The finches were the worst behaved, though the tomtits and the
nuthatches ran them very close in the noise they made. As for the
blackbirds and thrushes, they seemed to think the place belonged to
them; much more so than the starlings, who kept to themselves, and
apparently cared for nothing in earth or heaven. The wrens and
hedge-robins contributed their fair share to the chorus, but nothing
could beat the fanfare of the finches, which was almost more than ears
only accustomed hitherto to the tiny song of a caged cock-canary could
endure.
The aged Haberland in his felt slippers knew them all apart. The old
gardener's office had become a sinecure, as he was too infirm now to do
anything more than sprinkle the lawn with the hose. Old Haberland knew
exactly which birds built their nests in the trees and which on the
ground, at what hour they began to sing, and the best post of
observation to take up if you wanted to study their habits and plumage.
It was horrible that the squirrels must be shot. She could almost have
hated the old fellow when she saw him going out with his rifle under
his coat to wage war against those jolly little beasts. For he declared
that the artful little robbers knew the gun when they saw it, and
scurried off and outwitted him if they caught sight of it. He wasn't on
friendly terms either with the jays and magpies. His favourite was the
shy green woodpecker, which he had coaxed to nest in the park. Then
there was that curiosity, the parti-coloured hoopoe, so tame that it
came fearlessly at all hours of the day close up to the castle, sang
its "Hu-tu-tu," and then with his crooked sabre of a bill cut the worms
out of the grass.
Since the world began there could not have been such radiant glorious
mornings as these. When you put your head out of doors at five o'clock,
the cool purple mist wrapped you about like a royal mantle. Over the
pond, where the reeds and rushes seemed to grow up in a night, forced
by invisible hands, lay sunlit vapours which lifted gradually and rose
into the sky in luminous columns. Vapour arose everywhere. Often it
looked as if white fires had been kindled on the slopes of the lawn;
clouds of light rolled heavily from the glittering fronds as if
satiated with the dew they had absorbed. Oh, what mornings!
Then, when things burst into flower, you never grew tired of wandering
about, filling apron and basket with great sprays of snowy and purple
lilac and trails of golden chain, till you were almost drowned in a sea
of blossom. The mad joy of the dogs was indescribable, when their
lovely young mistress appeared smiling on the garden steps in her white
blouse and short skirt, armed with scissors and shears. Patiently they
waited for her, whining and yelping if she came later than they
expected; for they had given her without hesitation their canine
allegiance, regardless of pitying, benevolent smiles from Fraeulein von
Schwertfeger, whom they abhorred.
The cleverest of them all, Bevel the terrier, was not numbered among
her admiring bodyguard, as he never failed to attend at the colonel's
heels when he took his early morning survey of his acres. But there was
Pluto, the long-eared setter, who now in the spring was out of
employment, and went on his own account hunting rabbits in the park.
There were Schnauzl the poodle and Bobbi the dachshund, who lived in
constant state of jealous feud with each other because of her. But most
beautiful of all was Regina, the huge panther-like Dane, whose left
foreleg had been injured by a stone, and who, ashamed of her lameness
in the daytime, always slunk out of the sight of strangers, though at
night she made up for it by keeping indefatigable guard and terrifying
the neighbourhood by her bay.
Indescribable, too, were the gambols of the colts in the paddock beyond
the rose garden, the craving for caresses of the two-year-olds, when
their sugar-squandering mistress pulled back the hurdles and stretched
out her arms, to pillow on them the slender heads of her young pets.
Nothing, too, could equal the fury of the turkey-cock when the
pheasants stole a march on him and got the first crumbs; though he
surpassed himself in jealous rage when those idiotic ducks dared to
squat on Lilly's feet as if it were a perfectly natural thing to do. So
bristling with anger was he that he would sometimes peck at Pluto's
drooping ears, an attention which the setter declined with a
contemptuous shake of the head.
Oh! those were mornings worth living!
After the early stroll round the estate came breakfast, at which she
arrived so brimming over with happiness and affection that it didn't
matter whether she threw her arms first round the colonel's neck or
Anna's; for now in confidential moments she was permitted to call her
by her Christian name, and felt more drawn to her, though still full of
fear of her displeasure and harsh judgment. For indeed she found in her
a severe schoolmistress. No word, gesture, or movement of Lilly's
escaped observation, or if necessary, reproof. There was a right and a
wrong way of sitting at table, or in an arm-chair, pouring out tea, of
asking someone to sit down, of beginning a conversation, and making
visitors known to each other. Lilly learnt to glide over the difficulty
of forgotten names and to show each one the proper degree of
friendship. These and a hundred other little matters Lilly was
enlightened upon. There seemed no end to them.
