Karen E-Book

Cecily Sidgwick

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

‘I am going to Germany,’ I said, looking up from my letters.
‘What for?’ said Dad. He never wasted words.
‘Eugenie Gutheim is going to be married and wants me to come to her wedding. I promised her I would if she won her bet.’
Dad and I were sitting opposite to each other in our flat in Sloane Gardens. It was the end of April 1913 and I had various engagements for the month of May. But when Eugenie’s letter came, I decided as I read it that I would throw them all to the winds and go to Reichenstadt. I was accustomed to see Dad fly off to the ends of the earth at a few hours’ notice and not appear again for months: but I had never been with him. In fact I had never been abroad. 

Leseprobe

Karen

Cecily Sidgwick

© 2024 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385748265

Karen

I

‘I am going to Germany,’ I said, looking up from my letters.

‘What for?’ said Dad. He never wasted words.

‘Eugenie Gutheim is going to be married and wants me to come to her wedding. I promised her I would if she won her bet.’

Dad and I were sitting opposite to each other in our flat in Sloane Gardens. It was the end of April 1913 and I had various engagements for the month of May. But when Eugenie’s letter came, I decided as I read it that I would throw them all to the winds and go to Reichenstadt. I was accustomed to see Dad fly off to the ends of the earth at a few hours’ notice and not appear again for months: but I had never been with him. In fact I had never been abroad. Mother had been an invalid for some time before her death two years ago and unable to travel: and while I was at school I spent the holidays at English seaside places or at home. It was time for me to see a foreign country and enlarge my mind. I had to decide such things for myself because Dad had other things to think of, and even when he talked to me had an absent look in his eyes and an appearance of fixing his thoughts with difficulty on my trivial affairs.

‘I am going to Germany, Dad,’ I said again, for he was opening his Times and would, I knew, be immersed in it in another moment.

‘By yourself?’

‘Yes. Why not?’

‘Can you speak German?’

‘A little. Enough to get to Reichenstadt.’

‘Eugenie Gutheim! that bouncing, good-looking girl who stayed here one Easter! What do you mean by saying she has won her bet?’

‘We had a bet together when she left school. I said she would marry a business man, and she said she would marry an officer, however difficult it was.’

‘Why should it be difficult?’

‘Because the Gutheims are Jews. Eugenie told me that no officers visited at their house. Yet she has pulled it off.’

‘Doesn’t she tell you his name? If some Captain Snooks wants to marry you, which heaven forbid, you won’t talk of him as “an officer,” will you?’

‘His name is Eduard von Gösen. Noble, too, you see. No wonder Eugenie is excited. Shall I read you her letter?’

I read a page of it, and then Dad said he would imagine the rest. There was too much ecstasy in it for his taste. Eduard was in raptures about Eugenie and Eugenie was in raptures about Eduard. His godly beauty! his martial bearing! his tender heart! and ‘oh! his kiss!’

‘But that last is a quotation,’ I explained, for Dad looked rather sick. ‘And Eugenie’s father is giving her all the furniture and twenty thousand pounds. In marks it sounds stupendous.’

‘H—m,’ said Dad. ‘You can have your jaunt to Germany if you have set your heart on it, but don’t bring a lieutenant back with you.’

I thought I could promise Dad not to do that. I meant to marry an Englishman if I married at all, but I was in no hurry. I was enjoying my present life too much to want to change it, and next time Dad went across the world I meant to go with him. I had told him so, and he had only stared and said nothing. When the time came I should pack my trunk and remind him to take two tickets instead of one.

A week later I was on my way to Reichenstadt. I knew that I was young and inexperienced to travel alone. At least I knew that other people would say so, and that if Mother had been alive I should never have been allowed to do it. But Dad never thought of little things like that, and luckily I had no old aunts and cousins to interfere. I did not take Wilkins, my maid, because I knew from Eugenie that there would be no room for her in their flat, and that if ever I was invited there I should be expected by myself. She had said that in Germany girls did not have maids of their own unless they belonged to the highest and wealthiest circles, and that you would hardly be accompanied by one on a visit unless you were a royalty or a millionaire.

Dad saw me off from Charing Cross, told me to take care of my keys and my ticket, and asked me to send him a wire when I got to Reichenstadt. He described Calais station to me and the two trains that would be waiting for Paris and Cologne, and he reminded me that I should have to change at Cologne. He did not expect me to have any difficulties.

‘The girl who came from Arabia looking for her lover knew how easy travelling was,’ he pointed out, ‘she just said “Thomas—London”—and got there.’

