雙語·雷潑萊拉

CRESCENTIA ANNA ALOISIA FINKENHUBER was thirty-nine years of age, and had been born (an illegitimate child) in a mountain hamlet not far from Innsbruck. Under the rubric “Special Peculiarities”in her identity paper as servant-maid was drawn a line signifying“None”; but if the officials who fill in such documents were obliged to enter characterological details, there would certainly have been written here: “l(fā)ooks like an over-driven, bony, lean mountain nag.” Beyond question there was something horse-like in the aspect of the cumbrous lower lip; in the elongated and sharply bounded oval of the brownish visage; in the dull eyes almost denuded of lashes; and, above all, in the coarse hair, plastered on to the forehead with pomade. Her gait, too, was as stiff and reluctant as that of a mule, one of those unhappy beasts which winter after summer and summer after winter, have to carry loads of wood up and down the same rough and stony or muddy track way. When freed from the halter of toil, Crescenz, clasping her bony fingers and sticking out her elbows in ungainly fashion, would usually sit down and fall into a doze, no more lightened by intelligence than that of one of the aforesaid mules standing patiently in its stable when the day’s work was done. Everything about her was hard, wooden and heavy. Thought, with her, was a slow process. A new idea made its way into her mind with much difficulty, as if it had to traverse the meshes of a choked sieve; but, once she had grasped it, she retained it as a miser clings to a coin. She never read, not even the newspaper or her prayerbook. Writing was a great labour to her, and the awkwardly-formed letters in her marketing-book reminded one of her own clumsy and angular figure, which was utterly lacking in feminine charm. As hard as her bones, her forehead, her hips, and her knuckles, was her voice, which, despite the guttural Tyrolese accent, creaked like the hinges of a rusty iron gate. Nor was this rustiness surprising, for Crescenz never uttered a superfluous word. No one had seen her laugh. In this respect, likewise, she resembled the lower animals; for more cruel even than the denial of speech to those we term “Dumb beasts” is the denial of laughter, that free and joyful vent to the emotions.

Being a bastard, she had been brought up at the charge of the community, and at the age of twelve had been sent out to service, at first as maid-of-all-work in a restaurant; but then, having gained a good character by her indomitable and almost bestial diligence, as cook-general to a second-rate hotel on one of the main routes of travel. Rising daily at five, Crescenz slaved, swept, scrubbed, did the rooms, lighted fires, cooked, kneaded and baked, washed and ironed, till late at night. She never asked for a day out; never went into the street, except to church and back. The kitchen-fire was her sun, and her only acquaintance with the forest came from splitting thousands upon thousands of billets every year in order to feed the flames.

Men did not trouble her: maybe because, as previously explained, twenty-five years spent as a robot had rubbed off the very inadequate feminine graces which Mother Nature had bestowed on her; maybe because she so fiercely repelled any amorous advances. Her only pleasure was found in the amassing of money, for she had the magpie hoarding-instincts of the peasant, and dreaded lest, when she grew old, she would once more be forced to accept the unwelcome lot of being dependent upon the community. The bitter bread of public charity would have choked her.

Nothing but the lust for gain had, when she was thirty-seven lured this dull being from her Tyrolese homeland. The manageress of an employment agency, spending a summer holiday in the Tyrol, was amazed by Crescenz’s berserker rage for work, and told her that in Vienna she could get twice her present earnings.

On the railway journey, Crescenz maintained her usual taciturnity, seated in solemn silence while holding in her lap the wicker basket which contained all her worldly possessions, though her knees ached beneath its weight. Some of her fellow-travellers, friendly and companionable, offered to put it in the rack, but the dour woman snapped a refusal, for, in her peasant mind, cheating and theft were the only associations with the great city to which she was journeying. In Vienna it was some days before she could make her way alone to market, for at first the traffic frightened her almost out of her poor wits. But once she had grown familiar with the four streets she had to traverse, she became independent, and trotted safely to the market and back carrying a basket on her arm. In her new place, she swept, scrubbed, lighted the fires, and did the rooms, just as before. At nine, the customary hour in the Tyrol, she went to bed, and slept like an animal with her mouth wide open, until she was called in the morning. No one could tell whether she liked her new situation; perhaps she herself did not know. Her reserve was unbroken. She acknowledged orders with a monosyllabic “Right” ; or, if in a refractory mood with a shrug of the shoulders. She ignored her fellow-servants, being, as a rule absolutely indifferent to their inclination to tease and to make fun of her. Once only, when another maid, a cheerful Viennese girl, persistently mocked her Tyrolese accent, Crescenz lost patience. In a fury she snatched a burning log from the stove, and, brandishing this dangerous weapon, rushed at her tormentress, who fled shrieking with dismay. Thenceforward no one ventured to gibe.

Every Sunday morning, dressed in her voluminous skirt and wearing a Tyrolese head-dress, she went to Mass. Once only, being given a day off, she tried a walk through Vienna. She would not take a tram, and her peregrinations in the bewildering streets brought her, at length, to the Danube. After staring at the current as if it were a familiar friend, she turned about and retraced her steps, sedulously avoiding the busier highways. This first excursion must have been a disappointment, for it was never repeated. She preferred to spend her free Sundays doing needlework, or sitting idly at a window. Thus her coming to the metropolis wrought no change in the treadmill of her life, except that at the end of each month four blue bank notes instead of two were put into her toilworn, withered, and calloused hands. These notes were always suspiciously scrutinized. Each was separately folded and smoothed out, before being stacked with the others and laid to rest in the yellow box of carved wood which she had brought with her from the village. This clumsy little treasure-chest contained the innermost purpose of her life.At night she always had the key under her pillow. No one in the house knew where it was kept in the daytime.

