The Indian Lily and Other Stories by Hermann Sudermann
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Hermann Sudermann >> The Indian Lily and Other Stories
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Mary, although she did not look as though she were experienced in
flirtation or advances, made a brief, timid gesture. Then, as though
discovered and ashamed, she remained very still.
Those two then.... That's who it was....
And they had really made each others' acquaintance!
She was a delicately made and elegant Frenchwoman. Her bodice was cut
in a strangely slender way, which made her seem to glide along like a
bird. Or was it her walk that caused the phenomenon? Or the exquisite
arching of her shoulders? Who could tell? ... She did not take her
meals at the common table, but in a corner of the dining-hall in
company of an old gouty gentleman with white stubbles on his chin and
red-lidded eyes. When she entered the hall she let a smiling glance
glide along the table, but without looking at or saluting any one. She
scarcely touched the dishes--at least from the point of view of Mary's
sturdy appetite--but even before the soup was served she nibbled at
the dates meant for dessert, and then the bracelets upon her
incredibly delicate wrists made a strange, fairy music. She wore a
wedding ring. But it had always been open to doubt whether the old
gentleman was her husband. For her demeanour toward him was that of a
spoiled but sedulously watched child.
And he--he sat opposite Mary at table. He was a very dark young man,
with black, melancholy eyes--Italian eyes, one called them in her
Pomeranian home land. He had remarkably white, narrow hands, and a
small, curly beard, which was clipped so close along the cheeks that
the skin itself seemed to have a bluish shimmer. He had never spoken
to Mary, presumably because he knew no German, but now and then he
would let his eyes rest upon her with a certain smiling emotion which
seemed to her to be very blameworthy and which filled her with
confusion. Thus, however, it had come to pass that, whenever she got
ready to go to table her thoughts were busy with him, and it was not
rare for her to ask herself at the opening of the door to the
dining-hall: "I wonder whether he's here or will come later?"
For several days there had been noticeable in this young man an
inclination to gaze over his left shoulder to the side table at which
the young Frenchwoman sat. And several times this glance had met an
answering one, however fleeting. And more than that! She could be seen
observing him with smiling consideration as, between the fish and the
roast, she pushed one grape after another between her lips. He was, of
course, not cognisant of all that, but Mary knew of it and was
surprised and slightly shocked.
And they had really made each others' acquaintance!
And now they were both silent, thinking, obviously, that they had but
just come within hearing distance.
Then they hurried past the slowly creeping couple. The lady looked
downward, kicking pebbles; the gentleman bowed. It was done seriously,
discreetly, as befits a mere neighbour at table. Mary blushed. That
happened often, far too often. And she was ashamed. Thus it happened
that she often blushed from fear of blushing.
The gentleman saw it and did not smile. She thanked him for it in her
heart, and blushed all the redder, for he _might_ have smiled.
"We'll have to eat the omelettes cold again," the invalid mumbled into
his shawls.
This time she understood him.
"Then we'll order fresh ones."
"Oh," he said reproachfully, "you haven't the courage. You're always
afraid of the waiters."
She looked up at him with a melancholy smile.
It was true. She was afraid of the waiters. That could not be denied.
Her necessary dealings with these dark and shiny-haired gentlemen in
evening clothes were a constant source of fear and annoyance. They
scarcely gave themselves the trouble to understand her bad French and
her worse Italian. And when they dared to smile...!
But his concern had been needless. The breakfast did not consist of
omelettes, but of macaroni boiled in water and mixed with long strings
of cheese. He was forbidden to eat this dish.
Mary mixed his daily drink, milk with brandy, and was happy to see the
eagerness with which he absorbed the life-giving fumes. The dark
gentleman was already in his seat opposite her, and every now and then
the glance of his velvety eyes glided over her. She was more keenly
conscious of this glance than ever, and dared less than ever to meet
it. A strange feeling, half delight and half resentment, overcame her.
And yet she had no cause to complain that his attention passed the
boundary of rigid seemliness.
She stroked her heavy tresses of reddish blonde hair, which curved
madonna-like over her temples. They had not been crimped or curled,
but were simple and smooth, as befits the wife of a North German
clergyman. She would have liked to moisten with her lips the fingers
with which she stroked them. This was the only art of the toilet which
she knew. But that would have been improper at table.
