Chapter II（2 / 2）

There was a dead silence.He stood, putting himself at the mercy of the women.There came a hissing from the stove, and a stronger smell of coffee.Emilie turned swiftly away.He saw her flat, straight back and her strong loins, as she bent over the stove.

“But what are you going to do?” asked Fr?ulein Hesse, aghast.“I don’t know,” he said, grasping at more cherries.He had come to an end.“You’d better go to the barracks,” she said.“We’ll get the Herr Baron to come and see about it.”

Emilie was swiftly and quietly preparing the tray.She picked it up, and stood with the glittering china and silver before her, impassive, waiting for his reply.Bachmann remained with his head dropped, pale and obstinate.He could not bear to go back.“I’m going to try to get into France,” he said.“Yes, but they’ll catch you,” said Fr?ulein Hesse.Emilie watched with steady, watchful grey eyes.“I can have a try, if I could hide till to-night,” he said.

Both women knew what he wanted.And they all knew it was no good.Emilie picked up the tray, and went out.Bachmann stood with his head dropped.Within himself he felt the dross of shame and incapacity.“You’d never get away,” said the governess.“I can try,” he said.To day he could not put himself between the hands of the military.Let them do as they liked with him tomorrow, if he escaped today.

They were silent.He ate cherries.The colour flushed bright into the cheek of the young governess.Emilie returned to prepare another tray“He could hide in your room,” the governess said to her.The girl drew herself away.She could not bear the intrusion.“That is all I can think of that is safe from the children,” said Fr?ulein Hesse.Emilie gave no answer.Bachmann stood waiting for the two women.Emilie did not want the close contact with him.“You could sleep with me,” Fr?ulein Hesse said to her.

Emilie lifted her eyes and looked at the young man, direct, clear, reserving herself.“Do you want that?” she asked, her strong virginity proof against him.“Yes yes ” he said uncertainly, destroyed by shame.She put back her head.“Yes,” she murmured to herself.Quickly she filled the tray, and went out.“But you can’t walk over the frontier in a night,” said Fr?ulein Hesse.“I can cycle,” he said.Emilie returned, a restraint, a neutrality, in her bearing.“I’ll see if it’s all right,” said the governess.

In a moment or two Bachmann was following Emilie through the square hall, where hung large maps on the walls.He noticed a child’s blue coat with brass buttons on the peg, and it reminded him of Emilie walking holding the hand of the youngest child, whilst he watched, sitting under the lime tree.

Already this was a long way off.That was a sort of freedom he had lost, changed for a new, immediate anxiety.They went quickly, fearfully up the stairs and down a long corridor.Emilie opened her door, and he entered, ashamed, into her room.“I must go down,” she murmured, and she departed, closing the door softly.

It was a small, bare, neat room.There was a little dish for holy water, a picture of the Sacred Heart, a crucifix, and a prie Dieu.The small bed lay white and untouched, the wash-hand bowl of red earth stood on a bare table, there was a little mirror and a small chest of drawers.That was all.

Feeling safe, in sanctuary, he went to the window, looking over the courtyard at the shimmering, afternoon country.He was going to leave this land, this life.Already he was in the unknown.

He drew away into the room.The curious simplicity and severity of the little Roman Catholic bedroom was foreign but restoring to him.He looked at the crucifix.It was a long, lean, peasant Christ carved by a peasant in the Black Forest.For the first time in his life, Bachmann saw the figure as a human thing.It represented a man hanging there in helpless torture.He stared at it, closely, as if for new knowledge.

Within his own flesh burned and smouldered the restless shame.He could not gather himself together.There was a gap in his soul.The shame within him seemed to displace his strength and his manhood.He sat down on his chair.The shame, the roused feeling of exposure acted on his brain, made him heavy, unutterably heavy.Mechanically, his wits all gone, he took off his boots, his belt, his tunic, put them aside, and lay down, heavy, and fell into a kind of drugged sleep.

Emilie came in a little while, and looked at him.But he was sunk in sleep.She saw him lying there inert, and terribly still, and she was afraid.His shirt was unfastened at the throat.She saw his pure white flesh, very clean and beautiful.And he slept inert.His legs, in the blue uniform trousers, his feet in the coarse stockings, lay foreign on her bed.She went away.