The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 11. Francke Kuno
came out so comically, and Mieting clapped her hands with such a naïve surprise, that Else had to laugh, and the more so as she could thus best conceal the blush of embarrassment which flushed her face.
"Then he will not even take supper with us!" exclaimed Mieting.
"Why not?" asked Else, who had suddenly become very serious again.
"A simple captain!" repeated Mieting; "too bad! He's such a handsome man! I had picked him out for myself! But a simple sea captain!"
Madame von Strummin entered the room to escort the ladies to supper. Mieting rushed toward her mother to tell her her great discovery. "Everything is already arranged," replied her mother. "The Count asked your father and the President whether they wished the captain to join the company. Both of the gentlemen were in favor of it, and so he too will appear at supper. And then, too, he seems so far to be a very respectable man," concluded Madame von Strummin.
"I'm really curious," said Mieting.
Else did not say anything; but when at the entrance of the corridor she met her father, who had just come from his room, she whispered to him, "Thank you!"
"One must keep a cheerful face in a losing game," replied the General in the same tone.
Else was a bit surprised; she had not believed that he would so seriously regard the question of etiquette, which he had just decided as she wished. She did not reflect that her father could not understand her remark without special explanation, and did not know that he had given to it an entirely different meaning. He had been annoyed and had allowed his displeasure to be noticed, even at the reception in the hall. He supposed that Else had observed this, and was now glad that he had meanwhile resolved to submit quietly and coolly to the inevitable, and in this frame of mind he had met her with a smile. It was only the Count's question that reminded him again of the young sea captain. He had attached no significance either to the question or to his answer, that he did not know why the Count should not invite the captain to supper.
Happily for Reinhold, he had not had even a suspicion of the possibility that his appearance or non-appearance at supper could be seriously debated by the company.
"In for a penny, in for a pound," he said to himself, arranging his suit as well as he could with the aid of the things which he had brought along in his bag from the ship for emergencies. "And now to the dickens with the sulks! If I have run aground in my stupidity, I shall get afloat again. To hang my head or to lose it would not be correcting the mistake, but only making it worse – and it is already bad enough. But now where are my shoes?"
In the last moment on board he had exchanged the shoes which he had been wearing for a pair of high waterproof boots. They had done him excellent service in the water and rain, in the wet sand of the shore, and on the way to the tenant-farm – but now! Where were the shoes? Certainly not in the traveling bag, into which he thought he had thrown them, but in which they refused to be found, although he finally, in his despair, turned the whole contents out and spread them about him. And this article of clothing here, which he had already taken up a dozen times and dropped again – the shirt bosoms were wanting! It was not the blue overcoat! It was the black evening coat, the most precious article of his wardrobe, which he was accustomed to wear only to dinners at the ship-owners', the consul's, and other formal occasions! Reinhold sprang for the bell – the rotten cord broke in his hand. He jerked the door open and peered into the hall – no servant was to be seen; he called first softly and then more loudly – no servant answered. And yet – what was to be done! The coarse woolen jacket which he had worn under his raincoat, and had, notwithstanding, got wet in places had been taken away by the servant to dry. "In a quarter of an hour," the man had said, "the Count will ask you to supper." Twenty minutes had already passed; he had heard distinctly that the President, who was quartered a few doors from his room, had passed through the hall to go downstairs; he would have to remain here in the most ridiculous imprisonment, or appear downstairs before the company in the most bizarre costume – water-boots and black dress suit – before the eyes of the President, whose long, lean figure, from the top of his small shapely head to his patent-leather tips, which he had worn even on board ship, was the image of the most painful precision – before the rigorous General, in his closely buttoned undress uniform – before the Count, who had already betrayed an inclination to doubt his social eligibility – before the ladies! – before her – before her mischievous brown eyes! "Very well," he concluded, "if I have been fool enough to follow the glances of these eyes then this shall be my punishment, I will now do penance – in a black dress coat and water-boots."
With a jerk he pulled on the boots which he still held in his rigid left hand, regarding them from time to time with horror, and opened the door again, this time to go down the broad stairway, and with a steady step along the hall into the dining-room, the location of which he had already learned from the servant.
Meanwhile the rest of the company had assembled. The two young ladies had appeared arm in arm and did not allow themselves to be separated, although the Count, who approached them with animation, addressed his words to Else alone. He dutifully hastened to inform the young lady that the carriage had been sent off to Prora for the doctor a quarter of an hour before. He asked Else whether she was interested in painting, and if she would allow him to call her attention hastily to some of the more important things which he had brought from the gallery in Castle Golm to Golmberg to decorate the dining-room, which seemed to him altogether too bare: here a Watteau, bought by his great-grandfather himself in Paris; over there, a cluster of fruit, called "Da Frutti," by the Italian Gobbo, a pupil of Annibale Carracci; yonder, the large still-life by the Netherlander Jacob van Ness. This flower piece would interest the young lady especially, as it is by a lady, Rachel Ruysch, a Netherlander of course, whose pictures are greatly in demand. Here on the étagère, the service of Meissen porcelain, once in the possession of August the Strong, which his great-grandfather, who was for some years Swedish minister at the Dresden Court, had received in exchange for a pair of reindeer – the first that had been seen on the continent; here the no less beautiful Sèvres service, which he himself had in previous years admired in the castle of a nobleman in France, who had presented it to him, in recognition of his fortunate efforts to preserve the castle, which he had turned into a hospital.
"You are not interested in old porcelain?" queried the Count, who thought he noticed that the dark eyes of the young lady glanced only very superficially over his treasures.
"I have seen so few such things," said Else, "I do not know how to appreciate their beauty."
"And then, too, we are a bit hungry," put in Mieting – "at least I am. We dine at home at eight o'clock, and now it is eleven."
"Hasn't the Captain been called?" asked the Count of the butler.
"Certainly, your Grace; a quarter of an hour ago."
"Then we will not wait any longer. The etiquette of kings does not appear to be that of sea captains. May I accompany you, Miss Else?"
He offered Else his arm; hesitatingly she rested the tips of her fingers upon it. She would have liked to spare the Captain the embarrassment of finding the company already at the table, but her father had offered his arm to Mieting's mother, and the gallant President his to Mieting. The three couples proceeded to the table, which stood between them and the door, when the door opened and the strange figure of a bearded man in black suit and high water-boots appeared, in which Else, to her horror, recognized the Captain. But in the next moment she had to laugh like the others. Mieting dropped the arm of the President and fled to a corner of the hall to smother in her handkerchief the convulsive laughter which had seized her at the unexpected sight.
"I must apologize," said Reinhold, "but the haste with which we left the ship today was not favorable to a strict selection from my wardrobe, as I have unfortunately just now noticed."
"And, as this haste has turned out to our advantage, we least of all have reason to lay any greater stress upon the trivial mishap than it deserves," said the President very graciously.
"Why didn't you call on my valet?" asked the Count with gentle reproof.
"I find the costume very becoming," said Else, with a desperate effort to be serious again and with a reproving glance at Mieting, who had come out of her corner but did not