Among them Crammon had the appearance of a relic of an exalted and hieratic age.
One day the two nephews of the countess, Ottomar and Reinhold Stojenthin, appeared. They had succeeded in getting leave of absence for two months. Leave of absence from what? Crammon inquired with raised brows. They wanted to accompany Letitia to Munich. “They are splendid chaps, Herr von Crammon,” said the countess. “Do take them under your protection.” Crammon was vexed. “I’ve always lived in perfect dread of some one’s discovering my hidden talent for the rôle of a governess. The achievement was reserved for you, countess.”
His relations to Puck, the Pekingese, were strained. The little animal enraged him inexplicably. Whenever he saw it his eyes grew round and his face scarlet with anger. Perhaps it was the dog’s deep tawny coat; perhaps it was its sleepiness; perhaps he suspected it of maliciously feigning a delicate state of health so that it could sprawl on silken couches and have tidbits stuck into its mouth. The anxious care that Letitia gave the creature annoyed him. Once the little dog had gotten up from the carpet and, wheezing asthmatically, had slipped out through the door. “Where is Puck?” Letitia asked after a while from the depth of her armchair. Puck wasn’t to be seen. “Do whistle to him, Bernard,” she begged in her flute-like voice. “You can do that yourself,” said Crammon quite rudely. Letitia, calmly pathetic, dreamily preoccupied, said: “Please do it for me. I can’t whistle when I’m excited.”
So Crammon whistled to the hateful beast.
Still, a decision had to be arrived at. “Are you going to Munich with me?” the siren Letitia cooed, and laughed at his anger. To her aunt she said: “He’s still raging, but he’ll go with us in the end.”
Crammon nursed an ethical intention. He would influence Letitia to her own advantage. He could open her eyes to the dangerous downward slope of the path which she pursued with such unfortunate cheerfulness. She could be helped and supported and given a timely warning. Her extravagance could be checked, and her complete lack of judgment could be corrected. She was utterly inexperienced and thoughtless. She believed every liar, and gave her confidence to every chatterer. She was enthusiastic over any charlatan, held all flattery to be sincere, and provided every fool who paid court to her with a halo of wisdom and of pain. She needed to be brought to reason.
Crammon was quite right. Yet a mere smile of Letitia would silence him. She blunted the point of the most pertinent maxims and of the soundest moralizing by holding her head a little on one side, looking at him soulfully and saying in a sweetly and archly penitential tone: “You see, dear Bernard, I’m made this way. What’s the use of trying to be different? Would you want me to be different? If I were, I’d only have other faults. Do let me be as I am.” And she would slip one hand through his arm, and with the other tickle his almost double chin. And he would hold still and sigh.
The following persons started on the journey to Munich: Letitia, her personal maid, the nurse Eleutheria, the twins, the countess, Fräulein Stöhr, Ottomar and Reinhold, Crammon, the Pole Stanislaus Rehmer. Also the following animals: Puck, the Pekingese, a bullfinch in one cage and a tame squirrel in another. The luggage consisted of fourteen large trunks, sixteen hand-bags, seven hat-boxes, one perambulator, three luncheon baskets, and innumerable smaller packages wrapped in paper, leather, or sack-cloth, not to mention coats, umbrellas, sticks, and flowers. In the train the countess wrung her hands, Puck barked and whined pathetically, Letitia made a long list of things that had been forgotten at the last moment, the maid quarreled with the conductor, the twins screamed, Eleutheria offended the other passengers by baring her voluminous breasts, Fräulein Stöhr had her devout and patient heavenward glance, Ottomar and Reinhold debated some literary matter, the Pole spent his time gazing at Letitia, Crammon sat in sombre mood with legs crossed and twiddled his thumbs.
With the exception of the Stojenthin brothers, who went to a more modest hostelry, the whole company took rooms in the Hotel Continental. The bill which was presented to the countess at the end of each day was rarely for less than three hundred marks. “Stöhr,” she said, “we must find new sources of help. The child suspects nothing, of course. It would break her heart if she had an inkling of my pecuniary anxieties.” Fräulein Stöhr, without abandoning her air of virtue, succeeded in implying her doubt of that.
A lawyer of the highest reputation was entrusted with the suit against the Gunderams. The representative of the defendants had been instructed to refuse all demands. There were endless conferences, during which the countess flamed with noble indignation, while Letitia exhibited an elegiac amazement, as though these things did not concern her and had faded from her memory. Her statements as to what she had said and done, concerning agreements and events, were never twice the same. When these contradictions were brought to her attention, she answered, ashamed and dreamy and angry at once: “You’re frightfully pedantic. How am I to remember it all? I suppose things were as you’ve said they were in your documents. What are the documents for?”