Chapter II

The trouble was that Mr. Beck possessed no “cut-away.” Accordingly, he had one made, and standing facing the three glasses at the front, with his back against three more, he suddenly perceived that he was very ugly. The tailor looked at him with glee, “American? Ah! ah! Dollar! A lot of dollar--he, he, he!” and recommended the most expensive stuff available, while Mr. Beck reflected with discomfort that not the least of his reasons in coming over to Austria was the resolve drastically to reduce expenditure. “Have the honour--kiss the hand--my compliment--greet God--commend myself,” the tailor bowed him out. In the afternoon Mr. Beck dropped cards on Baroness Hauch, on the door of whose apartment he read: “Baron Karl Franz Egon Gaestner zu Hauch Wolf-Kadelburg von Hofmannsthal,” and on Thursday, as arranged, he called on Frau von Kranich. Irmgard came. In her brown hat which covered her exquisitely moulded forehead she did not look quite so lovely, and he noticed that she had the small burning eyes of her father. At the Hauchs’ Irmgard appeared a little shy. She wore a blue dress with white lapels and American brown shoes, and all the young men fell in love with her at first sight and danced with her uninterruptedly. Mr. Beck found himself seated far away from the table, with a cup of tea in his hand. There was no sugar in the tea, but the cup was too full and too hot: he knew he could never get up without spilling it--and he suffered in silence. Moreover, he remembered being told that the Baronin Hauch possessed the finest china set in Salzburg and he was tormented by the thought that at any moment he might drop the cup and smash the precious thing to smithereens! And what then----? The hostess spoke agitatingly, with her mouth full of crumbs, and every now and then a crumb would be shot out of her mouth to fly like a bullet into the middle of the cakes and pies. “What a beautiful girl,” she remarked, watching Irmgard dance with her son Franz Egon Rudolf Ferdinand.

“She’s just like a Cindrella,” answered Frau von Kranich, “waiting for Prince Charming to claim her.”

“But I hear,” breathed a nondescript lady, “that her father is not liked because of his intolerable conceit. I am told that when someone asked him recently about German authors, Herr Direktor Schulz had the indiscretion to reply that he was by far the greatest writer living! And he looks as though he thought it--walking round in that old-fashioned bowler and the astrakhan coat, looking like an English lord.”

Frau von Kranich wrinkled her nose. “He is a little bit of a _parvenu_,” she said.

“I haven’t noticed that,” rejoined the Baroness, while a crumb shot from her mouth right into the sugar-basin.

“Still--a little.”

They were beginning to play bridge--the princes seated in one room; the counts in another; the barons in a third, Mr. Beck among the barons, who spoke to him of the high purchasing power of the U.S. dollar and urged him to subscribe to various aristocratic charities. Frau von Kranich had long since gone away. When the gathering at last dispersed, he went with Irmgard to the tram, but she suggested walking home together to the castle. “I like walking after a dance.”

Mr. Beck considered. “I like walking--with you.” He thought this very daring. And he reflected, with inward satisfaction, that he was actually making love in German--for the first time in his uneventful life. It wasn’t ... “half bad!”

She paused. “I like--walking,” she said.

This was cautious. And Mr. Beck put out feelers. “I don’t want to impose myself on you, and please tell me when you’ve had enough of me.”

“I’ll tell you.”

“I mentioned it because it seems to me that Frau von Kranich is rather inflicting my heavy company upon your slender shoulders. Needless to say, for my own part I like it. At the same time, I feel I may be boring you with my imperfect German, and I’d do anything in the world rather than be a nuisance to you.”

“She means well,” said Irmgard; and they walked along in silence through the frosty streets.

“Have you always lived in Salzburg, then?”

“Always--since my birth.”

“Do you like it?”

“I hate it.”

“But the people here are good people.”

“I hate them.”

“You ought to go abroad where the people might be more to your liking,” suggested Mr. Beck. “You’d like America.”

“I hate Americans.”

“Why?”

She thought hard. “Because they wear such ugly knickerbockers--the tourists here.”

“The child!” he thought. “The touching innocence!”

They were now going by a long country lane that stretched across a lonely field of snow. Far away an engine whistled. The snow hung heavy on the trees. Mr. Beck conceived the plan of approach by way of her father. “I do love the way your father speaks--these little movements of the hands, this fumbling pause, this seeking after the right word. He is by far the most considerable intellectual in the city.”

“Yes, Papa is very clever.”

They came out into an open space at the mouth of the river which extended wide into the distance, chained in ice. “This is our castle.” At the top of a hill surrounded by a fence stood the castle--looking rather less than a mere house. Irmgard quickly vanished up the steps. Mr. Beck stood still a while. The ice-chained river was bathed in moonlight.

There was an added warmth that winter evening about the sky and moon as he walked home to his _pension_.