IV
The first meeting between Wickham Brand and young Franz von Kreuzenach had been rather dramatic, according to my friend’s account of it, and he did not dramatise his stories much, in spite of being (before the war) an unsuccessful novelist. It had happened on the third night after his presentation of the billeting-paper which by military right of occupation ordered the owners of the house to provide a bedroom and sitting-room for an officer. There had been no trouble about that. The Mädchen who had answered the door of the big white house in a side street off the Kaiserring had dropped a curtsey, and in answer to Brand’s fluent and polite German said at once, “Kommen Sie herein, bitte,” and took him into a drawing-room to the right of the hall, leaving him there while she went to fetch “die gnädige Baronin,” that is to say the Baroness von Kreuzenach. Brand remained standing, and studied the German drawing-room to read its character as a key to that of the family under whose roof he was coming by right of conquest, for that, in plain words, was the meaning of his presence.
It was a large square room, handsomely and heavily furnished in an old-fashioned style, belonging perhaps to the Germany of Bismarck, but with here and there in its adornment a lighter and more modern touch. On one wall, in a gilt frame to which fat gilt cupids clung, was a large portrait of William I. of Prussia, and on the wall opposite, in a similar frame, a portrait of the ex-Kaiser William II. Brand saw also, with an instant thrill of remembrance, two large steel engravings from Winterhalter’s portraits of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He had seen them, as a child, in his grandfather’s house at Kew, and in the houses of school-fellows’ grandfathers, who cherished these representations of Victoria and Albert with almost religious loyalty. The large square of Turkey carpet on polished boards, a mahogany sideboard, and some stiff big arm-chairs of clumsily-carved oak, were reminiscent of German furniture and taste in the period of the mid-nineteenth century, when ours was equally atrocious. The later period had obtruded itself into that background. There was a piano in white wood at one end of the room, and here and there light chairs in the “New Art” style of Germany, with thin legs and straight uncomfortable backs. The most pleasing things in the room were some porcelain figures of Saxon and Hanover ware, little German ladies with pleated gowns and low-necked bodices, and, on the walls, a number of water-colour drawings, mostly of English scenes, delicately done, with vision and a nice sense of atmosphere.
“The younger generation thrusting out the old,” thought Brand, “and the spirit of both of them destroyed by what has happened in five years.”
The door opened, he told me, when he had taken stock of his surroundings, and there came in two women, one middle-aged, the other young. He guessed that he was in the presence of Frau von Kreuzenach and her daughter, and made his bow, with an apology for intruding upon them. He hoped that they would not be in the least degree disturbed by his billeting-order. He would need only a bedroom and his breakfast.
The Baroness was courteous but rather cold in her dignity. She was a handsome woman of about forty-eight, with very fair hair streaked with grey, and a thin, aristocratic type of face, with thin lips. She wore a black silk dress with some fur round her shoulders.
“It will be no inconvenience to us, sir,” she answered in good English, a little hard and over-emphasised. “Although the English people are pleased to call us Huns”—here she laughed good-humouredly—“I trust that you will not be too uncomfortable in a German house, in spite of the privations due to our misfortunes and the severity of your blockade.”
In that short speech there was a hint of hostility—masked under a graciousness of manner—which Wickham Brand did not fail to perceive.
“As long as it is not inconvenient——” he said, awkwardly.