Of Human Bondage (24 page)

  Philip could not help reddening when he told a
downright lie.

  "No. I don't think I saw a living soul."

  He fancied that a look of relief passed across her
eyes.

  Soon, however, there could be no doubt that there
was something between the pair, and other people in the Frau
Professor's house saw them lurking in dark places. The elderly
ladies who sat at the head of the table began to discuss what was
now a scandal. The Frau Professor was angry and harassed. She had
done her best to see nothing. The winter was at hand, and it was
not as easy a matter then as in the summer to keep her house full.
Herr Sung was a good customer: he had two rooms on the ground
floor, and he drank a bottle of Moselle at each meal. The Frau
Professor charged him three marks a bottle and made a good profit.
None of her other guests drank wine, and some of them did not even
drink beer. Neither did she wish to lose Fraulein Cacilie, whose
parents were in business in South America and paid well for the
Frau Professor's motherly care; and she knew that if she wrote to
the girl's uncle, who lived in Berlin, he would immediately take
her away. The Frau Professor contented herself with giving them
both severe looks at table and, though she dared not be rude to the
Chinaman, got a certain satisfaction out of incivility to Cacilie.
But the three elderly ladies were not content. Two were widows, and
one, a Dutchwoman, was a spinster of masculine appearance; they
paid the smallest possible sum for their pension, and gave a good
deal of trouble, but they were permanent and therefore had to be
put up with. They went to the Frau Professor and said that
something must be done; it was disgraceful, and the house was
ceasing to be respectable. The Frau Professor tried obstinacy,
anger, tears, but the three old ladies routed her, and with a
sudden assumption of virtuous indignation she said that she would
put a stop to the whole thing.

  After luncheon she took Cacilie into her bed-room
and began to talk very seriously to her; but to her amazement the
girl adopted a brazen attitude; she proposed to go about as she
liked; and if she chose to walk with the Chinaman she could not see
it was anybody's business but her own. The Frau Professor
threatened to write to her uncle.

  "Then Onkel Heinrich will put me in a family in
Berlin for the winter, and that will be much nicer for me. And Herr
Sung will come to Berlin too."

  The Frau Professor began to cry. The tears rolled
down her coarse, red, fat cheeks; and Cacilie laughed at her.

  "That will mean three rooms empty all through the
winter," she said.

  Then the Frau Professor tried another plan. She
appealed to Fraulein Cacilie's better nature: she was kind,
sensible, tolerant; she treated her no longer as a child, but as a
grown woman. She said that it wouldn't be so dreadful, but a
Chinaman, with his yellow skin and flat nose, and his little pig's
eyes! That's what made it so horrible. It filled one with disgust
to think of it.

  "Bitte, bitte," said Cacilie, with a rapid intake of
the breath. "I won't listen to anything against him."

  "But it's not serious?" gasped Frau Erlin.

  "I love him. I love him. I love him."

  "Gott im Himmel!"

  The Frau Professor stared at her with horrified
surprise; she had thought it was no more than naughtiness on the
child's part, and innocent, folly. but the passion in her voice
revealed everything. Cacilie looked at her for a moment with
flaming eyes, and then with a shrug of her shoulders went out of
the room.

  Frau Erlin kept the details of the interview to
herself, and a day or two later altered the arrangement of the
table. She asked Herr Sung if he would not come and sit at her end,
and he with his unfailing politeness accepted with alacrity.
Cacilie took the change indifferently. But as if the discovery that
the relations between them were known to the whole household made
them more shameless, they made no secret now of their walks
together, and every afternoon quite openly set out to wander about
the hills. It was plain that they did not care what was said of
them. At last even the placidity of Professor Erlin was moved, and
he insisted that his wife should speak to the Chinaman. She took
him aside in his turn and expostulated; he was ruining the girl's
reputation, he was doing harm to the house, he must see how wrong
and wicked his conduct was; but she was met with smiling denials;
Herr Sung did not know what she was talking about, he was not
paying any attention to Fraulein Cacilie, he never walked with her;
it was all untrue, every word of it.

  "Ach, Herr Sung, how can you say such things? You've
been seen again and again."

  "No, you're mistaken. It's untrue."

  He looked at her with an unceasing smile, which
showed his even, little white teeth. He was quite calm. He denied
everything. He denied with bland effrontery. At last the Frau
Professor lost her temper and said the girl had confessed she loved
him. He was not moved. He continued to smile.

  "Nonsense! Nonsense! It's all untrue."

  She could get nothing out of him. The weather grew
very bad; there was snow and frost, and then a thaw with a long
succession of cheerless days, on which walking was a poor
amusement. One evening when Philip had just finished his German
lesson with the Herr Professor and was standing for a moment in the
drawing-room, talking to Frau Erlin, Anna came quickly in.

  "Mamma, where is Cacilie?" she said.

  "I suppose she's in her room."

  "There's no light in it."

  The Frau Professor gave an exclamation, and she
looked at her daughter in dismay. The thought which was in Anna's
head had flashed across hers.

  "Ring for Emil," she said hoarsely.

  This was the stupid lout who waited at table and did
most of the housework. He came in.

  "Emil, go down to Herr Sung's room and enter without
knocking. If anyone is there say you came in to see about the
stove."

  No sign of astonishment appeared on Emil's
phlegmatic face.

  He went slowly downstairs. The Frau Professor and
Anna left the door open and listened. Presently they heard Emil
come up again, and they called him.

  "Was anyone there?" asked the Frau Professor.

  "Yes, Herr Sung was there."

  "Was he alone?"

