The train rumbled on through the night, showers of sparks flew up from
the engine. When it was fed by the stoker, clouds of fire illuminated
the darkness, and you saw in a flash purple pines, snow-covered gables,
and wide-stretching golden spaces appearing out of black nothingness.
How beautiful, how strange it all was!
Lilly leaned her head, drowsy from champagne, against the red velvet
cushions. It was over, and everything had gone off well. A kaleidoscope
of confused pictures, half real, half imaginary, whirled through her
brain. She saw a great black inkstand with a small grey-bearded man
behind it asking lots of useless questions; a white lace veil with
myrtle-leaves attached thrown over her head by the adjutant's wife, who
went from one rapture into another; a hateful Protestant minister,
with two ridiculous white bibs under his chin. He looked like a
grave-digger, but at the end he gave such an exquisite address that
Lilly would have liked to cry on his bosom. Two gentlemen in black, two
in gay uniforms. One of the gentlemen in black was Herr Pieper, one of
those in uniform the colonel. And she was the colonel's wife the
colonel's wife! How the wheels seemed to murmur the words: "Colonel's
wife!" But if you listened more attentively they also said--what the
gentlemen at the wedding had said--"Most gracious baroness; most
gracious baroness," always in time.
The ice-cream had been so wonderful--a positive chain of mountains with
peaks, and pinnacles, and little lights that shone through the
crystals. She could have sat admiring it for ever, only she had to dig
into it with a big golden spoon, and so overturn a whole mountain. She
had asked him if she might have ice-cream every day in the future, and
he had laughingly answered, "Yes, if you like." She must have been
rather tipsy, or she couldn't have had the courage to ask such a
question. She would find an opportunity of begging his pardon later.
Now he sat opposite her looking her through and through with his
piercing eyes. That was the only thing that embarrassed her, and if she
hadn't been such a coward, she would have asked him to look the other
way for a change. Not that she felt her old fear of him to-day. Of late
she had gradually become more at home with him; how could it be
otherwise when he was so kind, and she had only to express a wish to
have it fulfilled instantly?
Then there was something she had noticed that she would never dare
breathe to anyone. He was bow-legged. They were the heavy cavalry legs
all over, rather too short for the imposing figure they supported. They
made him sway in his gait from side to side as if he were trying to
walk on a tight-rope. You noticed it even more when he wore mufti and
stuck his hands in his pockets as he was doing now.
Every now and then he leant forward and asked, "Are you all right,
little woman?"
She should think she was "all right" indeed! All her life she would
like to sit there leaning back against the red velvet cushions,
looking at her new soft _suede_ gloves, and the shiny toes of her
patent-leather boots peeping out from the hem of her travelling dress.
There had been quite a crowd at the station. No uniforms, because he
had dispensed with a military escort, but plenty of ladies had been
there, thickly veiled, trying to appear unconscious, as if their errand
at the station was an ordinary one. As she passed them on the colonel's
arm and got into the _coupe_, she had caught two or three admiring
remarks--and not from too friendly lips. It came back to her now with
heart-felt satisfaction. At the very last moment two bouquets had flown
in through the window, and she had looked out again. There stood the
Asmussen sisters, bowing reverentially and crying buckets full. Her
colossal good fortune had disarmed their envy and changed ill-feeling
into a sort of melancholy rejoicing.
And, opposite, sat the man who had worked the extraordinary revolution
in her lot. For a moment she was so overwhelmed with a feeling of
well-being and gratitude that she went down on her knees before him,
and, clasping his hands in hers, gazed up at him in adoration.
But when he caught her to him with one arm, and with the other caressed
her, she became frightened again and retreated to her place. He let her
be with a smile, conscious that his hour was not far off.
And it came sooner than she had expected. "Get ready," he said
abruptly; "we shall be getting out directly."
"Where?" she asked, startled.
"At the junction, from where there's a loop line to Lischnitz."
"Are we going to your estate, then?" she inquired anxiously. He had
talked of going to Dresden.
"No," he replied shortly; "we shall stay here."
Then they stood on a dark platform with their trunks and bags. The
frosty haze cast rainbow halos round the few dim gas-lamps, and shadowy
forms were enveloped in clouds of their own frozen breath as they
emerged into the light. The train steamed out of the station.
There they stood and no one heeded them. Then the colonel uttered one
oath after another. He had acquired the habit of swearing violently at
drill, when irritated. His fury fell on Lilly like a thunderclap, and
made her tremble, as if she were the culprit. At last the colonel's
oaths reached the ears of the station officials, who associated them
with something familiar in the past, and they began contritely to make
amends for their negligence by loading themselves with the luggage.
They got into the hotel omnibus which was waiting, and Lilly squeezed
herself into the furthest corner of it. Weird shadows flickered from
the miserable little oil carriage-lamps, on his sharply defined
features, giving him a new aspect, beneath which his long-slumbering
wrath still seethed.