He wore a yellow silk shirt with a pattern of riding crops. A bunch of
violets stuck in his button-hole. Its fragrance floated across
the table.
Now the young Frenchwoman entered the hall too. Very carefully she
pressed her old uncle's arm, and talked to him in a stream of
charming chatter.
The dark gentleman quivered. He compressed his lips but did not turn
around. Neither did the lady take any notice of him. She rolled bread
pellets with her nervous fingers, played with her bracelets and let
the dishes go by untouched.
The long coat of cream silk, which she had put on, increased the tall
flexibility of her form. A being woven of sunlight and morning dew,
unapproachable in her serene distinction--thus she appeared to Mary,
whose hands had been reddened by early toil, and whose breadth of
shoulder was only surpassed by her simplicity of heart.
When the roast came Nathaniel revived slightly. He suffered her to
fasten the shawl about his shoulders, and rewarded her with a
contented smile. It was her sister Anna's opinion that at such moments
he resembled the Saviour. The eyes in their blue hollows gleamed with
a ghostly light, a faint rosiness shone upon his cheek-bones, and even
the blonde beard on the sunken cheeks took on a certain glow.
Grateful for the smile, she pressed his arm. She was satisfied with so
little.
Breakfast was over. The gentleman opposite made his silent bow and
arose.
"Will he salute her?" Mary asked herself with some inner timidity.
No. He withdrew without glancing at the corner table.
"Perhaps they have fallen out again," Mary; said to herself. The lady
looked after him. A gentle smile played about the corners of her
mouth--a superior, almost an ironical smile. Then, her eyes still
turned to the door, she leaned across toward the old gentleman in
eager questioning.
"She doesn't care for him," Mary reasoned, with a slight feeling of
satisfaction. It was as though some one had returned to her what she
had deemed lost.
He had been gone long, but his violets had left their fragrance.
Mary went up to her room to get a warmer shawl for Nathaniel. As she
came out again, she saw in the dim hall the radiant figure of the
French lady come toward her and open the door to the left of her
own room.
"So we are neighbours," Mary thought, and felt flattered by the
proximity. She would have liked to salute her, but she did not dare.
Then she accompanied Nathaniel down to the promenade on the beach. The
hours dragged by.
He did not like to have his brooding meditation interrupted by
questions or anecdotes. These hours were dedicated to getting well.
Every breath here cost money and must be utilised to the utmost. Here
breathing was religion, and falling ill a sin.
Mary looked dreamily out upon the sea, to which the afternoon sun now
lent a deeper blue. Light wreaths of foam eddied about the stones. In
wide semicircles the great and shadowy arms of the mountains embraced
the sea. From the far horizon, in regions of the upper air, came from
time to time an argent gleam. For there the sun was reflected by
unseen fields of snow.
There lay the Alps, and beyond them, deep buried in fog and winter,
lay their home land.
Thither Mary's thoughts wandered. They wandered to a sharp-gabled
little house, groaning under great weights of snow, by the strand of a
frozen stream. The house was so deeply hidden in bushes that the
depending boughs froze fast in the icy river and were not liberated
till the tardy coming of spring.
And a hundred paces from it stood the white church and the comfortable
parsonage. But what did she care for the parsonage, even though she
had grown to womanhood in it and was now its mistress?
That little cottage--the widow's house, as the country folk called
it--that little cottage held everything that was dear to her at home.
There sat by the green tile oven--and oh, how she missed it here,
despite the palms and the goodly sun--her aged mother, the former
pastor's widow, and her three older sisters, dear and blonde and thin
and almost faded. There they sat, worlds away, needy and laborious,
and living but in each others' love. Four years had passed since the
father had been carried to the God's acre and they had had to leave
the parsonage.
That had marked the end of their happiness and their youth. They could
not move to the city, for they had no private means, and the gifts of
the poor congregation, a dwelling, wood and other donations, could not
be exchanged for money. And so they had to stay there quietly and see
their lives wither.
The candidate of theology, Nathaniel Pogge, equipped with mighty
recommendations, came to deliver his trial sermon.
As he ascended the pulpit, long and frail, flat-chested and narrow
shouldered, she saw him for the first time. His emaciated, freckled
hand which held the hymn book, trembled with a kind of fever. But his
blue eyes shone with the fires of God. To be sure, his voice sounded
hollow and hoarse, and often he had to struggle for breath in the
middle of a sentence. But what he said was wise and austere, and found
favour in the eyes of his congregation.