Such were the characteristics of this weird human being (for“Human being” we must call her, although the human attributes were queerly obscured); and perhaps a more normal woman could not have long endured to stay as a servant in the remarkable household of young Baron von Ledersheim. The atmosphere was so quarrelsome that in general the domestics were quick to give notice. The hysterical scoldings of their mistress were more than they could bear. The elderly daughter of an more extremely rich manufacturer, she had made the baron’s acquaintance at a health-resort. Though he was many years younger than herself, and his birth was nothing to boast of, while he was up to his ears in debt he was a handsome fellow, with distinguished manners and willing enough to marry money. Things were speedily arranged between the pair, notwithstanding the strenuous opposition of the lady’s parents, who were on the look-out for more solid advantages than Baron von Ledersheim could offer. Before the honeymoon was over, Baroness von Ledersheim was to learn that her father and mother had been right. The young husband had by no means finished sowing his wild oats, and was more interested in this form of agriculture than in the fulfillment of his conjugal duties. Nor had he even made a clean breast of it as to the amount of his debts.

Good-natured in a way, a pleasant companion like most libertines, he had no principles, and considered any attempt to regulate his expenditure to be the outcome of plebeian prejudices. The husband wanted to remain a dissolute spendthrift, after marriage as before; the wife wanted an orderly domestic life such as she had been used to in her parental home at Essen. This bourgeoisdom jarred on his aristocratic nerves. Since, wealthy though she was, she tried to draw the pursestrings tight, and refused to finance his pet scheme of building and running a racing-stable, his response to her “Meanness” was, as far as husbandly relations went, to ignore his North-German bride, whose dictatorial ways and harsh voice became increasingly offensive to him. As the saying goes, he “Shelved” her, without obvious brutality, but in a way which caused her grievous disappointment. When she reproached him he listened courteously and with apparent sympathy, but as soon as the sermon was over he blew away her exhortations as unconcernedly as the smoke of his cigarette, and continued to follow his own bent. This seeming amiability was more galling than open resistance. Since she was disarmed by his unfailing civility, her suppressed wrath found vent in other directions, and, above all, in railing at the servants, with reason or without. In less than two years, she had changed her domestic staff no less than sixteen times, having once used violence, and had to pay heavy compensation in order to avoid a lawsuit and public scandal.

Crescenz was the only one of the servants who could endure these storms of scolding unmoved, and stood stolidly while they raged, looking like a cab-horse in the rain. She never took sides, was unaffected by the frequent changes in the staff, hardly seemed to notice that her associates in the servants’ hall varied continually in name, aspect, and character. For she never passed the time of day with her workmates, was indifferent to the passionate slamming of doors, the frequent interruptions at mealtimes, her mistress’s fainting-fits and hysterical outbursts. She went on with her daily marketing expeditions and her work in the kitchen, unconcerned as to anything that happened outside the daily round of toil. Hard and insensitive as a flail, she threshed on as day followed day, and two years of her life in the metropolis passed by without effecting the slightest change in her mentality. As far as externals were concerned, the only difference to be noticed was that the pile of blue banknotes in her cash box had grown thicker by an inch;and that, when (licking her finger to facilitate the process) she counted them at the second year’s end, she found she was very close to the aim of her desire, the magical figure of a thousand.

But chance works with diamond-drills; and fate, cunning of hand, often produces strange modifications even in the rockiest of natures. In Crescenz’s case the manifest cause of change was as commonplace as she herself seemed. At the close of a ten-year cycle, the government was taking a new census and a complicated census-paper had to be filled in every dwelling-home. The baron, who had good reason to know that most of his domestics were unskilled in the use of the pen, decided to tabulate the information himself, and, in due course, Crescenz was summoned to his writing-table. When he asked her full name, age, and birthplace, the first item and the third proved of unexpected interest to the master of the house. A keen sportsman, he had often stayed with an old college-friend who was the owner of a Tyrolese shooting; and he had once done a fortnight’s mountaineering in pursuit of chamois, accompanied by a guide, Finkenhuber by name, who turned out to have been Crescenz’s uncle. Ledersheim had taken a fancy to the man. This fact, and his knowledge of the cook’s native village, led to a conversation between master and maid, with the resulting further disclosure that, in the inn where she had formerly worked, the baron had once partaken of an extraordinarily good haunch of venison. Trifling matters, no doubt; but the long arm of coincidence handles such trifles, and to Crescenz who for the first time encountered in Vienna a person acquainted with her home, they seemed wonderful. Her face flushed with unwonted excitement, she stood in front of the baron, curtseying in ungainly fashion, and highly flattered when he proceeded to crack jokes with her, asking her with an assumed Tyrolese accent, whether she knew how to yodel—and the like. At length entering into the spirit of the game, he spanked her with peasant familiarity on her hard behind, saying: “Be off with you now, my good Cenzi, and let me get on with my job; but take these two extra crowns with you because you hail from the Zillertal.”

