CHAPTER V.
It was certainly an odd pair that they found waiting in the yard. The battle-painter, an animated young fellow, with a clear, bright, rosy complexion, wore an enormous gray felt hat, with a small cock's-feather in the band; and an abundant red beard, that looked as queerly against his pink-and-white face as though a girl had tied a false beard round her chin, in the attempt to disguise herself as a brigand. Looking at the face closely, there was a decidedly spirited and manly look in the clear blue eyes, while a merry laugh lurked constantly about the mobile mouth. Beside him, his companion--though she was apparently still under thirty--seemed almost as though she might be his mother, there was such a weighty seriousness and prompt decision in her movements. She had one of those faces in which one never sees whether they are pretty or ugly; her mouth was a little large, perhaps; her eyes were bright and full of life, and her figure was rather short and thickset. She wore her hair cut short under a simple Leghorn hat; but in the rest of her dress there was nothing especially conspicuous.
Jansen introduced Felix, and a few commonplaces were exchanged. After her first glance at him, Angelica whispered something to the sculptor that evidently related to the stately figure of his friend, and its likeness to the bust she had seen in his studio. Then all four strolled along the Schwanthalerstrasse, followed by the dog, which kept close behind Felix, and from time to time rubbed its nose against his hand.
They stopped before a pretty one-story house in the suburb, standing in the middle of a neatly-kept garden. Rosenbusch took his flute out of his pocket, and played the beginning of the air "Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen." But nothing stirred in the house, although the upper windows were only closed with blinds, and every note rang out far and clear in the hot noonday air.
"Fat Rossel is either asleep or else he pretends he is, so as to shirk our high mass again," said the painter, putting up his flute. "I think we had better go on."
"Andiamo!" said Angelica, nodding. (She had once passed a year in Italy, and certain everyday Italian phrases had a way of slipping involuntarily from her lips every minute or two.)
The conversation, as they strolled on, was not exactly animated. Jansen seemed to be lost in thought; long silences were a habit of his, and, especially when there were several people about him, he could remain for hours apparently without the least interest in what was going on. And then, if something that was said happened to kindle a spark in him, his eloquence seemed all the more surprising. Felix knew him well, and made no attempt to disturb his abstracted mood. He looked about him as he walked, and tried to recognize the streets that he had first strolled through, long before, in one of his vacation journeys. Nor did Rosenbusch seem to be in a particularly talkative frame of mind; and only Angelica, who had a way of assuming a certain chaffing tone toward him, and besides was out of humor because, as she said, she had got "into a blind alley" with one of her pictures, kept up a fire of little sarcasms and ridicule against her neighbor. She even adopted the familiarity of calling him by his nickname, but not without putting a "Herr" before it.
"Do you know, Herr Rosebud, when you're composing a picture, you ought to repeat your poems instead of playing the flute? I know it would inspire you a great deal more, and your neighbors would suffer less. Now, to-day, for instance, I put some carmine on a whole group of children I was painting, and spoiled it, just because that everlasting adagio of yours had made me so sentimental."
"Why didn't you pound on the door, then, my honored friend, as we agreed, and then I would have 'ceased my cruel sport?'"
"If it hadn't been Sunday, and I hadn't said to myself it will soon be twelve o'clock, and then he'll stop anyhow--. But see that sweet little girl in the carriage--the one with the blue hat, next to the young man--it's a bridal couple, surely! What eyes she has! And how she laughs, and throws herself back in the carriage like a thoughtless child!"