Violet could not quite cope with this tone. She hung on his arm, squeezed it hard and said: “You’re a fine one! You might be a bit nice to me for once; there isn’t any need for you to always save up everything for your Petra.”
“Always to save up,” corrected Pagel with Studmann-like pedantry. “You might perhaps try learning a little grammar sometime.”
Oh, he could irritate her into a fury. He kept at a distance; there was no more kissing—he saw to that. Sometimes she fled from him with flushed cheeks and tears of rage. She swore that he was a coward, a wretch, a weakling; that she would never speak a word to him again.…
Next morning she was standing outside the office door, waiting for him.
“Well, am I in your good graces again?” he grinned. “I swear to you, Violet, today I’m more of a coward, more of a wretch and more of a weakling than ever.”
“When my Fritz comes back,” she said, with flashing eyes, “I’ll tell him how you’ve treated me. Then he’ll challenge you and kill you. I shall be glad!”
Pagel merely laughed.
“Do you think I won’t do it? I will do it! You see!” she cried, angry again.
“You are quite capable of it,” he laughed. “I’ve known for a long time that you are really an absolutely cold-blooded creature, and that you wouldn’t care if the whole world pegged out so long as you got what you wanted.”
“I hope you peg out!”
“Yes, yes, but not now. Now I’ve got to go to the stable. Senta foaled last night. Coming along?”
And of course she went with him. Almost overwhelmed by tenderness, she stood before the little long-legged creature with its large head. “Isn’t it sweet?” she whispered excitedly. “Isn’t it a darling? Oh, it’s heavenly!”
And Wolfgang looked at his Violet askance. Yet she would take the same pleasure in seeing me lie in the dust with a bullet through my heart. Or rather a bullet through my stomach, so that she could hear me moan with agony. No; give me my Peter a thousand times over. You’re no good; all dolled up outside, but rotten inside.
But however calm and self-assured he usually felt in her presence, she could always enrage him with one thing—her casting away of all sense of physical shame before him. If she nestled close to him, exhibiting a half-ironical tenderness and passion, it was bearable, though not pleasant. (And to act Joseph to Potiphar’s wife is always a little ridiculous.) She had been awoken once and for all, but she hadn’t learned to pull herself together, to deny herself things. But when, in the middle of a walk through the fields, she said to him with studied carelessness: “Go on ahead, Pagel, I want to do a wee-wee,” or when, bathing, she undressed herself before him with as little embarrassment as if he were her grandmother—then he was seized with a wild rage, and could have struck her. Trembling with anger, he would upbraid her roundly.
“Damn it all, you’re not a whore!” he shouted.
“And supposing I were!” she said, looking at him mockingly, amused. “You couldn’t make any use of me.” Or else she would say, “Always boasting! Aren’t you spoken for? Why get so angry about such things?”
“You’re rotten and stinking, spoilt to the marrow! There’s not a speck of your body that isn’t dreck!”
“Specks are usually dreck,” she said coolly.
It was perhaps not so much the insult to his manhood which aroused him, although such things must infuriate any man, especially one of twenty-three; it was perhaps rather a sudden panic. Did she already regard herself as completely lost? Did she intentionally want to go to the dogs? Has this fifteen-year-old really already had enough of life? Every decent person feels himself a little responsible for his fellow-beings: only the wicked let their brethren run into the swamp without warning. Pagel felt his responsibility. He would try to talk to her, to warn her. But she affected a complete lack of understanding; she sat within a barbed-wire entanglement of foolish remarks: “All men are like that—one must be low-down, otherwise one just gets treated badly.” Or else: “Do you think it decent, the way Herr Studmann shows off to Mamma as soon as Papa goes away—and do you expect me to be more decent?” Or: “You don’t tell me, either, all the things you did with your Fräulein Petra before you broke it off. I don’t suppose you were very decent in that, anyway. So you needn’t have started talking about decency to me—even if I am only a country girl.” Oh, she could be as cunning as the devil. Darting off at a tangent, she would say: “Is it true that there are places in Berlin where girls dance all naked? And you’ve been there? Well, then! And you want to tell me that you faint when you sometimes see a little bit of me? You are ridiculous!”
There was nothing to be done, she would not be persuaded. Hundreds of times Pagel was on the point of talking to Studmann or Frau Eva about the girl. If he didn’t, it was not because of any silly feeling of gentlemanly discretion. But what good could the old people do if she wouldn’t listen to a young person like himself? Punishments and sermons will merely make it worse, he thought. Perhaps I shall have to speak about it if she ever wants to run away, but she certainly won’t get mixed up with any of the fellows here—she feels herself too much of the heiress for that and won’t want to tarnish her glory as future proprietress. If this scamp of a Lieutenant Fritz should turn up again, I shall hear of it instantly. Then I’ll give the rascal a good hiding and write down for him, in no uncertain terms, that he can forget any idea of returning to these happy pastures.
Pagel stretched himself. He wasn’t afraid to scrap with the toughest man in the village. Three months of country life had developed his muscles; he felt himself strong enough for any Lieutenant, any adventurer.
“Well, whom would you like to embrace now?” asked Vi ironically.
“Your Lieutenant Fritz!” was the surprising answer. He leaped on his bicycle. “Cheerio, Fräulein. Our walk is off for this morning, I must get on to my Hussars. But perhaps at one o’clock.” He was gone.
“Come along here, Violet!” called Frau Eva, who had observed this leave-taking from the office window and was sorry at the disappointed look on her daughter’s face. “I’m going to town in a quarter of an hour to fetch the wages. Come along with me—we’ll have pastry and cream at Kipferling’s.”
“Oh!” said Vi, pouting. “I don’t know, Mamma. No thanks, cream just makes you fat.” And in order not to be called back again she went quickly into the park.
“Sometimes I get very worried,” declared Frau von Prackwitz.
“Yes?” said Studmann politely, busy with his wage lists. Although he hadn’t nearly given the numbers all the noughts that belonged to them, no single column could contain the riches.
“She is so undecided, so slack. There’s no life in her.”
“It’s a rather critical age for young girls, though, isn’t it?” suggested Studmann.
“Perhaps it’s really that,” agreed Frau Eva, adding cautiously: “As a matter of fact, she’s always with young Pagel and the tone between them seems to me rather familiar. Do you think there is anything in that?”
“Anything in what?” Studmann looked up from his wage lists a little distractedly. If he used the sick-benefit column for writing down the net wages then he would have to use the disability column for the health contributions. The disability column was too narrow for all this wealth of noughts; he would use the wage-tax column instead. And now it turned out that the wages book was much too narrow. You would have to have a kind of atlas-sized wage list, including all the world’s longitude lines. What a damn mess! And nothing balanced. The orderly Studmann looked at his disorderly wage list with a stern, discouraged face.