“Well!” thought Gilbert to himself. “This is a love affair, by Jove!” And he wished himself joy of it.
He was setded in a little, comfortable enough hotel in Trier, on the main street leading from the station: a small place for commercial travellers.
The morning after his arrival he went out into the town. It was sunny, and Saturday. In the old market-place the peasant women sat under the great umbrellas, like grasshoppers under toadstools, and sold their produce: green vegetables and pinkish carrots and white asparagus, eggs and butter, such a bursting abundance of everything, and everything so dirt cheap. There were also bunches of lilies of the valley — round bouquets of wild lilies of the valley, the pale greenish grains of the buds floating on the whiteness of the dense-packed flowers. And some had fringes of slipper orchids. How lovely they were.
Gilbert stood in the market-place looking at them and smelling the perfume, which was perhaps his favorite: at any rate, for the moment. When one smells violets, there is no scent imaginable more lovely: when one smells jasmine, again perfection. So he sniffed the watery fragrance of the clusters of lilies of the valley, and thought of love affairs and delicate romance, and rather longed to flutter into amorous ecstasies like a true young lover. But alas, even in the lily the scent, not only of tears, but of soap that smarts in the eye.
Ought one to be like a lily! — a lovely ethereal presence? Much of a lily his life was! Much of a lily he was himself. Not even a rank tiger-lily.
Man is born to ponder.
“Alas!” thought Gilbert. “My lily is Johanna, and in some ways she’s more like a blunderbuss.”
And then he began to imagine the true lily-maid: the virgin, the pure, the modest, the pale. Heaven above save us from any more Lilies.
He strode manfully out of the market, with his pipe between his teeth. No, damn it all, what was the good of love that wasn’t a fight! What was the good of anything that wasn’t a fight. Be damned, he did not care to fancy mingling with a woman, as if he and she were two spoonfuls of honey put into the same pot.
Lily! A lily has a ferocious tangle of roots underearth. Ach, in the cold, horrible earth its roots probe and fight and suck. He didn’t want his lily a plucked blossom, all very nice and fair. No, good heaven, let us have the whole party: the tangle of deep, unspeakable passions, the rage of downward shooting desires! Ah, all the terrible and unspeakable things that happen to a lily of the valley as it wrestles and writhes in the corrosive sod. Right then! He was ready for the fight and writhing and wrestling in the soul’s underground. Passion is always a fight, desire is always a strife. Hurray then for the fight and the strife. Let it never end, or we are picked blossoms.
The thought came to him on the cathedral steps. It is a massive, heavy round-bowed Dom, much more congenial to Gilbert than the soaring of Detsch’s singing stone, as somebody has called the cathedral. Our mathematical hero loved the heavy, downward-plunging masses of the ancient building, the for him gorgeous, ponderous return to earth, the down- thrust, and again the down-thrust.
This was like roots again. And this was what he wanted. Damn it, he didn’t want to be a picked blossom, like the rest of cultured civilised people. Picked blossoms, stuck in a nice aesthetic jar: there they are, while the water goes stagnant and rots. Picked blossoms! Myriads of sweet lilies — in blue vases. Damn the female lilies in blue vases. He wanted a lily with her roots deep down in the muck, fast, gripped, triumphant rooted in the muck. Then she could wither and grow old, and yet not die. Unlike one of these picked, spiritual, cultured lilies, that wither once and for all in a vase of putrifying water. Pah.
No, he was not going to try and idealise his love. Heaven save us. We pick it in the bud, and achieve its undoing. He was going to wrestle with it in the dark, down under-ground, in the damp, rotting, pungent earth. Long live the roots in the muck! The fight, thank God, is for ever.
Oh, you may have your blossom. But humanly, you mayn’t pick it: or even force it. There’s the blossom right enough. Even he, Gilbert, had written a bit of real music these last days. Even he felt great lovelinesses. But he felt the acrid, deep-down battling under the sod still more strongly. Rooted in battle he was. So be it. Thank God the battle is never quite won. It always has a new phase tomorrow. No Nirvana, thank you. God is very good to us. Supposing we were given our imbecile Nirvanas and heavens, what mugs we should look. Luckily we get a kick in the backside from a sane deity, if we try and sit too long on our raptures. Get on then! Get off that rapture! Enough of that lovey-dovey eternity stunt. And if you won’t, take a kick in the backside. For in spite of all rhapsody, there is no man breathing but has a posterior, and no man breathing can abstract and spiritualise a well-kicked bottom into song. Thank the Lord for that, and give us a strong toe- cap.
