Part 8

When they did meet--at 9.30--he found that he had nothing to discuss, nothing to talk over. He only wanted her, craved for her physical beauty with all the strength of his physical being. She knew a subtler passion that hovered in her breast and was more like music, that went out in long curves and found no resting-places. And to her he had been part of that elusive dream. “Forgive me, Isolde, but really it’s your fault. You put it all so clumsily. Marriage. Yes. Even so, what can I do now?”

At the word marriage her eyes lit up and a smile played on her face.

“What can I say now? I can’t say: Isolde, marry me. I perfectly understand you can’t say--your pride won’t allow you to say, yes.”

“I’ll go back to my memories. I knew I should have to be alone. I will never have another like Hans.”

“I know it’s the bitter lot of those to follow him to fare badly by comparison. Alas! no live virtue stands the ghost of a chance at the side of retrospective illusion.”

She looked at him sharply. “The comparison does not arise. I didn’t _love_ you.”

“But then why, may I ask--yes, precisely, why--?”

“Because I thought you expected it.”

“Look here. Listen. I want to tell you something.”

“Better hold your tongue.”

“I expect--” it was a desperate step--“yes, I expect you to marry me.”

Her face lit up at the word. She played with the idea. “I don’t deny”--she puffed at a cigarette--“that it would have certain immediate advantages. Father was carrying on again this morning. ‘_Ein Skandal!_ I, an old man with one foot in the grave, have to keep you.’ ‘What do you want me to do?’ I cried at last. ‘You never taught me a thing. All the shops and offices are reducing their staff. Do you want me to go on the streets?’ He slapped my face. I went to my room and cried. Later he came to me. He was sorry. ‘I’d like to see you settled before I close my eyes.’ He’d be glad, and I’d be glad to make him happy. Let me see, I’d have a little money if I married--not much, still a trifle.”

“Who from?”

“My brother-in-law promised. Then there are silver things--knives and forks, solid silver--not much, but still something.”

_Der öde Tag!_

“Father might be prevailed upon to give something from his shop. Then furniture--a bedstead--two chairs. My sister has taken the mattress, though it didn’t belong to her. My mother left it to me.”

The vulgarity of it--things--cupboards--carpets--meddling relations. How dismal was our human fate! He felt that one had but to set one’s ship towards romance, to realise how fruitless were one’s hopes and how soon frustrated! She thought of her father, of the end of squalor and deceit, the joy of her brother-in-law, her own home, children, wealth. “But--” she scarcely meant it--“but I can’t. It’s not honest towards you for me to accept a solution for reasons of convenience only.”

“So you can’t?” He was almost relieved.

“I can’t.”

All the misery and anguish of his loneliness, his intolerable loneliness dawned upon him. He had spent a week without her. He knew what it was like. “Come, it really looks as though you didn’t want to make me happy for my own sake!”

“Well, if you are sure that it will make you happy.”

He was not sure. (He was sure of the contrary.) He drank his cup to the bottom and then took the spoon and licked off the sugar, while she watched him critically. And he thought: She won’t let me drink my coffee as I like. She won’t let me do anything as I like. I’m a lost man.

She said, “We must look at it sensibly. We both will have our advantages. You will be proud of showing me to your people and friends, while I shall be doing things for you at home.” He looked at her: she was too small and when she walked she waddled like a duck. Indeed, what would his sisters think of it? He pictured her at forty, at fifty, sixty and seventy, while he pictured himself all the while at twenty-five. She complained a good deal of her father, but if the old man found fault with her it was, of course, with good cause. “I’ll mend this for you,” she would say--and never did. “I must visit Hans’s grave to-morrow”--but she went to a dance instead. He recalled that she had not yet returned his gloves--after keeping them two months!

“But why are you looking so wretchedly sad? I’ve not accepted you yet.”

“Not a bit.” He imagined his arrival with his dark bride in the United States, their appearing before his proud “one hundred per cent. American” mother, the astonishment of his slim forget-me-not eyed sisters, the curve of their raised brows.

“If I married--” and she looked at him out of the corner of the eye to see how he took it, “we’d have separate bedrooms.”

He smiled faintly. It was past a joke.

“Cheer up. You look as though somebody has done you out of your money. I can see it won’t do. You’re so cold, so calculating, so concentrated on yourself. I am sure I could never marry you. I was merely joking.”

“No joke, I meant it. It’s settled--you’re my bride now and I’m your blooming bridegroom.”

“Your first experience?”

“Yes. I feel like a fool.”

“Thank you,” she smiled. “It’s my second.” She looked at her hands. “May I keep Hans’s ring?”

“Yes,” he said gloomily. Hans. Fritz. Grete. Nauseating relations. They’ll want to congratulate him, see the ring, touch it, maybe--all the dark Jewish brood, dentists, skin-disease doctors, stock-exchange frequenters. A nosing father--perhaps suggesting purchasing the engagement ring at his own shop, offering a wedding ring “cheap” in advance, or questioning the value of it if bought elsewhere--belittling the outlay--pooh-poohing expense. It was unbearable.

“Do your people speak German?”

He shook his head abjectly.

“Then you must teach me English.”

“I’ll try.” He pictured her dumbness, her being tied to him night and day, his mother and sisters asking her easy simple questions: “How--do--you--like--America?” and her asking back: “Please?” every time. A bewildered aunt of his struggling with a dictionary to make herself understood. Isolde smiling propitiatorily at his mother, trying to curry favour with her, to appear the tender wife; and he the heavy father to their common children.

“You needn’t look so unhappy. I haven’t accepted you yet.”

“It’s one o’clock, the café’s closing,” he said peremptorily, and called to the waiter: “Herr Ober! Zalen!--Yes or no?”

She did not answer, but smiled shyly. He took an empty cigarette box, unscrewed his fountain-pen, and wrote:

“?”

She took the fountain-pen from him and wrote:

“!”

He quibbled: “Is that an affirmative or perhaps an equally determined negative?”

She did not answer. He helped her on with her coat and while he was putting on his own, slowly, pensively she was collecting her things into the bag: the powder-puff, the lip stick, the remaining cigarettes. He watched her eagerly. If she took the cigarette box with his “?” and her “!” it meant--he knew what it meant. It meant that in after years she would be saying: “On this empty cigarette box my husband once proposed marriage to me.” She would say it, a grey-haired gouty old woman, with a deep black moustache and a beard, lying in bed with one complaint or another, in a bonnet, her teeth in the glass at her side. She would say it to their children, little hairy black Jews creeping about everywhere: to her children’s children; and all those long years he’d be tied to her. Her gaze lingered on the cigarette box, and her thoughts, from this chance _memento_ of a romantic proposal swayed to that which it meant, her new life in America, her newly-gained freedom, the long-awaited salvation. But she noticed his searching critical look and did not take the _memento_.

“Yes or no, for the last time?”

They were moving to the door into the street, where the rain was beginning to dribble, and stood still on the pavement.

She shook her head, and he made a movement to go. She wanted to say something to hold him back. “Here are your--your gloves, Peter.” And tears seemed to come to her eyes.

He took them as a sign, pressed her hand and went his way hurriedly. At the corner a gust of wind blew the rain against his face and tried for his hat. He did not know what he had done, why he had done it, or what had been done to him. He only knew he wanted to go home, cover himself with the black flag--and die.