So when I arrived at Cologne I remembered the Saracen girl and said Reichenstadt to the first porter I saw: and he took me straight to a train waiting at a siding. I think our train must have been late, for he hurried me into a first-class compartment as if there was not a moment to lose, threw my dressing-case after me, took my tip, and banged the door as we got under way. There were two people in the train: an officer in a greyish uniform and a boy of about twelve, who wore spectacles and looked thin and ill. The officer seemed to be a most disagreeable man. As my porter opened the door he had commanded him in a hectoring voice to find another place for the lady as he wished to travel in peace. But there had been no time. I was on the step, the train began to move, several railwaymen were shouting indignantly at my porter and me, and all I could do was to stumble in. I might have gone along the corridor and looked for another seat, but I did not feel inclined to. I was not in the officer’s way, and I had as much right to my corner as he had to his. The boy and he both sat with their backs to the engine, and the boy sat opposite me. They did not speak to each other, and it did not occur to me that they were travelling together. The boy looked at me a good deal, but the man stared out of the window and seemed to be annoyed. He had a hard, arrogant profile, fine in its way, but cold. Presently two other officers looked in, stared at me, and asked him to come with them to the Buffet. He got up to do so, and then I realised how tall he was and how strongly made. Directly he had gone the boy in spectacles looked up at me and said:

‘Gnädiges Fräulein is English.’

‘Yes,’ I said; ‘how did you know?’

‘One sees it: besides, I heard you speak to the porter.’

‘I’m glad that odious man has gone. I hope he won’t come back. I think I’ll take his place.’

‘He will come back,’ said the boy, getting very red and uncomfortable.

‘Do you know him?’

‘He is my father. He is Graf Wolfram von Hohenroda, Rittmeister in the 2nd Reichenstadt Dragoons. I am Graf Max von Hohenroda.’

The boy stood up, put his heels together, made me a deep bow, and sat down again.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said; ‘you didn’t speak to each other and so I didn’t guess . . . besides, you are not at all alike.’

‘It does not matter,’ said the boy, who had charming manners. ‘You could not know. Unfortunately for me I do not resemble my father. My mother was an Eschenau, and all the Eschenaus are small and fair and delicate. It cannot be helped, but it makes life difficult.’

He looked downright ill, I thought: ill and melancholy. Probably the big arrogant man bullied him. I could easily believe it.

‘Life would be easier at the present moment if I could get some breakfast,’ I said; ‘I’m starving.’

II

‘You have only to ring that bell,’ said the boy, pointing to one I had not noticed. ‘The Kellner will bring you what you want here: or, of course, you can go to the Buffet.’

‘Have you had breakfast?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said, with some hesitation and a blush that made him quite pretty for the moment. I felt sure that his mother had been pretty, with gentle blue eyes and fair hair: and she had been married to that big blood and iron man: and had died.

‘Let’s have it together . . . in here,’ I said; ‘I don’t want to go to the Buffet.’

The waiter came running along the corridor as I spoke, and before the boy had time to object I gave the order. In a few minutes we had an ingenious little table let down between us and a tray brought with delicious hot coffee, fresh rolls, and ambrosial butter. They do some things much better in the Fatherland than we do at home. But not everything.

By this time we were travelling through wooded hill country with deep valleys, winding rivers, and little towns set here and there. The boy knew the names of the towns and the number of their inhabitants and what they manufactured. He said that he took this journey every year in order to visit his maternal grandparents, who lived near Cologne, and that his father had told him all these facts about the towns and expected him to remember them.

‘When I travel I like to look out of the window and dream,’ I said; ‘I should hate to be told things that I was obliged to remember.’

‘My father says that dreams profit nobody,’ said the boy with a sigh. ‘A man must be well-informed and acquainted with facts.’

He buttered his third roll and I poured out a second cup of coffee for him. We both felt better for our breakfast, the sun was shining on the hills, the train lumbered slowly forward, and voices from the corridor reached us in fragmentary dialogue with laughter intervening. Presently the waiter appeared again and said something in an undertone to the boy who instantly got up.

‘My father has sent for me,’ he said, looking decidedly frightened. But before he went he made one of his ceremonious bows again, and said that it had been a great pleasure to him to have breakfast with me. When he had gone I paid the waiter for my breakfast, and found that the bearish man had paid for the boy’s.

Presently I fell asleep. I did not want to because we were going through such lovely country, but after a sleepless night, breakfast and the hot sun combined were too much for me. At first I fought against my drowsiness, stared out of the window, and tried hard to keep awake. Then I dreamed and heard voices through my dreams. Then I sat up suddenly, looked at my watch and found it was midday: so I must have been asleep for hours. Very annoying. The boy and his father sat opposite me again and the father looked as point-device as if he had been on parade: while I felt dazed and dishevelled.

‘Does this train go through to Reichenstadt?’ I said to the boy, for I was not sure. After all we had had breakfast together and made friends. But I shall always believe that he had been told not to speak to me, for he coloured painfully and turned to his father for instruction.

‘This train goes through to Reichenstadt,’ said the man. ‘Some do not, but this is the quick train from Cologne.’

‘My wig!’ I cried, ‘if this is a quick train, what is a slow one like?’

He almost thawed into a smile, but not quite.

