Part 15

Frau Stacher knew well Maria's fine kitchen hand. So many years she had sat at her brother's table and seen Maria put just such cutlets on with those unrivalled fried potatoes. Frau Stacher was pierced cruelly for a moment by the memories these familiar things evoked; the children sitting around the table, talking and laughing, and her brother Heinie, who had loved them all impartially, looking indulgently from one to another. Indeed it seemed the most natural of things to each of the three women; a thing they'd done a thousand times together.

But after her first mouthful of the cutlet Frau Stacher knew she wasn't going to be able to eat it. Its odor was delicious, the edges of the tender veal were goldly brown, and towards the middle of the piece it could easily be seen how white the meat was.

"I believe you're ill, Tanterl," said Fanny again looking sharply at her. "You rest here while I take Kaethe and Leo."

"But I want to go with you," she returned imploringly, "I don't want to leave you."

Tante Ilde couldn't have told why she was so determined to go with Fanny, but the longing took her out of her usual gently acquiescent ways.... As if Fanny was to do something solemn, important for her, and she mustn't be separated from her. As if she had been warned that by keeping close to Fanny she would avoid some last, some ultimate horror. It was suddenly as clear as that.

"It's only a little cold I've got," she repeated beseechingly, like a child imploring some permission.

"As you will," said Fanny sweetly, "I'm only afraid you'll take more cold at the cemetery."

But Frau Stacher felt again that sudden, almost fierce cleaving to Fanny, to Kaethe ... to little Carli. Where they went, there she wanted to go. It seemed to her, too, that she wasn't feeling quite so ill, but rather afraid to be left alone, even with Maria, nice as that would be; Maria who would come in and talk about the old, the happy days, and show her Fanny's things,--Fanny's jewels and gowns. But even so she wanted to be with her own, her very own. She forced down a morsel of the cutlet and took a bit of the fried potatoes on her fork but it was evident to Fanny, and Maria, watching from the door, that she was eating with difficulty. She had an unbelievable, astonishing repugnance to the meat, to the fatty smell; then too, she was worrying about Ferry, thinking all the time that now she must speak of him. It seemed a mountainous exertion, one she was quite unequal to. But she could never go back to Irma's unless she did and then, too, she wanted to help Ferry. But it seemed beyond her strength. Anything except sitting still and being ministered to was beyond it. Then suddenly as she sat there toying with her cutlet, she knew that her work was done; though whence the assurance had come she could not have told. It came, a sort of glimmering presence, bringing its dim, sweet promise that effort was ended. Her attention was quite engaged by that lovely, unexpected presence, and it was as if from a long distance that she heard Fanny say:

"I think a good, strong cup of coffee, right now, would be the best thing for you," and then she called to Maria to make it quickly and make it strong.

The very suggestion acted as a stimulant on Frau Stacher, and she was able to pull herself together sufficiently to look gratefully at her niece. Then her eyes wandered again and were caught by that flowering tree, so spring-like to her age. It's thin fragrance foretold a true spring that she too old, and it too young, would never see. It was palely, tenderly confused in her mind with that gleaming presence. She felt that she must recognize its beauty by some word--perhaps afterwards she would get around to Ferry. She experienced a slight timidity at mentioning that plant, however, though why it should awaken timidity, with that other sentiment of reverence for its beauty, she could not have told.

"What lovely things grow on the earth!" she ventured finally, indicating it with the slightest of gestures.

"Yes," answered Fanny indifferently, she was thinking how changed her aunt was, "but you should see the donkey that sent it."

Frau Stacher thought no more of the plant.

Fanny herself was only toying with the veal cutlet and potatoes. If the truth be told she was aware of a slight excitement, following on her first embarrassment, just enough to cut her appetite ... having Tante Ilde there ... that way.

A pause ensued. They could hear Maria in the kitchen. On an important occasion like that Maria didn't intend to be alone, behind a closed door, and miss what they were saying. Maria herself was quite worked up. She hoped it would be decided for Frau Stacher not to go to the cemetery and then she would relieve her bosom of a lot of things pleasant and unpleasant, that really Fanny's aunt, when you had a fine aunt like that, should know, and besides she longed to show her Fanny's things. Then she carried in the coffee, an immense cup, its aroma filled the room, drowning the thin, sweet scent of the forced flowers.

