CHAPTER VII.
The Malzins walked home through the park. Fritz looked perturbed. His wife held her head high, and in no agreeable mood chewed at the stalk of a rose which the Conte had cut for her.
"Lotti," Fritz began after a while, "I know that you act without reflection; you were a little imprudent to-day; it would be of no consequence with a man of breeding, but from a man like Capriani a lady must not allow the least familiarity."
"You always find something to lecture me about," she replied sharply. "I have long known that I am not good enough for you. But I must confess that I have never observed that the ladies of your circle are more reserved than those of mine."
"You know none of them," Fritz rejoined with incautious haste.
"You certainly have afforded me no opportunity of knowing them," Charlotte retorted, reddening with anger, "although you probably would have done so, had you not been ashamed of me from the first. Count Truyn has managed to give his wife a position,--but you--you would rather have died than have stirred a finger for me."
This was not literally true, for Fritz had once knocked off the hat of an acquaintance who had forgotten to remove it in Charlotte's presence; on one occasion he had fought a duel on her account, and on another had horsewhipped a slandering editor, but it was substantially true that he had made not the smallest effort to introduce her to his world. He made no reply now to her reproaches, hung his head, and pulled at his moustache. She went on with angry volubility. "You were ashamed to walk in the street with me, and when you took me to the theatre you always hid yourself in the back of the box, and every day you had some fault to find with my ways. I have watched your aristocratic ladies at the races, at the theatre, and at artist's festivals--and their manners are as free--and it must out--as ill-bred ...."
"The ill-breeding of a lady of rank," Fritz interrupted her impatiently "extends usually only as far as the good-breeding of the man with whom she chances to be."
"I don't know what you mean," the opera-bouffe singer replied.
"Our ladies know that the men whom they honour with their gay talk recognise their little whims, and merry extravagances as tokens of confidence which they would never dream of abusing. We never allow ourselves to step beyond the line which the lady herself draws. Familiarities like those which Capriani allowed himself toward you to-day are impossible among people of refinement. Of course from him nothing better can be expected; low fellow that he is!"
"And you are his hired servant," said Charlotte.
"Yes!" he replied, "I am his servant; it is my duty to select his horses and to write his letters, but I am not obliged to dine with him; that is not in the contract. And from this time I shall accept no more of his invitations. I will not expose myself a second time to the annoyance to which you and he subjected me to-day."
Charlotte began to cry. "You are cruel to me--and rough," she sobbed. "I have put up with poverty for your sake, sacrificed a brilliant career to my love for you----"
"Yes--yes, I know--I know--I am very sorry for you--but what can I do?" said Fritz.
"The only pleasure I can enjoy, you want to deprive me of, when I look forward to it from Sunday to Sunday."
"You enjoy it?--What, for Heaven's sake do you enjoy about it?" asked Fritz, to whom everything at these Sunday dinners was an offence, except the gentle eyes and soft voice of the hostess.
"I enjoy mingling at last in fine society," she said stubbornly, and as he only stared at her in silence, she went on, "I know that you despise modern fine folk. But my views are broader and freer, and I have no feeling for aristocratic chimeras!"
She had indeed no feeling for chimeras with or without the adjective, no feeling for moral and social subtleties, no feeling for honourable traditional superstitions, for fine inherited weaknesses and illusions, no feeling for all that constitute the moral supports of a caste, although they cannot be expressed in words or grasped with the hand. How could this woman comprehend Fritz, Fritz who had grown up with chimeras, who had made playmates of them in the nursery?
He shrugged his shoulders and was silent. Just then the wailing of a weak childish voice fell upon the warm evening air. Fritz hurried forward; in front of the small arbour, with his little son in her lap, sat an old woman; it was old Miller, his nurse in childhood, who had at last found an asylum in a corner of his house. "The little fellow is crying for his father," she said while the boy smiling through his tears stretched out his tiny arms. "The Herr Count ought not to spoil him so."
"Never mind that, Miller," Fritz said taking the child in his arms. "Oh, my pale darling, what should we do without each other, hey?"
Fifteen minutes afterwards Fritz was sitting on the edge of a small bed on which his boy was kneeling with folded hands, looking in his snowy night-gown, that fell in straight folds about him, like a veritable Luca della Robbia.
"Come, Franzi, have you forgotten your prayer?"
"In my small bed I lay me here,
I pray Thee dearest Lord be near,
About me clasp Thy loving arm,
And shelter me and keep me warm."
the child murmured sleepily, then offered his lips to his father and lay down.
It was a childish prayer--but Fritz learned it at his mother's knee from her dear lips--reason enough for teaching it to his son.
And until the little man fell asleep, his hand under his cheek, Fritz still sat on the edge of the bed and dreamed.