The Vienna Melody (16 page)

“What guarantee shall I have?” he demanded to know. There was none. Her father was not rich; Henriette herself had three hundred and eleven florins in her account, all of which the Romanian gentleman unfortunately seemed to know already. “Perhaps someone else would step into the breach?” he suggested suddenly, and somehow it did not seem as though he were making such a proposal for the first time in his life, for it dropped so fluently from his bluish, smooth-shaven lips. One thing led to another, and as an expat he soon saw how easy it was to throw this young lady into a state of panic, so he quickly tightened the noose as soon as he had both ends in his hands. Wasn't there a Herr Alt whom the young lady had mentioned several times? To be sure, the publisher of the
Signals
had not the privilege of a personal acquaintance with him, but the Alt pianos were among the most exquisite in the world. And when would the wedding take place? At that time the engagement had not even taken place. But to Henriette it appeared to be the only way to get rid of this man with whom she was so utterly unable to cope, and so she named a day. Thereupon all that remained to be done was the signing of a small document. At times since then, when his splendid sources of information gave him occasion to do so, Jarescu recalled himself to her consciousness. In such cases he had sent warning messages and had received written assurances that everything was proceeding in the best possible way and that he must only have a little more patience.

But today he appeared in person and rang the bell on the fourth story shortly after Henriette had decided to engage the manservant sent to her by an employment agency. With a butler in the house she felt even more unsure of herself. She had never had one and therefore was quite uncertain how to deal with him. But what had she been sure of in those first unearthly days? At first she woke up weeping and was frightened by the new rooms. They were cold.

Life in them was all compulsion and menace. Something was going behind her back, and no one told her what it was. Her brother-in-law Otto Eberhard was scarcely civil; her father treated her like an invalid; she hardly knew even Franz, he had suddenly become so reserved. “Why did you really come back so soon from your wedding journey?” her girl friends asked. Others asked: “Tell me, is it wonderful?” She never had girl friends she liked. Little Christine from the first floor was the only one who put no questions and understood everything. You could sit with her for hours and sob your heart out, without having to hide from her, as from others, that you had lost someone.

“A gentleman to call, your ladyship,” announced the new butler. On the visiting card he handed her she read:

 

F
ERDINAND
M
ICHAEL
A
LEXANDER
J
ARESCU

Publicist and Editor-in-Chief of
Vienna Signals

 

“Ask him to come in,” Henriette said. She had almost lost her capacity to be afraid.

The presence of little Christine seemed to annoy the publicist, but Henriette said to her: “Please stay!” And to the gentleman with the highly pomaded shining black part in his hair: “This is my new relative. You can speak freely before her. We have no secrets from one another, have we, Christl?”

“No!” replied the child, who had changed amazingly since Henriette had moved into the house. She was no longer sad. She had blossomed out.

“Frau Alt,” her caller began, “has it perhaps escaped your attention that today is already February 4 in the calendar?”

“I know, it's really terrible! But I shall speak to my husband this very day,” she promised. It still cost her an effort to say “my husband.”

“It's high time, I must say,” Jarescu declared, and then, after looking at the little girl, he added a remark deriving from some of his splendid fund of information. “Especially as you're not likely to have much more time in which to do it.”

Henriette, thinking that here was the man who was the cause of all that had happened to her, did not grasp the implication of his remark. She was surprised that she saw him more as a source of wonder than of hatred. She realized that there were bad people, but she looked on him more as a freak.

Meanwhile little Christine had taken her firmly by the arm.

“What does this gentleman want from you? '' she asked softly, and in her large dark eyes there glowed the hatred Henriette did not feel.

“Nothing, Christl,” she replied.

“What we have to discuss is perhaps not entirely suited to the ears of children,” Jarescu suggested.

“Why not?” said Henriette, still rapt in her thoughts. “I prefer to have someone with me who is on my side. Two against one. That gives me a chance.”

The publisher of the
Signals
altered his velvety conversational tone a shade. “If you're counting on your possible arrest to liberate you from your responsibility in regard to me you're mistaken!”

Was he threatening to have her arrested? In such matters she was utterly unsuspecting and less like the daughter of an eminent jurist than like that of the opera singer Madame Aufreiter, who to the day of her death looked upon laws and everything that went with them as an impenetrable mystery. It was only in the Romanian's following remark that she found a clue to what he meant by arrest, but that she understood even less. It was impossible to be arrested because one had refused to give a signature to a document as required by a Chancellery chief!

“Don't be ridiculous!” she said.

Now that was something Jarescu never had any intention of being. “Frau Alt,” he protested, “it may fascinate certain highly or less highly placed persons to watch your display of naïveté. But you will be kind enough to spare me. Today is Wednesday. I'll give you until tomorrow. If you haven't settled my affair promptly by tomorrow noon, I'll not allow you to make a fool of me any longer, and the article will appear the day after tomorrow. Moreover, I'm convinced that its readers will look forward to a little story about the daughter of so romantic a mother who has shown herself quite inclined to romance too!”

“Hello, darling,” said Franz, who had entered the room while the publicist was still speaking. He had hurried straight back from the County Criminal Courthouse, whistling all the way. With every step he had realized more clearly that he could not have asked for better proof than that gray file.

“My husband—Herr Jarescu.” Henriette performed the introduction. The moment which she had feared and delayed so long had come. It could hardly have come less favorably, without any preparation and at the very time when Franz was so different.
I always used to have so much luck
, she thought to herself.

“How do you do?” Franz said. “What were you two saying about romance? I came home too soon, I know. But today I was particularly anxious to get home.”

Jarescu, on the other hand, found the time most favorable. Here was a husband fresh from his honeymoon, head over heels in love—that much was obvious to a blind man—and all unsuspecting that this coquettish little person did not care anything about him and wasn't even depressed by the prospect of having the secret police brutally intrude on the idyll the next day or even more probably that day! “I can quite understand your feelings,” was his approving remark, and he prepared to take hold of this husband in the way his experience had taught him. “A chivalrous gentleman like you,” he would say to him, “would not care whether you gave your lovely wife a beautiful string of pearls or an even more costly present if it would return her peace of mind to her!” That would untie his purse strings. Men are so vain!

“Herr Jarescu has come,” Henriette began, pressing the finger tips of both hands to her temples, a gesture characteristic of her in moments of extreme perplexity, “to get me—” She stammered. The long-awaited occasion found her unprepared. “You see, he is—”

The instant he had entered the room Franz had sensed that this fellow, who exuded such a penetrating barber-shop odor, was unpleasing to Henriette. I must have seen him before somewhere was the thought that crossed his mind.

“Herr Jarescu happens to be the publisher of
Vienna Signals
,” Henriette ventured.

Something clicked in Franz's memory. This was the man who, at performances of various virtuosos in the Musikverein concert hall, always pushed his way into the green room, although someone else the music critic on his filthy paper. However, it was an established fact that it was a filthy paper. The
Presse
, too, was a filthy paper. All liberal papers were ‘filthy rags.' Although. Franz was convinced he was no anti-Semite, nevertheless he shared the general opinion with regard to newspapers—namely, that liberal-minded Jews wrote for and financed them, and all liberalism was a filthy bussiness.

“Aha,” he said, “and to what may we attribute the pleasure of this call?”

“Perhaps you and I could discuss this privately?” the Romanian proposed. That was the last thing Henriette desired. But Franz was already on his feet, and with a “This way, please,” he showed him into the next room and followed him.

Little Christine asked, “Why are you so afraid of that man, Aunt Hetti?”

Because what was going on in there now was the worst that could happen! Franz would hear all about Mama's dreadful past and that Henriette herself had married him on material grounds. Under the influence of phrases current in her day, she had built her world on foundations already laid without its ever occurring to her to test them. Mama's ‘dreadful past ' could be boiled down to an affair with the man to whom she owed her position as a singer. But to marry a person on ‘material grounds,' according to the novels she had been brought up on, was a crime. On the other hand, to put someone on a pedestal, as Papa had done with Mama, was such a wonderful-sounding phrase that it must be true.

An undertone of voices came from the next room. At this very moment her future was being decided.

“Don't make a face like that!” Christine pleaded. “Shall I play a hand of marriage with you?”

She had the cards ready and dealt them out. Six for Henriette, six for herself. And to make the game more enticing she exclaimed: “It seems to me I have very bad cards!”

Diamonds were trumps. They had not yet taken the mourning draperies off the Coburg Palace.

“Your turn. Aunt Hetti!”

What are trumps?

Diamonds.

King, queen, ace of clubs. “Marriage! Auntie!”

At any moment the voices must grow louder. Could she have believed that Franz would pay such an enormous sum of money for something which really did not mean anything to him? While she listened with bated breath for sounds from the next room she somehow could not grasp how she had talked herself into it all. Her towering hopes, when faced with reality, fell in a heap like the cards before her. She might just as well not have married at all! She might just as well have screwed up the little mite of courage that Greek girl had had! She would have ruined everything as far as Franz was concerned anyhow. A tremendous mistake, the whole thing!

“But, Auntie, diamonds are trumps!”

Henriette jumped up because the door of the next rootii opened suddenly and the two men appeared. Franz was smoking a cigar. “We have talked the matter out.” He nodded smilingly to Henriette.

“Really?” she said, bewildered.

“Completely,” he answered, and blew a huge smoke ring into the air. I think we must not detain our editor any longer.” He opened the door into the vestibule. “By the way, what's the name of the man you engaged?” he inquired as he did so.

“Johann.” Her voice trembled. “But he asked to be called by his surname, Simmerl.”

“Simmerl!” Franz called in a loud tone.

“Yes, Your Grace!” echoed a voice from outside.

“Show this gentleman out. He's in a hurry!”

Jarescu's carefully shaven cheeks had taken on a sickly hue. “Thanks, I can find the way by myself,” he declared.

“Simmerl, show the gentleman out!” Franz repeated with emphasis.

The new butler appeared in the doorway of the living room and walked up behind the caller. “This way, if you please, sir.”

A second later the apartment door slammed behind the publicist.

“Bravo!'' Franz exclaimed with appreciation. “You seem to be experienced in throwing people out, Simmerl!”

“Thank you, Your Grace. I have my method!” replied the recipient of the praise.

When Franz left the vestibule and came back into the living room he went straight over to Henriette and took her into his arms. Pride was written all over his easily readable face. “Do you know what, Hetti? You're really a marvellous girl!”

“What did he tell you, Franz?” She decided to risk the question.

“He? We're rid of him! I gave him the address of where to go. The same place from which I have just come. By the way, at that place—and from that filthy rat just now too—I discovered something I've known for a long time but which it's always fun to hear again, and that is: I'm the luckiest husband in the world! Frau Alt, allow me to congratulate myself on you!” He passed his hand tenderly over her hair. The smug self-satisfaction which she had found so distasteful in him had almost vanished. She had never had a brother, and now it seemed to her as if she had one.

“Uncle Franz, you are wonderful!” cried little Christine, full of delight.

“‘Out of the mouths of babes,'” he quoted, laughing. “Does that man think Simmerl is such a beautiful name? Simmerl! Will dinner be ready soon?”

It was a long time since there had been nothing to fear.

The young chambermaid helped Henriette to dress. It seemed almost certain that dark blue was an appropriate color, although perhaps black would be more suitable for the occasion? Should she wear a hat? And if so, which one? What about gloves? Every one knew that Frau Schratt never appeared at court without the fan which the Empress had made fashionable.