‘Our train service is excellent,’ he said. ‘At least we think so.’ Then he turned his head again and resumed his study of the landscape. I took out a book and began to read and the boy watched me intently. Perhaps his father noticed this and did not like it, for in a few minutes he turned to his son and ordered him, in a harsh voice, to come to his side of the carriage and sit opposite him. I cannot convey his manner of speaking to any one who has not met Germans of his type, because in our country we hardly scold dogs in such a tone. The nearest thing to it that I know is the rasping voice of a sergeant drilling raw recruits: but he is addressing a number of men and not an individual. Besides, he has to shout to make himself heard. The boy moved at once, and as he did so stumbled a little over my foot. His father said something violent in so low a tone that I did not catch the words, but the boy looked as if he would cry in another moment and stopped short where he stood, his eyes fixed on mine.

‘You didn’t hurt me,’ I said.

‘Your foot should not have been there,’ said his father.

‘Perhaps not,’ said I, taken by surprise.

‘There is no doubt about it. I observed that your foot was at least two inches beyond your part of the floor.’

‘Then I must apologise to you,’ I said, looking up at the boy and smiling at him.

‘That is far-fetched,’ said his father. ‘A boy should take care not to be clumsy, and even if it is not his fault, he should apologise.’

I relapsed into my book again after this, for though the man had spoken to me his manner had been as arrogant and disagreeable as before. When the waiter announced dinner he got up at once and stalked out of the carriage without waiting to see whether I was coming too, and I hoped that I should not be placed at the same table. But I was. The two Hohenrodas sat on one side and I sat next to an enormous female who bulged over her seat and nearly edged me off mine. She wore a shiny grey alpaca skirt, a white blouse (such a one!), a sort of Paisley bolero, and a pork-pie hat perched on smooth, sandy hair done in a bun behind. When the waiter came round with the wine list she ordered Marcobrunner, and the Graf ordered Marcobrunner too. I don’t drink wine as a rule, but in spite of my sleep since breakfast I felt flat and tired, so I did what I thought was the safe thing and ordered Marcobrunner. But when the wine came, I found that whole bottles had been brought for the bearish man and me and a half bottle for the female at my side. They were uncorked so I did not try to change it. But I looked at it ruefully, and my neighbour looked at it severely, and the boy laughed.

‘Gnädiges Fräulein is assuredly very thirsty,’ he said mischievously.

‘Max!’ His father glowered at him.

‘Of course I wanted half a bottle,’ I said, ‘but it doesn’t matter.’

It didn’t in the least, for as I spoke the boy stretched out his hand for the Speisekarte and upset my bottle with the neck falling towards me and pouring a stream of wine into my lap. I jumped up to avoid being soaked, the stout female screeched like a cockatoo, every one near us stared, the boy turned as white as a sheet, and his father, after he had seized the bottle and set it on end again, said to him in that agreeable voice of his:

‘Away! If you can’t behave yourself you may go hungry.’

‘He didn’t do it on purpose,’ I said indignantly.

The man took no more notice of me than if I had not spoken, but turned to the boy, and with an imperious gesture, confirmed his order of dismissal.

‘Oh! do forgive him,’ I said. ‘I don’t mind in the least. Besides, I can get some more.’

Instead of answering, the man summoned the wine waiter, who stood a little way off and was looking on helplessly at what had happened.

‘A clean cloth and a fresh bottle of wine for this lady,’ he said. He spoke to the waiter much as we speak to a spaniel when we want it to come to heel, but I began to think it was his natural tone to inferiors and subordinates and did not mean much. But I was not going to fall in with his ideas.

‘You need not order fresh wine for me,’ I said. ‘If you drive your son away I shall go away too.’

‘On what grounds?’

‘I state a fact. You may guess at the reason.’

He turned on his son in a fury.

‘Are you here still?’

The boy fled before his father’s wrath, a trembling, piteous little figure. I was so angry myself that I could hardly speak, but I only had two words to say, and before I followed the boy I said them.

‘Guten Appetit!’ I flung at him. Eugenie had sometimes said it to me as we began to eat so I knew the phrase. Under the circumstances I hoped it would annoy him, and I believe it did. He looked like thunder.

III

At this point I am going to describe a portrait of my mother that hangs in the drawing-room at home. She was alluring and exquisite to the day of her death: but when this portrait was painted she had a spice of the devil in her eyes. ‘Green as green flames, blue-grey like skies, and soft like sighs,’ they were: and her hair was dark with bronze lights in it, and her hands were slim and white. That’s enough. You must imagine the rest. I’m not what she was, but I’m like her to look at. Dad says so. And, by the way, my name is Karen Gilfoy. Dad is what people call a financier. He rushes about all over the world and ‘operates’: but I can’t tell you much more about his ways of earning his bread. Sometimes we seem to be rich and sometimes hard up, but we get along. I’ve been as well or as ill-educated as an English girl is who goes to an expensive school and likes games better than work: and I’ve always had all the money I wanted for clothes. I was not called Karen after Hans Andersen’s dancing girl, but after a Danish friend of my mother’s who married an Englishman and was my godmother. So much for our family affairs.

