CHAPTER XIII
The train rumbled on through the night, showers of sparks flew up from the engine. When it was fed by the stoker, clouds of fire illuminated the darkness, and you saw in a flash purple pines, snow-covered gables, and wide-stretching golden spaces appearing out of black nothingness. How beautiful, how strange it all was!
Lilly leaned her head, drowsy from champagne, against the red velvet cushions. It was over, and everything had gone off well. A kaleidoscope of confused pictures, half real, half imaginary, whirled through her brain. She saw a great black inkstand with a small grey-bearded man behind it asking lots of useless questions; a white lace veil with myrtle-leaves attached thrown over her head by the adjutant's wife, who went from one rapture into another; a hateful Protestant minister, with two ridiculous white bibs under his chin. He looked like a grave-digger, but at the end he gave such an exquisite address that Lilly would have liked to cry on his bosom. Two gentlemen in black, two in gay uniforms. One of the gentlemen in black was Herr Pieper, one of those in uniform the colonel. And she was the colonel's wife the colonel's wife! How the wheels seemed to murmur the words: "Colonel's wife!" But if you listened more attentively they also said--what the gentlemen at the wedding had said--"Most gracious baroness; most gracious baroness," always in time.
The ice-cream had been so wonderful--a positive chain of mountains with peaks, and pinnacles, and little lights that shone through the crystals. She could have sat admiring it for ever, only she had to dig into it with a big golden spoon, and so overturn a whole mountain. She had asked him if she might have ice-cream every day in the future, and he had laughingly answered, "Yes, if you like." She must have been rather tipsy, or she couldn't have had the courage to ask such a question. She would find an opportunity of begging his pardon later.
Now he sat opposite her looking her through and through with his piercing eyes. That was the only thing that embarrassed her, and if she hadn't been such a coward, she would have asked him to look the other way for a change. Not that she felt her old fear of him to-day. Of late she had gradually become more at home with him; how could it be otherwise when he was so kind, and she had only to express a wish to have it fulfilled instantly?
Then there was something she had noticed that she would never dare breathe to anyone. He was bow-legged. They were the heavy cavalry legs all over, rather too short for the imposing figure they supported. They made him sway in his gait from side to side as if he were trying to walk on a tight-rope. You noticed it even more when he wore mufti and stuck his hands in his pockets as he was doing now.
Every now and then he leant forward and asked, "Are you all right, little woman?"
She should think she was "all right" indeed! All her life she would like to sit there leaning back against the red velvet cushions, looking at her new soft suède gloves, and the shiny toes of her patent-leather boots peeping out from the hem of her travelling dress.
There had been quite a crowd at the station. No uniforms, because he had dispensed with a military escort, but plenty of ladies had been there, thickly veiled, trying to appear unconscious, as if their errand at the station was an ordinary one. As she passed them on the colonel's arm and got into the coupé, she had caught two or three admiring remarks--and not from too friendly lips. It came back to her now with heart-felt satisfaction. At the very last moment two bouquets had flown in through the window, and she had looked out again. There stood the Asmussen sisters, bowing reverentially and crying buckets full. Her colossal good fortune had disarmed their envy and changed ill-feeling into a sort of melancholy rejoicing.
And, opposite, sat the man who had worked the extraordinary revolution in her lot. For a moment she was so overwhelmed with a feeling of well-being and gratitude that she went down on her knees before him, and, clasping his hands in hers, gazed up at him in adoration.
But when he caught her to him with one arm, and with the other caressed her, she became frightened again and retreated to her place. He let her be with a smile, conscious that his hour was not far off.
And it came sooner than she had expected. "Get ready," he said abruptly; "we shall be getting out directly."
"Where?" she asked, startled.
"At the junction, from where there's a loop line to Lischnitz."
"Are we going to your estate, then?" she inquired anxiously. He had talked of going to Dresden.
"No," he replied shortly; "we shall stay here."
Then they stood on a dark platform with their trunks and bags. The frosty haze cast rainbow halos round the few dim gas-lamps, and shadowy forms were enveloped in clouds of their own frozen breath as they emerged into the light. The train steamed out of the station.
There they stood and no one heeded them. Then the colonel uttered one oath after another. He had acquired the habit of swearing violently at drill, when irritated. His fury fell on Lilly like a thunderclap, and made her tremble, as if she were the culprit. At last the colonel's oaths reached the ears of the station officials, who associated them with something familiar in the past, and they began contritely to make amends for their negligence by loading themselves with the luggage. They got into the hotel omnibus which was waiting, and Lilly squeezed herself into the furthest corner of it. Weird shadows flickered from the miserable little oil carriage-lamps, on his sharply defined features, giving him a new aspect, beneath which his long-slumbering wrath still seethed.