Gilbert’s host at the Griinwald was very inquisitive about Gilbert. The host was young — not more than thirty-three. He and his wife ran the hotel between them. He spoke English: had been Steward on the Nili boats, and on the Nord- Deutscher-Lloyd boats. And, although rather a nice young fellow, he was curious about his visitor. Not many people, foreigners, came to Trier: and none of them put up at the little Griinwald.
What was Gilbert doing there? This was the question rampant in Fritz’s mind. So much so that our innocent friend felt called upon to give an explanation.
And this is how he did it.
“I am waiting for my wife.”
“Your wife!”
“Yes. She is in Detsch.”
“Your wife is in Detsch?”
“Yes, with her mother and father.”
“Oh, then your wife is German?”
“Yes, she is German. But she has been a good many years in England.”
“Ah yes! You have been married a good many years?”
“Well — some.”
“So! And your wife will join you here — ?” which meant, in the Griinwald Gasthaus.
“Yes,” said Gilbert. “She is coming on Tuesday.”
“Ah — On Tuesday! And shall you want another room? — or better a room with two beds?”
“A room with two beds.”
“And shall we put them together — ” Fritz closed his two hands — ”Or apart” — and he sundered his prayer-joined palms.
“Together,” said Gilbert.
“Ah together! Good!”
So do we count our chickens before they are hatched. Or rather, so do we build our nest before we have a hen to sit in it.
Gilbert wrote to Johanna and said how he was waiting for her and they must not part again, and Johanna wrote and said how she was dying to come.
He waited for Tuesday. He played his fiddle, he stared into the Moselle, he raced over the hills. More soldiers.
Bolting out of the town, musing, he came to a dead halt one morning hearing men’s martial voices singing — God Save the King! His heart quite stood still. Never had it had the same sound. —
So he made out a barracks, and a drill-ground, and a company of soldiers marching to the solid, ominous tune.
“God save our Gracious King
Long live our noble King.”
The Englishman stood and felt quite faint. Heavy, male, massive voices plunging out the rhythm with strange, deep force, march-rhythm, but not meant for the feet, meant for the heart’s stroke. Was it possible the banal tune could come out with such a terrible, ponderous, splendid heart-stroke, stroke after stroke welding the deep heart into black iron! Men’s voices in terrifying martial unison, like some great tolling bell.
For a few moments Gilbert stood stunned. And then he gathered courage to listen. And then he realised the words.
“Heil Dir im Sieger Kranz — ”
Strange! Something seemed to knock at his consciousness — something he refused to admit. Wherever he was in Germany, the soldiery made a deep impression on him. But he did not take them quite for real.
They frightened him. Another day, just outside Trier he met a long cavalcade of horse-soldiers with guns coming down a little hill between yellow earthy banks. And he stood aside under the bank as they rode by — a long time. And he watched them all. And for some reason, fear knocked also at this inner consciousness, though he would not admit it.
They were handsome, on the whole, the cavalry: so strong, so healthy looking, powerful, with that strange military beauty which one never saw in England. How far they were from him! What a gulf! Yet he almost envied them, he, in his incurable civilian innocence. So clatter-clatter-clatter he watched them retreat, and looked after the strong retreating backs. Ah, the man’s world! The fighting world. The strange glamour of the string of cavalry riding through the vineyards towards the Moselle.
“Will you come and see your room?” said the young host Fritz when Gilbert returned.
Gilbert went. It was a pleasant big room with a large bed. And our hero actually went out and bought a bunch of the above-mentioned lilies.
“But you will stay where you are till tomorrow?” said the host.
“Oh yes,” said Gilbert. And he sat reading Jugend and waiting for tomorrow. There was a joke about a mouse-trap and the bait.
“What is Speck?” asked Gilbert.
“Speck?” said the host, coming and bending over the paper. “Oh — Speck! That is bacon.”
Gilbert never forgot the German for bacon. Let us hope, gende reader, you may also remember.
On the morrow arrived Johanna, the Baroness in a black silk coat, and Lotte in Parisian black and white, made substantial by Vienna.
“Bonjour!” cried Lotte, making dark, flashing eyes. “Moi, je ne suis pas de l’ambassade. Je m’en vais. Je viendrai te trouver, Mere.”
And she jumped into a taxi, and drove off to see the sights.
Gilbert was somewhat taken aback by the family arrival: and Johanna in a new rose-coloured erection of a Viennese hat, that didn’t suit her, and no more luggage than a pocket- handkerchief.