I happened to be travelling in a very thin, fine tweed, and the wine had soaked me through to the skin. When I got back to the carriage the boy was crying, and I felt hungry again and damp and uncomfortable. So I lost my temper and rang the bell hard and repeatedly. The boy left off crying when I did that and looked at me in horror. Then he pointed to a notice just under the bell with Verboten in big letters and a whole rigmarole in small ones. However, I didn’t have to read it, because the noise I made brought an official in uniform who worked his arms up and down like a semaphore and talked nineteen to the dozen. My school German would not keep pace with his, so I said twice in a commanding voice:

‘Dinner for two. Here. Quickly. Do you understand?’

He was beginning the semaphore business again when I produced a large silver coin and pressed it into his hand, saying, as well as I could for laughing:

‘For you. Dinner. Quickly. Very hungry.’

All the while the boy was staring at me with eyes like tea-saucers. I believe he thought I should be clapped into prison there and then for disrespectful behaviour to an official in uniform. But, on the contrary, the man suddenly turned as sweet as honey, disappeared, and before long returned with a waiter and a tray. In a twinkling the little table was let down again between the boy and me and we were eating veal cutlets with a macedoine of vegetables that was delicious and most soothing to our spirits. I had some trouble at first to persuade the boy to eat. He said his father would not wish it. But when the cutlets and the macedoine were put before him he could not resist them.

‘Is your dress quite ruined?’ he asked with a sigh when he began to feel better.

‘I don’t suppose so,’ I said; ‘a good English tweed ought to be able to stand a little German wine.’

I put it in that silly way because his father had annoyed me so much and I was still out of temper.

‘You grow no wine in England,’ said the boy.

‘We buy a good deal,’ I countered.

Then we went on for a while in the same fashion, he saying teasing things about England, and I crowing as loud as I could about my country and country folk. But we did not vex each other because we were both laughing and in a happy frame of mind. I was trying to prove that a London fog was rather enjoyable if you were used to it, when back came the bearish man and saw his son before his son saw him. I believe it startled him to find the boy looking as a boy of that age should, cheerful and with a bit of mischief in his eyes. At any rate he stared hard at him, stared at the table still between us, and stared at me as if he hardly knew what to say. He had fine eyes.

‘You must ring,’ I said to the boy. ‘We want these things taken away.’

Then I got up and moved to the other side of the carriage, leaving my seat free for the bearish man, who could not have passed me. He sat down and spoke to the boy, on whose face a cloud of fear had now descended.

‘I told you to go hungry,’ he said.

‘I persuaded him to eat,’ said I; ‘it is not good for the young to go long without food. If he had not eaten he would probably have been ill.’

He acknowledged what I said by a stiffening of manner and by an inclination of his head that was too slight and frosty to call a bow. When the waiter came he threw a paper note on the table while I stood up and hurriedly gave the man a piece of gold. No doubt we both felt rather silly. Certainly I did. However, the waiter settled the matter by taking the price of my meal from me and the price of the boy’s meal from his father’s note. The table was cleared, the man resumed his former seat, I went back to mine, and we all travelled in silence. I tried to read, and fell asleep again. When I waked I looked at my watch and knew we must be near Reichenstadt. Before long the outskirts of the town appeared, and in a few minutes we drew up at the big station. As we did so I saw Eugenie Gutheim on the platform, and with her a small, fair-haired man in uniform with some roses in his hand, and a girl I guessed to be her sister Emma. They rushed up to the window when they saw me, and before I could get out Eugenie presented her bridegroom and he presented his roses. For a moment I blocked the way, and the last I saw of the bearish man was a profile that expressed his contempt of the people who met me, and who, even while they welcomed me, tried hard to attract his notice. Eugenie’s little officer saluted him, Eugenie addressed him as her dear Graf, and her sister gazed at him in idiotic rapture, as if the privilege of seeing him deprived her of her wits and her speech. The Graf made me a stiff bow before he strode through the crowd, and the boy bid me good-bye as if he was sorry to part from me. Then they disappeared, and I imagined that I should never see them again.

Eugenie’s sister was a shock to me, and so, to tell the truth, was her bridegroom. Eugenie had always assured me that Emma was extraordinarily handsome, and she had described Eduard von Gösen as a man of high lineage and godly beauty. But if it had not been for his uniform Eduard would have looked what, in fact, he was: a very ordinary, amiable little man with a snub nose, mild blue eyes, and a foolish smile. As for Emma, she had a parroty profile and the kind of mouth you see everywhere in Germany and never in England. I can see it as I write and I could draw it, but to put its distinguishing marks into words is difficult. The lips are rather thick and the corners are rather greedy and sulky, and the German gutturals suit it exactly. Eugenie had the mouth, but she was handsomer than her sister. Both girls were well dressed in a heavy way, but their hats were hideous. They were much more interested in the bearish man and his son than in me, and they asked me a string of questions about them.

‘Did Graf von Hohenroda speak to you?’ asked Eugenie in an awestruck voice.

