My father made a very wry face; but then he shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, you women,” he said contemptuously. “Luckily the young one will not ask your permission. The blood of soldiers is running in his veins. Nay, and he will surely not remain your only son. You must marry again, Martha. At your age it is not good to be alone. Tell me, is there none of your suitors that finds grace in your sight? For instance, there is Captain Olensky, who is desperately in love with you; he has been just now pouring out his sighs to me again. He would suit me thoroughly as a son-in-law.”
“But not me as a husband.”
“Then there is Major Millersdorf.”
“No; if you run down the whole military gamut to me, it is in vain. At what time does your dinner take place? when shall I come?” I said to turn the subject.
“At five. But come half-an-hour earlier; and now, adieu—I must go. Kiss Rudi for me—the future commander-in-chief of the Imperial and Royal Army.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A solemn, stiff, sleepy business, that is how my father qualified his proposed dinner, and that is how I should have looked on the ceremony also if it had not been for the one guest whose presence moved me in a singular way.
Baron Tilling came the instant before the meat—so when he saluted me in the drawing-room I had no time for more than the briefest exchange of words; and at table, where I sat between two snow-white generals, the baron was removed so far from me that it was impossible for me to draw him into the conversation carried on at our end of the table. I was pleased at the return into the drawing-room; there I meant to call Tilling to me and question him still further about that battle-scene: I longed to hear again that tone of voice which had at first sounded so sympathetically in my ears.
But no opportunity offered itself to me at first to carry out this intention; the two old generals kept constant to me after dinner too, and sat down at my side when I took my place in the drawing-room to pour out café noir. To them joined themselves in a semicircle my father, the Minister, Dr. Bresser, and, finally, Tilling, but the conversation which arose was on general topics. The rest of the guests—all the ladies among them—had got together in another corner of the drawing-room where smoking was not going on; whilst in our corner smoking was allowed, and even I myself had lighted a cigarette.