The colonel wishing, on account of his mesalliance, to avoid his many
military friends, did not stop over at Berlin with Lilly, but went
directly on to Dresden, which they reached in three hours.
He had engaged rooms at Sendig's, and the proprietor had done his utmost
to fit up snug and aristocratic quarters for the newly-wed couple.
Sitting-room, bedroom, and bath--that was all they needed. Close
companionship, the outer appearance of intimacy, would naturally bring
about inward intimacy.
The colonel had good cause, indeed, to be satisfied with his honeymoon!
He, who in the course of his many amours had probably dandled hundreds
of girls on his knees, who thought he knew women through and through,
the tart and the sweet, the chaste and the coquette, the sensitive and
the bold, the genuine and the flashy, those who confined their coy
caresses to a man's hand and lower arm, and those who hung on men's lips
biting and sucking them in a wild frenzy, he, the old voluptuary, to
whom nothing feminine ought to have been strange, stood astounded,
incredulous before this lovely marvel.
So much abandon and so much pride, so much tenderness and so much fire,
so much ready comprehension and so much artless childishness, all
mingled in one dreamy, laughing Madonna head, had never before presented
itself to him, for all the fine art he had exercised in his roue's
career.
What touched him most and completely puzzled him was the modesty of her
desires, the fact that she made no demands of any sort.
When they took dinner _a la carte_ he might be sure her eye would travel
to the cheapest orders for herself; and the expression with which she
would sometimes prefer a request to be allowed to drink orangeade, was
as hesitating and shamefaced as if she were making a love avowal.
One day, on returning from the Grosser Garten by way of side streets,
Lilly stood still in front of a poverty-stricken little provision shop.
As a rule nothing could induce her to look into shop windows, and the
colonel, curious as to her interest in the place, extracted from her the
confession that she loved sunflower seeds--and would he be very angry if
she asked him to buy some?
The more he overwhelmed her with gifts, the less she seemed to realise
that money was being spent for her sake.
The long dearth she had suffered prevented her from appreciating the
value of money, and whatever he put into her purse she handed out again
without hesitation to the first beggar she met on the street. Then again
it smote her conscience when he gave a flower girl two marks for a rose.
Once, upon her doing one of these incredible things, which usually sent
the colonel into epicurean transports, he was seized with sudden
distrust.
"I say, little girl," he said, "are you an actress?"
Lilly did not even understand him. She looked at him with the great, sad
eyes of innocence she always made on such occasions, and said:
"What are you thinking of! Since papa left I haven't even _seen_ an
actress. I haven't been inside a theatre once."
That very day he ordered a box, and she danced about the rooms with the
tickets in her hand wild with joy.
But her delight was dampened by his injunction to wear evening dress.
Lilly could not comprehend why one should have to bare one's neck and
shoulders in order to be edified by "The Winter's Tale." Besides, the
magnificence of the gowns filled her with discomfort. She would walk in
awe about the gleaming gala robes as circumspectly as about a thicket of
nettles. The colonel had had them made when in a giving mood, for no
real purpose, since it was impossible, of course, for the present to
introduce Lilly to society.
When she appeared before him stiff and constrained, her eyes severely
fixed, her cheeks, however, glowing with the fever of festivity, her
delicately curved breast half concealed in a nest of white lace, the
fabulously exquisite chain of pearls about her swan-like throat--taller,
lither, apparently, more of a blossoming Venus than ever--the old robber
was seized by intoxication in the possession of his booty, the
magnificent gown came near being consigned to the wardrobe, and the
tickets to the waste basket; but Lilly begged so hard, that he choked
down his feelings, and got into the carriage with her.
The colonel thought he had long ago outlived the banal delight of
shining in the eyes of strangers. He found he was mistaken. The old
bachelor experienced a new, unexpected sensation, to which he gave
himself up disdainfully, though feeling immensely flattered. After a
time he accepted his triumph as a matter of course.
The instant Lilly appeared in the box the whole house had eyes for her
alone. The handsome, aristocratic couple, whose very being together
aroused speculation, busied everybody's imagination, and as soon as the
lights went up at the end of the first act, the whispering and
questioning and pointing of opera glasses began anew.