‘The boy and I made friends,’ I said.

‘The Graf will be present at our wedding, we hope. It is a great honour, but Eduard knew him as a boy. Did he converse with you, or was it only the little Graf who showed himself amiable?’

‘It was only the boy. His father was decidedly unamiable.’

‘Ah! He has that reputation. He is highly exclusive and aristocratic. He visits with hardly any one in Reichenstadt. He is a great deal at court, and the Grand Duke is devoted to him.’

‘Does he live in Reichenstadt?’

‘He comes there. He lives at Hohenroda, in his father’s castle. Eduard has known him all his life, and at first he was very much opposed to our marriage.’

‘But when Eduard presented you to him he was very polite,’ put in Emma, ‘he said he was pleased to make your acquaintance.’

‘I have great hopes that he may come to our Polterabend as well as to our wedding,’ said Eduard.

‘Eduard! what are you saying?’ cried Emma in an ecstasy: and Eduard nudged his bride. We were all in a taxi by this time, and nudging was nothing to the endearments the betrothed pair had indulged in from the moment we started. At first I had looked out of the window because I did not want to embarrass them, but I found that Eugenie did not remove her head from Eduard’s shoulder when I turned mine their way: nor did my presence and Emma’s act as any check on the need they felt to press each other’s hands and to address each other in those diminutive terms of endearment for which we have no exact equivalent in the English tongue. I may tell you that he called her his little pigeon and that she called him her little treasure, but it doesn’t sound the same thing.

IV

The Gutheims had a handsome flat in what was evidently an expensive quarter of the town. I expected that, as at school Eugenie had talked overmuch about her father’s money and the luxurious way in which the family lived. The plain school fare had been a great trial to her, and so were the school regulations about clothes and jewellery. She had not been much liked at school, but not exactly disliked either; for though we thought her boastful and in some ways silly and touchy, we found her good-natured and amusing. Our friendship began accidentally in one of the short vacations when she was not going to Germany, and could not go as usual to her cousins in Manchester on account of measles. I asked her to stay with us and we gave her a good time. It was easy to do so, but she was grateful, and adopted me ever after as her bosom friend. I doubt whether the friendship would have lasted if we had remained together, because my fervour never equalled hers. But she went back to Germany at the end of the term, and since then we had not met. She had altered considerably in the three years that had elapsed, and was now a handsome, self-confident young woman who would some day be enormous unless she curbed her appetite and took plenty of exercise. I saw directly I arrived that she was a replica of her mother, who, however, belonged to a simpler generation and gave herself no airs. Frau Gutheim must have weighed about eighteen stone, and a man who made up his mind to marry her image could see the fate awaiting him. Moreover the lady had a temper and made use of it. Before I crossed the threshold she was having a row with the taxi-driver and the maid about muddy boots and my trunks. But her face was wreathed with smiles as she received me, and when she ushered me into the room I was to occupy she looked at me with appraising eyes, and said that she was delighted to have me as her guest because I had stood by her daughter when she was neglected and forsaken by her relatives.

‘But they couldn’t help it,’ I said, ‘they had measles.’

‘Perhaps!’ said Frau Gutheim, showing plainly that she did not believe in the measles, and then she looked round the well-furnished room with evident pride and apologised for its imperfections. As I assured her that I saw everything necessary to my comfort, Eugenie came in with a vase of lilies-of-the-valley which she was about to put on the dressing-table when her mother snatched it from her.

‘No, Eugenie!’ she said, ‘that I will not allow. Everything in reason. Flowers in a bedroom are not reasonable. They are unhealthy, and the vase would probably mark the highly-polished toilet-table. I consider toilet-tables ridiculous. A hanging glass behind the washstand is all I had when I was a girl. But you persuaded your father to buy this expensive suite, and my duty is to take care of it.’

‘But, Mamma, it is the English custom. When I stayed with Karen I always found flowers on my dressing-table. Is it not so, Karenchen?’

‘One can quite well do without them,’ I murmured.

‘To every country its own ways. Karen has roses already. She cannot need two kinds of flowers in order to fall asleep to-night in what I hope is a comfortable bed. Allow me to take your roses, my child. They shall be placed in a glass and the glass can stand on the marble top of the night table near your bed. Marble can be washed.’

‘Mamma is very excited,’ said Eugenie as her mother waddled out of the room carrying my roses with her. ‘A wedding makes a great deal to do in the house, and even in ordinary times she has a hot temper. I shall be glad when it is all over and I get away with my Eduard, who is always amiable. Tell me, Karen, what impression has my Eduard made on you? Is he not a pearl amongst men?’

I was very glad the two questions were asked in rapid succession, because I was able to answer that Eduard was undoubtedly a pearl, but I could not honestly have said that he had made much of an impression. If Eugenie considered him a pearl he was a pearl as far as she was concerned, and in matrimony I suppose that is what matters. I hastily changed the subject by unlocking my big trunk and taking out of it the two presents I had brought for Eugenie: one for her wedding and one because I had lost my bet. The wedding present was a diamond pendant, and I paid my debt with a small travelling clock that had cost more than we wagered, and would, I hoped, be useful. I don’t think she cared for it, but her eyes glistened over the pendant, and in a roundabout way she did her best to discover what it had cost. In the end I told her that I did not know because Dad had bought it, but I could find out if she wished.

