In her neat little room with the flower-covered furniture, Tony woke
next morning with the fresh, happy feeling which one has at the
beginning of a new chapter. She sat up in bed and, with her hands
clasped round her knees and her tousled head flung back, blinked at the
stream of light that poured through the closed shutters into the room.
She began to sort out the experiences of the previous day.
Her thoughts scarcely touched upon the Grünlich affair. The town, his
hateful apparition in the landscape-room, the exhortations of her
family and Pastor Kölling--all that lay far behind her. Here, every
morning, there would be a care-free waking. These Schwarzkopfs were
splendid people. Last night there had been pineapple punch, and they
had made part of a happy family circle. It had been very jolly. Herr
Schwarzkopf had told his best sea tales, and young Schwarzkopf stories
about student life at Göttingen. How odd it was, that she still did not
know his first name! And she had strained her ear to hear too, but even
at dinner she did not succeed, and somehow it did not seem proper to
ask. She tried feverishly to think how it sounded--was it Moor--Mord--?
Anyhow, she had liked him pretty well, this young Moor or Mord. He had
such a sly, good-natured laugh when he asked for the water and called
it by letters and numbers, so that his father got quite furious. But
it was only the scientific formula for water--that is, for ordinary
water, for the Travemünde product was a much more complicated affair,
of course. Why, one could find a jelly-fish in it, any time! The
authorities, of course, might have what notions they chose about fresh
water. For this he only got another scolding from his father, for
speaking slightingly of the authorities. But Frau Schwarzkopf watched
Tony all the time, to see how much she admired the young man--and
really, it was most interesting, he was so learned and so jolly, all
at the same time. He had given her considerable attention. She had
complained that her head felt hot, while eating, and that she must
have too much blood. What had he replied? He had given her a careful
scrutiny, and then said, Yes, the arteries in the temples might be
full; but that did not prove that she had too much blood. Perhaps,
instead, it meant she had too little--or rather, that there were too
few red corpuscles in it. In fact, she was perhaps a little anæmic.
The cuckoo sprang out of his carven house on the wall and cuckooed
several times, clear and loud. “Seven, eight, nine,” counted Tony.
“Up with you!” She jumped out of bed and opened the blinds. The sky
was partly overcast, but the sun was visible. She looked out over the
Leuchtenfeld with its tower, to the ruffled sea beyond. On the right it
was bounded by the curve of the Mecklenburg coast; but before her it
stretched on and on till its blue and green streaks mingled with the
misty horizon. “I’ll bathe afterwards,” she thought, “but first I’ll
eat a big breakfast, so as not to be consumed by my metabolism.” She
washed and dressed with quick, eager movements.
It was shortly after half-past nine when she left her room. The door
of the chamber in which Tom had slept stood open; he had risen early
and driven back to town. Even up here in the upper storey, it smelled
of coffee--that seemed to be the characteristic odour of the little
house, for it grew stronger as she descended the simple staircase
with its plain board baluster and went down the corridor, where lay
the living-room, which was also the dining-room and the office of
the pilot-captain. She went out into the verandah, looking, in her
white piqué frock, perfectly fresh, and in the gayest of tempers.
Frau Schwarzkopf sat with her son at the table. It was already partly
cleared away, and the housewife wore a blue-checked kitchen apron over
her brown frock. A key-basket stood beside her.
“A thousand pardons for not waiting,” she said, as she stood up. “We
simple folk rise early. There is so much to be done! Schwarzkopf is in
his office. I hope you don’t take it ill?”
Tony excused herself in her turn. “You must not think I always sleep
so late as this,” she said. “I feel very guilty. But the punch last
night--”
The young man began to laugh. He stood behind the table with his short
pipe in his hand and a newspaper before him.
“Good morning,” Tony said. “Yes, it is your fault. You kept urging me.
Now I deserve only cold coffee. I ought to have had breakfast and a
bathe as well, by this time.”
“Oh, no, that would be rather too early, for a young lady. At seven
o’clock the water was rather cold--eleven degrees. That’s pretty sharp,
after a warm bed.”
“How do you know I wanted a warm bath, monsieur?” and Tony sat down
beside Frau Schwarzkopf. “Oh, you have kept the coffee hot for me, Frau
Schwarzkopf! But I will pour it out myself, thank you so much.”
The housewife looked on as her guest began to eat. “Fräulein slept
well, the first night? The mattress, dear knows, is only stuffed with
sea-weed--we are simple folk! And now, good appetite, and a good
morning. You will surely find many friends on the beach. If you like,
my son shall bear you company. Pardon me for not sitting longer, but I
must look after the dinner. The joint is in the oven. We will feed you
as well as we can.”
“I shall stick to the honeycomb,” Tony said when the two were alone.
“You know what you are getting.”
Young Schwarzkopf laid his pipe on the verandah rail.
“But please smoke. I don’t mind it at all. At home, when I come down
to breakfast, Papa’s cigar-smoke is already in the room. Tell me,” she
said suddenly. “Is it true that an egg is as good as a quarter of a
pound of meat?”
He grew red all over. “Are you making fun of me?” he asked, partly
laughing but partly vexed. “I got another wigging from my Father last
night for what he calls my silly professional airs.”
“No, really, I was asking because I wanted to know.” Tony stopped
eating in consternation. “How could anybody call them airs? I should
be so glad to learn something. I’m such a goose, you see. At Sesemi
Weichbrodt’s I was always one of the very laziest. I’m sure you know
a great deal.” Inwardly her thoughts ran: “Everybody puts his best
foot foremost, before strangers. We all take care to say what will be
pleasant to hear--that is a commonplace....”
“Well, you see they are the same thing, in a way. The chemical
constituents of food-stuffs--” And so on, while Tony breakfasted. Next
they talked about Tony’s boarding-school days, and Sesemi Weichbrodt,
and Gerda Arnoldsen, who had gone back to Amsterdam, and Armgard von
Schelling, whose home, a large white house, could be seen from the
beach here, at least in clear weather. Tony finished eating, wiped her
mouth, and asked, pointing to the paper, “Is there any news?” Young
Schwarzkopf shook his head and laughed cynically.
“Oh, no. What would there be? You know these little provincial
news-sheets are wretched affairs.”
“Oh, are they? Papa and Mamma always take it in.”
He reddened again. “Oh, well, you see I always read it, too. Because
I can’t get anything else. But it is not very thrilling to hear that
So-and-So, the merchant prince, is about to celebrate his silver
wedding. Yes, you laugh. But you ought to read other papers--the
_Königsberg Gazette_, for instance, or the _Rhenish Gazette_. You’d
find a different story there, entirely. There it’s what the King of
Prussia says.”
“What does he say?”
“Well--er--I really couldn’t repeat it to a lady.” He got red again.
“He expressed himself rather strongly on the subject of this same
press,” he went on with another cynical laugh, which, for a moment,
made a painful impression on Tony. “The press, you know, doesn’t feel
any too friendly toward the government or the nobility or the parsons
and junkers. It knows pretty well how to lead the censor by the nose.”
“Well, and you? Aren’t you any too friendly with the nobility, either?”
“I?” he asked, and looked very embarrassed. Tony rose.
“Shall we talk about this again another time?” she suggested. “Suppose
I go down to the beach now. Look, the sky is blue nearly all over. It
won’t rain any more. I am simply longing to jump into the water. Will
you go down with me?”