Müllerstrasse lay somewhere in an extreme northerly direction; it was in "Franz-Josef Land," the owner of a fruit and vegetable stall, of whom she made inquiries, informed her. The way led through a network of narrow streets, from one electric tram to another, past the Reichstag buildings, the Lessing Theatre, along an interminable tree-flanked road; and beyond the Weddingplatz, which Berliners regard as the end of everywhere, the Müllerstrasse began.
No one seemed to have heard of a chapel dedicated to St. Joseph, not even people who lived in the neighbourhood. At last someone she asked said he thought there was a Catholic place up there in a yard, and after a little further exploration she found what she sought. It was a low iron building shaped like a shovel, between flowering shrubs, with high tenements surrounding it. The side door was open, and garlands of pine bid her "Welcome." She entered a plain whitewashed hall, filled with the odour of incense, laurel, and new pinewood. In the background was an alcove decorated to resemble a starry canopy. Behind the wooden balustrade that separated the pictureless chancel from the rest of the building rose two magnificent feathery palms. The low rolling tones of an organ proceeded from the loft; the organist had probably lingered behind after the funeral to improvise dreamily at the instrument.
Lilly's eyes wandered anxiously over the walls in quest of the shrine of her saint. She wondered if he held up his finger here in smiling warning, as did the kind old gentleman of St. Ann's in her native town.
There was no room for side altars, as every inch of space was filled with benches. But that big picture over there in tawdry gilt frame, with a console-table beneath piled with dusty nosegays, was that----? She started back, shocked. Her saint, her own dear beloved saint was simply absurd, with his sharp-featured, wax-doll's face, his flaxen beard and seraphically pious smile. An infant Jesus in pink sat triumphal on one arm, while in his other hand he daintily clasped a spray of lilies. And pity succeeded her horror. How far behind her, how infinitely far away, was the time when one could worship and pray for miracles to a saint like this!
Could her good, faithful monitor in St. Ann's have been like this? She hardly dared think of such a thing. He couldn't; no, he couldn't have been so insipid and ridiculous. One place on earth must remain to which one's memory in hours of smiling pensive melancholy might return on holy pilgrimages. The organ began the prelude to an exquisite mass of Scarlatti's with which Lilly had been familiar in her girlhood, and so gradually she became more at home in the little chapel.
She knelt on a bench at the back, shut her eyes, and tried to fancy that instead of this flaxen-haired caricature her real old friend was looking down on her.
A saying of St. Thomas Aquinas came into her head that she had learnt in class when a child: "Other saints have been given the power by God to help us in certain circumstances, but to St. Joseph has been granted the power to help us no matter what our need may be."
Such a power he had once had in her life. So she spoke to him again for the last time across the waste of years that separated her from the altar in St. Ann's. She was sure it would be the last time, because for such childish things there could no longer be room in her soul. And as she felt it was a farewell talk, she related, without reserve, everything that had happened to her: how supremely happy she had become; how she felt an awakening of new life within her, and her dead self blossoming forth afresh, while the whole of creation seemed one great symphony of joy. And she told him, too, of the gross deception she was forced to practise, of her fear of discovery, and of the delicious expectant tremors for which she could find no name.
Then she added that she no longer had any faith in him, and was, to all intents and purposes, an atheist. Feeling reconciled, she placed the carnations she had brought as an offering to the poor saint among the dusty nosegays, and with a lighter heart went out, laughing, to meet the spring that laughed at her.
There was not only this new-born Lilly who rode on the crest of the wave far above all earthly cares and annoyances, but another Lilly, who every other night enchanted her old set with her triumphant humour, her élan, and brilliant wit, which amazed and took everyone by storm. Richard, when he came to tea in the afternoon, never ceased to wonder at the change in her. Instead of the gloomy listlessness, which had characterised her for so long, he found her sprightly and full of gay pranks, a creature of surprises, never still for a moment.
He accustomed himself readily to this new aspect of her being, though it slightly abashed him, owing to his inability to keep pace with her; and he praised the magical effects of the new tonic, hæmatogen, which the doctor, with a knowing twinkle in his eye, had prescribed this spring instead of iron.