‘I can find out,’ she said. ‘At least, I can find out its value. Your father might feel surprised if you asked.’

‘I believe he would,’ I admitted.

When I had put away my things and changed my dress I was called to supper in the dining-room. The girls still wore their tweed skirts and silk blouses: and Frau Gutheim was packed into a black taffetas that creaked as she breathed because it was so tight. I thought she must be very uncomfortable, but I suppose use is second nature. She ate an enormous supper, and embarrassed me by getting quite ratty because I did not eat enough to please her. Eduard had stayed to supper too, and did his best to soothe his future mother-in-law by praising the food and the cooking. When I saw what was wanted, I said I had never tasted anything so delicious as the pickled cucumbers which they called Salzgurken, but that did no good because, as it happened, they had been bought in place of some home-made ones that had gone wrong. Soon after, I refused a second helping of Filet-braten because I did not want it, which seemed, to my mistaken English ideas, a sufficient reason. But Frau Gutheim’s brow clouded ominously, and in a sulky voice she said to Eugenie that she feared their cooking was not good enough to please her friend.

‘Bei uns müssen Sie sich nicht geniren,’ said Herr Gutheim, and before I could stop him he had forked a large slice of meat out of the dish near him and plumped it on my plate. He was an amazingly ugly small man with friendly brown eyes and I rather liked him: but I did not quite understand what he had just said.

‘Nicht geniren,’ said Emma, who sat next to me and ladled little balls of buttery brown potatoes on my meat.

‘They mean that you must eat as much as you like without feeling shy about it,’ said Eugenie, and then told her family in German that in England your hosts never pressed you to eat.

‘But how inhospitable!’ said Frau Gutheim; ‘how, then, can a guest eat himself satisfied?’

I tried to explain the English point of view, but I did not eat the meat and potatoes. I’m afraid I made a bad impression; but it was worth while, for in future Herr Gutheim did not put food on my plate: and Frau Gutheim often observed that it was useless to press me, since English people only considered their own comfort and could not bring the smallest sacrifice in order to please their hosts.

‘Imagine, Mamma!’ said Eugenie when the food question had been discussed sufficiently, ‘Karen travelled in the same carriage with the Hohenrodas and they spoke to her.’

‘I met the Graf in the Stadtpark the other day and he evidently did not know me, although Eduard had presented me a few days before,’ said Emma; ‘at any rate he did not greet me although I am sure he saw me.’

‘How can you be sure?’ said Eduard. ‘Hohenroda is very proud, but he has perfect manners.’

‘I was looking at him,’ said Emma coyly, ‘our eyes met. He has magnetic eyes.’

‘Were you very much attracted, Karen?’ said Eugenie.

‘Attracted!’ I cried, ‘attracted by that bearish, bad-tempered man! I thought him detestable. I never want to see him again.’

‘He will probably not remember you if you meet,’ said Emma snappishly.

V

The trousseau was on view in the living-room and the presents were in the salon. The entertainment on Polterabend was being given by Uncle Marcus, and the wedding dinner and reception were to take place at the Rheinischer Hof, the chief hotel of Reichenstadt. Frau Gutheim informed me of this programme next day at breakfast, and explained that a daughter’s wedding was a joyful event but troublesome, and that her nerves were all to pieces. She regretted that the dining-room was the only room left to the family just now because she knew that I was used to sit in a salon all day. She hoped that I was not drinking coffee, out of politeness, when I really preferred tea. No sugar! How economical! The attention of the family was drawn to the fact that I took no sugar, and that I actually preferred rolls and butter to almond cake, although the cake had been made in my honour with Emma’s own hands. The eggs were of the best quality. I need not be afraid to take a second. A German breakfast must seem painfully frugal to any one used to a heavy hot meal in the morning, but, for her part, she found it lasted her very well till ten o’clock, when we should all have buttered rolls and sausage.

I found these protestations and apologies tiresome, but I supposed they were the custom of the country, and I did not let them spoil my pleasure in being for the first time with foreign folk in a foreign town. The food was good, the room was sunny, my hosts were friendly, and everything looked a little different from what it did at home.

There were no flowers on the table, but there were large, well-kept palms and india-rubber plants in pots near some of the windows: there was the porcelain stove instead of the open fireplace: and there were embroideries of all kinds everywhere. The seats and backs of some chairs were embroidered and so were the footstools: so was a newspaper-rack, a pipe-rack, a cigar-box: photograph frames and moral sayings hung in conspicuous places. Eugenie told me later that Eduard and she did not mean to decorate their flat in this way, but that Mamma had old-fashioned ideas.

