Meuk, as she passed through it, shook its head over her, too, consoling itself when she returned no greetings, did not even seem to see greetings, with the same explanation and shrug—Engländerin. Robertlet and Ditti, walking along neatly to afternoon school, and suddenly aware of the approach down the street towards them of a disordered parent who not only did not stop but apparently did not see them, murmured to each other, being by now well instructed by their grandmother, the same explanation—Engländerin. Frau Dremmel, leaning on her window-sill to watch her charges safely round the corner, and lingering a moment in the mellow summer air, explained her daughter-in-law, who went by without a glance, walking conspicuously in the middle of the road, with no parcel in her hand to legitimise her being out and not so much as an umbrella to give her a countenance, just with empty ungloved hands hanging down, and a scandalous scarcity of hairpins, and her clothes all twisted, in the same brief manner, Engländerin. Baroness Glambeck, driving towards the town along the shade-flecked highroad, bent on one of those errands of mercy that are forced at intervals upon the great, with a basket of the properties, principally home-made jam and mittens, at her feet, endeavoured though vainly to mitigate the shock she received on being cut by her own pastor's wife, and a pastor's wife producing curiously the effect of somehow being in tatters, by using the same word to the female dependent who accompanied her on these occasions because somebody had to carry the jam—Engländerin. The very birds in the branches, being German birds, were no doubt singing it; the dogs, as they met her, scented misfortune and barked furiously, instantly detecting the alien, angered by her batteredness, discovering nothing in her clothes however diligently they sniffed that an honest German dog could care about; and when on a lonely stretch of the road she came to a tramp, instead of begging he offered her a drink.
The lane turning off to Kökensee was so lovely that afternoon in the bright bravery of early summer, and so glanced and shone and darted with busy birds and insects and the glory of young leaves in the sun, that the dingy human figure faltering along it seemed an indecency. In that vigorous world what place was there for blind fatigue? In that world of triumph what place for a failure? It was the sort of day that used to make Ingeborg's heart lift up; now she saw nothing, felt nothing, except that the sand was deep.
She began to cry presently because the sand was deep. It seemed to give way on purpose beneath her feet, try on purpose to make her stumble and not get home. The line of roofs up against the afternoon sky did not appear to come any nearer, and yet she kept on trying to get home. The tears fell down her face as she laboured along. She was afraid she wouldn't get home in time before she had to leave off walking because she couldn't walk any farther. It seemed to her a dreadful thing that she who could walk so well should not be able to walk now and get home. And this white sand—how fine it was, how it slid away on each side of one's feet wherever one put them! And it got into one's shoes, and one couldn't stop and empty them for fear if one sat down one wouldn't be able to get up again, and then one wouldn't get home. Slower and more slowly she laboured along. By the time she reached the steep part just before the village she was crawling like a hurt insect. She had forgotten to eat on the journey, and in Milan there had only been the rusks.
The street was asleep, empty that fine afternoon, the inhabitants away at work in the fields, and only the pig and the geese were visible in the parsonage yard. Luckily the gate in the wire-netting fence that shut off the house and garden was not latched, for she could not have opened it, but would have stood there holding on to it and foolishly sobbing till some one came and helped. The least obstacle now would be a thing that in no way could be got over. The front door was shut, and sooner than go up the steps and try to get it open, she went round the path to the side of the house where the lilacs grew and Robert's window was. That way she could reach the kitchen, whose door stood always open and was level with the garden. Robert would be out in his fields. She would go into his laboratory and wait for him. Nobody but Robert knew yet. She had come back before the end of her leave. His shame was not yet public property. If he just beat her, she thought, in a disinterested weak way, and there was an end of it, wouldn't that do? Then no one need ever know, and he could stay on in Kökensee and go on with his work, and she wouldn't have ruined him. It was the thought of having ruined Robert that clove her heart in two. To have ruined him, when all her ambition and all her hope had been to make him so happy....
