The Song Of Songs Part 118

"Come back, I say! You know where your home is. I won't let you stray about in the world any more. Heaven knows what may happen to you.

Driver, turn back."

The coachman turned his russet face inquiringly to the lady in the hansom.

"I beg your pardon, Richard. I have the sole say as to this cab--and as to my future life, too. Just as you have had over your own."

"Stuff and nonsense! I suppose you're alluding to the American heiress.

She can go to the devil for all I care. That's the way I've felt for some time. But you--_must--come--back. You--must--come--back.

You--must--you--must_."

He grasped the hem of her skirt with both hands, as if to drag her from the carriage by her clothes.

"I beg you to come back--I can't sleep--I can't work--I'm so used to you. If I had married, I should have come to you directly after the wedding. Our relationship wouldn't have changed an iota. And everything in your apartment is just as you left it. You saw it. Adele says Peter won't eat, and Adele herself is worried. She says she simply can't do without you. I'll give you a life-long annuity of twenty--by G.o.d! thirty thousand marks a year. What's the difference? Mother hasn't anything against it. She sees how I take it. She knows I won't ever marry after all. She'll never do anything to you again. You can come to the office, too. You can use our carriage instead of the hired one. I'll have a telephone put up between your apartment and the stable. And if you want I'll buy an automobile a thousand times finer than this one."

That was the highest trump. No one could outbid an automobile. So he stopped to see the effect. Kneeling on the steps he leaned far into the hansom and stared into her face.

Lilly realised she could not free herself from him, unless he learned the truth.

She felt very sorry for him, but it had to be.

"Listen, Richard! What you offer doesn't count with me anymore. Because I love another man--who wants to give me much more than you."

"What! I'd like to know what sort of a young Vanderbilt he is!" he cried in jealous scorn. "Why, I never knew _that_ side of your nature."

"He's not a young Vanderbilt, Richard. On the contrary, he's so poor he doesn't know where he'll get his bread from day to day. But I am engaged to him, and as his affianced I will have to ask you to stand out of my way."

His mouth gaped. His eyes grew large and round. He reeled back against the hindwheels of the taxicab.

"Go on!" Lilly cried to the coachman.

She leaned back in her seat, drawing a deep breath of relief, though with a faint consciousness of guilt, as if she had rid herself of her old lover too lightly.

Throughout the ride she heard back of her the chug-chug of a slow-moving automobile; and when she descended from her hansom, Richard descended from the taxicab, at a slight distance, though near enough for Lilly to catch the look in his eyes.

It was the look of a whipped dog.

As if someone were pursuing her, she ran up the four flights without concerning herself about the trunk. But a little while later the driver came panting up the stairs with it, apparently of his own accord.

When she held out the money to him, he refused it.

The gentleman downstairs, he said, had already paid for everything.

CHAPTER XX

It was the evening of the following day.

The carriage that was taking Lilly to the dreaded meeting stopped in front of the renowned Linden restaurant which has been the resort of elegant folk for years.

Although it was some time since Lilly had been there, she knew every stone of it.

She knew Albert, too, the tall, dignified porter, who stood in the doorway, and put his hand to his braided cap. It was he who had acted as the go-between for her and the handsome hussar of the guards.

With downcast eyes, pressing close to Konrad, she pa.s.sed by him, hoping he no longer remembered her.

"This is Lilly, uncle."

An old bow-legged gentleman, slightly under medium size in an ill-fitting jacket and crumpled collar, came shambling out of a back room, and held out a broad, fleshy hand, the brown skin of which played loosely over his bones like a large glove.

Lilly threw a timid glance of scrutiny at the all-powerful person, whom she had pictured to herself as a commanding yet complaisant thunderer.

In reality he was a tottering, rotund, somewhat common-looking gnome.

When she told herself that her conduct now and during the next hour would decide Konrad's and her own future, the old miserable timidity, which had not troubled her for some time past, began to paralyse her muscles and turned her into a doll, which smiled inanely and could not tell its own name.

But the old uncle also seemed to have lost his power of speech.

He looked her up and down repeatedly and well-nigh forgot to invite her to enter the back room.

As with everything else about the place Lilly was familiar with this back room, its pressed leather walls, its red silk hangings, and the blue oriental rugs over the high-armed sofa.

In the period when Richard was still possessed of the ambition to belong to the aristocracy of high livers, she had spent many a mad hour there late at night with him and his chance friends.

An immaculate waiter helped her off with her brocade jacket and lace mantilla, and looked at her the while as if to say:

"I ought to know you."

Oh, that was a moment of agony.

The uncle, who had not ceased furtively to cast awed yet sullen glances at Lilly, pulled himself together and said:

"Well, let's have a cosy time together, children. Nice and pleasant, eh?"

Lilly inclined her head.

Her gesture was stiff enough apparently to increase the bow-legged old gentleman's respect. He seemed to be at a loss, and tramped about the room, played with the gold k.n.o.bs which hung as a charm from his watch pocket, and two or three times nodded his solemn appreciation to Konrad.

They seated themselves at the gleaming white table, resplendent with flowers and cut gla.s.s.

About the bronze lamp--Lilly remembered it with its claws and slim lily design--hung a veil of violet orchids, which had surely cost an enormous sum.

He knew how to live, the old untidy rogue. One had to admit that.

Lilly saw her reflection in the mirror opposite her seat. It was rea.s.suringly aristocratic.

She had chosen a pleated dress of black Liberty silk with a waist of Chantilly lace, which despite its costliness lay in simple lines of grace about her breast and arms.