The Song Of Songs Part 103

But the bill of fare offered a dizzying abundance of good things--too bad they had come all at once. The landlady who handed them the card with smiling obsequiousness, was an artful city product.

Konrad wanted Lilly to arrange the menu, but she refused. The thought of the woman in the case oppressed her sorely, and, as through a dark veil, she looked on the laughing world, which willingly threw its early summer treasures at their feet.

"At last we're here," she said sighing. "Now do confess: what sort of a woman is she?"

He burst out laughing.

"So you know there's a woman in the case?"

"What else would make me jealous?"

"She has the right to make you jealous, I must say, I've never seen anything more beautiful in my life. It's a pity she's of marble."

Oh, if that was all.

"I am and always will be a goose," laughed Lilly, and he kissed her hand in apology.

While awaiting the fish they had ordered, he told her the history that led up to their present pilgrimage.

In Rome he had once noticed an antique bust of a woman in an art dealer's show window. The head was badly mutilated, but of such lofty sombre beauty that he kept returning to the window to feast his eyes upon it. One day he found the dealer and a German gentleman engaged in an eager conversation, which, however, never progressed, because the two did not understand each other. He offered his services as interpreter, and to his dismay learned that his beloved was being bargained for. The German was a baron, courteous and evidently a man of some culture. In defiance of his own feelings Konrad tried his best to arrange the sale, and for his pains received an invitation to view the bust in the baron's park--he was to convince himself that the beautiful head was destined for no unworthy setting.

"Why, then, it's not a forbidden garden after all," cried Lilly, blissfully stretching her arms toward the mysterious green walls. "We have the right to enter it."

But Konrad looked thoughtful.

"It's not so simple as all that. Remember--as what shall I introduce you? You're not my wife. I can't say you're my sister, as you and I pretend, and we're both too young for any other relationship."

A sudden bitterness welled up within her. Again she felt scorned, outlawed, expelled from the community of the virtuous.

"You should have left me at home," she burst out. "I'm nothing but a burden to you."

"Oh, Lilly," he said, "what do I care for all the marble women in the world! I'd rather stand outside with you than be shown the honours of the entire place."

Reconciled and grateful, she stroked his hand hanging at his side.

At this point--at last! the carp was served.

Two hours later they were walking along an endless wall about nine feet high with never a break in it to peep through.

But at the corner of the park to the right the wall came to an end giving place to a high mossy wooden fence, which allowed them a view some distance into the interior.

Ancient plane trees arched over shady nooks with lindens and elms forcing themselves between. Large-leafed vines with great violet eyes draped the open gra.s.sy places. In the background on a hillock about which towered sombre spruces stood a small, solemn round temple with Tuscan columns and a gleaming green roof.

"She must be in there," said Konrad. But the temple was empty.

So they continued their search. Not a single opening in the foliage escaped them. Here something gleamed and there and there--a Ceres, a satyr blowing his pipe of Pan. In a cypress thicket they caught a glimpse of a wayside shrine of Our Lady, but the woman's head they were seeking was nowhere to be seen.

They walked on. A stream flowing from within the park crossed the road.

An unsightly plank bridge, such as is to be seen on every highway, led across.

But a few hundred feet away, inside the park, another bridge boldly yet gracefully threw its shining white arch over the running water.

"The bridges in Venice look like that," he said.

"That is the way the G.o.ds went to Walhalla," she said.

With a sigh they stopped and pictured the delights of crossing that bridge.

Still nothing to be seen of their marble bust.

Beyond the plank bridge, where the village began, the park receded some distance from the road. A row of tall serious Weymouth pines ran along the other side of the fence.

The village street was gay with Sunday life. The sound of a piano and a fiddle came from a dancing hall, interrupted every now and then by the roll of bowling b.a.l.l.s.

Lilly and her friend pa.s.sed without giving heed to these things. Their wishes were still fastened upon the forbidden garden. Each moment increased their longing.

Hidden between the village lindens crouched crumbling stone posts to which the decaying fence pales clung with difficulty.

Here the foliage in the interior was impenetrable to the eye. Ivy and clematis serpentined from trunk to trunk, and lilacs and spiraeas grew in rank profusion between.

The lord of the garden seemed to have drawn an inner living hedge about himself and his companions to conceal them in laughing seclusion.

Once more they walked along in vain endeavouring to get a peep into the interior.

Presently they came upon an ancient, three-winged gate, which with its vases and columns, its cracked belfry, and its wrought-iron lace work, was half sunk in blooming acacias.

Here at last they could get a good view of the park.

In sombre solemnity tall pines led straight to the castle. But even here they were unable to obtain a glimpse of the buildings, which probably stood off to one side hidden behind trees and bushes. The only architectural bit their searching eyes discerned was a columned terrace, where cherubs fluttered their snowy white wings.

"Oh, how beautiful!" sighed Lilly, and pressing her face between the iron bars she jestingly whined and begged to be let in.

"That's just the way I stood outside the gate in Ravello. Now you know what it's like."

His words brought to Lilly the realisation that she had long known what "it was like." She was familiar with the feeling. She had often stood in the very same position.

But where, where?

Where had cold iron pressed her cheeks just as now?

Oh, yes. Many and many a time she had stood at the iron grating of the door leading to Mrs. Dehnicke's staircase, that proud, laurel-shaded staircase which her desecrated feet were never to tread.

That, too, was a forbidden garden!

Forbidden gardens everywhere!

"Shouldn't we go?" she asked softly. "It will simply depress us to remain here."