Part 11

But Carli didn't want his and leaned his head heavily against his mother's breast.

"Carli not hungry any more," he whispered. He hadn't eaten his rice either, though his mother had taken him on her knees and tried to coax him with little tricks and stories; the girls and Hansi had finally divided it into the most even portions possible.

His mother made another cup of milk for him and soaked one of his "Keks" in it; he had taken a tiny mouthful, then again leaned his head heavily against her breast and seemed to go to sleep. She got up gently and bearing him into the other room laid him on a cot near the rosebud Anny's crib. So dear he was to her as she laid him down, that her heart seemed to come out of her breast in a great beat of love. The only color in his face was those violet eyes, which now were veiled so thinly by his transparent lids, that standing back from his bed, she thought for an instant they had opened, and that he was looking at her. But he lay so still that in anguish she bent over him to see if the breath were really fluttering from his waxy lips....

When she got back into the living room that look, mask-like, antique, of mother-fear still lay upon her face.

Tante Ilde softly rose from the table and stood by her without a word. "It will be all right in a moment," Kaethe said looking up at her gratefully. "It is silly, of course, to be so frightened," and she kissed the thin hand that hung over her shoulder.

A moment later there was heard the well-loved sound of the latch key, but somewhat slow, uncertain even. Lilli ran quickly to open the door.

Her father was not, as she expected, alone. A miserable little girl of five or six was clinging to his hand, a pale, anxious child that the wintry monster Life had been grimacing at and frightening terribly.

Professor Eberhardt gave his wife one look, but he knew his Kaethe, and it was a look of confidence rather than anxiety that he bent upon her as he stood in the doorway,--a tall, once very handsome man, who had been mangled by the War, then stamped on by the Peace till he had lost all semblance to his former imposing self. His grey eyes were sunken into deep pits on either side of his thin, pinched nose. The blond beard and moustache had had the yellow taken out of them by the early grey of his griefs and anxieties. But as he stood there, his shabby overcoat buttoned up to his chin, some brightness lay about his face; it seemed for the moment quite filled out.

"I met Koellner coming back," he said to his wife, and then he bent gently over the child, "This is his dear, good little girl come to make the children a visit."

Something rose up in Kaethe admonishing her to defend her own. Another child! no, no, no.... But turn that frightened, shivering mite away? It was equally impossible to the elastic kindness of her heart.

It was a situation that in the end beings like the Eberhardts meet in but one way. When that which they have not has been taken from them, they find that they have still something left that they must give.

There was no doubt about its all being a shock to Kaethe, rather than a surprise. She couldn't be surprised by another sight of misery, even though brought up round before it.... Her eyes filled with those weak, ever-ready tears, then she smiled quiveringly. At that smile for which he had waited, entirely trustful, Eberhardt turned to Lilli:

"Take Marichi into the kitchen, darling, and find her a bite of something."

The children suddenly quite still, had been looking at the little girl. Resl thought she wasn't too dirty, and Hansi that she was of a convenient age to order about. Else didn't understand.

Lilli's thoughts were confused, only out of that confusion seemed to come some sudden, new understanding. In that moment, indeed, Lilli grew from childhood into adolescence. She silently reached out her hand and received the little girl from her father. She gave him a long look as she did so. Something quite beyond the scope even of her new understanding, though within reach of her new feelings was happening. Something hard to do, yet in another way fluidly, hotly easy. As she was turning away the child's hand in hers, she hesitated then went back and threw her arms about her father's neck. Eberhardt had a moment almost of ecstasy as he pressed his lovely daughter close to him in some suddenly opened heaven on earth. Then she withdrew herself from his embrace and took the child out of the room.

"It's a desperate case," Eberhardt said to his wife after a moment's silence, "her mother has just died,--consumption--and he's starving himself. He knows a waiter at the Hotel Imperial who gives him some bread every day ... poor fellow, I was all broken up, so talented too; his clothes, only hanging on him, no overcoat, just buttons his jacket up to his neck. I told him about the Stephansplatz. He had a look on his face I didn't like. He was so worried for his little girl. They've lost their rooms, I didn't quite understand how. Anyway they've nowhere to go. Kaethe, I couldn't but say to him, 'Let us take the little one for awhile,' we _have_ a home," he ended.