"What has this dreadful old man to do with you, or you with him," Lilly asked herself, a shiver running through her, "that you should be at his mercy so completely? Why not rush past him, tear open the door, and leap out into the night?"
She pictured what would happen if she acted on this impulse. He would stop the omnibus, pursue her, calling and shouting after her, and, if she was so lucky as to hide herself, he would set the police on her track. The next morning she would be found cowering under an arch asleep, perhaps frozen to death.
At that moment he stretched out his hands, groping for hers, as people in love are wont to do. The shadows dissolved and she responded to his caress, wreathed in smiles. Yet on their arrival at the hotel, where the proprietor, waiters, and commissionaires received them with deferential bows and an effusive welcome, Lilly's thoughts, in the midst of all the bustle, light, and warmth, reverted again to flight.
"I'll say I have left something in the omnibus, run out and never come back."
She was already ascending the stairs on his arm.
A spacious, awe-inspiring apartment swallowed them up. It had a flowered carpet and a glaring three-armed chandelier. In one corner stood a huge wide bedstead, covered with a smooth white damask counterpane. It was carved at the head and foot. She looked round in vain for a second bed. "St. Joseph!" she breathed to herself.
The colonel made himself perfectly at home. He grumbled, turned up the lights, and tossed his overcoat into a corner. Then he lit a cigarette and threw himself down on the sofa, whence he watched with the eye of a connoisseur her movements as she reluctantly took off her coat and drew the pins out of her hat.
There was a knock, and a waiter came in with cold refreshments and a silver-necked bottle on a tray.
"More champagne?" questioned Lilly in alarm. She had not yet recovered from the amount that she had imbibed at midday.
"Nothing like champagne," he said, "to give a little woman courage to consecrate the pretty blue silk négligé waiting in her box to be unpacked."
He poured out the foaming liquid into the two glasses. She clinked glasses with him obediently, but scarcely touched a drop of her wine.
When he rallied her on her abstinence, she answered pleadingly, "I don't want to be tipsy on such a sacred night as this!"
Her reply seemed to entertain him immensely. He burst into hilarious laughter, and exclaimed: "All the better! All the better!"
He would have drawn her to him, but, as every touch of his caused her acute discomfort, she evaded him quickly and said, "I must look for my négligé."
She knelt before the box, which she herself had packed the night before, lifting out the trays, and produced from the depth a garment of filmy lace and washing silk, which he, with all the other beautiful clothes, had bought for her before the wedding.
She looked round in search of a sheltering alcove into which she could retire to change, but there was none no escape from those eyes, almost softened by their desire for her, watching everything she did. Shuddering, she stood there, clinging helplessly to the collar of her dress, which she hadn't the courage to unhook.
He grew impatient and sprang to his feet. He nearly caught her in his arms, but the imploring look she gave him was so full of pathos that he chivalrously desisted, and stooped instead to pick up something which, in her search for the négligé, she had turned out of the box on to the floor. The next minute Lilly saw a white roll between his dark fingers.
"It's 'The Song of Songs,'" shot through her brain.
With a cry she hurled herself upon him, and tried to snatch the roll of music from his grasp, but his fingers were like iron. He defended himself and repulsed her attack with ease, laughing all the time. She was beside herself at the thought that her life's secret should be tampered with by strange hands, and she cried, implored, and beat him with her fists.
Now the matter began to appear to him in a suspicious light. Doubts began to rise within him as to the unblemished purity of her soul, and even of her body.
"Be careful, my little girl," he said. "Prevarication and deceit are out of the question now. You will kindly let me see what this is without delay, or I'll pin you down so that you can't stir a limb."
"Oh, please, dear colonel," she begged and prayed, "give them up. They are only two or three sheets of paper covered with music, the music of songs--nothing else, I swear. Please let me have them, dear colonel."
Her innocent pleading touched him, and the comical unconscious humility of her "dear colonel" made him laugh again. Besides, as the daughter of a professional, she might cherish musical ambitions.
"Do you compose yourself?" he asked.
"No, no, no! It's not my composition, but don't look at it," she entreated, "or I'll jump out of the window. I swear I will by all the saints."
He was so delighted with the picture she made, her eyes wide with alarm, her hair loosened and dishevelled, the tragic mute expression on her sweet childlike face with its clear-cut features, that he wanted to prolong the struggle for a few minutes. So he looked very black and pretended to be what he really had been a little while ago--full of jealous suspicion.
Then she fell on her knees, and, clasping his legs, she whispered in a voice half suffocated by her emotions of shame and distress:
"If only you give it back to me, I won't mind what you do. I won't attempt to defend myself."
