The collie had been in some muddy water on the way, and looked horrible. His legs were thin with wet, and the white parts of his ragged coat covered with dirt. His gaping mouth was black to the throat from nuzzling for field-mice, and his dark red tongue hung dripping out of his mouth. He quickly lapped up his milk, and then lay with panting sides by his mistress's feet, flat on his side, his head thrown back in an attitude of repose.
Klaus Heinrich declared it to be inexcusable for Imma to expose herself after her ride to the invidious springtime air without any wrap. “Take my cloak,” he said. “I really do not want it, I'm quite warm, and my coat is padded on the chest!” She would not hear of it; but he went on asking her so insistently that she consented, and let him lay his grey military coat with a major's shoulder-straps round her shoulders. Then, resting her dark head in its three-cornered hat in the hollow of her hand, she watched him as, with arm outstretched towards the Schloss, he described to her the life he had once led there.
There, where the tall window opened on to the ground, had been the mess-room, then the school-room, and up above Klaus Heinrich's room with the plaster torso on the stove. He told her too about Professor Kürtchen and his tactful way of instructing his pupils, about Captain Amelung's widow, and the aristocratic “Pheasants,” who called everything “hog-wash,” and especially about Raoul Ueberbein, his friend, of whom Imma Spoelmann more than once asked him to tell her some more.
He told her about the doctor's obscure origin, and about the money his parents paid to be quit of him; about the child in the marsh or bog, and the medal for saving life; about Ueberbein's plucky and ambitious career, pursued in circumstances calling for resolution and action, which he used to call favourable circumstances, and about his friendship with Doctor Sammet, whom Imma knew. He described his by no means attractive appearance and readily owned to the attraction which he had exercised on him from the very beginning. He described his behaviour towards himself, Klaus Heinrich—that fatherly and jolly, blustering camaraderie which had distinguished him so sharply from everybody else—and gave Imma to the best of his ability an insight into his tutor's views of life. Finally he expressed his concern that the doctor seemed not to enjoy any sort of popularity among his fellow-citizens.
“I can quite believe that,” said Imma.
He was surprised, and asked why.
“Because I'm convinced,” she said, wagging her head, “that your Ueberbein, for all his sparkling conversation, is an unhappy sort of creature. He may swagger about the place; but he lacks reserve, Prince, and that means that he will come to a bad end.”
Her words startled Klaus Heinrich, and made him thoughtful. Then turning to the Countess, who awoke with a smile out of a brown study, he said something complimentary about her riding, for which she thanked him gracefully. He said that anybody could see that she had learnt to ride as a child, and she confessed that riding lessons had formed a considerable part of her education. She spoke clearly and cheerfully; but gradually, almost imperceptibly, she began to wander into a strange story about a gallant ride which she had made as a lieutenant in the last manœuvres, and suddenly started talking about the dreadful wife of a sergeant in the Grenadiers, who had come into her room the previous night and scratched her breasts all over, meanwhile using language which she could not bring herself to repeat. Klaus Heinrich asked quietly whether she had not shut her door and windows.
“Of course, but anyone could break the glass!” she answered hastily, and turned pale in one cheek and red in the other. Klaus Heinrich nodded acquiescence, and, dropping his eyes, asked her quietly to let him call her “Frau Meier” now and then, a proposal which she gladly accepted, with a confidential smile and a far-away look which had something strangely attractive about it.
They got up to visit the “Pheasantry,” after Klaus Heinrich had taken back his cloak; and as they left the garden, Imma Spoelmann said: “Well done, Prince. You're getting on,” a commendation which made him blush, indeed gave him far more pleasure than the most fulsome newspaper report of the valuable effect of his appearance at a ceremony which Councillor Schustermann could ever show him.