The Song Of Songs Part 57

He burst into mocking laughter at himself, and threw himself full length on the fur-covered couch which stood in the darkest corner of the large gla.s.s-walled room. Then he jumped up, and offered Lilly some of the ginger from the pot he always kept on hand.

She declined, and pressed him for an answer.

"Good Lord," he said, "don't you realise how heavily one's own chains weigh one down? Fire would have to descend from heaven and melt my manacles. Or else the G.o.ddess herself would have to come down, lay her corset and stockings on that chair there, and say: 'Here I am, sir. Here is the foam-born body. Begin--look and paint to your heart's content.'"

Still chewing ginger he took his stand in front of Lilly and raised his clasped hands up to her.

"You look at me so oddly," she said, "what have _I_ to do with all that!"

"I'm not saying anything," he exclaimed. "I have too much contemptible respect to--. But when my chain-laden beauty shall have cried for freedom long enough--she cries day and night, sometimes she cries so I can't sleep--then, perhaps, the miracle will happen, and a certain lady, who is now blushing even unto her eyeb.a.l.l.s, will come and--"

"I think we'd better get to work," said Lilly.

After that day Lilly took good care not to speak of the picture, nor even give it a sidelong glance if she thought Mr. Kellermann might see her. Nevertheless he made many beseeching allusions to his presumptuous desire, which he seemed unable to dismiss from his mind. Finally Lilly had to forbid his ever referring to it.

Her zeal for learning increased daily. The hours in the studio did not suffice. She practiced at home as well. And when she tried her skill on the gla.s.s plates she had bought, the result, in her and Mrs. Laue's opinion, was highly commendable.

In the background the sun set in the prescribed manner in a sea of blood over hilltops of a robin's egg blue. In the foreground stood woods, dark and silent, of gra.s.s and ferns, belonging anywhere between the Jura.s.sic and Carboniferous ages, shading huts festively lighted from within, constructed by a race of men who must have acquired culture at an extremely early period in the world's history.

Lilly lacked the courage to show her creations to her master. He had declared, as a matter of principle he would have nothing to do with those pasted abominations. But it would have been a great pleasure to let Mr. Dehnicke see what she had learned and achieved since she had visited him.

Unfortunately, after receiving that one letter, she did not hear from him again, and she was abashed at having been set aside so lightly.

But one day Mr. Kellermann said:

"What the devil--the bronze manufacturing business seems to be booming all of a sudden. Our Mr. Dehnicke can't give me enough orders. He's up here every day to see how things are progressing."

Something in Mr. Kellermann's manner of blinking at her made Lilly blush, and disquieted her, though at the same time it filled her with a degree of satisfaction.

At length, when the seven pairs of plates had been painted, and she could no longer endure her excess of eager pride, she took heart, and wrote him a letter on her beautiful ivory paper with the golden, seven-pointed coronet--she had about twenty sheets of it left. Since he had taken such kindly interest in her, she wrote, she would ask him to come next Sunday afternoon, and so on.

His reply arrived without delay.

Her kind letter gratified his dearest wish; he had greatly desired to visit her but had remained away so long merely out of respect for her wishes.

And then, on the appointed Sunday afternoon, he came.

Lilly had placed a gladiolus plant in the punch bowl and stuck pink carnations back of the box containing the lamp shade. Suspended at the windows by silk ribbons hung the sunsets glowing like a conflagration and throwing a magic light on the motley frippery that Mrs. Laue had saved along with her own self from better times. In her white lace blouse, which she herself had washed and ironed, Lilly looked gay and festive, and when she held out her hand to Mr. Dehnicke who appeared in the doorway clad in patent leather shoes and a chimney-pot, bowing and sc.r.a.ping, she was once again the affable, unapproachable society lady, who three weeks before had entered his office, and given rather than gotten.

Her benefactor seemed all the more embarra.s.sed.

He sniffed the poor-people's smell that penetrated Mrs. Laue's best room from the rest of the house, looked up and down the walls uneasily, and in general acted as if he were trespa.s.sing on forbidden territory.

How happy he was, he said, that she had at last granted him permission--he hadn't wished to appear intrusive--he would have waited even longer had not her note removed all his doubts. He repeated everything he had said in his letter with nervous precipitation, which did not harmonise with his elegant appearance or his usual frosty manner.

Lilly thanked him amiably for all he had done for her, regretted having caused him the inconvenience of coming to see her, and all the while felt that with each word she was falling back more and more into the role of the "general's wife"--partly against her will--who does the honours in her drawing-room with courteous condescension.

Gradually she turned the conversation in "by-the-ways" to her art. She said she was sorry she was so incompetent, and pointed to the transparencies at the windows.

Mr. Dehnicke jumped up. He was silent for a while, then burst into exclamations of enthusiasm, for each of which he had to take a fresh start, as it were, reiterating his praises with a certain business-like monotony of tone, and smiling in an embarra.s.sed way.

Lilly was far too delighted to suspect the tone of his criticism.

"Have you shown them to Mr. Kellermann?" asked Mr. Dehnicke.

Lilly confessed to her lack of courage. "Besides," she added, "I felt I ought to show them to you first."

He looked at her gratefully and worshipfully, and said:

"If you haven't done so yet, I advise you to refrain from ever showing them to him. Despite his apparent willingness, the man is obsessed by inordinate professional conceit, and it might be--"

Mr. Dehnicke seemed to fear to say more.

Lilly plucked up her courage, and asked, as if it were a matter of only slight importance, whether he thought anyone would buy her work.

Mr. Dehnicke became silent again, and with his index finger scratched at the left side of his upper lip under his moustache. Then he inclined his smooth, round head still more to the left, and said weighing each word:

"It would be best if you were to entrust the sale of your transparencies to me. I have certain connections and I know the character of the buyers. If I set the gla.s.s in bronze frames, or something of the sort, I might even dispose of them as goods of my own."

Lilly flushed with grat.i.tude.

"Oh, will you?" she cried, grasping his hand. "At least until I have found customers for myself?"

The pressure of her hand caused him to redden to the roots of his hair.

"In order to do that," he said, looking away from her with an abashed expression, "you must move away from here at once and establish a home worthy of yourself."

"I will gladly," she answered gaily, "as soon as I have earned the wherewithal."

"That may mean years."

"I will wait years."

"May I be permitted," he stammered, "to remind you once more that being an old and intimate friend of your betrothed, I am justified--"

Lilly drew herself up.

"If my betrothed," she said, "ever should or could take care of me, I might not have to refuse. But as it is, I may not allow anybody in the world, not even his dearest friend, to make offers which at best would merely humiliate me."

She turned her face aside to hide her tears, which arose from a sense of insult.

Mr. Dehnicke contritely begged her pardon, but something like a bit of fluttered triumph sat in his eyes.

When it had been agreed that one of his waggons was to come the following day to fetch the transparencies, and all "business" had been settled, Mr. Dehnicke modestly begged to be allowed to remain a few moments longer. He would like to speak a little more about the absent friend. It was his only opportunity--

"A great pleasure for me, too, I am sure," replied Lilly and invited him to be seated. "I am happy to have found somebody with whom I can speak about my betrothed."

"Betrothed," now fell quite naturally from her lips. She felt somewhat stirred when she uttered it.