The train rumbled on in the night. Showers of sparks flew past the
window. When the stoker added coal, a beam of light was projected far
into the darkness, and for an instant created out of the black void
purple pine trees, snowy roofs gleaming golden, and fields mottled with
yellow.
How beautiful and strange it was!
Lilly leaned her head, heavy with champagne, back against the red velvet
cushion.
It was over. A whirl of images, real and imaginary, flitted back and
forth in her brain.
A great black inkwell and a little man with a grey beard behind it
asking all sorts of useless questions. A white cloud of lace and a
myrtle wreath thrown over her head by the wife of the manager of the war
office, who fell from one fit of rapture into another. A hateful
Protestant minister with two ridiculous little white bibs. He looked
like a grave-digger, but he spoke so exquisitely, after all, that you
wanted to throw your arms about his neck, and cry. Two black and two gay
gentlemen. One of the black gentlemen, Mr. Pieper, one of the gay
gentlemen, the colonel.
"The colonel's wife--the colonel's wife," throbbed the wheels.
But if she listened carefully, she also heard them say what the
gentlemen had kept saying to her that day:
"La--dy Mertzbach--La--dy Mertzbach."
Keeping time. Keeping time.
The ice cream had been a perfect marvel, a regular mine with shafts and
tunnels and mineral veins, and little lights, which set the cut-glass
a-sparkle. She could have sat there forever staring at it, but she had
to dig in with a large gold spoon, so that a whole mountain side gave
way.
Then she had asked him whether she might have ice cream to eat every
day, and he had laughed and said "yes." If she had not been a bit tipsy,
she would not have been so bold, certainly not. And she determined to
ask his forgiveness later.
There he sat opposite, piercing her with his eyes.
That was the only embarrassing thing. If she weren't such a
chicken-hearted ninny, she would ask him to look somewhere else for a
change.
But to-day she did not experience actual fear. Latterly the old dread
had gradually left her, as she came to realise how supernaturally dear
he was. Express a wish, and it was fulfilled.
There was something else, about which, of course, she couldn't speak to
anyone. Merely to think of it was a crime. He was bow-legged. Regular
cavalry legs. They were a little short, besides, for his powerful body,
giving his stiff stride a springy sort of uncertainty, as if he were
endeavouring all the time to toe the mark, especially since he had
donned civilian's clothes and kept his hands stuck in his coat pockets.
From time to time he leaned forward and asked:
"Are you comfortable, little girl?"
Oh, she was ever so comfortable. She could have reclined there the rest
of her life, her head leaning back on the red velvet cushion, the soft
kid gloves on her hands and the natty tips of new boots every now and
then peeping from under her travelling gown.
What a crowd there had been at the station!
No uniforms, of course, because he had not desired an official escort.
To compensate, the number of veiled ladies had been all the greater.
They pretended to have business to attend to on the platform, and tried
to be inconspicuous.
When Lilly walked to the train leaning on his arm, she caught two or
three muffled cries of admiration. And God knows, they did not issue
from friendly lips.
It all circulated about her heart like a warm, soothing stream.
At the last moment, as the train was moving off, two bouquets flew in
through the window.
She looked out. There were the two sisters, making deep courtesies, and
weeping like rain spouts.
So great was Lilly's fortune that even envy was disarmed, and all the
evil poison in these girls was transmuted into pained participation in
another's joy!
And there he sat, the creator of it all.
Overcome by a sense of well-being and gratitude, she knelt on the
carpeted floor of the compartment, folded her hands on his knees, and
looked up to him worshipfully.
He put his right arm about her, pulled her close to him, and let his
left hand stray down her body. Fear came upon her again. She slid from
under his grasp back to her seat. He nodded--with a smile that seemed to
say:
"My hour will come in due time."
It was there sooner than she had suspected.
"Put on your coat," he said suddenly, "we shall be getting out soon."
"Where?" she asked, frightened.
"At the station--you know--from which a branch line goes to Lischnitz."
"Why, are we going to your place?" Lilly was terrified, because he had
always spoken of going to Dresden.
"No," he said curtly. "We remain here."
In a few moments they found themselves on a dark platform among their
bags and trunks.
The icy mist formed rainbow-coloured suns about the few lanterns, and
white clouds of frozen breath enveloped each shadowy form as it stepped
into a circle of light.
The train glided off.
They stood there, and nobody concerned himself for them.
The colonel began to swear violently, a habit acquired probably at
drill, when the world did not wag as he wished it to wag.
His cries of wrath fell upon Lilly like great hailstones. Her whole body
quivered, as if she were at fault.
Some of the station guards, to whom this tone of command seemed familiar
from times of old, loaded themselves with the baggage, and presented a
lamentable spectacle in their deep contrition.
A hotel coach was waiting on the other side. Lilly thoroughly
intimidated squeezed into the farthest corner.
