Part 11 (2/2)
We could endure the solitude, but such society was unendurable.
The next day I took my last bath.
On our return journey, at Cologne, an odd thing happened.
It was early, and I was sleepy. I was waiting for breakfast in melancholy mood, and was contemplating a huge pile of elegant hand-luggage which a servant in a very correct dark suit was superintending, when two ladies, followed by a maid, made their appearance, one fair, the other dark, from the dressing-room, which had been locked in our faces. In honour of these two princesses we had been obliged to remain unwashed. Ah, how fresh and neat and pretty they both looked! The dark one was by far the handsomer of the two, but she looked gloomy and discontented, spoke never a word, and after a hurried breakfast became absorbed in a newspaper. The fair one, on the contrary, a striking creature, with a very large hat and a profusion of pa.s.s.e.m.e.nterie on her travelling-cloak, talked a great deal and very loudly to a short, fat woman who was going with her little son to Frankfort, and who addressed the blonde as ”Frau Countess.”
The name of the short woman was Frau Kampe, and the name of the Countess, which I shortly learned, shall be told in due time. The Countess complained of the fatigue of travelling; Frau Kampe, in a sympathetic tone, declared that it was almost impossible to sleep in the railway-carriages at this time of year, they were so overcrowded.
But the Countess rejoined with a laugh,--
”We had as much room as we wanted all the way; my husband secures that by his fees. He is much too lavish, as I often tell him. Since I have been travelling with him we have always had two railway-carriages, one for me and my maid, and the other for him and his cigars. It has been delightful.”
”Even upon your wedding tour?” asked her handsome, dark companion, looking up from her reading.
”Ha, ha, ha! Yes, even upon our wedding tour,” said the other. ”We were a very prosaic couple, entirely independent of each other,--quite an aristocratic match!” And she laughed again with much self-satisfaction.
”Where is the Herr Count?” asked Frau Kampe. ”I should like to make his acquaintance.”
”Oh, he is not often to be seen; he is smoking on the platform somewhere. I scarcely ever meet him; he never appears before the third bell has rung. A very aristocratic marriage, you see, Frau Kampe,--such a one as you read of.”
The Countess's beautiful companion frowned, and the little Kampe boy grinned from ear to ear,--I could not tell whether it was at the aristocratic marriage or at the successful solution of an arithmetical problem which he had just worked out on the paper cover of one of Walter Scott's novels.
I must confess that I was curious to see the young husband who even upon his marriage journey had preferred the society of his cigars to that of his bride.
My aunt had missed the interesting conversation between Frau Kampe and her young patroness; she had rushed out to see the cathedral in the morning mist. I had manifested so little desire to join her in this artistic but uncomfortable enterprise that she had dispensed with my society. She now came back glowing with enthusiasm, and filled to overflowing with all sorts of information as to Gothic architecture.
Scarcely had she seated herself to drink the coffee which I poured out for her, when a tall young man, slightly stooping in his gait, and with a very attractive, delicately-chiselled face, entered. Was he not----?
Well, whoever he was, he was the husband of the aristocratic marriage.
He exchanged a few words with the blonde Countess, and was about to leave the room, when his glance fell upon my aunt.
”Baroness, you here!--what a delight!” he exclaimed, approaching her hastily.
”Lato!” she almost screamed. She always talks a little loud away from home, which annoys me.
It was, in fact, our old friend Lato Treurenberg. Before she had been with him two minutes my aunt had forgotten all her prejudice against him since his marriage,--and, what was more, had evidently forgotten the marriage itself, for she whispered, leaning towards him with a sly twinkle of her eye and a nod in the direction of the ladies,--
”What n.o.ble acquaintances you have made!--from Frankfort, or Hamburg?”
My heart was in my mouth. No one except Aunt Rosamunda could have made such a blunder.
The words had hardly escaped her lips when she became aware of her mistake, and she was covered with confusion. Lato flushed scarlet. At that moment the departure of our train was announced, and Lato took a hurried leave of us. I saw him outside putting the ladies into a carriage, after which he himself got into another.
We travelled second-cla.s.s, and therefore had the pleasure of sharing a compartment with the man-servant and maid of the Countess Lato Treurenberg.
My aunt took it all philosophically, while I, I confess, had much ado to conceal my ungrateful and mean irritation.
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