The master had not shown any deep feeling. Nothing, one might have thought, to stir the old maid to the depths. But on her dull and unimpressionable nature those few minutes’ talk had the effect of a stone thrown into a stagnant pool, forming circular waves which moved, slowly widening, to lap upon the margin of consciousness. Not for years upon years had the taciturn creature had any sort of personal relations with one of her fellows; and it seemed to her almost uncanny that the first to show a friendly interest in her, from among the millions who lived in this wilderness of bricks and mortar, should be a man who knew her own mountains, and had actually eaten venison cooked there by her own hands. Super added came the clout upon the backside, which, to her peasant mind was a laconic invitation to the woman in her. Even though Crescenz did not make so bold as to fancy that the elegantly dressed and distinguished gentleman actually coveted her wizened body, still the physical familiarity stirred her slumbering senses.

Thus, thanks to this encounter, there began in the woman’s inmost being a transformation, obscure at the outset, but growing continually more definite—and culminating in a new feeling, akin to that sudden recognition which leads a dog to single out one from among the innumerable bipeds that surround it, and to look upon him thenceforward as master, nay as god. The dog thus transformed follows its master everywhere, wriggles with delight and wags a friendly tail when meeting him again after an absence, obeys, fetches, and carries with slavish subservience. Into the narrow chambers of Crescenz’s mind, which had hitherto been completely filled with a bare half-dozen of ideas—money, marketing, kitchen-fire, church, and bed—there had suddenly been thrust a new element, which demanded accommodation, and roughly elbowed the previous occupants aside. With the “Havingness” that makes the peasant so reluctant to surrender anything that has once been gripped, she interpolated this new element sedulously into the confused world of her lethargic impulses. It was a little while, of course, before the change in her habits became fully manifest, and the initial signs of the transformation were obscure. For instance, she brushed the baron’s clothes and cleaned his shoes with meticulous care, while leaving the baroness’s dresses and footgear to the lady’s maid to look after. Then she would often scurry forth into the hall the instant she heard the baron’s latch-key in the lock, eager to relieve him of hat, coat, and stick. In the kitchen, she worked harder than ever, and would sometimes laboriously ask her way to the big market, in search of a haunch of venison. She also began to pay more attention to the niceties of dress.

A week or two elapsed before this first shoot of her new feelings showed its leaves plainly above the ground. Several more weeks were needed until a second shoot pushed up from the seedling, and assumed a definite tint. The second feeling was the obvious complement of the first, hatred for the baroness, for the wife who could live with the baron, sleep with him, speak to him whenever she pleased, but nevertheless did not revere the master as she herself, Cenzi, did. It may have been because (having now learned to take notice) she had been shocked by one of the scenes in which the infuriated wife “Slanged” her husband unmercifully, or it may have been because she had become aware how painfully the cold and arrogant manners of the North German mistress contrasted with the geniality of the Viennese master of the house—in any case Crescenz began, in manifold ways, to show that she had conceived a spite against the baroness. Brigitta von Ledersheim had always to ring twice, at least, before Crescenz would deign to answer the bell; and then the maid came with irritating slowness and obvious reluctance. Her raised shoulders produced the same impression as the turning back of its ears by a stubborn and vicious horse, a conviction of insuperable antagonism. She said nothing in response to her mistress’s orders, so that the baroness never knew whether she had been understood and would be obeyed. A repetition produced only a contemptuous nod, or a “I heard you all right,” in her broad peasant accent. Again, just before a visit to the theater, when the mistress was dressing, the key of a drawer containing some indispensable trinket would have gone astray—to be discovered in a corner of the room after half an hour’s frantic search. Crescenz made a point of failing to deliver telephone messages to the baroness, and when scolded for the omission would pertly reply “I just forgot.” She never looked her mistress squarely in the face, perhaps, from fear lest her loathing should peep out.

Meanwhile these domestic discomforts led to continually more violent scenes between husband and wife—for there can be little doubt that the maid’s state of mind and uncivil manners reacted on the mistress to increase the latter’s uncontrol. Brigitta’s nerves had been overstrained by too long a period of spinsterhood; she had been further embittered by her husband’s neglect and by her failure to hit it off even with her servants; so that she now grew more and more unbalanced. The bromides and the veronal she took to relieve insomnia made matters worse; but no one sympathized with the poor woman in her nervous crises, or tried to help her to live more hygienically and to regain selfmastery. A neurologist whom she consulted advised a couple of months’ stay in a sanatorium, and her husband endorsed the proposal with such injudicious enthusiasm that the baroness at first refused to consider it. In the end, however, she gave way. She would take the lady’s maid with her, while Crescenz would be left alone to look after the baron in the roomy flat.

The news that the care of her beloved master was to be left wholly in her hands had an electrifying effect on Crescenz. She seemed to have been given the contents of a magic phial—a philtre which stirred the lees of her undischarged passions and modified her behaviour. Her limbs were no longer stiff and ungainly; she moved lightly, easily, and swiftly. When the time came for the baroness’s journey, the maid ran from room to room, packed the trunks without waiting to be told, shouldered them like a porter, and carried them down to the cab. When, late in the evening, the baron returned from seeing his wife off at the station, handed hat and overcoat to the expectant Crescenz, and, with a sigh of relief, said: “Well, I’ve got her safely away!”—a remarkable thing happened. Crescenz, as already explained, resembled the lower animals, in that she never laughed. But now her lips were animated by an unfamiliar phenomenon. Her mouth broadened into a grin so unrestrained that Ledersheim, to whom the awkward servant maid’s expression of countenance came as a painful surprise, felt ashamed of having been so open with a menial, and went into his bedroom without saying another word.

