Part 16 (1/2)
After dinner the gentlemen retired to the smoking-room to smoke, the ladies to the drawing-room to yawn.
”I cannot cease looking at you, this evening, Comtesse,” Charlotte Malzin exclaimed, seating herself on a sofa beside the daughter of the house, ”your gown is enchanting.”
”Very much too picturesque for this part of the world, they can't appreciate these contrasts of colour in this barbarous country,” Ad'lin said crossly, as she was wont to receive the actress's advances. ”They are far behind the age in Austria! _Dieu, qui l'Autriche m'ennuie!_”
The actress fell silent, in some confusion.
”What had the poet to say to you, Ad'lin?” asked the Baroness Melkweyser, after she had inspected through her eye-gla.s.s each piece of furniture in turn in the drawing-room.
”That he could not digest truffles, and that he means to dedicate his next work to me.”
”Ah! the first item is highly interesting, and the last uncommonly flattering,” the Melkweyser rejoined.
”Yes, it means that I must order at least fifty copies of the interesting effusion,” Ad'lin said fretfully, adding with a half smile, ”People in our position have to encourage literature--_n.o.blesse oblige_!”
The Baroness bit her lip and resumed her voyage of discovery, turning to a cabinet filled with antique porcelain.
”You really cannot think,” Ad'lin began, leaving her sofa to join her friend, ”how I have longed for you! You are the only link here in Austria between ourselves and civilization. I depend upon your forming an agreeable circle for us here.”
It was noteworthy that since Zoe's return to her native land, Adeline's familiarity had seemed far less acceptable to her than it had been in Paris. ”An agreeable circle!” she exclaimed, ”that is easily said, but you make it very hard for me. You do not want to know our financiers ....”
”The Austrian financiers have no position; even the Rothschilds are not received at Court.”
”And the Austrian aristocracy is excessively exclusive on its own soil--!” said Zoe.
”Ah that exclusiveness is a _fable convenue_,” Ad'lin insisted, ”I am convinced that if Austrian society knew us ....”
Instead of replying, the Melkweyser directed her eye-gla.s.s towards the porcelain on the shelves of the cabinet. ”That is the Malzin old-Vienna tea-service.”
”Yes, but it cannot be used--it is not complete.”
”I know it, Wjera Zinsenburg has the other half.”
”If it would give the Countess the slightest pleasure to complete the set, I should be perfectly ready to place this half at her disposal!”
Capriani's voice was heard to say.
The gentlemen had left their cigars and had come to the drawing-room for their coffee. Fermor who was too nervous to allow himself the indulgence of a cup of Mocha, sat down at the piano, and began to prelude in an affected manner.
Leaning in a languis.h.i.+ng att.i.tude against the raised cover of the piano, Ad'lin murmured, ”No one but you invents such modulations. You ought to indulge me with a grand composition, Count; have you never completed one?”
”I am busy now with a work of some scope for a grand orchestra,” Fermor lisped, dabbing his limp, bloodless hands upon the keyboard like a nervous kangaroo.
”Ah! A sonata?--An opera?”
”No, a requiem; that is a kind of requiem--more correctly a morning impromptu, the last thoughts of a dying poacher.”
”Oh how interesting! Pray let me hear it.”
”It is a rather complicated piece of music, Fraulein Capriani,” Fermor always ignores the Capriani patent of n.o.bility--”if you are not especially fond of our German cla.s.sic masters ....”