CHAPTER XVIII
It was begun in laughter--and with laughter it continued. The next morning when Lilly awoke the objects round her--the lamp, the washstand, the sentimental pictures on the wall--seemed to have taken on a different aspect, and the sun shone in at the windows with redoubled brilliance.
In her night clothes she stood before the glass and smiled again at the reflection she saw there; it was the face of a gamin, with eyes roguish and sparkling, and a tipped-up saucy nose.
At breakfast she scintillated with small witticisms, chased the stiff-kneed colonel round the table, and cherished sentiments of glowing gratitude towards Fräulein von Schwertfeger. She on her side smiled eloquently to herself, and when the colonel had retired, chucked Lilly under the chin, and said, "What a child you are!"
She made no allusion to the confession that had escaped Lilly the night before. It almost seemed that it had not been heard.
Lilly ran up to her balcony, pushed apart the creepers, and gave him a nod to come in as he walked up and down uncertainly between the castle and the bailiff's office. He understood her signal, bowed low, and disappeared in the direction of the terrace steps.
What passed between him and Fräulein von Schwertfeger remained a secret. There was no finding out whether she interrogated him on his previous relations with the young baroness. But that the result of the interview as a whole was successful there could be no question. Instead of the colonel giving him his congé, the colonel himself brought him in to supper that evening. He wore his best coat, white waistcoat, his most respectful expression, and looked as if he was going to sink into his collar.
"A little bird tells me," said the colonel to Lilly, "that Herr von Prell is rather dull and lonely over there sometimes. So, if you have no objection, we will ask him in oftener than we have done."
She hadn't the very least objection, only the thought that Käte might appear any moment in the doorway prevented her from speaking.
Instead of Käte another maid handed old Ferdinand the plates and dishes. Lilly's eyes turned inquiringly to Fräulein von Schwertfeger, who said, in an undertone so that the men should not hear, "The poor girl, owing to her illness, has gone home, and probably will not come back."
Lilly squeezed her hand under the table from sheer relief. She had a dim notion that Käte had been sent away to spare her unpleasantness.
The other two were deep in cavalry talk, much interlarded by technical terms and dry names.
Herr von Prell leaned towards his old superior officer, blinking his lids with reverential and eager attention. The colonel laid down the law like a wrathful deity, spoke in gruff, fierce tones, and shot about him dagger-like glances, as if there were enemies all round to mow down, which of course was mere professional vainglory.
Lilly listened, and would have liked to join in. But apparently both men had forgotten her existence, and she became depressed and jealous without being exactly sure which of them she was most angry with.
When Prell rose to take his leave, the colonel laid his hand on his shoulder, and asked:
"Why haven't we done this before, my boy?" And the look he gave Lilly seemed to add, "There has really been no necessity for so much caution." After this, Prell's invitations to supper became more frequent as the September days grew chillier, and the colonel's gout made his visits to the town rarer. Groaning and swearing he mounted his horse with difficulty, but he would not listen to Lilly's entreaties to him to give up the early morning ride.
"I might ride round the place instead of you," she said, "if you weren't so ridiculously nervous about my having an accident."
The colonel and Anna exchanged glances.
"It certainly is a disgrace," he remarked, "that the girl hasn't learnt yet to sit on a horse. She ought to be taught. What do you say, Anna? Can we trust that scamp Prell to give her riding lessons?"
Lilly's face beamed with delight.
Fräulein von Schwertfeger's lids were lowered meditatively. After a few moments' silence she raised them, and said very slowly and emphatically:
"If the harum-scarum young man brought our pet home one day with a broken arm or leg, what should we do? I think the proposal, at any rate, needs to be further considered."
Lilly forbore from expressing her longing, and did not contradict Anna, who, however, must have divined her thoughts, for when they were alone together she suddenly said, taking Lilly's face between her hands:
"Dismiss the idea from your mind, darling. Take my word for it, it will be best."
