CHAPTER XII
This was the moment in which Lilly's hopes and wondering astonishment reached their climax. Could it be Lilly Czepanek to whom all this was happening, or had she changed places with someone else--some heroine who only lived inside those old brown-covered books, and who would cease to exist directly the last page was turned? He did not urge her to consent at once. As she sank back in a helpless heap, incapable of speaking, he took her hands tenderly in his, and with the smile of a beneficent deity, reasoned with her more gently than she could have believed possible. She might think it over, he said, for three days, or he would even allow her ten. So long he could be patient, but she must promise in the meantime to say nothing about it to anyone.
She gladly acceded, still too terribly ashamed to look him in the face.
Then she ran home and cried and cried without knowing why she cried, whether for joy or for grief. She was still sobbing when towards four in the morning the sisters, who had relaxed their strict etiquette in honour of the New Year, crept in and passed through the room.
When she got up in the morning she was sure that he could not have been in earnest, and that before the day was over he would send to say that he had changed his mind. She wouldn't care much if he did. Indeed, she would breathe more freely and thank God to be relieved from a haunting burden of perplexities.
At ten o'clock there was a ring, and a basket of roses was handed in. The size and costliness of the blooms filled the sisters with astounded disapproval. They knew the price of roses in winter, and calculated that these had cost a sum greatly exceeding Lilly's wages for a month.
"Really," remarked the elder, "I cannot see why you shouldn't give in to such a gorgeous admirer. If it was one of us, it would be different, of course. We are in society, and could not afford to lose caste. But you, a mere shopgirl without any family to disgrace, why shouldn't you? Besides, such a life has its charms and advantages. If I were you, I should certainly try it."
The younger and more sentimental of the two protested. "The first step," she said, "should only be taken for love. That is what is due to yourself, even if you are nothing but a shopgirl."
They were still debating this knotty question when they went off to New Year's parade. They wanted to see Colonel von Mertzbach in command of the guard. They had heard he was "awfully handsome," and that all the fashionable girls in the town were setting their cap at him.
Lilly caressed her roses and would have kissed them all, only there were too many.
Then she took courage, locked up, and went out to St. Ann's to consult St. Joseph. She would have met the officers riding to parade if she had not turned down a back street in the nick of time.
High-mass was over, and had left an odour of incense and poor people lingering in the aisles. A few worshippers remained praying at the side altars. Lilly knelt down before her dear saint, pressed her forehead against the velvet padding of the altar ratings, and tried to pour out her torn heart to him, begging for advice and consolation.
"Ought I to ... May I? Can I?" Oh! She hoped she might so very much. Such a chance was not likely to come more than once in a lifetime. She would be rich, a baroness, with the world and all its splendours at her feet. When did such things happen outside fairy-tales?
If only one thing about him had been different. For the first time it struck her clearly what that one thing was.
It was not his eyes, whose glance was a dagger-thrust. It was not the grey bristly hair on his temples, nor the harsh commanding voice of the martinet. No; now she knew that it was none of these, but the folds of skin hanging down from his chin to his throat. It was these that must always form a barrier between him and her. They couldn't be got over, nothing could conceal them. She shuddered at the thought of them. And yet the Asmussen sisters had talked of him as a handsome man. The daughters of wealthy and distinguished people were said to run after him.
It would have been folly on her part to refuse him. Wasn't he the best and noblest and most high-principled of men? Wasn't he nearly as good and kind as God Himself? Then she mapped out a future in which she was to live and breathe only for him; to sit at his feet as a disciple. She would flutter about him in gayer moments like a dove, though she could not exactly picture herself being ever lively in his presence. But she might be poetic; she might gaze at the stars in the distant firmament and the evening clouds, and look the image of a pale, noble, saintly creature to whom young strangers would lift their eyes in devouring longing without being rewarded by a single glance from her. All this would be possible, because her life would be consecrated to him, who was her friend, protector, and father, to whom she looked up on the heights whence no gleam had ever descended to her before.
"Yes, I will--I will!" an eager voice cried within her. "Yes, dear St. Joseph, I will!"
For answer St. Joseph held up a warning forefinger. Of course, he would have done it in any case. He couldn't help himself, for his artist had presented him thus. And yet there was something disconcerting about that raised forefinger. It didn't somehow help a poor distraught human being on its way through this troublesome world.
The next day Lilly got a letter from Herr Doktor Pieper, making an appointment with her at his office.
She turned hot and cold. "He knows," she said to herself.
When she asked leave to go, Frau Asmussen remonstrated severely with her.
"You receive costly presents and flowers, and you are always wanting to go out; if you continue like this, I am afraid I shall have to offer up daily prayers for you again."
But when Lilly showed her guardian's letter, Frau Asmussen gave her permission. Lilly had not seen him since that day, a year and a half ago, when she had come out of the hospital, so weak she could hardly stand. She had been too shy to accept his invitation to call on him again. Besides, there had been no reason why she should. From time to time a lanky, dried-up looking person, whom Lilly recognised as the head clerk, had come to Frau Asmussen's, and after a brief conversation conducted in an undertone, departed. This was the only sign that the man under whose guardianship she had been placed ever thought of her existence.
"Herr Doktor Pieper will see you now," said the head clerk.
As Lilly entered, the distinguished lawyer was sitting at his writing-table in the same position as she had last seen him. He raised his head and contemplated her with a long scrutinising gaze. Then he smiled and rubbed the mirrorlike surface of his bald patch. "Ah! So it's you!" he drawled.
Lilly's respect for this man deprived her of breath. While he studied her from head to foot as if she had been a marketable object, she made an awkward movement, which was a cross between a nod and a bow, and tugged at the short sleeves of her coat.
"Ah! I perceive, my child, that you have developed into something that makes masculine folly, not of course justifiable, because we are endowed with masculine intellect to restrain the tendency, but, at any rate, excusable.... But I haven't wished you good-morning."
He rose and offered her his cool flabby hand, which felt as if it had no bones in it.
"Please let me look at your gloves," he said next.
Lilly trembled, and drew back her elbows like a thief caught in the act. She stammered out, growing very red, "I was going to buy a new pair to-day."
"Don't, dear Fräulein," he answered, smacking his lips with satisfaction; "those holes are touching, and awake sympathy. Your winter coat, too, awakes sympathy. These are mere matters of detail, which contrast piquantly with the main features of your appearance. Anyone sentimentally inclined, even if he were not born a poet, might easily be inspired to an outburst of lyrical verse by such a pathetic appeal."
As he spoke, he put his arm familiarly through hers and led her to an easy-chair, upholstered with many springs and cushions.
"Sit down in this victims' chair," he said, "though I promise you there will be no drawing of teeth to-day. Altogether, you've done very well for yourself, my child. I am perfectly satisfied with you."