Every night that they went out together on pleasure bent, the same little comedy was enacted. At first she would say that she had caught cold, or had a headache, that she was not in a mood for meeting people; but when once he had prevailed on her to come, she would play with her admirers as if they were puppies, and tell her lady friends things to their faces that filled them with nervous gratification. Sometimes, it is true, she would sit apart in sulky self-absorption, lost in dreams, though now, if anyone teased her for doing it, she neither blushed nor looked uncomfortable, but made such sharp, stinging repartees that the men retired and hid their diminished heads. Only once during this period did she drink herself into a light-headed condition, and that happened to be on the very day that she at last decided to tell Richard about her new friend. She had grappled with the question for two months. It would have to be done in the end, but indecision as to how she should do it made her put it off from day to day.
She was helped in her quandary by chance. One day Richard brought her some sketches of vases about which he wanted her opinion, and forgot to take them away with him when he left. Afterwards Konrad came across them, and with a few swift pencil-strokes inserted the outline which was in the original draft, but which the artist had omitted in developing the plan. The next day Richard was utterly astonished to find that the corrections had been made, and so accurately. Who was responsible for them? Lilly, with recollections of her bungled glass-plaque painting, dared not say that she was, and courageously took the bull by the horns.
"My art history master made the corrections," she said.
"How long have you had an art history master?" he asked with round severe eyes.
To his surprise and consternation, she began to rate him soundly. She asked if he expected her to spend a miserable barren and frivolous existence till the end of her days. Did he think it was a crime for a woman of no occupation to try and improve her mind a little, so that she might be clever enough to talk to a sensible man like him and his associates? Surely that was better than spending all her time on gossip and finery, and going to the dogs dressed up like a frivolous doll.
The phrase, "a sensible man like you," mollified him considerably.
"It's all very well," he said in a milder tone, "but why not have told me before?"
She now began a long story.
She had seen an advertisement about six weeks ago in the Lokal Anzeiger, in which an erudite young scholar offered his services as coach to ladies and gentlemen with a thirst for self-improvement. She had answered it, and the scholar had come and arranged a course of lessons forthwith. It had led to a friendship between master and pupil--of a purely platonic nature, of course. She had made up her mind, she said, not to tell him, being afraid of exciting his jealousy, till she was able to convince him of the absolute disinterestedness of her intellectual endeavours by proving their success.
He knit his brow, and a sardonic smile, which she could not account for, played about his lips.
"So you have got a young scholar for a friend again?" he asked, leaning his head on one side and winking at her.
"Yes, and I am proud of it."
"I suppose he's going to be Regius professor?"
"He hasn't made up his mind what he's going to be."
"He is extremely brilliant, intellectual, and superior, I presume?"
She cast up her eyes ecstatically. "I should think so. I have never met anyone like him." She stopped short, horrified at her own indiscretion.
"Ha! ha! I see," he said, as if some long-cherished suspicion had been confirmed. "I see," and he got very red, and gnawed his moustache. "Didn't I say what it would be?"
"You are jealous!" she cried. She felt herself writhing under a shameful injustice.
Without another word he departed, scowling. An hour later a parcel from Liebert & Dehnicke's was left at the door. As she opened it, a light suit which she had seen Richard wear the summer before fell out. The note that accompanied the parcel ran as follows:
"Darling Lilly,
"You see that I am true to my promise of coming to the assistance of your intellectual affinities with cast-off wearing apparel. I shall be happy, too, to send another supply of old boots to help them on their road to success. This will show you how jealous I am.
"Yours,
"Richard."
That same evening she was in such exuberant spirits that she drank wine immoderately; and never, not even when she had danced for Dr. Salmoni's delectation, had she let herself go with such unbridled abandon and exercised her art of mimicry with wilder éclat.
To wind up with, she danced on the top of the tables, joined together, a Salome dance which was just then the rage. She accompanied herself through her clenched teeth with quaint Eastern snatches of melody.
"What on earth is that gibberish?" the spectators asked each other.
Afterwards, when they put the question to her herself, she was incapable of giving an answer. Insensible, she heard and saw nothing more.
