CHAPTER VI.
It is really melancholy for people who have been accustomed in Paris to entertain crowned heads, to be obliged in Austria to put up with a few sickly sprigs of nobility.
The Menu was very elaborate; the clumsy table service came from Froment-Munice and the china was Sèvres of the latest pattern, white, with a coronet and cipher in gilt; the butler looked like a cabinet minister, and the silk stockings of the flunkies were faultless. Nevertheless the entire dinner produced a sham, masquerading effect, reminding one more or less of a stage banquet when all the viands are of papier-maché.
The hostess, with Baron Kilary on her right, and Fritz Malzin on her left, devoted herself almost exclusively to the latter, asking him kindly questions about his children.
The host, seated between the Baroness Melkweyser, and the Countess Malzin, contented himself with seeing that the actress's plate was kept well supplied, and with exchanging jests with her which were merely silly during soup, but which grew more objectionable at dessert.
The Baroness Melkweyser studied the Menu, Paul Angelico Orchis complained of his dyspepsia and asked advice of his neighbour, Ad'lin Capriani, as to his diet. Moreover he testified his gratitude for Capriani's hospitality by praising everything enthusiastically. He remarked that he had visited Schneeburg formerly, but that he should hardly have recognised the castle again, absolutely hardly have recognised it, it was so wonderfully improved, he could not see how Count Capriani could have effected so much in so short a time.
Whereupon the master of the mansion replied with aristocratic nonchalance: "The place had to be made habitable, but there's not much that can be done with it, it is nothing but an old barracks, an inconvenient old barracks." He then held forth at length upon the improvements which he still contemplated, concluding with, "But I have no room--the Schneeburg domain is so contracted, so insignificant! Unfortunately all the estates which would serve my purpose are owned by people unwilling to sell."
Madame Capriani tried several times unsuccessfully to check her husband, and Fritz looked gloomily down into his empty plate.
He had always been so proud of his Schneeburg, and that it should not be good enough for this swindler, forsooth!----
Fermor looked discontented, and talked to Adeline about his compositions, betraying at every word the sentimental arrogance of a narrow-minded, lackadaisical, provincial aristocrat, greedy for adulation, and salving his conscience for his new associations, by making himself as disagreeable as possible to the people whose bread he eats.
Malzin, albeit in a subordinate position, manifested from habit the instinctive reserve of a true gentleman, fearful of wounding the susceptibilities of his inferiors. The conduct of his fellows was in striking contrast to his own. Fermor ignored him. Kilary on the contrary continually tried to draw him into familiar talk upon subjects of which none of the others knew anything, a course evidently irritating to the host.
Malzin was, moreover, the only one at table towards whom Kilary conducted himself courteously. To the poet he was especially insolent. At dessert he read aloud with sentimental emphasis a couple of bonbon-mottoes, and then asked, "My dear Orchis, are these immortal lines your own?" at which the poet vainly tried to smile. The rumour ran that when his finances were at a low ebb he did sometimes place his genius at the disposal of a Vienna confectioner.
After dinner the gentlemen retired to the smoking-room to smoke, the ladies to the drawing-room to yawn.
"I cannot cease looking at you, this evening, Comtesse," Charlotte Malzin exclaimed, seating herself on a sofa beside the daughter of the house, "your gown is enchanting."
"Very much too picturesque for this part of the world, they can't appreciate these contrasts of colour in this barbarous country," Ad'lin said crossly, as she was wont to receive the actress's advances. "They are far behind the age in Austria! Dieu, qui l'Autriche m'ennuie!"
The actress fell silent, in some confusion.
"What had the poet to say to you, Ad'lin?" asked the Baroness Melkweyser, after she had inspected through her eye-glass each piece of furniture in turn in the drawing-room.
"That he could not digest truffles, and that he means to dedicate his next work to me."
"Ah! the first item is highly interesting, and the last uncommonly flattering," the Melkweyser rejoined.
"Yes, it means that I must order at least fifty copies of the interesting effusion," Ad'lin said fretfully, adding with a half smile, "People in our position have to encourage literature--noblesse oblige!"
The Baroness bit her lip and resumed her voyage of discovery, turning to a cabinet filled with antique porcelain.