He smoothed his well-kept fair beard and showed his teeth in a satisfied smile, like a conjurer after performing a specially clever trick.
"When do you intend the wedding to come off?"
"It's not even an engagement yet," murmured Lilly.
"Oh, as far as that goes, there will, of course, be no engagement, properly speaking--that is to say, no formal announcements to friends, cards, visits, and other courtesies. Have everything done as quickly as possible--as quietly as possible; that is my advice to you, Fräulein. You see, in the very delicate situation of affairs in which we find ourselves, adverse influences are always to be feared."
"But I haven't so much as said 'Yes,' yet," Lilly ventured to put in.
This seemed vastly to amuse him.
"Ho! ho! We're assuming the possibility of a refusal, are we? A refusal! Very clever! I shouldn't have credited you with so much capacity for business, dear Fräulein."
"I am sure I don't know what you mean," said Lilly, a flush of indignation rising to her face--she knew not why.
He thrust his hands against his sides and continued to be amused.
"Yes, yes; that's all very well and practical, but a joke can be carried too far, you know. I advise you to leave it in my hands for the time being.... I understand these matters, though I must confess I haven't often handled so important a case. I will do my utmost to hurry on the wedding.... For reasons already stated, I must demand absolute secrecy till his resignation is a fait accompli. When the banns are once put up, providing you with a trousseau will be a minor consideration. My advice to you, young lady, is to behave for the present in as maidenly and ingenuous a manner as you can. A rosebud unfolding with the freshness of the dew upon it should be your example. But I would suggest the use of a better soap.... I think there's no room for improvement in anything else. The necessity may arise for you to take up your abode with another family, in which case the sum realised from the sale of your mother's effects--one moment, please." He opened a big ledger which he took from a rack by the writing-table. "A, B, C--ah, here we are--Czepanek. Sums amounting to one hundred and thirty-six marks will come in very usefully just now. My purse, too, out of a purely aesthetic enjoyment of the romance, is at your disposal. So much for the period before the wedding. As for the time to follow, which is of infinitely greater importance, I should not like you to go away from here without my giving you a few gentle hints, though, unfortunately, I am not in a position to"--he paused for a moment, and a satyr-like grin widened his loose-skinned cheeks--"take a mother's place and impart to you the precepts with which she would speed you on your way as a bride."
Lilly understood this time well enough what he would imply, and redhot shame wove a fiery mist before her eyes.
"In all matters connected with arrangements for your future, such as insurance, settlements, alimony in case of divorce, provided you are the guiltless party--or even if you were guilty--you may implicitly trust me. I was not made your guardian for nothing. But there is one contingency, very common in marriages such as yours, in which my professional help can give you no security. You must keep your eyes open for yourself.... We are placed in this world, my dear child, to do what we like; anyone who says the contrary would rob your heaven of its sun. But I give you a threefold warning: first, don't exchange superfluous glances; second, don't demand superfluous rendering of accounts; thirdly and lastly, don't make superfluous confessions. You cannot be expected to-day, perhaps, to understand clearly what all this signifies"--as a matter of fact, Lilly understood nothing at all--"but think of my words when occasion arises. They may be of use to you. Let me see. Another thing! Are you fond of jewels?"
"I have hardly ever seen any," said Lilly.
"Not at the jewellers' in the market-place?"
"At school we weren't allowed to look in at the shop-windows," Lilly answered.
He smiled his most unpleasant smile. "Then I venture to advise that every time you and your husband go out together you stop and look in at every shop-window. Such little hints are seldom ignored. Be specially charmed with pearls, my dear young lady. You will in this wise lay up for yourself treasures which, when your time of trouble comes--and, remember, it will come--will be of invaluable assistance to you."
Lilly nodded, and thought to herself, "I shall certainly do nothing of the kind."
Heir Doktor Pieper passed his soft plump well-kept hand over his glossy bald patch several times, and continued:
"Well, what more have I got to say to you? A good deal, but I am rather afraid of being misunderstood. There is one thing, however, which must not be omitted. The early days of married life, no matter what its nature may be, are apt to have a disturbing effect on the nervous system. When you first feel depressed, take bromide. In fact, take a good deal of it. Draw a protective cap of indifference over your head in moments of strong excitement, whether caused by love or antipathy, so that you will not see, hear, or feel anything. You must deaden your perceptions and be unconscious of your will-power. In time you will become used to the oppressive hot-house atmosphere, probably in a few months; and afterward you will again breathe the fresh air, and then, instead of the bed-canopy above you, there will stretch again before you the heaven of your girlhood. When one's nerves are over-strained it is dangerous to think too much of one's immediate surroundings and to seek compensation there. Dream rather of the distant blue mountains. Let your happiness linger afar off. You are young, and it will certainly draw nearer as years pass. Give it time to grow up.... I expect you do not understand the very least bit what I am saying?"
"Yes, of course I understand," Lilly stammered.
She didn't wish to be thought stupid. But he was right. His words rained on her like hailstones of which she could only gather a few here and there--except the blue mountains. She had caught that, and liked the expression.
"Never mind," he went on. "Something of what I have said will occur to you, I've no doubt, at times. Now I come to the last and most delicate point of all, because it deals, as it were, with spiritual conditions. Don't fret if your environment does not respond to you and echo your ideas. You must leave it, and not try to make things different. Bells that are cracked can never be made to ring in tune again. Rather provide music for yourself. I shouldn't be surprised if you have a whole orchestra at your command."
"I have 'The Song of Songs,'" Lilly thought with pride.
"You have no conception, my child, how essential it is, when you live in harness with another human being, not to lose touch with yourself. To hold a private court of your own flattering thoughts is an excellent diversion. Anyone who wants to eat fresh eggs must keep poultry; never forget that. But don't let anyone suspect. Display no unnecessary opposition, no obstinacy. You must arrange to run your life from the start on double paths, so that you can travel in both directions as your needs require. I shouldn't wonder if in these circumstances your marriage were to turn out happily, apart from its exceptional worldly advantages, the duration of which depend mainly on good luck and the exercise of tact and powers of adaptation. I shall send you the marriage contract sealed. Till your coming of age in two years' time I shall always be at your service. If you feel in after years that your temper is permanently tried, break the seal by all means. A good lawyer can interpret a contract very differently from a layman, and read all sorts of things into it. As I indicated, there is one case in which he is impotent to do this. Be on your guard against it. Technically, it is called in flagrante.... Sometime or other you will doubtless acquire information as to what the word means. Now, may I give the colonel your final consent?"