"Just what I needed, Fanny," Tante Ilde said in what seemed to be a loud tone, with that hammering in her ears; it was really not much more than a whisper. From the very first swallow she felt herself being renewed, and as she continued to sip it, a delightful feeling of actual strength regained came to her. Not go with her dear ones to lay Carli away? The thought was foolish ... and being driven there and back and wearing her new coat? She was beginning to feel equal to anything.

"It's _so_ good," she murmured between her genteel little sips and when Fanny dropped an extra lump of sugar in without asking her, it was still more sustaining to both body and soul and she drank in longer swallows the sweet, dark strength.

Then Maria replaced the cutlet by two pieces of Sacher tart, one for her and one for Fanny. And that, too, was dark and sweet and she was able to eat it. A bite, a sip of coffee and then another bite, another sip. She got on really well with it, though for all its pleasing taste each bite had a way of stopping for a while in her chest.

Then suddenly she knew it was time to speak about Ferry, quite time, before she took the last swallows.

She reached down by her chair where lay her poor bag and picking it up she took out the little wooden statue of the woman bent over waiting for Ferry to put the full pails in her hands.

"Ferry has a lot of talent," she began musingly rather than informingly, as she passed it across the table to Fanny, "and such an old knife too, that he did it with. I'd like to give him a new one."

"But naturally, we'll get him the best, with six or eight blades!" cried Fanny very pleased. Anything they needed except that eternal food and raiment and fuel was a welcome suggestion. Fanny did love to give people things they _could_ live without, not just bread and coal and shoes. It got monotonous to one of her temperament. Even such a little thing as a knife for a boy struck an agreeably releasing note. She kept looking at the delicate figure. It imparted a pleasant sensation to her fingers as she touched it. It was quite evident that Ferry had talent. All was coming around as Tante Ilde had hoped.

"But Ferry is ill," she continued with her gentlest look. "He has night-sweats sometimes, and always a little cough."

"Ach, the poor Buberl!" cried Fanny warmly.

"How easy Fanny makes things," her aunt was thinking, yet somehow she still hesitated.

Fanny was passing her hand again over the little figure which kept inviting the caress of her long, white fingers, of her soft, rosy palm.

"Hermann says he must go to the country,--a bit high,--if he is to be saved and at his age one can't delay."

So it was done--as easy as that after all. That little wooden peasant woman cried out not alone of young talent but of fresh air, the fruits of the field, you couldn't get away from it, not that Fanny was trying to; further more the familiar story of family needs, now one thing now another, chased away the last trace of embarrassment. She was on the firmest of grounds _there_, only she was thinking again how old and ill her aunt was looking and did not answer immediately. When she did it was to exclaim warmly again:

"But naturally! Of course we must send him to the country. Manny will tell us where." Then Fanny, who was, indeed, as Pauli said, "a good fellow" and no fool either added, "Don't you want to take the money to Irma yourself?"

So that was all it was--that stone-heavy act! Light as thistledown really--because Fanny was Fanny.

Then suddenly as she sat there looking at her, for she knew not how long, with still unspent treasures of love in her look, she saw that Fanny's eyes were wet, not because of Ferry either, he could be helped, but because of other things, things that she, her poor aunt, didn't know about. She saw that for all Fanny's gayety there were rings around her lovely eyes and that she was pale under that merest touch of rouge. The merest touch was all she ever used. She was too wise as well as too lovely to be the painted woman. Fanny hung out no signs.

Then Frau Stacher found herself saying to her niece who lived just off the Kaerntner Street:

"Fanny, precious one, you too, have some grief."