‘The world does not stand still,’ she said. ‘My mother wants me to have everything as she had it at the time of her marriage: but that is absurd. We have had terrible scenes, but luckily Eduard supported me. He has great courage. He told Mamma plainly that if she insisted on buying furniture that pleased her and not him he would go back on our engagement. He is highly artistic, and he said it would shatter his soul to possess chairs and tables he could not admire. That brought Mamma to reason: that and the sight of my tears which flowed unceasingly day and night.’

‘But why didn’t Eduard buy his own furniture?’ I asked, for in some ways Eugenie’s narrative puzzled me.

‘My father buys all the furniture and linen and most of the silver,’ she explained.

‘As well as your clothes! And gives you a big dowry too. Then what does Eduard bring to the ménage?’

‘Himself! For me, it is enough. I am not mercenary.’

But I knew Eugenie well enough to know that when she concluded a deal, even if it was a matrimonial one, she would not expect to lose by it: and I had gathered from her talk at school that in Germany a girl of Jewish birth often marries an impecunious officer in order to get a footing in army society. It seemed to me that the parent Gutheims were buying this privilege for their daughter at a high price, and I doubted whether the he parent was as pleased with his bargain as his wife and daughter were. Herr Gutheim was as ugly as one of Du Maurier’s nightmares, but his eyes twinkled with intelligence. I was soon convinced that he took his future son-in-law’s measure and saw him for what he was, a little coxcomb but harmless, and likely to be wax in the hands of his wife. For Eugenie had her mother’s temper and let it loose on the smallest provocation. At school we had soon found that she took offence about nothing and either sulked or dissolved in tears, but on one occasion her whole body had trembled with fury, and we had been rather disgusted by the exhibition she made of herself. I had never had a quarrel with her, and when I accepted her invitation I remembered her agreeable side and hoped for the best. But before I had been under the roof twenty-four hours I knew that her home atmosphere had elements of storm in it that were easily brought into action and easily stilled. In England quarrels are rather serious and leave trouble behind. In the Neue Strasse quarrelling seemed to be an ordinary mode of intercourse and without any effect on the family affections. Any one who has seen Potash and Perlmutter will have some idea of the state of things there. I found such violent squabbles puzzling and distressing until I perceived that the principal parties were not really much upset by them, although they constantly referred to the failing conditions of their hearts and nerves. The worst of it was that the mother and daughters all took me into their confidence and expected my sympathy. Eugenie told me more than once that the flat had been in an uproar ever since she got engaged, and that the scenes over the trousseau had marred her pleasure in it. Mamma had such antiquated ideas, and was so much less inclined than other mammas to profit by the experience and knowledge of the young. One dreadful episode remained in Eugenie’s memory, when a flimsy garment had literally been torn asunder in their hands because Eugenie vowed she would have it and Mamma screamed at her that she should not: in a big shop, too, so that strangers had stared and sniggered. But Mamma was known to be a hot-head, and every one forgave her because she was so efficient and such an admirable housekeeper. There was always a row when she preserved her apricots, but no one else had such good ones or such plenty: and so her family bore with her. Eugenie understood Mamma because she had the same temperament, but just on that account they did not live comfortably together. Emma was more pliable, but lately Emma had shown herself rather silly. She was working herself into a frenzy over Graf Wolfram v. Hohenroda, who would never look at her.

I was going to ask more about that, but just then Frau Gutheim took me to see her kitchen, and when we got there said she deeply regretted having sent Eugenie to an English school because she had come back full of ideas that were in the highest degree exaggerated and unpatriotic. She actually pretended that silver was better polished in England than in Germany, and she had given mortal offence to a wealthy and childless aunt by saying that her friend Karen kept house without any fuss and that her ménage was more comfortable than a German one.

‘Her aunt is very excitable, and quarrels with her servants from morning till night, but she is a magnificent housekeeper,’ said Frau Gutheim.

I would rather have a dinner of herbs where love is than a stalled ox and hatred therewith, but I didn’t say so, because I was afraid Frau Gutheim would get excited if I disagreed with her. So I murmured something inane about every country having its own ways that I hoped would be sedative and non-committal. But if Frau Gutheim wanted a flare-up she would have one with anybody and on any pretext.

‘Of course every country has its own ways,’ she cried. ‘That is what I am trying to point out to you. German housekeepers are the finest in the world. No one can deny it. They require no advice or assistance from Englishwomen, who know nothing whatever.’

I looked at Emma with gratitude, for she created a diversion just then by coming in to us with her hand pressed to her heart and her face white with emotion.

‘He is in Reichenstadt,’ she exclaimed. ‘I have just seen him. He is not at Hohenroda. He is probably staying here for the wedding. He will be present to-morrow night. I shall hear his voice. I may touch his hand. If he invites me to dance I shall swoon.’

‘Stupid goose,’ said Frau Gutheim, and waddled away.

‘Mamma is a pearl amongst women,’ said Emma turning her eyes heavenwards, ‘but she is not sympathetic with youth. Yet I suppose she was once in love with my father and idealised him. I must ask her.’