This was only practising in the small compass of the castle and on its
occasional guests. The real thing was to come later, in the autumn,
when Lilly was to call on the wives of the proprietors of the
neighbouring estates. Till then the colonel desired to live quietly at
home with as little outward social intercourse as possible. It was easy
for him to find an excuse, as, after his many years of bachelorhood, it
was not unnatural that he should wish to prolong his honeymoon. By the
autumn Lilly's education would be complete, and she would emerge into
society a _grande dame_ capable of holding her own at the functions of
the landed nobility and in the casino with a tact that would not
disgrace her husband's name and rank; and Fraeulein von Schwertfeger
kept this ideal, as the highest attainable, before Lilly's eyes every
hour of the day. It was like preparing for an examination in the
Selecta, Lilly thought, as she anxiously modelled herself after the
prescribed pattern, and dreamed day and night of her _debut_.
In reality, she was only at ease when wandering about out of doors or
shut up in her boudoir. "Boudoir!" No, she mustn't call it that.
Fraeulein von Schwertfeger said that it was a sitting-room, and only
very rich butchers' and bankers' wives--according to Fraeulein von
Schwertfeger they were the same--owned boudoirs.
Thus Lilly stumbled at every step. Sometimes, as if to put her social
development to the test, the colonel permitted Lilly, under Fraeulein
von Schwertfeger's wing, to do the honours of his table when he chanced
to entertain fellow-officers who turned up from neighbouring barracks.
On these occasions the same thing always happened. At first she would
be as stiff as a wound-up doll, incapable of making a spontaneous
remark to the military guests in their resplendent uniforms; but in a
few glasses of wine she found courage and became by degrees more
lively, not to say merry, till at last she simply bubbled over with
innocent little jokes--how they came into her head she didn't know--and
so charmed these men, who had mostly passed their prime, that they paid
her court in every word they said, and kept their gaze fixed on her
face in delight and desire. The colonel would become uneasy, and
Fraeulein von Schwertfeger, who generally stared at her plate with a
scoffing little smile, received a sign from him; whereupon the ladies
instantly rose and retired, deaf to all the loudly expressed regrets at
their going on the part of the men.
The ecstasy, however, that she had awakened in her husband's guests
recoiled on herself: made her exultant and sorry together, and
compelled her to sit till past midnight, with wet cheeks, beating
heart, and strained nerves staring out into the blue twilight of the
park.
Foreshadowings of undisciplined madness and uncontrolled self-abandon
swept like lightning flashes through her brain. A consuming fever
within her relaxed her limbs. It made the dress she wore, the room she
was in, the park, the world seem too small for her, and filled her soul
with a crowd of dancing fiery shapes, a whirl of reflected masculine
passions.
On such nights as these the colonel would come to her, in a more or
less intoxicated condition, when the guests were gone, and reproach her
mildly for not being "ladylike" enough; then, when she tried to defend
herself, he would kiss her tears away and throw himself beside her on
the bed. Shivering with disgust at his drunkenness, her conscience a
prey to groundless pangs, yet for all that happy and relieved to feel
herself released from a torturing anxiety, she fell asleep in his arms.
There were other nights when she felt restless and lonely and would
have been glad of his company, when she longed in soul as well as body
to cling humbly to him; but he did not come, and locked his door. On
the whole, he treated her kindly. To him she was a light fragile toy,
not to be played with too often in case of damage, but to be put away
carefully after use till next time--and this suited her well enough. At
least she personally was spared the terror of his outbursts of fury,
which two or three times a day threatened to shiver the walls of the
castle to atoms. Even Fraeulein Von Schwertfeger hardly knew how to meet
them, and bowed her head and bit her lips as to an inevitable fate when
the storms burst.
Lilly could never quite make up her mind as to what were the relations
between these two. Generally, it seemed as if, during long years,
mutual sympathy and understanding had bound them together by
indissoluble ties, though at other times they appeared to have nothing
in common and to avoid each other, he with frigid hauteur, she with
scorn in her squinting sidelong glances. It had often occurred to
Lilly, too, that when Fraeulein von Schwertfeger was young and fair to
look upon, she and the colonel might have had a love affair. But
gradually she abandoned this idea, for if anything of the kind had ever
existed, Fraeulein von Schwertfeger would have been far too proud to
endure their present companionship, and he was too domineering to
tolerate the presence of any such uncomfortable reminder of a dead
amour. All Lilly could gather of the aristocratic spinster's past was
that as the orphan of a poor officer she had been forced to earn her
own living almost since her confirmation. She had presided over the
colonel's house for nearly twenty years. That she, like herself, was
without resources and dependent on the whims of the same old man seemed
to Lilly to form a bond of sympathy between herself and Fraeulein von
Schwertfeger, yet she never could get rid of the undefinable dread she
had been inspired with at the outset. She really was indebted to her
for many things. Without the spinster's untiring surveillance she must
have fallen innumerable times from the straight road, which was to lead
to her apotheosis as noblewoman and Lady Bountiful. When she was
disposed to err on the side of over-humility, there would have been
scoffers to take base advantage of it; and her easy-going manner with
those who were not her equals might, if uncorrected, have got her into
serious trouble. As it was, she was popular with everyone. In the
kitchens and the stables, the villages and the agents' offices,
everywhere she was greeted respectfully with beaming smiles. But it was
in the Polish quarters, where the women dried their washing behind
great fires of brushwood, that she was simply idolised. It may have
been that they had got wind of her Slavonic name and her Catholicism.