It was about this time that Lilly, who loved to explore the spacious and only partly inhabited old castle, made a remarkable discovery that excited her curiosity not a little. In one of the guest chambers on the third floor, which was hardly ever used, she was rummaging one day in the drawers of a bureau when she came across a transparent garment of silver net, fringed with spangles and fastened at the shoulder by curious barbaric clasps. It resembled the one in which, in the Dresden days, she had danced at bedtime, and which now lay at the bottom of her wardrobe enjoying undisturbed repose. She had never shown it to Fräulein von Schwertfeger, being somewhat ashamed of it. But this duplicate she folded up and took downstairs to her friend, for she was anxious to learn its history.
Fräulein von Schwertfeger looked up from her account-books abstractedly till she saw the glitter of spangles in the sun, and then a shudder convulsed her whole frame, her eyes became distended, and she seemed as paralysed with horror as if she had seen a ghost.
"What's the matter? What's the matter?" laughed Lilly.
"I thought I had thrown away all the rubbish," she said, and gave herself a little shake.
She snatched the flimsy thing out of Lilly's hands, rolled it in a sheet of paper, and took it to the kitchen. Lilly, who followed, saw a thin cloud of smoke rise from the hearth, carrying with it a whirl of charred tinsel rags. Old Grete stood by, glancing first at Anna and then at Lilly in perturbed surprise.
She appeared to know of what transactions the discovery was evidence, but when asked by Lilly to explain she held her tongue.
"I was not much here, but away in the town," she excused herself, "when the colonel was there with the regiment, you know. Ask the Fräulein; she will tell you."
The Fräulein would not tell. With grimly compressed lips and vacant gaze she avoided the subject, and for three days or more scarcely answered when Lilly spoke to her.
Then suddenly, as they sat at supper, without any apparent cause, her whole manner changed. She became facetious and talkative, and sympathetic towards her employer, suggesting remedies for his gout and wringing from him a promise to give up the injurious morning ride.
"I have been thinking over Lilly's riding lessons," she went on. "I really don't think there can be any danger after all in entrusting her to the boy, if one of us is present to see that all is right--anyhow at the start."
Lilly gave a sigh of joy, but neither by her eyes nor facial expression did she betray the smallest sign of pleasure, so severely in the meantime had she learned to school herself.
The next morning the lesson began.
Walter von Prell appeared in riding get-up. His body was bent forward as much as to say, "I await orders," and his whole bearing bespoke submissive respect as he stood first on one foot, then on the other.
A quiet grey mare, with narrow flanks and somewhat overstrained forelegs, but a smart, well-groomed little mount, had been chosen for the first ride. Her instructor explained to her the principle on which bridle and bit were constructed, showed her how the girths were buckled, how the snaffle and curb-reins were to be held, and how to prevent the curb throttling the horse.
Then came learning to mount. When Lilly planted her foot in his joined hands she felt a warm thrill creep up her spine to the back of her neck, as if this contact were a sign of the secret understanding between them.
He counted "One, two, three," and, presto! there she was in the saddle.
The colonel clapped and applauded, and Walter blushed to the roots of his fair hair with delight.
Henceforth he had the game in his hands.
"Who would have thought that jackanapes had so much of the pedagogue in him?" the colonel remarked to Fräulein von Schwertfeger, who nodded silently and drew a deep breath as if something weighed on her mind.
When Lilly dismounted she had learnt how to draw in the reins and slacken them, and to turn to right and left. She had even got as far as a trot round the yard. The colonel said good-humouredly she promised to be the most dashing horsewoman in the army.
One lesson followed another. Either the colonel or Anna was always present, so there was little opportunity for a confidential conversation. Walter did not drop his stiff and obsequious manner, though Lilly longed for a flash of the old devilry that she alone understood.
Then came a day when it happened that both sentinels were absent from duty. The colonel was busy giving directions for the making of a covered riding-way where his gouty limbs would not be exposed to chills, and Fräulein von Schwertfeger was nowhere to be found.
Lilly's heart beat fast as she and her merry friend met, and she gave him her hand with a smile of suppressed triumph. He responded with a sly wink in the direction of the terrace, where her duenna was wont to stand.
"She's nowhere to be seen," whispered Lilly.
"What are we to do, then," he said, wringing his hands in mock lamentation, "without the protecting eye of the illustrious Fräulein? How are we to mount?"
