The Breaking of the Storm Volume I Part 8

"Only a merchant-captain!" repeated Meta. "What a pity! such a good-looking man! I had quite counted upon him for myself! But a merchant-captain!"

Frau von Strummin here came in to accompany the two girls to supper.

Meta flew to her mother to communicate her great discovery.

"It has all been arranged," answered her mother. "The Count asked your father and the President if they wished Captain Schmidt to be invited to join the party. Both gentlemen expressed themselves in favour of it, and so he will appear at table. He really seems a very well-mannered sort of person," concluded Frau von Strummin.

"I am really curious to see him," said Meta.

Elsa said nothing; but as, coming into the corridor, she met her father just leaving his room, she whispered to him, "Thank you!"

"One must make the best of a bad job," answered the General in the same tone.

Elsa was a little surprised; she had not thought that he would have taken so seriously the question of etiquette which he had decided according to her view. She did not consider that her father could not understand her words without some explanation, and did not know that he had given them quite another meaning.

He had been put out, and had allowed his annoyance to be seen--even when they were received in the hall. He thought that this had not escaped Elsa, and that she was pleased now to see that he had meanwhile made up his mind to submit quietly and calmly to the inevitable, and therefore met him with a smile. The young sailor had only been recalled to his mind by the Count's question. He had attached no importance to the question or to his own answer, that he did not know why the Count should not invite Captain Schmidt to his table.

Happily for Reinhold himself he had not even a suspicion of the possibility that his appearance or non-appearance at table could be a question to be seriously discussed by the other members of the party.

"What is begun may as well be continued," said he to himself, as with the help of the things he had brought with him in a handbag from the s.h.i.+p in case of accidents, he arranged his dress as well as he could; "and now away with melancholy. If I have got aground by my own stupidity, I shall get off again in time. To go about hanging my head, or losing it, would not make up for my folly, but only make matters worse, and they are quite bad enough already. But where are my shoes?"

At the last moment on board he had changed the shoes he was wearing for a pair of high seaboots. They had been most useful to him since through rain and puddles, in the wet sands on the sh.o.r.e, and on the way to the farm; but now! Where were the shoes? Not in the bag, at any rate, into which he thought he had thrown them, and out of which they would not appear, although at last in his despair he tumbled all the things out and strewed them around him. And this garment which he had taken up a dozen times and let fall again, half the skirt was missing. It was not his blue frockcoat, it was his black tailcoat, the most precious article in his wardrobe, which he had only been in the habit of wearing for a dinner with his owners, or the consul, and on other most solemn occasions.

Reinhold rushed at the bell--the broken rope came away in his hand. He tore open the door and looked into the pa.s.sage--not a servant to be seen. He called softly at first, then louder, not a servant would hear.

What was to be done? The rough pilot-coat which he had worn under his waterproof, and which yet had got wet through in some places, had already been taken away by the servant to be dried. In a quarter of an hour the man had said the Count begged him to come to supper, twenty minutes had already pa.s.sed; he had distinctly heard the President, whose room was some doors off from his, walk along the pa.s.sage on his way downstairs. He must either remain here in the most absurd captivity, or appear before the company below in the extraordinary attire of seaboots and a dress-coat! Before the eyes of the President, whose long, thin figure, from the crown of his small aristocratic head to the soles of the polished boots which he had worn even on board, was a model of the most painfully precise neatness; before the stiff, tightly b.u.t.toned-up General; before the Count, who already showed some disposition to consider him of small account in society; before the ladies; before her--before her laughter-loving brown eyes! "Well, if I was fool enough to follow a sign from those eyes, this shall be my punishment; thus will I do penance in tailcoat and seaboots."

And with one effort he pulled on the garment which he had still held in his extended left hand, looking at it from time to time with dismay, and again opened the door, this time to pa.s.s with steady step along the corridor, down the broad stairs, and into the dining-room below, whose whereabouts he had already ascertained from the servant.