Lilly had never before been in a box, and on entering she had started
back instinctively, feeling confused and alarmed. But accustomed as she
now was to implicit obedience, she took the chair to which the colonel
pointed without a word of protest. When she realised she was the object
of general attention, the old numbness came over her. She felt as if the
woman sitting there speaking and smiling were not herself but someone
else whose connection with her person was purely accidental.
She did not awake from her torpor until the hall was thrown into
darkness again, and the curtain went up. Then the play wafted her to the
land of the poet, breathless, exulting, dismayed.
After this, two Lillies sat in her seat--the one in blissful
self-forgetfulness flitting on the rainbow-coloured wings of childlike
fancy through heavens and hells; the other making precise gestures like
a wound-up doll, unconsciously imitating the manners of the well-bred;
at the same time feeling a strange, hot, torturingly sweet sensation
creep over her being: the intoxication of the vain.
The triumph he had celebrated in the theatre was not enough for the
colonel. On returning to the hotel he did not have supper served as
usual in their rooms, but led Lilly to the general dining room, where a
gypsy band was playing and elegant folk of all descriptions were
spreading their peacock feathers.
The game of the box was repeated in all but one respect. Lilly, carried
away by the dreamy magic of the violins, dropped some of her coyness.
Her cheeks glowed, her eyes swam, and stretching herself a bit she
ventured to take a tiny part in the sport.
Two tables off sat a blond young man in full dress--white shirt front
and black tie like all the others. He kept staring at her with hot
persistence, as if she were a strange animal.
She moved uneasily under this gaze, which caressed and gave hurt, which
spoke wild words in a foreign tongue, yet was nothing else than that sob
of the violins which feverishly quivered through her limbs, up and down
her body.
Suddenly her husband faced about and surprised the admirer in the very
act. He stabbed him with one of his piercing glances, and soon the
miscreant vanished.
The colonel's mood seemed to be spoiled somewhat.
He said, "It's time to go," and led her upstairs.
When he had her to himself, joy in his possession got the upper hand
again, mounting to a sort of triumphal ecstasy.
Others might pasture on the delights of her evening attire; the winsome
asperity of her childlike features, on which life had not yet left its
traces, were good enough for display down there in the dining room--off
with the pearl chain! Down with the laces!
He wanted her without covering of any sort, wanted to drink in with
greedy eyes the secret of her proudly blooming body, wanted to satiate
his hungry old age with the long-forbidden charms of strange, stolen
youth.
Lilly, helpless, without will of her own, did what she had often done.
In shame that flamed afresh each time, she allowed him to tear the last
veil from her body. She threw herself on the carpet and rose again--she
danced, she posed as a worshipper, as a maiden in distress begging for
help, as a Maenad, a water-carrier, a coquette laughing between her
fingers--as anything he wished.
This evening there was an additional something, which burned in her
blood like venom. A diffident desire, which was really a feeling of
repulsion--a love that clung to him in grateful self-abandon, while
secretly hankering for something else--for the sobbing of violins and
the hiss of conflagrations, a purple heaven dotted with stars, and the
deadly sweet yearning that dwelt in Hermione.
When he had had his fill of the spectacle--and this came soon because of
his years--he made her don the loose gauze shirt worked with silver
thread with which he had presented her at the very beginning of their
stay in Dresden. Before he went to sleep she always had to dance in it a
while. Although the metal woof was icy cold and pricked like needles,
she soon became accustomed to it, since his will was her law. Then,
while she sat beside him on the edge of the bed, he smoked a cigarette
in bed, and laughingly retailed smutty jokes; which he called, "singing
his baby to sleep."
Henceforth it was the colonel's pleasure to take meals in the common
dining room. He wanted to re-experience the prickly delight of seeing
his young wife admired and regarded with desirous eyes. The value of his
property seemed to be enhanced in the degree in which people smiled, and
envied him the possession of it.
