The Song Of Songs Part 27

That very day he ordered a box, and she danced about the rooms with the tickets in her hand wild with joy.

But her delight was dampened by his injunction to wear evening dress.

Lilly could not comprehend why one should have to bare one's neck and shoulders in order to be edified by "The Winter's Tale." Besides, the magnificence of the gowns filled her with discomfort. She would walk in awe about the gleaming gala robes as circ.u.mspectly as about a thicket of nettles. The colonel had had them made when in a giving mood, for no real purpose, since it was impossible, of course, for the present to introduce Lilly to society.

When she appeared before him stiff and constrained, her eyes severely fixed, her cheeks, however, glowing with the fever of festivity, her delicately curved breast half concealed in a nest of white lace, the fabulously exquisite chain of pearls about her swan-like throat--taller, lither, apparently, more of a blossoming Venus than ever--the old robber was seized by intoxication in the possession of his booty, the magnificent gown came near being consigned to the wardrobe, and the tickets to the waste basket; but Lilly begged so hard, that he choked down his feelings, and got into the carriage with her.

The colonel thought he had long ago outlived the ba.n.a.l delight of shining in the eyes of strangers. He found he was mistaken. The old bachelor experienced a new, unexpected sensation, to which he gave himself up disdainfully, though feeling immensely flattered. After a time he accepted his triumph as a matter of course.

The instant Lilly appeared in the box the whole house had eyes for her alone. The handsome, aristocratic couple, whose very being together aroused speculation, busied everybody's imagination, and as soon as the lights went up at the end of the first act, the whispering and questioning and pointing of opera gla.s.ses began anew.

Lilly had never before been in a box, and on entering she had started back instinctively, feeling confused and alarmed. But accustomed as she now was to implicit obedience, she took the chair to which the colonel pointed without a word of protest. When she realised she was the object of general attention, the old numbness came over her. She felt as if the woman sitting there speaking and smiling were not herself but someone else whose connection with her person was purely accidental.

She did not awake from her torpor until the hall was thrown into darkness again, and the curtain went up. Then the play wafted her to the land of the poet, breathless, exulting, dismayed.

After this, two Lillies sat in her seat--the one in blissful self-forgetfulness flitting on the rainbow-coloured wings of childlike fancy through heavens and h.e.l.ls; the other making precise gestures like a wound-up doll, unconsciously imitating the manners of the well-bred; at the same time feeling a strange, hot, torturingly sweet sensation creep over her being: the intoxication of the vain.

The triumph he had celebrated in the theatre was not enough for the colonel. On returning to the hotel he did not have supper served as usual in their rooms, but led Lilly to the general dining room, where a gypsy band was playing and elegant folk of all descriptions were spreading their peac.o.c.k feathers.

The game of the box was repeated in all but one respect. Lilly, carried away by the dreamy magic of the violins, dropped some of her coyness.

Her cheeks glowed, her eyes swam, and stretching herself a bit she ventured to take a tiny part in the sport.

Two tables off sat a blond young man in full dress--white shirt front and black tie like all the others. He kept staring at her with hot persistence, as if she were a strange animal.

She moved uneasily under this gaze, which caressed and gave hurt, which spoke wild words in a foreign tongue, yet was nothing else than that sob of the violins which feverishly quivered through her limbs, up and down her body.

Suddenly her husband faced about and surprised the admirer in the very act. He stabbed him with one of his piercing glances, and soon the miscreant vanished.

The colonel's mood seemed to be spoiled somewhat.

He said, "It's time to go," and led her upstairs.

When he had her to himself, joy in his possession got the upper hand again, mounting to a sort of triumphal ecstasy.

Others might pasture on the delights of her evening attire; the winsome asperity of her childlike features, on which life had not yet left its traces, were good enough for display down there in the dining room--off with the pearl chain! Down with the laces!

He wanted her without covering of any sort, wanted to drink in with greedy eyes the secret of her proudly blooming body, wanted to satiate his hungry old age with the long-forbidden charms of strange, stolen youth.

Lilly, helpless, without will of her own, did what she had often done.

In shame that flamed afresh each time, she allowed him to tear the last veil from her body. She threw herself on the carpet and rose again--she danced, she posed as a worshipper, as a maiden in distress begging for help, as a Maenad, a water-carrier, a coquette laughing between her fingers--as anything he wished.