CHAPTER IX.

The rest of the party were already a.s.sembled. The two girls had appeared arm-in-arm, and kept together, although the Count, who had come forward hastily to meet them, directed his conversation to Elsa alone. He hastened to inform Fraulein von Werben that the carriage that was to fetch the doctor from Prora had been gone a quarter of an hour.

Did Fraulein von Werben take any interest in painting, and would she allow him to direct her attention to some of the more important objects that he had brought from the gallery of Castle Golm for the decoration of the dining-room here, which really had appeared to him too bare.

This was a Watteau bought by his great-grandfather himself in Paris; that was a fruit-piece by the Italian painter Gobbo, surnamed Da Frutti, a pupil of Annibale Caracci; this large still-life scene was by the Dutchman Jacob van Es. This flower-piece would be peculiarly interesting to her, as it was by a lady, Rachel Ruysch, a Dutchwoman, of course, whose pictures were in great request. Here, on the _etagere_, was a service of Dresden china, formerly belonging to Augustus the Strong, from whom his great-grandfather, who for many years had been Swedish amba.s.sador at the court of Dresden, had received it in exchange for a team of Swedish horses, the first which had been seen on the Continent; here was an equally beautiful service of Sevres, which he himself the preceding year had admired at the chateau of a French n.o.bleman, and had received as a gift from him, out of grat.i.tude for his successful efforts to preserve the chateau, which he (the Count) had converted into a hospital.

"You do not care for old china, however?" said he, observing that the lady's dark eyes only very briefly inspected his treasures.

"I have seen so little of it," said Elsa; "I do not know how to appreciate its beauty."

"And then we are all rather hungry," said Meta, "I am at least. At home we have supper at eight, and now it is eleven."

"Has not Captain Schmidt been told?" asked the Count of the butler.

"Yes, sir, a quarter of an hour ago."

"Then we will not wait any longer. The courtesy of kings does not seem to be shared by merchant captains. Allow me."

He offered his arm to Elsa; hesitatingly she laid the tips of her fingers upon it, she would gladly have spared the Captain the awkwardness of finding the whole party at table. But her father had already offered his arm to Meta's mother, the gallant President had given his to Meta herself; the three couples were moving towards the table which stood between them and the door, when the door opened, and the wonderful figure of a bearded man in a tailcoat and high seaboots appeared, in whom Elsa, to her horror, recognised the Captain. But the next moment she was forced to smile like the others. Meta dropped the President's arm and fled into a corner of the room, where she tried to conceal behind her handkerchief the convulsive laughter which had seized her at the unexpected appearance.

"I must apologise," said Reinhold, "but I have unfortunately only just discovered that the haste with which we left the s.h.i.+p was not favourable to a careful choice in my wardrobe."

"And as that haste was for our benefit, we have the less occasion to lay unnecessary stress upon the small mishap," said the President very courteously.

"Why did you not apply to my valet?" asked the Count, with mild reproach.

"I think the costume is very becoming," said Elsa, with a desperate effort to recover her gravity, and a severe look at Meta, who had indeed come out of her corner, but without venturing yet to remove her handkerchief from her face.

"That is much more than I could have possibly hoped," said Reinhold.

They took their seats at the table; Reinhold exactly opposite the Count and nearly opposite Elsa, while on his left hand sat Meta and on his right Herr von Strummin, a broad-shouldered man with a broad, red face, the lower part of which was covered with a big red beard, and whose big loud voice was the more disagreeable to Reinhold that it was perpetually breaking in upon the gay, good-humoured chatter of the young lady upon his left.

