I have not the heart to set down what passed between my sister and myself when I broke to her the news that I must be against her. Impulsive in all her moods, and ungoverned in her emotions, she displayed much bitterness and an anger that her disappointment may excuse. I have little doubt that I, on my part, was formal, priggish, perhaps absurd; all these faults she charged me with. You can not put great ideas in a boy's head without puffing him up; I was doing at cost to myself what I was convinced was my duty; it is only too likely that I gave myself some airs during the performance. Might I not be pardoned if I talked a little big about my position? The price I was paying for it was big enough. It touched me most nearly when she accused me of jealousy, but I set it down only to her present rage. I was tempted to soften her by dwelling on my own precarious health, but I am glad that an instinct for fair play made me leave that weapon unused. She grew calm at last, and rose to her feet with a pale face.
"I have tried to do right," said I.
"I shall not forget what you have done," she retorted as she walked out of the room.
I have been much alone in my life—alone in spirit, I mean, for that is the only loneliness that has power to hurt a man—but never so much as during the year that elapsed before Victoria's marriage was celebrated. Save for Hammerfeldt, whose engagements did not allow him to be much in my company, and to whom it was possible to open one's heart only rarely, I had nobody with whom I was in sympathy. For my mother, although she yielded more readily to the inevitable, was yet in secret on Victoria's side on the matter of marriage. Victoria had been for meeting the foreign representatives by renouncing her succession; my mother would not hear of that, but was for defying the protests. Nothing, she had declared, could really come of them. Hammerfeldt overbore her with his knowledge and experience, leaving her defeated, but only half convinced, sullen, and disappointed. She was careful not to take sides against me overtly, but neither did she seek to comfort or to aid me. She withdrew into a neutrality that favoured Victoria silently, although it refused openly to espouse her cause. The two ladies thus came closer together again, leaving me more to myself. The near prospect of independence reconciled Victoria to a temporary control; my mother was more gentle from her share in her daughter's disappointment. For my part I took refuge more and more in books and my sport.
Amusement is the one great consolation that life offers, and even in this dreary time it was not lacking. The love-lorn Baron had returned to Waldenweiter; he wrote to Hammerfeldt for permission; the Prince refused it; the Baron rejoined that he was about to be married; I can imagine the grim smile with which the old man withdrew his objection. The Baron came home with his wife. This event nearly broke the new alliance between my mother and my sister; it was so very difficult for my mother not to triumph, and Victoria detected a taunt even in silence. However, there was no rupture, the Baron was never mentioned; but I, seeking distraction, made it my business to pursue him as often as he ventured into his boat. I overtook him once and insisted on going up to Waldenweiter and being introduced to the pretty young Baroness. She knew nothing about the affair, and was rather hurt at not being invited to Artenberg. The Baron was on thorns during the whole interview—but not so much because he must be looking a fool in my eyes, as because he did not desire to seem light of love in his wife's. Unhappily, however, about this time a pamphlet was secretly printed and circulated, giving a tolerably accurate account of the whole affair. The wrath in "exalted quarters" may be imagined. I managed to procure (through Baptiste) a copy of this publication and read it with much entertainment. Victoria, in spite of her anger, borrowed it from me. It is within my knowledge that the Baroness received a copy from an unknown friend, and that the Baron, being thus driven into a corner, admitted that the Princess had at one time distinguished him by some attentions—and could he be rude? Now, curiously enough, the report that got about on our bank of the river was, that there was no foundation at all for the assertions of the pamphlet, except in a foolish and ill-mannered persecution to which the Princess had, during a short period, been subjected. After this there could be no question of any invitation passing from Artenberg to Waldenweiter. The subject dropped; theprinter made some little scandal and a pocket full of money, and persons who, like myself, knew the facts and could appreciate the behaviour of the lovers gained considerable amusement.
My second source of diversion was found in my future brother-in-law, William Adolphus, of Alt-Gronenstahl. He was, in himself, a thoroughly heavy fellow, although admirably good-natured and, I believe, a practical and competent soldier. He was tall, dark, and even at this time inclining to stoutness; he became afterward exceedingly corpulent. He did not at first promise amusement, but a rather malicious humour found much in him, owing to the circumstance that the poor fellow was acquainted with the negotiations touching the marriage first suggested for Victoria, and was fully aware that he himself was in his lady's eyes only apis-aller. His dignity might have refused such a situation; but in the first instance he had been hardly more of a free agent than Victoria herself, and later on, as though he were determined to deprive himself of all defence, he proceeded to fall genuinely in love with my capricious but very attractive sister. I was sorry for him, but I am not aware that sympathy with people excludes amusement at them. I hope not, for wide sympathies are a very desirable thing. William Adolphus, looking round for a friend, honoured me with his confidence, and during his visits to Artenberg used to consult me almost daily as to how he might best propitiate his deity and wean her thoughts from that other alliance which had so eclipsed his in its prospective brilliance.
