“Fish-blooded,” snapped Frau Godowska. “Without soul, without heart, without grace. But you cannot equal their dress materials. I spent a week in Brighton twenty years ago, and the travelling cape I bought there is not yet worn out—the one you wrap the hot-water bottle in, Sonia. My lamented husband, your father, Sonia, knew a great deal about England. But the more he knew about it the oftener he remarked to me, ‘England is merely an island of beef flesh swimming in a warm gulf sea of gravy.’ Such a brilliant way of putting things. Do you remember, Sonia?”
“I forget nothing, mamma,” answered Sonia.
Said the Herr Professor: “That is the proof of your calling, gnädiges Fräulein. Now I wonder—and this is a very interesting speculation—is memory a blessing or—excuse the word—a curse?”
Frau Godowska looked into the distance, then the corners of her mouth dropped and her skin puckered. She began to shed tears.
“Ach Gott! Gracious lady, what have I said?” exclaimed the Herr Professor.
Sonia took her mother’s hand. “Do you know,” she said, “to-night it is stewed carrots and nut tart for supper. Suppose we go in and take our places,” her sidelong, tragic stare accusing the Professor and me the while.
I followed them across the lawn and up the steps. Frau Godowska was murmuring, “Such a wonderful, beloved man”; with her disengaged hand Fräulein Sonia was arranging the sweet-pea “garniture.”
“A concert for the benefit of afflicted Catholic infants will take place in the salon at eight-thirty P.M. Artists: Fräulein Sonia Godowska, from Vienna; Herr Professor Windberg and his trombone; Frau Oberlehrer Weidel, and others.”
This notice was tied round the neck of the melancholy stag’s head in the dining-room. It graced him like a red and white “dinner bib” for days before the event, causing the Herr Professor to bow before it and say “good appetite” until we sickened of his pleasantry and left the smiling to be done by the waiter, who was paid to be pleasing to the guests.