CHAPTER XV
The big railway station's grimy glass roof was pierced by the peaceful golden light of a June Sabbath morning. Beneath the three bold archways that led into the open air such masses of blue ether seemed to be concentrated that, as the trains passed under them, it was like being precipitated into a sun-drenched sea. Ribbons from girls' smart hats fluttered against the Sunday coats of their swains, each of whom appeared to think himself an indispensable master of the revels. Athletic and boating clubs were represented in the crowd, smoking clubs and music societies, and one warehouse's whole staff of clerks was there.
Through the excited holiday throng a quiet, happy pair, looking round them cautiously and keeping at a judicious distance from each other, so that it might be doubted whether they were together, made their way to a carriage in the front part of the train. Lilly walked ahead, and again and again she saw the faces of people coming towards her grow rigid with an almost solemn awe as they regarded her--a mute homage to which she was used, but which had never filled her with so much satisfaction as to-day, when she was followed by the only man in the world in whose eyes she cared to be pleasing.
In his honour she was dressed entirely in festive white, a linen coat and skirt, a soft lawn blouse, and a wide straw hat draped with a white lace veil which shaded her brow, and beneath which her burnished brown hair projected in great glossy waves. On her arm she carried a white woollen shawl as a protection against the chilly night air, for it had been agreed between them that they were not to worry about catching certain trains home, but were to stay in the country till they were tired of it.
They sat opposite each other in the corner seats of a third-class compartment, without speaking. Together they were travelling into an undiscovered land. "Trust yourself to my guidance," he had said, "and I will give you a surprise. We are going on a voyage of discovery. I am not in the least certain where the place is; if I were, it wouldn't be a voyage of discovery."
This sensation of being led like a little child was a new and exquisite joy. After an hour's journey, when the carriage had emptied, he signed to her to get out.
"Where are we?" she asked.
"Does that matter?" he rejoined.
He was right. What did it matter?
She did not even look to see what the name of the station was, and they walked out of it into the main street of a bare little country town. On the front of the yellow houses the sunlight lay like a soothing hand. The low doors of the shops were locked, and half of the poor goods displayed in the windows was covered by a sheet to show that it was Sunday. Organ-notes sounded round street corners like sighing winds. A turkey-cock came strutting consequentially from under a gateway and gobbled at them; and then there were no more organ-notes ...
Houses were gradually left behind. A whiff of ripening grain came from the fields, but the pungent fragrance of the yellow lupins outscented it. All round them were meadows carpeted with white and pink tufts of clover, and, beyond, dark firs rose on the slopes of sandy hills.
The road was shadeless, but they tramped along it gaily, and little columns of silvery dust whirled in front of them. He knew everything, and nothing escaped his keenly observant eye. He pointed out a wild rabbit flicking the white underpart of its tail impertinently as it scampered away with comical self-importance. Every moment there was something fresh to look at.
Since her married days at Lischnitz Castle, Lilly had never seen the spring blossom forth in the pure open country.
"Ah! if then I had had him for my guide," she thought, "all would have been different."
As they entered the warm shade of the pine-woods, a squirrel ran almost over their feet and darted a few feet up a tree, where it paused and sat motionless, as if turned to stone.
They looked at each other, both thinking of the moment that had first brought them together.
Lilly went close up to the little animal, but he did not stir.
"I feel as if I were on enchanted ground," she said; "if he began to talk to us I shouldn't be surprised."
She threw herself down, with a sigh of content, on the grey cushiony moss.
He followed her example. Shading their eyes with their hands, they lay on their backs and blinked at the sunshine flickering down on them through the branches. They had nearly forgotten the squirrel, when suddenly, close above them, he made a whistling sound, and then scuttled for his life further up the tree to the topmost branches.
The scared little fellow had been staring at them all the time, not daring to move until now.
"Do you see?" Konrad said. "As long as our human language sounds in their ears, they'll take care to have nothing to do with us."
"All the same, we are bewitched here," she said, laughing. "I've never before lain so luxuriously on the moss and had the sun shine on me so; have you?"
"Yes, once," he answered. "I remember it quite well."
"When did you, and where?" she demanded instantly, jealous of any moment of happiness in his life that she had not created for him.
