IX
Christian wanted Crammon to accompany him and Alfred Meerholz, the general’s son, to St. Moritz for the winter sports; but Crammon had to attend Konrad von Westernach’s wedding in Vienna. So they agreed to meet in Wiesbaden, where Frau Wahnschaffe and Judith would join them in the spring.
Frau Wahnschaffe usually spent January and February in the family’s ancestral home at Würzburg. She had many guests there and so did not feel the boredom of the provincial city. Wolfgang had been studying political science at the university there; but at the end of the semester he was to go to Berlin, pass his examination for the doctorate, and enter the ministry of foreign affairs. Judith said to him sarcastically: “You are a born diplomatist of the new school. The moment you enter a room no one dares to jest any more. It’s high time that you enlarge your sphere of activity.” He answered: “You are right. I know that I shall yield my place to a worthier one who knows better how to amuse you.” “You are bitter,” Judith replied, “but what you say is true.”
When Christian arrived in Wiesbaden in April his mother introduced him to the Countess Brainitz and to her niece, Letitia von Febronius. The countess was ostensibly here to drink the waters; but her purpose was commonly thought to be the finding of a suitable match for her niece among the young men of the country. She had succeeded, at all events, in gaining the confidence of Frau Wahnschaffe, who was distrustful and inaccessible. Judith was charmed by Letitia’s loveliness.
Christian accompanied the young ladies on their walks and rides, and the countess said to Letitia: “If I were you I’d fall in love with that young man.” Letitia answered with her most soulful expression: “If I were you, aunt, I’d be afraid of doing so myself.”
Crammon arrived in an evil mood. Whenever one of his friends so far forgot himself as to marry, there came over him an insidious hatred of mankind which darkened his soul for weeks.
He was surprised when Christian told him of these new friends, and wondered at the trick by which fate brought him into the circle of Letitia’s life. He had a feeling that was uncanny.
He was anything but delighted over the Countess Brainitz. He was familiar with the genealogy and history of the dead and living members of all the noble families of Europe, and so was thoroughly informed concerning her. “In her youth,” he reported, “she was an actress, one of those favourite ingénues who attune souls of a certain sort poetically by a strident blondness and by pulling at their aprons with touching bashfulness. With these tricks she seduced in his time Count Brainitz, a gentleman who had weak brains and a vigorous case of gout. She thought he was rich. Later it turned out that he was hopelessly in debt and lived on a pension allowed him by the head of the house. On his death this pension passed to her.”
She was blond no longer. Her hair was white and had a metallic shimmer like spun glass. Its hue was premature, no doubt, for she was scarcely over fifty. She was corpulent; her body had a curious sort of carved rotundity; her face was like an apple in its smooth roundness; it gleamed with a healthy reddish tinge; and each feature—nose, mouth, chin, forehead—was characterized by a certain harmless daintiness.
From the first moment she and Crammon found themselves hopelessly at odds. She clasped her hands in despair over everything he said, and all his doings enraged her. With her feminine instinct she scented in him the adversary of all her cunning plans; he saw in her another of those arch enemies that, from time to time, spun for one of his friends the net of marriage.
She asked him to dine merely because of Letitia’s insistence. The girl explained: “Even if you don’t like him in other ways, aunt, you’ll approve of him as a guest. He’s very like you in one way.” But Crammon’s dislike of the countess robbed him of his usual appetite, so that the reconciliation even on that plane did not occur. She herself ate three eggs with mayonnaise, half of a duck, a large portion of roast beef, four pieces of pastry, a plate full of cherries, and additional trifles to pass the time. Crammon was overwhelmed.
After each course she washed her hands with meticulous care, and when the meal was over drew her snow-white gloves over her little, round fingers.
“All people are pigs,” she declared. “Nothing they come in contact with remains clean. I guard myself as well as I can.”
Letitia sat through it all smiling in her own arch and tender way, and her mere presence lent to the common things about her a breath of romance.