The discomfort lasted for a fleeting moment, and during the next few days master and maidservant were united in the enjoyment of a precious sense of quietude and agreeable ease. The wife’s exit from the scene had cleared the atmosphere. Rudolf freed from the burden of responsibility, and from the perpetual risk of being called to account for his movements came home late next evening, and Crescenz’s silent adoration was a welcome contrast to the loquacious inquisitiveness with which Brigitta was wont to receive him. Crescenz devoted herself to her work with more than customary zeal, got up earlier than usual, polished the furniture till you could see your face in it, was never satisfied with the brightness of the door-handles, provided exceptionally tasty meals—and, greatly to the baron’s surprise, served them on a dinner-set which was supposed to be kept for great occasions. Though as a rule he was blind to such matters, he could not but notice the peculiar and delicate attentions of this strange maidservant, and, being a good-natured fellow at bottom, he expressed his gratification. He praised her culinary skill, and, in a day or two, when his birthday came round and Crescenz had made him a jam tart in which the pastry was decorated with his initials and the family coat-of-arms, he said with a smile: “You are spoiling me, Cenzi. But what the devil shall I do when the mistress comes home again?”

To the inhabitants of other lands, such free and easy ways, such want of reserve in the remarks of a master to a servant, may seem incredible, but there was nothing out of the ordinary in them as far as pre-war Austria was concerned. They were, in fact, manifestations of the boundless contempt of the aristocracy for the mob, a contempt in witness whereof the gentry rode with a loose rein. Just as an archduke, stationed in some out-of-the-way Galician town, would send his orderly to the brothel to fetch him a bedfellow, and having satisfied his desires, would hand the girl over to the underling—regardless of the salacious gossip that would ensue when the cits got wind of the affair—so a man of title who was out shooting would be more inclined to hobnob over luncheon with his loader or his groom, than to be friendly with a university professor or a wealthy man of business. But these ostensibly democratic relationships, easy-going though they seemed, must not be taken at their face value; the master remained the master, and knew how to keep his distance once more, the instant he rose from his meal. Since, however, the minor gentry were always inclined to ape the manners of the feudal aristocracy, the baron made no bones about speaking derogatorily of his wife to a country wench who was in her service, assured that she would never give him away but failing to realize what a profound impression his words were producing in her simple mind.

All the same, he imposed some vestiges of restraint upon his tongue and his general behaviour for a few days. Then feeling confident that he could trust her, he began, unheeding dangerous possibilities, to resume bachelor habits. This was his own house, his wife was away, and he could amuse himself as he pleased. One day towards the close of the first week he spent as a grasswidower, he rang for Crescenz, and,as if the matter were of no moment, told her that that evening she was to lay a cold supper for two, and to go to bed without waiting up for his return. He would himself see to everything when he came in.

“Very good, Sir,” answered Crescenz, without the smallest change of expression to show that she understood what lay behind. But that she was sharper of wit than she seemed was plain to the amused Rudolf when, returning towards midnight accompanied by one of the young ladies of the opera, he found the supper-table decked with flowers;and, on going into his bedroom, discovered, not only that his own bed had been made ready as usual, but that the adjoining bed had been invitingly turned down, and that one of his wife’s silk nightgowns and her slippers were laid out ready for use. The husband whose marriage vows sat so lightly on his conscience could not but laugh at the length to which this extraordinary abigail was prepared to go in her attentions. Thenceforward she was his acknowledged confederate, and next morning he had no hesitation in ringing for Crescenz to act as lady’s maid to his light-of-love.

It was at this juncture that Crescenz was rechristened. The budding diva was understudy for the role of Donna Elvira, and found it congenial to call her lover Don Juan. On her next visit to the flat, she said merrily:

“Don Juan, I wish you’d send for that Leporella of yours.”

The name took his fancy, were it only for the reason that it was too grotesquely misapplicable to the withered Tyrolese peasantwoman, and from that time on he always addressed her as Leporella. Crescenz, though startled at first by her new appellation, accepted it as a compliment. She knew nothing of its Don Giovannesque associations, but it was euphonious to her untutored ears and her vanity was tickled that her master should give her a pet-name. Whenever she heard the impudent call “l(fā)eporella!” her thin lips parted in a smile that showed her horse-like teeth; and, obsequiously, she hastened to fulfil the commands of her liege lord.

The name had been lightly chosen, and I have called it misapplicable. Nevertheless, it hit the mark, for “l(fā)eporella,” like her namesake Leporello, was a sympathetic accomplice. An old maid who had known nothing of love, she took a vicarious pride in her lusty young master’s adventures. No matter whether the delight came from knowing that the detested baroness’s bed was dishonoured almost every night by some new illicit occupant, or from an imaginary participation in these sensuous pleasures—there could be no question as to its existence. Her bony frame, wasted and wizened by decades of arduous toil until it had been almost completely desexualized, thrilled with bawdy pleasure at sight of a second and then a third fleeting occupant of Baroness von Ledersheim’s rightful couch. Her confederateship and the unfamiliar erotic atmosphere were powerful stimulants to her slumbering senses. Crescenz became really and truly Leporella, became, like Leporello in Da Ponte’s libretto, vigorous and sprightly. Un-accustomed qualities, stirred up from the depths by this ardent co-partnership came to the surface, petty wiles and artifices, an inclination to spy and eavesdrop. She listened at the door, squinted through the keyhole, buzzed eagerly hither and thither, until her curiosity and alertness transformed what had been little better than an automaton into living flesh and blood. To the astonishment of the neighbours, Crescenz became sociable;she gossiped with the servants, cracked jokes with the postman, began to talk of miscellaneous subjects with the market-women. Then, one evening, when the lights in the attic (where the servants’ quarters were) had been extinguished, the maids in the rooms on the opposite side of the court heard a remarkable humming from her window usually so silent. Clumsily, mezzo voce, she was singing one of those folk-songs which dairymaids sing in Alpine pastures. Monotonously she produced the air, with untrained lips and vocal cords, like a child fingering the keys of a neglected piano-the effect being simultaneously touching and repulsive. Not since early youth had she tried to sing, but now something that came from the darkness of forgotten years seemed to be struggling towards the light.