"Oh, there's not much to tell about it," he said. "It was at Ravello, perched like a gull's nest high up on the rocks above the sea, not far from Amalfi--just about there is a fairy-land of magic country. Picture old Moorish palaces half deserted and half lived in; marble courtyards shut in by trellises; ruined fountains, with myrtle and laurel growing in profusion, and little white climbing-roses trailing over every nook and cranny. There was one place I would have given anything to get inside ... It was a small mysterious gallery standing out against the deep blue sky like a web of silver filigree. So once when there was no one about--only a handful of olive-gatherers live in the neighbourhood--I behaved like a schoolboy, and climbed the great iron gate as high as a house, bar by bar, up one side and down on the other."
"Oh, how splendid!" cried Lilly.
"Yes. I got inside. And when I had examined all the gorgeous details with a professional eye, I threw myself full length on the warm stone steps, and let the sun bake me through; just in the same position as we are lying in here now under these Brandenburg pines. And--would you believe it?--the little bluish-green lizards that you are so fond of came and slowly and cautiously crawled all over me."
"Oh, how heavenly!" cried Lilly in rapture.
"And while I lay there, with the old marble fountain making music in my ears, I fell fast asleep. But I had better have left going to sleep alone, because there's a risk of getting sunstroke even in mid-winter. I should in all probability have been a victim, if some tourists hadn't come and thrown sticks and stones at me. Everything looked red and swam before my eyes. To climb back over the gate was out of the question. The key had to be fetched from the Sindaco, and subsequently I had to appear before him and give an account of myself. But, thank goodness, they didn't lock me up for trespassing, because all the witnesses tapped their foreheads and said 'è matto'--'he's mad.'"
"Never mind," she laughed. "You at least got your way, and saw the inside of the forbidden garden. Many people have to be satisfied with standing outside and looking through the railings."
"That's a pleasure that may be ours to-day," he remarked. And she had to restrain her curiosity.
"It doesn't hurt, at any rate," he went on, "to practise now and then standing outside. For God knows that generally the happiness we happen to be craning our necks to reach is a forbidden garden."
Lilly gazed at him in alarm. What did he mean by that? Then their eyes met in shy understanding. The disquieting expectancy to which she was afraid to give a name crept over her suddenly like an ague.
"Let us go on," she said, springing to her feet, and she walked on rapidly without looking round to see if he followed.
The woods grew clearer. They came to a little swampy coppice where silver birches shot up their slender trunks gaily from mossy pedestals.
The hot midday air stirred in tiny wavelets. Somewhere not far off church-bells were ringing, but no farmstead was in sight, and suddenly they found themselves at diverging paths without knowing which direction to take.
"A decision is called for," he said, and strained his ears for a moment in the quarter whence the sound of church-bells came.
"I wish with all my heart," he added, "that there was a bell ringing thus to guide me on my road in life." And he turned to the right.
Then he told her that he was standing figuratively at cross-roads. He had been offered a post which, considering how young he was, ought not to be scoffed at; but before accepting he was bound to consider whether it would interfere with the progress of his life's work.
"It's a very good post, I suppose?" Lilly asked proudly. If he had been appointed minister of the fine arts or Emperor of China she would not have thought it in the least extraordinary. But he seemed disinclined to say more.
"I would rather talk to you about it when it's settled one way or the other," he replied. And she was perforce satisfied.
Red-tiled roofs appeared above the bushes, and the mirror-like surface of a lake made a shining line against the horizon.
"Is that where we're going?" asked Lilly.
"It may be," he answered.
"Oh, don't be so mysterious," she scolded him in fun. "I've been very good in not asking questions. But now I really must insist on your telling me what your programme is."
"Yes, when we've got there," he laughed. "I know you, and don't want to make you jealous before the right moment."
Could it be that there was another woman in the case?
Another woman? She did not betray her emotion, but as they walked on she felt quite faint--partly from hunger and partly from mental distress. The lake now lay before them in its early summer beauty, with its greenish-grey girdle of reeds and rushes, and lights and shadows flitting across it.
A little distance from the bank, on a shrubby slope, was the inn, with "Logierhotel" printed on its signboard. It was one of those orange-brick monstrosities built in the barbarous palatial-barn style. But round it three or four ancient lime-trees spread their wide shady branches, and they seated themselves on a white bench beneath them, their mood harmonising with the scene.