CHAPTER XIII
The train rumbled on through the night, showers of sparks flew up from the engine. When it was fed by the stoker, clouds of fire illuminated the darkness, and you saw in a flash purple pines, snow-covered gables, and wide-stretching golden spaces appearing out of black nothingness. How beautiful, how strange it all was!
Lilly leaned her head, drowsy from champagne, against the red velvet cushions. It was over, and everything had gone off well. A kaleidoscope of confused pictures, half real, half imaginary, whirled through her brain. She saw a great black inkstand with a small grey-bearded man behind it asking lots of useless questions; a white lace veil with myrtle-leaves attached thrown over her head by the adjutant's wife, who went from one rapture into another; a hateful Protestant minister, with two ridiculous white bibs under his chin. He looked like a grave-digger, but at the end he gave such an exquisite address that Lilly would have liked to cry on his bosom. Two gentlemen in black, two in gay uniforms. One of the gentlemen in black was Herr Pieper, one of those in uniform the colonel. And she was the colonel's wife the colonel's wife! How the wheels seemed to murmur the words: "Colonel's wife!" But if you listened more attentively they also said--what the gentlemen at the wedding had said--"Most gracious baroness; most gracious baroness," always in time.
The ice-cream had been so wonderful--a positive chain of mountains with peaks, and pinnacles, and little lights that shone through the crystals. She could have sat admiring it for ever, only she had to dig into it with a big golden spoon, and so overturn a whole mountain. She had asked him if she might have ice-cream every day in the future, and he had laughingly answered, "Yes, if you like." She must have been rather tipsy, or she couldn't have had the courage to ask such a question. She would find an opportunity of begging his pardon later.
Now he sat opposite her looking her through and through with his piercing eyes. That was the only thing that embarrassed her, and if she hadn't been such a coward, she would have asked him to look the other way for a change. Not that she felt her old fear of him to-day. Of late she had gradually become more at home with him; how could it be otherwise when he was so kind, and she had only to express a wish to have it fulfilled instantly?
Then there was something she had noticed that she would never dare breathe to anyone. He was bow-legged. They were the heavy cavalry legs all over, rather too short for the imposing figure they supported. They made him sway in his gait from side to side as if he were trying to walk on a tight-rope. You noticed it even more when he wore mufti and stuck his hands in his pockets as he was doing now.
Every now and then he leant forward and asked, "Are you all right, little woman?"
She should think she was "all right" indeed! All her life she would like to sit there leaning back against the red velvet cushions, looking at her new soft suède gloves, and the shiny toes of her patent-leather boots peeping out from the hem of her travelling dress.
There had been quite a crowd at the station. No uniforms, because he had dispensed with a military escort, but plenty of ladies had been there, thickly veiled, trying to appear unconscious, as if their errand at the station was an ordinary one. As she passed them on the colonel's arm and got into the coupé, she had caught two or three admiring remarks--and not from too friendly lips. It came back to her now with heart-felt satisfaction. At the very last moment two bouquets had flown in through the window, and she had looked out again. There stood the Asmussen sisters, bowing reverentially and crying buckets full. Her colossal good fortune had disarmed their envy and changed ill-feeling into a sort of melancholy rejoicing.
And, opposite, sat the man who had worked the extraordinary revolution in her lot. For a moment she was so overwhelmed with a feeling of well-being and gratitude that she went down on her knees before him, and, clasping his hands in hers, gazed up at him in adoration.
But when he caught her to him with one arm, and with the other caressed her, she became frightened again and retreated to her place. He let her be with a smile, conscious that his hour was not far off.
And it came sooner than she had expected. "Get ready," he said abruptly; "we shall be getting out directly."
"Where?" she asked, startled.
"At the junction, from where there's a loop line to Lischnitz."
"Are we going to your estate, then?" she inquired anxiously. He had talked of going to Dresden.
"No," he replied shortly; "we shall stay here."
Then they stood on a dark platform with their trunks and bags. The frosty haze cast rainbow halos round the few dim gas-lamps, and shadowy forms were enveloped in clouds of their own frozen breath as they emerged into the light. The train steamed out of the station.
There they stood and no one heeded them. Then the colonel uttered one oath after another. He had acquired the habit of swearing violently at drill, when irritated. His fury fell on Lilly like a thunderclap, and made her tremble, as if she were the culprit. At last the colonel's oaths reached the ears of the station officials, who associated them with something familiar in the past, and they began contritely to make amends for their negligence by loading themselves with the luggage. They got into the hotel omnibus which was waiting, and Lilly squeezed herself into the furthest corner of it. Weird shadows flickered from the miserable little oil carriage-lamps, on his sharply defined features, giving him a new aspect, beneath which his long-slumbering wrath still seethed.
"What has this dreadful old man to do with you, or you with him," Lilly asked herself, a shiver running through her, "that you should be at his mercy so completely? Why not rush past him, tear open the door, and leap out into the night?"
She pictured what would happen if she acted on this impulse. He would stop the omnibus, pursue her, calling and shouting after her, and, if she was so lucky as to hide herself, he would set the police on her track. The next morning she would be found cowering under an arch asleep, perhaps frozen to death.
At that moment he stretched out his hands, groping for hers, as people in love are wont to do. The shadows dissolved and she responded to his caress, wreathed in smiles. Yet on their arrival at the hotel, where the proprietor, waiters, and commissionaires received them with deferential bows and an effusive welcome, Lilly's thoughts, in the midst of all the bustle, light, and warmth, reverted again to flight.
"I'll say I have left something in the omnibus, run out and never come back."
She was already ascending the stairs on his arm.
A spacious, awe-inspiring apartment swallowed them up. It had a flowered carpet and a glaring three-armed chandelier. In one corner stood a huge wide bedstead, covered with a smooth white damask counterpane. It was carved at the head and foot. She looked round in vain for a second bed. "St. Joseph!" she breathed to herself.
The colonel made himself perfectly at home. He grumbled, turned up the lights, and tossed his overcoat into a corner. Then he lit a cigarette and threw himself down on the sofa, whence he watched with the eye of a connoisseur her movements as she reluctantly took off her coat and drew the pins out of her hat.
There was a knock, and a waiter came in with cold refreshments and a silver-necked bottle on a tray.
"More champagne?" questioned Lilly in alarm. She had not yet recovered from the amount that she had imbibed at midday.
"Nothing like champagne," he said, "to give a little woman courage to consecrate the pretty blue silk négligé waiting in her box to be unpacked."
He poured out the foaming liquid into the two glasses. She clinked glasses with him obediently, but scarcely touched a drop of her wine.
When he rallied her on her abstinence, she answered pleadingly, "I don't want to be tipsy on such a sacred night as this!"
Her reply seemed to entertain him immensely. He burst into hilarious laughter, and exclaimed: "All the better! All the better!"
