The Song of Songs

CHAPTER XXI

Fear, the same unreasoning fear that had taken possession of Lilly during her engagement, consumed her again. It paralysed her spine, bound her arms, and made her knees shake and the veins in her neck throb. It wrapped her brain in a blank impenetrable darkness. But after the first meetings were over and nothing occurred to excite the smallest gleam of suspicion, her fear died down, leaving behind it an ever-ready watchfulness, a tension at all times on the lookout for awkward questions, a warily assumed innocence by which to avoid pitfalls.

Extraordinary to relate, the colonel saw nothing. He who was the most jealous and suspicious of husbands, utterly devoid of illusions, was for once blind. He even swallowed the headache myth, and came to sit on her bed in half-playful, half-cynical sympathy to help Fräulein von Schwertfeger change the compresses, which she prepared with over-zealous attentiveness. To submit to this woman's caresses taxed her heavily, for behind them was a furtive pair of eyes that strove to look harmless, yet could not disguise their insatiable curiosity.

As anxiety with regard to her husband gradually lulled itself to sleep, the more wakeful did it become in the case of the self-sacrificing female friend, who at any moment might assume the rôle of a full-fledged enemy and traitor.

Lilly dared not cry till night, when she was alone, and then she would spring out of bed to wash away traces of her tears, only to cry herself to sleep after all.

It was not remorse that she felt, nor shame, nor yearning love, but simply an unfathomable loneliness, a dismayed facing of the question "What next?"

Would it be confession and retirement into a convent, or elopement and suicide?--events which in Frau Asmussen's old novels had been the quite ordinary sequel to such a misdeed.

A week went by. Her headache was well. She had been up again quite a long time, but hadn't seen him. Not a vestige of him was to be seen when, with the doors of her room bolted, she rushed on to the balcony to look across at his quarters.

The colonel kept urging her to resume her rides. The exercise would do her good, and Herr von Prell was ready to escort her.

By the time Saturday came she felt she must give in, for they would be forced to meet the next day at dinner. The horses were stamping before the door. Now the moment of meeting, which she had been anticipating with trembling fears, had come, and confronted her like a new danger. But when she had beheld her friend swagger over the terrace in his high, polished riding-boots, pale and haggard, bowing like a doll on wires to show his hypocritical respect, something in her grew rigid; a feeling came over her that this young man was an utter stranger to whom she was going to speak for the first time.

The next moment they rode out of the gate together. The colonel had gone to the stables, but Fräulein von Schwertfeger stood with clasped hands looking after them.

The road across the fields was like a morass from the standing pools of rain, and squelched under the horses' hoofs. A chill breeze stirred the young autumn wheat. Beyond the ragged twigs of the birches was a faint yellow glow, in which a watery-looking sun was sinking. Everything looked fatigued and sad; even the winter crops seemed to think it had been hardly worth while to sow them.

They trotted on side by side in silence; every minute seemed an hour.

"Surely he must speak at last," she thought, biting her lips till they bled, as she rose in the saddle.

He kept his eyes fixed with an unfaltering gaze on the road, and only moved his right hand now and again to adjust his reins.

"He'll begin again before long with his 'gracious baronesses,'" she thought bitterly, and felt ashamed of herself and him in anticipation.

At length it was she who broke silence.

"Do walk your horse!" she implored, nearly crying.

"Of course we will, comrade," he said, reining in his chestnut.

"Comrade! Comrade!" she echoed derisively, and sought his eyes with a passionate glance. "We've made a nice mess of our comradeship!"

He shrugged his shoulders, the gesture with which he always met a scolding, and did not answer.

"I wish you would say something!" she cried, quite beside herself.

"What do you want me to say?" he asked, making a movement as if he were going to scratch his head reflectively. "It's a nasty affair--we admit that," and he repeated, pondering to himself, "nasty affair, nasty affair!"

"And is that all you have to say?" she exclaimed.

"My gracious friend," he replied, "I am little, and my heart is little in proportion. It's hardly an adequate platform whereon to parade great anguish of soul!"

"Who is talking about anguish of soul!" she cried. "What is to become of us? That is what I want to know."

"Directly I inherit an unencumbered ancestral manor," he replied, with a gesture that denoted invitation, "containing house, stable, horses and carriages, and other animate and inanimate necessaries, I shall permit myself the honour of asking your husband for your hand."

She could no longer control her despair.

"If you continue to make your insulting jokes," she almost screamed, bursting into tears, "I'll ride straight away from you now, and break my neck."

"Rather a difficult thing to accomplish on that sober nag of yours," was his cool reply.

She was at a loss what to retort and so let her tears fall silently.

At last he adopted a different tone.

"Be sensible for a change, my child, to please me," he said. "All I meant to do was to clear your soul of superfluous tragedy. As soon as you put a bright face on the matter I'll give it practical consideration; I promise you."

She wiped the tears from her eyes with the gauntlet of her riding-glove and forthwith smiled obediently.

"That's all right," he said with approval. "Not in vain did the poet sing:

Well, now, I'll tell you a fairy tale. We two pretty orphan children were just planted down here in this enchanted castle for each other. We were obliged to come together here, even if long ago we had not been two hearts united somewhere else. The colonel, as a matter of fact, wedded us from the first. The only pity is that your marriage contract with him did not make provision for the circumstances. But there it is, and we have no choice but to resort to some secret arrangement between ourselves. Don't you see, dearest child, we are both tacking the same way on life's ocean. The risks you and I have to run are one and the same. So buck up, and let's go it! We are poor vagabonds, anyhow."

"Thank you, I am not a vagabond!" Lilly flared up. "I have my pride and my honour to maintain, and even if I have sinned, I know how to die for my sins."

"Dying is not so easy," he remarked; "generally the opportunity is lacking, and then when it comes one funks it."

She felt her old burning desire to protect him from his own low estimate of himself.

"You don't mean what you say!" she cried. "You are amongst the boldest and bravest of men, and would face death for the sake of your honour, I know. And if you liked you might have the whole world at your feet. I shall never cease to remind you of that. I have not sacrificed myself for you for nothing. I will interest myself in you till you get back your faith in yourself, till you feel you are once more on the upward path. I will share all your trials and temptations, and stand between you and evil. What am I here for except for your sake--yours?"