Frau Stacher was seeing all things from a great but clear distance. Things stood out very sharply now that that feverish blur seemed suddenly to have been wiped from her eyes. It was as if she, Ildefonse Stacher, stood on a mountain and saw the world, a valleyed plain, spread out before her. Mortals dwelt in it, doing their little best or their little worst. Sharp as their figures were it was still too far to see what exactly was their best and what their worst. Legions of them. Hosts of them. She saw Fanny fighting under deep-dyed colors, in an innumerable army of women, drawn up in array against the sons of other women. The look she bent upon her niece as she turned from the contemplation of the armies in the plain became more tender, more grave.

Fanny's eyes flooded with tears under that look; hanging crystal a moment about her dark lashes, they fell slowly leaving smooth, shining, white little roads down her cheeks with just that touch of rouge. Such a little thing as that Frau Stacher could focus her eyes on,--even after the immensity of the plain.

Fanny went over and knelt by her aunt who had always loved her--who loved her now--and put her shining head against that thin breast and wept. Fanny hadn't wept, except in rage, for a long time, and there were many tears to fall.

"I can't bear it, I can't bear it," she whispered, but she didn't say what she couldn't bear and Tante Ilde didn't ask her, only pressed that gleaming head more closely to her. And Fanny should have noticed how strangely her aunt was breathing when she had her head there against her breast. But suddenly she got up and said something about her nerves being "total kaput" and went into her bedroom and closed the door.

Maria crept in from the kitchen.

"It's the Count," she whispered, "I'm afraid we're going to lose him. Fanny adores the ground he walks on. A fine gentleman, a Cavalier," (Maria pronounced it "cawlier" in her soft, thick Viennese) "but not a kreutzer to bless himself with and a South American girl whose Papa has more head of cattle than in all Europe, is crazy about him and wants to marry him. Whatever we'll do, I don't know. She's that jumpy when the bell rings, she's afraid it's bad news coming in at the door. His family is ruined by the Peace and his father commanding and his mother praying him to save them, and four unmarried sisters too. A bad mess we're in and what will be the end? I went to the fortune-teller a week ago,--a wonder,--and she saw cattle, cattle everywhere and told me I was to beware of them, but how can I beware of stupid cattle stamping about in South America?" asked Maria helplessly, resentfully. "I knew all the time what she meant--and saying, too, that she saw a letter coming. Oh, I've been that worried! Naturally I haven't told Fanny, but I've been waiting for that letter ever since. You don't know Fanny," Maria's eyes filled with tears, "one day she says she will kill herself and another that she's going into a convent," she whispered dismally, after a cautious look at the closed door; "and if Fanny ever gets started _that_ way, she'll make Maria Magdalena look about like this," and she proceeded to measure a negligible quantity of the surrounding atmosphere between her thumb and forefinger. There was, however, pride in her voice.

Frau Stacher was listening vaguely. For all her deep interest in Fanny, she was finding it difficult to focus her thoughts. Things were getting blurred again.

Maria kept on, a warning note in her voice, "I'll feel sorry for the family if Fanny doesn't hold out," (Maria, it will be seen, was at the other side of "holding out"--the far side.) "She bought the villa at Moedling last year and we put a lot of money in England through a Jew," here Maria was quite contemptuous ... "but," she added in another and fondly indulgent tone, "we had to let the Count, his people were starving, have a lot of that. We still get some income from it, but there are so many of us, and if Fanny should lose her nerve,"--Maria broke off; only she didn't use the ordinary word for "nerve" but the famous Vienna expression "Hamur," which means, beside nerve, a lot of things that are both more and less.

Tears overflowed her small, dark, friendly eyes. There was no nonsense about Maria. She adored Fanny, she was proud of Fanny and to have the revered aunt sitting there made a priceless occasion on which to relieve her feelings. Crossing her arms over her ample bosom she went on:

"She gives everything away, not only to the family and naturally to the Count, but yesterday--will you believe it,--to a shameless hussy, no better than she should be, she gave a heap of money to keep her out of the hospital, where she truly belongs. I told Fanny where I thought she'd end herself if she didn't look out, but Fanny" ... she broke off suddenly as the bedroom door opened.

"What are you gossiping about?" Fanny cried sharply to her, "Didn't you hear the door bell ring?" Then as it rang again a contraction passed over her face and she started to the door herself.