Well did she know that a pastor whose wife had broken the seventh commandment would be driven out, would be impossibly scandalous in any parish. And her not having broken it was quite beside the point; it didn't matter what you didn't do so long as you looked as though you had done it. And if Robert killed her it wouldn't help him, either; he would have done the only decent thing, as the Baroness and her son Hildebrand had said that time long ago, and avenged his honour in the proper German way, but there were drawbacks to avenging one's honour—one was, illogically, punished for doing it, and even though it were mild punishment, any punishment ended a pastor's career.
She crept round the corner of the house. She was so tired that if she had to wait for him long in his laboratory she felt sure she wouldn't be able to keep awake. Well, if he came in and killed her while she was asleep it would be for her the pleasantest thing; she was so very tired that it would be nice, she thought vaguely, to wake up afterwards, and find oneself comfortably dead. But Robert was not in his fields. From the path beneath his window she could see his head, as she had seen it hundreds of times, bending over his desk.
At the sight she stopped, and her heart seemed to shrink into quite a little, scarcely beating thing. There he was, her dishonoured husband, the being who in her life had been kindest to her, had loved her most, still working, still going on doggedly among the ruins she had created, up to the last moment when public opinion, brutal and stupid, making her the chief thing when she so utterly was not, while it thrust her and her wishes and intimate knowledge aside as not mattering when, as in the question of more children, or no more children, they so utterly did, would on her sole account, on the sole account of what seemed to her at that moment the most profoundly naturally unimportant thing in life, a woman who had been silly, put a stop to his fine work and refuse to give the world a chance to profit by his brains.
Well, she couldn't think about that now. She couldn't hold on to any of her thoughts for more than an instant. She only knew that the moment had come for facing him, and that she was very tired. She really was extraordinarily tired. Her mind was just as dim and reluctant to move as her body. Whatever Robert was going to do to her she would cling to him with her arms round his neck while he did it. She was so tired that she thought if he didn't mind her just putting her arms round his neck she would very likely go to sleep while he beat her. But poor Robert, she thought—how hot it was going to make him to have to be violent, to have to beat! It was not at all good beating weather.... And it was almost a pity to waste punishment on somebody too tired to be able properly to appreciate it, to take it, as it were, properly in.
She moved along down the path towards the back door. When one came to think of it it was a strange thing to be going in to Robert to be hurt. Well, but she had deserved it; she perfectly understood about his honour and its needs. Oh, yes, she perfectly understood that. A man has to—what had she just been going to think? What does a man have to? Oh, well. If only what he did to her could blot out every consequence of what she had done to him, be a full, perfect, and sufficient—no, that was profane; tiresome how one thought in the phrases of the Prayer-book and how difficult it was if one had had much to do with prayer-books not to be profane. As it was, her punishment wouldn't do anybody any good that she could see. Funny, the punishment idea. Of what use was it really? The consequences of the things one did were surely enough in their devastating effect; why increase devastation? And forgiveness didn't seem to be of much use, either. It blotted out the past, she had heard people in pulpits say, but it didn't blot out the future, that daily living among consequences which she perceived was going to be so dreadful.
Well, she couldn't think now. And here was the kitchen door; and here—yes, wasn't that Klara, staring at her open-mouthed, arrested in the middle of emptying a bucket? Why did she stare at her? Did she then know?
"Allmächtiger Gott" exclaimed Klara, dropping the bucket.
Yes, evidently Klara knew, she thought, dragging her dusty feet across the kitchen into the passage, and allmächtiger Gott was what one said in Germany when one's disgraced mistress came back, instead of guten Tag. Well, it didn't matter. The dark little passage; one almost had to grope one's way along it when the front door was shut. And it had not been aired apparently since she went away, and it was heavy and choked with kitchen smell. She supposed it must be this thickness of atmosphere that made her, on Robert's doormat with her hand on the latch, feel suddenly so very like fainting. And it really was dark; surely it didn't only seem dark because she suddenly couldn't see? Alarmed, she remembered how she had fainted after her conscience-stricken journey back from Lucerne. Was she then to go through life making at intervals conscience-stricken journeys back, and fainting at the critical moment at their end?