At that moment her enthusiasm for him was so great that she could gladly have thrown herself under the hoofs of his horse, and when she compared this with her feelings when they had first met that day, she could hardly comprehend how it was that he had appeared to her in so alienated and repulsive a light.

"You are a most emotional creature," he said; "it is a good thing that the creepers hide your balcony so effectually."

"What do you mean to imply by that?" she faltered, in shocked foreboding.

"And the ladder luckily is still in its place," he went on, "ready to be used. The creepers might break this time and no one would notice anything amiss, not even the Schwertfeger, eh?"

His light eyelashes blinked at her persuasively.

She did not know which way to look, she felt so dreadfully ashamed.

"Never, never will I have anything to do with you again!" she cried. "I swear by all the saints I never will! I should loathe myself if I did, and despise you with all my heart and soul!" She finished with an exclamation of disgust.

He merely shrugged his shoulders. "A pity," he said; "it would have been a splendid opportunity ..."

He came to dinner the next day the picture of all the virtues in his frock-coat and black cravat. He bowed and scraped, pursed his lips, and was so absurdly deferential that he seemed afraid to take his cup of Mocha coffee from her hand. Fräulein von Schwertfeger's eyes wandered watchfully and inquiringly from one to the other.

Late that Sunday night, after the colonel had gone into town, and Fräulein von Schwertfeger retired early to her room, Lilly was sitting on her bed brushing her hair in her night attire, when she became aware of a soft rattling sound at the window. It sounded as if a branch were being blown by the autumn wind against the shutters, only that it occurred regularly at intervals, growing weaker and stronger, but always persistent. Seized with fright, she first thought of going down to Fräulein von Schwertfeger. But, recollecting herself in time, she threw on a dressing-gown, and cautiously opened the window and a bit of the outside shutter.

For a moment she saw nothing. It was a starless night, and the bailiff's house opposite seemed plunged in darkness; then it dawned on her that something like a rod was oscillating close to the shutter. She opened it a little further--and recognised the pea-shooter!

Then she knew what it was.

Springing backwards she drew the bolt, flung herself into bed, and stopped up her ears with her fingers. But every time she drew them out to listen she heard that persistent regular rattle, which had now become almost an unblushing knock.

The watchman who patrolled yard and park every hour had only to see the ladder leaning against the balcony, and all would be lost. Anxiety deprived her of her senses. Trembling like an aspen-leaf in every limb, she ran into her dressing-room again, where there was no light, opened the balcony door slowly and noiselessly a finger's depth, and whispered through the crack into the darkness: "Go away at once, and never attempt such a thing again." But when she tried to close the door again it wouldn't shut. She listened, but nothing was to be seen or heard. Then she groped with her hands and found the obstacle. It was the inevitable pea-shooter. She moaned aloud, buried her face, and the next moment was lying half-fainting in his arms.

After this evening she was completely in his power, defenceless, and without a will of her own--a victim of his every wish and whim.

It couldn't be called happiness or even ecstasy. That followed later, when she had overcome her horror of their monstrous conduct and fear of discovery was deadened by nothing happening to disturb them, and she could revel in a defiant sense of security. Then it became a blissful skating over awful abysses--a delirium of the senses full of intangible joys--a beatific offering of herself to a lacerating scourge, an alternative ebullition of self-scorn and degradation and blasphemous prayer.

She began to laugh again--not that old silly childlike laughter which till recently had dominated her frivolous nature. No, it was a mocking exultant laughter, the laughter of a hunted thief when, behind the back of his pursuer, he drags his hard-won booty into a place of safety.

There was a feeling of justification in it too. "I am only doing what my destiny ordains," she would tell herself. "I am coming into the heritage promised me by fate, that the old man has cheated me of for so long."

There was something more that scored over everything, and almost gave a sanctity and purity to this arrant deception, and this was the reflection that their intercourse meant salvation to him. He would learn to despise vulgar and shameful intrigues under the spell of this elevating passion, and on the wings of a woman's redeeming love he would rise into the pure ether where the spirits of great men and heroes dwell.

She drugged her conscience ever anew with these delusions, and when he lay in her arms at their secret rendezvous, gave expression to them in a whisper, for walls were thin, and it was as well not to speak too loud.

He laughed and kissed the words from her lips, and when she grew uneasy and begged for pledges of constancy, he swore by all his stars to be true.

Fräulein von Schwertfeger's visits to Lilly's room now never lasted later than eleven. At about this hour he was permitted to come; at half-past one he had to be gone. Of course, this was only on nights when the colonel went to town. The train service made it impossible for him to return before two, and, besides, the clatter of approaching carriage wheels could be heard as a warning on the courtyard paving-stones. Before his departure Walter had to smoke a cigarette to clear the room of the odour which he brought with him of stable and leather. For sometimes the colonel, if wine made him talkative, would look in on Lilly as he went to bed, and even come and sit by her for a little, regaling her with the latest "good stories" from Berlin, that he had heard in the Casino. She for her part pretended to be very sleepy, would yawn and purr like a kitten, and often in confidence of safety actually fall asleep in the middle of a laugh.

If only there had been no Fräulein von Schwertfeger! Not that she had noticed anything--the terrors of such a contingency were not to be contemplated. But her restless comings and goings, the almost nervous eagerness with which she spied round her, gave quite enough food for anxiety. She began to look haggard and pale, only the flesh round her mouth, like her sharp-tipped nose, was a deep red. It looked almost as if she drank, but if she did it was in secret, for at table she hardly touched wine.

"I don't mind what she does," thought Lilly, "as long as she doesn't play the spy on me as she did on Käte."

Sometimes it struck Lilly rather forcibly that she herself was now not much better than the poor girl who had been sent away from the castle in disgrace.

CHAPTER XXII

Fräulein von Schwertfeger had said "Good-night" and gone out of Lilly's room about half an hour before midnight one November evening. The colonel had driven off to the town, and close to Lilly's pillow sat the hero, wet and frozen, for he had been waiting a long time in the drizzling rain below before the signal--a double click of the shutter bolt--had been given to summon him to her side.