As for Lilly, she always took interest in perceiving the drunken
sensations of that evening arise in her again. With drooping lids she
might feel the silent flame of hopeless desire burn in so many hot young
eyes round about. And, carried away by the lamentations of the violins
and the hymns of the cymbals, she might flee to those dark and blessed
distances to which the way had been barred--she did not know by
what--since the hour her great happiness had come to her.
Never did she permit it even to occur to her to return one of the
glances that forced themselves upon her by so much as the quiver of her
lids. The young men remained mere figurants on her stage, as necessary
as the other accessories, the lights, the music, the flowers on the
white napery, and the cigarette smoke ascending to the ceiling in blue
spirals.
Nevertheless it happened that one day while she was walking along the
street on her husband's arm a look pierced to her heart.
It came from a pair of dark eyes, which from afar had been turned on her
in a friendly, searching manner. On coming nearer they flared up, as
with a flash of recognition, into a sad fire.
She felt as if she would have to hurry after the passerby and ask:
"Who are you? Do you belong to me? Do you wish me to belong to you?"
She was incautious enough to turn around and look back at him.
For only the fraction of a second!
But the incident had not escaped her husband. When she faced about
again, she saw his vigilant eyes resting upon her in distrust.
And he nodded several times as if to say:
"Aha! That's the point we've gotten to already, is it?"
He remained absorbed and ill-tempered the rest of the day.
That encounter was only the first of an endless series for Lilly.
To be sure, she never met the same young man again, despite her diligent
watch for him; but a host of others took his place.
Passersby no longer remained mere figures in a dissolving view, through
whom one looked as if they were non-existent. When she saw a slim man at
a distance whose contour and bearing appeared youthful she wondered
while waiting for him to draw near:
"What will he be like? Will he look at me?"
If he found favour in her eyes, and if his glance was not impudent, yet
was full of astonishment or desire, she would often feel a pang, which
said to her:
"You suit him far better than this old man at whose side you are
walking."
And each occurrence saddened her.
It saddened her also if one she was pleased with happened to pay no
attention to her.
"I'm not good enough for him," she would think. "He scorns me. I wonder
why he scorns me."
In the dining room, on the Bruehlsche Terrasse, and at other elegant
places where there is a constant crossfire of furtive glances, her
bearing in its relation to her environment began gradually to change.
She acknowledged the incense offered her by a little grateful uplift of
her eyes, and she looked without embarrassment directly into the faces
of the scrutinising ladies; and although she had the keen vision of a
falcon, she would gladly have turned a lorgnette on them. But of this
she did not venture to breathe a word to the colonel.
She was often tormented by the desire to bury her eyes in those of the
man looking at her, without decorum, without fear, without reserve--just
as he was doing. It would have been a mystic union of souls which would
do her endless good. Of this she no longer harboured a doubt. She was
starving, starving, starving--as she had never starved in her life.
The colonel seemed not to notice in the least what was going on in her,
though a state of bitter warfare existed between him and all whose
glances besieged her. The eyes of the old Ulan were ever on the
look-out, and the one who was too persistent, ardent or melancholy was
stabbed with a dart from his eyes.
It happened, however, that some paid no attention to his threats, and
even had the audacity to return what they received with raised brows.
This would cause him uneasiness. He would play with his card case and
begin to write something, then put the pencil back into his pocket, and,
as a rule, wind up with:
"It seems to me we've strayed into bad company. We'd better be going."
Despite his uncomfortable experiences he could not get himself to live
alone again with his young wife. Habituated from youth up to motley
associations, he required noise and light and laughter. But his
suspicions waxed, and finally fastened upon Lilly, too.
He forbade the matinal visit to church, to which she clung so ardently.
What she had done, following a mere impulse, after the first awaking at
his side, had by and by become a custom; and while he slept his profound
sleep she dressed without making a sound and slipped out into the
freshness of early morning.
Going to church served as a pretext.
Generally all she did was dip her fingers in the holy water and make her
three genuflections. Sometimes she even contented herself, untroubled by
scruples, with merely passing the church.
For here was an hour of golden liberty, the only one throughout the day.