But Maria, in spite of her avoirdupois, was out like lightning. After a moment's parleying in the hall she was back.

"Nothing," she said looking fondly, relievèdly at Fanny, "It's only to say the carriage is there."

Fanny went slowly back into her room followed by Maria who shut the door. Frau Stacher left alone, almost immediately fell into a doze; her eyes closed heavily and she slipped deeply into the big chair. But she couldn't quite lose herself for she had a feeling that it would soon be time to go and kept trying to keep herself awake.

She sat up sharply, with a start, when Fanny reappeared, how long after she could not have told, in a black costume whose long, fur-trimmed cape fell smartly about her form. A tiny black velvet hat from which she had just torn the cunningly, expensively placed blue aigrette, put her eyes in a becoming, melancholy shadow. She had an extra pair of black gloves in her hand and a fine dark leather bag that she had done with, to replace the "horror" as she called it to herself that her aunt was using.

"You've got such dear little hands," she was saying as she held out the gloves, "These ar'n't big enough for me. I paid a heathen price for them, and this bag's a bit handier than yours." But in spite of her pleasant words, her pallor was so extreme as she held out the gloves and bag, that her aunt whose eyes were again very bright and not alone with fever, noted it anxiously.

"Oh, my little, little Fanny," she cried in quite a strong voice, and even held out her arms. She shared, in a way she could not have expressed, Fanny's grief whatever it was. She didn't want Fanny, dear, gold Fanny to suffer. Fanny _mustn't_ suffer. Fanny _mustn't_ weep. She wanted to live a long, long time, even uncomfortably, denudedly, so that out of the whole careless world, Fanny might always have someone who truly loved her.

Then she became aware, for the first time, of something that intimately concerned herself. The shape and color of her own life.... Loving the children of three other women had been _her_ life. Her middle class life, undisturbing and for so long undisturbed. One day, one year, like another, always loving the children of three other women ... looking through the same windows at the same things. And suddenly now Fanny's world, Fanny's strange world.... It had other horizons, red horizons behind dark mountains with their secrets. But of these secrets her aunt was not thinking. She only knew, as she stood close to Fanny, that it was her own flesh and blood that was suffering,--beautiful and suffering.

How Fanny's beauty threw a bright, blinding cloud about everything that concerned her! She said again:

"My darling child, my beautiful child, don't weep," as Fanny pressed against her, and she comforted her as she might have done in the far off years for girlish griefs. Had she reflected she might have changed her old motto into "Beauty stays, Virtue goes."

She was breaking in Fanny's house for a last time her alabaster box of precious spikenard. From it, in the blue room, a strong fragrance came, over-powering the scent of lily of the valley from an expensive shop in the Graben that hung about Fanny's clothes, and the thin perfume of the too-early blossomed plant. She was thinking only of Fanny's generosity and why she could indulge those many generous impulses she thought not at all,--just as if the family didn't lower their voices when speaking of Fanny and look around to see that the children weren't there. She felt, too, intimately joined to Fanny. Deeply beneath consciousness was that feeling that Fanny was yet to give her something essential, had some ultimate gift for her, that she must be there to receive.... That it was to be her deathbed she didn't know. She only felt that something final and priceless would come through Fanny.

And truly 'tis a great thing to give any one. For mostly each one, no matter how he wanders or is denuded, has, in some strange way, his own.

* * * * *

They were driving slowly up over the noisy cobble stones of the Jacquingasse on their way to the cemetery, Kaethe and Fanny and Tante Ilde on the back seat of the big, black mourning coach. Kaethe, wedged between them, was holding on her lap the white wreath. Opposite sat the Professor. On his knees for a last time was Carli; Carli in his little white box; Carli on his first and only journey.

The sable horses struck the cobble stones with their slow, accustomed beat. It seemed to Frau Stacher the loudest sound she had ever heard, and "some day for you, some day for you" seemed cadenced unmistakably....