Now, however, all was going smoothly. The house slept, the watchmen had gone by, and the ladder, which he for greater safety dragged after him on to the balcony, reposed peacefully in its corner. The blue-shaded lamp bathed the warm, perfumed atmosphere of the room with a midsummer brilliance. Showers of drops dripped softly from the bars of the shutters, and the November wind whimpered in the chimney like a beggar. Lilly lay comfortably stretched beneath the pale blue satin quilt. She held his hand and gazed dreamily up into his face, which even in moments of self-abandonment never quite lost its expression of schoolboy sheepishness. She gazed at the freckled bridge of his nose, the blinking pale-lashed eyes, and the sharply pointed unshaven chin, half hidden in the turned-up collar of his green Norfolk jacket. He dared not brush himself up for her any more, or it would have excited remark from his colleagues.

They did not talk much. It was enough that he was there, he who belonged to her in life and death, with whom she had been cast adrift in this cold, strange world. She drew his head down to hers and stroked the forehead, on which his easy-going career had left no lines. A few raindrops still hung on his temples.

The clock ticking on the wall drew breath for a gentle chiming of the hour, the hanging lamp swung a little, casting long wavering shadows on the ceiling, like rocking cradles, or the flapping of ravens' wings. Then there came from the courtyard the sound of the dull rumble of wheels. Whether the sound was advancing or receding was not easy to decide.

Both started and looked at the hands of the clock. Could that possibly be the carriage already, which had gone to fetch the colonel from the station? At twelve? Surely not. The horses were never put in before a quarter to two, or they would have had to wait at the station for an hour and a half. Probably it was the milkman, who had been delayed in bringing back his cans. They grew calm again. A whole long precious hour was before them, an hour of sweet enjoyment and oblivion of everything except each other. To show his relief he made a popping sound with his mouth. She stretched out her arms and lifted herself up to his level with a contented smile. At that very moment there were three short peremptory raps on the door opening into the corridor. Fräulein von Schwertfeger's voice called out, "Open the door, Lilly; open the door immediately."

Walter bounded up. Before she could look round he had glided out of the room. She felt as if bells were pealing in her ears, and a vague longing to sink through the bed before the knock was repeated and drew her to the door to turn the key. Overcome with shame, she had hardly time to bury herself under the quilt again before Fräulein von Schwertfeger's eyes took a hasty survey of the room and alighted on something grey and round in a corner. She darted at it, and only later did Lilly recognise that it was Walter's cap. She drew back the bolt of the door into the colonel's room, and then with apparent calm, as if nothing had happened, seated herself on the edge of Lilly's bed.

"Whatever you do, don't cry," she whispered hurriedly, and then the colonel's footsteps were heard in the corridor.

"Good gracious, is it so late? How time flies when two women get gossiping!" was the speech Fräulein von Schwertfeger greeted him with. Her tone expressed the most unbounded surprise.

There he stood, and appeared not altogether pleased at not finding his young wife alone.

"Where do you spring from all at once, colonel? You can't have ordered a special train, and if you came through the air, I never knew before you had mastered the art of flying; and I am sure your wife didn't--did you, my pet? You see, she is rendered speechless with astonishment."

Thus she talked on, giving Lilly a few moments in which to collect herself.

Forced to render account of his movements, he said that as he drove to the station he had remembered that it was a neighbouring squire's birthday, and, changing his plans on the spot, had turned round and gone to help in the celebration of the happy event instead of going to town.

"That is always the way," said Fräulein von Schwertfeger; "the most extraordinary events have the simplest explanations. Good-night, dearest. I hope you will sleep well, and wake up without headache."

The colonel was on the alert. "Why, if she had a headache, didn't you leave her to go to sleep long ago?" he asked.

Fräulein von Schwertfeger was equal to the occasion, and without hesitating a moment she replied:

"Lilly asked me to get her compresses again, but I thought it wiser just to lay a cool hand on her forehead. Now I think we ought to leave her alone, don't you, colonel? Goodnight!"

Thereupon she extinguished the blue lamp.

Lilly felt she must scream out: "Don't go! stay here, or he'll strangle me!"

She was already out of the room, and so effectual had her diplomacy been, that the colonel, with a few civilities about her headache, retired to his own room without further questions. Otherwise a breakdown of Lilly's nerves might have brought things to the inevitable crisis there and then.

Paralysed with a dull fear she lay listening, first in the direction of the colonel's room, then of that where the wind moaned, and where there was an almost inaudible rustling of the leaves, caused by the ladder which Walter was sliding over the railings of the balcony. As long as there was light in the room he discreetly remained where he was. She could hear afterwards how he removed the ladder and put it in the old place. Not till now, when she knew they were safe, did she realise with a shudder the gravity of their escape, and she felt an inclination to call out and cry for mercy.

Anna's conduct seemed inexplicable. Why had she made herself a party to their misdeeds, she whose reputation, existence, and employment were at stake? Did a wretched sinner like herself deserve such a sacrifice?

Her heart went out to her in gratitude. She could no longer rest quietly in bed. She must at once go and thank her.

Noiselessly she threw something on, and taking the precaution to bolt the door of communication between the two rooms, she slipped out into the corridor, having assured herself that the colonel was already asleep.

The old oak staircase creaked terribly, but it often did this when no one was creeping down it; its music resounded through the house at intervals all the night through. From under Fräulein von Schwertfeger's door came the glimmer of light. Heavy footsteps paced up and down restlessly. At last she ventured to knock, and was answered by "Who's there?"

"It's Lilly.... Anna!"

"What do you want? Go back to bed!"

"No, no, Anna! I must speak to you; I must."

The door opened. "Come in, then," was the not very cordial invitation.

Lilly was going to throw herself on her neck, but Fräulein von Schwertfeger shook her off.

"I am in no mood for disturbing scenes," she said in her trumpet voice, which she tried in vain to muffle. It had lost every vestige of its sympathetic tone. "You needn't thank me; I haven't acted as I have done for your sake."

Lilly felt very small, and very like a scolded child. Since the days when she had accepted meekly Frau Asmussen's chastisements she had not been so snubbed.

"At first you help me ..." she hesitated, "and then ..."

"As you are here, you shall answer a few questions," said Anna. "Fasten up your dress--it is cold here--and sit down."

Lilly obediently did what she was told.