First she hastened to the Augustus bridge to offer her breast to the
winds always blowing there and watch the waters course by far below.
Then she walked along the banks of the river, usually at a wild pace, in
order to gather in as large a harvest of pictures and incidents as
possible before creeping back to her husband's home.
Everything the hour brought was pregnant with significance.
The early morning mist lying red on the hills and descending to the
river in golden ribbons; the chorus of the bells in the Altstadt; the
first timid bursting of the boughs already russet with sap; the joggling
carts on their way to market; the hissing and sparking of the swaying
wires when the trolley-pole of an electric tram swept along underneath
them--all this was joy, it was life.
Since she was not threatened with a gift in consequence she ventured
also to look into shop-windows, and greedily, in amazement, devoured
every morsel of art.
An end to all this from now on!
The gates suddenly swung shut through which she had escaped for a single
hour her perfumed life-prison overheated by desire and indolence.
But she was so soft and pliant that she yielded without a murmur even in
her innermost being.
It was his wish--that was sufficient.
Such a quantity of love lay fallow in her soul and cried for activity
that in this time of inner conflicts she proffered him a double measure
of tenderness. She had to, whether she wished to or not, whether her
thoughts dwelled with him or glided off on the viewless path of dreams.
She was his slave, his plaything, his audience; she dressed him, admired
his good looks, rubbed his hips with ointment, adjusted the hare's skin
about his loins to protect him against his gout; brought him his sodium
carbonate when he had eaten too much; massaged his grizzled head with
hair tonic, the pungent perfume of which nauseated her, and stood by to
help and advise when he trimmed his moustache.
She did it all with eager devotion and ingenuous confidence, as if in
ministering to her husband she had found the end and aim of her
existence.
Nevertheless he lost his supernatural, god-like qualities in her eyes,
became nothing more to her than a man, knightly to be sure, but
whimsical and vain; for all his mental force intellectually indolent;
for all his sensitiveness utterly brutal, and for all his thirst for
love an oldish man, whose powers had long been enervated.
Not that she ever put it in this way to herself.
Had she seen his characteristics so clearly she might have come to hate
and scorn him; for she was too immature to know that the witch's
cauldron of worldly life brews the same out of most men's souls,
provided the great feelings grow grey along with a man's hair, and he
has erected no altar for himself at which he may seek refuge while
sacrificing to it.
But the picture her fancy had made of him shifted and changed colours
from day to day, taking on now one aspect, now the reverse, until a
little pity mingled with her terrified respect, and her childlike
relation to him was tinged by a certain motherliness, which would have
been ridiculous had it not had its roots in the unfailing warmness of
her heart, which transmuted another's weakness into cause for her
solicitude.
Oh, if only she had not had to starve so!
Starve, when sitting at a festive board each day decked anew with choice
viands.
Every morning Lilly eagerly read the theatrical and musical
announcements posted in the hotel lobby, only to be drawn away swiftly
by the colonel, who in his little garrison town had lost all interest in
the arts. For lack of exercise his organs for perceiving and enjoying
had lost their functions, and he shrank back petulantly from the
intellectual work she expected of him.
Everything in which he took pleasure, the exaggerated gaiety of the
music halls, the display of physical strength and agility, the loud
colours, soon became an abomination to Lilly after her first curiosity
had been stilled.
Wild horses, the colonel said, could not drag him to Shakespeare or
Wagner again, then certainly not to a concert, the object of Lilly's
profoundest cravings.
One day she saw an announcement of the Fifth Symphony, which was bound
to her childhood days by a thousand ties. She maintained silence, as was
proper; but when she reached their room she threw herself on the bed and
cried bitterly. He questioned; she confessed. With a bored laugh he made
the sacrifice and took her to the concert.
She had not been at a concert since her father's last performance.
When she entered she trembled, and suppressing her tears, drew the air
in through her nose.
"You snuffle like a horse when he smells oats," joked the colonel.
"Don't you notice there's the same atmosphere at all concerts?" she
asked in a joyous tremour. "Our concert hall at home smelt just like
this."