To their left the lake stretched away into the hazy distance; on their right, beyond the reeds and sedges of the shore, was a tiny village with moss-green thatched roofs, and a stumpy, storm-beaten spire half hidden among reeds and bushes. And close to them, not a hundred steps from where they sat in the shade of the limes, there rose the wooded slopes and mighty tree-tops of an ancestral park, from the interior of which they caught the gleam of pillars, bridges, and white, vine-clad balustrades. Very likely that was the forbidden garden, outside the gates of which they were to stand to-day. How charming! how mysterious!
Anglers came up from the lake, scarlet of face and panting with thirst, and these apparently were the only guests at the inn besides themselves, for the Sunday stream of excursionists had not yet begun to flow in the direction of this quiet nook.
The bill of fare which the landlady, equipped with all the wiles she had acquired in the capital, smilingly handed to them presented a dazzling abundance of good things. It was too bad that they all came together. Lilly was asked to choose, but declined. Thoughts of the strange woman who was certainly in the case depressed her. And she only saw the laughing world, which threw its early summer gifts at their feet so bountifully, through a mist of suppressed tears.
"Here we are at last," she said, sighing. "So you may as well confess: what sort of woman is she?"
He laughed heartily. "So you've guessed, have you, that it is a woman?"
"If not, why should I be jealous?"
"I must admit you have every cause. I never set eyes on anything more beautiful; the only pity is, that she is marble."
Oh! then that's all it was!
"I am and always shall be a silly," she said, laughing from relief, and he kissed her hand in contrition.
While they were waiting for the fish which they had ordered, he told her the story of how they came to be making their present pilgrimage.
He had one day, during his sojourn in Rome, seen in the window of an art-dealer's shop the antique cast of a woman's head, much damaged, but of such inspiring and sombre beauty that he went again and again day after day to feast his eyes upon it. And one morning he found the owner of the shop and a German gentleman standing in the doorway engaged in a lively conversation, which, however, did not progress, as neither of them understood what the other was talking about. He offered his services as interpreter, and to his chagrin learned that the subject of discussion was his favourite bust, which the German, a courteous and cultivated country gentleman, wished to purchase. Setting aside his own feelings, Konrad assisted in concluding the bargain on the Baron's behalf, and had received an invitation from him to visit his house on returning to Germany, in order that he might see the marble bust adorning his park, and convince himself that its new surroundings were not unworthy of its beauty.
"Oh! so the garden isn't forbidden after all?" cried Lilly, holding out her arms ecstatically towards the green mysterious barriers. "We may just walk straight in."
Konrad's face became thoughtful. "It's not so simple as that," he said, "for how should I introduce you? You are not my wife.... Only between ourselves you are my sister, and we are too young to trump up any other plausible relationship."
A sudden bitterness welled up within her. Once more she felt despised and rejected, ostracised from honourable society.
"You should have left me at home," she broke out. "I am only an encumbrance to you."
"Ah, Lilly," he said, "what do I really care about marble busts? I would rather stand behind the fence with you than have the run of the whole park without you."
She caressed his hand, as it hung by his side, mollified and grateful. And then at last the carp came.
Two hours later they were pacing along a seemingly endless wall, half as high again as a man, with no break in it to peep through. "Not till they came to the corner of the park where the wall ended did they find a less impenetrable, high, moss-grown fence, which ran along to the right. Now through the gaps they could get a view of the interior. Venerable plane-branches formed arches over shady nooks, with groups of oaks and limes between. The open grassy lawns were banked with rhododendrons, the blossoms of which looked like violet eyes. On a knoll in the background, a little round temple with Tuscan columns and a shining green roof looked solemnly out of its dark surrounding cypresses.
"She must be in there," Konrad said. But the little temple was empty, so they prosecuted their search further afield. Not a single opening in the foliage escaped their vigilance. Here and there statues gleamed, a Ceres, a Satyr playing on his flute, and in a cypress thicket they caught a glimpse of a shrine of the Virgin, but nowhere did they see a sign of the strange, beautiful woman's head they were looking for.
