Crammon had determined to stay only one week at the Villa Ophelia.
In the first place he did not like to prolong the family idyl beyond
decent and appropriate limits. In the second place his programme, which
he was not in the habit of changing except for catastrophes, demanded
his departure for England. But the one week merged into a second, and
the second into a third. At the end of the third week he was still
unable to come to a decision.
He was rancorous against his surroundings and against himself, and
as whimsical as a woman. He blamed himself, accused himself of
senile indecision, and was full of bitter dissatisfaction with the
slovenliness of the countess’s establishment. The cuisine was, in his
view, too greasy, and threatened to upset his sensitive digestion; the
servants were not properly respectful, because their wages were too
often in arrears. The constant stream of guests was generally lacking
in nothing so much as in distinction. There were second-rate musicians
and poets and painters, and women of the same calibre. Furthermore
there were aristocrats of doubtful reputation. In brief, a gathering of
parasites, the thriftless, the unprofitable.
Among them Crammon had the appearance of a relic of an exalted and
hieratic age.
One day the two nephews of the countess, Ottomar and Reinhold
Stojenthin, appeared. They had succeeded in getting leave of absence
for two months. Leave of absence from what? Crammon inquired with
raised brows. They wanted to accompany Letitia to Munich. “They are
splendid chaps, Herr von Crammon,” said the countess. “Do take them
under your protection.” Crammon was vexed. “I’ve always lived in
perfect dread of some one’s discovering my hidden talent for the rôle
of a governess. The achievement was reserved for you, countess.”
His relations to Puck, the Pekingese, were strained. The little animal
enraged him inexplicably. Whenever he saw it his eyes grew round and
his face scarlet with anger. Perhaps it was the dog’s deep tawny coat;
perhaps it was its sleepiness; perhaps he suspected it of maliciously
feigning a delicate state of health so that it could sprawl on silken
couches and have tidbits stuck into its mouth. The anxious care that
Letitia gave the creature annoyed him. Once the little dog had gotten
up from the carpet and, wheezing asthmatically, had slipped out through
the door. “Where is Puck?” Letitia asked after a while from the depth
of her armchair. Puck wasn’t to be seen. “Do whistle to him, Bernard,”
she begged in her flute-like voice. “You can do that yourself,” said
Crammon quite rudely. Letitia, calmly pathetic, dreamily preoccupied,
said: “Please do it for me. I can’t whistle when I’m excited.”
So Crammon whistled to the hateful beast.
Still, a decision had to be arrived at. “Are you going to Munich with
me?” the siren Letitia cooed, and laughed at his anger. To her aunt
she said: “He’s still raging, but he’ll go with us in the end.”
Crammon nursed an ethical intention. He would influence Letitia to her
own advantage. He could open her eyes to the dangerous downward slope
of the path which she pursued with such unfortunate cheerfulness.
She could be helped and supported and given a timely warning. Her
extravagance could be checked, and her complete lack of judgment could
be corrected. She was utterly inexperienced and thoughtless. She
believed every liar, and gave her confidence to every chatterer. She
was enthusiastic over any charlatan, held all flattery to be sincere,
and provided every fool who paid court to her with a halo of wisdom and
of pain. She needed to be brought to reason.
Crammon was quite right. Yet a mere smile of Letitia would silence
him. She blunted the point of the most pertinent maxims and of the
soundest moralizing by holding her head a little on one side, looking
at him soulfully and saying in a sweetly and archly penitential tone:
“You see, dear Bernard, I’m made this way. What’s the use of trying to
be different? Would you want me to be different? If I were, I’d only
have other faults. Do let me be as I am.” And she would slip one hand
through his arm, and with the other tickle his almost double chin. And
he would hold still and sigh.
