Hand in hand they returned the entire distance they had come, keeping as close as possible to the enclosure and speaking of anything but their hearts" desire.
Nevertheless, their eyes remained fastened on the goal of their aspirations; and the yearning they both felt, though neither of them would express it for fear of hinting reproaches, threw a fairy film of gold over the universe.
Evening came.
Violet shadows lay upon the meadows, the coppery pine trunks glowed like torches. As the sinking sun dipped into the reeds, the lake lost its cool blue silvery sheen and adorned itself with a net of reddish gold.
It looked as if it had sportively drawn to itself the fulfilment of all earthly promises.
The two could no longer bear it on land.
Down at the bathing pavilion, where a merry lot of people were splashing about in the evening coolness, there was a boat to be hired for very little.
Konrad took the oars and Lilly seated herself at the tiller.
Water plants plashed lightly against the sides of the boat, and the bow cut through a waving carpet of pollen.
Among this year"s tender green reeds stood the yellowish-grey weather-beaten remnants of last year"s growth. Dark bulrushes edged the sh.o.r.es, and the water-flag planted its golden tents between.
Over the reeds and bulrushes they could see the ma.s.sed park trees rising toward the heavens like purple walls.
When Lilly told him to look there, he observed indifferently:
"Oh, no use, it"s out of the question."
Nevertheless he continued to cast sidelong glances that way.
Lilly in her slight experience with boats did not know how to manage the tiller, and after trying a while she threw the rope down and spread her white shawl on the bottom of the boat to make a cosy nest for herself.
She lay crouched at Konrad"s feet with her back to the seat in the stern, and with her eyes lost in the blue depths she began to plan a different future, some way of saving herself by a desperate leap into the land of the virtuous.
She would give music lessons--her knowledge sufficed for beginners--and with her savings prepare for the stage, for which her talents eminently fitted her--or, better still, take up scientific studies, because she must keep intellectual pace with him. She must be a suitable friend so long as he needed her friendship.
Or--not to wound the sensibilities of others--she would leave Germany, earn her living as a teacher of German, and when he should summon her, return a new, purified being.
Or--oh dear, "or!"
To lie and dream and drink the cup of her present joy to the dregs.
Discovery and death--the one involved the other--would come soon enough.
The sun dissolved behind a blood-red curtain. Violet vapours closed down, enveloping things far and near. The entire world seemed to have thinned into light and air. The reeds alone, with their slender black stalks standing out against the evening glow like a dainty railing of wrought iron, retained their corporeal aspect.
The foliage of the park slowly melted into a ma.s.s of darkness.
Now the park seemed to be doubly a forbidden garden, filled to the brim with thrills and mysteries, sunk forever in the realm of the unattainable.
As the boat glided slowly along the edge of the reeds a blue cove suddenly opened up, making a wedge-shaped cut into the land on the park side. It seemed to continue inward without end.
For a few moments Konrad remained motionless, his oars suspended. Then he jumped to his feet with an exclamation of joy.
"What"s the matter? What"s the matter?"
"You remember the stream flowing out on the other side of the park?"
"Certainly."
"It must have flowed in somewhere--eh?"
"Of course."
He pointed to the gleaming tip of the cove.
"There it is."
"You think we shall after all--?"
The thought was too bold for utterance.
"Now, by water, in this boat, we shall cross that whole dark region from one side to the other."
In her rapture she jumped up with a little outcry of delight, and fell upon his neck, naturally, as if they had never exchanged vows and pledges.
The boat gradually slipped into the current and floated between meadows set with willows where the evening mist lay like white swathes. Beyond stood gleaming peasant huts; and fishing nets draped the fences.
Then, at a bend in the stream, a mighty arch of foliage opened up before them.
"O Lord!" cried Lilly.
"Psst! We must keep very quiet now," he said, "else we"ll be turned out after all."
He dipped his oars so lightly that the sound might have been taken for the splash of a leaping fish.
He rowed through the gate of leaves under branches joined overhead in a mazy thicket. It was dark as night in this spot, though here and there on the right a gleam of the summer twilight pierced through the foliage.
They also caught a glimpse of lights and heard talk and laughter and the sound of clinking gla.s.ses and, intermittently, a chord, as if someone in the midst of conversation carelessly ran his hand over the keys.
Here the trees and bushes were wider apart, and they had an un.o.bstructed view of the castle--a broad, two-storey building. Its ponderous simplicity pointed to the time when the grandees of Brandenburg had not yet possessed a feeling for art. But on the terrace were the cherubs who had greeted them from a distance in the afternoon.
Between their white bodies at a long table in the flickering lamplight sat a chattering, laughing, singing company, apparently drinking in the intoxication of the summer evening with their wine.
"He, too, might be sitting there, if I weren"t a mill-stone about his neck," thought Lilly, and she felt as if she ought to beg his pardon.
The current carried the boat on. The banquet scene vanished like the vision of a moment.
Pa.s.sing that end of the castle in which the kitchen and pantries lay, where ministering spirits ran busily to and fro, they dipped once more into silence and darkness.
To the right of them back of the many-windowed edifice, was a lawn with old statues and ivy-draped urns--to the left a world buried in darkness.