This evening there was an additional something, which burned in her blood like venom. A diffident desire, which was really a feeling of repulsion--a love that clung to him in grateful self-abandon, while secretly hankering for something else--for the sobbing of violins and the hiss of conflagrations, a purple heaven dotted with stars, and the deadly sweet yearning that dwelt in Hermione.

When he had had his fill of the spectacle--and this came soon because of his years--he made her don the loose gauze shirt worked with silver thread with which he had presented her at the very beginning of their stay in Dresden. Before he went to sleep she always had to dance in it a while. Although the metal woof was icy cold and p.r.i.c.ked like needles, she soon became accustomed to it, since his will was her law. Then, while she sat beside him on the edge of the bed, he smoked a cigarette in bed, and laughingly retailed s.m.u.tty jokes; which he called, "singing his baby to sleep."

Henceforth it was the colonel's pleasure to take meals in the common dining room. He wanted to re-experience the p.r.i.c.kly delight of seeing his young wife admired and regarded with desirous eyes. The value of his property seemed to be enhanced in the degree in which people smiled, and envied him the possession of it.

As for Lilly, she always took interest in perceiving the drunken sensations of that evening arise in her again. With drooping lids she might feel the silent flame of hopeless desire burn in so many hot young eyes round about. And, carried away by the lamentations of the violins and the hymns of the cymbals, she might flee to those dark and blessed distances to which the way had been barred--she did not know by what--since the hour her great happiness had come to her.

Never did she permit it even to occur to her to return one of the glances that forced themselves upon her by so much as the quiver of her lids. The young men remained mere figurants on her stage, as necessary as the other accessories, the lights, the music, the flowers on the white napery, and the cigarette smoke ascending to the ceiling in blue spirals.

Nevertheless it happened that one day while she was walking along the street on her husband's arm a look pierced to her heart.

It came from a pair of dark eyes, which from afar had been turned on her in a friendly, searching manner. On coming nearer they flared up, as with a flash of recognition, into a sad fire.

She felt as if she would have to hurry after the pa.s.serby and ask:

"Who are you? Do you belong to me? Do you wish me to belong to you?"

She was incautious enough to turn around and look back at him.

For only the fraction of a second!

But the incident had not escaped her husband. When she faced about again, she saw his vigilant eyes resting upon her in distrust.

And he nodded several times as if to say:

"Aha! That's the point we've gotten to already, is it?"

He remained absorbed and ill-tempered the rest of the day.

That encounter was only the first of an endless series for Lilly.

To be sure, she never met the same young man again, despite her diligent watch for him; but a host of others took his place.

Pa.s.sersby no longer remained mere figures in a dissolving view, through whom one looked as if they were non-existent. When she saw a slim man at a distance whose contour and bearing appeared youthful she wondered while waiting for him to draw near:

"What will he be like? Will he look at me?"

If he found favour in her eyes, and if his glance was not impudent, yet was full of astonishment or desire, she would often feel a pang, which said to her:

"You suit him far better than this old man at whose side you are walking."

And each occurrence saddened her.

It saddened her also if one she was pleased with happened to pay no attention to her.

"I'm not good enough for him," she would think. "He scorns me. I wonder why he scorns me."

In the dining room, on the Bruhlsche Terra.s.se, and at other elegant places where there is a constant crossfire of furtive glances, her bearing in its relation to her environment began gradually to change.

She acknowledged the incense offered her by a little grateful uplift of her eyes, and she looked without embarra.s.sment directly into the faces of the scrutinising ladies; and although she had the keen vision of a falcon, she would gladly have turned a lorgnette on them. But of this she did not venture to breathe a word to the colonel.

She was often tormented by the desire to bury her eyes in those of the man looking at her, without decorum, without fear, without reserve--just as he was doing. It would have been a mystic union of souls which would do her endless good. Of this she no longer harboured a doubt. She was starving, starving, starving--as she had never starved in her life.

The colonel seemed not to notice in the least what was going on in her, though a state of bitter warfare existed between him and all whose glances besieged her. The eyes of the old Ulan were ever on the look-out, and the one who was too persistent, ardent or melancholy was stabbed with a dart from his eyes.

It happened, however, that some paid no attention to his threats, and even had the audacity to return what they received with raised brows.

This would cause him uneasiness. He would play with his card case and begin to write something, then put the pencil back into his pocket, and, as a rule, wind up with:

"It seems to me we've strayed into bad company. We'd better be going."