The Song Of Songs Part 29

But Lilly wanted to see his emotions stirred, and warming up over her own words, she described the lessons on the history of art and told of the yearnings to see Italy which the poor moribund had enkindled in her with the flame burning in his own heart.

Her cheeks glowed, her eyes swam beneath lids drooping as if with the weight of wine; she dreamed and fantasied, and scarcely heeded his presence.

Suddenly he asked:

"How would it be--would you like to go there?"

Lilly did not reply. That was too much bliss.

He began to consider the matter seriously. Instead of poking in one place and vexing himself over all sorts of stupid people, a man might just as well take a seat in a railroad coach and make a short day's run down to Verona or Milan.

She flung her arms about his neck, she threw herself at his feet--it _was_ too much bliss.

Life now became absolutely unreal, a constant change from ecstasy to anxiety and back again, because something might intervene to prevent the trip.

First of all he had to have a pair of knickerbockers and a Norfolk jacket, such as every aristocratic traveller wears. Then there were a dozen other hindrances.

The fact was, he probably felt he had grown too unwieldy to keep pace with her in her ability to enjoy herself. But something occurred to hasten their departure.

The last few days, the colonel noticed, they had been followed by a pale, bull-necked individual, six feet tall, who tried with stupid pertinacity to attract Lilly's attention.

To judge by the man's appearance he was a tourist of the Anglo-Saxon race. His manners indicated a certain loftiness, and the colonel's threatening looks glanced from him without leaving the faintest trace.

Lilly saw her husband fall for the first time into a lasting mood of thoughtfulness. He paced up and down the room, repeatedly muttering:

"I'll have to box his ears," or "I'll have to look for a second."

The next day, when the colonel observed the importunate person trotting about ten feet behind them, he veered about suddenly and accosted him.

The blond t.i.tan looked him up and down without so much as removing the short pipe from his mouth.

"I may look at anyone I want to, and I may go anywhere I want to," he declared.

With that he slightly shoved up the sleeves of his overcoat and struck a boxing att.i.tude, which, foreboding a street row, stifled all desire for a knightly mode of chastis.e.m.e.nt.

The colonel in a final attempt to settle the matter in an honourable fashion handed the stranger his visiting card, which was received with a friendly "Thank you, sir." And the colonel's opponent stuck the card in his pocket evidently without the least inkling of the ominous import of the formality. Pa.s.sersby began to gather and there was nothing left for the colonel to do but turn his back.

The upshot of the rencontre was that the Englishman now a.s.sumed the right to honour Lilly and her husband with a greeting, and the colonel, who tried to drown the consciousness of having made himself ridiculous in a torrent of oaths, decided to leave Dresden immediately. This was about the middle of April.

In Munich, where they stopped off a few days to render homage to the Hofbrauhaus, nothing especial occurred.

But the colonel had grown nervous. He cast challenging, pugnacious looks at the most harmless admirers and began to heap reproaches on Lilly's head. "It seems," he would say, "everybody can tell at a glance that you are no lady; otherwise you would not be the object of such a number of indelicate attentions."

At any other time Lilly would have grieved bitterly. Now she listened to him with an absent smile on her lips. Her soul no longer dwelt on German soil. She was breathing the air of the beloved country on whose threshold, she thought, she was already standing.

One night's ride still, a short day in Bozen, and then the gates would open.

Now nothing could intervene.

It was in a section of the express that leaves Munich late in the evening and crosses the Brenner Pa.s.s in the dusk of early morning. Lilly and her husband sat in the seats by the window. The seat next to the corridor had been taken by a young man, who on a.s.suming it had saluted the other occupants with a smile, and then paying no further attention to them had become engrossed in a book written, apparently, in Italian.

So he was an Italian, a messenger from Paradise, who had come to bid them welcome. That was enough to ensure Lilly's interest.

She regarded him from under lids to all appearances closed in sleep.

He had a clear-cut, high-spirited face of a peculiar, milky yellow tint, without lines or shadows, as smooth as if enameled. A small, dark moustache, somewhat crispy, and the hair on the temples cropped so close that the skin shone beneath.

Lilly wanted to see his eyes, too, but he kept them obstinately bent on his book, though he seemed merely to be skimming through it.

What she admired most was the peculiar roundness and softness of his movements. You might suppose a woman was clothed in that black and white checked suit, which attracted her by its unusually aristocratic appearance. The silk shirt was violet and dark red, and a green necktie was tied carelessly about the soft collar.

All these colours, strange as they looked, went so well together and seemed to have been selected with so much care and refinement of taste, that Lilly grew quite uncomfortable. She almost felt the young stranger was trying to force himself upon her by his manner and bearing and dress, and above all by his ostensible disregard of her.

It was ridiculous; she was afraid of him.

When the customs officers entered the compartment at the Austrian frontier he uttered a few strange-sounding words, which the officers understood, for they turned away from him with deep bows.

At that moment he raised his eyes and let them rove about the compartment; and while the colonel was opening his bag they rested for an instant, as if by chance, upon Lilly.

What singular eyes he had!

They sent out sharp rays like black diamonds, yet they gave a caress, a wicked, sure caress, which asked impatient questions, questions that made one blush.

The next instant nothing had happened. He was bending over his book as before and seemed not to notice her.

But her husband scrutinised her with watchful cunning, as if he had found a something in her face for which he had long been searching there.

When the train started again the colonel disposed himself to sleep. For the sake of greater comfort he chose the unoccupied seat next to the corridor. The stranger in order not to be opposite him instinctively moved nearer to the centre, by this greatly diminishing the distance between Lilly and himself. A little more and he would have been sitting directly face to face with her.

If she had harboured an _arriere pensee_, she would have bestowed more attention upon her husband's sleep. But all her senses were engaged in the desire to avoid the stranger, whose proximity p.r.i.c.ked her with a thousand needles.

She pressed close into her corner, and spasmodically stared out of the window, where the illuminated interior of the coach was reproduced on the black background as in a dark mirror.

Thus she could observe the stranger quietly, without his catching her in an occasional raising of her lids.

The light of the ceiling lamp sharply lit up his smooth, soft cheeks, whose even sheen merged into bluish darkness at the temple, a cheek formed for pressure and petting. To let your hand stray over it gently must be a great delight.

And what long, dark lashes he had, longer than her own. Their shadow formed dark semicircles reaching to the finely cut nostrils.

Suddenly he raised his eyes and looked at her.

There it was again, that black-diamond, caressing gleam, cold, yet how seductive!

She started in fright, and grew still more frightened at the thought that he might have noticed her fear.

He smiled a very, very faint smile and continued to read.