Part 5

I must gather myself together. I must cherish and hoard my happy evening. It is wrong to think such things, but I am glad that Henry had to read the treatise this evening. I mean....

* * * * *

You led me to the table. You sat on my right, and you were so calm. You are always so calm. Why should you not be calm, you are not in love.

You invited me to drink, and I who never drink wine, drank with you, only a sip. It was ... no, I cannot speak of it. But now I understand that clergymen really believe it when they say, “This is the body and blood of Christ.”

No one could read my thoughts.

Now I know what it is that I have lacked hitherto, and I am glad that I have lacked it.

You made a speech in my honour. It was so natural that you should. You led me to the table, and it was my birthday. For me it was a sacred miracle. The words you spoke have gone to sleep in my heart. When I die one day in my coffin, and my children weep over me, they will arise and whisper and sing as your yellow flowers sang when I was ill.

I hold so fast to my happiness. But my hands are weak, and it slips through them like running sand.

The hours go as they came.

Why do you rend my dream in twain? Why do you thrust a knife in my heart? I have never thought of being your mistress. I only grant you every delight there is. But why in this night, in this night, when I woke and clung to my happiness! When Magna Wellmann telephoned me to-day, I knew everything. She said nothing and I asked no questions.

My yellow orchids hang on their stalks like dead butterflies. I have forgotten to give them water.

Forgive me! I am not. I won’t be like this, and now it is over. It hurts no longer. I am well, like the little boy who was run over the day before yesterday. He cried and moaned that he was going to die, and all the time was quite unhurt.

You walked over my heart, and I thought it must die, but there is nothing the matter with it.

* * * * *

It is months since I wrote to you last; I simply felt I couldn’t. I have been like one scared. Why do people speak so often without thinking? One lets fall a word quite indifferently, that stabs the heart of another like a poisoned arrow. I have been half distracted by anxiety. I have listened to all the gossip. I am sick from disquietude. My youngest child has been ill, days and nights. I have watched beside him, expecting every hour that death would come, and yet in the middle of my fear of death my thoughts have been incessantly with you.

I wouldn’t believe it.... But if it is true.... Beloved, I am so saddened, I don’t know whether I ought to tell you why, or whether you would tolerate my intruding into the habits of your daily life. But I am not only depressed, for if that was all I could bear it in silence. No, I am frightened, frightened, frightened. I cannot sleep for anxiety.

You wrote last year to tell me yourself that your doctor had forbidden you to resort to the strong remedy which had become a necessity to you; that you were obeying, but suffering horrible pain in consequence. That first awakened my anxiety. Many, many times I felt as if I were running my head against the blank wall which separates life from death.... And yet, it seemed to me that there was strength in the touch of your hands, strength that could grapple with any illness, strength in your hands, your glance, your smile. Then one day something happened that it took weeks to get out of my head. I sat with you and between us was built the usual bridge of kindness and confidence. Your smile came over the bridge and met mine. We played with words as children in a meadow play with flowers. Your hand lay on mine so firmly and tenderly. I grasped at that moment why men honour so much the idea of a foundation stone. I felt my hand, too, was the corner-stone in an eternal building. So proud was I that your hand rested on mine, so sure, firmly and tenderly, and then suddenly, with such terrible suddenness, that my heart nearly stopped beating, your smile froze and died; your eyes became vacant, glazed; your face was not only strange—would it had only been that—it was so changed that you wouldn’t have recognised it yourself in the looking-glass.

In that moment—I can’t say whether they were moments or minutes—you were not master of your body, neither were you ruler of your soul. And then you came to yourself. But I left you and cried. My tears were cold and made me freeze. Soon after I had to go away on a journey. Beloved, beloved, how full of pain love is! Every day, every hour when I strolled in the garden among my flowers which I planted there myself, which stand there mysteriously waiting and watching for your coming, I saw before me a shadow that proceeded from my own distraught mind ... your dear face with the relaxed expression, and the glazed, fixed eye.

The pain which I experienced then has been carried about in my heart for years, and was day by day increased and nourished by my anxiety.

But then your letters came, like stars dropping from the sky in the still, dark night ... and once more I gained strength and courage to look life in the face. _Life_—that is what _you_ are for me.

I could fancy every one dying round me, even my own darling children, all that was near and dear to me; all that peoples the earth, and I could fancy the houses falling, day and night ceasing—but I cannot picture life without you.

I cannot, and I _will not_....

* * * * *

The summer passed, and with the falling leaves I returned to your neighbourhood. You were, to all appearances the same, only rather paler, rather softer in your manner. Your hands were the same, your lips sought mine. I asked you no questions. Dare any one call to the man walking on a rope over the abyss, whether he feels giddy? I asked you nothing. But others talked about you to me. And all, all said the same. Don’t you see how changed he is? And they spoke of the strong remedy that had become indispensable to you, of the remedy by the help of which you maintain your mask of mental equilibrium, a mask through whose holes your own tormented soul stares out into vacancy.

