CHAPTER XII
In the early autumn of the same year, Richard took a husband's holiday, and went to Ostend, while Lilly lived cheaply and innocently at a bathing-place on the Baltic, where she passed as a widow of good birth and position. She accepted the admiring homage of several spinsters, allowed a young missionary to dedicate a volume of verse to her, and declined an honourable offer from a widower, town-clerk of Pirna, with expressions of esteem and friendship.
Lilly enjoyed those six weeks immensely. The winter that followed differed very little from those that had preceded it. At Christmas, Richard's present to her was a hired carriage with the seven-pointed coronet emblazoned on its panels. He wanted to avoid the unpleasantness of his mother--whose prejudice against Lilly increased from year to year--ordering the family brougham for her own use when he was driving about in it with his mistress. Another present was a sable coat of the newest shape with dozens of tails, that cost a small fortune.
In spite of Richard's reproaches, Lilly made very little use of either of her new acquisitions, for the never-silenced inner voice of fear said to her that this sort of pomp and luxury would make her more and more part of the world she longed to flee from. While Richard aimed with stubborn pertinacity at draining the cup of pleasure to the dregs, Lilly hankered more and more after respectability. It was her last anchor of hope in the barren life which, as the days dragged along, left her tortured and dissatisfied in the midst of music, laughter, and light.
The only person in her set who stimulated her intellect in the least was Frau Jula. She knew how to relate entertaining stories, she showed that she had been at home in different worlds, and that her mind retained the impressions she had received there. But for some time past her silly little curly head had been enveloped in a web of impenetrable mystery. The erotic verse, which she had contributed to modern German periodicals, no longer appeared, and her morbid short stories were nowhere to be met with. When her friends teased her and asked what had become of her art, she would smile like a coy bride, and answer, "Wait and see."
At this time Lilly would gladly have seen more of Frau Jula, for she had long since given up feeling that she was in any way superior to her or more moral. But she did not find it easy to approach her, so she carried the burden of her hopes and fears unshared, and trudged on alone, thirsting by the way.
What now came to pass happened on the nineteenth of March, a date never to be forgotten, because it was St. Joseph's Day. It was a day of soft spring-like breezes and pinkish-grey skies; a day on which Nature's orchestra seemed to be rehearsing for the great symphony of spring.
The grassy slopes of the canal-banks were already beginning to turn green, the wild-ducks, in couples, swam on the smooth surface of the water, and big foam-edged blocks of melting ice floated downstream.
Lilly, filled with vague and wistful longings, could not stand it any longer indoors, and prepared to go out early. She wanted to run, cry, shout, jump hedges, throw herself on the grass anything, she didn't care what, so long as she escaped for a few hours from this prison, which smelt of powder and perfumed paints, and was oppressed by the weight of indolence.