The good-natured girl had determined to make Reinhold forget her previous rudeness, and the keeping of this resolution was so much the easier to her, that now, when the tablecloth kindly covered those absurd boots, she found her first idea of him quite justified; the Captain with his large, bright blue eyes, his sunburnt complexion, and curly brown beard, was a handsome--a very handsome man. After she had attempted to convey this important discovery to Elsa by various significant glances and explanatory gestures, and to her great joy had perceived from Elsa's smiles and nods, that she agreed with her, she gave herself up to the pleasure of conversing with this good-looking stranger all the more eagerly that she was certain her eagerness would not remain unnoticed by the Count. Did she not know by experience that he was never pleased, that he even took it as a sort of personal affront, when ladies to whom he did not himself pay any particular attention, were especially civil to other men in his presence! And that this man was only a merchant-captain, whose fitness for society had been just now called in question, made the matter the more amusing and piquant to her mischievous imagination. Besides she really was very much amused. The Captain had so many stories to tell--and he told them so well and simply!

"You cannot think, Elsa, how interesting it is," she exclaimed across the table; "I could listen to him all night long!"

"That good little girl is not too particular in her tastes," said the Count to Elsa.

"I am sorry for that," said Elsa; "she has just chosen me, as you hear, for a friend."

"That is quite another thing," said the Count.

The conversation between these two would not flow properly, and the Count frequently found himself left to Frau von Strummin, to whom he had to talk so as not to be left in silence, whilst Elsa turned to her other neighbour--the President. And more than once, when that lady's attention was claimed by the General, he really was obliged to sit dumb, and silently to observe how well his friends entertained themselves at his own table without him. To fill up these enforced pauses he drank one gla.s.s of wine after another, and did not thereby improve his temper, which he then exercised upon the servants for want of any one else. He certainly would have preferred the merchant-captain for that purpose. He thought the fellow altogether odious, everything about him--appearance, manners, look, voice; it was all the more provoking that he should himself have brought the fellow to his house in his own carriage! If he had only not asked any one's opinion and left him in his room!

He told himself that it was ridiculous to vex himself about the matter, but he did vex himself about it nevertheless, and that all the more because he could not conquer the feeling. At any cost he must make the conversation general to free himself from a mood which was becoming intolerable.

Opposite to him Herr von Strummin was shouting his views upon the railroad and the harbour into the ear of the General, who appeared to listen unwillingly. He had made up his mind, for his part, not to touch upon this ticklish topic at table, but any topic was agreeable to him now.

"Excuse me, my good friend," said he, raising his voice, "I have been hearing something of what you have been saying to General von Werben about our favourite plan. You always say 'we' and 'us,' but you know that in many essential points our views differ; so I must beg you, if you do speak about the matter, to do so only in your own name."

"What! what!" cried Herr von Strummin; "what great difference is there?

Is it that I want to have a station at Strummin, just as much as you want one at Golm?"

"But we cannot all have stations," said the Count, with a pitying shrug of the shoulders.

"Of course we can't, but I must! or I should not care a bra.s.s farthing for the whole project!" cried the other. "Am I to send my corn two or three miles, as I did before, and have the train steaming away under my nose an hour later! I would rather give my vote at the a.s.sembly in that case for the road which the Government offers us; that would run just behind my new barn; I could send the waggons straight from the thras.h.i.+ng-floor out into the high-road. Could not I, President?"

"I really do not know, Herr von Strummin," said the President, "whether the road runs just behind your barn; it certainly crosses the boundary of your fields. But my views have long been known to you both;" and he turned again to Elsa, to continue his interrupted conversation with her.

The Count was furious at the rebuff which the last words seemed to imply, the more furious that he knew he had not deserved them. He had not begun upon the matter, but now it should be further discussed.

"You see," said he, turning to Herr von Strummin, "what disservice you do us--I must say 'us' now--by this perpetual overzealous putting forward of private interests. Of course we look to our own advantage in this; what reasonable man would not? But it must come second--first the State, then ourselves. At least, so I consider, and so does the General here, I am sure."

"Certainly I think so," said the General. "But why should I have the honour of being referred to?"

"Because n.o.body would gain more if this project were carried out than your sister, or whoever shall some day possess Warnow, Gristow, and Damerow."