But he had not noticed the similarity of smell, and he did not recall
the Fifth Symphony.
"Such matters--" he began.
She was indifferent to all that preceded the symphony. She wanted to
hear nothing but that trumpet call of fate which had once filled her,
when just blossoming into womanhood, with a shudder of foreboding.
The call came and knocked at people's hearts, and set the knees of all
those a-tremble who, companions and fellow-combatants, filled with the
same fear and the same impotence, writhed like worms under the blows of
fate.
Her husband amusedly hummed:
"Ti-ti-ti-tum, ti-ti-ti-tum." That was all he understood of it.
Turning about softly to urge him if possible to keep still, she noticed
for the first time a profusion of yellowish-grey hair growing in his
ear. It disgusted her.
"If he has hair in his ears," she thought, as though that were the
reason of his deafness to music. A profound despondency seized her.
Never again would she rejoice in the beautiful, never again stretch arms
in prayer to wrestling heroism, never again quench her thirst for a
higher, purer life at the sources of enthusiasm.
Between her and all that stood this man, who sang "ti-ti-ti-tum," and in
whose ears there was a little bush of hair.
The soft consolation of the violins died away unheard, the melancholy
acquiescence of the andante found no echo in her soul, and the
triumphant jubilation of the finale--it brought her no triumph.
Tortured, debased, undone in her own eyes, she left the hall at the side
of her yawning husband.
But her vital energy was too sound, her belief in the sunniness of human
existence too lively to permit her to succumb to such moods.
Moreover, an event occurred which lent new wings to her being and
flushed her with the intoxication of bold hopes.
Though little was said about plans for the immediate future, it was
settled that they should remain in Dresden, or some other large city,
until May, and then go to Castle Lischnitz, where the household, as
always in the master's absence, was conducted by the oft-mentioned Miss
Anna von Schwertfeger.
The colonel, forever hovering between trust and distrust of his young
wife, was seized one evening by a fresh attack of doubts, and tried to
get a view down to the bottom of her soul by questioning her as to how
often and whom she had loved before she met him.
Unsuspecting as always, Lilly blurted out her two little experiences.
She told of Fritz Redlich first--because that had been the greater
love--and then of the poor, consumptive teacher.
Despite his petty misgivings her husband's judgment had remained clear
enough to appreciate the trustful purity of her conscience, and he sent
his doubts to the devil with the laugh he usually reserved for his
vulgar jokes.
But Lilly wanted to see his emotions stirred, and warming up over her
own words, she described the lessons on the history of art and told of
the yearnings to see Italy which the poor moribund had enkindled in her
with the flame burning in his own heart.
Her cheeks glowed, her eyes swam beneath lids drooping as if with the
weight of wine; she dreamed and fantasied, and scarcely heeded his
presence.
Suddenly he asked:
"How would it be--would you like to go there?"
Lilly did not reply. That was too much bliss.
He began to consider the matter seriously. Instead of poking in one
place and vexing himself over all sorts of stupid people, a man might
just as well take a seat in a railroad coach and make a short day's run
down to Verona or Milan.
She flung her arms about his neck, she threw herself at his feet--it
_was_ too much bliss.
Life now became absolutely unreal, a constant change from ecstasy to
anxiety and back again, because something might intervene to prevent the
trip.
First of all he had to have a pair of knickerbockers and a Norfolk
jacket, such as every aristocratic traveller wears. Then there were a
dozen other hindrances.
The fact was, he probably felt he had grown too unwieldy to keep pace
with her in her ability to enjoy herself. But something occurred to
hasten their departure.
The last few days, the colonel noticed, they had been followed by a
pale, bull-necked individual, six feet tall, who tried with stupid
pertinacity to attract Lilly's attention.
To judge by the man's appearance he was a tourist of the Anglo-Saxon
race. His manners indicated a certain loftiness, and the colonel's
threatening looks glanced from him without leaving the faintest trace.
Lilly saw her husband fall for the first time into a lasting mood of
thoughtfulness. He paced up and down the room, repeatedly muttering:
"I'll have to box his ears," or "I'll have to look for a second."