“And how do you like to be in Trier? It is a nice town. You have seen the Dom and the “ so the Baroness made polite conversation as the three walked towards the Griin- wald — three or four minutes walk from the station. He felt he could hardly speak to Johanna in that rose-pink erection of a bishop’s mitre.
“You will have coffee!” said Gilbert.
So the three sat at one of the little tables just outside the hotel door, in the sunshine of the street.
“Would you like to see the room first?” said Gilbert to Johanna.
“Oh — ” she stammered. “I’m not staying.”
He looked at her.
“I had to promise Papa to come back with Mama and Lotte. He’d never have let me come if I hadn’t. Oh, I’ve had an awful time of it with them.”
Gilbert sat down.
“Ja! Wissen Sie — ” began the Baroness, in a quaint, plangent, lamentoso voice. “Yes, you see, her father can’t allow it. He can’t allow his daughter to go off in this way. You must excuse her. She must go back tonight. I must take her back tonight — ”
Fritz brought coffee and sweet cakes. The Baroness interrupted herself, but immediately resumed in her high, crying voice, sometimes German, sometimes English.
“Her father is a gentleman and an officer. He fears very much for his daughter’s name and all the trouble and the shame. Ah, you do not know. You have not thought of it all. Ah, you must think much more. You cannot begin this thing in such a way, like a glass of wine. It cannot be done so. It is a dreadful thing for Johanna — ”
The Baroness sipped her coffee and straightened her hat, which had a disposition to go sideways.
“You know how hard, how ha-aarrd it is for her here in Germany. You know the divorce is three years — hier in Deutschland die Scheidung braucht drei Jahren, three years, drei Jahrelang. And in America it is much quicker. Ach, yes! If she does not go back to that Boston — ach, poor Hannele, she doesn’t like it at all there — then she must wait, the divorce must be in America. It takes much shorter, only six months, only three months even. Only three months! And here it takes three years — three ye-ears! Ja!”
Fritz was hovering in the background drinking in every word. Johanna was rapidly eating the sweet cakes, one after the other, like a goat nibbling leaves. The Baroness’ hat went on one side, and she resumed:
“Yes, he must make the divorce in America. Yes, her husband must make her a divorce. He must make her a divorce. Yes, he must. That is what you want, is it not so? You want that she should have the divorce?”
“Yes,” said Gilbert.
“Yes! Oh yes! Oh yes, he must. Her husband must make the divorce over there in America. It is much easier. And much queecker! Only three months. And here in Deutschland three years! Three years! Drei Jahren! Ach, it is too lo-ong, too lo-ong.”
The three years, drei Jahren rang through and through Gilbert’s brain. But still he did not see the point.
“But in the meantime?” he said.
“Ja — in the mean time — she must come back to Detsch to her father — and we must think of the best way. You are young, you do not think. You do not know what you are doing. — She is a mother with two little children — Oh yea, it is dreadful. Ach, afterwards! Afterwards! It is this we must think of.”
This was just what Gilbert did not intend to think of. Indeed, he did not intend to think at all. In his mind, or soul, Johanna was predestined to stay with him, and there was no thinking to be done. If one must reckon the costs, at least let us have the dinner first and reckon afterwards. No matter what the cost is, if we’ve once had the dinner nobody can take it from us. And life is often called a feast. But society is a mean host, the modern world is a paltry kind of inn.
Now the poor Baroness felt very much as Gilbert himself felt. She would much rather have left her daughter comfortably behind with her young lover. But oh dear, was she not saddled with a mother’s duties. And having had all her life to enjoy an unfaithful, gambling husband, she naturally felt that a legal position was the only sure thing in a woman’s life. It was the only sure thing she had had. And here was Johanna going to play skittles with her legal surety: and for what? — for an escapade with an unknown young fellow of the lower classes, without money. Oh dear oh dear — the man was right enough. The Baroness quite liked him, and if he had been no more than a transient lover she would have winked quite gratefully at him. After all, she did not wish her daughters to know nothing but the long tied-up widowhood she had known herself.
But afterwards! afterwards! The money, the never-ending irritation of moneylessness — money was always lacking in the Hebenitz household. — And then the children — the two little children! Ach no, no, it was too hard for the Baroness. Why should all this misery and distraction take place! So, like a floundering swimmer who has lost his nerve, she lectured Gilbert, rather pathetically, and Gilbert got into a bull’s rage.
“You are young, ach, so young! You do not know the world, you do not know to keep a woman. Ach, you have all your life before you, and you would take a woman who has two children and a husband! Oh yea! Oh yea! Think what you do. Think what you do! You will spoil your life. You will spoil your life. And also Johanna’s life! Oh no! Ach, nein, es ist zuviel. Better you should go back to England.”
