CHAPTER XIX
For a long time the threshing-machine had been in tune for its autumn song. Far beyond the courtyard, penetrating every wall and hedge, its melancholy hum was now heard. There was no suggestion in it of golden harvest blessings and consolidated sunshine. Like an Æolian harp it moaned and howled from morn to eve in the storm-tossed branches. Sometimes it seemed to shriek as if the sheaves of grain it tore and tortured had found a voice wherewith to express their agony.
Once more Lilly's soul was so full of dreamy bliss that she heard in this music nothing but a seductive yearning. It impregnated her morning slumber, and often she lay with closed eyes half awake so as to listen the better to the monotonous singsong. And all the time he was in her thoughts. What she had always wanted was now hers--a playmate, a comrade; someone to rejoice and grumble with; someone who confessed all his sins to her, the very blackest, and then received a laughing absolution. Then whatever he did, he himself was not guilty; it was the youth in him that sinned, the same sweet, wicked youth that charged her own soul with melancholy and filled her body with thrills, which dominated them both like a tormenting deity, smiling on one and frowning on the other.
Yes, he must be saved; saved from his own folly, from that fatal cynicism of his which threatened to enmesh him in a network of vulgar intrigues. There was no silencing the rumours of the sort of life he was leading. She had only to set foot in the servants' quarters to hear the stream of unsavoury gossip of which he was the subject. All that must be ended. Her first interference was to be but the beginning of the great mission she had to perform in his life. She would be his good genius, standing in his path with raised hands to ward off all horrid temptations, so that he should become as pure and devoid of evil desires as herself.
So she dreamed to the accompaniment of the threshing-machine's melody.
The first ride outside the castle gates, though taken without leave, was praised and approved; permission was given for others to follow. But Lilly hesitated. She would like to be sure of her cantering powers, she said, before venturing on unknown ground. The truth was, she was dying for another such hour, and only lacked the courage to hurry it on.
The very next morning he had been the stern unbending riding-master again, treating her with extravagant courtesy. She had thought he would be certain to whisper tenderly, "little comrade," or some other familiar greeting--he could have found the opportunity if he had liked--but nothing of the sort came to pass either this time or the next.
They had no thought indeed of riding beyond the courtyard for several lessons after, till one day the colonel himself issued the command.
"Enough of this ambling about round the yard. Go out and let the wind of the fields blow through you," he said.
"As the colonel wishes," replied Walter, with his hand raised to his cap in salute, and he turned her horse with his own towards the open gates.
Her heart stood still, and she forgot to send back a farewell greeting over her shoulder, so occupied was she with the contemplation of coming delights.
In a minute they were riding in the same direction as they had followed ten days ago, when the great event had taken place. The weeping willows dripped with dew, and at the slightest movement showered down drops upon her. Lilly laughed and shook them off. Instead of joining in the sport, he tried to make her keep to the middle of the road.
"But I love getting wet," she protested.
"Very well, if the gracious baroness pleases," he answered with his stupid exaggerated formality.
They rode on in silence. When they came to the place where ten days before the great event had happened to which all his conduct to-day gave the lie, she dared to shoot a reminiscent side glance at him. But he made no response, and appeared not to see. His cap pulled down over the back of his head as far as his neck, his thin smooth face sprinkled with dewdrops, his boyish figure all muscle and sinews, he sat his horse as if he and the animal were one.
"How fond I am of him, in spite of everything, dear little fellow!" she thought, and pictured what her desolation would be if one day he were suddenly to vanish from the scene. And then she realised all at once that her equable gaiety of soul, the feeling of living her life to the full, were all due to his nearness to her day after day.
They rode along even ground steadily. The chain of brown ridges on the far side of the river came nearer, and he seemed to be steering for these; but this did not serve her purpose, for the hour of serious converse had sounded. To-day or never! And with a laborious effort of thought she began to calculate all the things she had to say to him. But she could not arrange them methodically in her mind, especially as her attention was half taken up by her horse. In the saddle she was too completely at his mercy, so plucking up courage she proposed that they should dismount. While he paused to consider she sprang to the ground, and he had to be quick to catch the mare's snaffle.
He scolded her a little, but finally had to do as she wished. They proceeded on foot, and he led the horses.
The road lay through a marshy declivity where there was a scanty growth of alders and oaks. Yellow marigold buds starred the damp ground and burr reed spread out its prickly fruit on distorted branches. Red-dock leaves swayed on their withered stalks, and sedgy grass curled itself up in anticipation of autumn frosts. A mountain ash felled by a recent storm bridged the ditch at the side of the road. Its scarlet berries, which should have been dead, still glowed like fire, as if deriving life from some mysterious source of their own.
"I should like to sit down here," she said.
He bowed acquiescence.
"But you must sit down too."
"I must hold the horses, gracious baroness."
"You can tie them to a tree."
He reflected a moment. "So I can," he said, and knotted the reins to the fallen trunk.