Now I have come to it. I have come to it. Please do not be angry, or hurt, but let me say what I can no longer carry about with me unsaid. Try if you cannot, slowly and by degrees, break yourself of the habit of resorting to means which, instead of strengthening, undermine your health. In the name of my love I ask you to do this, and you must not think that I ask for my sake alone. Then if it happened that I was going to die, and knew that I was going to die to-day, so that I should never see you, or hear your voice again, I should still make the same request. Why will you be kind to every one but to yourself? A doctor said to me about you—No, those are words that may not be repeated....

Now say with a smile that I am conjuring up bogies, that my feelings have got the better of me, and perhaps you are right, but, beloved, death is not the worst. Do you understand me now?

I sit here and write in the bright sunshine. My children play round my skirts, and chatter and ask me why I am crying....

Well, now it is said, and now that I have said it, I dare not let you read what I have written.

But I will keep this letter with the rest of _your_ letters, with the letters which you have never received. Should the day ever come when I have sufficient courage you shall read it.

Only this one, of all the letters.

AN UNSENT LETTER FROM LILI ROTHE TO PROFESSOR ROTHE.

Henry, I had on my mind to write to you and, for the last time, ask you to forgive me, but I know that it is no use. Perhaps your forgiveness could do me no good now. It is too late. I have suffered so much. I cannot bear more. But this letter contains nothing but the truth, and it is the last letter that I shall write.

Henry, I have never denied my love for you. I have never forgotten you, and never deceived you. If I am to die now, because I long for the sleep, which while I live, cannot mercifully be granted to me, you must believe my poor last words.

I don’t know whither I am going, but even if I knew for certain that I should reach the open gates of Paradise, I could not cross the threshold. So long as you had not forgiven me in your heart, eternal peace would not encompass me. And if I knew, he for whose sake I have caused you such great trouble that it casts a shadow behind and dims all that was once radiant and happy, if I knew that he was standing ready to receive me with those words which up till this hour I have never heard him utter, “Welcome, my beloved,” it would be impossible for me to follow him into everlasting bliss. Consciousness of guilt would prevent it.

In the years when I loved you alone, I was happy; when he came into my life and I loved you both, my happiness increased with my love, and I did not feel guilty. I was so unspeakably happy. I loved you, and I loved him. You are a doctor, and when women are ill you can make them well, but for my sickness you had no panacea to prescribe.

And I cannot do what you desire of me; I cannot say that my love for him is dead. Love cannot die, when once it has lived.

Henry, when you took me back, I entreated you to ask me no questions, and you asked none. But your eyes asked and the walls asked, and everything round me asked questions. I do not wish to have any more secrets from you. Yet you never can understand what I am now going to say.

He did not know me when I came to him, and he died without having recognised me. But it made me happy to be with him. When the others were asleep, and it was all quiet, I heard him mention a name. Not my name. He did not love me, you see. Every time he mentioned that other name I felt I was expiating some of my guilt towards you. I sat and listened, the nights were so long, but my name never came. The name of the one he loved, the names of others, but mine never.

One night I fell asleep and dreamed that he called me. I awoke, and he lay dead. And now I shall never find out whether that was only a dream or something more.

I have thought so much over the question whether other women are the same as I am. Were I strong enough I would go about and look till I found one who could tell me truthfully that she had loved two men, loved both with her whole heart and soul. I would then beg her to go to you and explain how that is something one cannot help, cannot fight against, and cannot kill.

My nun has espoused a husband, and I have been to call on the young couple. He has only one eye, is superannuated, and has warts in his ears. He is a hod carrier. When she contemplates him she feels as if heaven were opening before her.

She comes from a good family, and has had a good education; he is ignorant and stupid, but he seems to appreciate her adoration. I had a ticket for “Lohengrin” this evening, but I am not inclined to go.

After all, I can understand it. Once I should have thought it silly, but my ideas have undergone a change. When I reflect on it there is really only one condition that can be called unhappy, and that is loneliness. Loneliness on a desert island, loneliness in a great city, loneliness in married life.... Loneliness.

For this reason all living beings crowd together. The animals seek each other. The faded leaves, as they flutter down from the trees, wed in the hour of their destruction.

She feels that she has been cheated for all the years of her convent life, has loved without an object. She has cast off her shackles, and achieved her liberty. The thought of a joint life with some one, that she may have pined for vaguely in the convent, became, out in the world, the highest thing to aim at. In her excessive modesty she humbly accepted the first thing that offered. Surely there is nothing ridiculous in that.

