“A thousand pardons for not waiting,” she said, as she stood up. “We simple folk rise early. There is so much to be done! Schwarzkopf is in his office. I hope you don’t take it ill?”
Tony excused herself in her turn. “You must not think I always sleep so late as this,” she said. “I feel very guilty. But the punch last night—”
The young man began to laugh. He stood behind the table with his short pipe in his hand and a newspaper before him.
“Good morning,” Tony said. “Yes, it is your fault. You kept urging me. Now I deserve only cold coffee. I ought to have had breakfast and a bathe as well, by this time.”
“Oh, no, that would be rather too early, for a young lady. At seven o’clock the water was rather cold—eleven degrees. That’s pretty sharp, after a warm bed.”
“How do you know I wanted a warm bath, monsieur?” and Tony sat down beside Frau Schwarzkopf. “Oh, you have kept the coffee hot for me, Frau Schwarzkopf! But I will pour it out myself, thank you so much.”
The housewife looked on as her guest began to eat. “Fräulein slept well, the first night? The mattress, dear knows, is only stuffed with seaweed—we are simple folk! And now, good appetite, and a good morning. You will surely find many friends on the beach. If you like, my son shall bear you company. Pardon me for not sitting longer, but I must look after the dinner. The joint is in the oven. We will feed you as well as we can.”
“I shall stick to the honeycomb,” Tony said when the two were alone. “You know what you are getting.”
Young Schwarzkopf laid his pipe on the verandah rail.
“But please smoke. I don’t mind it at all. At home, when I come down to breakfast, Papa’s cigar-smoke is already in the room. Tell me,” she said suddenly. “Is it true that an egg is as good as a quarter of a pound of meat?”
He grew red all over. “Are you making fun of me?” he asked, partly laughing but partly vexed. “I got another wigging from my Father last night for what he calls my silly professional airs.”
“No, really, I was asking because I wanted to know.” Tony stopped eating in consternation. “How could anybody call them airs? I should be so glad to learn something. I’m such a goose, you see. At Sesemi Weichbrodt’s I was always one of the very laziest. I’m sure you know a great deal.” Inwardly her thoughts ran: “Everybody puts his best foot foremost, before strangers. We all take care to say what will be pleasant to hear—that is a commonplace. …”
“Well, you see they are the same thing, in a way. The chemical constituents of foodstuffs—” And so on, while Tony breakfasted. Next they talked about Tony’s boarding-school days, and Sesemi Weichbrodt, and Gerda Arnoldsen, who had gone back to Amsterdam, and Armgard von Schelling, whose home, a large white house, could be seen from the beach here, at least in clear weather. Tony finished eating, wiped her mouth, and asked, pointing to the paper, “Is there any news?” Young Schwarzkopf shook his head and laughed cynically.
“Oh, no. What would there be? You know these little provincial news-sheets are wretched affairs.”
“Oh, are they? Papa and Mamma always take it in.”
He reddened again. “Oh, well, you see I always read it, too. Because I can’t get anything else. But it is not very thrilling to hear that So-and-So, the merchant prince, is about to celebrate his silver wedding. Yes, you laugh. But you ought to read other papers—the Königsberg Gazette, for instance, or the Rhenish Gazette. You’d find a different story there, entirely. There it’s what the King of Prussia says.”
“What does he say?”
“Well—er—I really couldn’t repeat it to a lady.” He got red again. “He expressed himself rather strongly on the subject of this same press,” he went on with another cynical laugh, which, for a moment, made a painful impression on Tony. “The press, you know, doesn’t feel any too friendly toward the government or the nobility or the parsons and junkers. It knows pretty well how to lead the censor by the nose.”
“Well, and you? Aren’t you any too friendly with the nobility, either?”
“I?” he asked, and looked very embarrassed. Tony rose.
“Shall we talk about this again another time?” she suggested. “Suppose I go down to the beach now. Look, the sky is blue nearly all over. It won’t rain any more. I am simply longing to jump into the water. Will you go down with me?”
VII
She had put on her big straw hat, and she raised her sunshade; for it was very hot, though there was a little seabreeze. Young Schwarzkopf, in his grey felt, book in hand, walked beside her and sometimes gave her a shy side-glance. They went along the front and walked through the garden of the Kurhouse, which lay there in the sun shadeless and still, with its rosebushes and pebbly paths. The music pavilion, hidden among pine trees, stood opposite the Kurhouse, the pastry-cook’s, and the two Swiss cottages, which were connected by a long gallery. It was about half-past eleven, and the hotel guests were probably down on the beach.
They crossed the playground, where there were many benches and a large swing, passed close to the building where one took the hot baths, and strolled slowly across the Leuchtenfeld. The sun brooded over the grass, and there rose up a spicy smell from the warm weeds and clover; bluebottle flies buzzed and droned about. A dull, booming roar came up from the ocean, whose waters now and then lifted a crested head of spray in the distance.
“What is that you are reading?” Tony asked. The young man took the book in both hands and ran it quickly through, from cover to cover.
“Oh, that is