The September sky was very blue; a crisp breeze, heavy with the perfume of damp freshly turned sods, blew across the courtyard. He pointed with his whip to the open gate. She laughed and nodded assent. The next moment she cantered beside him along the grassy road, whither no Argus eye could follow them, inwardly rejoicing and exultantly scenting all sorts of mad pranks. But he seemed unwilling to make the most of their unexpected freedom. He kept his eyes fixed in front of him; every now and then he caught at her rein, altered her stirrups or corrected her seat in the saddle. He was the riding-master and nothing more.
"What's Tommy doing?" she asked, finding things dull.
"Tommy sends his love," he answered with his gaze still fastened on the road, "and wishes to say that to-day we had better attend to the horses, for if anything happens we shall not be allowed out again."
"My love to Tommy," she retorted, "and tell him he's a little goose."
"I'll not forget," he said, and bowed over the saddle.
They came to a coppice of larch-trees where the ground was slightly boggy and required careful crossing. But she saw nothing but the silver sheen of the trunks, and the golden mist made by the delicate leaves dancing in the breeze and nearly brushing her cheek.
"Oh, look, how lovely!" she said with a sigh of satisfaction.
Then a demon within her prompted her to an act of madness. She touched the mare with her whip and started off on a wild gallop, regardless of all the rules and regulations laid down by her riding-master.
In a few seconds he came up with her, seized her bridle, and with a dexterous jerk brought both horses to a standstill.
Their eyes flashed into each other. She felt as if she must throw herself on to his saddle to be nearer him at any cost.
"What do you mean by that, dear little comrade?" he roared.
"And what do you mean by calling me 'dear little comrade'?" she retorted.
Then they turned their horses and walked them slowly and in silence homewards.
CHAPTER XIX
For a long time the threshing-machine had been in tune for its autumn song. Far beyond the courtyard, penetrating every wall and hedge, its melancholy hum was now heard. There was no suggestion in it of golden harvest blessings and consolidated sunshine. Like an Æolian harp it moaned and howled from morn to eve in the storm-tossed branches. Sometimes it seemed to shriek as if the sheaves of grain it tore and tortured had found a voice wherewith to express their agony.
Once more Lilly's soul was so full of dreamy bliss that she heard in this music nothing but a seductive yearning. It impregnated her morning slumber, and often she lay with closed eyes half awake so as to listen the better to the monotonous singsong. And all the time he was in her thoughts. What she had always wanted was now hers--a playmate, a comrade; someone to rejoice and grumble with; someone who confessed all his sins to her, the very blackest, and then received a laughing absolution. Then whatever he did, he himself was not guilty; it was the youth in him that sinned, the same sweet, wicked youth that charged her own soul with melancholy and filled her body with thrills, which dominated them both like a tormenting deity, smiling on one and frowning on the other.
Yes, he must be saved; saved from his own folly, from that fatal cynicism of his which threatened to enmesh him in a network of vulgar intrigues. There was no silencing the rumours of the sort of life he was leading. She had only to set foot in the servants' quarters to hear the stream of unsavoury gossip of which he was the subject. All that must be ended. Her first interference was to be but the beginning of the great mission she had to perform in his life. She would be his good genius, standing in his path with raised hands to ward off all horrid temptations, so that he should become as pure and devoid of evil desires as herself.
So she dreamed to the accompaniment of the threshing-machine's melody.
The first ride outside the castle gates, though taken without leave, was praised and approved; permission was given for others to follow. But Lilly hesitated. She would like to be sure of her cantering powers, she said, before venturing on unknown ground. The truth was, she was dying for another such hour, and only lacked the courage to hurry it on.
The very next morning he had been the stern unbending riding-master again, treating her with extravagant courtesy. She had thought he would be certain to whisper tenderly, "little comrade," or some other familiar greeting--he could have found the opportunity if he had liked--but nothing of the sort came to pass either this time or the next.
They had no thought indeed of riding beyond the courtyard for several lessons after, till one day the colonel himself issued the command.
"Enough of this ambling about round the yard. Go out and let the wind of the fields blow through you," he said.
"As the colonel wishes," replied Walter, with his hand raised to his cap in salute, and he turned her horse with his own towards the open gates.
Her heart stood still, and she forgot to send back a farewell greeting over her shoulder, so occupied was she with the contemplation of coming delights.
