CHAPTER XIII
The train rumbled on in the night. Showers of sparks flew past the window. When the stoker added coal, a beam of light was projected far into the darkness, and for an instant created out of the black void purple pine trees, snowy roofs gleaming golden, and fields mottled with yellow.
How beautiful and strange it was!
Lilly leaned her head, heavy with champagne, back against the red velvet cushion.
It was over. A whirl of images, real and imaginary, flitted back and forth in her brain.
A great black inkwell and a little man with a grey beard behind it asking all sorts of useless questions. A white cloud of lace and a myrtle wreath thrown over her head by the wife of the manager of the war office, who fell from one fit of rapture into another. A hateful Protestant minister with two ridiculous little white bibs. He looked like a grave-digger, but he spoke so exquisitely, after all, that you wanted to throw your arms about his neck, and cry. Two black and two gay gentlemen. One of the black gentlemen, Mr. Pieper, one of the gay gentlemen, the colonel.
"The colonel"s wife--the colonel"s wife," throbbed the wheels.
But if she listened carefully, she also heard them say what the gentlemen had kept saying to her that day:
"La--dy Mertzbach--La--dy Mertzbach."
Keeping time. Keeping time.
The ice cream had been a perfect marvel, a regular mine with shafts and tunnels and mineral veins, and little lights, which set the cut-gla.s.s a-sparkle. She could have sat there forever staring at it, but she had to dig in with a large gold spoon, so that a whole mountain side gave way.
Then she had asked him whether she might have ice cream to eat every day, and he had laughed and said "yes." If she had not been a bit tipsy, she would not have been so bold, certainly not. And she determined to ask his forgiveness later.
There he sat opposite, piercing her with his eyes.
That was the only embarra.s.sing thing. If she weren"t such a chicken-hearted ninny, she would ask him to look somewhere else for a change.
But to-day she did not experience actual fear. Latterly the old dread had gradually left her, as she came to realise how supernaturally dear he was. Express a wish, and it was fulfilled.
There was something else, about which, of course, she couldn"t speak to anyone. Merely to think of it was a crime. He was bow-legged. Regular cavalry legs. They were a little short, besides, for his powerful body, giving his stiff stride a springy sort of uncertainty, as if he were endeavouring all the time to toe the mark, especially since he had donned civilian"s clothes and kept his hands stuck in his coat pockets.
From time to time he leaned forward and asked:
"Are you comfortable, little girl?"
Oh, she was ever so comfortable. She could have reclined there the rest of her life, her head leaning back on the red velvet cushion, the soft kid gloves on her hands and the natty tips of new boots every now and then peeping from under her travelling gown.
What a crowd there had been at the station!
No uniforms, of course, because he had not desired an official escort.
To compensate, the number of veiled ladies had been all the greater.
They pretended to have business to attend to on the platform, and tried to be inconspicuous.
When Lilly walked to the train leaning on his arm, she caught two or three m.u.f.fled cries of admiration. And G.o.d knows, they did not issue from friendly lips.
It all circulated about her heart like a warm, soothing stream.
At the last moment, as the train was moving off, two bouquets flew in through the window.
She looked out. There were the two sisters, making deep courtesies, and weeping like rain spouts.
So great was Lilly"s fortune that even envy was disarmed, and all the evil poison in these girls was trans.m.u.ted into pained partic.i.p.ation in another"s joy!
And there he sat, the creator of it all.
Overcome by a sense of well-being and grat.i.tude, she knelt on the carpeted floor of the compartment, folded her hands on his knees, and looked up to him worshipfully.
He put his right arm about her, pulled her close to him, and let his left hand stray down her body. Fear came upon her again. She slid from under his grasp back to her seat. He nodded--with a smile that seemed to say:
"My hour will come in due time."
It was there sooner than she had suspected.
"Put on your coat," he said suddenly, "we shall be getting out soon."
"Where?" she asked, frightened.
"At the station--you know--from which a branch line goes to Lischnitz."
"Why, are we going to your place?" Lilly was terrified, because he had always spoken of going to Dresden.
"No," he said curtly. "We remain here."
In a few moments they found themselves on a dark platform among their bags and trunks.
The icy mist formed rainbow-coloured suns about the few lanterns, and white clouds of frozen breath enveloped each shadowy form as it stepped into a circle of light.
The train glided off.
They stood there, and n.o.body concerned himself for them.
The colonel began to swear violently, a habit acquired probably at drill, when the world did not wag as he wished it to wag.
His cries of wrath fell upon Lilly like great hailstones. Her whole body quivered, as if she were at fault.
Some of the station guards, to whom this tone of command seemed familiar from times of old, loaded themselves with the baggage, and presented a lamentable spectacle in their deep contrition.
A hotel coach was waiting on the other side. Lilly thoroughly intimidated squeezed into the farthest corner.
The miserable little oil lamp burning dimly in a dirty gla.s.s case, threw confused shadows upon his sharply cut face, and seemed to endow it with a new flickering life, as if the wrath that had long been stifled were still seething within him.
"You are completely at the mercy of this bad old man, whom you don"t know, who doesn"t concern you in the least, and never will concern you."
A chill ran through her. "Supposing you were to dash by him, tear open the coach door, and run away into the night?"
She pictured what would take place. He would have the coach stopped, would jump out, and give chase, calling and screaming. In case she managed to keep well concealed, he would rouse the police, and the next morning she would be discovered cowering in a corner, asleep, or frozen perhaps.
At this point in her thoughts he groped for her hand as lovers are wont to do. The phantom world vanished, and blossoming into smiles again she returned his pressure.