"To begin with, have I ever done anything to bring about a meeting between you and that young man?"

"No; when could you?"

"That's just what I am asking."

"It was quite the contrary, for you wouldn't even consent at first to my having the riding lessons."

"And when I did consent, have I allowed them to take place without supervision?"

"Without supervision?" echoed Lilly. "No, I should think not, indeed. You were nearly always there from start to finish."

"Was it I who proposed your riding about the open country with him alone?"

"You? Why, of course not. The first time we went without leave, and afterwards it was the colonel who wished it."

"Lastly, have I or have I not taken care to watch that everything was right in your room?"

"I am not sure, but I think so. You used, anyhow, to come in the last thing to say 'Good-night.'"

"Have you taken me for your enemy--your jailer?"

"Not exactly ... but I thought you didn't really care much about me."

Anna laughed a hard, cheerless laugh.

"Your utterances are very valuable," she said. "It proves to me that I haven't blundered in carrying through my scheme, and that I have nothing to reproach myself with."

"What scheme?" asked Lilly, quite at sea.

Fräulein von Schwertfeger measured her with a glance of pitying scorn.

"I knew everything, child, from the very beginning. The first moment you met him here I saw what was coming. I could reckon it all up as I do the cost of dinner. I just let things go as they were bound to go. I could do it without lowering myself in my own self-esteem. Besides, what end would have been served by interfering? You were simply bent on rushing headlong to your ruin."

"What have I ever done," faltered Lilly, "that you should hate me so? I have never tried to upset your position in the house. I submitted to you from the first moment I arrived. I put myself entirely in your hands and now you treat me like this!"

"My dear, if I had hated you," replied Fräulein von Schwertfeger, "you would not be here now. You would probably at this very minute be wandering on the high-road. A dozen times or more I might have crushed you like dust in the palm of my hand, and I haven't done it. But I'll be honest.... Yes, I did hate you--that is to say, before I knew you. I pictured you a little pert, designing minx, who had drawn the colonel on, out of mercenary motives, to resort to that extreme measure which is the last resource of old libertines when they are thwarted. But when you came and I saw what you were, a dear, ingenuous child, without suspicion of evil, full of good intentions towards him and myself, I had to pocket my hate. Then you became to me nothing more than a harmless little pet dog that one uses so long as it is any pleasure to one and then kicks aside. I have done with you, my dear child, long ago. You're not in it. I and the colonel alone are playing the game. I have to reckon with him now, and then my work is over."

Lilly's soul was full of a dull sickening wonder. She felt as if doors were being thrown open and blinds drawn up, and she was looking straight into human hearts as into a fiery abyss.

"I thought that you and he were so much to each other," she said. "I thought----" Then suddenly it occurred to her that her first idea had been the right one. This imperious and hardened old maid, of whose beauty there were still traces, had ten or fifteen years ago been admired by her employer, after a time neglected, and now wished to be revenged.

Fräulein von Schwertfeger guessed her thoughts and speedily dispelled the delusion.

"If that had been it," she said, "I should have known how to keep silent, and have regarded the castle as my sanctuary had I been allowed to remain in it. No, no, my child; things are not always so simple in this world, and there are worse hells than you dream of."

Then Lilly heard a story which filled her with horror and pity, the story of which she was the last chapter.

The colonel, always a man of tyrannical will, with a mad infatuation for young girls, had, under the pretext that when he was at home on leave he liked to have youth and gaiety about him, advertised for pupils to learn housekeeping. He selected the successful applicants himself, having known beforehand whom they were to be. For a long time Fräulein von Schwertfeger suspected nothing, till the servants began to talk. They came to her with stories of secret orgies at the top of the house, of wild races up and down stairs after frightened girls clothed in silver spangles--transparent garments of silver being apparently an old weakness of the colonel's. Her eyes were fully opened to these disgraceful goings-on when one of the girls attempted suicide, and she left the house. But she was poor and used to ruling. She could not keep subordinate posts, and sank into poverty and wretchedness. The colonel did not lose sight of her, and when he thought she had suffered sufficient punishment for her independent line of action, he asked her to return once more to the castle as his lady-housekeeper. He promised her that there would be nothing more to complain of, so she crept back to his house like a starved dog. He soon broke his word, however; the orgies were resumed, but she hadn't any longer the courage to protest. She learnt to be blind and deaf when amorous glances were exchanged at table, and late at night shrill cries and laughter reached her bedroom. She even went so far as to keep the scandal from the curious servants, and thus to screen the house's reputation, while she offered his girl friends a motherly interest and affection.

"I shouldn't be surprised," she added, "if he hadn't made you the same proposals, and suggested that I should look after you."

And it came back to Lilly's remembrance how in that hour of fate, when she had become engaged to him, he had walked round her, eager but irresolute, and spoken of a worthy and distinguished lady under whose fostering care she was to develop on his estate into a woman of the world.

Fräulein von Schwertfeger had not done. She went on to say that the bitter consciousness of her shameful position ate into her soul like a canker, and finally took such possession of her that her one thought was to be revenged. His marriage was to be the instrument. She would continue to be blind and deaf as he had once demanded she should be. That was all. Matters should take their natural course. Such had been the state of affairs till to-day. To-day the catastrophe must have been unavoidable, and would have fallen on the colonel if at the last decisive moment her strength of character had not failed her. She found that the young, good-hearted, guilelessly guilty wife had won her affection too deeply to be sacrificed to her plans of vengeance.

"But I thought you said just now," Lilly ventured to interpose, "that you had not done it for my sake."

Fräulein von Schwertfeger fixed her with a stony and awful stare.

"My child," she answered, "if you were not quite such a stupid young thing, whom sin alone can mature, you might understand the conflict that is perpetually going on in anyone like myself. For the present, be satisfied that you are out of danger."

In a burst of gratitude Lilly flew at Fräulein von Schwertfeger and kissed her face and hands. Anna no longer repulsed her; she caressed her hair and talked to her in a tone of friendly patronage. Then Lilly, crouching at her feet, confessed how the affair with Walter had arisen, how their friendship had originated, and how he in reality had been the author of her happiness.

"Happiness!" echoed Fräulein von Schwertfeger, and she made a sound through her tight lips like a whistle of disdain.