They went on. A stream ran out from the park across the road, spanned by a rough plank such as is to be met with in any country lane. But a hundred paces away, inside the park, was another snow-white glistening bridge, throwing its graceful arch boldly over the water.
"The Venetian bridges are like that," he said.
"Across such a bridge the gods entered Walhalla," she sighed.
They stood still and conjured up the joy of crossing that bridge. But still they could not get on the track of the marble bust.
Beyond the plank bridge, where the village began, the park receded some way from the lane. A row of Weymouth pines flanked the inner side of the fence. The quaint village street was gay with Sunday festivities. Dancing was going on to the accompaniment of piano and fiddles, and somewhere bowls were rolling merrily; but they passed without taking any notice of these things, for all their interest was still centred on the forbidden garden. Every moment it drew them with more compelling charms. Crumbling gate-posts were half-hidden among the village lime-trees, and the palings were so rotten they hardly held together. At this spot the foliage on the inner side was quite impenetrable to the eye. Trunk was garlanded to trunk by growths of clematis and ivy, and lilac and spiræa bushes were massed underneath. It looked as if the master of the garden had, in addition to a stone wall, drawn a living one around his demesne to hedge in himself and his family in happy seclusion.
For a long time they walked on without being rewarded by another glimpse of the inside of the park. Then unexpectedly they came to an old three-cornered gateway which, with its vases and pillars, its cracked belfry and lacework of latticed railings, was half buried in blossoming acacias.
Here at last they got an uninterrupted view of the inside of the park. A straight avenue of pines led in solemn dignity up to the castle, but even at this favourable standpoint nothing of its architecture was revealed to their gaze. Trees and bushes hid it from view. The only bit of stone-work their eager eyes discerned was a flight of steps on the columns of which marble nymphs raised aloft their snow-white wings.
"Isn't that lovely?" Lilly murmured with a sigh; and thrusting her face through the iron bars, she whimpered and begged playfully to be let in.
"That is exactly how I stood, outside the gate at Ravello," he said. "Now you know what it is like."
As he said this, it struck her that the sensation of being shut out somewhere was familiar to her too. She knew as well as he did what it was like. But where was it that cold iron had pressed her cheeks before?
Ah! now she recollected. Had she not many a time stood without the latticed door which barred the staircase to the private part of Liebert & Dehnicke's warehouse? That pretentious, proud, forbidding laurel-flanked ascent, which her unholy feet might never tread?
It, too, was a forbidden garden. Forbidden gardens abounded everywhere, it seemed!
"I think we had better give it up," she said softly; "it only makes our hearts ache."
So hand-in-hand they wandered back along the path they had come, close to the fence, and talked persistently of other things. And yet their eyes still lingered longingly in the neighbourhood of the park, and the aspiration they both felt, but did not express for fear of hinting reproaches, gilded everything with a fairy-tale glamour.
Evening came. Violet mists hung over the meadows, and the copper-coloured trunks of the pines glowed like torches. The deeper the setting sun sank into the reeds and rushes, the more the lake lost its cool, blue, silvery sheen, and took on a network of ruddy gold. It looked now as if it bore on its face the sparkling fulfilment of all earthly promises.
Neither of them could tolerate being on shore any longer.
A boat lay at anchor by the hotel's bathing pavilion, where in the cool of the evening happy bathers were splashing, and they hired it for a mere song. Konrad took the oars and Lilly seated herself at the stern. All kinds of water-flowers rose with a swish lightly to the surface as the boat cut through a carpet of sedges. Mingled with the young green of the sprouting reeds were the brown battered remnants of last year's growth; stately bulrushes bordered the banks, and the water flag planted her golden tents between them. Like huge dense walls of purple, the park's wealth of timber rose high against the sky.
When Lilly pointed this out, Konrad shook his head and said: "It's no good thinking any more about it." But, nevertheless, he kept casting glances in that direction.
Lilly had scarcely ever been in a boat, and soon gave up steering as a bad job. She spread her shawl at the bottom of the boat and made herself a comfortable soft nest, into which she retired.
Crouched at Konrad's feet, she lay there with her back against the seat in the stern. And thus, her eyes dreamily fixed on blue space, she began to build castles in the air about her future, devising plans by which, with a bound, she was to swing herself back into the midst of respectability.