"What has this dreadful old man to do with you, or you with him," Lilly
asked herself, a shiver running through her, "that you should be at his
mercy so completely? Why not rush past him, tear open the door, and
leap out into the night?"
She pictured what would happen if she acted on this impulse. He would
stop the omnibus, pursue her, calling and shouting after her, and, if
she was so lucky as to hide herself, he would set the police on her
track. The next morning she would be found cowering under an arch
asleep, perhaps frozen to death.
At that moment he stretched out his hands, groping for hers, as people
in love are wont to do. The shadows dissolved and she responded to his
caress, wreathed in smiles. Yet on their arrival at the hotel, where
the proprietor, waiters, and commissionaires received them with
deferential bows and an effusive welcome, Lilly's thoughts, in the
midst of all the bustle, light, and warmth, reverted again to flight.
"I'll say I have left something in the omnibus, run out and never come
back."
She was already ascending the stairs on his arm.
A spacious, awe-inspiring apartment swallowed them up. It had a
flowered carpet and a glaring three-armed chandelier. In one corner
stood a huge wide bedstead, covered with a smooth white damask
counterpane. It was carved at the head and foot. She looked round in
vain for a second bed. "St. Joseph!" she breathed to herself.
The colonel made himself perfectly at home. He grumbled, turned up the
lights, and tossed his overcoat into a corner. Then he lit a cigarette
and threw himself down on the sofa, whence he watched with the eye of a
connoisseur her movements as she reluctantly took off her coat and drew
the pins out of her hat.
There was a knock, and a waiter came in with cold refreshments and a
silver-necked bottle on a tray.
"More champagne?" questioned Lilly in alarm. She had not yet recovered
from the amount that she had imbibed at midday.
"Nothing like champagne," he said, "to give a little woman courage to
consecrate the pretty blue silk _neglige_ waiting in her box to be
unpacked."
He poured out the foaming liquid into the two glasses. She clinked
glasses with him obediently, but scarcely touched a drop of her wine.
When he rallied her on her abstinence, she answered pleadingly, "I
don't want to be tipsy on such a sacred night as this!"
Her reply seemed to entertain him immensely. He burst into hilarious
laughter, and exclaimed: "All the better! All the better!"
He would have drawn her to him, but, as every touch of his caused her
acute discomfort, she evaded him quickly and said, "I must look for my
_neglige_."
She knelt before the box, which she herself had packed the night
before, lifting out the trays, and produced from the depth a garment of
filmy lace and washing silk, which he, with all the other beautiful
clothes, had bought for her before the wedding.
She looked round in search of a sheltering alcove into which she could
retire to change, but there was none no escape from those eyes, almost
softened by their desire for her, watching everything she did.
Shuddering, she stood there, clinging helplessly to the collar of her
dress, which she hadn't the courage to unhook.
He grew impatient and sprang to his feet. He nearly caught her in his
arms, but the imploring look she gave him was so full of pathos that he
chivalrously desisted, and stooped instead to pick up something which,
in her search for the _neglige_, she had turned out of the box on to
the floor. The next minute Lilly saw a white roll between his dark
fingers.
"It's 'The Song of Songs,'" shot through her brain.
With a cry she hurled herself upon him, and tried to snatch the roll of
music from his grasp, but his fingers were like iron. He defended
himself and repulsed her attack with ease, laughing all the time. She
was beside herself at the thought that her life's secret should be
tampered with by strange hands, and she cried, implored, and beat him
with her fists.
Now the matter began to appear to him in a suspicious light. Doubts
began to rise within him as to the unblemished purity of her soul, and
even of her body.
"Be careful, my little girl," he said. "Prevarication and deceit are
out of the question now. You will kindly let me see what this is
without delay, or I'll pin you down so that you can't stir a limb."
"Oh, please, dear colonel," she begged and prayed, "give them up. They
are only two or three sheets of paper covered with music, the music of
songs--nothing else, I swear. Please let me have them, dear colonel."
Her innocent pleading touched him, and the comical unconscious humility
of her "dear colonel" made him laugh again. Besides, as the daughter of
a professional, she might cherish musical ambitions.
"Do you compose yourself?" he asked.
"No, no, no! It's not my composition, but don't look at it," she
entreated, "or I'll jump out of the window. I swear I will by all the
saints."
He was so delighted with the picture she made, her eyes wide with
alarm, her hair loosened and dishevelled, the tragic mute expression on
her sweet childlike face with its clear-cut features, that he wanted to
prolong the struggle for a few minutes. So he looked very black and
pretended to be what he really had been a little while ago--full of
jealous suspicion.
Then she fell on her knees, and, clasping his legs, she whispered in a
voice half suffocated by her emotions of shame and distress:
"If only you give it back to me, I won't mind what you do. I won't
attempt to defend myself."
