Szekler pottery, a few handsomely bound books--all these were so disposed as to fill the mind with a sense of refined elegance combined with the utmost simplicity.
[Footnote 107: Ap.r.o.ns.]
A curtained door led from the saloon into another room--possibly a bed-chamber.
In a few minutes this door opened and the fair lady fluttered in.
It did not escape my attention that the moment she entered she turned her head on one side, and contracted her eyebrows as if to bid some one else remaining behind there to keep quiet. The momentary opening of the door also permitted me to see that in the direction in which she had looked was a tall tester bed with the curtains drawn close.
The moment, however, that she had shut the door behind her and turned towards me, the face of the lovely lady became all amiability. She hastened up to me and pressed my hand.
"It was very nice of you to come and see me. Don"t be angry with me for giving you the trouble."
The lady was now more amiable than ever.
She was in the simplest stay-at-home toilet. The only ornament on her head was her own bright silky hair, twisted up into a knot and tied at the top with a ribbon.
She looked just as she was ten years before, a little girl of sixteen.
Her whole being recalled to me her childish days. There was the same candid, guileless look; those open eyes through which you could read into her very soul; the same artless mouth.
She invited me to sit down. She took my hat and laid it on the table.
"I suppose you"ll remain to dinner? I have told the cook to prepare your favourite dish."
"Then you know what it is?"
"Why, of course! _Beans with pig"s ear._ Why, all your admirers throughout the kingdom know that."
I had now good reason to be proud! My nation, then, has some regard for me, after all. To others it presents _bays_, to me--_beans_.[108]
[Footnote 108: In Hungarian the resemblance is closer still, _babo_ meaning bean, and _baber_, laurel.]
"In that case I"ll remain," I said.
"In Kvatopil"s time I was never permitted to cook beans, for he maintained that they make a man stupid."
"On the contrary. Pythagoras a.s.sures us that the bean contains the same component parts as the human brain."
Having thus rehabilitated the bean, I reverted to the real motive of my visit there.
"I should have come to visit you to-day even without a special invitation."
"Was there any special reason, then, why I should occupy a place in your thoughts?"
"I have received a letter from Italy, the contents of which will greatly interest you."
At these words she looked at me as coldly as if she had become an alabaster statue.
"Interest _me_?"
"So I believe. On the 20th instant there was a battle on the Mincio, at which your husband distinguished himself."
"Really?" said the lady mechanically.
("Really?"--In that tone? It was rather odd. However, I went on.)
"Nay, in the heat of the combat he was even wounded."
(I calculated surely on the dramatic effect of these words. I fancied that the tender spouse would leap to her feet, pale, ready to faint, wringing her hands, till at last, amidst sobs, the name of the adored husband would burst forth from her lips: "Oh! my Wenceslaus! Oh! my Kvatopil!" But she did not so much as turn her head round.)
"Indeed?" she said, with complete _sangfroid_.
Just as if it were an every-day occurrence for a beloved husband to be wounded in battle.
I was offended. Such ungrateful indifference I had never met with before. How was I to go on? I had calculated that when the despairing consort had wept and sobbed her fill, I should hasten to console her.
"It is true," said I, "that his wound is not sufficiently dangerous to prevent him from continuing in the field."
"I can easily believe it," replied the lady, with a shrug of the shoulders.
Now this was a want of feeling worthy of an alligator! Surely she had the nerves of a rhinoceros! I was not prepared for this reception. "I can easily believe it!" Was that all?
Well, then, if our tender feelings are so hermetically sealed, we must try what more drastic means will do. We must appeal to other sentiments.
Vanity, for instance, is a sentiment which never can be blunted.
So I moved forward my heavy artillery.
"Lieutenant Kvatopil," I said, "was called to the front and made a captain straight off for heroic valour in the field."
But even at this the lovely lady did not fling herself on my neck. She did not even utter a sound, but contracted the corners of her mouth.
What did that mean? When you tell a lieutenant"s wife that from to-day she has a right to the t.i.tle Mrs. Captain; that every one who meets her in the street and congratulates her will address her as, "Frau Rittmeisterin," while the other lieutenants" wives naturally burn with secret envy; that she may now print her corresponding rank on her visiting cards--when you tell her all this, and even then no impression is produced, and the cherry lips do _not_ expand with joy, revealing the sparkling, pearly teeth and the dimples on the sunbright face; when, instead of that, she purses up her mouth so nastily and gives herself a double chin--what _are_ you to think? There is nothing so hideous as a pretty woman with a double chin. A double chin makes a woman look absolutely old.
I was quite confused. What am I to do to amuse her now? Should I talk about the weather?
"May I congratulate you?" I said, seizing her hand.
But not only did she _not_ press my hand in return, as she ought to have done; on the contrary, she irritably drew it back and turned aside her head.
Suddenly a light flashed through my brain, a light kindled by my immeasurable self-conceit. "Why go on praising the distant husband,"
said I to myself, "when you yourself are present? Do you think she invited you to dinner to sing the praises of Wenceslaus Kvatopil?"
I drew my chair nearer to the sofa on which Bessy was sitting, and airily pa.s.sed my hand through my frizzled locks.
Bessy observed the movement, and quickly turned her face towards me. A mocking smile suddenly lighted up her face, a smile from which a man can read a whole chapter in a moment. That is something like stenography.
"Ha, ha, sir! then we have come thither with that thought, have we? We have had our hair frizzled, eh? We have decked ourselves out to be irresistible, I know?"
A thousand mocking fish-tailed nixies were wriggling about in those sea-like eyes.