Lilly stopped short, looked at her inquiringly, and then understood. The question burned in her brain, "Am I any better, really, than if he had dragged me here as his mistress?"

It was eleven months since that night of courtship. What had they made of her? She threw her arms round Fräulein von Schwertfeger's neck and cried, cried, cried. It did her such a lot of good to have a sisterly, or rather a motherly, bosom on which to pillow her head. It reminded her of the days which had ended with the flourish of a knife.

Of course, now it was all over; that was an understood thing. They must not meet again--not once. Fräulein von Schwertfeger demanded it, and Lilly without opposition agreed.

"If only it weren't for my mission!" she sighed.

"What mission?" asked Anna.

Then Lilly told her that too--of her sacred responsibility with regard to his life, of the influence her love had upon him, awaking him to higher and purer things, and how she would be answerable with the last drop of blood in her veins for his ascent to a noble plane of endeavour, where his work, inspired by her, would bear fruit and not be wasted.

It was Fräulein von Schwertfeger's turn to be astounded, and she listened to her with distended, incredulous eyes, paced the room excitedly, and murmured to herself, "It's unbelievable! unbelievable!" And when Lilly asked her what was unbelievable, she kissed her on the forehead and said, "You poor, poor thing!"

"Why poor?" asked Lilly.

"Because you are bound to suffer in this life."

Hereupon it was settled that Anna would speak to him once more herself, and, as the price of her silence, require from him the breaking off of every sort of relation between them. Not even the rides would be permitted. Lilly pleaded for the writing of one single letter of farewell. That, she thought, she owed him in order that he should not be cast into despair about her and his future.

Then they separated. Lilly ran upstairs; elated, redeemed, borne on the wings of new hopes, she cast all precautions to the winds, but, thank God, the colonel was still snoring.

The clocks struck four, and the clodhopping step of the stable-boy was already heard in the yard. Before she flung herself into bed she allowed herself one farewell look across at the bailiff's lodge and rejoiced that renunciation was so easy.

CHAPTER XXIII

"DEAREST HERR VON PRELL,

"You will have concluded from what has happened that all must be over between us. Yes, everything has come to an end. We shall never meet again except at table. If you ask whether this makes me sad I will be brave and say 'No,' in the hope that it will cause you to feel our parting less. But the question is not whether we find it difficult or easy. We have to consider whether our feelings in the matter are elevating and humanly disinterested. True self-sacrifice must be the keystone of our lives. Yes, I expect from you the nobility of renunciation. The whole of our future must be dedicated to memories alone. Are we ever likely to enjoy again such exquisite hours as we have spent together? I have done with thoughts of happiness, and so must you too. Henceforth my one sacred duty will be my husband's welfare, and I must request you to devote all the energy you are capable of to the reordering of your life. You know life is a very sacred thing. I feel that it is so, since I have had a kind woman friend to set me on the right road, and I want you to feel it too.

"This letter is my last. You may write to me just once. Please do, and put your answer in the pea-shooter, which still stands as before in the corner of the balcony. Ah! indeed, I shall have no peace till I know that our souls are united by the same desires. Good-bye, and when you come to meals, be sure you make no secret reference to what has been. It would only be painful to me, and I should doubt your good faith.

"Always yours in true sisterly affection,

"L. v. M."

"Gracious Friend and Lady,

"The profound emotions I have experienced since my last interview with our honoured Fräulein von Schwertfeger are only deepened by your most kind lines. I feel a great impulse to perform deeds of atonement never yet attempted. I am ready to heap scorn and contumely on the seven deadly sins. I will take as example all the paragons of virtue the world has ever known, and will try to find in the lofty renunciation you demand of me that undiluted happiness which is the only kind devoid of the sting of remorse--an advantage which cannot have much weight with one so fatally constituted that he has heard of such a thing but never felt it.

"Thus, dearest and most charming of women, farewell! We certainly had a good time. I can swear to this without committing perjury. Should you require more pledges for the future, I can also swear, first, to abhor alcohol; second, to shun the fair sex like the plague; third, to devote to the Encyclopædia of Agriculture unremitting love and attention, two volumes of seven hundred and twenty pages each notwithstanding.

"Once more, farewell! The ladder of my hopes, which I have climbed for the last time, shall find a wintry grave under fir cones and branches. When the times comes, may it rise therefrom to greet a new spring.

"Till then, I kiss in all constancy your slim and refreshingly large hand.

"Yours,

"Already reformed,

"Walter von Prell."

Lilly found this letter, on the morning but one after the foregoing events, stuffed in the mouth of the pea-shooter, which reposed innocently against the balcony glass doors. It cannot be said that it gave her unlimited satisfaction. There were expressions in it that raised scepticism with regard to the sincerity of his conversion. Yet his assurances of amendment were so frank and concise, one could not doubt that the sentiment that prompted him to make them was genuine. It was only that he could not give up the incorrigible levity with which he expressed himself. Those who loved him must tolerate this eccentricity, whether they liked it or not.

She kissed the letter and put it inside her blouse, that it might rest there comfortably for a little while before being torn up.

In the afternoon she went for a stroll round the castle, and found under the balcony a heap of fir-branches freshly gathered, out of which a rung or two of the buried ladder greeted her confidentially. Pleased at this tender evidence of his pain at parting from her, she ran on to the boggy outskirts of the park, and marvelled every now and then at the easiness of renunciation.

Yet it proved not so easy after all. She began to discover this during the next few days of reaction, when life seemed hollow and barren of excitement, when the sad grey autumn hours passed drearily and evening came, followed by morning, apparently without rhyme or reason.

She did not did in Anna von Schwertfeger's society the solace and support she had hoped for. Although her friend did not withdraw her promises, she remained behind a wall of reserve, which made any close and loving intimacy out of the question. It almost seemed as if she was afraid of being implicated in the sinner's guilt, if she encouraged Lilly's advances.

At this time Lilly had to put up with a great deal from the colonel. His outbursts of ungovernable fury now fell on her, as on the rest of the household. But what she dreaded more was the gloomy, threatening glance he fixed on her at moments when she sat indulging in quiet introspection; she felt instinctively that something was in his mind that boded her no good. She began even to fear that he had got wind of her affair with Prell. But Fräulein von Schwertfeger would not hear of such a thing.

