The count obeyed and came up. He was charming and told racing anecdotes.
At the end of another fifteen minutes came the Countess Brainitz with Ottomar and Reinhold. It had been agreed that they were to call for Letitia. They all filled Judith’s drawing-room, and there was a hubbub of talk.
Crammon said to Ottomar, whom his condescension at times permitted to learn his opinions and feelings: “Once when I was in Tunis I was awakened by violent voices in the morning. I thought the native population had risen in revolt and rushed from my bed. But there were only two elderly, dark-brown ladies carrying on a friendly conversation under my window. It is characteristic of women to produce a maximum of din with a minimum of motive. They are constantly saving the Capitol. I am inclined to believe that the Romans, a nation of braggarts and sabre-rattlers, infused a rather ungallant implication into the pleasant fable of the geese. Usually their judgment of female nature was blithely sophomoric. As proof I adduce the story of Tarquin and Lucretia. Monstrous nonsense, penny-dreadful stuff! In my parental house we had a calendar on which the story was related in verse and bodied forth in pictures. This cataract of chastity gave me an utterly perverse notion of certain fundamental facts of human nature. It took years to penetrate the character of the deception.”
Ottomar said: “I grant you what you say of all women except of Letitia. Observe how she moves, how she carries her head. She is an exquisite exception. Her presence makes every occasion festive; she is the symbol of lovely moments. She will never age, and all her actions are actions in a dream. They have no consequences, they have no objective reality, and she expects them to have neither.”
“Very deep and very finely observed,” said Crammon, with a sigh. “But heaven guard you from trying to establish a practical household with such a fairy creature.”
“One shouldn’t, one mustn’t,” the young man replied, with conviction.
Crammon arose, and went over to Judith. “Isn’t Edgar at home, Frau Lorm?” he asked. “Can one get to him? We have not seen each other for long.”
“Edgar is ill,” Judith answered, with a frown, as though she had reason to feel affronted by the fact.
A silence fell on the room. All felt a sense of discomfort. And Crammon saw, as in a new and sudden vision, Judith’s projecting cheek-bones, her skin injured by cosmetics, her morbidly compressed mouth with its lines of bitterness, her fluttering glance, and her restless hands. There was something of decay in her and about her, something that came of over-intensity and the fever of gambling, of a slackening and rotting of tissues. Her cheerfulness arose from rancour, her vivacity was that of a marionette with creaking joints.
Letitia had forgotten to mention Christian. Not until they reached the street did she recall the purpose of her visit. She reproached Crammon for not having reminded her. “It doesn’t matter,” Crammon said. “I’m going back to-morrow and you can come with me. I want to see Lorm. I have a presentiment of evil; misfortune is brewing.”