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"I have already told you how glad I am that you will be travelling with me, the more so as there is not a woman in the town so congenial to me as you." "Yes," said Herr Rupius, "I can corroborate that.
The two ladies got out and made their way to the third floor, where the dressmaker's workroom was situated. While Frau Rupius tried on her new costume, Bertha had various materials displayed to her from which she made a choice. The assistant took her measure, and it was arranged that Bertha should call in a week's time to be fitted.
"I might have told you everything, you know," Bertha went on to say; "indeed I might say that I wished to tell you before I actually went to Vienna ... but just fancy, isn't it strange? I did not venture to do so." "Moreover at that time, too, there probably had not been anything to tell," said Frau Rupius, without looking at Bertha. Bertha was amazed. How clever that woman was!
"What do you mean?" asked Bertha, looking at him in great alarm, as though she had done something she ought not, and had been found out. "What? You had no adventures? But you were with Frau Rupius; all the men must surely have run after you?" "What on earth has come into your head? Frau Rupius' conduct is irreproachable! She is one of the most well-bred ladies I know." "Quite so, quite so!
She was angry with her dead husband and with her dead father and mother; she was indignant with the people amongst whom she was now living, whose eyes were always upon her so that she dared not allow herself any freedom; she was hurt with Frau Rupius, who had not turned out to be such a friend that Bertha could rely on her for support; she hated Klingemann because, ugly and repulsive as he was, he desired to make her his wife; and finally she was violently enraged with the man she had loved in the days of her girlhood, because he had not been bolder, because he had withheld from her the ultimate happiness, and because he had bequeathed her nothing but memories full of fragrance, yet full of torment.
I am not saying a word against Frau Rupius or you." She looked him in the face. His eyes were gleaming, as they often did when he had had a little too much to drink. She could not help recalling that somebody had once foretold that Herr Garlan would die of an apoplectic stroke. "I must pay another visit to Vienna myself one of these days," he said. "Why, I haven't been there since Ash Wednesday.
For a whole minute the silence continued, and Bertha was so embarrassed that she would gladly have gone away had it not been necessary to arrange with Frau Rupius the details of the morrow's journey. Anna was the first to speak. "So then it is agreed that we are to meet at the railway station in time for the morning train isn't it?
She hurried off.... How was it, then, that she did not feel any nervousness on Frau Rupius' account?... Ah, of course, she had known that Frau Rupius had been better the previous evening. But where was the letter, though?... She had again thrust it quite mechanically into her bodice. Some officers were sitting in front of the restaurant having breakfast.
And to Emil it mattered just as little that Herr Klingemann had proposed to her the previous day, that Richard, her precocious nephew, kissed her sometimes, and that she had a great admiration for Herr Rupius. She would be sure to ask him on the morrow yes, she must be certain as regards all these points before she ... well, before she went with him in the evening into the country.
For a whole hour she slaved away, instilling a few letters into his head. The rain still kept falling; it was a pity that she could not go for a walk. The afternoon would be long, very long. Surely she ought to go and see Herr Rupius without further delay. It was too bad of her that she had not called on him since her return from Vienna.
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