The Indian Lily and Other Stories by Hermann Sudermann
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Hermann Sudermann >> The Indian Lily and Other Stories
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14 Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Michael Lockey and PG Distributed Proofreaders
THE INDIAN LILY
AND OTHER STORIES
BY
HERMANN SUDERMANN
TRANSLATED BY
LUDWIG LEWISOHN, M.A.
1911
CONTENTS
THE INDIAN LILY
THE PURPOSE
THE SONG OF DEATH
THE VICTIM
AUTUMN
MERRY FOLK
THEA
THE INDIAN LILY
Chapter I.
It was seven o'clock in the morning when Herr von Niebeldingk opened
the iron gate and stepped into the front garden whose wall of
blossoming bushes separated the house from the street.
The sun of a May morning tinted the greyish walls with gold, and
caused the open window-panes to flash with flame.
The master directed a brief glance at the second story whence floated
the dull sound of the carpet-beater. He thrust the key rapidly into
the keyhole for a desire stirred in him to slip past the porter's
lodge unobserved.
"I seem almost to be--ashamed!" he murmured with a smile of
self-derision as a similar impulse overcame him in front of the
house door.
But John, his man--a dignified person of fifty--had observed his
approach and stood in the opening door. The servant's mutton-chop
whiskers and admirably silvered front-lock contrasted with a repressed
reproach that hovered between his brows. He bowed deeply.
"I was delayed," said Herr von Niebeldingk, in order to say something
and was vexed because this sentence sounded almost like an excuse.
"Do you desire to go to bed, captain, or would you prefer a bath?"
"A bath," the master responded. "I have slept elsewhere."
That sounded almost like another excuse.
"I'm obviously out of practice," he reflected as he entered the
breakfast-room where the silver samovar steamed among the dishes of
old Sevres.
He stepped in front of the mirror and regarded himself--not with the
forbearance of a friend but the keen scrutiny of a critic.
"Yellow, yellow...." He shook his head. "I must apply a curb to my
feelings."
Upon the whole, however, he had reason to be fairly satisfied with
himself. His figure, despite the approach of his fortieth year, had
remained slender and elastic. The sternly chiselled face, surrounded
by a short, half-pointed beard, showed neither flabbiness nor bloat.
It was only around the dark, weary eyes that the experiences of the
past night had laid a net-work of wrinkles and shadows. Ten years
ago pleasure had driven the hair from his temples, but it grew
energetically upon his crown and rose, above his forehead, in a
Mephistophelian curve.
The civilian's costume which often lends retired officers a guise of
excessive spick-and-spanness had gradually combined with an easier
bearing to give his figure a natural elegance. To be sure, six years
had passed since, displeased by a nagging major, he had definitely
hung up the dragoon's coat of blue.
He was wealthy enough to have been able to indulge in the luxury of
that displeasure. In addition his estates demanded more rigorous
management.... From Christmas to late spring he lived in Berlin, where
his older brother occupied one of those positions at court that mean
little enough either to superior or inferior ranks, but which, in a
certain social set dependent upon the court, have an influence of
inestimable value. Without assuming the part of either a social lion
or a patron, he used this influence with sufficient thoroughness to be
popular, even, in certain cases, to be feared, and belonged to that
class of men to whom one always confides one's difficulties, never
one's wife.
John came to announce to his master that the bath was ready. And while
Niebeldingk stretched himself lazily in the tepid water he let his
reflections glide serenely about the delightful occurrence of the
past night.
That occurrence had been due for six months, but opportunity had been
lacking. "I am closely watched and well-known," she had told him, "and
dare not go on secret errands." ... Now at last their chance had come
and had been used with clever circumspectness.... Somewhere on the
Polish boundary lived one of her cousins to whose wedding she was
permitted to travel alone.... She had planned to arrive in Berlin
unannounced and, instead of taking the morning train from Eydtkuhnen,
to take the train of the previous evening. Thus a night was gained
whose history had no necessary place in any family chronicle and the
memories of which could, if need were, be obliterated from one's own
consciousness.... Her arrival and departure had caused a few moments
of really needless anxiety. That was all. No acquaintance had run into
them, no waiter had intimated any suspicion, the very cabby who drove
them through the dawn had preserved his stupid lack of expression when
Niebeldingk suddenly sprang from the vehicle and permitted the lady to
be driven on alone....
Before his eyes stood her picture--as he had seen her lying during the
night in his arms, fevered with anxiety and rapture ... Ordinarily
her eyes were large and serene, almost drowsy.... The night had proven
to him what a glow could be kindled in them. Whether her broad brows,
growing together over the nose, could be regarded as a beautiful
feature--that was an open question. He liked them--so much
was certain.