The next day, when the colonel observed the importunate person trotting
about ten feet behind them, he veered about suddenly and accosted him.
The blond Titan looked him up and down without so much as removing the
short pipe from his mouth.
"I may look at anyone I want to, and I may go anywhere I want to," he
declared.
With that he slightly shoved up the sleeves of his overcoat and struck a
boxing attitude, which, foreboding a street row, stifled all desire for
a knightly mode of chastisement.
The colonel in a final attempt to settle the matter in an honourable
fashion handed the stranger his visiting card, which was received with a
friendly "Thank you, sir." And the colonel's opponent stuck the card in
his pocket evidently without the least inkling of the ominous import of
the formality. Passersby began to gather and there was nothing left for
the colonel to do but turn his back.
The upshot of the rencontre was that the Englishman now assumed the
right to honour Lilly and her husband with a greeting, and the colonel,
who tried to drown the consciousness of having made himself ridiculous
in a torrent of oaths, decided to leave Dresden immediately. This was
about the middle of April.
In Munich, where they stopped off a few days to render homage to the
Hofbraeuhaus, nothing especial occurred.
But the colonel had grown nervous. He cast challenging, pugnacious looks
at the most harmless admirers and began to heap reproaches on Lilly's
head. "It seems," he would say, "everybody can tell at a glance that you
are no lady; otherwise you would not be the object of such a number of
indelicate attentions."
At any other time Lilly would have grieved bitterly. Now she listened to
him with an absent smile on her lips. Her soul no longer dwelt on German
soil. She was breathing the air of the beloved country on whose
threshold, she thought, she was already standing.
One night's ride still, a short day in Bozen, and then the gates would
open.
Now nothing could intervene.
* * * * *
It was in a section of the express that leaves Munich late in the
evening and crosses the Brenner Pass in the dusk of early morning. Lilly
and her husband sat in the seats by the window. The seat next to the
corridor had been taken by a young man, who on assuming it had saluted
the other occupants with a smile, and then paying no further attention
to them had become engrossed in a book written, apparently, in Italian.
So he was an Italian, a messenger from Paradise, who had come to bid
them welcome. That was enough to ensure Lilly's interest.
She regarded him from under lids to all appearances closed in sleep.
He had a clear-cut, high-spirited face of a peculiar, milky yellow tint,
without lines or shadows, as smooth as if enameled. A small, dark
moustache, somewhat crispy, and the hair on the temples cropped so close
that the skin shone beneath.
Lilly wanted to see his eyes, too, but he kept them obstinately bent on
his book, though he seemed merely to be skimming through it.
What she admired most was the peculiar roundness and softness of his
movements. You might suppose a woman was clothed in that black and white
checked suit, which attracted her by its unusually aristocratic
appearance. The silk shirt was violet and dark red, and a green necktie
was tied carelessly about the soft collar.
All these colours, strange as they looked, went so well together and
seemed to have been selected with so much care and refinement of taste,
that Lilly grew quite uncomfortable. She almost felt the young stranger
was trying to force himself upon her by his manner and bearing and
dress, and above all by his ostensible disregard of her.
It was ridiculous; she was afraid of him.
When the customs officers entered the compartment at the Austrian
frontier he uttered a few strange-sounding words, which the officers
understood, for they turned away from him with deep bows.
At that moment he raised his eyes and let them rove about the
compartment; and while the colonel was opening his bag they rested for
an instant, as if by chance, upon Lilly.
What singular eyes he had!
They sent out sharp rays like black diamonds, yet they gave a caress, a
wicked, sure caress, which asked impatient questions, questions that
made one blush.
The next instant nothing had happened. He was bending over his book as
before and seemed not to notice her.
But her husband scrutinised her with watchful cunning, as if he had
found a something in her face for which he had long been searching
there.
When the train started again the colonel disposed himself to sleep. For
the sake of greater comfort he chose the unoccupied seat next to the
corridor. The stranger in order not to be opposite him instinctively
moved nearer to the centre, by this greatly diminishing the distance
between Lilly and himself. A little more and he would have been sitting
directly face to face with her.
