The Song of Songs. Hermann Sudermann
form a committee," one girl proposed, and the others seconded enthusiastically.
"Thank God," Lilly thought. She felt as if his life had already been prolonged by forty or fifty years.
At the ten o'clock recess they lost no time in getting together for urgent deliberation. Officers were chosen, and Lilly had the inexpressible joy of emerging from the election in the dignity of secretary.
A few days later the first meeting took place in Klein's confectionery shop—they did not venture into Frangipani's, the resort of military officers and city officials—in the course of which fifteen young ladies consumed fifteen small meringues glacés and fifteen cups of chocolate, business expenses subsequently to be divided among them. Various promising plans were submitted for consideration. Emily Faber suggested that a public reading of Romeo and Juliet with assigned rôles be given in the club house, and the leading man of the city theatre be asked to take the part of Romeo. The proposal received unanimous approval; for this leading man was one of the most beloved of leading men that ever found his way into girls' hearts.
Kate Vitzing, whose cousin was tenor of the boys' high school quartette, proposed an amateur concert to be given jointly by the quartette and the Selecta. This, too, was unanimously approved.
Finally, Rosalie Katz, who was of a practical turn, submitted a scheme for printing subscription blanks to be presented to well-to-do citizens. This plan gave less satisfaction, but in the end the girls agreed that one good thing need not exclude another, and decided to put all three projects into execution.
Lilly conscientiously recorded all the transactions, and her heart went pit-a-pat, "For him!"
The lectures on the history of art followed their regular course; so also the meetings of the aid committee. The consumption of meringues glacés and cups of chocolate remained on about the same level, but enthusiasm for the cause markedly diminished. Not that Dr. Mälzer's subsequent lectures offered ground for disillusionment. Rich alike in substance and figures of speech, they never failed to win the same tense sympathy from the girls. But the plans for helping him had met with serious obstacles.
The much-beloved Romeo had been engaged to perform in another city at the beginning of the autumn, the quartette had been refused permission to coöperate with the Selecta, and a permit from the police department was necessary for a house to house collection. None of the girls dared apply for it.
Thus, the great life-preserving idea gradually petered out, terminating in a confectioner's bill, of which three marks eighty fell to Lilly's share. Lilly well knew the way to the pawnbroker's, and she did not have to pluck up courage before relinquishing the little gold cross that she wore about her neck, the last remnant of better days. Besides, it was all for his sake.
Autumn came, and Dr. Mälzer grew worse. He coughed a great deal, each time putting his handkerchief to his mouth and then examining it furtively.
One day the girls were told that the lectures on the history of art would be discontinued until further notice.
Anna Marholz reported he had had a hemorrhage.
Lilly did not stop to ask for an explanation of what that meant.
"He's dying, he's dying!" was the cry in her soul.
After dark she stole to his house (Anna Marholz had found his address in one of her father's books). A weary, green-shaded lamp was burning in his room. Not a shadow stirred, no hand appeared at the window-curtain. But the little lamp continued to burn patiently for hours and hours, despite its weariness, all the time that Lilly trotted up and down the damp street in front of his house, full of conscientious scruples for having robbed her toiling mother of her help.
The adventure was repeated the following evenings, and anxiety waxed in Lilly's soul. She pictured him lying there gasping for breath, with no woman's hand to wipe the death sweat from his brow.
On Saturday her solicitude drove her from her work-table early in the afternoon. To patrol his house in broad daylight was impossible, but she ventured to pass it once, and lacked the courage to return. Then she was seized by a heroic resolve. She went to the florist's shop, and sacrificing the two marks eighty left over from the transaction of the little cross, she walked back to his house with a brownish yellow bouquet of drooping autumn roses.
Without stopping to think she ran up the steps, and rang at the door of the second story, where she had seen the green lamp.
An old woman in a soiled blue apron and mumbling her lips opened the door. Lilly stammered Dr. Mälzer's name.
"In the rear," said the woman, and shut the door.
Then the little green lamp did not burn for him. An old woman lived there, who wore a dirty apron and whose lips kept mumbling. For a week she had been worshipping a false idol. Disappointed, she was about to steal down the stairs, when her eye caught his name among four door-plates. Her heart leapt, and before she knew it, she had knocked.
A brief interval elapsed before his head appeared behind the door, which he held only partly open. The lapels of his grey coat were raised to cover his neck, which apparently was collarless. His hair was in wild disorder, and the ends of his moustache were more matted than ever. And how his eyes glared as they seemed to demand in embarrassment, "What do you want?"
"Miss—Miss—Miss—" he stammered. He appeared to recognise her, but failed to recall her name.
Lilly wanted to give him the bouquet and run away, but she remained rooted to the spot as if paralysed.
"You have been sent here by your class, I presume," he said.
"Yes, yes," Lilly answered eagerly. That was her salvation.
"Otherwise, you see, it would be impossible for me to invite you to come in," he continued with a shy smile. "It might have very serious consequences for both of us. But as a delegate—" he reflected a moment—"come in, please."
Lilly had imagined him living in high, spacious apartments, surrounded by carved bookcases, vases, globes, and busts of great men. In dismay she observed a little room with only one window, an unmade bed, an open card table, a clothes-rack, and a small book-stand holding mostly unbound and crumpled old volumes. Such were his quarters.
"He lives more wretchedly than we do," she thought.
At his invitation she seated herself on one of the two chairs, feeling less embarrassed than she had expected to. Poverty shared alike brought them nearer to each other.
"How lovely in the young ladies to remember me!"
Lilly recollected the flowers she still held in her hand.
"Oh, excuse me," she said, proffering them.
He took the bouquet without a word of thanks, and pressed them against his face.
"They don't smell," he said, "they are the last—but my first. So you can imagine how precious they are to me."
Lilly felt her eyes growing dim with joy.
"Are you still in pain, Dr. Mälzer?" she managed to ask.
He laughed.
"Pain? No. I don't suffer from pain. A little fever now and then—but the fever's pleasant, very amusing. Your soul seems to soar in a balloon away over everything—over cities, countries, seas, over centuries, too; and often great persons come to visit you, persons, if not so beautiful—that is to say—I beg your pardon—"
His compliment frightened him. Why, he was the teacher and she the pupil.
In the midst of his embarrassment a certain blindness seemed suddenly to drop away from him. He stared at her with eyes burning like torches in two blue hollows.
"What is your name?" he asked in a voice even shriller and hoarser than usual.
"Lilly, Lilly Czepanek."
The name was not familiar to him, as he had been in the city only a short time.
"You