Anyhow, by all those poor despised foreign folk, who drifted about
among the proud stolid Germans, with humility in their downcast
childlike eyes and snatches of their native song on their lips, Lilly
was regarded in the light of a saviour and patron saint. She loved to
visit and busy herself with these gentle grateful people. She tended
the sick and took compassion on the forsaken. The girls were to her
like her own sisters, who needed a watchful eye over them; and as for
the boys, they were a sacred trust whose welfare she would always have
at heart.
Fraeulein von Schwertfeger grimly disapproved of this attachment between
Lilly and the Poles.
"The people on the estate are beginning to complain," she said, "that
you prefer the aliens to themselves. If I were you I should take my
walks in another direction."
Lilly objected to doing this, and so Fraeulein von Schwertfeger bore her
company when she went in the direction of the barn dwellings, in case
they should exercise too great a fascination over her. She succeeded,
too, in converting Lilly to Protestantism--only outwardly, of course.
"You may worship your Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph as much as you
like," she said, "but do remove those images and relics from your
bedside. And then with regard to going to church, certainly if you like
you can drive five miles in to Krammen to attend mass. The colonel will
allow you, but, all the same, I would like you, my sweet, to come to
church with us and sit in the ancestral pew; do, to please me. You
won't regret it."
And when Lilly unresisting had given in, Fraeulein von Schwertfeger
presented her as a reward with a tiny folding domestic altar. The
outside looked like a dainty jewel-box, but when you opened it--oh,
joy!--there was the Holy Child in the arms of the Virgin painted on
glass, with St. Anne on the left panel and St. Joseph on the right.
Lilly almost wept, she was so pleased with it. Still, she could not
bring herself to love the giver as she ought. Often when they sat
together chatting confidentially, Lilly felt solitary and--frightened.
She even dared not satisfy her hunger. Since the days of Frau
Asmussen's milk puddings, Lilly had developed an enormous, well-nigh
indecent appetite, and Fraeulein von Schwertfeger's aghast expression at
her piled-up plate often was the cause of her rising from table still
unsatisfied, and falling back on raids on the storeroom cupboard
between meals. The dear old cook, her fast ally, guaranteed to guard
Lilly from surprises on the part of Fraeulein von Schwertfeger, and when
she came into the kitchen Lilly accounted for her presence there on the
plea that she was learning to cook, an announcement which was received
with patronising merriment.
If it had not been for old Grete the cook, she would have known nothing
at all about the conduct of the household, for, either from caution or
greed of power, Fraeulein von Schwertfeger chose to conceal everything
that might have led to a practical and intelligent comprehension of the
_menage_. When she offered to help she was told help was not wanted,
and she must take care of her hands and not tire herself. So it went on
day after day.
She would have given anything to learn riding, but there again
Schwertfeger interference prevented her by discovering signs of
motherhood, which invariably proved later to be a false alarm. She
might not so much as cultivate her musical talent. The old tin-kettle
of a piano, the rattling yellow keys of which looked like a set of
teeth decayed from tobacco smoke--just as the colonel's were--was not
to be replaced by a new one till they went to Danzig for the day in the
autumn.
So her life dragged on, half in bliss, half in regret. She felt like a
pilgrim who against her will had strayed into paradise. She looked back
on the time before her marriage as on a long, long vanished youth, and
would have laughed at anyone who had pointed out to her that at barely
nineteen most of her youth lay before her. It was well that opposite,
in the bailiff's lodge, there was at least one person who could testify
to her having been a girl once; otherwise she might have told herself
that her girlhood was a dream, and she had been a full-fledged married
woman and the colonel's wife before she was out of her cradle.
All this time she had only met her merry comrade at dinner on Sunday,
when, in his long frock-coat, with his reverential awed manner, he cut
a rather comical figure. Neither of them by a single word or glance
recalled the past. Often from her balcony, now completely secluded by
its growth of rambling vines, she looked across to the gabled house and
saw him gambolling with the red little fox of a puppy. Then it seemed
to her that this blond-haired good-for-nothing, who flirted with all
the pretty girls on the estate, so old Grete said, was the only
creature with whom she had anything in common in this cold world. Grete
told how he nearly rode the horses to death to get back from his secret
outings before dawn; and then sometimes behind the closed shutters of
his den---- Here old Grete could not proceed, and Lilly concluded that
things too dreadful for words went on behind those closed shutters.