The Song Of Songs Part 33

"Lieutenant von Prell, who is learning farming here," said the colonel.

Just a slight inclination of her head, the same as to the others, no more.

But my poor, merry friend, how you look!

A long frock-coat fell below his knees, his narrow-pointed head was lost in his high collar, his clothes hung in loose, limp folds. Every feature of his, every marionette movement bespoke rigid formality and obsequiousness.

Lilly stood there lost in pity and astonishment. If she had not seen him that very morning while he was--

"Shake hands with the gentlemen," she heard whispered behind her.

She started and pressed the honest country fists more firmly than beseems a chatelaine. But she quickly let go Von Prell's freckled hand, which was still well kept.

"Thank the Lord, he won't betray us," she thought.

Then came grace.

CHAPTER XVI

The finches were the maddest of all. The t.i.tmice, too, made a racket, and so did the nuthatches, and the blackbirds behaved as if they were lords of the place, while the stay-at-home starlings formed in groups among themselves and paid no attention to the rest of the world. Beside, there were the hedge-sparrows and wrens, who added a fair share to the chorus. But the fanfare of the finches was too much for ears accustomed to the tiny twittering of a caged canary.

Old Haberland knew them all. Old Haberland was the gardener, who pottered about in felt shoes and lived, in a measure, from the colonel's bounty, since he held sway now over nothing but the lawn sprinkler. He knew which birds nested on the ground and which in the branches. He knew the time each began to sing and the best place to stand if you wanted to study their plumage and habits.

It was terrible to think that the squirrels had to be shot. Lilly almost hated the old man when he sallied forth, his pea-rifle under his jacket, with evil intent against the jolly little marauders--Haberland maintained the vermin recognised his gun and scurried off when they saw it. The magpies and jays were no friends of his, either. His love was the shy, green woodp.e.c.k.e.r, whom he had actually coaxed into nesting in the park. And that gay marvel of a bird, the hoopoe, came without fear at any hour of the day to the back of the castle, where it sang its hututu and transfixed the insects in the gra.s.s with its curved sabre of a bill.

Those were mornings full of glow and brilliance, such as could not have been since the creation of the world.

When you opened the door at five o'clock in the morning the cool purple mist crept in and folded itself about your body like a royal mantle. On the pond, where the reeds rose up over night, pushed by underground powers, lay sunlit vapours, which gradually lifted and ascended heavenward. Everything steamed. Sometimes white lights seemed to have been kindled on the lawn, and the little clouds in evaporating rolled heavily from the glistening campions, as though surfeited with the dew they had drunk.

Such mornings!

Who can describe the mad delight of the dogs when their beautiful young mistress appeared on the steps smiling, clad in a white blouse and short skirt and armed with garden shears? They had been awaiting her there a long time, every now and then emitting short, impatient sounds, half whine, half yelp. For _they_ had not hesitated an instant to recognise her absolute rule, in utter disregard of the pitying benevolence with which Miss von Schwertfeger--whom they detested--stood by and smiled.

Bebel, the terrier, the cleverest of all, did not count, because he sped after the colonel on his early cross-country gallop. But there was Pluto, the long-eared setter, who, out of employment at this season, gave chase to the rabbits on his own account. There were Schnauzl, the poodle, and Bobbie, the dachs, living in constant feud with each other for the first place in Lilly's favour. Dearest of all was Regina, the panther-like Great Dane, one of whose forelegs had been broken. As if to apologize for her disgraced existence, she always crept back of anyone she met; but at night, to compensate, she was untiring in her watchfulness, and maintained a steady reign of terror.

Who can describe the joyous caracoling of the colts in the pasture, the craving for love the yearling manifested when the mistress, who always carried sugar with her, pushed back the bars, and stretched her arms to caress the slender heads of her favourites?

Who can describe the chagrin of the turkey c.o.c.k, great enough when the pheasants got first peck at the bread crumbs, but knowing no bounds when those stupid ducks squatted right on Lilly's feet, as though that were the most natural thing in the world? At times his jealousy so swelled him with rage that he even dared to nab one of Pluto's ears. But Pluto disdained to do more than shake him off in scorn.

Yes, those were wonderful mornings!

And when the height of the flowering season came, she never wearied of wandering about and filling baskets with blue, golden and snowy blossoms until she was fairly drowned in a floral sea.

After the morning stroll came breakfast, when from sheer joy and tenderness Lilly hesitated about whose neck first to throw her arms, the colonel's or Anna's--on certain confidential occasions she was called Anna. Lilly, in general, was very affectionate with Miss von Schwertfeger, despite her fear of that lady's censoriousness and despite other fears of which she could not rid herself.

Yes, she thought, it was a strict school, indeed, which she had entered.

Not a word, not a step, not a movement remained un.o.bserved, or, if necessary, unreproved. She learned to sit at table and in an arm-chair, how to prepare and serve tea, how to invite a person to be seated, how to begin a conversation, how to introduce strangers to each other without getting into a muddle, how to pa.s.s over forgotten names, and offer everybody at table a fair portion of cordiality. All these things Lilly learned, and, oh, much more.

But they were only the rudiments to be practised in the small world of the castle or when occasional visitors dropped in. Real instruction was to begin in the fall; for then expeditions to neighboring estates would be undertaken. In the meantime the colonel wished to avoid all contact with the families round about. He could do this without provoking comment, his long bachelorhood serving as a plausible pretext for wishing to prolong his honeymoon to the utmost.