In terror lest she should do it now if she waited a moment longer, and so twist things round in that dishonourable womanly way which commits the wrong and then bringing in the appeal of bodily weakness secures the comforting, secures, almost, the apology, she seized all her courage, swept its fragments together into a firm clutching, and opened the door.
Herr Dremmel was at his table, writing. He did not look up.
"Robert," she said faintly, her back against the door, her hands behind her spread out and clinging to it, here I am.
Herr Dremmel continued writing. He was, to all appearances, absorbed; and his forehead, that hot afternoon, was covered with the drops of concentration.
"Robert," she said at last again, in a voice that shook however hard she tried to keep it steady, "here I am."
Herr Dremmel finished his sentence. Then he raised his head and looked at her.
Staring back at him in misery and fear, and yet beside the fear with a dreadful courage, she recognised the look. It was the look he had when he was collecting his attention, bringing it up from distant deep places to the surface, to herself. How strange that he should at this moment have to collect it, that it did not instantly spring at her, that she and the havoc she had brought into his life should not be soaked into every part of his consciousness!
"What did you say, Ingeborg?" he said, looking at her with that so recognisable look.
For all her study of him she felt she did not yet know Robert.
"I only said," she stammered, "that I—that here—that here I was."
He looked at her for a further space of silence. Then it flashed upon her that he was, dreadfully, pretending. He was acting. He was going to torment her before punishing her. He was going to be slowly cruel.
Herr Dremmel, as though he were gathering himself together—gathering himself, she thought watching him and growing cold at his uncanniness, for a horrible spring—inquired of her if she had walked.
"Yes," said Ingeborg even more faintly, her eyes full of watchful fear.
He continued to look at her, but his hand while he did so felt about on the table for the pen he had laid down.
She recognized this look, too—amazing, horrible, how he could act—it was the one he had when, talking to somebody, a new illumination of the subject he was writing about came into his mind.
She felt sure now that the worst was going to happen to her; but first there was to be torture, a long playing about. These revealed depths of cunning cruelty in him, of talent for cleverest acting, froze her blood. Where was Robert, the man of large simplicities she believed she had known? It was a strange man, then, she had been living with? He had never, through all the years, been the one she thought she had married.
"Please-" she said, holding out both her hands, "Robert—don't. Won't you—won't you be natural?"
He still looked at her in silence. Then he said with a sudden air of remembering, "Did you get your boots, Ingeborg?"
This was dreadful. That he should even talk about the boots! Throw in her face that paltry preliminary lying.
"You know I didn't," she said, tears of shame for him that he could be so cruel coming into her eyes.
Again Herr Dremmel looked at her as though collecting, as though endeavouring to remember and to find.
"I know?" he repeated, after a pause of reflective gazing during which Ingeborg had flushed vividly and gone white again, so much shocked was she at the glimpse she was getting into inhumanity. It was devilish, she thought. But Robert devilish? Her universe seemed tumbling about her ears.
"I think," she said, lifting her head with the pride he ought to have felt and so evidently, so lamentably, didn't, "one should give one's punishment like a man."
There was another pause, during which Herr Dremmel, with his eyes on hers, appeared to ruminate.
Then he said, "Did you have a pleasant time?"
This was fiendish. Even when acting, thought Ingeborg, there were depths of baseness the decent refused to portray.
"I think," she said in a trembling voice, "if you wouldn't mind leaving off pretending—oh," she broke off, pressing her hands together, "what's the good, Robert? What's the good? Don't let us waste time. Don't make it worse, more hideous—you got my letter—you know all about it—"
"Your letter?" said Herr Dremmel.
