Nine O'Clock in the Morning

Episode in Old Age, Showing What Awaits "All That Beauty, All That Wealth E'er Gave"

MADDY VEGTEL

EARLY one beautiful May morning, Mr. Smith (an amiable, middle-aged gentleman) went into his kitchen, took a rucksack from a peg in the wall, returned to the room where his wife was seated, said "Are you sure that's all you'll need?" and "I 11 take the G:io train hack," and walked out of the house. He descended the steps leading from the terrace to the garden, he opened the garden gate and descended another flight of steps which led to a path which led in turn to the village station: a charming path winding its way between lilac bushes, jasmine bushes and bushes bright with yellow flowers, winding its way between horse-chestnut trees, lime-trees and meadows, winding its way up and down and up and down and up . . .

Grüss Gott! Mr. Smith called out (for Mr. Smith was just then living in Bavaria) to a peasant who was feeding his chickens, Grüss Gott! to the priest who was on the point of entering the chapel, and "my wife wants a dozen eggs", to a woman who was hanging up the washing at the side of her house. And then where the path abruptly turned and abruptly ascended Mr. Smith stopped and looked around him in the way he always did before he walked the last quarter of a mile to the station. And because it was such a beautiful May day the landscape for the moment seemed as colourful as the picture-postcard representations of it which were sold at the grocery store.

THERE lay the Lake as blue as the heaven above, there were the mountains, snow-white, there the meadows, the trees . . . "Beautiful," said Mr. Smith, "beautiful," and then he turned and trudged up the path and finally arrived, slightly out of breath, at the station. And "Grüss Gott!", he cried again to the station master as he bought his ticket. He then walked up the platform and there on one of the benches a lady was seated. She wore a yellow dress, an immense straw hat and in one hand she held a parasol. Her head was turned away so that one could not say whether she were very young or very old, for her figure had that peculiar angularity which can belong to either.

But as Mr. Smith's footsteps sounded on the platform, she turned her face towards him.

"Good God," thought Mr. Smith, "there that old hag is again, Gräfin Fels!" Now what was she doing there, sitting on a hard station bench at nine in the morning, a seventy-eight-year-old lady? vVbsurd! Ridiculous! But then she always did the absurd, the ridiculous thing. The first time, for example, that he and his wife had gone to call on her and her husband (for they were neighbours although their villas lay ten minutes' walk apart) the first time they had called on her, she had suddenly left the tea-table, left her guests and had insisted on taking him, Mr. Smith, to her boudoir to "look at my photographs".

Photographs! Mr. Smith had never seen so many photographs in his life, and all in one small room. They hung on the walls, they littered up the tables, a cupboard, a shelf— and such photographs! Of Royalty, of princes, dukes, counts, of ambassadors, opera stars, tragediennes, dashingly signed "Yours, Albert," "Fond remembrance, Zizi," "Paul, Prince Pa'llfy," "With love, Pauline Metternich."

"Pauline Metternich?" Mr. Smith asked.

"Pauline Metternich," said Gräfin Fels.

"But this one here, and this, and Mr. Smith, do you remember hearing of her?" She pointed hurriedly, feverishly, to a photograph here, a photograph there. Sarah Bernhardt, James de Rothschild, Richard Wagner, Count Bentinck, Marie Vecséra, Marie Sax, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Marquise de Lima, they hung pêle-mêle, grandes-dames, members of the haute-finance, operatic divas, artists. . . . "My friend, one of my best friends, ah, an adorable man . . . and she, my dear Mr. Smith. . . ." Thus Gräfin Fels commented in her peculiar hissing whisper. Occasionally she smiled, occasionally permitted an insinuation of past glories to escape her.

"Good Lord, what a woman!" thought Mr. Smith (for Mr. Smith knew all about her past and thought it was best to leave that past alone). "What a terrible woman! The less my wife sees of her the better." And then suddenly his eyes fell on an unsigned picture of a young girl with short, blonde, curly hair around which a wreath of flowers was tied with ribbons that fell over her bare shoulders, over the tiny puffed sleeves, over the short bodice with the low, square-cut neck. Mr. Smith bent forward to look better at this picture. Never had he seen so radiantly happy a face.

"THE flowers of that wreath were cherry red and blue," Gräfin Fels said suddenly. She began to hum. . . . "That's what they played that night: 'Si vous n'aviez rien à me dire, Pourquoi venir aupràs de moi?' " The voice stopped. Mr. Smith and Gräfin Fels were looking at each other, but Mr. Smith realized suddenly that Gräfin Fels was staring past him at the picture.

"Heavens!" thought Mr. Smith. "It can't he . . . impossible! I •would never have known —hut what happened that night that she remembers the flowers and the song. . . . How old was she? Surely not more than sixteen, it must have been before her marriage to Prince Bethyani—or was it Erdöd?" He did not remember. Some one had told him, in fact, everyone had told him about her life as a young girl in Paris, her marriage, her flight to London after the Prussian victory, her elopement with a jockey, her husband's suicide, her re-marriage, her divorce, her return to Paris where she lived. On what? One did not know. She had lost much money and yet she kept an equipage, she kept four servants. How did she do it? No one knew but one could not help hut guess, but was it Lord C—, or Mr. B—? And then her sudden marriage (when she was already past middle-age) to Gröf Fels. A wealthy man Gröif Fels, but no longer wealthy after the war and daily becoming more the miser.

"A sad way to end up such a glittering life," some one had said to Mr. Smith, hut Mr. Smith had expostulated, "Sad! Sad! She ought to thank God on her knees for a respectable home!" Ah yes, Mr. Smith had heard all about her life, all about her disreputable past, but as he gazed at that picture he forgot it, he saw but the girl as she must have dazzled men when she danced to Roses of the South, or a waltz by Lanner, dressed in "tarlatan blue Mediterranean" or tulle eau-de-Nil; as she must have enchanted hundreds when she visited the courses, the salons, the balls, the sauteries, the fêtes for visiting Royalty; as she must have charmed the entire Parisian heau-monde in those glittering days of the Second Empire.

BUT on this morning, on this beautiful morning in May, the sight of her, the sight of her old, painted face (for painted it was, with rouged lips and under the old eyes streaks of blue powder) disgusted him. Reluctantly he went over to her.

"Gräfin," he said and bent and kissed her hand.

"Sit down," she said, "sit down. You are going to town, your wife told me you were going today, so I came to see you . . ."

"Yes?" asked Mr. Smith. "Yes?"

Gräfin Fels moved nearer, so near that the brim of her hat touched his shoulder, "I want you to do something for me."

"What!" cried startled Mr. Smith. Fear suddenly clutched at his heart.

"Yes, I want you to do something for me, but do not tell my husband. No! No! You must not let my husband know, he would not approve."

Mr. Smith moved away a little. What did she want him to do? Something her husband was not allowed to know. He had a vision of himself involved in a terrible scandal, he already saw himself saying "Good-bye" to his wife, departing for a duel . . .

"Listen," and then suddenly Gräfin Fels hissed, "My husband . . ."

Yes, there was Gräf Fels coming towards them.

"Thank God," thought Mr. Smith, "she has no time now to . . ."

But something was slipped hurriedly into his hand: a coin; and a voice beside him whispered, "A box of cigarettes. Batchari. Mind, Batchari."

And loudly now the voice went on, "Ah, Fels! Our friend Mr. Smith was telling me about the success his wife has with her roses." "Yes," said Mr. Smith looking at her, hut this time he did not see her, but a girl with a wreath of flowers, cherry red and blue.