In a minute they were riding in the same direction as they had followed ten days ago, when the great event had taken place. The weeping willows dripped with dew, and at the slightest movement showered down drops upon her. Lilly laughed and shook them off. Instead of joining in the sport, he tried to make her keep to the middle of the road.
"But I love getting wet," she protested.
"Very well, if the gracious baroness pleases," he answered with his stupid exaggerated formality.
They rode on in silence. When they came to the place where ten days before the great event had happened to which all his conduct to-day gave the lie, she dared to shoot a reminiscent side glance at him. But he made no response, and appeared not to see. His cap pulled down over the back of his head as far as his neck, his thin smooth face sprinkled with dewdrops, his boyish figure all muscle and sinews, he sat his horse as if he and the animal were one.
"How fond I am of him, in spite of everything, dear little fellow!" she thought, and pictured what her desolation would be if one day he were suddenly to vanish from the scene. And then she realised all at once that her equable gaiety of soul, the feeling of living her life to the full, were all due to his nearness to her day after day.
They rode along even ground steadily. The chain of brown ridges on the far side of the river came nearer, and he seemed to be steering for these; but this did not serve her purpose, for the hour of serious converse had sounded. To-day or never! And with a laborious effort of thought she began to calculate all the things she had to say to him. But she could not arrange them methodically in her mind, especially as her attention was half taken up by her horse. In the saddle she was too completely at his mercy, so plucking up courage she proposed that they should dismount. While he paused to consider she sprang to the ground, and he had to be quick to catch the mare's snaffle.
He scolded her a little, but finally had to do as she wished. They proceeded on foot, and he led the horses.
The road lay through a marshy declivity where there was a scanty growth of alders and oaks. Yellow marigold buds starred the damp ground and burr reed spread out its prickly fruit on distorted branches. Red-dock leaves swayed on their withered stalks, and sedgy grass curled itself up in anticipation of autumn frosts. A mountain ash felled by a recent storm bridged the ditch at the side of the road. Its scarlet berries, which should have been dead, still glowed like fire, as if deriving life from some mysterious source of their own.
"I should like to sit down here," she said.
He bowed acquiescence.
"But you must sit down too."
"I must hold the horses, gracious baroness."
"You can tie them to a tree."
He reflected a moment. "So I can," he said, and knotted the reins to the fallen trunk.
Then when he came to sit beside her she shifted her position more towards the middle to make room. Her feet hung in the air over the ditch-water. He pushed himself after her along the tree, hand over hand.
"That's far enough," she said; for she did not want him too close.
"Very well, gracious baroness," he answered, and swung his legs.
The formality of his address caused her fresh annoyance.
"Don't you think when we are alone together you might drop titles?" she asked, looking him straight in the eyes.
"I might ... but I mustn't."
"But how about the other day?"
"Oh, the other day was my birthday," he answered, "and as I wanted a pretty little present I gave myself that!"
"And to-day is my birthday," she jested. "What present am I to be given?"
"Anything the gracious baroness likes."
"Then I like you to call me 'Comrade.'"
"Always, or just once in a way?"
"Always."
"Shall I call you comrade, or be comrade?"
"Be comrade; be--be comrade. That's the chief thing!" she cried.
"A bargain," he said, and cautiously crept a little nearer along the wobbling trunk to give her his right hand.
"A bargain," she said, and shook hands.
"But there are other items to be settled in connection with this," he said, clearing his throat.
"What are they?"
"Well, for one thing, does a comradeship mean Christian names?"
"Certainly not," Lilly replied, feeling that she was making a great sacrifice.
He accepted the condition as final, and said submissively, "Just as you like, comrade."
Now was her chance to speak out. She drew a deep breath and said:
"You know I want to talk seriously to you, Herr von Prell."
"Ugh!" he ejaculated, prepared for a bad quarter of an hour, as he gnawed his gloved thumbs.
Lilly plunged off at a tangent. She would not say anything about his last misdemeanour, for bad as it was, it was all over, and what was forgiven ought also to be forgotten. But if he imagined that the loose life he had been leading was a secret in the castle household, he was very much mistaken. It was an open scandal, and even the laundry and scullery-maids sniggered about it; but how could he expect anything else after ... Here she enumerated the sum total of his misdoings, as she had gleaned them from remarks the servants had let fall.