This extraordinary transformation was least obvious to the man who had brought it about—for who troubles to notice his own shadow? We see, of course, with half an eye, how it dogs our footsteps, or sometimes runs in advance (like a wish of which we are not yet fully aware); but how rarely do we heed its parody of our form, or recognize in it a caricature of our personality. All that Ledersheim noticed in Crescenz was that she seemed ever ready to serve him diligently, silently, and self-sacrificingly. Her mute worship was agreeable to him. From time to time, as if patting a dog, he said a friendly word or two; sometimes he jested with her, took her good-naturedly by the ear, gave her a banknote or a theatre ticket-trifles he extracted from his waistcoat-pocket, but, for her, treasures of inestimable value, which she hoarded as relics in her cashbox. Gradually it became a habit with him to think aloud in her presence, and even to entrust her with difficult commissions; and the more marked these signs of his confidence, the more slavish became her devotion. She tried to anticipate his desires;to enter into his being as the executant of his will; to see with his eyes, hear with his ears; to enjoy his pleasures and share in his conquests. She beamed when a new bedfellow accompanied him on his return, and was visibly disappointed if he came back alone. Her brain now worked as unceasingly as aforetime her hands had done, and a new light of understanding sparkled in her eyes. The overdriven beast of burden had developed into a human being; though still reserved, tight-lipped, crafty, and dangerous, meditative and much occupied, restless and rancorous.

Once, when the baron came home earlier than usual, he was amazed on entering the hall to hear from behind the door of the kitchen, where inviolable silence usually prevailed, the noise of sniggering. The door was half-open, and in the aperture Leporella showed herself, rubbing her hands on her apron, simultaneously cheeky and embarrassed.

“Beg pardon, Sir, for being so free,” she said, with downcast eyes;“But I’ve got the pastrycook’s daughter in there; she’s such a pretty girl, and she’d be main glad to make your acquaintance.”

Ledersheim stared at Crescenz, not knowing whether to reject these impudent advances forthwith, or whether to grasp at the skirts of happy chance and accept the impromptu bawd’s offer. In the end, desire stirred within him, and got the upper hand.

“l(fā)et’s have a look at the beauty,” he replied.

The girl, a fair-haired hussy of sixteen, whom Leporella had limed with flattering tales, emerged from the kitchen, blushing and giggling, and, revolving awkwardly showed off her charms to the stylish gentleman whom she had often furtively admired from the shop across the way. The baron was pleased with her looks, and invited her to drink tea with him in his room. She glanced towards Crescenz for a pointer, but Crescenz had vanished, and the pastrycook’s daughter, thus inveigled into an adventure, inquisitive and excited (for all her blushes and embarrassment), felt she had no option out to accept the invitation.“Will you walk into my parlour?” said the spider to the fly!

But nature makes no leaps. Although, under stress of a warped passion, a measure of spiritual mobility had resulted in this ossified personality, the new but limited thought-processes did not enable Crescenz to look ahead. She remained as unimaginative as the lower animals, whose actions are guided by short-sighted instincts. Concerned only with the longing to serve the master whom she loved with the fidelity of a dog, she completely forgot the absent wife. It came, therefore, like a bolt from the blue when, one morning the baron with knitted brows and holding a letter in his hand entered the kitchen and told her to devote the day to a general house-cleaning, for next afternoon his wife would be back from the sanatorium. Crescenz turned livid at the news, standing open-mouthed with the horrified aspect of one who has been stabbed. She stared dumbly at her master, until the baron, wishing her to pull herself together, said:

“You don’t look best pleased Cenzi; but there’s nothing we can do about the matter!”

At this her rigid countenance began to stir, as though something were at work in the depths. A wave seemed to rise from her inwards, and her pale cheeks flushed dark red. Her throat twitched, and, with immense difficulty she got out the words:

“After all...one might...one might...surely...”

She choked, and did not finish the sentence. Her face was contorted with malice, and so sinister was her expression, that it was Ledersheim’s turn to be frightened, and he shrank back in alarm. But Crescenz had resumed her work, and was scouring a copper saucepan with a violence that threatened to take the skin off her fingers.

With the return of the mistress, the sense of comfort that had prevailed during her absence was dispelled. Once more began the regime of banging doors and causeless scoldings. Maybe some of the neighbours had sent her anonymous letters to inform her of her husband’s “Goings-on” during her absence, or maybe the lack of warmth in his welcome had been enough to disclose the state of his feelings; in any case, she seemed worse instead of better for her two months’ treatment, since outbursts of weeping alternated with menaces and hysterical scenes. The relations between the couple grew more intolerable day by day. For a few weeks the baron confronted the storm of reproaches, answering evasively and consolingly, with his habitual civility, when she threatened to sue for a divorce or to write to her parents. But this indifferent attitude had an evil effect upon her. She was beginning to believe herself surrounded by secret enemies, and her nervous excitement verged upon persecution mania.

