Fräulein von Schwertfeger grimly disapproved of this attachment between Lilly and the Poles.
"The people on the estate are beginning to complain," she said, "that you prefer the aliens to themselves. If I were you I should take my walks in another direction."
Lilly objected to doing this, and so Fräulein von Schwertfeger bore her company when she went in the direction of the barn dwellings, in case they should exercise too great a fascination over her. She succeeded, too, in converting Lilly to Protestantism--only outwardly, of course.
"You may worship your Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph as much as you like," she said, "but do remove those images and relics from your bedside. And then with regard to going to church, certainly if you like you can drive five miles in to Krammen to attend mass. The colonel will allow you, but, all the same, I would like you, my sweet, to come to church with us and sit in the ancestral pew; do, to please me. You won't regret it."
And when Lilly unresisting had given in, Fräulein von Schwertfeger presented her as a reward with a tiny folding domestic altar. The outside looked like a dainty jewel-box, but when you opened it--oh, joy!--there was the Holy Child in the arms of the Virgin painted on glass, with St. Anne on the left panel and St. Joseph on the right.
Lilly almost wept, she was so pleased with it. Still, she could not bring herself to love the giver as she ought. Often when they sat together chatting confidentially, Lilly felt solitary and--frightened. She even dared not satisfy her hunger. Since the days of Frau Asmussen's milk puddings, Lilly had developed an enormous, well-nigh indecent appetite, and Fräulein von Schwertfeger's aghast expression at her piled-up plate often was the cause of her rising from table still unsatisfied, and falling back on raids on the storeroom cupboard between meals. The dear old cook, her fast ally, guaranteed to guard Lilly from surprises on the part of Fräulein von Schwertfeger, and when she came into the kitchen Lilly accounted for her presence there on the plea that she was learning to cook, an announcement which was received with patronising merriment.
If it had not been for old Grete the cook, she would have known nothing at all about the conduct of the household, for, either from caution or greed of power, Fräulein von Schwertfeger chose to conceal everything that might have led to a practical and intelligent comprehension of the ménage. When she offered to help she was told help was not wanted, and she must take care of her hands and not tire herself. So it went on day after day.
She would have given anything to learn riding, but there again Schwertfeger interference prevented her by discovering signs of motherhood, which invariably proved later to be a false alarm. She might not so much as cultivate her musical talent. The old tin-kettle of a piano, the rattling yellow keys of which looked like a set of teeth decayed from tobacco smoke--just as the colonel's were--was not to be replaced by a new one till they went to Danzig for the day in the autumn.
So her life dragged on, half in bliss, half in regret. She felt like a pilgrim who against her will had strayed into paradise. She looked back on the time before her marriage as on a long, long vanished youth, and would have laughed at anyone who had pointed out to her that at barely nineteen most of her youth lay before her. It was well that opposite, in the bailiff's lodge, there was at least one person who could testify to her having been a girl once; otherwise she might have told herself that her girlhood was a dream, and she had been a full-fledged married woman and the colonel's wife before she was out of her cradle.
All this time she had only met her merry comrade at dinner on Sunday, when, in his long frock-coat, with his reverential awed manner, he cut a rather comical figure. Neither of them by a single word or glance recalled the past. Often from her balcony, now completely secluded by its growth of rambling vines, she looked across to the gabled house and saw him gambolling with the red little fox of a puppy. Then it seemed to her that this blond-haired good-for-nothing, who flirted with all the pretty girls on the estate, so old Grete said, was the only creature with whom she had anything in common in this cold world. Grete told how he nearly rode the horses to death to get back from his secret outings before dawn; and then sometimes behind the closed shutters of his den---- Here old Grete could not proceed, and Lilly concluded that things too dreadful for words went on behind those closed shutters.