The miserable little oil lamp burning dimly in a dirty glass case, threw
confused shadows upon his sharply cut face, and seemed to endow it with
a new flickering life, as if the wrath that had long been stifled were
still seething within him.
"You are completely at the mercy of this bad old man, whom you don't
know, who doesn't concern you in the least, and never will concern you."
A chill ran through her. "Supposing you were to dash by him, tear open
the coach door, and run away into the night?"
She pictured what would take place. He would have the coach stopped,
would jump out, and give chase, calling and screaming. In case she
managed to keep well concealed, he would rouse the police, and the next
morning she would be discovered cowering in a corner, asleep, or frozen
perhaps.
At this point in her thoughts he groped for her hand as lovers are wont
to do. The phantom world vanished, and blossoming into smiles again she
returned his pressure.
Nevertheless, when they reached the hotel where they were received by
the proprietor and clerks with enthusiastic bowing and scraping, and
Lilly felt a stream of light, sound, and warmth pouring toward her, the
fleeting thought beset her again:
"If I were to say I had left something in the coach, and were to run
away and never come back?"
She was already walking up the steps on his arm.
They were ushered into a large, awe-inspiring room with a flowered
carpet and a bare, three-armed chandelier.
In one corner was a huge bed, with high carved top and tail boards,
smoothly covered with a white counterpane.
She looked about in vain for another bed.
"St. Joseph!" shot through her mind.
The colonel--when thinking of him, she always called him the colonel
still--behaved as if he were at home in the room. He grumbled a bit,
fussed with the lights, and threw his overcoat in a corner.
She remained leaning against the wall.
"If I want to flee now," she thought, "I shall have to throw myself out
of the window."
"Don't you intend to budge until to-morrow morning?" he said. "If so,
I'll engage your services as a clothes horse."
A smirking calm seemed to have come over him, as if he were at last sure
of his possession.
He threw himself in a corner of the sofa, lighted a cigarette, and
looked at her with a connoisseur's gaze, while she slowly divested
herself of her cloak and drew out her hatpin with hesitating fingers.
A knock at the door.
A waiter entered bearing a tray with cold dishes and a silver-throated
bottle.
"Champagne again?" asked Lilly, who still had a slightly sickish
feeling.
"The very thing," he said, pouring a foaming jet into the goblets. "It
gives a little girl courage to dedicate the lovely nightgown waiting for
her in the trunk."
She clinked glasses with him in obedience to his demand, but scarcely
moistened her lips with the wine.
He jokingly took her to task, and she pled:
"I shouldn't like to be drunk on such a sacred evening."
Her answer seemed to gratify him immensely. He burst into a noisy laugh,
and observed:
"All the better, all the better!"
He attempted to draw her down to him, but contact with him made her
uneasy, and she eluded his grasp with a quick movement.
"You said you wanted me to hunt for the nightgown."
She knelt at the trunk, which she herself had packed the night before,
lifted the trays out, and from near the bottom fetched out the nebulous,
lacy creation, which was one of the many things he had bought her before
the wedding.
She looked about for a retreat, but nowhere on earth was there escape
from that pair of eyes which swimming in desire followed her every
movement.
Hesitating, faint-hearted she stood there, her fingers hanging to her
collar, which she did not venture to unfasten.
Growing impatient he jumped up.
He was about to seize her, but the look she gave him was so full of
despair that a knightly impulse bade him desist.
To account for his action he picked up a roll of paper that had dropped
from the trunk while she had been rummaging for the nightgown.
Lilly saw something white gleam between his dark fingers.
"The Song of Songs!" occurred to her.
With a cry she jumped on him and tried to snatch away the roll. But his
hand held it as in a vice.
He defended himself with ease, laughing all the time.
The thought that the secret of her life had strayed into alien hands,
deprived her of her senses. She cried, she screamed, she beat him with
her fists.
The matter began to look suspicious. A doubt as to the virginity of her
soul, yea, even of her body, began to assail him.
"One moment, little girl," he said. "There are no nooks or crannies for
hiding in now. Either you'll kindly let me see what this is without
further delay, or I'll take you between my knees and hold you so fast
you won't be able to move a muscle."
Lilly took to pleading.
"Colonel, dear, _dear_ colonel! A few sheets of music, and some songs,
that's all, I swear to you, _dear_ colonel."
The droll innocence of her plea stirred his emotions; that humble,
unconscious "colonel" set him laughing again. Besides, the daughter of a
musician, as he knew her to be, might be expected to have ambitions.
"You yourself probably compose?" he asked.
"No--no--no--it's not that," she moaned. "But don't look in--give it
back to me--if you don't, I'll jump out of the window. I will, by God
and all the saints!"
She pleased him so well with her eyes stretched in deadly terror, with
her hair loosened by the struggle, with the expression of a tragic muse
on the sweet, delicately cut child's face, that he wanted to enjoy the
rare sight a little longer.