She would give music lessons--she was good enough for beginners--and with the proceeds prepare herself for the stage, for which she had a decided talent.... Or perhaps it would be wiser to go in for science, to train her mind so that it might not lag behind his. She must be intellectual enough to deserve his friendship so long as he desired her to be his friend. Or--so that no harm should happen to anyone else--she would go abroad and teach German, and come back a new and regenerated woman at his summons. Or ... Ah! what? Or ... or ... lie and dream, and drain the happiness of the hour to the dregs. Exposure and death--one must entail the other--would come time enough....
The sun went down, melting into a blood-red haze. Nearness and distance were now veiled in violet mists. The whole globe seemed to be diluted into light and air, the reeds alone, with their slender black stems latticing the evening afterglow, retained an earthly corporeal form.
The foliage of the park gradually melted into a dark undefined mass. More than ever did it now seem to be a forbidden garden, filled with thrills and mysteries, sinking for ever into the unattainable.
As the boat glided along the edge of the reeds, it suddenly drifted near a blue bay, which cut like a wedge into the land on the park side, so far in that it was impossible to see where it ended. For a moment Konrad rested on his oars motionless, then he sprang to his feet with a cry of delight.
"What is it?" she asked.
"You remember we saw a stream flowing out of the park on the village side?"
"Of course I do."
"It must have flowed in somewhere, mustn't it?"
"Why, yes."
He pointed with his hand to the gleaming bay's narrowing tip.
"There's the place!"
"And do you really think that at last we have ..." She dared not suggest it.
"If we like, we can in this boat traverse the whole unexplored region by water."
In her childlike jubilation she jumped up with an exclamation, and simply fell on his neck as if it was a natural thing to do, and they had never made any platonic vows.
Slowly the boat drifted on with the current--between meadows lined with weeping willows, where the evening mist hung like white scarves. Peasants' cottages stood near, with fishing-nets spread out over the fences. Then, at a bend in the stream, a dark gateway of foliage opened like a huge vault in front of them.
"Oh, goodness!" cried Lilly.
"Hush!" he whispered, in pretended awe. "Now we must be as quiet as mice, or we shall get turned out for trespassing, after all."
And the dip of his oars became so stealthy that it might have been taken for the splash of a leaping fish.
Thus they rowed under the triumphal arch of leaves which thickly interlaced overhead. It was pitch dark close around them, though here and there from the right bank came an occasional gleam of summer twilight. Lamplights, too, twinkled in the distance, and they could catch the hum of voices, the clink of glasses, and now and then a stray chord struck on the piano. The foliage parted, and an unimpeded view of the castle lay before them. It was a wide, two-storeyed, box-like structure, its ponderous simplicity dating from a period when the grandees of Brandenburg still possessed little sense of the artistic. But on the stone steps gleamed the marble nymphs that had greeted them in the afternoon, and beyond their white bodies one saw on the terrace itself a long table, round which was gathered, in the flickering lamplight, a chattering, laughing party, passing gaily with song and wine the intoxicating summer evening.
"And he might be sitting there too," thought Lilly, "if I were not hanging like a millstone about his neck," and she felt almost as if she must apologise to him.
They drifted quickly by on the current, and like the vision of a moment the banquet vanished from their sight. They passed the brightly lighted windows of the castle kitchen and offices, where servants flitted to and fro like ministering spirits, and glided again into silence and darkness. To their right, at the back of the house with its countless windows, was a grass plot bordered with old statues and ivy-draped urns; on their left everything was plunged in shadow. Here was an avenue of century-old limes running along the bank of the stream, every ray of light extinguished in its dark depths.
Maybe somewhere near here stood the marble head they longed to find. Lilly's eyes searched every corner furtively, as if she scrupled to deprive him of the joy of discovery.
The arched bridge, which they had admired earlier in the day, now gleamed at them again out of the dusk. It evidently did not lead to Walhalla, but to an islet of spiræa and hemp bushes, under the branches of which a pair of swans were roosting. At the sound of the oars they awoke, and with flapping wings pursued the boat, opening their beaks for bread.
"Swans! the one touch that was wanted to make everything perfect!" Lilly exclaimed jubilantly. "I wish I had some crumbs to give them."
