Bertha’s friends looked for her elsewhere, nowadays, than at her rooms. Tarr was always likely to be found there in impolite possession. She made them come as often as she could; her coquetry as regards her carefully arranged rooms needed satisfaction. She suffered in the midst of her lonely tastefulness. But Tarr had certainly made these rooms a rather deserted place. Since the dance none of her women friends had come. She had spent an hour or two with them at the restaurant.
 
At the dance she had kept rather apart. Dazed, after a shock, and needing self-collection, was the line sketched. Her account of things could not, of course, be blurted out anyhow. It had to grow out of circumstances. It, of course, must be given. She had not yet given it. But haste must be avoided. For its particular type, as long a time as possible must be allowed to elapse before she spoke of what had happened. It must almost seem as though she were going to say nothing; sudden, perfect, and very impressive silence on her part. To accustom their minds to her silence would make speech all the more imposing, when it came. At a café after the dance her account of the thing flowered grudgingly, drawn forth by the ambient heat of the discussion.

They were as yet at the stage of exclamations, no malveillant theory yet having been definitely formed about Kreisler.

“He came there on purpose to create a disturbance. Whatever for, I wonder!”

“I expect it was the case of Fr?ulein Fogs over again.” (Kreisler had, on a former occasion, paid his court to a lady of this name, with resounding unsuccess.)

“If I’d have known what was going on, I’d have dealt with him!” said one of the men.

“Didn’t you say he told a pack of lies, Renée??”

Fr?ulein Lipmann had been sitting, her eyes fixed on a tram drawn up near by, watching the people evacuating the central platform, and others restocking it. The discussion and exclamations of her friends did not, it would appear, interest her. It would have been, no doubt, scandalously unnatural if Kreisler had not been execrated. But anything they could say was negligible and inadequate to cope with the “Gemeine alte Sau.” The tameness of their reflections on and indignation against Kreisler when compared with the terrific corroding of this epithet (known only to her) made her sulky and impatient.

Applied to in this way directly about the lies, she[161] turned to the others and said, as it were interposing herself regally at last in their discussion:

“Ecoutez—listen,” she began, leaning towards the greater number of them, seeming to say, “It’s really simple enough, as simple as it is disagreeable: I am going to settle the question for you. Let us then discuss it no more.” It would seem a great effort to do this, too, her lips a little white with fatigue, her eyes heavy with disgust at it all: fighting these things, she was coming to their assistance.

“Listen: we none of us know anything about that man”; this was an unfortunate beginning for Bertha, as thoughts, if not eyes, would spring in her direction no doubt, and Fr?ulein Lipmann even paused as though about to qualify this: “we none of us, I think, want to know anything about him. Therefore why this idiot—the last sort of beer-drinking brute—treated us to his bestial and—and—wretched foolery?”

Fr?ulein Lipmann shrugged her shoulders with blank, contemptuous indifference. “I assure you it doesn’t interest me the least little bit in the world to know why such brutes behave like that at certain times. I don’t see any mystery. It seems odd to you that Herr Kreisler should be an offensive brute?” She eyed them a moment. “To me NOT!”

“We do him too much honour by discussing him, that’s certain,” said one of them. This was in the spirit of Fr?ulein Lipmann’s words, but was not accepted by her just then as she had something further to say.

“When one is attacked, one does not spend one’s time in considering why one is attacked, but in defending oneself. I am just fresh from the souillures de ce brute. If you knew the words he had addressed to me.”

Ekhart was getting very red, his eyes were shining, and he was moving rhythmically in his chair something like a steadily rising sea.

“Where does he live, Fr?ulein Lipmann?” he asked.

[162]

“Nein, Ekhart. One could not allow anybody to embroil themselves with that useless brute.” The “Nein, Ekhart” had been drawled fondly at once, as though that contingency had been weighed, and could be brushed aside lightly in advance. It implied as well an “of course” for his red and dutiful face. “I myself, if I meet him anywhere, shall deal with him better than you could. This is one of the occasions for a woman?”

So Bertha’s story had come uncomfortably and difficultly to flower. She wished she had not waited so long. But it was impossible now, the matter put in the light that Fr?ulein Lipmann’s intervention had caused, to delay any longer. She was, there was no doubt about it, vaguely responsible for Kreisler. It was obviously her duty to explain him. And now Fr?ulein Lipmann had just put an embargo on explanations. There were to be no more explanations. In Kreisleriana her apport was very important: much more definite than the indignation or hypothesis of any of the rest. She had been nearer to him, anyway. She had waited too long, until the sea had risen too high, or rather in a direction extremely unfavourable for launching her contribution. It must be in some way, too, a defence of Kreisler. This would be a very delicate matter to handle.

Yet could she sit on there, say nothing, and let the others in the course of time drop the subject? They had not turned to her in any way for further information or as to one peculiarly susceptible of furnishing interesting data. Maintaining this silence was a solution. But it would be even bolder than her first plan. This would be a still more vigorous, more insolent development of her plan of confessing—in her way. But it rather daunted her. They might easily mistake, if they pleased, her silence for the silence of acknowledged, very eccentric, guilt. The subject was drawing perilously near the point where it would be dropped. Fr?ulein Lipmann was summing up, and doing the final offices of the law over the condemned and already unspeakable Kreisler.[163] No time was to be lost. The breaking in now involved inevitable conflict of a sort with Fr?ulein Lipmann. She was going to “say a word for Kreisler” after Fr?ulein Lipmann’s words. (How much better it would have been before!)

So at this point, looking up from the table, Bertha (listened to with uncomfortable unanimity and promptness) began. She was smiling with an affectedly hesitating, timid face, smiling in a flat strain............