The following persons started on the journey to Munich: Letitia, her
personal maid, the nurse Eleutheria, the twins, the countess, Fräulein
Stöhr, Ottomar and Reinhold, Crammon, the Pole Stanislaus Rehmer. Also
the following animals: Puck, the Pekingese, a bullfinch in one cage and
a tame squirrel in another. The luggage consisted of fourteen large
trunks, sixteen hand-bags, seven hat-boxes, one perambulator, three
luncheon baskets, and innumerable smaller packages wrapped in paper,
leather, or sack-cloth, not to mention coats, umbrellas, sticks, and
flowers. In the train the countess wrung her hands, Puck barked and
whined pathetically, Letitia made a long list of things that had been
forgotten at the last moment, the maid quarreled with the conductor,
the twins screamed, Eleutheria offended the other passengers by baring
her voluminous breasts, Fräulein Stöhr had her devout and patient
heavenward glance, Ottomar and Reinhold debated some literary matter,
the Pole spent his time gazing at Letitia, Crammon sat in sombre mood
with legs crossed and twiddled his thumbs.
With the exception of the Stojenthin brothers, who went to a more
modest hostelry, the whole company took rooms in the Hotel Continental.
The bill which was presented to the countess at the end of each day was
rarely for less than three hundred marks. “Stöhr,” she said, “we must
find new sources of help. The child suspects nothing, of course. It
would break her heart if she had an inkling of my pecuniary anxieties.”
Fräulein Stöhr, without abandoning her air of virtue, succeeded in
implying her doubt of that.
A lawyer of the highest reputation was entrusted with the suit against
the Gunderams. The representative of the defendants had been instructed
to refuse all demands. There were endless conferences, during which
the countess flamed with noble indignation, while Letitia exhibited an
elegiac amazement, as though these things did not concern her and had
faded from her memory. Her statements as to what she had said and done,
concerning agreements and events, were never twice the same. When these
contradictions were brought to her attention, she answered, ashamed and
dreamy and angry at once: “You’re frightfully pedantic. How am I to
remember it all? I suppose things were as you’ve said they were in your
documents. What are the documents for?”
The old litigation concerning the forest of Heiligenkreuz was also to
be accelerated. The countess’s hopes in this matter were justified in
no respect. Nevertheless she felt that she was a wealthy landowner,
and sought capitalists to finance her on the security of this dusty
and hopeless claim. She failed, yet her faith was unshaken. She even
prevailed upon herself to enter places that she considered unhygienic,
and chaffer with persons who were not immaculate. “Don’t worry, my
angel,” she said to Letitia. “Everything will turn out well. By Easter
we shall be rolling in money.”
Letitia did not, indeed, worry. She enjoyed herself and was radiant.
Every day was so full of delight and pleasure that it seemed rank
ingratitude to think of the morrow except under the same aspect. Life
clung to her as pliantly and adorningly as a charming frock. Since her
inner life was unshadowed and all men smiled upon her, she believed
the world at large to be in a lasting condition of content. Rumours of
pain and misfortune, she thought, must somewhere have their ground in
reality. But by the time that a knowledge of them reached her, they
were transformed into the likeness of beauty and legend.
She read the books of poets, listened to music, danced at balls,
chatted and walked, and everything was to her a mirror of her
loveliness and a free, playful activity. She was quite free, for
she never felt the impulse toward restraint. She had time for every
one, for the moment was her master. And so she was most disarmingly
unpunctual, and so innocent in her faithlessness that those whom she
betrayed always ended by consoling her. Her affairs were quickly going
from bad to worse. She knew nothing of it. She created an unparalleled
confusion among men, but she was quite unconscious of it. Whoever
spoke to her of love received love. She was sorry for them. Why not
share one’s overflowing wealth? Six or eight passionate wooers could
always simultaneously boast of weighty evidences of her favour. If any
one reproached her, she was astonished and not seldom on the verge of
tears, like some one whose pure intentions had been incomprehensibly
misunderstood.
One of the twins fell ill, and a physician was summoned. He delayed
coming, and she sent for another. Next morning she had forgotten
both, and sent for a third, simply because his name in the telephone
directory had pleased her. The consequence was confusion. It happened
too that she would fall in love with one of the physicians for a few
hours. Then the confusion was heightened.
She accepted three separate invitations for Christmas week, and
promised to go at the same time to Meran, Salzburg, and Baireuth. When
the time came she had forgotten all three, and went nowhere.
Her maid was discovered to be a thief. A dozen girls presented
themselves for the vacant position. She took a liking to the last, and
forgot that she had already taken a liking to the first and had hired
her.
She was invited to luncheon and appeared at tea. A sum had been scraped
up to pay pressing bills. She loaned it to Rehmer, who was poor as a
church mouse and needed new clothes. The confusion grew and grew.
But it did not touch her. Her mood was exalted and festive, her gait
a little careless, her head charmingly bent a little to one side. Her
soft, deer-like eyes were full of expectation and delight and just a
shade of cunning.
Crammon could not possibly approve this state of affairs. It was a
topsyturvy world, in which all rules were trodden under foot. A very
dainty, very pretty foot, no doubt, but the result was enough to
frighten any one. He growled his complaints like Burbero in Goldoni’s
play. He said things would come to a bad end. He had never known such
slovenliness in all things not to come to a bad end. His horror was
that of a bourgeois who sees his pet virtues outraged. Fascinated and
frightened by the spectacle of Letitia’s gambols on the edge of an
abyss, he denied his own past, forgot his follies, his adventures, his
freebooting days, his greed and varied lusts, and the remnants of them
that accompanied him even now. He forgot all that. He complained.
One evening he was dining alone with the countess. Letitia had gone to
a concert. The countess had something on her heart, and his suspicions
were vigilant. Her ways were mild and she served him the best of
everything. She spoke of the change of domicile that had been planned,
and said that she and Letitia had not yet been able to agree whether
it were better to spend the coming months in Wiesbaden or Berlin. She
asked Crammon’s advice. He begged her to permit him not to interfere
in the controversy. He had other plans of his own, and no desire to
witness a noisy débâcle.
At that the countess began to lament her pecuniary embarrassment and
complain of the impatience of her creditors. For the dear child’s
sake she had determined to ask him for a considerable loan. She would
give him any security he desired, provided her name and person and
reputation did not suffice. Nothing, of course, could greatly mitigate
the painfulness of having to make such a request. Yet the sense of
asking the father of her darling did console her for her suffering.
Her red round cheeks did, in fact, become a shade less rosy, and in her
forget-me-not blue eyes shimmered a tear or two.
Crammon laid down his knife and fork. “You misjudge me, countess,”
he said with the melancholy of a Tartuffe. “You misjudge me gravely.
Never in my life have I loaned out money--neither at interest nor
out of friendship. Nothing could move me to change my principle. You
probably fancy me well off. That is a most astonishing error, countess.
I may give that impression, but you must not draw false inferences.
I have had the art of thrift and frugality, that is all. I have been
careful in the choice of my associates--men as well as women. If
ever I had two invitations, one from the East and one from the West,
and the Eastern invitation was issued by an unquestionably wealthier
source, my decision was immediate and unhesitating. Thus I was guarded
from scruples and regrets. All that I call my own is a little farm in
Moravia that yields a most modest revenue--a little grain, a little
fruit, and an old ramshackle house in Vienna with a few sticks of
worm-eaten furniture, which is guarded for me by two rare pearls of the
female sex. No one, countess, I assure you, has ever before made the
quaint mistake of asking me for money. No one.”
Sadly the countess leaned her head upon her hand.
“But my conscience would forbid my acquiescence in this case even had I
the ability,” Crammon continued morosely. “I would never forgive myself
for having been the banker of the follies that are perpetrated here,
or the financier of mad extravagance. No, no, countess. Let us talk of
more cheerful things.”
He was still up when, at midnight, he heard a tapping at his door.
Letitia entered. She sat down beside him, and said to him with a
wide-eyed gentle look: “It wasn’t nice of you, Bernard, to treat auntie
so cruelly. Neither you nor I can let a thing like that go. Are you
stingy? For heaven’s sake, Bernard, don’t tell me that you’re stingy!
Look me in the eyes, and tell me if such a thing is possible. My dear,
I’d have to disown you!”
She laughed and put her arms about his neck, pulled his hair and kissed
the tip of his nose, and was, in a word, so arch and so irresistible
that Crammon’s cast-iron principles were fatally shattered. He revoked
his refusal and promised to pay Letitia’s debts.
Once again the breath and speech of a woman had power over him. But
it was late, and the sweetness was shot with pain. For he was no more
the robber but the victim. Ah, it was time to practise modesty and
renunciation. No longer did one bite into a juicy pear. No longer did
one eat; one was eaten.
Letitia determined to go to Berlin. After some vain refusals, Crammon
consented to accompany her.