He would have drawn her to him, but, as every touch of his caused her acute discomfort, she evaded him quickly and said, "I must look for my négligé."
She knelt before the box, which she herself had packed the night before, lifting out the trays, and produced from the depth a garment of filmy lace and washing silk, which he, with all the other beautiful clothes, had bought for her before the wedding.
She looked round in search of a sheltering alcove into which she could retire to change, but there was none no escape from those eyes, almost softened by their desire for her, watching everything she did. Shuddering, she stood there, clinging helplessly to the collar of her dress, which she hadn't the courage to unhook.
He grew impatient and sprang to his feet. He nearly caught her in his arms, but the imploring look she gave him was so full of pathos that he chivalrously desisted, and stooped instead to pick up something which, in her search for the négligé, she had turned out of the box on to the floor. The next minute Lilly saw a white roll between his dark fingers.
"It's 'The Song of Songs,'" shot through her brain.
With a cry she hurled herself upon him, and tried to snatch the roll of music from his grasp, but his fingers were like iron. He defended himself and repulsed her attack with ease, laughing all the time. She was beside herself at the thought that her life's secret should be tampered with by strange hands, and she cried, implored, and beat him with her fists.
Now the matter began to appear to him in a suspicious light. Doubts began to rise within him as to the unblemished purity of her soul, and even of her body.
"Be careful, my little girl," he said. "Prevarication and deceit are out of the question now. You will kindly let me see what this is without delay, or I'll pin you down so that you can't stir a limb."
"Oh, please, dear colonel," she begged and prayed, "give them up. They are only two or three sheets of paper covered with music, the music of songs--nothing else, I swear. Please let me have them, dear colonel."
Her innocent pleading touched him, and the comical unconscious humility of her "dear colonel" made him laugh again. Besides, as the daughter of a professional, she might cherish musical ambitions.
"Do you compose yourself?" he asked.
"No, no, no! It's not my composition, but don't look at it," she entreated, "or I'll jump out of the window. I swear I will by all the saints."
He was so delighted with the picture she made, her eyes wide with alarm, her hair loosened and dishevelled, the tragic mute expression on her sweet childlike face with its clear-cut features, that he wanted to prolong the struggle for a few minutes. So he looked very black and pretended to be what he really had been a little while ago--full of jealous suspicion.
Then she fell on her knees, and, clasping his legs, she whispered in a voice half suffocated by her emotions of shame and distress:
"If only you give it back to me, I won't mind what you do. I won't attempt to defend myself."
The bargain struck him as advantageous.
"Your hand on it," he said.
"Yes, here is my hand on it," she replied. "And you'll never ask any questions? Promise."
"Not if you swear by your blessed St. Joseph that it's really nothing but music."
"Yes, nothing but music and the libretto, I swear."
He gave her the roll, and she yielded herself entirely to him ... sold herself at the price of "The Song of Songs" to the man to whom she already belonged.
The early morning sunlight, shining straight in her eyes through the yellow striped curtains, awoke her. She felt herself resting on a sort warm pillow, and was conscious of having slept splendidly. Slowly it dawned on her what had happened. She leaned over to him with the intention of giving him a kiss. He lay with his head thrown back and his mouth open, and the light from the window played on his shining bristled chin. Over his haggard cheeks little red and blue veins ran in all directions like rivers on a map. His ink-black moustache glistened with pomade, and his eyelids were so wrinkled into folds that they must, it seemed, have reached down to the top of his nose if they had been ironed out.
"He's not so bad-looking," Lilly thought to herself; but she omitted the kiss.
She got up noiselessly and dressed herself without his moving. The old cavalry officer was a sound and heavy sleeper.
Lilly scribbled on a sheet of notepaper which she found in the hotel blotter: "I am gone to church," laid the note on his pillow, and slipped down the stairs, past the porter, who was so astonished he forgot to say "Good-morning."
The streets of the little town still slept in the peace of the late winter dawn. The snow had been swept from the middle of the road into heaps along the gutter. A party of crows sat in a circle round the frozen fountain in the market-place. From the distance came the faint music of sleigh-bells. Down the main street boys with satchels were loitering to school. In some of the smaller shops lights still burned and apprentices were sweeping and cleaning the steps, their faces blue with cold. As Lilly went by they stared hard, or called to others inside to come out and gape after her.
The swinging tread of marching footsteps was behind her. A long train of infantry, wearing gloves but without cloaks, came tramping along in the middle of the road. They puffed, in regular time, clouds of frozen breath before them. Their eyes with one accord turned to the left in Lilly's direction as if by word of command. The officers, walking beside their men, exchanged significant glances and shrugged their shoulders.
She had not far to look for the Catholic church of the parish. The clumsy stone fabric, with its remnants of Gothic bricked over, stood high above the roofs of the town. The side aisles were crammed with altars in barbaric colours, much gilded and adorned with paper roses in cheap vases. She could not find St. Joseph anywhere, and had to be content instead with Our Lady of Sorrows, between whom and herself relations seemed strained.
A feeling of oppression and emptiness, which she could not explain, took possession of her soul. It was as if she had done something wrong and didn't know what. She kneeled down and gabbled her prayers so thoughtlessly that she felt ashamed, then she caught herself absently eyeing with contentment her suède gloves, which moulded her fingers with such perfect ease and distinction. Every now and then a shudder ran through her, which made her shut her eyes and clench her teeth, and then she felt ashamed again.
Soon she gave up attempting to pray, and gazed up at the Mother of God, with her tearful face, who appeared to be saying, "Please take these things out of me." Yet the seven swords piercing her heart were set at the hilt with pearls and precious stones.
"If only I was really unhappy, I should have some excuse," thought Lilly. "Then I might talk with her as I used to with St. Joseph, and the swords in my heart would be costly to behold." As costly as the pearl necklace he had put round her neck just before the wedding.
She saw herself as she had been two months ago, when she had stolen out in the grey dawn to lay her poor distraught heart at the feet of her favourite saint; how soon, with the reaction of youth, she had walked on air again, intoxicated at the thought of what was coming to her in the fair future. And all the time she had been actually steeped in poverty and wretchedness, forsaken and friendless.
"Happiness takes on strange aspects," she thought, and she gave her shoulders a petulant little shrug.
Then suddenly a great dread came over her that those times would never come back, that she must go on like this eternally, barren in soul, disturbed in spirit, persecuted by gloomy, inexpressible fears.
"It must all come of not loving him enough," she confessed to herself.
Now she knew what she had to petition of the Virgin Mary. She bowed her face in both hands and prayed long and fervidly--prayed that she might learn to love him with as much passion as she had blood in her veins; with as much devotion as she had hopes of her soul; with as much joyousness as there was laughter in her heart. And, lo! her prayer was answered.