"You really cannot think," Ad'lin began, leaving her sofa to join her friend, "how I have longed for you! You are the only link here in Austria between ourselves and civilization. I depend upon your forming an agreeable circle for us here."
It was noteworthy that since Zoë's return to her native land, Adeline's familiarity had seemed far less acceptable to her than it had been in Paris. "An agreeable circle!" she exclaimed, "that is easily said, but you make it very hard for me. You do not want to know our financiers ...."
"The Austrian financiers have no position; even the Rothschilds are not received at Court."
"And the Austrian aristocracy is excessively exclusive on its own soil--!" said Zoë.
"Ah that exclusiveness is a fable convenue," Ad'lin insisted, "I am convinced that if Austrian society knew us ...."
Instead of replying, the Melkweyser directed her eye-glass towards the porcelain on the shelves of the cabinet. "That is the Malzin old-Vienna tea-service."
"Yes, but it cannot be used--it is not complete."
"I know it, Wjera Zinsenburg has the other half."
"If it would give the Countess the slightest pleasure to complete the set, I should be perfectly ready to place this half at her disposal!" Capriani's voice was heard to say.
The gentlemen had left their cigars and had come to the drawing-room for their coffee. Fermor who was too nervous to allow himself the indulgence of a cup of Mocha, sat down at the piano, and began to prelude in an affected manner.
Leaning in a languishing attitude against the raised cover of the piano, Ad'lin murmured, "No one but you invents such modulations. You ought to indulge me with a grand composition, Count; have you never completed one?"
"I am busy now with a work of some scope for a grand orchestra," Fermor lisped, dabbing his limp, bloodless hands upon the keyboard like a nervous kangaroo.
"Ah! A sonata?--An opera?"
"No, a requiem; that is a kind of requiem--more correctly a morning impromptu, the last thoughts of a dying poacher."
"Oh how interesting! Pray let me hear it."
"It is a rather complicated piece of music, Fräulein Capriani," Fermor always ignores the Capriani patent of nobility--"if you are not especially fond of our German classic masters ...."
"I adore Wagner and Beethoven."
"Then, indeed, I will .... but the harmony is very complicated!"
Whereupon he began, with closed eyes, after the fashion of pretentious dilettanti, to deliver himself of a piece of music, the beginning of which reminded one of a piano-tuner, and the intermediate portion of the triumphal march of an operetta, and which, after it had lasted half an hour, and the audience had given up all hope of relief, suddenly, and without any apparent reason stopped short, a common termination where there has been no reason for beginning.
"C'est divin!" Ad'lin exclaimed. "Your composition, Count, reminds me of the intermezzo of the Fifth symphony."
"You are mistaken, Fräulein Capriani, my composition recalls no other music!" Fermor said, greatly irritated.
With his eyes glowing, his full red underlip trembling, and his manner insolently obtrusive, Capriani threw himself down beside Charlotte Malzin upon the sofa and stretched his arm along the back of it behind her shoulders.
"Come and help me with my work, Count Malzin," Frau von Capriani called kindly from her pile of cretonne. "You have so steady a hand."
And while Fritz took his place beside her, and began to cut a bird of Paradise out of the stuff with great precision, Kilary took Arthur by the buttonhole and said, "You ought to know all about it young man, how must one begin who wants to grow rich?"
"You must ask my father," Arthur replied insolently. "All that I understand of financial matters is, how to make debts."
A servant brought in the letters and papers upon a silver salver.
Whilst Arthur opened a dozen begging letters, and tossed them aside, ironically remarking, "Three impoverished Countesses--two Barons--a captain ..." and whilst Ad'lin hailed with enthusiasm two letters from a couple of French duchesses whom she counted among her friends, the Conte hurriedly ran his eye over an unpretending epistle which he had instantly opened. His hands trembled, a strange greed shone in his eyes, and quivered about his lips. Quite pale, as one is apt to be in a moment of victory he paced the room to and fro once or twice and then stepping directly up to Malzin he exclaimed, "What do you think--coal--! Schneeburg is a coal-bed. Extraordinary! Your father tried after madder, and I--have found coal!"