But I am alone. I am solitary.

* * * * *

God in heaven, what have I done? There he lies asleep, as if he were never going to wake. Such a little gnome. But I couldn’t do anything else, and behind all my anxiety and fidgetting I have a feeling that for the first time in my life I have done what is right.

For it was not unpremeditated, or was it? Do I know? A transformation has been going on lately within me. But when did it begin, and where will it lead me? If I only had some one whom I could consult, but there is no one. I have broken all my old ties. I stand quite alone. Even Jeanne.... Jeanne must be told as soon as possible, but, of course, she will think it is nothing except one of my whims in which I indulge to kill time.

When I ask myself deep down in my heart why I did it, there is no answer, and, meanwhile, the boy is lying in my bed. I have slept an hour or two here on this chair without knowing it. The windows are wide open, yet every minute I inhale a horrible smell of spirits ... a little boy of seven! How am I to know whether he is seven, five, or nine?

I must collect myself. This hour may decide the whole course of my life. I have only to hold the telephone receiver to my ear, and directly the house-porter will call in the police. Before noon the boy will be gone, and I shall never see him again.

* * * * *

Why should it concern me? It would be sheer folly if I gave way to a sickly sentimentality and wished to keep this small tramp. Small as he is, he seems to be endowed with every vice.

I feel as if I had dreamed it all, and not seen it with my eyes.... And it all comes of my freak of using the subway under the river instead of taking a motor. What induced me to waste time in that fashion? I who, of all others, detest subterranean zigzagging?

Was it a presentment? Did I expect a sensation, and wish to gloat over the sight of roofless night-wanderers, who for five cents travel backwards and forwards by this route all day? One’s way of living and thinking is different in New York from what it is in great European capitals. We don’t follow each other like sheep. We think more for ourselves.

I felt so tired inwardly on the journey, so utterly without an anchor. I tried to fall asleep before we reached the river to escape hearing the ghastly rushing sound in the air behind. The boy had seen me at once. I believe I inspired him with a certain awe. My clothes probably were too smart for him.

He hurled himself past me without calling out rude words, or making grimaces. I could not take my eyes off him. At first I thought it was one of the dwarfs out of the Hippodrome, and I squirmed with disgust. Then I saw that it was a child. A child sick with a fever which his senses could not master. I, like the other passengers, thought him mad, till we grasped what was the matter with him.

He jumped on ladies’ laps, and spat in their faces; he kicked gentlemen’s legs violently with his heels. When the guard caught hold of his wrists and commanded him to be quiet, he bit the man so hard he was obliged to let him go. At the next station he was ejected. But directly the train was in motion again, he swung himself on to the car, and this process was repeated at every station. No one knew how to cope with him; no one knew where he came from, or to whom he belonged. Suddenly he began to sing, what, I couldn’t understand, but from the expression on the faces of the men present, and from his own gestures, I gathered that it was something indecent.

How shall I describe my feelings? Were they prompted by horror, repulsion, or compassion? I must try to analyse them clearly.... I felt as if I had brought this wretched creature into the world, as if I were responsible for him. I experienced a mother’s agony and a mother’s boundless tenderness.

Directly it became plain to me that the child was not speaking in the delirium of fever, but of drunkenness, I had to bite my lips till they bled, so as not to cry out. Then the boy came to me, and threw himself across my lap. There he stayed, nestling his head against me, and went to sleep.

* * * * *

Were I to act now sensibly and as common reason demanded, I should send the child back whence he came, though I don’t know in the least where that is.... The child who has awakened the most sacred feeling in my poor, withered heart.... The child who is to blame for my having shed, for the first time in my life, tears of joy.

When I offered to take Jeanne’s child, I had my reasons at my fingers’ ends, but they were not honourable ones. I wanted to start for myself an interest in life. I started from the hypothesis that what filled the lives of so many women might equally well fill mine. I wanted to take Jeanne’s child, in the same way as five years before I had taken her ... as an experiment, a distraction.

But it was not so to-night. This small boy had kissed my hands, and I had blessed him.

I have heard somewhere of a holy man who met once a little child who was tired. He lifted him on to his shoulders and carried him over a river, but on the way the child grew and became heavier and heavier, while the man sank deeper and deeper.... All that, however, doesn’t matter.

I took him home with me. Here you can do what you like. My proceeding excited no remark. A stranger asked if he should fetch me a carriage, and we drove home.

I must, of course, make inquiries about his antecedents. He says nothing himself. He woke up when I struck a light, but he wouldn’t tell me his name even. The people in the train thought he was one of those outcast children without parents who live from hand to mouth by selling newspapers, and stealing from the banana carts, and who pass the night on the river’s bank or in empty wagons.