If she had harboured an _arriere pensee_, she would have bestowed more
attention upon her husband's sleep. But all her senses were engaged in
the desire to avoid the stranger, whose proximity pricked her with a
thousand needles.
She pressed close into her corner, and spasmodically stared out of the
window, where the illuminated interior of the coach was reproduced on
the black background as in a dark mirror.
Thus she could observe the stranger quietly, without his catching her in
an occasional raising of her lids.
The light of the ceiling lamp sharply lit up his smooth, soft cheeks,
whose even sheen merged into bluish darkness at the temple, a cheek
formed for pressure and petting. To let your hand stray over it gently
must be a great delight.
And what long, dark lashes he had, longer than her own. Their shadow
formed dark semicircles reaching to the finely cut nostrils.
Suddenly he raised his eyes and looked at her.
There it was again, that black-diamond, caressing gleam, cold, yet how
seductive!
She started in fright, and grew still more frightened at the thought
that he might have noticed her fear.
He smiled a very, very faint smile and continued to read.
Her fancy wove more and more anxious, flattering thoughts about him,
thoughts tantamount to a crime, which weighed upon her like a nightmare
of which she could not rid herself.
Suddenly--an icy stream poured over her heart--she felt a soft, tender
pressure on her left foot, which she must have moved nearer to the
centre quite involuntarily, for only a short time before it had been
close against her right foot, and her right foot touched the outer wall
of the compartment.
What should she do?
A rebuking "I beg pardon!" an angry flaring up, would have roused the
colonel and given occasion again for suspicion, perhaps even for an
encounter. So she slowly withdrew her foot, using the utmost caution,
and pressed it against the wall to prove to herself she had rescued it.
But those few moments of hesitation, she knew it well, had made her
_particeps criminis_, and this consciousness tormented her as the
thought tantamount to a crime, which she had permitted to obsess her
before.
Dishonoured, besmirched, she seemed to herself, a prey to each and any
man that waylaid her path.
Why find fault with him? The thing he had impudently desired, was it not
the fulfillment of her own impure wishes?
This notion fairly stifled her. She wanted to jump up, cry aloud, and
beg for forgiveness. The stranger continued to read quietly, as if
nothing had occurred.
When Lilly started out of a state of wakeful torpor a grey day was
peering in through the window. She saw a foaming torrent tumbling into
depths below, and beyond gigantic green masses towering into the
heavens. It was a picture she had seen only in her dreams, convincing in
its greatness, dwarfing all else with its might.
What she had experienced before falling asleep was now a grotesque dream
and had lost its vital essence.
She looked about the compartment cautiously.
The stranger was lying stretched out in repulsive sleep. His cheeks
swelled and sank as he puffed heavily. He looked sallow and effeminate,
and disgusted her.
She turned more to the side and suddenly saw her husband's wide-open
eyes resting upon her with a rigid, chastising look. She started as if
caught in guilt.
"Are you awake already?" she asked with a constrained smile.
"I didn't sleep a wink all night," he replied.
Something in the tone of his voice set her a-tremble. It was both a
rebuke and a sentence.
And how he looked at her!
They rode on without speaking. Lilly utterly disregarded the stranger.
At the hotel in Bozen the colonel entered Lilly's room and said:
"My dear child, I have something to say to you. I am tired of the
annoyances to which we are subjected day after day. To what extent your
appearance and conduct are to blame, or to what extent my age is the
cause, I will not discuss. However that may be, I do not reproach you
with gross infringement of the laws of duty or good taste. And I may not
demand a _grande dame's_ matter-of-course reserve of one who two or
three weeks ago was serving behind a counter. To teach you propriety
requires time, and it is a matter that I may leave entirely without
qualms of any sort to Miss von Schwertfeger. We will take the noon train
back to Germany and we will reach Lischnitz day after to-morrow in the
evening, perhaps earlier in the day."
Lilly did not even grieve, she felt so humiliated and bruised.
And the land of her dreams sank below the horizon.