She was uneasy, perturbed to her last fibre. She wanted to remain
clear, with no touch on her. A wild instinct made her shrink away from
any hands which might be laid on her.
She was a foundling, probably of some gipsy race, brought up in a Roman
Catholic Rescue Home. A naïve, paganly religious being, she was
attached to the Baroness, with whom she had served for seven years,
since she was fourteen.
She came into contact with no one, unless it were with Ida Hesse, the
governess. Ida was a calculating, good-natured, not very
straightforward flirt. She was the daughter of a poor country doctor.
Having gradually come into connection with Emilie, more an alliance
than an attachment, she put no distinction of grade between the two of
them. They worked together, sang together, walked together, and went
together to the rooms of Franz Brand, Ida’s sweetheart. There the three
talked and laughed together, or the women listened to Franz, who was a
forester, playing on his violin.
In all this alliance there was no personal intimacy between the young
women. Emilie was naturally secluded in herself, of a reserved, native
race. Ida used her as a kind of weight to balance her own flighty
movement. But the quick, shifty governess, occupied always in her
dealings with admirers, did all she could to move the violent nature of
Emilie towards some connection with men.
But the dark girl, primitive yet sensitive to a high degree, was
fiercely virgin. Her blood flamed with rage when the common soldiers
made the long, sucking, kissing noise behind her as she passed. She
hated them for their almost jeering offers. She was well protected by
the Baroness.
And her contempt of the common men in general was ineffable. But she
loved the Baroness, and she revered the Baron, and she was at her ease
when she was doing something for the service of a gentleman. Her whole
nature was at peace in the service of real masters or mistresses. For
her, a gentleman had some mystic quality that left her free and proud
in service. The common soldiers were brutes, merely nothing. Her desire
was to serve.
She held herself aloof. When, on Sunday afternoon, she had looked
through the windows of the Reichshalle in passing, and had seen the
soldiers dancing with the common girls, a cold revulsion and anger had
possessed her. She could not bear to see the soldiers taking off their
belts and pulling open their tunics, dancing with their shirts showing
through the open, sagging tunic, their movements gross, their faces
transfigured and sweaty, their coarse hands holding their coarse girls
under the arm-pits, drawing the female up to their breasts. She hated
to see them clutched breast to breast, the legs of the men moving
grossly in the dance.
At evening, when she had been in the garden, and heard on the other
side of the hedge the sexual inarticulate cries of the girls in the
embraces of the soldiers, her anger had been too much for her, and she
had cried, loud and cold:
“What are you doing there, in the hedge?”
She would have had them whipped.
But Bachmann was not quite a common soldier. Fräulein Hesse had found
out about him, and had drawn him and Emilie together. For he was a
handsome, blond youth, erect and walking with a kind of pride,
unconscious yet clear. Moreover, he came of a rich farming stock, rich
for many generations. His father was dead, his mother controlled the
moneys for the time being. But if Bachmann wanted a hundred pounds at
any moment, he could have them. By trade he, with one of his brothers,
was a waggon-builder. The family had the farming, smithy, and
waggon-building of their village. They worked because that was the form
of life they knew. If they had chosen, they could have lived
independent upon their means.
In this way, he was a gentleman in sensibility, though his intellect
was not developed. He could afford to pay freely for things. He had,
moreover, his native, fine breeding. Emilie wavered uncertainly before
him. So he became her sweetheart, and she hungered after him. But she
was virgin, and shy, and needed to be in subjection, because she was
primitive and had no grasp on civilized forms of living, nor on
civilized purposes.