"Girls are rather difficult to manage," he used to say to me ruefully. "You'll know more about them in a few years, Augustin."
I knew much more about them than he did already. I am not boasting; but people who learn only from experience do not allow for intuition.
"But I think she's beginning to get fonder of me," he would end, with an uphill cheerfulness.
She was not beginning to get the least fonder of him; she was beginning to be interested and excited in the stir of the marriage. There were so many things to do and talk about, and so much desirable prominence and publicity attaching to the affair, that she had less time for nursing her dislike. The shock of him was passing over; he was falling into focus with the rest of it; but she was not becoming in the least fonder of him. I knew all this without the few words; with them he knew none of it. It seems to be a mere accident who chances to be previous to truth, who impervious.
In loneliness for me, in perturbation for poor William Adolphus, in I know not what for Victoria the time passed on. There is but one incident that stands out, naming against the gray of that monotony. The full meaning of it I did not understand then, but now I know it better.
I was sitting alone in my dressing-room. I had sent Baptiste to bed, and was reading a book with interest. Suddenly the door was opened violently. Before I could even rise to my feet, Victoria—the door slammed behind her—had thrown herself on her knees before me. She was in her nightdress, barefooted, her hair loose and tumbled on her shoulders; it seemed as though she had sprung up from her bed and run to me. She caught my arms in her hands, and laid her face on my knees; she said nothing, but sobbed violently with a terrible gasping rapidity.
"My God, what's the matter?" said I.
For a moment there was no answer; then her voice came, interrupted and half-choked by constant sobs.
"I can't do it, I can't do it. For God's sake, don't make me do it.
"Do what?" I asked.
Her sobs alone answered me, and their answer was enough. I sat there helpless and still, the nervous tight clutching of her hands pinning my arms to my side.
"You're the king, you're the king," she moaned.
Yes, I was the king; even then I smiled.
"You don't know," she went on, and now she raised her face streaming with tears. "You don't know—how can you know what it is? Help me, help me, Augustin."
The thing had come on me with utter suddenness, the tranquillity of my quiet room had been rudely rent by the invasion. I was, in an instant, face to face with a strange dim tragedy, the like of which I had never known, the stress of which I could never fully know. But all the tenderness that I had for her, my love for her beauty, and the yearning for comradeship that she herself had choked rose in me; I bent my head till my lips rested on her hair, crying, "Don't, darling, don't."
She sprang up, throwing her arm about my neck, and looking round the room as though there were something that she feared; then she sat on my knee and nestled close to me. She had ceased to sob now, but it was worse to me to see her face strained in silent agony and her eyes wept dry of tears.
"Let me stay here, do let me stay here a little,"she said as I passed my arm round her and her head fell on my shoulder. "Don't send me away yet, Augustin," she whispered, "I don't want to be alone."
"Stay here, dearest, nobody shall hurt you," said I, as I kissed her. My heart broke for her trouble, but it was sweet to me to think that she had fled from it to my arms. After all, the old bond held between us; the tug of trouble revealed it. She lay a while quite still with closed eyes; then she opened her eyes and looked up at me.
"Must I?" she asked.
"No," I answered. "If you will not, you shall not."
Her arm coiled closer round my neck and she closed her eyes again, sighing and moving restlessly. Presently she lay very quiet, her exhaustion seeming like sleep. How long had she tormented herself before she came to me?
My brain was busy, but my heart outran it. Now, now if ever, I would assert myself, my power, my position. She should not call to me in vain. What I would do, I did not know; but the thing she dreaded should not be. But although I was in this fever, I did not stir; she was resting in peace; let her rest as long as she would. For more than an hour she lay there in my arms; I grew stiff and very weary, but I did not move. At last I believe that in very truth she slept.
The clock in the tower struck midnight, and the quarter, and the half-hour. I had rehearsed what I should say to my mother and what to Hammerfeldt. I had dreamed how this night should knit her and me so closely that we could never again drift apart, that now we knew one another and for each of uswhat was superficial in the other existed no more, but was swept away by the flood of full sympathy. She and I against the world if need be!
A shiver ran through her; she opened her eyes wide and wider, looking round the room no longer in fear, but in a sort of wonder. Her gaze rested an instant on my face, she drew her arm from round my neck and rose to her feet, pushing away my arm. There she stood for a moment with a strange, fretful, ashamed look on her face. She tossed her head, flinging her hair back behind her shoulders. I had taken her hand and still held it; now she drew it also away.
"What must you think of me?" she said. "Good gracious, I'm in my nightgown."
She walked across to the looking-glass and stood opposite to it.
"What a fright I look!" she said. "How long have I been here?"
"I don't know; more than an hour."
"It was horrid in bed to-night," she said in a half-embarrassed yet half-absent way. "I got thinking about—about all sorts of things, and I was frightened."
The change in her mood sealed my lips.