"Thank heaven," he thought. "At last, once more--a _woman_."
And he thought of another who for three years had been allied to him
by bonds of the tenderest intimacy and whom he had this
night betrayed.
"Between us," he consoled himself, "things will remain as they have
been, and I can enjoy my liberty."
He sprayed his body with the icy water of the douche and rang for John
who stood outside of the door with a bath-robe.
When, ten minutes later, shivering comfortably, he entered the
breakfast-room, he found beside his cup a little heap of letters which
the morning post had brought. There were two letters that gripped his
attention.
One read:
"Berlin N., Philippstrasse 10 a.
DEAR HERR VON NIEBELDINGK:--
For the past week I have been in Berlin studying agriculture, since,
as you know, I am to take charge of the estate. Papa made me promise
faithfully to look you up immediately after my arrival. It is merely
due to the respect I owe you that I haven't kept my promise. As I know
that you won't tell Papa I might as well confess to you that I've
scarcely been sober the whole week.--Oh, Berlin is a deuce of a place!
If you don't object I will drop in at noon to-morrow and convey Papa's
greetings to you. Papa is again afflicted with the gout.
With warm regards,
Your very faithful
FRITZ VON EHRENBERG."
The other letter was from ... her--clear, serene, full of such
literary reminiscences as always dwelt in her busy little head.
"DEAR FRIEND:--
I wouldn't ask you: Why do I not see you?--you have not called for
five days--I would wait quietly till your steps led you hither without
persuasion or compulsion; but 'every animal loves itself' as the old
gossip Cicero says, and I feel a desire to chat with you.
I have never believed, to be sure, that we would remain indispensable
to each other. '_Racine passera comme le cafe_,' Mme. de Sevigne says
somewhere, but I would never have dreamed that we would see so little
of each other before the inevitable end of all things.
You know the proverb: even old iron hates to rust, and I'm only
twenty-five.
Come once again, dear Master, if you care to. I have an excellent
cigarette for you--Blum Pasha. I smoke a little myself now and then,
but _c'est plus fort que moi_ and ends in head-ache.
Joko has at last learned to say 'Richard.' He trills the _r_
cunningly. He knows that he has little need to be jealous.
Good-bye!
ALICE."
He laughed and brought forth her picture which stood, framed and
glazed, upon his desk. A delicate, slender figure--"_blonde comme les
bles_"--with bluish grey, eager eyes and a mocking expression of the
lips--it was she herself, she who had made the last years of his life
truly livable and whose fate he administered rather than ruled.
She was the wife of a wealthy mine-owner whose estates abutted on his
and with whom an old friendship, founded on common sports,
connected him.
One day, suspecting nothing, Niebeldingk entered the man's house and
found him dragging his young wife from room to room by the hair....
Niebeldingk interfered and felt, in return, the lash of a whip....
Time and place had been decided upon when the man's physician forbade
the duel.... He had been long suspected, but no certain symptoms had
been alleged, since the brave little woman revealed nothing of the
frightful inwardness of her married life.... Three days later he was
definitely sent to a sanitarium. But between Niebeldingk and Alice the
memory of that last hour of suffering soon wove a thousand threads of
helplessness and pity into the web of love.
As she had long lost her parents and as she was quite defenceless
against her husband's hostile guardians, the care of her interests
devolved naturally upon him.... He released her from troublesome
obligations and directed her demands toward a safe goal.... Then, very
tenderly, he lifted her with all the roots of her being from the old,
poverty-stricken soil of her earlier years and transplanted her to
Berlin where, by the help of his brother's wife--still gently pressing
on and smoothing the way himself--he created a new way of life
for her.
In a villa, hidden by foliage from Lake Constance, her husband slowly
drowsed toward dissolution. She herself ripened in the sharp air of
the capital and grew almost into another woman in this banal,
disillusioned world, sober even in its intoxication.
Of society, from whose official section her fate as well as her
commoner's name separated her, she saw just enough to feel the
influence of the essential conceptions that governed it.
She lost diffidence and awkwardness, she became a woman of the world
and a connoisseur of life. She learned to condemn one day what she
forgave the next, she learned to laugh over nothing and to grieve over
nothing and to be indignant over nothing.
But what surprised Niebeldingk more than these small adaptations to
the omnipotent spirit of her new environment, was the deep revolution
experienced by her innermost being.
She had been a clinging, self-effacing, timid soul. Within three years
she became a determined and calculating little person who lacked
nothing but a certain fixedness to be a complete character.
A strange coldness of the heart now emanated from her and this was
strengthened by precipitate and often unkindly judgment, supported in
its turn by a desire to catch her own reflection in all things and to
adopt witty points of view.
Nor was this all. She acquired a desire to learn, which at first
stimulated and amused Niebeldingk, but which had long grown to be
something of a nuisance.
He himself was held, and rightly held, to be a man of intellect, less
by virtue of rapid perception and flexible thought, than by virtue of
a coolly observant vision of the world, incapable of being confused--a
certain healthy cynicism which, though it never lost an element of
good nature, might yet abash and even chill the souls of men.
His actual knowledge, however, had remained mere wretched patchwork,
his logic came to an end wherever bold reliance upon the intuitive
process was needed to supply missing links in the ratiocinative chain.
And so it came to pass that Alice, whom at first he had regarded as
his scholar, his handiwork, his creature, had developed annoyingly
beyond him.... Involuntarily and innocently she delivered the keenest
thrusts. He had, actually, to be on guard.... In the irresponsible
delight of intellectual crudity she solved the deepest problems of
humanity; she repeated, full of faith, the judgments of the ephemeral
rapid writer, instead of venturing upon the sources of knowledge. Yet
even so she impressed him by her faculty of adaptation and her shining
zeal. He was often silenced, for his slow moving mind could not follow
the vagaries of that rapid little brain.
What would she be at again to-day? "The old gossip Cicero...." And,
"Mme. de Sevigne remarks...." What a rattling and tinkling. It
provoked him.
And her love! ... That was a bad business. What is one to do with a
mistress who, before falling asleep, is capable of lecturing on
Schopenhauer's metaphysics of sex, and will prove to you up to the
hilt how unworthy it really is to permit oneself to be duped by nature
if one does not share her aim for the generations to come?
The man is still to be born upon whom such wisdom, uttered at such an
hour--by lips however sweet--does not cast a chill.
Since that philosophical night he had left untouched the little key
that hung yonder over his desk and that give him, in her house, the
sacred privileges of a husband. And so his life became once more a
hunt after new women who filled his heart with unrest and with the
foolish fires of youth.
But Alice had never been angry at him. Apparently she lacked
nothing....
And his thoughts wandered from her to the woman who had lain against
his breast to-night, shuddering in her stolen joy.
Heavens! He had almost forgotten one thing!
He summoned John and said:
"Go to the florist and order a bunch of Indian lilies. The man knows
what I mean. If he hasn't any, let him procure some by noon."
John did not move a muscle, but heaven only knew whether he did not
suspect the connection between the Indian lilies and the romance of
the past night. It was in his power to adduce precedents.
It was an old custom of Niebeldingk's--a remnant of his half out-lived
Don Juan years--to send a bunch of Indian lilies to those women who
had granted him their supreme favours. He always sent the flowers next
morning. Their symbolism was plain and delicate: In spite of what has
taken place you are as lofty and as sacred in my eyes as these pallid,
alien flowers whose home is beside the Ganges. Therefore have the
kindness--not to annoy me with remorse.
It was a delicate action and--a cynical one.
Chapter II.
At noon--Niebeldingk had just returned from his morning canter--the
visitor, previously announced, was ushered in.
He was a robust young fellow, long of limb and broad of shoulder. His
face was round and tanned, with hot, dark eyes. With merry boldness,
yet not without diffidence, he sidled, in his blue cheviot suit,
into the room.
"Morning, Herr von Niebeldingk."
Enviously and admiringly Niebeldingk surveyed the athletic figure
which moved with springy grace.
"Morning, my boy ... sober?"
"In honour of the day, yes."
"Shall we breakfast?"
"Oh, with delight, Herr von Niebeldingk!"
They passed into the breakfast-room where two covers had already been
laid, and while John served the caviare the flood of news burst which
had mounted in their Franconian home during the past months.
Three betrothals, two important transfers of land, a wedding, Papa's
gout, Mama's charities, Jenny's new target, Grete's flirtation with
the American engineer. And, above all things, the examination!
"Dear Herr von Niebeldingk, it's a rotten farce. For nine years the
gymnasium trains you and drills you, and in the end you don't get your
trouble's worth! I'm sorry for every hour of cramming I did. They
released me from the oral exam., simply sent me out like a monkey when
I was just beginning to let my light shine! Did you ever hear of such
a thing? _Did_ you ever?"
"Well, and how about your university work, Fritz?"