Accordingly, he assumed a black expression, and pretended to be what a
few moments ago he had actually been.
She fell on her knees, and clasping his legs, stammered and whispered,
almost choked with shame and distress:
"If you give it back to me, you can do with me whatever you want. I will
do whatever you want. I won't resist any more."
The bargain, it struck him, was to his advantage.
"Shake hands on it?" he asked.
"Shake hands," she replied. "And never ask questions--yes?"
"If you swear to me by your St. Joseph it's nothing but music."
"And the libretto, I swear."
He handed her the roll, and she gave herself up to him--sold herself to
the man who already possessed her for the Song of Songs, of which he had
robbed her.
* * * * *
The rays of early morning shining on her eyes through curtains striped
with yellow awoke her. She was resting comfortably pressed against
something warm. She had slept deliciously.
What had happened to her came back to her slowly.
She leaned over and wanted to kiss him.
He was lying with his head thrown back, his mouth open. The light from
the windows was playing on his shiny, furrowed chin. Little veins
crisscrossed his gaunt cheeks like streams on a map. The inky moustache
glistened with pomade. His eyelids were folded over so often that Lilly
thought if they were stretched to their length they would reach to the
tip of his nose.
"He doesn't look bad," she said to herself, but the idea of kissing him
passed out of her mind.
She got up without making a sound, and all the time she dressed he did
not stir. The old cavalry man was blessed with sound sleep.
She wrote on a sheet of hotel paper, "have gone to church," laid the
sheet between his fingers, and slipped out, down the steps and past the
porter, who was so astonished he forgot to pull off his cap.
The streets of the little town were dreaming in the quiet of the winter
morning. Hillocks of snow swept from the middle of the street were
heaped in rows along the gutters. A black swarm of crows squatted in a
circle about the frozen fountain in the market-place. The faint sound of
sleigh bells penetrated the grey air.
Boys carrying bags were wending their way to school. In some of the
sorry shops lights were still burning. Apprentices with ruddy cheeks
sweeping the steps stopped at Lilly's approach, and stared, or called to
others inside; whereat more youths appeared and all, as if moved by one
spring, goggled after her.
Marching steps beat a tattoo behind her. A long line of infantry wearing
gloves--but no overcoats--came tramping along the middle of the street,
puffing clouds of frozen breath in front of them at regular intervals.
All turned "eyes left" toward her, as if that had been the word of
command, and the officers walking at the side of the line threw one
another questioning glances, and shrugged their shoulders.
She did not have far to search for the Catholic parish church, which
towered above the roofs round about. It was a clumsy stone structure
with remnants of Gothic built over and stopped up with bricks.
The alcoves along the side aisles were filled with altars barbarously
gilded and decorated with cheap garish vases. Her St. Joseph was nowhere
to be found. So she contented herself with Our Lady of Sorrows, who,
however, did not have much to say to her.
An inexplicable feeling of oppression and emptiness seized her, as if
she had broken something, she did not know what.
She kneeled and mumbled her prayers so unthinkingly that she was ashamed
of herself.
Then she caught herself ogling her kid gloves which enveloped her
fingers with velvety, inconspicuous aristocracy.
Every now and then a shiver ran through her body, which forced her to
close her eyes and clench her teeth--she was ashamed of the shiver, too.
Soon she gave up praying entirely, and regarded Our Lady, who was
pulling a doleful face, as if to say: "Do, please, draw this thing out
of my body." Yet the seven swords piercing her heart had handles set
with pearls and precious gems.
"If only I were unhappy," thought Lilly, "I'd have _something_. Then I
could carry on a conversation with her, the way I used to with St.
Joseph--and the swords in _my_ heart would be sumptuous to behold."
As sumptuous as the pearl chain he had put about her neck yesterday at
the wedding.
She recalled what she had been like two months before, when she had
stolen off for half an hour in the grey of early morning to lay her hot,
surcharged heart at the feet of her beloved saint--how she had been
borne off on clouds by the intoxication of youth, her gaze turned upon
the fair and blessed distance.
None the less she had been steeped in misery and utter destitution.
"If that's the way happiness looks," she went on with her thoughts, and
shrugged her shoulders.
Suddenly she was beset with fear that those times would never return,
that she would have to live on eternally as now, empty-hearted,
distraught, tortured by a dull oppression.
"This comes of not loving him enough," she confessed to herself.
At last she knew what she had to pray for to Our Lady of Sorrows.
She hid her face in both hands, and prayed long and fervently. She
prayed to be able to love him--with as much passion as she had drops of
blood--with as much devotion as she had hopes in her soul, with as much
delight as there was laughter in her heart.
And behold! Her prayer was heard!
With the burden removed from her soul, her eyes shining, she arose, and
returned to the place where she belonged, to serve him in humility and
trust--as his child, his handmaiden, his courtesan, whichever he
happened to wish.