And she looked at him under her black eyebrows, and he scowled heavily in response. She could see he had no intention of going back to England.
“Better you go to England,” she insisted.
“No,” he said.
“You don’t want? Ach! Well, you must go somewhere and wait for her. You must wait — ”
“There’s Lotte!” cried Johanna. And sure enough there was Lotte coasting by gaily in her taxi, waving a handkerchief to the party at the little table.
“Gleich! Fiinf Minuten!” called the Baroness in a quaint, high shout, after the retreating car. Then, her face all lifted in upward-tending wrinkles of worry, she resumed to Gilbert.
“And Johanna’s father must write to her husband, and ask him for the divorce, if still she will not go back. And the divorce must be in America. But what will you do? How will you keep a woman? Where will you find the money?”
She looked at Gilbert from under her knitted brows, and he scowled back. “Ach, all things are against it. All things. — So you must wait. You must wait. I must take her back to her father tonight, and you must wait. You must go away somewhere where you can forget this. — And then her husband must give her the divorce — ”
So she went on, round and round in the same wheel, till Lotte appeared once more in the taxi.
“Shall we go for a walk?” said Johanna to him.
“Yes,” he answered.
“And you will bring her back at four o’clock — please? Yes? You will promise.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Oh thank you. Thank you. Her father is promised that she shall come home with me. Danke! Danke! Ja, auf wieder- sehen — Vier Uhr, weiss du, Hannele.”
Johanna moved off, and Gilbert, glancing round, saw the Baroness’ ample rear climbing into the motor-car. In another moment she drove by, looking like a child that has just got out of a row, and is going to enjoy itself.
Gilbert and Johanna walked away into the country, and she told him what a life they were leading her at home. Her father was dead against any breach with her husband.
“Poor Papa,” she said. “He is so unhappy. He said to me, ‘My Child, I know the world.’ But I said to him, ‘Not the best, Papa. Not the best. You don’t know that.’ And he didn’t answer. Poor Papa!”
“I don’t see what the world, or knowing the world has got to do with it,” said Gilbert.
“Ah, but they get so upset. And they are so frightened. I believe poor Papa sees a lost woman in me. Poor Papa, with his Elena in the back-ground, and his illegitimate son! How else could he see it.”
“Then why should he look! It’s not his affair.”
“Oh yes. Poor Papa. He does love me, in a way. And he was awfully fond of Everard. — Ach, it is all such a bother.”
“What shall you do then?”
“Oh I don’t know. Go back and let them talk. — But you — what shall you do?”
“I shall go to Joseph Heysers at Wensdorf, and wait.”
“Shall you wait? And will you come to me when I tell you?”
“Yes. But don’t be too long. How long do you think?”
“Ah!” she sighed. “I don’t know. They give me a hell of a time. I’m almost out of my mind. Ah, and they all say they love me. Ah — it is too much. What am I to do?”
“Let us go away together.”
“Yes! Yes! I know. But I’ve promised to go back tonight.”
“In a few days then. Don’t stop long, or God knows what will happen to you.”
“I know. They will drive me mad.”
“Then don’t stop long. And I will come whenever you let me know — and wherever you tell me.”
“Yes! Yes! If only I could get away.”
They walked away into the country, she holding his hand. In a world of floating straws he seemed for the moment solid.
So they stayed and kissed and made love in a dry ditch under a beech-tree. This was not the matrimonial bed Gilbert had prepared. But still, it was something. And that is always better than nothing.
So Johanna returned to Detsch, and saw the look of relief come over her father’s face when he caught sight of her in the railway carriage. He had come to the station to meet the train.
Gilbert returned to the Grúnwald.
“So the gnadige Frau is not staying?” said Fritz.
“No! She has had to go back to Detsch with her mother.”
“But I have changed all your things, and prepared the big room.” The inn-keeper’s tone was rather aggrieved, and there was a touch of impertinence.
“Yes. I know that. But she couldn’t stay.”
Gilbert closed so definitely, that the man said no more.
“I shall be going away tomorrow,” said Gilbert.
“In the morning?”
“Yes.”
“Very well.”
And so our hero went up to the room that smelled of lilies of the valley. And he slept alone in the big matrimonial bed. And next day he sat in the train and wound that wonderful way all along the Moselle valley to the Rhine at Coblenz — where he changed, and crossed the river — and changed again, and caught the train north for Cologne.