Crescenz had put on her old armour of silence. But now this silence became aggressive and menacing. When her mistress returned, she remained in the kitchen, from which she would not emerge even when summoned to welcome the baroness home. She stood like a figure carved out of wood, her shoulders raised stubbornly, giving such curt answers to questions that the impatient mistress soon ceased asking any and turned away, while Crescenz glared at her unsuspecting back with venom and hatred. Her avarice made her feel that she had been robbed by this return of the mistress of the house, had been deprived of the joys of companionable service and thrust back to toil in the kitchen, while her pet-name of Leporella had been stolen from her. For the baron was careful, in his wife’s presence, to avoid showing any marks of sympathy for Crescenz. Now and again, however, exhausted by the scenes the baroness made, and wanting to draw a breath of relief, he would steal into the kitchen, plump down on one of the hard wooden stools, and exclaim with a groan:

“I can’t stand it any longer!”

These moments in which her idolized master sought refuge in her sympathy were the happiest known to Leporella. She never dared to answer or to attempt consolation, but remained dumb, while looking compassionately at her enslaved god. This soundless sympathy did Ledersheim good for a time. But as soon as he left the kitchen, his worries came back to him with a rush, while Crescenz wrung her hands in impotent fury, or tried to work off her rage by a vengeful scouring of pots and pans and a polishing of silver.

At length the sultry atmosphere of the baroness’s return broke in a terrible storm. During one of the scenes, the baron lost patience, and, abandoning his customary attitude of courteous indifference (that of a schoolboy who is being scolded), he flung out of the room, and, before banging the door so that every window in the flat rattled, he yelled:

“I’m absolutely fed up.”

His face blue with wrath, he burst into the kitchen and shouted to the trembling Crescenz:

“Pack my portmanteau at once and take down my gun-case. I shall go for a week’s shooting. The devil himself could not stick it in such a hell as this.”

Crescenz looked up at him, her eyes shining with enthusiasm. He was master once more, had asserted himself! With a hoarse laugh she said:

“Quite right, Sir. Time and more to put a stop to this!”

Quivering with zeal, she hastened from room to room and got together all he could possibly want for the expedition. She carried portmanteau and gun-case to the cab. But when he was about to say a word of thanks, he was startled by her aspect. Her pinched lips were parted in the malicious smile which always alarmed him, reminding him as it did of what a beast of prey looks like when about to spring. But she curtsied becomingly, and, as he drove off, whispered with an air that was only impertinent because of the intimacy it implied:

“Have a good time, Sir, while you’re away. I’ll tend to everything.”

Three days later the baron was recalled by a laconic wire:

“Essential return home instantly.”

The cousin who had sent it met him at the station, and Ernst’s face was enough to show Rudolf that something terrible had happened. After a futile attempt to “Break the news,” he told the baron that Baroness von Ledersheim had been found dead in bed that morning, with the room full of gas from the unlighted gas-heater. Accident was out of the question. The death must have been intentional, for the gas-heater had not been used throughout the summer, and the weather was still warm. Besides, overnight the dead woman had taken a dozen or more tablets of veronal. Furthermore, Crescenz, the cook, who had been alone in the house with her mistress, testified to having heard the latter go into the dressing-room presumably in order to turn on the master-tap of the gas-stove which for safety was placed there instead of in the bedroom. In view of these facts, the police surgeon had certified the death to be suicidal.

The baron’s hands trembled. When his cousin mentioned Crescenz’s report, his flesh crept, for a distressing thought flashed into his mind. But he repressed the tormenting idea and silently accompanied Ernst to the flat. The corpse had already been removed. His relatives hostile of mien, were awaiting him in the drawing-room, and their condolences were icy. As if accusingly, they “Felt it their duty” to inform him that there would be no possibility of hushing up the scandal, for in the morning the servantmaid had rushed out on to the public staircase screaming, “The missus has killed herself!” They had arranged for a quiet funeral, but already “Society folk” were saying illnatured things. Rudolf listened confusedly, raised his eyes involuntarily towards the door leading from sitting-room into bedroom, and then quickly looked back at the floor. There was that haunting thought he wanted to think out to its logical conclusion-but this idle and hostile chatter made connected thinking impossible. For half an hour his relatives stayed, black-a-vised and reproachful; then, one after another, they bade farewell, leaving Rudolf alone in the darkening chamber stricken by the unexpected blow; with aching head and weary limbs. He still stood, too listless even to sit down.

Someone knocked at the door.

“Come in!” he cried.

The door behind him opened, and there was a sound of hesitating, shuffling footsteps-footsteps he recognized. He was horrified, had a feeling of strangulation in his throat and of goose-flesh all over his body and limbs. He tried to turn round, but his muscles would not obey his will. Thus he remained standing in the middle of th room, tremulous, silent, hands clenched, while fully aware how contemptible must be the aspect of this guilty silence. Then, still from behind, came in a dry, indifferent, matter-of-fact tone, the words:

“I only come to ask whether the master will dine at home or out.”

The baron trembled even more violently, and the icy chill gripped him at the heart. He made three attempts before he could answer:

“Thanks, I want nothing to eat.”

The shuffling footsteps receded before he found courage to look round. Then his immobility was broken. He shook like an aspen leaf, but had strength to leap towards the door and turn the key in the lock, resolved to hinder the re-entry of those detestable and ghostly footsteps. Then he flung himself on the sofa, and vainly tried to strangle the loathsome thought which obtruded itself into his reluctant mind. It was an obsession which kept him awake the livelong night, and would not leave him even when day returned, nor when, clad in the customary suit of solemn black, he stood as chief mourner at the head of his deceased wife’s coffin.

