Pity took possession of her, and she wished to say something pleasant to him, so she asked him gently: “Are you feeling better to-day?”
He smiled: “No, but I shall some time.”
She shook her head.
“What are you reading?” he asked softly.
She gave him her book.
“Poetry!” and he burst out with a contemptuous laugh. He looked interrogatively at her.
“From the bottom of my soul I despise our modern rhyming,” he said excitedly. “The poet is now-a-days a disreputable fellow! If he has to write a line, he becomes swollen with conceit, begins to model words, sentences, and rhymes,—the devil knows what he is about,—if only he said something sensible! And what does he write about? About love and troth, about the moon and stars; he glorifies the good, curses rascals, kisses the boots of old kings, and knights, and their fair maidens, prophesies good times to his country and to humanity in general—Oh, those ossified conceptions that have long lost their significance!
“And again, for whom does he write? For our bourgeois! And they are every inch of them practical people! If they are going to give six kreuzers for that book, they want to have something for it! The praise of ancient, good days, prophecies that better times are coming,—such things the bourgeois like to read. Then hymns of humanity, justice, sympathy, light, virtue, and goodness,—only sing these ideals to them,—it is like scratching their backs,—that pleases them, and they like it so much, that they are willing to stretch out their hands for a small volume of these verses from time to time! Do you suppose all that finds an echo in their souls, their hearts, and their blood? No, no, no! They have only been inoculated at school with the idea that this is beautiful, that this is good, that it will not hurt them, their sons, or their daughters, as long as it is all quiet! Only no militant spirit! That unnerves them! They are afraid of catastrophes and revolutions. And thus our whole poetry flows in a conservative stream!” He threw the book down on the bench.
“What good is it to us?” he said more quietly, measuring Lucy with his eyes. Her expression evidently told him that there was much she did not understand.
But her eyes were sparkling with delight. That voice sounded pleasant to her, and it seemed to her to be true and convincing, and so she was absclutely sure that all this was the truth. . . .
“Hide yourself,” he suddenly whispered to her, pointing to the bench on which he was sitting. Lucy looked around her and at once sat down. The steps of two persons were heard upon the sand,—the heads were already visible: one belonged to the slender blonde, the daughter of the tax collector, the other to Jiří. He was looking into her face, and she was glancing sideways,—a girl’s scheming pose: “I will never fall in love; my ideal would be to live somewhere within the walls of a cloister,” she said, sentimentally.
They passed by,—their steps and voices died away.
“Jiří, Jiří, silly carp,” the sick man laughed loud.
“Do you know him?”
“My schoolmate,—formerly my friend. It is comical,” he suddenly burst out laughing, “how he, a connoisseur of female hearts (so he deemed himself to be), he, who was tired of all those joys and pleasures, who regarded himself as a blasé, a sly fellow, a diplomat of love, is deceived by the first toad that has crossed his way! It is too funny! Well, there will soon be a wedding. The young lady has a good instinct: a little country jollity, some remarkable restraint, and yet is a little provoking,—add to this a veneer of romantic sentimentality,—and behold that is the creature which our blasé carp, ‘god of fortune’ my mother calls him, has caught. In two years they will begin to get stout, to be tired of each other, to quarrel, and again to make up,—ugh, it’s an insipid life! Of course, our whole life is something incidental and temporary, and it does not make much difference, how we go through it. . . .”
Lucy displayed true feminine curiosity,—curiosity, and nothing else,—for she was interested only in this new park. As they passed by, a peculiar peace fell upon her soul. It occurred to her that a tree must feel that way, when a lifeless branch is cut from it. Her relation to Jiří now became clear to her,—it was a pure, sisterly relation. With her whole heart, she wished the two happiness, and Jiří suddenly appeared to her as something better, and she felt that she would from now on be more lenient with him, that she would make peace with him, and would press his hand at home. Then she felt that something brought her nearer to that stranger by her side.
“My appointed time, too, will soon come,” he added, firmly, but more to himself.
“But you have not coughed yet,” she consoled him.
“What is not, that may . . .” his hand suddenly grasped hers. She drew back in surprise, and looked at him, but immediately caught him up with her other hand. A sudden weakness overcame him, a pale mist lay over his eyes, his face looked ghastly white in the green shade, and he breathed heavily and with effort. She looked at him in fright: all of a sudden an infinite pity took possession of her,—pity? . . . She took his head in her hands, kissed his brow, held it, and tenderly passed her fingers through his hair. . . . At that moment there was a din in her breast, as if a broad torrent were pouring through it; an intoxicating weakness fell upon her head, her eyes, and her ears. . . . Everythiné around them disappeared,—only they remained; that emptiness grew broader and broader, it grew above them and below them, and they were in the midst. . . .
He slowly opened his eyelids.
He did not speak a word; he only looked somewhere into the distance, between the branches. Then he gently dropped her hands, and sat a little longer:
"Not yet to-day, but, perhaps, in ten or fourteen days,” he coughed, “it will all be over.”
Tears sparkled in Lucy’s eyes.
He looked a long time at them, as if they were a relief to him. . . . “Well, it is a fine sundown,” he whispered softly.
“Is it true,” he suddenly asked in a strong voice, “that you are . . . his mistress?”
“I am not, I am not!”
“Of course,” he again spoke quietly, in apathetic peace, “what difference does it make? To-day the whole town knows your history; your life is as open as a book, and all will cast mud upon it. . . .”
Lucy wrung her hands: “I swear to you: I am not, I am not! Mire . . . yes, I have walked through the mire, but I want to live a new life, another, a pure life. . . .” Tears gushed from her eyes.
“The bourgeois will not permit that; they will crush you,” he said sadly. “The new life!” he repeated. “What is that for? That people should look differently at you? That they should consider you their equal?” He shook his head: “In vain,—never! The bourgeois will not permit anything, they will not forget. Oh, I should like to live to the moment when this rotten world of theirs, with all its lying wisdom, deception, untruth, stupidity, and malice, will go to ruin!”
He shook with internal anger, and looked into space, while the green reflection of the leaves swayed like needles in his pupils. Then, as if seeing the absurdity of his anger, he spoke more softly:
“I should like to hasten the stream of time by some twenty years! In twenty years it will be different. In twenty years from now you would be happy; in twenty years I myself would not be so willing to die. To-day we are both judged, both lost. In short; this life . . . it does not make any difference how we live it . . . it is something temporary . . . maybe later it will be something, and maybe not . . . who knows?”
Lucy was not listening. Her meeting with the ladies at once became clear to her. The feeling of a coming storm overcame her. The whole park seemed to her to be hostile. She thought of the room at the estate and of the old lady, of her good, pale eyes, and she longed for them, as a child longs for its mother. She arose. With face turned away, she quietly gave him her hand. He pressed it, without saying a word. She went away, faster, faster, until she found herself almost at a run, where the walnut leaves smelled more strongly. Then she walked more slowly, with downeast head, in dull resignation, like an animal scenting the blood of the slaughterhouse. . . .