"If that were so," she said, "he would adopt a rather different procedure. Broken chairs and smashed lamps would be the consequence of his first-awakened suspicion. I think the matter stands thus: he is bored to extinction at home, he is hankering for the regiment, and he holds you, child responsible for the change in his manner of living. God forbid that he gets to hate you for it, otherwise, as far as I can see, you will have no choice but to get a separation--or commit suicide."

All this was not very consoling. No less discouraging was his persistent refusal to introduce her to his neighbours. Anna assured him Lilly's education was long ago complete, and no colonel's dame could find anything amiss in her manners. Yet he looked at her in distrust, and put off the visits week after week.

Nevertheless, Lilly cheerfully endured her troubles. Belief in herself and in him buoyed her up, and gave her strength and composure. She made herself out a time-table, so that every hour of the day should be occupied. She learnt Goethe's lyrics by heart, she read Shakespeare in English, pored over Art books and studied the labyrinthine history of the French Revolution. Especially attractive reading did she find in a big geographical tome containing illustrations of Southern harbours and tropical forests, rocky mountains, and the like. Italy, too, was represented. There were pious pilgrims praying at shrines, mystic churches and buildings, slender pillared porticos, and all filled her with the old hunger to wander under those sunny skies.

And so she lost her way travelling in spirit in foreign countries, to look round suddenly and find herself face to face with a fair young man with freckles in a black and white check suit stiffly bowing and saying, "as gracious baroness commands." Then tears sprang to her eyes. Her only distraction now was to stand at the balcony door, and over the rampart of Virginian creeper, the last leaves of which fluttered about like red flags, to gaze across at the outside of the bailiff's house. Of course, he had no idea she was there. Oh, how proud she felt of him! For she saw him spending all his spare hours with the Encyclopædia of Agriculture on the window ledge. Quickly she caught up her geographical work again, fired by his example not to idle.

In the evening he closed the shutters early, and drew the heavy curtains, which he had put up in his wild days, so close that not a crack of light glimmered through. But Lilly hadn't the smallest doubt that the lamp went on burning far into the night, and that he sat over his books copying memorable passages, and revelling in great creative ideas. And she revelled with him, for now she knew he could not fall. She had his word, and he her honour in his keeping. This must be his talisman leading him on to a higher life. So the weeks went on.

He excused himself from appearing on Sundays, and she was grateful to him. Another thing she congratulated herself on was that in that fatal night she had caught a cold, which the doctor said was severe enough to prevent her rides for the rest of the winter. Probably Fräulein von Schwertfeger had a hand in this too.

One morning early in December it happened that the colonel varied his ordinary confirmed grumpiness and appeared at table in excellent spirits. He chuckled to himself, looked into vacancy with eyes that twinkled, and seemed to be shaking inwardly with suppressed laughter.

Lilly ventured to inquire what was the cause. At first he declined to tell her. "Rubbish! Mind your own business," he said, but finally he could not keep the news to himself.

"Now, would you believe it?" he began. "I was warned lately at the Casino to keep an eye on my young Prell. It turns out from all accounts that he has been haunting low quarters at night, and has distinguished himself in a brawl about some little baggage of a barmaid."

Lilly felt a freezing sensation rise from her feet and slowly creep up her spine. Her limbs became numb. She smiled, and the smile cut into her cheeks like the sharp corners of a stone.

"At first I laughed at them," he went on, "for, in the only train that goes out and comes in of an evening, I have been a passenger myself, as you know, every day. No horse could stand twenty miles each way for long. And the pocket-money I give him wouldn't pay for a special train. So I told our major. But he stuck to his story, and said he had heard it from the younger men, and that it would be a pity if the boy was stripped of his uniform. When I got to the station at one, it struck me that I had time to search the train from end to end, which I did--fourth class and all. Not a sign of him of course. I did the same the next night and the next, and went on doing it till I was sick, even calling up the inspector to ask if he could give me a clue. He couldn't, he called out from inside, half asleep. So I began to think the whole thing a swindle. Now, just listen to this: yesterday evening when I got to the station here and was already in the carriage, I remembered that I had forgotten my umbrella, an appendage to which I can never get accustomed. So I went back for it. The station was quite empty, but the train was still standing there; and just as I passed the luggage van, which had its doors wide open, I saw someone jump out on the line on the other side. I shouted 'Stop!' but he bolted off into the woods. It flashed into my mind that it was Prell. I told Heinrich to drive like the devil, and in less than ten minutes we were here. Then I reflected he must have heard the sound of wheels from the footpath, and I went straight to my room and turned on the lights. I wanted him to think I was there. Did I disturb you, Lilly? By Jove, Lilly!" and he started, "I never saw such a face!"

"What's the matter with it?" she asked, faintly smiling again.

"She hasn't been well all day," interposed Anna hurriedly. "Your story too, colonel, is rather exciting. I am quite wound up."

"Humph!" he ejaculated, twisting his dyed moustache, and he seemed unwilling to take up the thread of his tale again. But Lilly could not maintain her composure.

"I must know the rest, I must!" she cried, clasping her hands imploringly, quite beside herself.

"Very well," said the colonel, fixing his eyes on her. "I went down again quickly and stood in ambush before the bailiff's house. Two minutes--and my gentleman comes along, slouching like a pole-cat, stands still, looks up and eyes my room, sees the light, and thinks, 'Ha, ha! it's all right.' Then just as he puts his latchkey in the door, I collar him."

Lilly burst into a fit of wild laughter. "Oh, how funny! How very funny!" she exclaimed, and this time the colonel believed her.

"Yes; but something funnier is coming," he continued. "I said to him, 'If you confess the whole truth, I'll forgive you; if not, you'll go packing to-morrow early.' And then it came out--what do you think the rascal has been up to? Carrying on with the barmaid at the Golden Apple, if you please--the resort of non-commissioned officers and clerks. So that he might loaf there at his ease, he bribed the porters, and actually went and came back in the same train with me evening after evening concealed in the luggage van. If that isn't impudence, I don't know what is--eh, Lilly?"

There was a pause. She felt herself tossing on a stormy sea, a boiling and singing in her ears, and felt at the same moment Anna's hand closing on hers under the table, in warning pressure.