She was ashamed to retail them. This was not what she had intended to say at all.... She had wanted to speak grandly of the high purpose of human existence, the nobility of self-renunciation, the glory of pure and lofty ideals, of the spiritual tie uniting the elect on earth, and so on. But inspiration failed her when she saw him sitting there with bent shoulders and turning his big toes inwards so that under the soft leather of his riding-boots they looked like excrescences, and she could think of nothing better.
He did not interrupt her. Even when she had done he was silent, absorbed in watching an insect wriggling in circles on the surface of the water.
"Have you no answer," she asked, "after all the disgraceful things I have accused you of?"
"What should I answer, most learned judge?" he retorted. "My one claim to distinction is that I am absolutely devoid of moral sense. Do you want me to lose it?"
"If you are so weak and have no reliance on yourself," she exclaimed in growing zeal, "let me be your mainstay and support. Lean on me, your friend, adviser, your----"
"Foster-father," he suggested, and stirred the slime in the ditch with his whip.
She awakened to the fact that what she had said had not made the least impression; he was laughing at her all the time.
"Get up and let me pass," she said. "Why should I try to do my best for someone who is not worth it?"
He made no sign of moving from his place.
"Now, look here, comrade," he said, pointing down at the black mirror of ditch-water. "There goes a water-spider with its legs in the air and its head downwards. If you were to ask it why it swims like that, it would say because it knows no other way. That's its nature. Well, do you see, it's my nature. What's to be done? You can't alter it."
"Anyone can restrain his evil passions," she exclaimed, flaring up in indignation. "Anyone can, if he likes, keep his eyes fixed on a high ideal and struggle to attain it--can listen to a friend when she would help, and say to him----"
"Well, what would the friend say?" he asked ingratiatingly, swinging himself nearer.
She did not answer. She had put her hands before her face and was crying--crying till her sobs convulsed her body.
"For God's sake, sit still!" he exclaimed, circling his arms towards her, for on the wobbling trunk of the mountain ash she might at any moment lose her balance. "Child, dear little comrade, sit still."
She quivered all over. She heard nothing but the sweet, caressing, criminal "dear little comrade," which her soul had been yearning to hear.
And then he promised her to turn over a new leaf. He would not flirt any more. He would give up tippling with the bailiffs; he would read stiff agricultural literature; he would do anything--oh, what wouldn't he do?--if she would only stop crying.
"Give me your word of honour?" she asked, raising her wet, reddened eyes to his.
He gave it without hesitation.
Comforted and grateful, she smiled at him.
"You'll never repent it," she said. "I'll stand by you. I'll be a true friend, and do all I can for you."
"All that the two watch-dogs permit," he added.
To-day she didn't mind his saying "two watch-dogs." She shrugged her shoulders and said, "Yes, of course, what they permit."
Then they both laughed so heartily that they narrowly escaped falling into the ditch, after all.
CHAPTER XX
Then came a delightful time in which she played hide-and-seek with her emotions: drank long draughts from the never-exhausted fount of pleasures anticipated and rehearsed, fulfilled and enjoyed, which left behind them a delightful after-taste and a glow of memories. Every day brought new happiness and a boundless wealth of experience.
Often when Lilly opened the shutters and the rosy September dawn greeted her, she felt as if the Creator had spread a mantle spun out of golden sunbeams across the sky on purpose to wrap them in cosy seclusion, so that the whole of the world beneath vanished, leaving them alone, clinging to one another intoxicated with laughter and light.
She felt that she grew lovelier from day to day, that there was a sort of radiance surrounding her that made everyone she met gaze at her with admiring wonder, and with a little sadness too, as one looks at a flower unfolding too proudly, too gloriously, for its miracle of blossom to endure.
The two watch-dogs were not blind to the change in her.
The colonel, who was full of craft and guile, failed to diagnose in this case the symptoms. His suspicions would have been aroused directly if she had been melancholy and absentminded, had hung about him nervously, in alternate moods of fervid affection and cold estrangement. Then he would have subjected her to a severe espionage. But her yielding tenderness and happy serenity was a riddle to which he could find no solution; so he gave it up, and tolerated with paternal equanimity his young wife's rollicking gaiety and the embraces she lavished on him to give vent to the ecstasy within her.