That was a ticklish business, the youth averred. Law and political
science was no use. Every ass took that up. And since it was after all
only his purpose to pass a few years of his green youth profitably,
why he thought he'd stick to his trade and find out how to plant
cabbages properly.
"Have you started in anywhere yet?"
Oh, there was time enough. But he had been to some lectures--agronomy
and inorganic chemistry.... You have to begin with inorganic chemistry
if you want to go in for organic. And the latter was agricultural
chemistry which was what concerned him.
He made these instructive remarks with a serious air and poured down
glass after glass of Madeira. His cheeks began to glow, his heart
expanded. "But that's all piffle, Herr von Niebeldingk, ... all this
book-worm business can go to the devil.... Life--life--life--that's
the main thing!"
"What do you call life, Fritz?"
With both hands he stroked the velvety surface of his close-cropped
skull.
"Well, how am I to tell you? D'you know how I feel? As if I were
standing in front of a great, closed garden ... and I know that all
Paradise is inside ... and occasionally a strain of music floats out
... and occasionally a white garment glitters ... and I'd like to get
in and I can't. That's life, you see. And I've got to stand
miserably outside?"
"Well, you don't impress me as such a miserable creature?"
"No, no, in a way, not. On the coarser side, so to speak, I have a
good deal of fun. Out there around _Philippstrasse_ and
_Marienstrasse_ there are women enough--stylish and fine-looking and
everything you want. And my friends are great fellows, too. Every one
can stand his fifteen glasses ... I suppose I am an ass, and perhaps
it's only moral _katzenjammer_ on account of this past week. But when
I walk the streets and see the tall, distinguished houses and think of
all those people and their lives, yonder a millionaire, here a
minister of state, and think that, once upon a time, they were all
crude boys like myself--well, then I have the feeling as if I'd never
attain anything, but always remain what I am."
"Well, my dear Fritz, the only remedy for that lies in that 'book-worm
business' as you call it. Sit down on your breeches and work!"
"No, Herr von Niebeldingk, it isn't that either ... let me tell you.
Day before yesterday I was at the opera.... They sang the
_Goetterddmmerung_.... You know, of course. There is _Siegfried_, a
fellow like myself, ... not more than twenty ... I sat upstairs in the
third row with two seamstresses. I'd picked them up in the
_Chausseestrasse_--cute little beasts, too.... But when _Brunhilde_
stretched out her wonderful, white arms to him and sang: 'On to new
deeds, O hero!' why I felt like taking the two girls by the scruff of
the neck and pitching them down into the pit, I was so ashamed.
Because, you see, _Siegfried_ had his _Brunhilde_ who inspired him to
do great deeds. And what have I? ... A couple of hard cases picked up
in the street."
"Afterwards, I suppose, you felt more reconciled?"
"That shows how little you know me. I'd promised the girls supper. So
I had to eat with them. But when that was over I let 'em slide. I
ran about in the streets and just--howled!"
"Very well, but what exactly are you after?"
"That's what I don't know, Herr von Niebeldingk. Oh, if I knew! But
it's something quite indefinite--hard to think, hard to comprehend.
I'd like to howl with laughter and I don't know why ... to shriek, and
I don't know what about."
"Blessed youth!" Niebeldingk thought, and looked at the enthusiastic
boy full of emotion. ...
John, who was serving, announced that the florist's girl had come with
the Indian lilies.
"Indian lilies, what sort of lilies are they?" asked Fritz overcome by
a hesitant admiration.
"You'll see," Niebeldingk answered and ordered the girl to be
admitted.
She struggled through the door, a half-grown thing with plump red
cheeks and smooth yellow hair. Diffident and frightened, she
nevertheless began to flirt with Fritz. In front of her she held the
long stems of the exotic lilies whose blossoms, like gigantic
narcissi, brooded in star-like rest over chaste and alien dreams. From
the middle of each chalice came a sharp, green shimmer which faded
gently along the petals of the flowers.
"Confound it, but they're beautiful!" cried Fritz. "Surely they have
quite a peculiar significance."
Niebeldingk arose, wrote the address without permitting John, who
stood in suspicious proximity, to throw a glance at it, handed cards
and flowers to the girl, gave her a tip, and escorted her to the
door himself.
"So they do mean something special?" Fritz asked eagerly. He couldn't
get over his enthusiasm.
"Yes, my boy."
"And may one know...."
"Surely, one may know. I give these lilies to that lady whose lofty
purity transcends all doubt--I give them as a symbol of my chaste and
desireless admiration."
Fritz's eyes shone.
"Ah, but I'd like to know a lady like that--some day!" he cried and
pressed his hands to his forehead.