Directly the funeral was over the baron fled from the capital. He could not bear the way in which his friends and relatives looked at him. Their sympathy was tinged with an inquisitorial demeanour—or did he only fancy this to be so? Fancied or real, it was insupportable. Even inanimate objects looked at him accusingly. Every piece of furniture in the flat, and especially those in the bedroom (where the sickly-sweet odour of gas lingered), repelled him whenever he entered the place. But the insufferable hag-riding, whether by night or by day, was the imperturbability of his sometime confidante, who went about her business in the empty dwelling as if nothing untoward had happened. Since that moment at the station when his cousin had mentioned her name, he dreaded contact with her. Whenever he heard her step, it was difficult for him to control the impulse to run away. He was nauseated by the though of her: her harsh voice; her greasy hair; her dull, bestial pitilessness. Rage over-mastered him because he lacked strength to rid himself of the incubus, to tear the stranglehold of her fingers from his throat. His only resource was flight. He packed his trunk secretly, without saying a word to her; and stole away, having scribbled a note to the effect that he was going to stay with friends in Carinthia.

He did not return till the summer was over, except for one brief visit necessitated by matters connected with his late wife’s property. Then he stayed at a hotel, to avoid, having to set eyes upon the bird of evil omen at the flat. Crescenz, who kept herself to herself, never knew that he had been in Vienna. Unoccupied, gloomy as an owl, she spent her days in the kitchen, but went twice to Mass (instead of once only, as previously). The baron’s solicitor provided her with funds and checked her accounts. Of her master she heard not a word, for he neither wrote to her nor sent a message. During this time of silent waiting, her face grew harsher and leaner, her movements became wooden as of old. Thus the months passed for her in a strange condition of rigid apathy.

In the autumn, however, the baron was recalled to the flat by urgent business. He stood hesitant on the threshold. Many weeks spent with intimate friends had enabled him to forget a good deal; but now that he was about to see again in the flesh the woman who had perhaps been his accomplice, he was agitated and near to vomiting, as he had been the day after his wife’s death. Step by step, as he mounted the stairs, it seemed to him that an invisible hand was gripping his throat. He moved slower and slower and had to summon all his forces before he could bring himself to turn his latch-key in the lock.

At the sound, Crescenz rushed out of the kitchen in astonishment. When she saw her master, she urned pale and then, as if making an obeisance, stooped to pick up the hand-valise he had put down in the entry. She forgot to say a word of welcome, and the baron was equally remiss. No “Good day” passed his lips. Silently she carried the valise into his bedroom, and silently he followed. In silence he waited, looking out of the window, till she had left the room. Then he hurriedly locked the door.

That was their only greeting after his long absence.

Crescenz waited. The baron waited too, in the hope that these paroxysms of horror at sight of her would cease to trouble him. But there was no improvement. Even before he saw her, when he merely heard her shuffling footsteps in the passage, he became giddy and had a sensation of nausea. He could not eat a morsel of the breakfast she prepared for him. Morning after morning, he slipped from the house as soon as he was dressed, and did not return till late at night, his object being to avoid a glimpse of her, and to be out of hearing of her movements. The few orders he was obliged to give were given without looking at her. He was choked by the air she breathed.

Crescenz, for her part, spent her days sitting mumchance upon her stool in the kitchen. She did not trouble to prepare food for herself, having no appetite; and she would not say a word to anyone. She sat, timidly awaiting the master’s whistle, like a whipped cur that recognizes it has done wrong. How, precisely, she could have been at fault, she was too stupid to guess. All she knew was that her master, her god, had turned his face away from her, and that his displeasure was agony.

Th days after the baron’s return, the door-bell rang. A grey-haired man, with a quiet demeanour, clean-shaven, carrying a hand-bag, stood on the landing. Crescenz waved him away, but the newcomer explained that he was the valet, that the Herr Baron had ordered him to come at ten, and that Crescenz must announce him. She turned as white as chalk, and stood stock-still for a moment, hand raised and fingers outspread. Then this hand dropped like a winged bird.

“Go and announce yourself,” she said snappishly to the astonished valet, turned on her heel, and retreated into the kitchen, slamming the door behind her.

The manservant stayed on. Thenceforward Rudolf had no need to say a word to Crescenz, giving his orders through the instrumentality of this quiet fellow, who was elderly, and accustomed to service in the best families. Crescenz no longer knew what went on in the flat outside the kitchen, the life of the place flowing over her head like deep water over a stone.

This distressing state of affairs lasted a fortnight, and had upon Crescenz the effect of a wasting disease. Her face fell away, and the hair on her temples turned grey. If her movements had before been wooden, now she seemed turned into stone. She sat motionless as an idol, staring vacantly out of the window; but when she had work to do, she did it in furious, quasi-maniacal out-bursts.

When the fortnight was up, the manservant came one morning unsummoned into the master’s study, and waited discreetly to indicate that he had a communication to make. Once before he had ventured to complain about the offensive manners of the “Tyrolese baggage”, as he disdainfully called her, and had advised her being given notice. On that occasion, however, the baron, feeling sorry for Crescenz, had refused to act on the suggestion. The valet did not dare to press the point. This time, however, the man was more urgent in his representations. When Rudolf said that Crescenz had been a long time in his service, and he saw no adequate ground for dismissing her, the valet, instead of taking no for an answer, looked perplexedly at the baron, reiterated his request, and then, with considerable embarrassment, said:

“Sir, I’m afraid you’ll think me a fool, but the fact is...I’m afraid of the woman....She’s furtive, malicious....The Herr Baron really does not realize how dangerous a person he has as member of his household.”