His mother moved with him into the parsonage. She was a small, fussy
lady, energetic and very business-like, who complained of what she
called previous mismanagement and seemed to avoid friendly relations.
But her son found his way to the widow's house for all that. He found
it oftener and oftener, and the only matter of uncertainty was as to
which of the four sisters had impressed him.
She would never have dreamed that his eye had fallen upon her, the
youngest. But a refusal was not to be thought of. It was rather her
duty to kiss his hands in gratitude for taking her off her mother's
shoulders and liberating her from a hopeless situation. Certainly she
would not have grudged her happiness to one of her sisters; if it
could be called happiness to be subject to a suspicious mother-in-law
and the nurse of a valetudinarian. But she tried to think it
happiness. And, after all, there was the widow's house, to which one
could slip over to laugh or to weep one's fill, as the mood of the
hour dictated. Either would have been frowned upon at home.
And of course she loved him.
Assuredly. How should she not have loved him? Had she not sworn to do
so at the altar? And then his condition grew worse from day to day and
needed her love all the more.
It happened ever oftener that she had to get up at night to heat his
moss tea; and ever more breathlessly he cowered in the sacristy after
his weekly sermon. And that lasted until the hemorrhage came, which
made the trip south imperative.
Ah, and with what grave anxieties had this trip been undertaken! A
substitute had to be procured. Their clothes and fares swallowed the
salary of many months. They had to pay fourteen francs board a day,
not to speak of the extra expenses for brandy, milk, fires and drugs.
Nor was this counting the physician who came daily. It was a desperate
situation.
But he recovered. At least it was unthinkable that he shouldn't. What
object else would these sacrifices have had?
He recovered. The sun and sea and air cured him; or, at least, her
love cured him. And this love, which Heaven had sent her as her
highest duty, surrounded him like a soft, warm garment, exquisitely
flexible to the movement of every limb, not hindering, but yielding to
the slightest impulse of movement; forming a protection against the
rough winds of the world, surer than a wall of stone or a cloak
of fire.
The sun sank down toward the sea. His light assumed a yellow, metallic
hue, hard and wounding, before it changed and softened into violet and
purple shades. The group of pines on the beach seemed drenched in a
sulphurous light and the clarity of their outlines hurt the eye. Like
a heavy and compact mass, ready to hurtle down, the foliage of the
gardens bent over the crumbling walls. From the mountains came a gusty
wind that announced the approaching fall of night.
The sick man shivered. Mary was about to suggest their going home,
when she perceived the form of a man that had intruded between her and
the sinking sun and that was surrounded by a yellow radiance. She
recognised the dark gentleman.
A feeling of restlessness overcame her, but she could not turn her
eyes from him. Always, when he was near, a strange presentiment came
to her--a dreamy knowledge of an unknown land. This impression varied
in clearness. To-night she was fully conscious of it.
What she felt was difficult to put into words. She seemed almost to be
afraid of him. And yet that was impossible, for what was he to her?
She wasn't even interested in him. Surely not. His eyes, his violet
fragrance, the flexible elegance of his movements--these things merely
aroused in her a faint curiosity. Strictly speaking, he wasn't even a
sympathetic personality, and had her sister Lizzie, who had a gift for
satire, been here, they would probably have made fun of him. The
anxious unquiet which he inspired must have some other source. Here
in the south everything was so different--richer, more colourful, more
vivid than at home. The sun, the sea, houses, flowers, faces--upon
them all lay more impassioned hues. Behind all that there must be a
secret hitherto unrevealed to her.
She felt this secret everywhere. It lay in the heavy fragrance of the
trees, in the soft swinging of the palm leaves, in the multitudinous
burgeoning and bloom about her. It lay in the long-drawn music of the
men's voices, in the caressing laughter of the women. It lay in the
flaming blushes that, even at table, mantled her face; in the
delicious languor that pervaded her limbs and seemed to creep into the
innermost marrow of her bones.
But this secret which she felt, scented and absorbed with every organ
of her being, but which was nowhere to be grasped, looked upon or
recognised--this secret was in some subtle way connected with the man
who stood there, irradiated, upon the edge of the cliff, and gazed
upon the ancient tower which stood, unreal as a piece of stage
scenery, upon the path.
Now he observed her.