She rose from her knees with shining eyes, a burden lifted from her soul, and hurried away, back to him to whom she belonged, to serve him with all humbleness and confidence, either as his daughter, his handmaiden, his mistress--in any capacity he wished.
CHAPTER XIV
They passed Berlin without stopping, because the colonel had no desire to encounter his military friends so soon after his mésalliance. From here in three hours they reached Dresden, and took up their quarters at Sendig's, where the hotel proprietors had arranged to provide the newly-married pair with the comforts and privacy of a home. Drawing-room, bedroom, and dressing-room were all they needed, for the closer their outer intimacy the nearer would their inward relations approximate. And, indeed, the colonel had every reason to be satisfied with his honeymoon. He, who in the course of his not too short life had held hundreds of girls on his knee, who thought he knew every type through and through, the sweetly clinging, the coyly coquettish, the brazenly bold, the sham and the true, and all their different kinds of kisses--this old amorous hand, who ought to have been surprised at nothing, was simply full of incredulous amazement at his last lovely find. In his whole carefully cultivated career as a roué he had never come across so much yielding and so much pride, so much fire, ready wit, and quick understanding, so much naïve simplicity, as were comprised in this one dreamily smiling Madonna-faced child.
Perhaps he was most taken aback and puzzled by her utter unpretentiousness. When they dined à la carte, she invariably selected for herself the very cheapest items on the menu, and would ask if she might have lemonade to drink with as much shy modesty as if she were making a love confession.
Once, on their way back from the public gardens, when they wandered home through queer little back streets, Lilly, who resolutely declined as a rule to look in at shop-windows, stood transfixed before a small greengrocer's. The colonel, on inquiring what interested her, elicited gradually that she loved eating sunflower seeds, and would he mind very much if she bought some?
The mote he loaded her with presents, the less able did she seem to realise that money was being spent on her account. So long had been the dearth of money in her life, that now she had no discrimination as to the value of it. However big the sum he placed in her purse, she did not hesitate to hand it out to the first beggar they met. But when he paid a flower-girl two marks for a rose she thought it wicked extravagance.
Once when she had tickled his fastidious palate beyond belief by her naïveté, he asked in sudden distrust, "I say, little woman, are you acting?"
She didn't know what he meant, and with the wide melancholy eyes of childlike innocence, which she used to turn on him at such questions, she replied, "Acting indeed! Since papa went away I haven't seen any acting, or been inside a theatre once."
The same day he took a box for the play, and she danced about the room with the little blue tickets in her hand, half mad with delight. But her joyous enthusiasm was somewhat damped by being told that the occasion demanded evening dress. It was incomprehensible to her that to appreciate Shakespeare's "Winter's Tale" you should be obliged to bare your neck and shoulders. The evening gowns, besides, seemed far too grand for her. In selecting one to wear, she hovered round them with their glittering, jewelled trimmings and exquisite lace as gingerly as if they were a bed of nettles. In a generous mood the colonel had ordered the gowns, for no particular reason, for to take Lilly into society as yet was not to be thought of.
When she came to him dressed, stiff and stern-eyed from embarrassment, yet glowing with a feverish joy in her finery, taller and more of a budding Venus than ever, her delicate rounded breast half hidden in a mass of soft lace, the fabulously beautiful chain of pearls on her swan-like throat, the elderly robber went into such ecstasies over his booty that he was near ordering the finery back into the wardrobe, and throwing the theatre tickets into the waste-paper basket; but she implored him so fervently to keep his promise that he thought better of it and got into the carriage with her.
Then, he, who imagined he had long ago outlived the commonplace vanity of delighting to show off his possessions in public, experienced a triumph. The blasé old bachelor found himself enjoying the sensation of being envied, and, though he accepted it disdainfully as a matter of course, he was tremendously flattered.
Directly Lilly entered the box she was the cynosure of all eyes. Everyone speculated as to what the relationship could be between this extraordinarily handsome and distinguished pair, and when after the first act a thousand tongues of light leapt out again from the ceiling, opera-glasses were levelled at them, and a hubbub of questioning comment passed from mouth to mouth.
It was the first time Lilly had ever witnessed a play from a box, and her first instinct was to hide herself at the back, but she had already learnt blind obedience to his commands, and when he pointed to the chair beside him she meekly subsided into it. Then, as she became aware of the universal notice she attracted, that strange numbness and feeling of detachment came over her. It seemed to her when she moved, smiled, or spoke, someone else was doing it all--another person with whom she herself had only a chance connection.
Not till the lights were lowered and the curtain went up again did she awake from her lethargy. Then she followed the poet into his enchanted realms with breathless excitement and delicate thrills of suspense. After this two Lillies sat in the box--one Lilly in blissful self-oblivion flitted through heaven and hell on the rainbow wings of her childhood's phantasy; the other, like a wound-up doll, made stilted gestures and strove unconsciously to imitate the manners of the well-bred, feeling all the time a hot sweet torturing sensation creeping over her, the intoxication of vanity.
Afterwards the colonel, not satisfied with his triumph at the theatre, instead of having supper as usual served upstairs, went with Lilly on his arm into the public dining-room where an Hungarian band was playing, and elegant people supped and displayed their fine feathers. Here the little drama of the box was enacted over again, save that Lilly, carried away by the wild dreamy melodies of the violins, let her awkward shyness drop from her, and expanding a little, with flaming cheeks and shining eyes, dared to play her small part.
Opposite them, two tables further on, sat a fair young man, with expansive white shirt-front and black tie, like all the others. He stared at her with unflinching persistence, as if she were some rare wild animal.
She writhed under the fire of this gaze, that caressed and hurt her at the same time and spoke a foreign language to her with the violins, the notes of which quivered down her spine and throbbed feverishly through her being.
Suddenly her husband turned round and caught the admirer in the act of staring. He pierced him with his dagger-like glance to such effect that the fair-haired man speedily rose and disappeared. But the colonel's pleasure seemed spoilt. "Come, it's late," he said, and led her away.
As soon as he had her to himself again his pride in his treasure broke out anew. It became a sort of unbridled frenzy. Lilly had to undress, as she had often done before, and pose in numerous attitudes, both classical and the reverse. Then, to wind up, she was compelled to don the silver-spangled gauze garment, which he had bought for her during their first days in Dresden, arrayed in which he liked her to dance to him before going to bed. The metal threads sent ice-cold shivers down her limbs, and pricked her skin like needles, but as it was his wish, and his wish was law, she made no demur.
In bed he lit another cigarette, and while she sat on the edge of the bed he amused himself by telling her risqué anecdotes, which he described as "his little girl's lullaby."
