The old man is the cat-o"-nine-tails. The old man decides what is good and what is bad on earth. The old man breaks one man"s neck and pays another man"s debts. He is the punch bowl of all our virtues and all our sins. Withal the old man is eternally young. The old man sees you and says to you: "Come here, little girl. I"m a grey old horror, but I wish to have you." Then you have just enough courage left to ask "When do you want me, high and mighty lord?" You see, child, that"s the old man.
They hist him on to you long ago, and if ever he should find his way to you, then may the Lord have mercy on you! Then all"s over and done for with my poor young queen."
"But I don"t know yet who the old man is," said Lilly, whom this enigmatic alarum was beginning to make a little uncomfortable.
"Then don"t ask," he replied, and held out his freckled hand in good-by.
"It"s a pity for us two," he added, smiling at her tenderly and compa.s.sionately from between his blinking lids. "We could so cosily have enriched history with another famous pair of lovers." Leaning far over the counter, "Since I am a man utterly devoid of moral fibre, I should like to bestow one kiss upon you before I go."
Lilly laughingly held her mouth up.
He kissed her and walked to the door stiffly.
"I can scarcely crawl, I"m so knocked up by my bout," he said, and with that was outside the door.
After this visit Lilly was seized with the same disquieting sense as after his first visit. It seemed to her she was being flicked in sport with tickling switches. But this time, joined to the other feeling, was a certain anxiety which set her nerves a-tingle with a tormenting yet soothing sensation, as if she were waiting outside a locked door of gold, behind which an unknown fate was crouching ready to pounce on her.
CHAPTER XI
Outside on the street the hilt of a sword and the b.u.t.tons of a uniform glittered in the noon sunlight of a December day.
"A new one," thought Lilly. The stiff, thickset figure of the man who clanked up the steps of the porch was unfamiliar to her.
A masterful stamping outside the door. The bell rang more sharply than usual.
No, she did not know him. He was not a frivolous lieutenant, nor yet one of the maturer ones, who played the dignified and watched with an expectant smile for the first shy glance in order to extract from it whatever they dared.
She saw eyes piercing sharp as a falcon"s with a close ring of mobile crows" feet about them; she saw a severe high-bridged aquiline nose, and gaunt cheek bones on which lay a well-defined spot of red finely chased with purple veins. Under a short, bushy moustache she saw thin, compressed lips, the corners of which turned up in a smile of mocking benevolence. She saw a receding chin, polished to a shine by the shave, and disappearing in two limp folds near the high collar.
She saw all this as in a dream. Her heart began to throb so violently that she had to lean against the bookcase.
"Why, this is what I was afraid of," a voice within her spoke. "This is the old man."
He raised his hand carelessly to his cap, but did not think of removing it.
"Colonel von Mertzbach," he said in a voice whose rough intonations spread a whole world of authoritative power before her. "I should like to speak to you a few minutes. I have reasons for wishing to know you."
Lilly felt she was to be subjected to a humiliating examination, which she was by no means in duty bound to suffer. But never in her life had she seemed so defenceless as at that moment. She felt as if she were standing in the presence of a judge who had the right to pardon or condemn entirely at his own discretion.
Her lips trembled as she stammered something meant to express consent.
"You seem to be an extremely dangerous young woman," he said. "Why, you"ve fairly crazed my men, especially the younger ones--there"s no managing them."
"I don"t understand," replied Lilly, summoning all her courage.
He uttered "h"m," stuck a monocle in his eye, and looked her up and down, or rather looked down to the point where the top of the counter cut her figure off. Then he uttered another "h"m," and observed:
"It"s very easy to play the innocent in cases like this. However that may be, I can thoroughly comprehend my young men. Probably I myself should not have behaved differently. But it seems that despite your youth and--inexperience, you possess a very respectable amount of feminine cunning, otherwise you would not have succeeded, in spite of your irreproachably reserved manner--or, perhaps, just _because_ of your manner--you would not have succeeded, I say, in bringing the young men here on repeated visits--they are somewhat fastidious."
Lilly felt the tears rising. It would have been easy to repudiate the insults he offered her; but from where derive the strength to oppose a word in defence to this man whose eyes disrobed her and drilled her through and through, whose smile held her in a wire net?
So she sat down and cried.
He, in his turn, rose from his seat and stepped close to the counter.
"How deeply your sense of honour has been wounded I cannot say offhand.
At any rate, it is not my intention to make you cry. On the contrary, I should like you to give me with the utmost composure possible a little information which will enlighten me and which may be of some importance for your future."
Lilly was conscious of only one thought: "You must pull yourself together because he wants you to."
She wiped her eyes and looked at him obediently, sniffling a little, as when she had been scolded in her childhood.
He asked her name, where she had been born, where her parents were, what school she had attended, and what she was doing in the library. At the mention of her guardian"s name an ironic smile pa.s.sed over his face.
"I know the gentleman"s views," he said. "So, in short, you have been left absolutely alone in the world?"
Lilly a.s.sented.
"And it would not be disagreeable to you to have some mainstay--to know someone to whom you could turn in moments of need?"
"Where is a person like that to come from?"
"Let me think it over at leisure," he said, wrinkling his forehead. "In any case, you cannot remain in this hole. Do they treat you well here at least?"
"Oh, tolerably," said Lilly, and added between laughter and tears, "Only--the food is bad and sometimes I get--" she was going to say "beaten," but was ashamed to, and subst.i.tuted "punished," which was a perversion of the truth.
The colonel burst into a laugh that sounded like the crack of a whip.
"Very commendable in you to take the matter humorously," he said, and rose to go. "Well, I know what I wanted to know. My men may continue to come to you--in uniform, in civilian"s clothes, whichever way they want.
They will find no more irreproachable company among the young ladies of this town. Should they ever forget their manners, just drop me a line.
But I am sure they won"t. Good afternoon, Miss Czepanek."
Lilly watched him walk across the porch with the jerky, springy strut of an old cavalry man. The wintry sun seemed to be shining for the sole purpose of casting a dancing radiance about his figure.
When he reached the pavement he turned to her window and lifted his cap slightly but respectfully. The eyes behind the lowering brows pierced hers, searching, almost threatening. Then he pa.s.sed out of sight.
Lilly"s soul was a.s.sailed by a tumult of questions:
"What was it? What was expected of her? Why wasn"t she let alone?"
She wanted to cry, wanted to pour out complaints and feel herself pitied. But her trouble had a certain festal tinge, a certain shadowyness and unreality. She bedizened herself with it as with a new hope, and what he had said about some one to whom she could turn in moments of need re-echoed in her soul like a soothing, easing melody.
Didn"t it seem almost as if he himself wished to be the mainstay so sorely lacking in her floundering young life?
Perhaps he would get Mr. Pieper, who did not concern himself about her at any rate, to give up his guardianship over Lilly. Or, perhaps the colonel might even adopt her, or something like that. There was no knowing.
If only there had not been those dagger eyes, that amused laugh, and that evil, evil look at the end, and above all her friend"s warning: "If ever he should find his way to you, then may the Lord have mercy on you!"