Then when he came to sit beside her she shifted her position more towards the middle to make room. Her feet hung in the air over the ditch-water. He pushed himself after her along the tree, hand over hand.
"That's far enough," she said; for she did not want him too close.
"Very well, gracious baroness," he answered, and swung his legs.
The formality of his address caused her fresh annoyance.
"Don't you think when we are alone together you might drop titles?" she asked, looking him straight in the eyes.
"I might ... but I mustn't."
"But how about the other day?"
"Oh, the other day was my birthday," he answered, "and as I wanted a pretty little present I gave myself that!"
"And to-day is my birthday," she jested. "What present am I to be given?"
"Anything the gracious baroness likes."
"Then I like you to call me 'Comrade.'"
"Always, or just once in a way?"
"Always."
"Shall I call you comrade, or be comrade?"
"Be comrade; be--be comrade. That's the chief thing!" she cried.
"A bargain," he said, and cautiously crept a little nearer along the wobbling trunk to give her his right hand.
"A bargain," she said, and shook hands.
"But there are other items to be settled in connection with this," he said, clearing his throat.
"What are they?"
"Well, for one thing, does a comradeship mean Christian names?"
"Certainly not," Lilly replied, feeling that she was making a great sacrifice.
He accepted the condition as final, and said submissively, "Just as you like, comrade."
Now was her chance to speak out. She drew a deep breath and said:
"You know I want to talk seriously to you, Herr von Prell."
"Ugh!" he ejaculated, prepared for a bad quarter of an hour, as he gnawed his gloved thumbs.
Lilly plunged off at a tangent. She would not say anything about his last misdemeanour, for bad as it was, it was all over, and what was forgiven ought also to be forgotten. But if he imagined that the loose life he had been leading was a secret in the castle household, he was very much mistaken. It was an open scandal, and even the laundry and scullery-maids sniggered about it; but how could he expect anything else after ... Here she enumerated the sum total of his misdoings, as she had gleaned them from remarks the servants had let fall.
She was ashamed to retail them. This was not what she had intended to say at all.... She had wanted to speak grandly of the high purpose of human existence, the nobility of self-renunciation, the glory of pure and lofty ideals, of the spiritual tie uniting the elect on earth, and so on. But inspiration failed her when she saw him sitting there with bent shoulders and turning his big toes inwards so that under the soft leather of his riding-boots they looked like excrescences, and she could think of nothing better.
He did not interrupt her. Even when she had done he was silent, absorbed in watching an insect wriggling in circles on the surface of the water.
"Have you no answer," she asked, "after all the disgraceful things I have accused you of?"
"What should I answer, most learned judge?" he retorted. "My one claim to distinction is that I am absolutely devoid of moral sense. Do you want me to lose it?"
"If you are so weak and have no reliance on yourself," she exclaimed in growing zeal, "let me be your mainstay and support. Lean on me, your friend, adviser, your----"
"Foster-father," he suggested, and stirred the slime in the ditch with his whip.
She awakened to the fact that what she had said had not made the least impression; he was laughing at her all the time.
"Get up and let me pass," she said. "Why should I try to do my best for someone who is not worth it?"
He made no sign of moving from his place.
"Now, look here, comrade," he said, pointing down at the black mirror of ditch-water. "There goes a water-spider with its legs in the air and its head downwards. If you were to ask it why it swims like that, it would say because it knows no other way. That's its nature. Well, do you see, it's my nature. What's to be done? You can't alter it."
"Anyone can restrain his evil passions," she exclaimed, flaring up in indignation. "Anyone can, if he likes, keep his eyes fixed on a high ideal and struggle to attain it--can listen to a friend when she would help, and say to him----"
"Well, what would the friend say?" he asked ingratiatingly, swinging himself nearer.
She did not answer. She had put her hands before her face and was crying--crying till her sobs convulsed her body.
"For God's sake, sit still!" he exclaimed, circling his arms towards her, for on the wobbling trunk of the mountain ash she might at any moment lose her balance. "Child, dear little comrade, sit still."
She quivered all over. She heard nothing but the sweet, caressing, criminal "dear little comrade," which her soul had been yearning to hear.
And then he promised her to turn over a new leaf. He would not flirt any more. He would give up tippling with the bailiffs; he would read stiff agricultural literature; he would do anything--oh, what wouldn't he do?--if she would only stop crying.
"Give me your word of honour?" she asked, raising her wet, reddened eyes to his.
He gave it without hesitation.
Comforted and grateful, she smiled at him.
"You'll never repent it," she said. "I'll stand by you. I'll be a true friend, and do all I can for you."
"All that the two watch-dogs permit," he added.
To-day she didn't mind his saying "two watch-dogs." She shrugged her shoulders and said, "Yes, of course, what they permit."
Then they both laughed so heartily that they narrowly escaped falling into the ditch, after all.