In the dark Minorite church Fanny had been a model of piety and recollection. She crossed herself so slowly, so devoutly. She buried her face in her hands and knelt long without fidgeting on the hard, uncomfortable stool. She took holy water and held a tip of her finger to Kaethe as they went out and then to Tante Ilde and to Leo. She and Kaethe had always loved each other very much. Fanny after her wont was going through the afternoon without stint or sloppiness. It would be, in her hands, an "entire" matter.

As they drove along Kaethe rested her head on her sister's warm, scented shoulder. Her eyes were dry, but her face was haggard from the night.

No one noticed that Tante Ilde didn't say a word. Kaethe and Leo were with their child a last time and Fanny, who generally selected pleasant things to do, was finding it more wearing than she had thought and was plunged in her own reflections. At one moment she said to herself "I'm not going to be able to stick it out," and forgot their griefs and miserably let her thoughts turn to the man she truly loved, and if everything in the world, every last thing, had been different.... Then suddenly she fell to cursing in her heart a certain predatory gentleman whom she had known in the "beginning," no, before the "beginning," but she pulled herself up round, that carriage was no place for curses, neither was it the moment. Then she caught sight of her face above Eberhardt's right shoulder. It was distinctly mirrored in the reflecting surface of the glass at his back, formed by the heavy black flaps of the driver's coat. It was white, white as the coffin on Eberhardt's lap, and the eyes were deep, dark pits, almost as if the flesh had fallen away from them. She was horribly frightened. What was the warm thing that went out of you and after it went out you were put in a box?... She jerked her head so that it slipped from view. But she got Tante Ilde's instead.... It was just dreadful.... All right as long as you lived, but there came a time when beauty, which had been so helpful, was clearly of no avail.... The activities of family and town were concentrated on getting you into a box and then ... Fanny who believed in hell and damnation, drew in her breath shudderingly. She was thankful to feel Kaethe's warm, living head against her shoulder. She wasn't dead yet--she was suddenly sure, too, that she'd have "time to repent." She quite brightened up, and as she never did anything by halves was apparently entirely herself by the time they got to the cemetery.

Fanny in the bosom of her family, for once taking charge of things in person, not just paying from a distance, was really worth seeing. Fanny at last visibly the source of whatever mercies they received. Fanny, as Pauli so truly called her, the family Doxology ... according to the mysterious permissions of God the source of their only blessings.

Fanny weeping and praying by the little grave, supporting the stricken mother--her sister, and laying on it the big wreath. Fanny taking them to the café near the cemetery and giving them hot coffee after their cold grief....

It was Fanny, too, who, when some extraordinarily stubbly semmels were served with it, bearing not the slightest resemblance to the anciently far-famed Viennese rolls, scolded the shambling, flat-footed waiter and said loudly it was a "shame" and "disgusting," and ended by going over to the desk and saying something in a lower tone to the gaunt woman who sat there. The woman had promptly produced some coffee cake and some crescents kept only for rich grief. She was used to pale, tear-washed faces. Every day, every day, they came in and went out. She had seen many a strange alteration in their looks after that hot coffee, even after ersatz coffee. People kept on living for all they had that momentary feeling that they couldn't. She had sat at that desk for twenty years. Grief, she knew it, all kinds, ... and they kept on living.

Even Kaethe, though her throat was stiff and dry with mother-grief, even Kaethe had taken her coffee.

But Tante Ilde made no pretense at drinking hers, not even a sip. Those little shivers had changed into a continuous trembling. She felt both hot and cold. Her eyes were filmy. The only thing she wanted to do really was to lie down, never to move again, to give way to that over-powering lassitude that she could no longer struggle against. She was only vaguely worried because she'd lost the new bag; dropped it at the grave probably, though when Eberhardt went back to get it, immediately when she noticed its loss, on coming out of the cemetery, it had already vanished from the earth. After her first dismay, she had strangely not cared, and now she was murmuring something about the alcove, not at all what any of the others were thinking or talking of.

Suddenly Kaethe, startled out of her own grief at a trembling motion of her aunt's shoulders, had looked at her in alarm.

"But what is the matter, Tante Ilde?" she asked.