  The beginning of a cunning smile narrowed his
mouth.

  "No, Fraulein Cacilie was there."

  "Oh, it's disgraceful," cried the Frau
Professor.

  Now he smiled broadly.

  "Fraulein Cacilie is there every evening. She spends
hours at a time there."

  Frau Professor began to wring her hands.

  "Oh, how abominable! But why didn't you tell
me?"

  "It was no business of mine," he answered, slowly
shrugging his shoulders.

  "I suppose they paid you well. Go away. Go."

  He lurched clumsily to the door.

  "They must go away, mamma," said Anna.

  "And who is going to pay the rent? And the taxes are
falling due. It's all very well for you to say they must go away.
If they go away I can't pay the bills." She turned to Philip, with
tears streaming down her face. "Ach, Herr Carey, you will not say
what you have heard. If Fraulein Forster – " this was the Dutch
spinster – "if Fraulein Forster knew she would leave at once. And
if they all go we must close the house. I cannot afford to keep
it."

  "Of course I won't say anything."

  "If she stays, I will not speak to her," said
Anna.

  That evening at supper Fraulein Cacilie, redder than
usual, with a look of obstinacy on her face, took her place
punctually; but Herr Sung did not appear, and for a while Philip
thought he was going to shirk the ordeal. At last he came, very
smiling, his little eyes dancing with the apologies he made for his
late arrival. He insisted as usual on pouring out the Frau
Professor a glass of his Moselle, and he offered a glass to
Fraulein Forster. The room was very hot, for the stove had been
alight all day and the windows were seldom opened. Emil blundered
about, but succeeded somehow in serving everyone quickly and with
order. The three old ladies sat in silence, visibly disapproving:
the Frau Professor had scarcely recovered from her tears; her
husband was silent and oppressed. Conversation languished. It
seemed to Philip that there was something dreadful in that
gathering which he had sat with so often; they looked different
under the light of the two hanging lamps from what they had ever
looked before; he was vaguely uneasy. Once he caught Cacilie's eye,
and he thought she looked at him with hatred and contempt. The room
was stifling. It was as though the beastly passion of that pair
troubled them all; there was a feeling of Oriental depravity; a
faint savour of joss-sticks, a mystery of hidden vices, seemed to
make their breath heavy. Philip could feel the beating of the
arteries in his forehead. He could not understand what strange
emotion distracted him; he seemed to feel something infinitely
attractive, and yet he was repelled and horrified.

  For several days things went on. The air was sickly
with the unnatural passion which all felt about them, and the
nerves of the little household seemed to grow exasperated. Only
Herr Sung remained unaffected; he was no less smiling, affable, and
polite than he had been before: one could not tell whether his
manner was a triumph of civilisation or an expression of contempt
on the part of the Oriental for the vanquished West. Cacilie was
flaunting and cynical. At last even the Frau Professor could bear
the position no longer. Suddenly panic seized her; for Professor
Erlin with brutal frankness had suggested the possible consequences
of an intrigue which was now manifest to everyone, and she saw her
good name in Heidelberg and the repute of her house ruined by a
scandal which could not possibly be hidden. For some reason,
blinded perhaps by her interests, this possibility had never
occurred to her; and now, her wits muddled by a terrible fear, she
could hardly be prevented from turning the girl out of the house at
once. It was due to Anna's good sense that a cautious letter was
written to the uncle in Berlin suggesting that Cacilie should be
taken away.

  But having made up her mind to lose the two lodgers,
the Frau Professor could not resist the satisfaction of giving rein
to the ill-temper she had curbed so long. She was free now to say
anything she liked to Cacilie.

  "I have written to your uncle, Cacilie, to take you
away. I cannot have you in my house any longer."

  Her little round eyes sparkled when she noticed the
sudden whiteness of the girl's face.

  "You're shameless. Shameless," she went on.

  She called her foul names.

  "What did you say to my uncle Heinrich, Frau
Professor?" the girl asked, suddenly falling from her attitude of
flaunting independence.

  "Oh, he'll tell you himself. I expect to get a
letter from him tomorrow."

  Next day, in order to make the humiliation more
public, at supper she called down the table to Cacilie.

  "I have had a letter from your uncle, Cacilie. You
are to pack your things tonight, and we will put you in the train
tomorrow morning. He will meet you himself in Berlin at the Central
Bahnhof."

  "Very good, Frau Professor."

  Herr Sung smiled in the Frau Professor's eyes, and
notwithstanding her protests insisted on pouring out a glass of
wine for her. The Frau Professor ate her supper with a good
appetite. But she had triumphed unwisely. Just before going to bed
she called the servant.

  "Emil, if Fraulein Cacilie's box is ready you had
better take it downstairs tonight. The porter will fetch it before
breakfast."

  The servant went away and in a moment came back.

  "Fraulein Cacilie is not in her room, and her bag
has gone."

  With a cry the Frau Professor hurried along: the box
was on the floor, strapped and locked; but there was no bag, and
neither hat nor cloak. The dressing-table was empty. Breathing
heavily, the Frau Professor ran downstairs to the Chinaman's rooms,
she had not moved so quickly for twenty years, and Emil called out
after her to beware she did not fall; she did not trouble to knock,
but burst in. The rooms were empty. The luggage had gone, and the
door into the garden, still open, showed how it had been got away.
In an envelope on the table were notes for the money due on the
month's board and an approximate sum for extras. Groaning, suddenly
overcome by her haste, the Frau Professor sank obesely on to a
sofa. There could be no doubt. The pair had gone off together. Emil
remained stolid and unmoved.