"You have no conception, my child, how essential it is, when you live in harness with another human being, not to lose touch with yourself. To hold a private court of your own flattering thoughts is an excellent diversion. Anyone who wants to eat fresh eggs must keep poultry; never forget that. But don't let anyone suspect. Display no unnecessary opposition, no obstinacy. You must arrange to run your life from the start on double paths, so that you can travel in both directions as your needs require. I shouldn't wonder if in these circumstances your marriage were to turn out happily, apart from its exceptional worldly advantages, the duration of which depend mainly on good luck and the exercise of tact and powers of adaptation. I shall send you the marriage contract sealed. Till your coming of age in two years' time I shall always be at your service. If you feel in after years that your temper is permanently tried, break the seal by all means. A good lawyer can interpret a contract very differently from a layman, and read all sorts of things into it. As I indicated, there is one case in which he is impotent to do this. Be on your guard against it. Technically, it is called in flagrante.... Sometime or other you will doubtless acquire information as to what the word means. Now, may I give the colonel your final consent?"
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.