Ledersheim was alarmed in spite of himself. But the information was too vague.

“Anton,” he said, you must speak more plainly, if I’m to do what you want.”

“Well, Herr Baron, I really can’t say anything definite. What I feel is that Crescenz is like a wild beast, or a beast only half-tamed; and that at any moment she might do me, or you, Sir, a mischief. Yesterday, when I was giving her your orders, she looked at me...it was something more than a look...she glared at me as if about to spring upon me and fix her teeth in my throat. I’m really afraid, Sir, to eat the food she cooks. She might poison me, or you, Sir, any day. The Herr Baron really doesn’t know how dangerous she is. It’s not what she says. She says nothing. But I’m positive she’s ripe for committing a murder.”

Rudolf looked at the accuser in alarm. Had the man heard some gossip? Had he conceived any definite suspicion? Rudolf became aware that his fingers were trembling, and he laid his cigar on the ash-tray, lest this tremor should betray him. But Anton’s face was impassive, and conveyed no sign of unuttered knowledge. The baron hesitated. The valet’s advice marched with his own wishes. He would like to get rid of Crescenz.

“I don’t want to be precipitate,” he said. “Perhaps you are right, but wait a little longer. If she is rude to you again, you can give her notice without consulting me, saying, of course, that you do so on my orders.”

“Very good, Sir,” answered Anton, and the baron went out with a sense of relief—though anything that reminded him of this enigmatical creature poisoned the day for him. The best thing would be, he thought, if Crescenz could be cleared out of the house while he was away—at Christmas, perhaps. The thought of being freed from the incubus did him a lot of good. Christmas would be most suitable. He was going to spend Christmas with friends.

The very next morning, however, immediately after breakfast, when he had seated himself in his study, there came a knock at the door. Unthinkingly he looked up from his newspaper, and called:

“Come in!”

Thereupon, with the hard yet shuffling step he had come to loathe, she entered, the figure that haunted his dreams. He was startled at the change in her. Always ill-favoured, her bony, wasted visage now looked like a death’s-head above her black garments. His detestation was tinged with compassion when he noticed how the down-trodden woman stopped short at the edge of the carpet, too humble to advance nearer. To hide his own emotion, he spoke as unconcernedly as possible:

“What is it, Crescenz?”

Yet, for all he could do, his tone, instead of being cordial, was repellent and angry.

Crescenz did not move, but stared gloomily at the carpet. After a long pause, she managed (like one kicking, something out of the way) to eject the words:

“Anton...Anton says that the Herr Baron gives me notice.”

Genuinely distressed, Rudolf von Ledersheim rose to his feet. He had never intended matters to take so swift a course. Stammeringly he explained that Anton ha been too precipitate. Everything could be smooth over if she could manage to be a little less cross-grained towards the valet. Servants must behave decently to one another; and so on.

Crescenz stood unheeding, her eyes boring into th carpet, her shoulders stubbornly raised, her head hanging disconsolately. She was awaiting a word that did not come. When at last, out of humour at having to assume an apologetic role towards a domestic, he stayed the flow of his eloquence, she still had no answer but mutinous silence.

After this awkward pause had lasted two or three minutes, she said:

“What I want to know is, whether the master himself told Anton to give me notice.”

She flung the words at him, fiercely, morosely. Was there an implied threat? A challenge? Both his cowardice and his sympathy took wings and vanished. Hatred for this woman, which had been accumulating for weeks and months, burst the dams and overflowed. His one desire was to see the last of her. With an abrupt change of tone, he assumed the cutting and circumstantial manner he had learned to use on occasions when he had been an under-secretary of State, and replied:

“Yes, Crescenz, such is the fact. To save trouble, I have put Anton in charge of household affairs. If he has given you notice, you must go. Unless, indeed, you can bring yourself to behave decently to him. Then I might say a word for you, and ask him to overlook your past boorishness. Otherwise, you’ll have to leave; and the sooner the better.”

If she meant to threaten him, she should get as good as she gave! He would stand no nonsense!

But the look which Crescenz now raised from the carpet had no menace in it. Merely that of a hunted beast, which sees the pack break from the coppice where it is about to take refuge.

“Thank you, Sir,” she said in a broken voice. “I’ll leave at once. I don’t want to be a trouble to you.”

Slowly turning, she shuffled out of the room.

That evening when, having returned from the opera, the baron went into his study to look at the letters delivered during the afternoon, he saw on the table an unfamiliar object-an oblong box of peasant workmanship. It was not locked. The contents, carefully arranged, were the trifles Crescenz had received from him: a few postcards sent when he had been away shooting, two theatre tickets, a silver ring. Besides these there was a pile of banknotes (the savings of a lifetime), and a snapshot taken in Tyrol twenty years before. In it her eyes, dazzled by the flashlight, had the distressful and whippedcur expression with which she had received his confirmation of her dismissal.

Much perplexed, the baron rang for Anton to ask why on earth Crescenz had placed her belongings on his study-table. The valet went to call his enemy to account. But Crescenz was not to be found in the kitchen, in her attic bedroom, or anywhere else in the building. Not until next day, when they read a news-item in the paper to the effect that a woman about forty years of age had drowned herself in the Danube, did master and man know what had become of Leporella.