I haven’t succeeded yet in getting his boots off. Though they have evidently once belonged to a grown-up, they are so tightly laced on his little legs that they can only be moved by cutting. He must have worn them day and night for months.

* * * * *

What will be the end of it? I daren’t think, and I daren’t act. I keep saying to myself without ceasing, the same thing, “Suppose he is taken away from me?” and I seem to see into the future, his life ending in crime, his death taking place in prison.

I intend to sacrifice my own life for this child’s ... but is that sufficient? Can that avert his fate?

My beautiful, beautiful boy! He is asleep. I have locked both doors and sit with the key in my pocket. Every quarter of an hour I look in at him; he smiles in his sleep as only innocent children smile. Then suddenly he clenches his little fists and his mouth becomes so distorted and ugly that I have to turn away. What can he be dreaming about?

Help me, help! To whom am I praying? I, who am without faith, and without hope. But I am not without love. No longer without love; for I love this poor, miserable child.

Could I but give him back his innocence!... Has he never been innocent like other children? Was he contaminated from the first by the two creatures who gave him life? Is it in my power to atone for others’ sins against him?

I wonder why he tried to run away to-day? Where did he want to go, and what was in his mind? If I had not got him back, God knows, I could not have faced another day.

* * * * *

I sat with him on my lap, and he looked up at me as if he would ask, “What are you going to do with me?”

His childish gaze was so suspicious and hard. I told him that I wanted to be his mother and to live for nothing else but to make him happy. All the time his little hands were feeling about to find my pocket. I pretended not to see, and smiling angelically, he plunged his hand after my purse, and began to fidget with it till it opened. My heart beat so that I could hear it distinctly resound in my ears.

Is it to be wondered at that he steals? He has known what it is to starve. But now I give him everything that heart can desire. I have bought him a little purse of his own, and filled it with money. Yet still his tiny face retains its expression of desperate greed when he sees me take out money. When will this alter?

And he asks me if I have bought him. Or have been given money to keep him. He does not remember that blessed, thousandfold blessed, night when he took my heart by storm, and transformed me into a real human being....

I wanted to test him, so to-day I went without lunch, explaining to him that I had no more money, but he was to eat, I could go without it. He nodded, and without troubling about me at all, ate up his lunch.

* * * * *

Kelly. That’s his name. Kelly! or he says it’s his name. He has been with me now for six days, and only to-day he told me what he was called. Well, it is at least a beginning. I am thankful for little.

I dare not hesitate any longer. If I could, I would travel off with him like a thief with his booty, even if somewhere a mother sat and wept for him. No, no! I wouldn’t rob a mother of her child. But I needn’t be afraid. Kelly’s whole bearing tells me that he has been for a long, long time alone in the world. Enquiries will be only a matter of form, and then I can adopt him properly. He will be mine by law.

* * * * *

It is quite a matter of indifference to me if people shake their heads at my insane action. How should they know that Kelly alone, only this boy with the vicious little face and criminal glance is the source of all my bliss and riches in this life? But it distresses me when people talk about it in his presence, and I cannot prevent them shaking their heads. Kelly understands what they mean. He seems conscious that his brow is branded with the mark of Cain.

* * * * *

To-morrow we are going to the Children’s Court; I have written to Mr. Rander. He is said to be one of the cleverest child-psychologists in America.

He has replied that I need cherish no fears. So long as my love is sufficiently great ... my love.... Yes, my love is great enough to bear the strain.

* * * * *

Why had that to happen just to-day, when I was feeling in such good heart? It’s only a trifle, certainly. He may not have thought what he was doing.

It’s a necessity of children’s nature to be destructive. They are cruel without being conscious of it. What, after all, do I care about the stupid cacti? I would have made him a present of all of them. But it was the glance of his! The sly, uncanny glance when I said, “But, Kelly, why have you cut my flowers in pieces?”

* * * * *

I am doing it entirely on my own responsibility. I should do it, even if the whole world cried out, “Leave it alone, it will prove your ruin!” I should do it. Even if I could see into the future, and behold my boy a full-fledged criminal sentenced to death.... I consecrate my life to him, my poor, squandered life. But it isn’t poor now. I am rich. I am a mother!

* * * * *

Mr. Rander meant well, I daresay, when he said, “Don’t do it. Take any of them, only not him!” And he related what he knew.

As if a single spoken phrase could dissolve the bond my heart has entered into voluntarily.

“Born, double-dyed criminal.” Nevertheless, I will educate myself to be a worthy mother to him.

DEAR MAGNA WELLMANN,

“From earth thou comest, to earth thou shalt return....” These words of Scripture occurred to me when I read your letter. That is the eternal circle ... in this case the circle of your family. Your grandfather was a renegade from the calling of his forefathers when he became a townsman. Your father degenerated, and now you have gone back to the land.