"Yes, it certainly is very funny," she said.

The tone in which she spoke was not convincing, for another pause ensued.

Then the colonel rose, took her head between his hands, pressing it so hard she thought her ears would split, and said:

"You certainly appear in need of rest."

With this he turned on his heel and went out of the dining-room.

"Now pull yourself together, dear," Lilly heard her friend's voice urging her, "because after this he'll be on the qui vive."

Lilly was going to throw herself on Fräulein von Schwertfeger's bosom, hoping to be petted and consoled, but she held herself aloof, as if she feared being caught in too intimate converse with Lilly, and said in a tone of strained friendliness:

"Excuse me, Lilly dear. There is something I must attend to at once," and she too left the room.

"What now?" she thought.

She looked about her. The remains of their abruptly finished meal were still on the table. The dark oak furniture cast shining black shadows into the wintry half-light of the room. The old brass chandeliers gleamed dully. All was as it always was, and yet there was nothing there--only a cruel, all-devouring void, an abyss which lured her into its depths as if drawing her with hooks and pulleys.

She went to the window, and looked out apathetically. The bare branches shook in the wind, the ivy on the railing swayed; even the bent rose-trees, the shoots of which the old gardener had protected with straw, moved quiveringly backwards and forwards. All of them writhed in the grip of winter, and only the fallen leaves lying in heaps on the thin coating of snow were still, but they were dead eternally.

What was to be done now?

If this could happen, then all was in vain. There was no hope, no rising to loftier heights, no more strength of purpose, and no more truth. You might as well throw yourself down on the ground beside the dead leaves and die.

She heard the clatter of plates behind her. The maid-servant, as no one had rung, had come unsummoned with old Ferdinand to clear the table. She thought of Käte and of that other creature, in whose arms he had made a mock of her and of her faith in him. She dragged her lifeless legs upstairs to the only room in the house where she ever felt at home. As she passed she heard the colonel raving in his bedroom, and almost running as he paced up and down.

"Let him rave!" she thought indifferently.

Next she heard him give orders from behind the closed door for the carriage to come round.

"He may stay or go, for all I care," she thought.

She stepped on to the balcony. The icy-cold sensation that still stiffened her neck crept down her arms to her finger tips.

Over there sat Walter, employing his leisure as usual in deep study of the great Encyclopædia of Agriculture. He lifted his hand every now and then wearily to his brow and knocked the ash from his cigarette against a flower-pot without looking up. He hadn't time to look up. Good God!

Confronted by this abominable farce, enacted solely with the object of deceiving her, Lilly was seized with such mad, accusing fury that she was rendered almost senseless. A pricking and stinging ran through her benumbed arms. Then an excruciating burning fever throbbed painfully in her temples and hung a blood-red curtain before her eyes.

She saw nothing more, heard nothing more.

She rushed down the stairs, tore back the bolt of the garden door, sprang down the terrace steps, and flew like mad across the lawn to the bailiff's lodge.

What did she care whether anyone saw her or not? At this moment she minded nothing. She didn't so much as knock at his door, but opened it with a vigour that sent it swinging against the wall. A hateful, pungent smell like the interior of a menagerie greeted her nostrils. He was still at the window, and bounded up when he saw her.

The grey daylight shone on the top of his head.

"He's got his hair cut like a clothes-brush again," she thought. "The fast life he's now leading requires that it should be so. He must look a swell."

"Lord in heaven!" he said, crumbling his lighted cigarette between his fingers. "This is a pretty rumpus."

"Why--why have you----?" she shrieked incoherently. "Oh, you blackguard! you dishonourable scoundrel!"

"Damn it!" he said, looking round him in despair, "I don't see how the gracious baroness is to get out of this without compromising herself."

"I don't care! You have broken your word; you have thrown away what was sacred between us--thrown it to a low barmaid ... a barmaid, a person who would hang round the neck of any man who gave her twopence ... You are a miserable wretch, not worth trying to save ... You won't be saved ... You insist on going to the dogs as fast as you can ..."

"That's all well and good," he said, "and you may be stating very deplorable and indisputable facts; but what I should like to know, dear baroness, is how you mean to save yourself?"

"I am absolutely indifferent with regard to myself!" she exclaimed. "I have come here to have it out with you ... I demand an explanation here--now--instantly--on the spot."

"With pleasure, gracious baroness," he answered, "but first, for God's sake, move away from the window."

Whereupon he cast a swift, keen, nervous glance across at the windows of the castle, which so far looked unsuspecting enough.

Shocked by his rudeness, she fled into the interior of the apartment. It was low-ceilinged, dark, and badly furnished, like a labourer's dwelling. The obnoxious doggy odour was here more strongly apparent. Where it came from was a mystery revealed a moment later, when, as she approached the wall at the back of the room, something snapped viciously at her foot, and two little circlets of fire gleamed angrily in the dusk.

"Behave yourself. Tommy," he commanded as she drew back with a cry.

So it was Tommy, the third party to the Triple Alliance!

She leaned against the back of the old spindle-legged sofa. Its worn springs creaked and its bristly horsehair pricked her hands. The thought shot through her brain: "What am I doing here? How does it concern me?"

He glided meanwhile, listening hard, from door to door.

"If old Leichtweg happened to be in the next room," he said, "there'd be the devil to pay. But if you go away at once by the front entrance into the yard, it might be supposed you only came to ask a question, and we may still save the situation."

She saw in this proposed move nothing but a crafty attempt at evasion, and a fresh volume of wrath overwhelmed her.

"I shall not go," she said, "till I hear what you've got to say for yourself;" and to give force to her resolve, she sank on to the creaking sofa, which was covered by a dirty, odoriferous grey horsecloth, folded several times to protect whoever sat down or lay on it from the projecting springs.

He was forced to yield. "Well, then, look here. A man is, so to speak, a man, isn't he? And when he is given up in a beastly mean sort of way he----"

"Mean way!" Lilly faltered. "What was there mean in my letter? Didn't I pour out my whole heart in it, and didn't dear Schwertfeger----?"

She could not go on, she was so choked with scorn and anger.

In the meantime he had arrived at the right policy to pursue, after being completely nonplussed at first.