After this, the colonel preferred to take meals regularly in the dining-room. He wished to enjoy to the full the piquant pleasure of seeing his young wife openly admired and unblushingly desired. The value of his property seemed to rise in proportion to the extent that he was envied by others for its possession.
And Lilly, for her part, could watch for the intoxicated sensations of that evening to awake in her ever anew. She might under drooping lids see and feel all those young, hot pairs of eyes around her hang burningly on hers, full of hopeless passion and desire; might, accompanied by the sad wail of the violins and the clash of the cymbals, take flight into those Elysian fields whither her road had been barred--she knew not how or why--since her great good fortune had come to her.
Never did she dream of permitting herself, even by the quiver of an eyelash, to return any of those ardent glances. The young men who gazed at her were only accessories to the scene, as indispensable as the lights, the band, the flowers, the white tablecloths, and the cigarette smoke which rose to the ceiling in little blue columns.
Nevertheless, one day, as she was walking arm-in-arm with her husband in the street, one of those glances shot her through the heart like an arrow. It proceeded from a pair of dark eyes, which even from a distance were fixed on her inquiringly, and flared up as they came nearer into a flash of melancholy fire and recognition.
She felt as if she must run after him as he walked on, and ask, "Who are you? Do you belong to me? ... Do you want me to belong to you?"
Then she committed the indiscretion of turning round to look at him. It was only for the fraction of a second, but her husband had remarked it, for when she again looked in front of her, she felt his vigilant eye was upon her, full of threatening suspicion. He nodded two or three times as if to say, "So it's come to this already." For the rest of the day he was preoccupied and bad-tempered.
The incident was but the first of a series for Lilly. Not that she ever met that identical youth again, though she kept on the lookout for him. He was succeeded by innumerable others. Those she met, from this time, were no longer unsubstantial shadows of a vision she saw as if they were not there. Now, when she beheld a slight youthful figure coming towards them, she wondered what he would be like near, and if he would look at her. And should his aspect please her, and his gaze without being impertinent express admiring astonishment and longing, she would often feel a pang at her heart and say to herself, "You are far more suited to him than to the old man on whose arm you are leaning." And every time it happened she felt very sad.
Still sadder did she feel when someone, whose appearance she liked, took no notice of her. "I am not good enough for him," she would think. "He despises me. I wonder why he despises me?"
In fashionable resorts, such as the dining-room of the Brühlische Terrace, where there was a perpetual crossfire of covert glances, her attitude towards the outside world began gradually to alter. She would acknowledge the incense burnt at her shrine by an ever so slight grateful uplifting of her eyes. She returned without shyness the scrutiny of ladies, and in spite of being blessed with sight as keen as a falcon's, she would dearly have loved to possess a lorgnette like theirs.
She was often tormented with a desire to look deep into eyes that rested on her without reserve, fear or restraint. It would have been a mystical union of souls, which would have done her infinite good; for she could not disguise the fact from herself any longer--she was hungering for something, hungering as she had never hungered in her life before.
The colonel appeared perfectly oblivious of what was passing within her. But he waged bitter warfare with all who laid siege to her with their glances. The old Uhlan was incessantly on the watch, and was ready to stab on the instant with his eye's deadly darts the too persistent and ardent adorers. But there were some who were not in the least discomposed by his threatening demeanour, and who even had the audacity to return the compliment and look daggers at him. This made him uneasy, and he would fidget with his card-case, look as if he were going to write something, then put the pencil away; and generally he ended by saying, "We seem in undesirable company here. Come, let us go!" Yet, despite these uncomfortable experiences out of doors, he found it less and less possible to live at home completely a deux with his young wife. From his youth upwards he had been accustomed to gay society, and he liked noise, laughter, and light around him. Nevertheless, his suspicions grew and centred on Lilly.
One day he put a stop to her early church-going, in which she found her greatest solace. The impulse she had followed on the first morning that she awakened by his side had become by degrees a habit. While he slept on in profound slumber, she softly rose and dressed herself and glided out in the freshness of the dawn. It is true that her church-going consisted often of merely dipping her fingers in the holy water and curtseying three times. Now and then she contented herself by passing the church door with an untroubled conscience and not going in at all.
This was her hour of freedom, precious to her as gold, the only one that she had entirely to herself in the course of the whole day. She hurried first to the Augustus Bridge, offered her face to the breezes that blew there from every point of the compass, and watched the water rolling under her feet. Next she flew along the bank, like a whirlwind, for she wanted to take in as many fresh impressions and pictures as she could, before creeping back into the connubial yoke. Everything that happened in this blessed hour was fraught with significance.
It was all experience, all happiness--the rosy early morning mist hanging over the hills and descending in golden shafts on to the river; the jangle of bells from the Altstadt; the first coy bursting of the buds on the russet boughs; the big waggons rumbling to market; the hissing of the swaying electric wires overhead when a tramcar passed. On these excursions she might even indulge in shop-gazing, as there was no fear of Nemesis in the shape of a present. How greedily she gloated over pictures and objets d'art!
And now all this was to end. It was over. The gates through which she escaped for one single hour from the perfumed idleness and hothouse closeness of her gilded prison clanged behind her. But so pliable and yielding was her nature that not once in the secret depths of her heart did she complain. He wished it, and that was enough. Such powers of love lay idle within her, crying out for employment, that at this period of inward struggle she was obliged, whether she liked it or not, to give him a double share of tenderness, even whether her thoughts were with him or cantering off on a secret path of dreams.
She was his slave, his plaything, his attentive audience. She valeted him, praised his personal beauty, massaged his thighs with salves, arranged the hare-skin on his loins to charm away his gout, gave him his carbonate of soda to correct indiscretions in diet, dressed his grizzled locks with a hairwash, the pungent odour of which turned her sick, and looked on, giving him the benefit of her artistic taste and advice, while he tinted his moustache. And she did it all with eager zeal and naïve self-reliance, as if in tending and coaxing him she had found the very aim and end of her existence.
In the process, however, he became divested for her of every rag of his godlike attributes, so that nothing was left but a once soldierly, though now vain, and capricious man--mentally effete, for all his vaunted intellect; brutal, for all his refined tastes, with his appetites prematurely sated and enervated.
Not that she was really clear in her mind with regard to these defects of his qualities. If she had been, it is possible that she might have loathed and despised him. She was too young and ignorant of the world to know that life is like a witch's cauldron, which brews out of the souls of all men much the same mess, when ideals bleach with their hair and they have no altar on which to gain salvation through sacrifice.
The pictures her imagination painted of him faded and shifted from day to day, first in one direction, then in another, until something like pity mingled with her childlike respectful awe of him, and a certain motherliness that would have been unnatural, had it not had its foundations in the goodness of heart that found in the weaknesses of others an object for its fostering care.