At that moment Frau Gutheim returned, evidently in a hurry and saying something about her keys and the provoking stupidity of people who borrowed them and did not give them back.

‘Tell me. Mamma,’ piped Emma, ‘when you married Papa did you not love him?’

‘Where are my keys?’ snapped Frau Gutheim. ‘You had them last.’

‘If you had seen him pass your door would your heart not have beaten faster? Would you not have agonised and rejoiced at the thought of meeting him? Tell me what you said when you first saw him?’

‘I said nothing would induce me to marry that ugly little man. So now you know,’ answered Emma’s mother. ‘And your father had his doubts too. He thought, as a young man, that he could never make himself happy with a woman who would become stout and heavy. No doubt we were fools: but we were never such fools as you. What have you done with my keys?’

VI

Eventually Frau Gutheim’s keys were discovered in her own petticoat pocket, but not before Emma and the parlour-maid had been reduced to tears. The parlour-maid wore a navy blue skirt, a checked apron, and a tartan blouse, open at the neck and fastened with an eighteen-penny diamond brooch, so she was not exactly smart: but she did not seem to mind being called a sheep’s head by her irate mistress, nor did she bridle and give notice when she was accused of stealing the keys in order to get into the store-room. She only wept copiously and noisily and talked about her service-book, in which any one, the English lady, for instance, could satisfy herself that Anna Schmidt had always had a character for perfect honesty.

‘What does she mean by her service-book?’ I said to Eugenie, who had come to take me into the rooms where her trousseau and wedding presents were on view, but had lingered to join in the fray.

‘Every servant in Germany has one,’ Eugenie explained. ‘They are all under police supervision, and have to produce their books on demand. If they lose them they are fined or imprisoned. The book contains a full description of a servant’s appearance and family circumstances and his or her character, signed by each successive employer.’

‘Then if a girl behaved badly on one occasion and it was recorded in her book, she could never live it down?’

‘Never,’ said Eugenie complacently.

‘It doesn’t seem fair.’

‘It’s convenient, and it gives employers a hold.’

My sympathies were all with the girl although she wore a tartan blouse, had the national mouth, and roared in an abandoned way. But I was glad to get out of the room with Eugenie, and while we were looking at her clothes, Emma came in and told us the keys were found and that Mamma was quiet again. I had not been twenty-four hours in the flat yet, but I had begun to think already that Papa had the best of it, because he was mostly at home at night when Mamma was presumably asleep. Her waking hours seemed to be too tempestuous for family comfort.

‘But where is your linen?’ I said to Eugenie when I had examined and admired the rest of her wardrobe, which was handsome, but on the whole heavy. ‘It is the linen I want to see. I have always heard that German brides have quantities of it.’

‘It is on view at the shop where it was bought,’ said Eugenie. ‘We will go there.’

‘How prosaic!’

‘But how practical! My great-grandmother spun her own. We still have some of it. My grandmother and mother made up their own and embroidered all the monograms. Months they must have worked at it. I went to Lange’s and ordered everything in a few hours. German girls used to begin to nil their linen chest when they were confirmed, but no one does that nowadays. We want to amuse ourselves while we are young.’

‘Tell me, Karen,’ said Emma at this moment, ‘am I better looking than Eugenie, or is she better looking than me?’

‘I can answer that,’ volunteered Eugenie. ‘I am better looking than you, of course. You have a fine colour and a good head of hair, but your profile is worth nothing. You will be the image of Aunt Rosalie in a few years.’

‘Eugenie!’ shrieked Emma, and I thought there was going to be a family row again.

‘It is of no consequence,’ Eugenie continued, ‘you have good looks enough to make a good parti considering what Papa can do for us. We are neither of us much to look at compared with Karen. Mamma is quite annoyed because I had not told her that you were of a dazzling beauty, Karen. I explained to her that I did not know it myself. In your school uniform one saw that you had long arms and legs and unusual eyes, but now . . .’

Eugenie blew me a little kiss, and Emma stared at me sulkily.

‘But what is your mother annoyed about?’ I asked.

‘Emma, shall I tell Karen about Oscar Strauss?’

‘It is all the same to me,’ said Emma sulkily. ‘I take no interest whatever in Oscar Strauss. He leaves me cold.’

Eugenie made a grimace at me that her sister must have seen and understood as well as I did. It meant that the subject would be resumed later when we were by ourselves. She had once described herself at school as a person of ‘enormous tact,’ a phrase that remained in our minds because we all thought that, however much she possessed she failed to show a vestige of it. I was not surprised when we were left by ourselves almost at once as Emma flounced out of the room saying that she did not wish to incommode us and that sisterly affection was at a low ebb when a stranger . . . I did not hear the end of the sentence. Perhaps Emma’s emotions impeded her speech.

‘My mother and sister are the noblest and finest natures in the world,’ said Eugenie in a voice that made me long to shake her because it was so charged with feeling. ‘They have only one fault. They are both insanely jealous.’