For a moment it seemed as though he were about to approach to address
her. In his character of a neighbour at table he might well have
ventured to do so. But the hasty gesture with which she turned to
her sick husband forbade it.
"That would be the last inconvenience," Mary thought, "to make
acquaintances."
But as she was going home with her husband, she surprised herself in
speculation as to how she might have answered his words.
"My French will go far enough," she thought. "At need I might have
risked it."
The following day brought a sudden lapse in her husband's recovery.
"That happens often," said the physician, a bony consumptive with the
manners of a man of the world and an equipment in that inexpensive
courtesy which doctors are wont to assume in hopeless and poorly
paying cases.
To listen to him one would think that pulmonary consumption ended in
invariable improvement.
"And if something happens during the night?" Mary asked anxiously.
"Then just wait quietly until morning," the doctor said with the firm
decision of a man who doesn't like to have his sleep disturbed.
Nathaniel had to stay in bed and Mary was forced to request the
waiters to bring meals up to their room.
Thus passed several days, during which she scarcely left the sick-bed
of her husband. And when she wasn't writing home, or reading to him
from the hymn book, or cooking some easing draught upon the spirit
lamp, she gazed dreamily out of the window.
She had not seen her beautiful neighbour again. With all the more
attention she sought to catch any sound, any word that might give her
a glimpse into the radiant Paradise of that other life.
A soft singing ushered in the day. Then followed a laughing chatter
with the little maid, accompanied by the rattle of heated
curling-irons and splashing of bath sponges. Occasionally, too, there
was a little dispute on the subject of ribands or curls or such
things. Mary's French, which was derived from the _Histoire de Charles
douze,_ the _Aventures de Telemaque_ and other lofty books, found an
end when it came to these discussions.
About half-past ten the lady slipped from her room. Then one could
hear her tap at her uncle's door, or call a laughing good-morning to
him from the hall.
From now on the maid reigned supreme in the room. She straightened it,
sang, rattled the curling-irons even longer than for her mistress,
tripped up and down, probably in front of the mirror, and received the
kindly attentions of several waiters. From noon on everything was
silent and remained silent until dusk. Then the lady returned. The
little songs she sang were of the very kind that one might well sing
if, with full heart, one gazes out upon the sea, while the
orange-blossoms are fragrant and the boughs of the eucalyptus rustle.
They proved to Mary that in that sunny creature, as in herself, there
dwelt that gentle, virginal yearning that had always been to her a
source of dreamy happiness.
At half-past five o'clock the maid knocked at the door. Then began
giggling and whispering as of two school-girls. Again sounded the
rattle of the curling-irons and the rustling of silken skirts. The
fragrance of unknown perfumes and essences penetrated into Mary's
room, and she absorbed it eagerly.
The dinner-bell rang and the room was left empty.
At ten o'clock there resounded a merry: "_Bonne nuit, mon oncle!_"
Angeline, the maid, received her mistress at the door and performed
the necessary services more quietly than before. Then she went out,
received by the waiters, who were on the stairs.
Then followed, in there, a brief evening prayer, carelessly and half
poutingly gabbled as by a tired child. At eleven the keyhole grew
dark. And during the hours of Mary's heaviest service, there sounded
within the peaceful drawing of uninterrupted breath.
This breathing was a consolation to her during the terrible, creeping
hours, whose paralysing monotony was only interrupted by anxious
crises in the patient's condition.
The breathing seemed to her a greeting from a pure and sisterly
soul--a greeting from that dear land of joy where one can laugh by day
and sing in the dusk and sleep by night.
Nathaniel loved the hymns for the dying.
He asserted that they filled him with true mirth. The more he could
gibe at hell or hear the suffering of the last hours put to scorn, the
more could he master a kind of grim humour. He, the shepherd of souls,
felt it his duty to venture upon the valley of the shadow to which he
had so often led the trembling candidate of death, with the boldness
of a hero in battle.
This poor, timid soul, who had never been able to endure the angry
barking of a dog, played with the terror of death like a bull-necked
gladiator.
"Read me a song of death, but a strengthening one," he would say
repeatedly during the day, but also at night, if he could not sleep.
He needed it as a child needs its cradle song. Often he was angry
when in her confusion and blinded by unshed tears, she chose a wrong
one. Like a literary connoisseur who rolls a Horatian ode or a
Goethean lyric upon his tongue--even thus he enjoyed these
sombre stanzas.
There was one: "I haste to my eternal home," in which the beyond was
likened to a bridal chamber and to a "crystal sea of blessednesses."
There was another: "Greatly rejoice now, O my soul," which would admit
no redeeming feature about this earth, and was really a prayer for
release. And there was one filled with the purest folly of
Christendom: "In peace and joy I fare from hence." And this one
promised a smiling sleep. But they were all overshadowed by that
rejoicing song: "Thank God, the hour has come!" which, like a cry of
victory, points proudly and almost sarcastically to the conquered
miseries of the earth.
The Will to Live of the poor flesh intoxicated itself with these pious
lies as with some hypnotic drug. But at the next moment it recoiled
and gazed yearningly and eager eyed out into the sweet and sinful
world, which didn't tally in the least with that description of it as
a vale of tears, of which the hymns were so full.
Mary read obediently what he demanded. Close to her face she held the
narrow hymn-book, fighting down her sobs. For he did not think of
the tortures he prepared for his anxiously hoping wife.
Why did he thirst for death since he knew that he _must_ not die?
Not yet. Ah, not yet! Now that suddenly a whole, long, unlived life
lay between them--a life they had never even suspected.
She could not name it, this new, rich life, but she felt it
approaching, day by day. It breathed its fragrant breath into her face
and poured an exquisite bridal warmth into her veins.
It was on the fourth day of his imprisonment in his room. The
physician had promised him permission to go out on the morrow.
His recovery was clear.
She sat at the window and inhaled with quivering nostrils the sharp
fragrance of the burning pine cones that floated to her in
bluish waves.
The sun was about to set. An unknown bird sat, far below, in the
orange grove and, as if drunk with light and fragrance, chirped
sleepily and ended with a fluting tone.
Now that the great dread of the last few days was taken from her, that
sweet languor the significance of which she could not guess came over
her again.
Her neighbour had already come home. She opened her window and closed
it, only to open it again. From time to time she sang a few brief
tones, almost like the strange bird in the grove.
Then her door rattled and Angeline's voice cried out with jubilant
laughter: "_Une lettre, Madame, une lettre_!"
"_Une lettre--de qui?_"
"_De lui!_"
Then a silence fell, a long silence.
Who was this "he?" Surely some one at home. It was the hour of the
mail delivery.
But the voice of the maid soon brought enlightenment.
She had managed the affair cleverly. She had met him in the hall and
saluted him so that he had found the courage to address her. And just
now he had pressed the envelope, together with a twenty-franc piece,
into her hand. He asserted that he had an important communication to
make to her mistress, but had never found an opportunity to address
himself to her in person.
"_Tais-toi donc--on nous entend_!"
And from now on nothing was to be heard but whispering and giggling.
Mary felt now a wave of hotness, started from her nape and overflowing
her face.
Listening and with beating heart, she sat there.
What in all the world could he have written? For that it was he, she
could no longer doubt.
Perhaps he had declared his love and begged for the gift of her hand.
A dull feeling of pain, the cause of which was dark to her,
oppressed her heart.
And then she smiled--a smile of renouncement, although there was
surely nothing here for her to renounce!
And anyhow--the thing was impossible. For she, to whom such an offer
is made does not chat with a servant girl. Such an one flees into some
lonely place, kneels down, and prays to God for enlightenment and
grace in face of so important a step.
But indeed she did send the girl away, for the latter's slippers could
he heard trailing along the hall.
Then was heard gentle, intoxicated laughter, full of restrained
jubilation and arch triumph: "_O comme je suis heureuse! Comme je suis
heureuse!"_
Mary felt her eyes grow moist. She felt glad and poignantly sad at the
same time. She would have liked to kiss and bless the other woman, for
now it was clear that he had come to claim her as his bride.
"If she doesn't pray, I will pray for her," she thought, and folded
her hands. Then a voice sounded behind her, hollow as the roll of
falling earth; rasping as coffin cords:
"Read me a song of death, Mary."
A shudder came over her. She jumped up. And she who had hitherto
taken up the hymn-book at his command without hesitation or complaint,
fell down beside his bed and grasped his emaciated arm: "Have pity--I
can't! I can't!"
Three days passed. The sick man preferred to stay in bed, although his
recovery made enormous strides. Mary brewed his teas, gave him his
drops, and read him his songs of death. That one attempt at rebellion
had remained her only one.
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