Kaethe met his gaze quite clearly now. Those stupid, weak tears were gone. She was thinking, and he knew it as if she had spoken the words: "Every crumb that child eats will be taken from our own children." But Kaethe, inflammable herself, had caught from her husband some of that light that shone about his face and after a second she was saying and warmly:

"But naturally, she can stay here till things get better."

Both Eberhardt and his wife were very beautiful in that moment wrapt in the bright flame of their charity.

Just why he had met his old friend Koellner in the street that noontide was quite clear. It wasn't for anything that he, in his own great need was to get out of it, but rather for what the child whose Father in Heaven knew that she had "need of all these things" was to get--in that hour and in that way.

Then Tante Ilde, who had been both entranced and troubled at the scene, spoke for the first time and very gently:

"She'll bring a blessing into the house, Leo."

At that Eberhardt turned and greeted her affectionately.

"Ah, Tante Ilde, pardon, it's good to see you." And as he embraced her his act of compassion was still so warm about him that she was conscious of some gentle heat, almost corporeal, emanating from him.

Though his now constant preoccupation as to ways and means was added to those temperamental fits of abstraction, suddenly in that moment he saw distinctly the shape and substance of Tante Ilde's hard destiny. That frail figure, in that worn striped gown, Eberhardt who never knew what women wore, was suddenly conscious of its old-fashioned cut, its threadbareness, perhaps it was its symbolic sense working on his imagination that saw at times both more and less than the run of men. He perceived, as under a microscope, in all its magnified significance, not alone that sagging face, that furrowed brow, that thinning hair, those broad, pale, colorless eyes reflecting something immeasurably patient under the double burden of old age and penury, but it was old age itself, in all its component parts that separated, as if under his glass, on his table, resolving themselves sharply into their elements. He was aghast at what he saw--those diminutions, those withdrawals--more horrified than at the accidental tragedy of the Privatdozent Koellner. This was integral, final. She could hope for nothing more from time, that was clear,--time that brings so surely both good and evil, that very time that was his hope had nothing more for her. He repressed a cry....

Then suddenly, or so it seemed, they all got very gay again, with an infectious gayety. The children were tumbling about noisily after their good meal. The little stranger kept looking from one to the other. That desperate apprehension was wiped from her face. This that was happening was clearly good. She hadn't seen anyone smile for a long time, except so sadly that they might as well have wept. She had entirely forgotten about laughing. But all this was good, good, that she knew out of her six years.

Then Hansi climbed up on his father's lap and asked him what he had had for dinner.

"A fine cup of cocoa, so hot it burnt my tongue, and a heaping plate of very good beans, only I didn't feel hungry today," he paused on the familiar phrase, and from his pocket he produced two pieces of zwieback.

Kaethe had been watching him, suspecting his next gesture.

"Eat it yourself, Leo," she interposed quickly, almost sternly, "we've had all we can possibly eat. Tante Ilde brought _so_ much."

But Eberhardt with no hesitation in his hand or heart, or at least none that one could have noticed, said to the strange child, the child of whose existence he had been unaware an hour before:

"Come, dear child, come, Marichi," and handed her the zwieback. That grimy, claw-like little hand closed over it. In spite of her hunger she was too dazed to eat. She looked from her hand up to her protector with the mysterious glance of childhood.

"It's good, eat it," he said. She put it in her mouth, one piece and then, very quickly, the other. Hunger, she knew about it, all about it. This was something different and she was getting warm.

The silence that fell somewhat heavily upon the room, was broken by Hansi recounting to his father, boastfully, stoutly, what they had had for dinner and smacking his lips and showing him the colored picture from the package of "feinste Keks"; then how Carli hadn't wanted his rice and how they had had that too.