The bargain struck him as advantageous.
"Your hand on it," he said.
"Yes, here is my hand on it," she replied. "And you'll never ask any questions? Promise."
"Not if you swear by your blessed St. Joseph that it's really nothing but music."
"Yes, nothing but music and the libretto, I swear."
He gave her the roll, and she yielded herself entirely to him ... sold herself at the price of "The Song of Songs" to the man to whom she already belonged.
The early morning sunlight, shining straight in her eyes through the yellow striped curtains, awoke her. She felt herself resting on a sort warm pillow, and was conscious of having slept splendidly. Slowly it dawned on her what had happened. She leaned over to him with the intention of giving him a kiss. He lay with his head thrown back and his mouth open, and the light from the window played on his shining bristled chin. Over his haggard cheeks little red and blue veins ran in all directions like rivers on a map. His ink-black moustache glistened with pomade, and his eyelids were so wrinkled into folds that they must, it seemed, have reached down to the top of his nose if they had been ironed out.
"He's not so bad-looking," Lilly thought to herself; but she omitted the kiss.
She got up noiselessly and dressed herself without his moving. The old cavalry officer was a sound and heavy sleeper.
Lilly scribbled on a sheet of notepaper which she found in the hotel blotter: "I am gone to church," laid the note on his pillow, and slipped down the stairs, past the porter, who was so astonished he forgot to say "Good-morning."
The streets of the little town still slept in the peace of the late winter dawn. The snow had been swept from the middle of the road into heaps along the gutter. A party of crows sat in a circle round the frozen fountain in the market-place. From the distance came the faint music of sleigh-bells. Down the main street boys with satchels were loitering to school. In some of the smaller shops lights still burned and apprentices were sweeping and cleaning the steps, their faces blue with cold. As Lilly went by they stared hard, or called to others inside to come out and gape after her.
The swinging tread of marching footsteps was behind her. A long train of infantry, wearing gloves but without cloaks, came tramping along in the middle of the road. They puffed, in regular time, clouds of frozen breath before them. Their eyes with one accord turned to the left in Lilly's direction as if by word of command. The officers, walking beside their men, exchanged significant glances and shrugged their shoulders.
She had not far to look for the Catholic church of the parish. The clumsy stone fabric, with its remnants of Gothic bricked over, stood high above the roofs of the town. The side aisles were crammed with altars in barbaric colours, much gilded and adorned with paper roses in cheap vases. She could not find St. Joseph anywhere, and had to be content instead with Our Lady of Sorrows, between whom and herself relations seemed strained.
A feeling of oppression and emptiness, which she could not explain, took possession of her soul. It was as if she had done something wrong and didn't know what. She kneeled down and gabbled her prayers so thoughtlessly that she felt ashamed, then she caught herself absently eyeing with contentment her suède gloves, which moulded her fingers with such perfect ease and distinction. Every now and then a shudder ran through her, which made her shut her eyes and clench her teeth, and then she felt ashamed again.
Soon she gave up attempting to pray, and gazed up at the Mother of God, with her tearful face, who appeared to be saying, "Please take these things out of me." Yet the seven swords piercing her heart were set at the hilt with pearls and precious stones.
"If only I was really unhappy, I should have some excuse," thought Lilly. "Then I might talk with her as I used to with St. Joseph, and the swords in my heart would be costly to behold." As costly as the pearl necklace he had put round her neck just before the wedding.
She saw herself as she had been two months ago, when she had stolen out in the grey dawn to lay her poor distraught heart at the feet of her favourite saint; how soon, with the reaction of youth, she had walked on air again, intoxicated at the thought of what was coming to her in the fair future. And all the time she had been actually steeped in poverty and wretchedness, forsaken and friendless.
"Happiness takes on strange aspects," she thought, and she gave her shoulders a petulant little shrug.
Then suddenly a great dread came over her that those times would never come back, that she must go on like this eternally, barren in soul, disturbed in spirit, persecuted by gloomy, inexpressible fears.
"It must all come of not loving him enough," she confessed to herself.
Now she knew what she had to petition of the Virgin Mary. She bowed her face in both hands and prayed long and fervidly--prayed that she might learn to love him with as much passion as she had blood in her veins; with as much devotion as she had hopes of her soul; with as much joyousness as there was laughter in her heart. And, lo! her prayer was answered.
She rose from her knees with shining eyes, a burden lifted from her soul, and hurried away, back to him to whom she belonged, to serve him with all humbleness and confidence, either as his daughter, his handmaiden, his mistress--in any capacity he wished.