"That will come! That will come!" Niebeldingk tapped the youth's
shoulder calmingly.
"Will you have some salad?"
Chapter III.
Around the hour of afternoon tea Niebeldingk, true to a dear, old
habit, went to see his friend.
She inhabited a small second-floor apartment in the _Regentenstrasse_
which he had himself selected for her when she came as a stranger to
Berlin. With flowers and palms and oriental rugs she had moulded a
delicious retreat, and before her bed-room windows the nightingales
sang in the springtime.
She seemed to be expecting him. In the great, raised bay, separated
from the rest of the drawing-room by a thicket of dark leaves, the
stout tea-urn was already expectantly humming.
In a bright, girlish dress, devoid of coquetry or pouting, Alice came
to meet him.
"I'm glad you're here again, Richard."
That was all.
He wanted to launch out into the tale which he had meant to tell her,
but she cut him short.
"Since when do I demand excuses, Richard? You come and there you are.
And if you don't come, I have to be content too." "You should really
be a little less tolerant," he warned her.
"A blessed lot it would help me," she answered merrily.
Gently she took his arm and led him to his old place. Then silently,
and with that restrained eagerness that characterised all her actions
she busied herself with the tea-urn.
His critical and discriminating gaze followed her movements. With
swift, delicate gestures she pushed forward the Chinese dish, shook
the tea from the canister and poured the first drops of boiling water
through a sieve.... Her quick, bird-like head moved hither and
thither, and the bow of the orange-coloured ribbon which surrounded
her over-delicate neck trembled a little with every motion.
"She really is the most charming of all," such was the end of his
reflections, "if only she weren't so damnably sensible."
Silently she took her seat opposite him, folded her white hands in her
lap, and looked into his eyes with such significant archness that he
began to feel embarrassed.
Had she any suspicion of his infidelities?
Surely not. No jealous woman can look about her so calmly and
serenely.
"What have you been doing all this time?" he asked.
"I? Good heavens! Look about you and you'll see."
She pointed to a heap of books which lay scattered over the window
seat and sewing table.
There were Moltke's letters and the memoirs of von Schoen, and Max
Mueller's Aryan studies. Nor was the inevitable Schopenhauer lacking.
"What are you after with all that learning?" he asked.
"Ah, dear friend, what is one to do? One can't always be going about
in strange houses. Do you expect me to stand at the window and watch
the clouds float over the old city-wall?"
He had the uncomfortable impression that she was quoting something
again.
"My mood," she went on, "is in what Goethe calls the minor of the
soul. It is the yearning that reaches out afar and yet restrains
itself harmoniously within itself. Isn't that beautifully put?"
"It may be, but it's too high for me!" In laughing self-protection, he
stretched out his arms toward her.
"Don't make fun of me," she said, slightly shamed, and arose.
"And what is the object of your yearning?" he asked in order to leave
the realm of Goethe as swiftly as possible. "Not you, you horrible
person," she answered and, for a moment, touched his hair with
her lips.
"I know that, dearest," he said, "it's a long time since you've sent
me two notes a day."
"And since you came to see me twice daily," she returned and gazed at
the floor with a sad irony.
"We have both changed greatly, Alice."
"We have indeed, Richard."
A silence ensued.
His eyes wandered to the opposite wall.... His own picture, framed in
silvery maple-wood, hung there.... Behind the frame appeared a bunch
of blossoms, long faded and shrivelled to a brownish, indistinguishable
heap.
These two alone knew the significance of the flowers....
"Were you at least happy in those days, Alice?"
"You know I am always happy, Richard."
"Oh yes, yes; I know your philosophy. But I meant happy with me,
through me?"
She stroked her delicate nose thoughtfully. The mocking expression
about the corners of her mouth became accentuated.
"I hardly think so, Richard," she said after an interval. "I was too
much afraid of you ... I seemed so stupid in comparison to you and I
feared that you would despise me." "That fear, at least, you have
overcome very thoroughly?" he asked.
"Not wholly, Richard. Things have only shifted their basis. Just as,
in those days, I felt ashamed of my ignorance, so now I feel
ashamed--no, that isn't the right word.... But all this stuff that I
store up in my head seems to weigh upon me in my relations with you. I
seem to be a nuisance with it.... You men, especially mature men like
yourself, seem to know all these things better, even when you don't
know them.... The precise form in which a given thought is presented
to us may be new to you, but the thought itself you have long
digested. It's for this reason that I feel intimidated whenever I
approach you with my pursuits. 'You might better have held your
peace,' I say to myself. But what am I to do? I'm so profoundly
interested!"
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