"Carli isn't well today," said Kaethe, "he seems so languid, but he's asleep now. He dropped off as soon as he had had his milk."

"I'm coming every Thursday," put in Tante Ilde comfortably at this point. She was feeling quite happy, almost joyous. "Fanny," she added in an aside, "sent word by Maria that I was always to get enough for everybody!"

Eberhardt flushed slightly but made no answer. Lilli and Resl were getting on their coats. As Lilli again put on her mother's old black cloak over her blue dress it was as if a snuffer had been put over a light,--a white, blue and gold light. Her father was content that it was so. About Resl they didn't worry. There was something strong, inevitable about her, even in those young years. She was clearly one who would get through. She was very like her mother, but behind that soft, dark resemblance was something steely that Kaethe had never had.

Things were always happening to Resl,--pleasant things. Those bright-dark eyes of hers, that round, smiling face that somehow kept its roundness through all those terrible winters, had something compelling about it. An American woman on one of the relief committees had seen Resl on a windy day looking into a delicatessen shop, and had taken a fancy to her. She had given her a meal a day for two months, and shoes and other things, often something to take home, then she had passed out of Resl's orbit into new circles of want. Another time coming home from school, Resl had stopped to swell the crowd around a smashed taxicab, and some one had cried, "Do look at that bright-eyed little girl!" and had given her a ten shilling note,--just like that! She hadn't understood what they said, but their smiles that she promptly returned and the money that she dashed home with were perfectly intelligible. Once she had found a gold piece in the street, when she and Lilli were going along together; of course she had been the one to find it. Lilli when she saw Resl pick it up, had hoped that it had been dropped by some very rich person, instead of by some one who hadn't anything else. To Resl, however, such fears were unknown, she would always take unquestioningly whatever goods the gods provided.

Tante Ilde was telling them about the woman who had grabbed the milk out of her very hand, and Hansi was saying with his chest out and his eyes ablaze,

"I'd have beaten her well, Tante Ilde," when they heard a scream from the next room,--a terrible scream, despair and supplication were in it.

Eberhardt and Tante Ilde rushed in followed by the children, Marichi stayed behind, cowering again. That scream had something frighteningly familiar about it.

Kaethe was holding Carli up to the window, where the light shone full on his baby face ... quite gently, quite easily, Carli had slipped from them leaving only his little waxen image.

* * * * *

Throughout that long night Tante Ilde kept miserably repeating to herself: "A child came in, a child went out," finding herself in a confusion of faith and doubt dark as the night that lay about her.

Irma was confirmed in her opinion that charity was dangerous.

VI

CORINNE

_A la Sourdine_

Das Herz ist ein weites Land.

But towards morning Frau Stacher's heart threw off its sorrow; she had suddenly felt its weight leaving her breast, why or how she did not know, for there in that distant house whence Carli had forever gone one she loved was still weeping. Perhaps she was done with grief,--long grief.

She was strangely all love that morning after the night of tears. Love emanated from her with a gentle radiance and played about her warmly. She loved even Irma. Even Irma who on account of her nerves couldn't bear to see that fine, soft light in her sister-in-law's eyes. An unreasonable, unseasonable light given the fact that one child had been reft away and another might as easily be taken. She should properly have been creeping about with her spirit quenched, instead of looking almost happy. It struck Irma, who was inaccessible to metaphysical changes, even as unseemly, and she proceeded to extinguish it, somewhat as a wet finger on the flame of a candle.

"Corinne today, but who's taking you tomorrow?" she asked flatly, meanly. Irma had a way, well tabulated in the family, of getting over pleasant spots at the quickest pace possible.

"Tomorrow," Tante Ilde answered, the light in her eye indeed put out, but her face quite pink as she stepped into the kitchen to put the broom, worn down to its wooden handle, back in its dingy corner, "Tomorrow," she continued resolutely as she reappeared, "I'm going to Fanny's."

"To Fanny's!" echoed Irma blankly and started to cry "I find it disgraceful!" But she stopped quite short as a thought came to her.... The easy way to do a hard thing. A little more of _that_ money! What did she care? She wanted Ferry to live.