Malzin shuddered slightly, but merely said, "I congratulate you!"
"Malzin would never have forgiven himself if your bargain had turned out a poor one," sneered Kilary.
There was something in his irony that irritated Capriani, a rebellion of caste against the autocracy of money, which he chose to punish. As he was powerless with Kilary he turned to Malzin and said in a tone of insolent authority, "Malzin, get me the map of Bohemia that lies on my writing-table." At a moment like this the thin varnish of refinement which contact with the world had imparted was rubbed off entirely, he showed himself in all his coarseness, and this not through any recklessness, but intentionally, in the consciousness that he, Alfred Capriani might do as he chose. At a moment like this he delighted in treading beneath his feet all who did not prostrate themselves before his millions.
Malzin had attained a height where such insults did not reach him. But the blood mounted to the cheek of the mistress of the mansion. "Arthur, go and get the map!" she said gently.
Fritz languidly prevented him. "You do not know where the thing is," he said good-humouredly and left the room.
Capriani went on pacing the spacious apartment in long strides. "They are all alike, these blockheads," he muttered, "when they take it into their heads to work they are more stupid than ever. Old Malzin tried everything; he ruined himself in artificial madder-red, in lager beer, in sugar and in stocks,--and it never occurred to him that millions were lying in the ground beneath his feet."
Malzin returned with the map and as every table was overcrowded with bibelots and jardinières, it was spread out upon the piano. Capriani eagerly travelled over it with his pudgy forefinger. "The track of the new railway must go here, between the iron works and Schneeburg."
"Then it must go a very long round," Arthur remarked, "can you obtain the permit?"
Capriani stuck a thumb in an arm-hole of his waistcoat and smiled.
"Malzin, you know the estates around here; to whom does that belong?" pointing to a spot upon the map.
"That belongs to Kamenz," said Malzin bending forward, and fitting his eye-glass in his eye.
"And that?"
"To Lodrin."
"Then it comes to whether the interests of these gentlemen jump with your own," Arthur observed. "If they should work against you, you never can obtain the permit."
"Pshaw! I understand tolerably well how to deal with these gentlemen."
"Kamenz will give you no trouble, he is up to his neck in embarrassments, and would be glad to dispose advantageously of a piece of his land," drawled Kilary, looking at the map and giving his opinion with lazy assurance.
"Lodrin's affairs cannot be in a very brilliant condition," Arthur remarked; "ever since his majority he has been making no end of improvements, and he is hard up financially."
"With such an enormous property as the Lodrin estate there can be none save temporary embarrassments," Kilary said drily, "and in no case would Lodrin allow himself to be influenced by personal considerations. If you cannot demonstrate to him that the new railway will conduce to the universal benefit of the whole country he never will agree to it, and unless he does you can do nothing with the present ministry. A comical fellow Lodrin--a perfect pedant in some ways."
"No," said Malzin, "not the least of a pedant, but a hot head with a heart of gold, and when duty is concerned, he is just like his father."
"The old idiot," Capriani muttered below his breath, slowly as, with an air that was almost tender he stroked his long whiskers, while an odd smile played about his lips. "In fact you are right, Malzin,--a charming fellow, Ossi--a superb creature; not one of your Austrian nobility can hold a candle to him. But I--you'll see, Malzin,--I'll twist Ossi Lodrin around my thumb."
Half an hour afterwards the guests separated. Frau von Capriani, more depressed than usual, retired to her room.
The gentlemen went to the garden, and shot at a target; Conte Capriani, who never could bring down a pheasant on the wing, proved more successful than any of the others in hitting the bull's-eye.
When the Melkweyser, who had been indulging in a short nap, entered the library half an hour afterwards to look for a 'sanitary novel' she found Ad'lin deep in the study of a small thick volume.
Zoë looked over her shoulder; the book was the 'Gotha Almanach,' the Bradshaw of the Austrian aristocracy.
"What are you looking for?" the Baroness asked.
"For the Fermors--I want to know who the Count's mother was. She is not in this year's list. She was a Princess Brack, was she not?"
"No, his mother was a Fräulein Schmitt, the daughter of a rich tavern-keeper."
"Ah!"