Anna von Schwertfeger was also apparently well satisfied with Lilly's happy state of mind and radiant spirits. She seemed as little as the colonel to think it suspicious, or to associate it with the influence of a third person, otherwise she would scarcely have countenanced so willingly the frequent meetings of the two young people.
Lilly now did her best to return the worthy Anna's warm affection, the display of which at first had worried her and left her cold. Fräulein von Schwertfeger often drew her in the evening into her own private room, where she sat with her account-books. It was quite an old-maids' paradise, with its canaries in cages, plants and flower-pots, and faded photographs of family groups and friends. It was full of old bits of china and gilded knick-knacks, such as one meets in ancient and impoverished houses as relics of former grandeur. Or she would come at an incredibly late hour stealing into Lilly's bedroom, seat herself on the bed, and not move till the wheels of the colonel's returning carriage were heard on the gravel. Then there would be discussions on such profound topics as life and death, the loneliness of old age, and the exuberance of youth, which caused grief and trouble when indulged in to excess. She asked no questions, she gave no warnings, yet the astonishing irrelevance with which she jumped from one subject to another, often contradicting flatly her own opinions, indicated that her thoughts were really far, far away.
While her voice droned on monotonously, Lilly sometimes looked up and caught her eyes fastened on her with a expression of melancholy compassion that she was at a loss to understand. Then she was kissed and stroked with such heartfelt, pitying tenderness that she felt touched, and when left alone in the dark began to be afraid of something, as if an avenging fate crouched at the foot of her bed ready to spring on her and devour her.
What misfortune could possibly fall upon her? Was she not securer and more sheltered than she had ever been? Whom did she deceive? What was her offence? And even if her innocent relations with Walter should come to light, would she merit any severer punishment than a lecture such as children get when they have been careless?
These reflections consoled her even before the after-taste of those nocturnal visitations had been lost in blissful dreams.
September wore to a close. Nearly every day brought a ride or an apparently chance meeting at twilight in a deserted part of the park. They would discern each other from afar lingering at some appointed rendezvous, and if a previous arrangement for meeting were frustrated, they resorted to the pea-shooter.
By means of this accommodating instrument, which he had brought back one day from the town--and in a corner of her balcony passed as a superfluous curtain-rod--she was able to blow her messages through the vine tendrils straight in at his open window. Sometimes it was a simple "Good-morning, comrade," at others an appointment to meet, or a harmless joke born on the spur of the moment's gaiety.
On the evenings that the colonel was at home he was usually invited to join them. Then, of course, he assumed his most correct and formal manner, though there was often opportunity for a little by-play between them, so skilfully managed that the watch-dogs remained quite unsuspicious.
Nevertheless, Lilly had a rival on these occasions, which she feared and hated, because it deprived her of the "comrade's" attention for hours. Its very mention was enough to reduce Lilly to a mere cipher. This rival was the Regiment. It was the time of the autumn manœuvres, and both men followed with feverish interest the tactical movements of their old division as reported in the newspapers.
One evening they despatched a joint picture-postcard congratulating the Regiment, and a day or two later the compliment was returned, a card arriving through the post scribbled over with numerous signatures, which it was the work of the world to make out. Two or three were abandoned as hopeless, till at last Walter hit on a solution. They belonged to three outside lieutenants who had joined the regiment for the manœuvres, and had signed their names with the other officers--von Holten, Dehnicke, von Berg. They made no impression on Lilly, except that "Dehnicke" struck her as sounding a little bourgeois and discordant amongst the music of the old patrician "vons."
This greeting from his active past seemed to affect the colonel unpleasantly. He became moody and cantankerous, and Lilly felt his eye upon her now and then full of a grim savage reproach that made her jump with terror. Henceforth his expeditions to the neighbouring garrison town became more frequent than ever, and when an invitation to join a shooting party arrived, he didn't refuse, in spite of his gout.
The first Sunday in October came. The colonel started off early to visit a neighbour, and was not expected to return till late at night.
A soft grey mist, shot with violet and gold, as a promise of sunshine later, enveloped the world, when Lilly, arm-in-arm with Fräulein von Schwertfeger, came out of church, almost groaning--she had been so bored.
The sunflowers in the labourers' cottage gardens were already drooping their scorched heads, and the asters showed signs of having suffered from the first severe nip of frost. Yet the air was balmy and sweet-scented as spring, and larks made a babel in the fields.
"To-day, to-day!" thought Lilly, and stretched herself in a vague longing for private talk and jubilant pranks.
It seemed as if her thoughts had been heard, for Anna von Schwertfeger asked suddenly, "What is the matter with you to-day?"
"I hardly know myself," Lilly answered, blushing. "I just feel as if to-day were a festival."
Anna looked at her sideways, then, clearly emphasising every word, she said, "I really might make a festival of it, and visit a friend in the town. But the colonel being away, I don't know whether ..."
Lilly started so violently that for a moment she could not recover her breath. Then she pulled herself together tactfully, and urged her companion to go. She had not had a day off all the summer. She lived like a prisoner, and must sorely need a holiday.
Anna nodded meditatively, and the fixed glassy stare that Lilly did not like came into her eyes.
At the midday meal, which the two ladies took alone to-day, she was still undecided, but directly it was over she ordered the carriage and drove off without a word. Lilly, who, instead of resting, had been watching from the upstairs landing, now flew to the pea-shooter. The dense foliage of the Virginian creeper still so completely shut her in that he could not catch a glimpse of her. But she saw him as he sat at the open window frowning over his book.
"My good influence!" she thought triumphantly; and it seemed almost a pity to decoy him away from his improving occupation.
The steward and book-keeper were pacing up and down, not far from the house, smoking their Sunday afternoon cigar; so it was necessary to be more cautious than usual.
The paper pellet that conveyed her message hit him on the forehead and rebounded on to the grass outside. So well had he himself in hand that he did not so much as raise his eyes to show he understood, but a few minutes later he let his book fall out of the window, as if by accident, and rose indifferently to pick it up.
Half an hour afterwards they met behind the carp-pond. He had on a new black-and-white check suit similar to the fateful one worn by the foreigner that night in the railway carriage.
"You are much too fine for me to-day," joked Lilly. "I would rather not be seen with you."
"That would be an awful shame," he remarked, "for I ordered these things on purpose for this day's outing."
"Why?"
"Because it's to be our festival."
"What has put that into your head?" stammered Lilly, shocked to think of the communion of ideas it testified to.
"A fellow has his presentiments," he replied, smiling significantly.
Simultaneously they turned their footsteps to the secluded beech-wood, whither they had wandered in the deepening dusk on the evening they had renewed their friendship.
"Where's Tommy?" she asked, thinking of the third member of their alliance.
"He's biting a hole in the boards," was the answer, "and making himself a kennel to his own mind. He roosts in it like a screech-owl. I shouldn't advise you to put the finger you wear your rings on into it; you'd lose the rings and possibly the finger too."
"Why do you let him get so wild?" she asked reproachfully.
"Why do I let myself get so wild?" he asked in turn.
"Oh, you--you know you are becoming quite tame and gentle," she replied, regarding him affectionately because it was all her doing.
"You really think so?" he asked; and his aspect assumed the masterfulness of his lieutenant days.
"Of course I do. Didn't you give me your word of honour?" she boasted.
"Rot!"
Still Lilly gloried in the success of her work of salvation.
"You may underrate my influence if you like," she replied, "but I can assure you everyone else notices the change in you. Herr Leichtweg says you are always punctual now; and then you borrowed that great agricultural encyclopædia from the colonel--that greatly impressed him--and Fräulein von Schwertfeger declares you look quite 'delicious' in these days!"
"Come, baronissima, shall we have a game of catch?" he asked. "It will be good for the circulation of your noble blood."
At once with a shout of joy she started off running at a mad pace up the slope, which was veiled in the purple autumnal haze. But she didn't go far. She caught her foot in the plaid that she had refused to let him carry for her, and fell full length on the ground. He was there in a moment to help her up, yet the fall had cured her of her desire to run.