Ah! if only she did not long for so much. Every day she sat at a sumptuously spread table and longed for more!
She read eagerly every morning the notices posted up in the vestibule of the hotel, giving a list of the evening's amusements. But the colonel would hurry her on--in the narrow groove of his small garrison he and the arts had become estranged. The organs necessary for the enjoyment of such things from long disuse had become decayed, and he shrank from the mental exertion required to galvanise them into activity once more.
The music-hall variety performances, boxing matches, ballets, and garish living-pictures, in which he took pleasure, were abhorrent to Lilly after she had once witnessed them out of curiosity. He declared that wild horses should not drag him again to Shakespeare or Wagner, nor to the concert-room, where Lilly longed to go.
One day Beethoven's Symphony in C Minor was among the announcements--the great work which was associated by a thousand tender ties with her childhood. She said nothing at the time, but afterwards she threw herself on her bed and cried bitterly. When he asked the cause of her grief she told him, and with a laugh he consented to be bored for once, and took her to the concert.
She had not been into a concert-room since her father's last pianoforte recital. She trembled as they took their places, fought back her tears and drew in the atmosphere in deep-drawn draughts.
"You are snorting like a horse when he smells oats," the colonel said jocularly.
"Haven't you noticed that it always smells the same in concert-rooms?" she asked in joyous excitement. "It was just like this in ours at home."
He couldn't remember what the concert-hall atmosphere was like, nor could he remember anything about the Symphony in C Minor.
"It's all rot," he said.
The part of the programme that preceded the Symphony was of no interest to her. She only wanted to listen to the trumpet-blast of fate--the call that she had heard first as she stood on the threshold of womanhood, and had been shaken to the foundations of her soul by a feeling of presentiment. And it came--came and thundered at every heart, and set trembling the knees of all those who were bound up together as fellow-combatants in the struggle against the mighty strokes of fate, and set them writhing as impotently as worms under the spell of a great power and a common fear.
Her husband hummed to himself, half-amused, "Ti-ti-ti-tum." That was all it meant to him: "Ti-ti-ti-tum."
As she turned to rebuke him softly into being quiet, she observed a tuft of yellowish-grey hair sprouting out of the cavity of his ear. She had never noticed it before, and it revolted her.
"What can you expect, when he has hair growing out of his ears?" she thought, as if this physical defect accounted for his lack of an ear for music. A profound feeling of dejection came over her. Never again would she be able to rejoice in the beautiful; never again stretch out her arms in worship of great heroic deeds; never again slack her thirst for higher and purer things at the fountains of inspiration.
The man who hummed "Ti-ti-ti-tum" and had hair growing out of his ears would be a barrier for evermore between her and all lofty living. The soothing sound of the violins did not console, the melancholy self-surrender of the Andante awoke no responsive echoes within her, the victorious jubilation of the Finale brought her no victory.
She left the hall with her yawning husband, humiliated, miserable, and disgusted with herself. But her joy in life was of too robust a growth, her faith in the sunny side of human nature too unwavering, for such moods of depression to be of long duration. Soon after the concert something happened, which gave her hopes new wings and raised her again to giddy heights.
Without having made any definite plans, it had seemed to be an understood thing that they were to stay in Dresden, or some other large town, till May, when they would proceed to Lischnitz, where, in the absence of the master of the castle, the often talked of Fräulein von Schwertfeger held the reins of management. One evening, however, the colonel, who was eternally vacillating between confidence in and distrust of his girl-wife, was seized with a panic of doubt, and in order to lay bare the innermost secrets of her soul he began to cross-examine her on her previous love affairs.
Lilly, as usual, unsuspecting, related glibly first the story of Fritz Redlich, because he was the more important love, and, secondly, that of the poor consumptive assistant master.
Her husband, in spite of his jealous misgivings, had retained his clearness of judgment sufficiently to appreciate the guilelessness of Lilly's conscience, and he now threw his suspicions to the wind with a laugh that he generally reserved for his broadest jokes.
Lilly, having begun, was anxious to play further on her husband's emotions, so she went on to describe the wonderful lectures on the history of art, and how the poor invalid lecturer had infected her with his own burning yearnings to see Italy.
Her cheeks flamed, her eyes swam under her heavily drooping lids, as she went on giving voice to her dreams and drawing word-pictures, almost forgetful that she had a listener.
Suddenly he asked, "Shall we go there?"
She couldn't answer. The very proposal seemed too much bliss. Then he began to think it over seriously. A man might just as well get into the train and be landed at Milan or Verona as mope in one place and be worried to death by stupid fools dogging your footsteps. Lilly flung her arms round his neck, then threw herself at his feet. This was indeed too much happiness.
Her life now became an alternate dream of ecstasy and a fever of anxiety, for something might always happen to prevent their going. First, they had to wait for the knickerbocker suit, which he ordered at a tailor's as the correct get-up for travelling, and then there were a dozen other delays. The truth may have been that he was pondering whether he could command enough youthful agility to keep pace with her excessive élan and capacity for enjoyment.
Then a certain incident hurried on their departure. For several days they had been shadowed by a fair-haired, bull-necked young man, six feet in height, who with stubborn pertinacity tried to attract Lilly's attention. Judging by his appearance he was probably an Anglo-Saxon tourist. There was in his manner a lofty nonchalance which rendered him absolutely indifferent to the threatening darts of the colonel's eyes.
For the first time Lilly saw her husband plunged in deep thought. He paced the room, muttering to himself repeatedly, "I shall have to box his ears"; or, "I must find a second."
The next day, when this irrepressible person followed them at a few yards' distance across the Schlossplatz, the colonel wheeled round and confronted him.
The fair giant measured him from top to toe without removing his short pipe from between his lips.
"I may look at anyone I choose to," he said in broken German, "and I may go anywhere I choose to."
He made a gesture as if he meant to turn up his coat-sleeves and struck an extremely pugilistic attitude, which discouraged all idea of inflicting on him a chivalrous correction.
The colonel, with a final attempt to bring the matter to an honourable issue, handed him his visiting-card, which the stranger put in his pocket with a friendly "Thank you, sir," without evidently the least notion of what this formality portended. A little crowd began to collect, and there was nothing left for the colonel but to turn his back on him.
The result of this passage of arms was, that in future the Englishman considered it his right to bestow on Lilly and her husband a greeting when they met. And the colonel, who tried unsuccessfully to stifle his consciousness of having made himself ridiculous in a torrent of oaths, resolved to leave Dresden on the spot.
