“Shall I be rude if I talk about Mrs. Dodsworth?” urged Kurt. “She is so lovely! A kind of Arctic beauty, shining like ice. And yet so very warmhearted and gracious and funny. And such gallantry—an explorer—but very elegant—like in a Roman, with many bearers and dressing for dinner in the jungle. One feels she could do anything she wanted to enough. Forever young. She is—perhaps thirty-five?—one would say she was twenty-eight. Our European women are very gemütlich, they are easy to be with, they wait on us, but not many among them have a sword-like quality like Mrs. Dodsworth and such high spirits—Oh, I hope I am not rude! She is lucky to be accompany with a great red Indian like you—a chief, sagt man?—who can guide and protect her!”
Sam made the most awkward sound—something between “Thanks” and “Like hell!”
“As I said once, I admire America very much, and it is so kind of you two to come and bummel with me! And meet my friends.”
“Kindness all yours, Count. Good Lord! Mighty nice of you to let us meet such nice people as the Princess and—”
“Oh, don’t call me ‘Count.’ I am not a count—there aren’t any more counts—the republic has come to stay—I am just a clerk for the I.T.A.! If I am only something with a title, then I would better be nothing! I shall be glad if you call me ‘Kurt.’ We Austrians are almost like you Americans in our fondness to call by the first name among people we like. Yes.”
“Well, that’s mighty nice of you—”
Sam wished that he could warm up. But he was conscious of waiting for Fran—of Kurt’s waiting. He was annoyed at the prospect of again being admitted as Fran’s patient escort, as he had been in Madame de Pénable’s gang. Yet he felt that Kurt was honest in professing admiration for both of them, and he forced himself to sound amiable:
“I guess one of the things we Americans fool ourselves about is claiming that we’re the only really hospitable race in the world. Don’t believe any stranger in America ever was received in a more friendly way than Mrs. Dodsworth and—than Fran and I have been here and in England. Mighty nice!”
Then Fran was upon them, in amethyst velvet, and with velvet she had put on a patronizing grandeur. The simple-hearted Kurt was confused; it took him ten minutes to understand that she was not showing displeasure in dropping her jollity, but merely playing a different role. Entreated to join them in a cocktail, she condescended. “It would be ever so amusing to have an aperitif in the bar, but do you really think one could?”
“Oh yess, it is quite proper … almost!” Kurt begged.
Sam said nothing. He had seen Fran enjoying too many drinks in too many bars, and not calling them “aperitifs,” either.
She was full of high life amid the upholstery and expensive food of Horcher’s, and she generously commended the Rheinlachs. But somehow she came out of it—somehow, sometime, Kurt began calling her “Fran,” and she admitted him with “Kurt”; she laughed without admiring her own laughter, and, permitting them an entr’acte during her personal drama of The Sophisticated American Lady Abroad, she allowed them to be human and cheerful again. Kurt talked, less flamboyantly now, more naturally, and Sam realized that however Kurt might insist that he was no nobleman now but only a tourist-agency clerk, Kurt belonged to the once powerful of the earth and, but for the war, would be magnificence in a castle. His father had been gentleman in waiting and friend to the Emperor, his great-uncle, the field-marshal, had organized the war against Prussia, and he himself, as a boy, had played with the Archduke Michael.
Sam wondered whether, however genuine his family, Kurt was one of these fictional adventurers who would be likely to borrow money, and to introduce swindlers to a rustic from the Middle West. He rejected it. No. If he knew anything about people, this man was honest, unselfishly fond of entertaining people. And the Biedners vouched for him, and to Fran’s father, the canny old brewer, a Biedner had been almost as beautiful and dependable and generally Biblical as stock in a national bank.
Obviously Fran had no doubts whatever about Kurt von Obersdorf. In the glow of his stories about the frivolous days of old Vienna, she forgot her own charms. She consented when Kurt proposed that they go to the Königin and dance; she consented when he proposed that they leave that decorative but packed haunt of the more sporting Junkers and venture to the vulgar Cabaret von Vetter Kaspar.
The wit there was devoted chiefly to the water-closet, and Sam was astonished to hear Fran shamelessly joining in Kurt’s whooping laughter. Of course he laughed himself; but still—Well, this fellow Obersdorf, he enjoyed things himself so much that he made you feel like laughing at—well, at things that people didn’t talk about in Zenith, anyway not in mixed company—But still—
They came out of the cabaret at one in the morning.
“Now just one more place!” Kurt demanded. “Such a place as I do not think you will see in America. Shrecklich! Such curious men hang out there and dance with one another. But you must see it once.”
“Oh, it’s pretty late, Kurt. I think we’d better be getting home,” said Sam. An evening of stories, and a bottle of champagne, had warmed him to a point where it seemed natural to call Kurt by his first name, but not to a point where he forgot the joys of a good soft pillow.
“Yes, it is late,” said Fran, but vaguely.
“Oh no!” Kurt begged. “Life is so short! To waste it in sleeping! And you are here a so small time. Then you will wander on and perhaps I shall never see you again! Oh, you did enjoy today, did you not? We are good friends, nicht? Let us not