She begged him, she entreated him to leave off pretending. "Don't, don't keep on like this," she besought—"it's such a dreadful way of doing it—it's so unworthy—"
"Ingeborg," said Herr Dremmel, "will you not cultivate calm? You have journeyed and you have walked, but you have done neither sufficiently to justify intemperateness. Perhaps, if you must be intemperate, you will have the goodness to go and be so in your own room. Then we shall neither of us disturb the other."
"No," said Ingeborg, wringing her hands, "no. I won't go. I won't go into any other room till you've finished with me."
"But," said Herr Dremmel, "I have finished with you. And I wish," he added, pulling out his watch, "to have tea. I am driving to my fields at five o'clock."
"Oh, Robert," she begged, inexpressibly shocked, he meant to go on tormenting her then indefinitely? "please, please do whatever you're going to do to me and get it over. Here I am only waiting to be punished—"
"Punished?" repeated Herr Dremmel.
"Why," cried Ingeborg, her eyes bright with grief and shame for this steady persistence in baseness, "why, I don't think you're to punish me! You're not fit to punish a decent woman. You're contemptible!"
Herr Dremmel stared. "This," he then said, "is abuse. At least," he added, "it bears a close resemblance to that which in a reasonable human being would be abuse. However, Ingeborg, speech in you does not, as I have often observed, accurately represent meaning. I should rather say," he amended, "a meaning."
She moved across to the table to him, her eyes shining. He held his pen ready to go on writing so soon as she should be good enough to leave off interrupting.
"Robert," she said, leaning with both hands on the table, her voice shaking, "I—I never thought I'd have to be ashamed of you. I could bear anything but having to be ashamed of you—"
"Perhaps, then, Ingeborg," said Herr Dremmel, "you will have the goodness to go and be ashamed of me in your own room. Then we shall neither of us disturb the other."
"You are being so horrible that you're twisting things all wrong, and putting me in the position of having to forgive you when it's you who've got to forgive me—"
"Pray, then, Ingeborg, go and forgive me in your own room. Then we shall neither of us—"
"You're being cruel—oh, but it's unbelievable—you, my husband—you're playing with me like a cat with a miserable mouse, a miserable, sorry mouse, something helpless that can't do anything back and wouldn't if it could—and see how you make me talk, when it's you who ought to be talking! Do, do, Robert, begin to talk—begin to say things, do things, get it over. You've had my letter, you know perfectly what I did—"
"I have had no letter, Ingeborg."
"How dreadful of you to say that!" she cried, her face full of horror at him. "When you know you have and you know I know you have—that letter I left for you—on this table—"
"I have seen no letter on this table."
"But I put it here—I put it here—"
She lifted her hand to point out passionately the very spot to him; and underneath her hand was the letter.
Her heart gave one great bump and seemed to stop beating. The letter was where she had put it and was unopened.
She looked up at Herr Dremmel. She turned red; she turned white; she tasted the very extremity of shame. "I—beg your pardon," she whispered.
Herr Dremmel wore a slight air of apology. "One omits, occasionally, to notice," he said.
"Yes," breathed Ingeborg.
She stood quite still, her eyes on his face.
He pulled out his watch. "Perhaps now, Ingeborg," he said, "you will be so good as to see about tea. I am driving to my fields—"
"Yes," breathed Ingeborg.
He bent over his work and began writing again.
She put out her hand and slowly took up the letter. Tradition, copious imbibing of the precepts of bishops, were impelling her towards that action frequently fatal to the permanent peace of families, the making of a clean breast.
"Do you—do you—do you want to—" she began tremblingly, half holding out the letter.
Then her voice failed; and her principles failed; and the precepts of a lifetime failed; and she put it in her pocket.
"It's—stale," she whispered, explaining.
But Herr Dremmel went on writing. He had forgotten the letter.
She turned away and went slowly towards the door.
In the middle of the room she hesitated, and looked back. "I—I'd like to kiss you," she faltered.
But Herr Dremmel went on writing. He had forgotten Ingeborg.
THE END