The Song of Songs. Hermann Sudermann
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And the happiness endured.
It nestled in the dusty corners, it perched on the bookshelves, it span golden cobwebs from beam to beam, it rode on every ray of light reflected from the windows opposite on the leather backs of the books.
Wherever she went, Lilly was accompanied by a humming medley of quivering tones, half motifs and snatches of melodies, strains from an æolian harp, the chirping of a cricket-on-the-hearth, the singing of a boiling kettle, and the soft twittering of birds.
Awake or asleep, she always heard it.
Now and then a few measures of the Song of Songs joined in exultingly.
Outwardly everything went along in the old ruts. Mrs. Asmussen was sometimes sober, sometimes full of sweet drugs. Husband and daughters rose and sank, sank and rose, through the entire gamut of ethical appraisement, plunged one moment into the deepest pit of depravity, exalted the next to the shining heights of apotheosis. One day a volume of Gerstäcker was missing, another day a Balduin Möllhausen seemed to have been sucked into the swamps of the Orinoco.
Sometimes a puff of wind blowing through the window carried a little cloud of yellow powder to the edges of the shelves, from which it was wiped off like ordinary dust. Yet it conveyed a greeting from swaying boughs in bloom, which was all this spring brought to Lilly, except for a loads of lilacs carted past the library on their way to market.
The young hero from the other side of the house had not approached her again.
She trembled whenever she heard him go down the steps, and twice a day with beating heart she received his shy greeting—that was all.
And he was not to be seen on the porch again. The digging and cramming with the other young men lasted until late at night, and it was often two o'clock before she heard their departing tread.
Not until then would she throw herself in bed, where she lay staring into the dusk of the summer night, her spirit roving over the world to find the throne worthy to serve as her hero's goal. She saw him a general winning epoch-making battles in the open country, she saw him a poet walking up the steps of the capitol to receive the laurel wreath, she saw him an inventor soaring through the ether in the airship he himself had perfected, she saw him the founder of a new religion—but here she came to a terrified halt, for in her heart she had remained a good Catholic.
Under the oppression of bodily and spiritual castigation she had not dared seek refuge in religion. Quickly enough the courage had gone from her to ask Mrs. Asmussen for permission to visit St. Anne's early every morning, and soon she had completely forgotten that such a thing as a confession or a mass ever took place.
Now, however, in the exuberance of her feelings, feelings such as she had never before suspected, her longing for spiritual disburdenment grew so strong that she decided to acknowledge her Catholicism to Mrs. Asmussen and beg for the privilege to pray in that quiet corner where St. Joseph, who had always been good to her, stood behind six gold-encircled candles and smilingly shook his finger.
In Lilly's avowal Mrs. Asmussen found an explanation of all her vices; her sneakiness, her hypocrisy, her laziness, her lack of a sense of order. Mrs. Asmussen, therefore, concluded her daily prayer with the wish for immediate and complete conversion.
Nevertheless she did not refuse Lilly two excursions a week to early mass, which was all Lilly had dared hope for.
The meeting between Lilly and St. Joseph was touching.
Really, going back to him was like going back home. The cherubs that fluttered in the gay glass case behind him greeted her with a knowing, confidential look, like brothers and sisters who have been let into the secret that the punishment after all is not going to be so very severe. The golden-yellow carpet extended a hospitable invitation to kneel, and the flowers on the Holy Virgin's altar close by perfumed the air.
The saint at first seemed a little hurt because she had not visited him for so long. But after she had made her moan—telling of her loneliness, the daily mush and the blows—he softened and forgave her.
Since her last visit he had received three new silver hearts, which shot out rays of light the length of a finger. She felt like dedicating one to him, too, but on what grounds she did not know, since the miracle to be worked in her was yet to be accomplished.
"Perhaps it's only jealousy in me, or a desire to show off," she thought, for it was painful to her that others should stand in closer relations to her saint than she. "After all," she comforted herself, "how can I expect anything else when I neglected him so long?"
After confessing everything—except, of course, her love story—he had become too much of a stranger for that—she hastened away. The clocks were striking quarter of seven, and if she did not meet her hero on his way to school, her morning meditations would have had neither purpose nor significance.
She met him and his companions at the corner of Wassertor street.
He raised his cap and passed by. But she, fetching a deep breath, remained for a time on the same spot, like one who has just escaped a great danger.
From now on there were two such encounters a week.
Her secret wish that some morning, when he was alone, he would stop and enter into a neighbourly conversation, was never fulfilled. Not the faintest glimmer of joy appeared in his face at her approach, and the tense concern depicted on his features did not relax even when—blushing a bit—he raised his cap to her.
Lilly had long given up all hope of his ever addressing her again, when one rainy July Sunday in the evening, when the door of the circulating library was closed to customers, she heard a faint tinkling of the bell. She opened the door—there he stood.
"Mercy!" she cried, almost shutting the door in her confusion.
Did she happen to have Rückert's poems in her library?
Lilly knew for certain she did not have them, but if she admitted forthwith her inability to furnish the book he would find no pretext for entering into a conversation, so she said she would go see, and wouldn't he step in and wait? He hesitated a moment, then seated himself on the customers' chair placed close to the door.
Lilly spent some time searching, because she was afraid the inevitable "no" would send him off with a curt "thank you," and she ran up and down the aisles between the shelves aimlessly, reiterating:
"I'm sure I saw the poems just a little while ago."
Then, in order to think the matter over more quietly, she seated herself opposite him with the counter between. But he encouraged her to renew the search.
"If you saw them only a short time ago, then they are bound to be here."
When finally convinced that Rückert's poems were not in the library, he fetched a deep sigh and murmured something like, "What shall I do?" and disappeared.
Lilly, completely dazed, stared at the doorway, which a moment before had framed his figure.
She wanted to cry out and plead, "Stay here! Come back!" But she heard the door on the other side of the hall fall shut, and everything was over.
She crouched at the window-sill indulging in speculations of what might have taken place if he had happened to remain.
Her heart throbbed violently.
About quarter of an hour later the bell rang again.
She jumped up. Supposing it was he?
It was he.
He begged pardon; he had forgotten his umbrella.
"This time you don't slip away!" something within her cried.
He caught up his soaking umbrella, which she had failed to notice despite the shining puddle which was crawling along the crack between two floor boards, and was about to escape again, when Lilly essayed: