Part 35

Klaus Heinrich felt happy and cheered, whether as the result of the canter--for which he had had to brace himself up, for, though a decent figure on a horse, his left hand prevented him from being a strong rider--or for some other reason. After leaving the pine-wood they rode along the quiet high-road between meadows and furrowed fields, with a peasant's hut or a country inn here and there. As they drew near the next wood, he asked in a low voice:

"Won't you fulfil your promise and tell me about the Countess? What is your companion's history?"

"She is my friend," she answered, "and in a sense my governess too, although she did not come to us till I was grown up. That was three years ago, in New York, and the Countess was then in a terrible state. She was on the brink of starvation," said Miss Spoelmann, and as she said it she fastened her big black eyes with a searching, startled look on Klaus Heinrich.

"Really starvation?" he asked, and returned her look.... "Do please go on."

"Yes, I said that too when she came to us, and although I, of course, saw quite well that her mind was slightly affected, she made such an impression upon me that I persuaded my father to let her be my companion."

"What took her to America? Is she a countess by birth?" asked Klaus Heinrich.

"Not a countess, but of noble birth, brought up in refined and luxurious surroundings, sheltered and protected, as she expressed it to me, from every wind, because from childhood she had been impressionable and sensitive. But then she married a Count Löwenjoul, a cavalry captain--a strange specimen of the aristocracy, according to her account--not quite up to the mark, to put it mildly."

"What was wrong with him?" asked Klaus Heinrich.

"I can't exactly tell you, Prince. You must take into consideration the rather obscure way in which the Countess puts what she has to say. But, to judge from what she has told me, he must have been just about as arrant a scamp as one could well imagine--a regular blackguard."

"I see," said Klaus Heinrich, "what's called a hard case, or a tough proposition."

"Exactly; we'll say man of the world--but in the most comprehensive and unlimited sense, for, to judge by the Countess's remarks, there were no limits in his case."

"No, that's what I too gathered," said Klaus Heinrich. "I've met several people of that sort--regular devils, so to speak. I heard of one such, who used to make love in his motor car, even when it was going at full speed."

"Did your friend Ueberbein tell you of him?"

"No, somebody else. Ueberbein would not think it proper to mention anything of that sort to me."

"Then he must be a useless sort of friend, Prince."

"You'll think better of him when I tell you more about him, Miss Spoelmann. But please go on!"

"Well, I don't know whether Löwenjoul behaved like your roué. Anyhow he behaved disgracefully."

"I expect he gambled and drank."

"I guess so. And besides that of course he made love, neglected the Countess and carried on with the loose women that are always to be found everywhere--at first behind her back, and later no longer behind her back but impudently and openly without any regard for her feelings."

"But tell me, why did she ever marry him?"

"She married him against her parents' will, because, as she has told me, she was in love with him. For in the first place, he was a handsome man when she first met him--he fell off in his looks later. In the second place, his reputation as a man of the world had gone before him, and that, according to her, constituted a sort of irresistible attraction for her, for, though she had been so well sheltered and protected, nothing would shake her in her resolve to share her life with him. If one thinks it over, one can quite understand it."

"Yes," he said, "I can quite understand it. She wanted to have her fling, as it were, to get her eyes opened. And she saw the world with a vengeance."

"You may put it like that if you like: though the expression seems to me rather too flippant to describe her experiences. Her husband ill-treated her."

"Do you mean that he beat her?"

"Yes, he ill-treated her physically. But now comes something, Prince, which you too will not have heard about before. She gave me to understand that he ill-treated her not only in a temper, not only in anger and rage, but also without being exasperated, simply for his own satisfaction. I mean, that his caresses were so revolting as to amount to ill-treatment."

Klaus Heinrich was silent. Both looked very grave. At last he asked: "Did the Countess have any children?"

"Yes, two. They died quite young, both only a few weeks old, and that's the greatest sorrow the Countess has had to bear. It would seem from her hints that it was the fault of the loose women for whom her husband betrayed her that the children died directly after birth."

Both remained silent, and their eyes clouded over.