She turned her head to look after the swans, and her neck rested against his knees.
"May I stay like this?" she asked a little nervously.
"Yes, if it's comfortable," he answered; and there was a caressing yielding in his tone that sent a warm glow through her limbs.
She took off her hat, not to crush it, and laid it on the seat in the stern. Now her head was free to lean too against him lightly, and in sweet anxiety she felt his hand rest for a moment tenderly on her hair. Yet he was silent and preoccupied, as if some burden were weighing on his mind, which he could not throw off. And again she felt as she had often felt before, as if a veil hung between him and herself--a veil that seldom lifted, and obscured from her the true characteristics of his nature, much as she clung to him in loving intimacy.
Oh, if only he would be merry!
The park came to an end, and the red after-glow, no longer hidden by walls of foliage, flamed in full glory over them. The spell threatened to be broken. The world of magic became almost ordinary.
"Come, let us turn round," she begged softly.
And they turned the boat's head and rowed again into the dreamy bliss of semi-darkness.
But now he had to strike out with a will, because they were rowing against the current, and he could not prevent his oars from splashing audibly in the water.
"We shan't get off. They will catch us now!" he said.
"Oh, but they are far too happy," she replied, "to be down on other happy people."
"Yes, it looks almost like an enchanted castle; but--who knows? it may be a snare and a delusion."
"Why should it be?"
"Ah, God knows!... Bleeding wounds can be hidden under flowers, and the beauty with which a man may surround himself is often deceptive."
This scepticism displeased her.
"They must be happy!" she cried; "they who have given us so much to-day must have enough for themselves too."
"It, doesn't follow, darling," he answered. "It's possible to make a rich man of a beggar, and to be as poor as a church mouse one's self."
"Are we beggars, then?" she asked, raising herself gently up to him.
"No, by Jove! we are not beggars;" and he drew a deep breath.
There was a silence, and then it seemed as if something warm and damp was falling on her forehead.
He was actually crying--crying for joy!
Did she deserve it? She, Lilly Czepanek, who ... And to hide her own tears she withdrew into herself. It was more than she could bear. She would have liked to sob and cry and kiss his hands, but instead she was obliged to clench her hands, and stuff her gloves between her teeth so that he should not notice her agitation. It was like an intervention of Providence that, as they once more drifted close by the castle, the sound of a woman's voice singing should fall on their ears.
What was the song? Ah! out of "Tristan." She had never heard it in the theatre, but she was sure it could be nothing but "Tristan."
She raised her head interrogatively, and Konrad, stooping, whispered in her ear, "Isolde's 'Liebestod.'" He quickly ran the boat ashore at the darkest spot on the bank, for not a note must be lost. On the terrace above, laughter and chatter were silenced. Only the nightingale in the lime-boughs was undisturbed, and mingled its sweet rhapsody with the exultant death-agony of the woman who, more than any other creation of God or man, teaches us that the will not to be is the most triumphant manifestation of being.
Lilly trembled from head to foot. She stretched her hands behind her to reach his. She could not help holding on to him. If she had not held on to him she must have sunk into space. Not till she felt his warm fingers between hers did she become calmer.
The last note died away; the grand arpeggios of the Nachspiel melted into silence. There was no clapping or applause of any kind. That lively party up there on the terrace were evidently impressed, and realised what was due to the singer.
Konrad, with a silent pressure, let go her hands and went back to the oars. She did not demur. The forbidden garden vanished, vanished utterly.
The dusk of early night now lay on the meadows. Not a sound was to be heard far or near. Yet the world seemed to echo with the melody of harp and the sound of song.
"And we've never seen your marble beauty," murmured Lilly, stroking his knees. "Yet I keep thinking that was her voice."
"And I, too," he burst out passionately. "She wasn't singing for those good people up there at all, but for us--for us alone."
"Ah! I wish I could sing it like her!"
"Try, at any rate."
She sang a few passages here and there. But she could not connect them, and, what was more, something else rose and forced its way imperiously into her memory.
With that grandest and most exquisite inspiration of the great master mingled, unbidden, her own poor "Song of Songs." And she sang out into the profound silence: