The threshing machine had been singing its autumn song for many a day.
Its monotonous whirr could be heard far beyond the castle court. It
carried no message of golden blessings or glowing crystallised sunlight.
From morning till late at night it moaned and howled like an aeolian harp
in stormbeaten branches; and sometimes soft, long-drawn cries burst from
its entrails, as if the sheaves it was torturing and tearing had been
endowed with speech.
So much dreamy bliss dwelt again in Lilly's soul that she got nothing
but allurement and yearning from this music, which entirely obsessed her
in her morning slumber and kept her lying in bed a long time in a drowsy
half-sleep the better to listen to its even, unvarying singsong.
All the while she thought of him.
A comrade, a playmate, that was what she had needed all along, some one
in whose company to make merry and complain, some one who would confess
all his follies, his most secret sins, and then receive laughing
absolution. For whatever his crime, he was not the guilty one; his youth
was the sinner, the same sweet, mischievous youth which filled her soul
with melancholy and her body with shuddering, which dominated them both
like a beneficent yet tormenting divinity, who favoured the one and
ruined the other.
He had to be saved--saved from his own frivolity, from that fatal
condition of his soul which threatened to entangle and choke him in a
net of vulgar escapades. Rumours of the low life he was leading kept
cropping up not to be silenced, and she needed but to step inside the
servants' hall for a stream of gossip to come gushing over her like a
jet of dirty water.
Her first intervention was to be only the beginning of the great mission
she had to perform in his life. She would be his good genius, walking
before him and holding up her hands against every evil temptation, until
he had become as pure, as undesirous as herself.
Thus she dreamed to the accompaniment of the threshing machine.
The first ride beyond the castle gates, though taken without permission,
had been approved, even commended; and others were to follow. But Lilly
hesitated. She wanted to learn a decent canter, she said, before
venturing upon new roads. As a matter of fact, she was burning with
eagerness for another such hour in Von Prell's company, and merely
lacked the courage to bring it about.
The morning after that first ride he was the same cringing riding master
as before, outdoing himself in respectfulness and over-polite while
rigorous in imparting instruction. Lilly had fully expected he would
whisper a familiar word hinting at the day before, a soft "Lilly." There
was plenty of opportunity, but nothing of the sort took place.
The next few lessons went in the same fashion. Neither Lilly nor Von
Prell thought of leaving the courtyard. But one day the decree went
forth from the colonel himself.
"Enough of this hopping about on the gravel. Get out of here and air
yourselves in the wind of the fields."
"At your command, Colonel," said Von Prell, touching his cap. He rode
his horse up to Lilly's and gently steered both of them out of the gate.
Her heart stood still. She forgot to say good-by to the colonel, she
was so preoccupied with anticipation of the pleasure in store for her.
They went the same road that had brought her the great experience of the
week before.
The willows dripped with dew and at the slightest touch showered down a
rain of drops. Lilly laughed and shook herself. Instead of joining in,
he guided his horse to the edge of the road, leaving the middle to her.
"But I _want_ to get wet," she said.
"As my lady says," he replied, stiff as a poker in his stupid,
artificial respect.
Then they rode on in silence.
When they reached the spot where the great event had occurred which gave
the lie to his present behaviour, she ventured to send him a furtive
sidelong glance. But he did not respond, seeming not to have noticed her
look. His jockey cap pulled close over his head down to the back of his
neck, his thin, tightly-drawn face, sprinkled with dewdrops, his boyish
body, all muscle and bone, he sat on his saddle as if he and his horse
were one.
"How I love him, in spite of everything, the dear little fellow," she
thought, and pictured to herself how horribly abandoned she would feel
if ever he were to leave the place. And it became clear as day to her
that the gay excitement in her soul, the sense of abundance in her life
here where she dwelt, had arisen from nothing else than his always,
always being near by.
They rode along at an even gait. The brown ridges bordering the opposite
bank of the stream drew nearer and nearer. Von Prell seemed to be making
for them, but this did not serve her purpose, because the hour for a
frank talk had struck.
To-day or never!
She made a great effort to go over in her mind what she would say to
him. But her thoughts were incoherent. She had to keep her attention
fixed on the horse; and so long as she remained in the saddle she felt
herself too much under Von Prell's control.
Summoning all her courage she asked:
"Can't we dismount?"
He paused to consider, but she had jumped from her horse already, and he
had just time enough to grasp the mare's snaffle. He reprimanded her,
though in the end he had to yield.
They walked side by side, Von Prell leading both horses.
The path led through a stone pit sparsely grown with oak trees and
alders. Golden marigold buttons dotted the marshy spots, and the
bur-reed stretched out its bristly fruit on crinkled arms. Reddish dock
raised its aging stalk and the floating grass was drawing in its blades
in expectation of approaching autumn.
A mountain-ash, felled by a storm, stretched diagonally from the side of
the road across the ditch. Its purplish red clusters of berries glowed
like flames which by right should have been extinguished long ago, but
which a mysterious life-force kept feeding.
"I'd like to sit here," said Lilly
He bowed.
"If you please."
"But you must sit down, too."
"I must hold the horses, my lady."
"You can tie them to a tree."
He considered a while.
"I can," he said, and tied the reins about the stump of the fallen tree.
When he was about to sit down next to her, she moved nearer to the
middle of the trunk to make room for him, and she sat with her feet
dangling over the ditch water.
He shoved himself after her, swinging his upper body between his arms,
which held him like props.
"No further," she said. She did not want him too close to her.
"At my lady's service," he answered, and kicked his heels.
The grotesque stiffness of his speech annoyed her.
"Don't you know a better way of addressing me when we are alone?" she
asked, looking him full in the face.
"I do, but I mustn't"
"And last time--how about then?"
"It happened to be my birthday," he replied, "and I wanted a pretty
gift, so I presented that to myself."
"And to-day's my birthday," she laughed. "What will you present me
with?"
"Whatever my lady wishes."
"Call me comrade."
"Once or always?"
"Always."
"Just _say_ comrade, or be comrade, too?"
"Be, be, be," she cried. "The being is the chief thing."
"Agreed!" he said, cautiously sliding his right hand along the swaying
trunk.
"Agreed!" she said, and they shook hands on it.
"There's something else to be passed upon in connection with this," he
observed, and cleared his throat.
"What's that?"
"Is this comradeship to be accompanied or not to be accompanied by the
use of the first name?"
"Not," rejoined Lilly, thinking she had made a great sacrifice.
He took the prohibition at its face value and said obediently:
"As my comrade wishes."
Now her time had come. Lilly drew in a deep breath and said:
"I have something very serious to say to you, Mr. Von Prell."
He seemed to suspect evil.
"Ouch," he said, and bit his gloved thumb.
Lilly began. She would say absolutely nothing about that affair with
Katie, even though it was very dreadful, because what is to be forgiven
must also be forgotten. But if he thought the life he had been leading
ever since he had come to Lischnitz had remained a secret, he was
greatly mistaken. Even the scrubbing women laughed at him behind his
back. But he couldn't expect anything else, if he--and she recounted the
list of his sins, which, in spite of herself, had reached her ears from
the servants' hall.
Lilly was ashamed of what she said. She had meant to speak of entirely
different things--of the loftiness of human existence, of the greatness
of self-abnegation, of keeping oneself pure for the sake of genuine
feelings, of the mysterious spiritual union of the elect on earth, and
much more in the same strain. But when she saw him, as he sat there with
his back curved and his feet turned inward, causing bulbs to appear and
disappear on the soft leather of his riding boots where they covered his
big toes, nothing better occurred to her.
He did not interrupt her.
When she had concluded he maintained silence and occupied himself with
following the movements of an insect which was wriggling in the dark,
slimy water of the ditch.
"Have you nothing to say," she asked, "after I have reproached you with
such disgraceful behaviour?"
"What should I have to say?" he asked in turn. "My one claim to
celebrity is my being a man utterly devoid of moral fibre. Should I lose
that one claim, too?"
"If you have nothing within yourself to hold you up, lean on me," she
cried, glowing with eagerness. "Let me be your friend, your adviser,
your--"
"Foster-father," he suggested, and swished about the slime with his
crop.
She realised that everything she said was lost on him; that he even
seized whatever opportunity offered to make merry at her expense.
"Please get up and let me by," she said. "Why should I cast what is best
in me before one who is unworthy?"
He made no movement to leave his seat.
"Look, comrade," he said, pointing to the dark, mirror-like surface of
the water. "A water spider is gliding about there all the time with its
legs up and its head down. If you were to ask it why, it would say it
doesn't know how to glide differently. That's its nature. What's to be
done?"
"A man can restrain himself," she cried, flaring up and casting
indignant glances at him. "A man can look up to heights, to an ideal. He
can listen to the advice of a friend who means well by him--that's what
he can do."
"And what does his friend advise?" he asked flatteringly, while swinging
himself nearer.
But this time she did not answer. She covered her face with her hands
and cried, cried so that her body shook with sobs.
"For God's sake, sit still," he exclaimed, stretching his arms about her
in a wide circle, for she was in danger of losing her balance on the
slim, swaying trunk of the mountain-ash. "Do sit still, Lilly, else
you'll fall into the water."
She shuddered. She heard nothing of what he said except that sweet,
secret, criminal "Lilly," for which she had been longing the whole
week.
Then he promised her everything she wanted of him. He wouldn't run after
any more servant girls, he wouldn't spend nights boozing with the
inspector and the bookkeeper, he wouldn't--oh, what wouldn't he do, if
only she stopped crying.
"Your word of honour?" she said, raising her wet, reddened eyes.
"My word of honour," he replied without an instant's hesitation.
She smiled at him, happy and grateful.
"You won't regret it," she said. "I'll be close at hand, I'll be your
friend, I will do whatever I can."
"And whatever the two High Mightinesses permit," he added.
This time the epithet "High Mightinesses" did not annoy her. She
shrugged her shoulders and said: "Oh, they--yes, of course."
Then they both laughed till they came near falling into the ditch after
all.