"Won't you tell Fanny about Ferry?" she began again, but gently, almost imploringly.

There was a long pause, in which the thick-boned figure of the woman her brother had loved loomed up before her in an imperative, almost menacing attitude as she waited for the answer. She had been bending closely over the hemstitching she was to finish that day for Mizzi. She had large, square-shaped hands, but she held deftly and delicately the diaphanous trifle that Mizzi would sell to some thick lady. Now she laid it down and took off her glasses, showing her eyes very strained. Her face seemed to broaden, her cheek bones to get higher, the spot of color on her cheeks was dyed deeper, harder. Everything was accented about Irma in that minute. Even the red of the little, fringed, three-cornered shawl was like life-blood spilled over her shoulders as she waited for her sister-in-law to answer and there was something increasingly minatory about her.

Strange, Frau Stacher was thinking, that Heinie should have desired her, Heinie almost an old man. But she couldn't really reason about such things, certainly not in that pause. Her thoughts had wandered because she was feeling quite dizzy and then, of course, she would do it. Irma might have known that. Those three boys had to be helped somehow into manhood, according to their needs. A generation lay between the two women, yet for a moment Irma, with that ancient mother-fierceness in her face, seemed the elder. She continued staccato:

"Ferry's got to go to the mountains. Fanny can send him if she will. Fanny's rich. Fanny's in the only good business for women in Vienna."

Frau Stacher felt the blood rush to her face. But it was pity for Irma that suddenly reddened her cheeks rather than shame for Fanny. All the pity of her heart for a moment spent itself lavishly on that unloved sister-in-law.

"It's one of the reasons I'm going--for Ferry. I'd thought of it too, and tomorrow you know it is Fanny who is taking us all--with Carli, to the cemetery," she answered finally with an immense gentleness. In her heart she handed that business of Fanny's to God, and she hoped He wouldn't take His price for it.

Irma suddenly broke into wild weeping.

"Don't speak to me about Carli again. I can't bear it. _My_ Ferry, _my_ son, _my_ first born, _he_ must live."

Then she tried to stop weeping. Those hot, salty tears that were scalding and dimming her eyes were an indulgence she could ill afford.

"Tell Fanny everything about Ferry, help him not to go where Carli has gone," and she stepped quite close to her sister-in-law, her hands clasped. "You are truly good," she found herself unexpectedly, even softly, ending.

Then Frau Stacher, warm with a love that was not for Irma, but whose warmth spread infinitely, embraced her, saying:

"Don't weep, Irma, we'll surely arrange about our Ferry."

The two women spoke no more. Irma's sobs turned into long, quivering sighs and her sister-in-law soon after slipped out.

Somewhat reproachfully the thought came to Irma that Tante Ilde did, perhaps, bring a blessing into the house and that she, Irma, had needlessly wiped away the look of happiness on her face. They all knew that she adored Corinne. Why couldn't she have let her have her pleasure, which was certainly not costing her, Irma, anything? And she remembered how broken her look and voice had been as she told about Carli the day before. Then repentantly almost, she thought that, after all, Tante Ilde couldn't be comfortable in that little alcove, though as she didn't know about the need of being alone, she couldn't understand just how uncomfortable. Then she thought that she would not ask her to draw back the curtains. She even fell to planning how when Ferry went away she would put Gusl to sleep in the alcove and give the little room to his aunt. Hermann had terrified her by saying that Gusl ought not to sleep any longer with Ferry,--was it really as bad as that? That was one of the things that made it a further nuisance having Tante Ilde. Then suddenly with the whole wild strength of her being, the strength of untamed generations living by the wild Plitvicer Lakes, she thrust her arms out and would have burst the too-narrow walls of that dwelling, made room, room, the way one had room there where she was born--out of the terrible city.