The bargain struck him as advantageous.
"Your hand on it," he said.
"Yes, here is my hand on it," she replied. "And you'll never ask any
questions? Promise."
"Not if you swear by your blessed St. Joseph that it's really nothing
but music."
"Yes, nothing but music and the libretto, I swear."
He gave her the roll, and she yielded herself entirely to him ... sold
herself at the price of "The Song of Songs" to the man to whom she
already belonged.
* * * * *
The early morning sunlight, shining straight in her eyes through the
yellow striped curtains, awoke her. She felt herself resting on a sort
warm pillow, and was conscious of having slept splendidly. Slowly it
dawned on her what had happened. She leaned over to him with the
intention of giving him a kiss. He lay with his head thrown back and
his mouth open, and the light from the window played on his shining
bristled chin. Over his haggard cheeks little red and blue veins ran in
all directions like rivers on a map. His ink-black moustache glistened
with pomade, and his eyelids were so wrinkled into folds that they
must, it seemed, have reached down to the top of his nose if they had
been ironed out.
"He's not so bad-looking," Lilly thought to herself; but she omitted
the kiss.
She got up noiselessly and dressed herself without his moving. The old
cavalry officer was a sound and heavy sleeper.
Lilly scribbled on a sheet of notepaper which she found in the hotel
blotter: "I am gone to church," laid the note on his pillow, and
slipped down the stairs, past the porter, who was so astonished he
forgot to say "Good-morning."
The streets of the little town still slept in the peace of the late
winter dawn. The snow had been swept from the middle of the road into
heaps along the gutter. A party of crows sat in a circle round the
frozen fountain in the market-place. From the distance came the faint
music of sleigh-bells. Down the main street boys with satchels were
loitering to school. In some of the smaller shops lights still burned
and apprentices were sweeping and cleaning the steps, their faces blue
with cold. As Lilly went by they stared hard, or called to others
inside to come out and gape after her.
The swinging tread of marching footsteps was behind her. A long train
of infantry, wearing gloves but without cloaks, came tramping along in
the middle of the road. They puffed, in regular time, clouds of frozen
breath before them. Their eyes with one accord turned to the left in
Lilly's direction as if by word of command. The officers, walking
beside their men, exchanged significant glances and shrugged their
shoulders.
She had not far to look for the Catholic church of the parish. The
clumsy stone fabric, with its remnants of Gothic bricked over, stood
high above the roofs of the town. The side aisles were crammed with
altars in barbaric colours, much gilded and adorned with paper roses in
cheap vases. She could not find St. Joseph anywhere, and had to be
content instead with Our Lady of Sorrows, between whom and herself
relations seemed strained.
A feeling of oppression and emptiness, which she could not explain,
took possession of her soul. It was as if she had done something wrong
and didn't know what. She kneeled down and gabbled her prayers so
thoughtlessly that she felt ashamed, then she caught herself absently
eyeing with contentment her _suede_ gloves, which moulded her fingers
with such perfect ease and distinction. Every now and then a shudder
ran through her, which made her shut her eyes and clench her teeth, and
then she felt ashamed again.
Soon she gave up attempting to pray, and gazed up at the Mother of God,
with her tearful face, who appeared to be saying, "Please take these
things out of me." Yet the seven swords piercing her heart were set at
the hilt with pearls and precious stones.
"If only I was really unhappy, I should have some excuse," thought
Lilly. "Then I might talk with her as I used to with St. Joseph, and
the swords in my heart would be costly to behold." As costly as the
pearl necklace he had put round her neck just before the wedding.
She saw herself as she had been two months ago, when she had stolen out
in the grey dawn to lay her poor distraught heart at the feet of her
favourite saint; how soon, with the reaction of youth, she had walked
on air again, intoxicated at the thought of what was coming to her in
the fair future. And all the time she had been actually steeped in
poverty and wretchedness, forsaken and friendless.
"Happiness takes on strange aspects," she thought, and she gave her
shoulders a petulant little shrug.
Then suddenly a great dread came over her that those times would never
come back, that she must go on like this eternally, barren in soul,
disturbed in spirit, persecuted by gloomy, inexpressible fears.
"It must all come of not loving him enough," she confessed to herself.
Now she knew what she had to petition of the Virgin Mary. She bowed her
face in both hands and prayed long and fervidly--prayed that she might
learn to love him with as much passion as she had blood in her veins;
with as much devotion as she had hopes of her soul; with as much
joyousness as there was laughter in her heart. And, lo! her prayer was
answered.
She rose from her knees with shining eyes, a burden lifted from her
soul, and hurried away, back to him to whom she belonged, to serve him
with all humbleness and confidence, either as his daughter, his
handmaiden, his mistress--in any capacity he wished.