CHAPTER III.
The dining-room, a long narrow apartment with three windows, smelled of fresh varnish and fly-poison; the walls were decorated with dusty laurel wreaths wound about with ribbons covered with gilt inscriptions, and with several photographs of the hostess in tights. The long table was loaded with viands. Malzin's children, a girl and a boy, respectively five and three years old, shared the meal. They were pale, and sickly, but extremely pretty with a wonderfully sympathetic expression about the mouth and eyes, reminding one of their father. It was easy to see from the shy gentleness of their demeanour that Fritz had taken great pains with their training. He exchanged little tender jests with his small daughter, but he evidently made a special pet of the boy who sat beside him in a high chair, and to whose wants he himself ministered.
There was nothing about Fritz of the amusing awkwardness of aristocratic fathers, who now and then in an amiable dilettante fashion interest themselves in the care of their offspring. On the contrary it was easy to see from the way in which he set the child straight at the table, tied on the bib, and put the mug of milk into the little hand, that the care of the child was a real occupation of his life.
Truyn sat beside his hostess murmuring threadbare compliments, touching his lips to his coffee-cup, and crumbling a piece of biscuit on his plate.
"You do our fare but little honour," the actress said more than once, "try a piece of this cake, Herr Count. Count Capriani who has a French cook, and is accustomed to the very best, always commends it."
Fritz blushed. "Try this cherry cake," he said hastily. "Lotti makes it herself. She used always to feast me upon it when we were betrothed--eh, Lotti?"
This cheery reference to her housewifely skill, offended the actress, and before Truyn could make some courteous rejoinder she exclaimed, flushed with anger, "You know, Herr Count, that where the means are so limited the mistress of the house must lend a hand."
Truyn stammered something and Fritz smiled patiently as he stroked his little son's fair curls.
It was a painfully uncomfortable hour.
Truyn looked from the photographs to the glass fly-traps beneath which innumerable flies were lying on their backs, convulsively twitching out their lives, and his glance finally rested upon his hostess. She was strongly perfumed with musk, and was painted around the eyes. Her stout arms were squeezed into sleeves far too tight, and her bust almost met her chin. After this keen scrutiny, however, Truyn discovered that she was certainly handsome, that her face although disfigured by too full lips, was strikingly like that of the capitoline Venus.
The intrusive humility of her manner, seasoned as it was with vulgar raillery, was insufferable.
"For this woman!" he repeated to himself again and again. "For this woman!" His eye fell upon a photograph portraying the Countess as 'la belle Héléne,' in a costume that displayed her magnificent physique to great advantage, and he suddenly remembered that he had seen her in that rôle; that her acting was bad; but that she produced a dazzling impression on the stage.
"Did you recognize that picture, Herr Count?" she asked suddenly.
"Instantly," he assured her.
"Did you ever see me play?"
"I once had that pleasure."
"Ah!" A remarkable transformation was immediately manifest, her languid air grew animated, thirst for the triumphs of the past glittered in her eyes. She moved her chair a little closer to Truyn and coquettishly leaning her head upon her hand whispered, "Were you one of my adorers?"
Fritz frowned and glanced angrily towards her, twisting his napkin nervously.
His attention was suddenly distracted however, by the noise of the blows of an axe resounding slowly and monotonously through the heavy summer air. Fritz changed colour, sprang up and hurried to the window.
"What is the matter?" the actress asked him negligently.
"They are cutting down the old beech," he said slowly, turning not to her, but to Truyn.--"The Friedrichs-beech; planted by one of our ancestors, Joachim Malzin, with his own hands after the liberation of Vienna; we children all cut our names upon it. Don't you remember how Madame Lenoir scolded us for it, and declared that it was not comme il faut, but a pastime befitting prentice boys only? Good Heavens--how long ago that is!--and now they are cutting it down. Capriani insists that it interferes with his view."