* * * * *

Frau Stacher got out to find the sun shining on the slippery streets, still covered, from the cold rain of the night, with a thin, glass-like substance. She went cautiously, slowly along. From St. Stephen's half-past eleven was sounding. She had plenty of time. Then she became aware again of a new and evil discomfort that had made itself felt from time to time that morning; not at all the usual undernourished, discouraged feeling, but as if something inimical, foreign to her body, had got into her circulation; unpleasant little shivers kept running up and down her back. She was relieved, however, for the moment of the weight of her penury. Corinne truly loved her. Corinne truly wanted her to live. She knew _that_, knew it as she knew that she existed. Corinne, lovely, loving Corinne. She could have sung a hymn to her. She crossed the Revolutionsplatz. It was still a little too early to go to the restaurant Zur Stadt Brunn where she was to meet Corinne at noon,--and perhaps find herself alone in the restaurant with her empty purse, if anything happened to prevent Corinne from coming. No, she couldn't have borne any such "blamage." She was timid about so many of the most usual things. She then crossed the Lobkowitz Place, looking, for an unrelated instant, up at the Lobkowitz Palace--long the French Embassy. She had once been used to read eagerly about Royalty and the "First Society" going to receptions there, their titles, their decorations, their gowns, and how their jewels shone in the great marble ballroom;--now past, all past--both for them to do and for her to enjoy. She slipped falteringly down the street to go into the Augustinian Church. She wanted to pray for Corinne,--that Corinne might have her happiness. But Corinne's happiness was a tangled affair. Corinne's happiness could only come through Anna's death, and how wish the death of any being? As she knelt down she found that she had to put from her the thought that human destinies resemble hot peas jumping about in a pan,--no more meaning than that. Then her heart repented the wickedness of her thought and she was able to put it from her, and to pray that, as it was quite evident that she, Ildefonse Stacher, could not be trusted with a little happiness, the Lord might in some way trust Corinne with it. Then she prayed for Carli, though Carli, bright among the angels, needed no prayers ... for Kaethe, Leo, Hermann, Ferry--Fanny.

Her knees were trembling as she knelt, and she felt a deathly cold, a grey cold, it seemed to her, like that of the stones of the high-vaulted church. She got up stiffly. Noon was sounding from the tower as she passed the marble tomb of one of Maria Theresia's daughters, so beloved by her sorrowing husband. She herself might well have taken position among the carved, grey, mourning figures that stood before the entrance to the tomb, so drooping, so shade-like was she.

As she went out the terrible, mumbling old man with sore eyes held open the door for her; the pale, young cripple who stood by him didn't move when he saw that spectre of genteel poverty. So many just like that went in and out of the church. They had no more to give than he himself....

The sun for a moment was fairly flooding the winter streets; they shone in bright splashes of wetness. She stepped across the road into the doorway of the restaurant. To enter a restaurant again! Such a simple thing, she'd been doing it all her life. She felt like a fish suddenly thrown back into its own waters.

Corinne was crossing the street. The light was very white and dazzlingly enveloped her slender, swaying figure. How sweetly, softly her blue eyes shone as she approached.

"My little Dresden china Auntie!" she cried and kissed her right there in the doorway. Then they passed in and made their way to a table.

"For three," said Corinne, "a gentleman is coming. Shall we wait a moment, Auntie dear, before ordering?" she asked as they sat down.

Now the smell of the small, fresh rolls that the waiter was counting out, somewhat as he would once have counted gold, and three of which he had put on their table made Frau Stacher suddenly quite faint, but the feeling was so familiar and she was so happy to be there with Corinne that she only said:

"But naturally," knowing, too, for whom they waited, and her eyes looked more deeply into Corinne's than she herself was aware of.

Corinne glanced away with that oblique glance that could veil her thoughts more completely than fallen lids. She flushed slightly.

When Tante Ilde spoke again it was to say:

"I just missed you last night. I was again at Kaethe's, only a few minutes after you had gone.... Fanny was there." She leaned heavily against the table and continued, "I couldn't bear not to go back. We mustn't weep for Carli," but all the same tears filled her eyes and Corinne's own were wet.