By autumn Lilly was to have been converted into a veritable _grand dame_, who would do honour to her husband's name and rank, and whose tact and ease would conquer all mistrust whether at the festivities in the homes of the gentry or in the club house.

This, the highest ideal on earth, Miss von Schwertfeger kept before Lilly's eyes every minute of the day, and Lilly dreamed of it as she had dreamed of approaching examinations when in the Selecta. Full of fears and doubts she worked over herself night and day.

Her soul found calm only when she went on one of her rambles, or, better still, when she sat behind locked doors in her boudoir.

No, no, Heaven preserve her! Not her boudoir! That wasn't its name.

The first time she had said "boudoir," Miss von Schwertfeger turned very condescending. It was a sitting-room. Only butchers' and bankers'

wives--in Miss von Schwertfeger's eyes one and the same--would disfigure it with the other name.

Thus Lilly stumbled at every step.

Occasionally, when he quartered officers on their way through the country, the colonel, as if to test Lilly's social ability, would have her preside at table with Miss von Schwertfeger's a.s.sistance.

Each time the same scene was enacted. At first Lilly would be stiff as a mechanical doll, incapable of addressing a word she had not learned by rote to these guests gleaming in military resplendence. A gla.s.s or two of wine would give her courage. Gradually she would liven up, and even grow merry, and finally bubble over with harmless pleasantries--from where they came flying into her head she did not know--which would so enrapture the gentlemen, most of whom were well past their prime, that they directed all their remarks to her, as if to pay her court, while their eyes hung on her face in enjoyment and desire.

Now the colonel would grow uneasy. He would cast furtive glances at Miss von Schwertfeger, who usually sat with her eyes on her plate and a wry smile on her lips; and then despite the gentlemen's protestations of regret, the ladies would leave the table.

Lilly grew hot with the fire she herself had kindled in the heads of her guests. It caused her pleasure and distress, and forced her to sit at her window until midnight, staring into the blue twilight of the park with beating heart and quivering nerves and flushed cheeks streaming with tears.

Forebodings of mad acts and riotous self-abandon flashed up in her brain. A parching fever enervated her body. Her clothes, her room, the park, the world became too contracted. A wild dance of looks and flames, a whirl of fiery red, inured, desirous masculinity chased through her head.

On such nights, when the guests had at last retired, the colonel, more or less intoxicated, would force himself into her bedroom, and begin by reproaching her for not having been ladylike enough. Lilly would cry and try to excuse herself. Then he would kiss the tears from her lashes, s.n.a.t.c.h her clothes from her body, and throw himself next to her in bed.

Shuddering with foolish pangs of conscience, quivering in disgust of his drunkenness, happy, nevertheless, to feel that tormenting tenseness relax, she gave her body up to him.

On other nights when she felt uneasy and alone and desired his presence, when her body as well as her soul longed to cling to him in the humble sense of belonging to him entirely, then he was not to be had. He kept his door locked.

On the whole he was loving and gracious to her. He handled her as if she were a gay, fragile toy, to be wound up not too often, and each time it has been played with enough, to be laid aside carefully for use on the next occasion. This treatment suited her. At least she was spared dread of those outbursts of wrath which set the walls a-tremble two or three times a day, and frightened every living thing in the vicinity. Even Miss von Schwertfeger was not sure how to take them. She silently set her teeth, and bowed her head as before the inevitable.

Lilly could never fathom the relation existing between the colonel and his housekeeper. Usually it seemed to her the many years of mutual confidence had welded them together inseparably. Then came times when they studiously avoided each other, the colonel in haughty preoccupation with his own affairs, Miss von Schwertfeger squinting sarcastically and suggesting by her manner a feeling of rancor, a menace.

Now and then it even occurred to Lilly that when the lady had been young and fair, she had been the colonel's love. But Lilly dismissed this idea. Miss von Schwertfeger was far too proud to endure the bitterness of such companionship, and _he_ was too dominating to tolerate the presence of such a creditor.

All that Lilly learned of her past was that she was the daughter of a poor yet aristocratic army officer, and had been left an orphan with her own living to earn after her confirmation. She had now been managing the colonel's household for nearly twenty years. The fact that Miss von Schwertfeger, homeless and without resources, like herself, had also been thrown upon the colonel's tender mercies gradually aroused in Lilly a sense of sympathy and kinship, although she could never cast off a slight feeling that she must be on her guard against this woman.

She really owed Miss von Schwertfeger a debt of grat.i.tude. Without her ready advice, Lilly would have fallen innumerable times from the road leading to the lofty heights where she would sit enthroned as aristocrat and lady of a manor. Ridiculers would have taken base advantage of her modesty; her sportive manner of equality would have invited impertinence; she would have ended in losing every vestige of power.

Perhaps people would even have come to despise her.

As it was, everybody loved her. She found shining glances to greet her in the kitchen, in the stables, among the villagers, and at the lodge; while in the barn, where the Polish women dwelt behind smouldering brushwood and drying wash, she was a veritable idol.

Whether a rumor had gotten about of her Slavic name, or her Catholicism, could not be determined. However that might be, the fact remained that these strange, despised people, who glided among the stiff and haughty Germans with the humble look of a child in their eyes and the plaintive melodies of their country on their lips, revered Lilly as their redeemer and patron saint.