In Munich, where they stopped a few days, it being the middle of April, to pay their respects at the Hofbräuhaus, nothing happened of a ruffling nature. But the colonel had become nervous. He cast furious and intimidating glances at the most harmless admirers, and began to heap reproaches on Lilly's head. It seemed as if everyone at a first glance, he said, could divine she was not a lady, otherwise she would not attract so much vulgar notice. At another time Lilly would have been bitterly grieved, but now she was unmoved. She only smiled absently, for her spirit was far away, and already she fancied that she breathed the air of the promised land, on whose threshold she believed she was standing. One night more in the train, a short day in Bozen, and then the magic gates would swing back. Nothing now could prevent the fulfilment of bliss.
They were in a compartment of the express, which leaves Munich late in the evening and crosses the Brenner Pass in the gloom of early morning. Lilly and her husband sat in the corner seats by the windows. Not far from them, on the corridor side, a young man had taken his place with a pleasant smile, and then, without heeding his fellow-travellers, had soon become deep in a book that appeared to be written in Italian. Probably he was Italian too, an ambassador from that earthly paradise come to bid her welcome. Her interest in him was thus instantly arrested. From under her lowered lids, apparently asleep, she studied him. His severely cut even features were of a peculiar milky ivory colour. There was not a line or wrinkle in his clear skin, which looked as smooth as enamel. A small, dark, slightly curled moustache adorned his upper lip. The crisp hair on his temples was so closely cropped that the skin underneath gleamed through. She wanted to see what his eyes were like, but these were kept obstinately bent on his book, though he seemed to be only skimming the pages.
What excited her admiring wonder about him most was the finished grace of his movements. It was almost as if a young woman were disguised in that black and white check suit, which charmed her eye with its distingué cut. His throat disclosed a peep of a violet and dark-red striped silk shirt, under the soft collar of which a green tie was carelessly knotted.
All this was not in the least bizarre in effect, but harmonised perfectly. The costume apparently had been chosen with care and taste, and, together with his total disregard of herself, it exercised a fascination on Lilly. She could almost believe that this young stranger, by his dress, bearing, and especially by his disregard of her presence, was compelling her notice.
Absurd as it was, she felt quite nervous. When they reached the Austrian frontier and the custom-house officials entered the carriage, he said a few foreign words in a low tone, which the officials evidently understood, for they turned away from him with low bows.
At the same moment he raised his eyes and let them wander round the carriage, and while the colonel was opening his bag, they rested for a second on her. What curious eyes they were! A dark, diamond-like radiance shot from them, yet they caressed, yes, caressed with a wicked confident tenderness, full of impatient questions--questions that made you blush.
The next minute it was as if nothing had happened. He bent over his book as before, and appeared not to have seen her.
Her husband gave her a look of watchful cunning as if he had discovered something in her face for which he had long been searching. Then, when the train went on again, he settled himself to sleep. For greater comfort he moved to the unoccupied seat next to the corridor. The stranger, wishing to avoid being opposite him, involuntarily shifted his position more towards the middle, so that the distance between himself and Lilly was appreciably diminished. A little more, and he would have been sitting directly opposite her.
Had Lilly been on her guard she would have paid more attention to her husband's sleep. But all her senses were centred on a desire to elude the stranger, whose proximity pricked her with a thousand needles.
She drew far back into her corner and looked intermittently out of the window, on the dark background of which the interior of the carriage was reflected as in a mirror. In this way she could contemplate him in peace, untroubled by a fear of his looking up and catching her. The light from the lamp in the ceiling sharply illumined his smooth, soft cheeks, with their polished surface merging into blue shadows on the temples. Such cheeks were surely made to be stroked and pressed against yours; to pass your hand over them would be a joy. And how long his eyelashes were--longer than her own--their shadow cast dark semi-circles as far down as his finely chiselled nostrils.
Suddenly he raised his eyes again and looked at her. There it was again, that dark caressing glance--cold, and yet how seductive!
She shrank back frightened, and was more frightened still at the thought that he might have seen her shrinking away from him.
He gave a scarcely perceptible smile, and went on again with his book; and still she continued to weave anxious and flattering thoughts around him--thoughts that were criminal in themselves, which descended on her like an avalanche that she hadn't the power to ward off. And then, all at once, with an icy chill at her heart, she felt a soft, tender pressure on her left foot, which she must by accident have thrust towards the centre of the gangway, for a moment before it had been resting on her right foot, which was still pressed close to the door of the compartment.
What was to be done? An indignant "I beg your pardon," an angry rising from her seat, would have awakened the colonel, and given cause for fresh suspicion and perhaps a duel. So she slowly, with extreme caution, withdrew her foot from under his and pressed it against the cushions, to be quite sure that she had rescued it. But she felt that the moment of hesitation had made her a participator in the crime, and this conviction oppressed and weighed on her more than her train of sinful thoughts had a few minutes before tormented her.
In her own eyes she appeared dishonoured, polluted, a prey to any and every licentious man who crossed her path. But why blame him? Was not his impertinently expressed desire merely the fulfilment of her own impure wishes? The reflection half suffocated her. She wanted to spring up, cry aloud, and ask to be forgiven. The stranger, however, went on reading calmly, as if nothing at all had occurred.
There was a glimmer of grey dawn when Lilly started up out of a half-waking doze. She saw a waterfall tossing its white foam beneath her; beyond towered huge moss-crowned rocks against the sky. It was a picture she had dreamed of, but never seen, appealing and impressive in its rugged grandeur and massive strength. All that had passed before she fell asleep seemed now a grotesque phantasmagoria devoid of reality. She glanced round the carriage nervously, and saw the stranger stretched out at full length, repulsive in sleep, his cheeks inflated and puffy as his breath came and went in heavy gasps. He looked to her now pasty and effeminate, and she loathed him.
She turned away in disgust and caught her husband's eyes wide open, fixed on her in severe reproof. She started guiltily.
"Can't you sleep any longer?" she asked, with a forced smile.
"I have not slept at all," he answered.
There was something in his voice that set her trembling anew. It accused and condemned at the same time. And how angrily he looked at her!
The journey was continued in silence, and she paid no further heed to the stranger.
After taking rooms at Bozen, the colonel came to Lilly and said: "Look here, my dear girl, this can't go on. I am tired of the unpleasantness to which I am subjected day after day. How far your appearance and behaviour or my age are accountable, I cannot say. We will not discuss the point. I have no charge of glaring misconduct and bad taste to bring against you. One does not expect the manners of a grande dame from anyone who a few months ago was serving behind a counter. It requires time to instruct you in such, and I can with confidence hand over your further education to our excellent Fräulein von Schwertfeger. So, if you please, we will change our plans and return to Germany by the midday train. On the evening of the day after to-morrow, perhaps earlier, we shall reach my estate."
Lily was too crushed and miserable to make any objection. And the land of promise, the goal of her dreams, sank beneath the waves.