They walked on at a sedate pace and climbed the heights on the other side, whence their eyes could wander over a sea of waving foliage right away to the open country. The beeches glowed pure red, the maples danced in all the colours of the rainbow, the birches quivered like slender flames of fire, the elm let fall coins of gold, while the oak alone retained the sombre green of his late summer dress. With folded hands she gazed at the distance, which was lost in a veil of violet.
The sun went down behind vagrant shafts of fire from out the lap of gilt-edged clouds. A band of rosy mist lined the horizon, spangled with sparks from the sun's reflection.
"Shall we sit down here?" he asked.
"No, not here," she answered, seized with a vague anxiety; "here I should soon begin to cry."
She ran on ahead of him, back into wood, and found the path again beside the brook. Here it was as dark as evening, but the magic of the sun's radiance was still felt, and filled her with worship of Nature.
Oh, how happy she was! how happy!
No danger, nothing to be afraid of ... not even of her own secret heart ... for he with whom she was walking was her comrade and playfellow--nothing more. He must not, could not, be anything more. She felt conscious of no evil; he gave her no furtive glances of desire, and she did not try to lead him on.
The bond between them and everything connected with it was above-board and clear as daylight, and though it was politic to keep it from others, there was not the least sin to hide. Their intercourse was purely fun for both.
She wanted to take his hand in her warm-hearted, impulsive way, but refrained in case her action should be misunderstood. Thus side by side they went on till they reached the spot where the brook, confined in a basin of rotten wood, gushed with a low murmur out of the earth. The pale green mossy floor was covered with rugged fronds of red-lined ferns, and leaves from the branches of the beeches fluttered down lazily.
"Here is the place to rest," said Lilly.
"But rather damp, isn't it?" he objected.
"We'll spread the plaid," she exclaimed, eagerly snatching it from him, for he had insisted on carrying it after her fall. She unfolded and threw it over the carpet of ferns. She crouched on the extreme right side of it, leaving him the lion's share, so that he should not spoil his beautiful new suit.
"Now we must have something to eat," he said.
"But we, poor church-mice, have nothing!" she laughed.
"Who told you so?" he asked, and produced proudly a paper bag from his coat pocket.
It contained a squashed crumbly piece of confectionery. He laid it between them and they spooned the crumbs up to their mouths with their hands. It had a sweet winey flavour, and Lilly identified it at once as punch-tart, for which she had a special weakness.
"The English call it tipsy-cake," he said. "You can get quite screwed on it."
"I don't mind risking it," she answered gleefully.
She threw herself on her back, folding her hands as a cushion behind her head. She lay thus motionless for a few minutes, gazing up at the round patch of sky that gleamed through a parting in the masses of foliage above. Luminous pink flakes of cloud floated in the ocean of ether; a little further away a blue shimmer broke through the lower sky, like the earnest of another heaven. Lilly stretched up her arms in longing.
"Are you trying to catch larks?" he asked.
"No, not larks, but the falling leaves," she said.
Like maimed birds, they kept dropping from the boughs, fluttering about in spirals when they reached the ground, as if uncertain where to sit.
"Let us see on which of us a leaf falls first," he said, and he too stretched himself on his back.
"The first to get one will have a great piece of good luck," she added.
They both lay still and waited, and then came a leaf floating towards his nose; but he refused to let it settle there, for she deserved the first great piece of luck, so he blew it over to her.
She was too proud to accept such a noble gift from him, and blew it back.
So the game went on. They laughed and threw themselves about after the whirling leaf. Then suddenly, in the heat of combat their lips met, and the next minute their arms were round each other.
The brook babbled on, and the leaves rained down as if nothing had happened. But the earth seemed clothed in a mist of fire, and everywhere rainbow suns glittered.
Why had they done this thing? She sank back, dazed, and noticed that the sky too was on fire. Her comrade sat next her, with his back bent like a schoolboy awaiting a flogging.
"Ah! now we may as well go home," she said despondently.
"Certainly, if the gracious baroness wishes," he replied in mock politeness.
She laughed a tired joyless laugh. Evidently his one desire was to forget what had passed as speedily as possible.
"It doesn't matter now," she said, "whether we call each other by our Christian names or not."