"That's just it," he said, growing more offended every moment. "Can it be supposed that a love affair like ours was to close with a lukewarm moral sermon? ... and from that Schwertfeger woman too? Did I deserve it of you, to be dismissed through a third person that shabby, hideous old thing too? Wasn't it enough to drive a fellow desperate ... after all I have done for you?"

"Done for me?" echoed Lilly. "What have you done for me, pray?"

"Well, wasn't I always ready to be your self-sacrificing comrade? Haven't I even sacrificed my loyalty to my old colonel for your sake--the man I honoured and reverenced, who you may say picked me out of the gutter? That's no trifle, I can assure you. Do you imagine it didn't go against the grain? Do you imagine I didn't get awfully depressed? And then night after night to have nothing to do but fool round with a dog that stinks; for that beast Tommy does, you know. Can a man be blamed in the circumstance for trying to deaden his feelings, to still the qualms of his love-anguish? How you can expect that I shouldn't entirely amazes me. We speak different languages, my child, a yawning chasm divides our two natures. You actually don't mind risking both our lives for the sake of a petty grievance. I don't belong, as a rule, to the prudes; but the devil knows what I wouldn't give to get you out of this room."

During this lengthy oration he had walked round Lilly with one hand in the belt of his shooting-jacket, his short, jerky steps expressing his indignant consternation.

She for her part sat rigidly erect, turning her head, with great despairing eyes, towards him mechanically, first to the right, and then to the left.

When he had finished he took a new cigarette from a case and energetically brushed off the superfluous tobacco with his forefinger.

She rose to her full height, leaving the sofa and sofa-table a long way below her.

"Listen, Walter," she said; "from this moment all is at an end between us."

"Wasn't it so long ago?" he asked.

"I mean inwardly too," she explained.

"Oh, indeed ... inwardly!" He made a grimace. "That means, I suppose, in your case, when you are sick and tired of one."

When she saw her love so vulgarly derided and jeered at, her self-restraint completely collapsed. With a loud moan she ran behind the sofa and hid her face in the wall.

"Don't go near the window," she heard him hiss, as he ground his teeth.

But what did she care about the window?

In his distraught anxiety he took to pleading.

"Do come away from the window," he entreated. "I was only rotting. I wanted to make you laugh again; nothing else, I swear. Please come away from the window."

She did not stir. She wanted to crawl into something--crawl away with her shame.

Then she felt herself roughly seized by his hands.

So it had come to that, too! She was to be beaten by him!

She struck at him, wrestled with him, dug her fingers into his throat, and then suddenly ... A whizzing, clashing, and clattering, and splinters of glass flew over their heads; and an oblong, dark, slender thing glanced by them, like the shaft of a lance, hit something, rebounded, and lay at their feet.

At the same time she felt a gust of wind blow on her forehead and awaken her from the stupefaction of the moment.

One of the upper window-panes was shivered to atoms. But no sign of a living person was to be seen. Only the balcony door, which a minute or two had been shut, stood open, showing blackness within as it swung to.

"A near shave, by Jove!" said Walter, and stooped to pick up the mysterious weapon, the splintered panes of glass crashing beneath his feet.

"The pea-shooter!" faltered Lilly.

Yes, it was the pea-shooter that a quarter of an hour ago had stood on her balcony.

"It's a good job he hadn't his gun at hand," said Walter, "or we should be riddled now like sieves."

He wiped the anxious sweat that beaded his brow away with the back of his hand.

For all that he was a plucky little chap, and knew exactly what to do. He sprang to the wardrobe under which the foxy dog roosted, got out his military revolver, drew back the trigger, and tested the barrels.

Then he said: "Now, oblige me by going into Leichtweg's room. Bolt yourself in. He's simply gone to load, and then he'll be here."

But Lilly wouldn't. Her anger against him had completely evaporated.

"Let me stay with you. Please let me stay."

"It won't do, child," he said, wrinkling his forehead into the old masterful folds. "What is to follow now is man's business."

"Then I shall stay in the passage, and receive him at your door."

He gnawed his moustache. "Well, if you will take it like that, I can't reason with you," he said. "Please be seated."

He took the key from the outside of the door, put it in the lock on the inside and cautiously turned it several times.

"There's a vast difference between loading and shooting," he said, "the devil only knows."

Hereupon he drew out his watch, and listening attentively to every sound outside, he counted: one, one and a half--two minutes.

"It looks as if he couldn't find his cartridges," he said; and then, with a commanding air, he added, "Sit down; you will need your legs later."

She sank into one corner of the sofa and he took the other. He laid the watch between them on the bumpy seat. Both counted now with their eyes fixed on the minute-hand. "Two and a half--three, three and a half--four, four and a half--five minutes."

Nothing was to be heard but the wind whistling through the branches. Then it seemed as if they could hear horses' hoofs in the courtyard and a trotting away on the other side of the gates.

"Whom can he be going to fetch?" asked Walter. "It hasn't come to seconds yet."

Lilly saw red suns dancing before her eyes. The ceiling of the room began to descend on her.

And Walter went on counting: "Seven--eight, eight and a half." Still nothing. "Nine, nine and a half--ten----" Then he suddenly uttered a low whistling sound and seized his revolver.

The front door grated on its hinges, steps drew near, but not the threatening thunder of an outraged husband's, bent on revenge; these crept softly, catlike, hesitatingly onwards.

Then for a while silence again, only broken by the breathing of two anxious beings, and of someone else's breathing on the other side of the door.

"Who is there?" called out Walter.

Next came a tap, low, broken, unassertive, as if made by fingers that trembled and failed.

"Who the devil is there?" he shouted again.

"Anna von Schwertfeger."

He jumped up and opened the door.

There she stood, ashen-grey, and only red about the mouth and eyelids.

"The colonel has just driven to Baron von Platow's, and will be back in three hours. He has bidden me tell you, Lilly, that when he returns he does not wish to find you in his house or on his estate."

"And what has he bidden you tell me?" sneered Walter von Prell.

Fräulein von Schwertfeger, without heeding him, took Lilly's hand.

"Come," she said, "there's not much time. We must begin packing at once."

"Yes, but where am I to go?" she asked helplessly as she slowly rose to her feet.

Directly they were outside she saw the carriage that was to take her to the station drive up.