"I hope mother hasn't noticed that my room's empty. No, of course not; she must be in bed long ago. Will you take me back to my room, Augustin?"
"Yes," said I.
She came up to me, looked at me for a moment, then bent down to me as I sat in my chair and kissed my forehead.
"You're a dear boy," she said. "Was I quite mad?"
"I meant what I said," I declared, as I stood up. "I mean it still."
"Ah," said she, flinging her hands out, "poor Augustin, you mean it still! Take me along the corridor, dear, I'm afraid to go alone."
Sometimes I blame myself that I submitted to the second mood as completely as I had responded to the first; but I was staggered by the change, and the old sense of distance scattered for an hour was enveloping me again.
One protest I made.
"Are we to do nothing, then?" I asked in a low whisper.
"We're to go to our beds like good children," said she with a mournful little smile. "Come, take me to mine."
"I must see you in the morning."
"In the morning? Well, we'll see. Come, come."
Now she was urgent, and I did as she bade me. But first she made me bring her a pair of my slippers; her feet were very cold, she said, and they felt like ice against my hand as I touched them in putting on the slippers for her. She passed her hand through my arm and we went together. The door of her room stood wide open; we went in; I saw the bed in confusion.
"Fancy if any one had come by and seen!" she whispered. "Now, good-night, dear."
I opened my lips to speak to her again.
"No, no; go, please go. Good-night, dear." I left her standing in the middle of her room. Outside the door I waited many minutes; I heard her moving about and getting into bed; then all was quiet; I returned to my own room.
I was up early the next morning, for I had been able to sleep but little. I wanted above all things to see Victoria again. But even while I was dressing Baptiste brought me a note. I opened it hurriedly, for it was from her. I read:
"Forget all about last night; I was tired and ill. I rely on your honour to say nothing to anybody. I am all right this morning."
She was entitled to ask the pledge of my honour, if she chose. I tore the note in fragments and burned them.
It was about eleven o'clock in the morning when I went out into the garden. There was a group on the terrace—my mother, Victoria, and William Adolphus. They were laughing and talking and seemed very merry. As a rule I should have waved a "good morning" and passed on for my solitary walk. To-day I went up to them. My mother appeared to be in an excellent temper, the Prince looked quite easy and happy. Victoria was a little pale but very vivacious. She darted a quick look at me, and cried out the moment I had kissed my mother:
"We're settling the bridesmaids! You're just in time to help, Augustin."
We "settled" the bridesmaids. I hardly knew whether to laugh or to cry during this important operation. Victoria was very kind to herfiancé, receiving his suggestions with positive graciousness: he became radiant under this treatment. When our task was done, Victoria passed her arm through his, declaring that she wanted a stroll in the woods; as they went by me she laid her hand lightly and affectionately on my arm, looking me full in the face the while. I understood; for good or evil my lips were sealed.
My mother looked after the betrothed couple as they walked away; I looked at my mother's fine high-bred resolute face.
"I'm so glad," said she at last, "to see Victoria so happy. I was afraid at one time that she'd never take to it. Of course we had other hopes."
The last words were a hit at me. I ignored them; that battle had been fought, the victory won, and paid for by me in handsome fashion.
"Has she taken to it?" I asked as carelessly as I could. But my mother's eyes turned keenly on me.
"Have you any reason for thinking she hasn't?" came in quick question.
"No," I answered.
The sun was shining and Princess Heinrich opened her parasol very leisurely. She rose to her feet and stood there for a moment. Then in a smooth, even, and what I may call reasonable voice, she remarked:
"My dear Augustin, from time to time all girls have fancies. We mothers know that it doesn't do to pay any attention to them. They soon go if they're let alone. We shall meet at lunch, I hope?"
I bowed respectfully, but perhaps I looked a little doubtful.
"It really doesn't do to take any notice of them," said my mother over her shoulder.
So we took no notice of them; my sister's midnight flight to my room and to my arms was between her and me, and for all the world as though it has never been, save that it left behind it a little legacy of renewed kindliness and trust. For that much I was thankful; but I could not forget the rest.
A month later she was married to William Adolphus at Forstadt.
The foreign tour I undertook in my eighteenth year has been sufficiently, or even more than sufficiently, described by the accomplished and courtly pen of Vohrenlorf's secretary. I travelled as the Count of Artenberg under my Governor's guidance, and saw in some ways more, in some respects less, than most young men on their travels are likely to see. Old Hammerfeldt recommended for my reading the English letters of Lord Chesterfield to his son, and I studied them with some profit, much amusement, and an occasional burst of impatience; I believe that in the Prince's opinion I, like Mr. Stanhope, had hitherto attached too little importance to, and not attained enough proficiency in, "the graces"; concealment was the life's breath of his statescraft, and "the graces" help a man to hide everything—ideals, emotions, passions, his very soul. It must have been an immense satisfaction to the Prince, on leaving the world at a ripe age, to feel that nobody had ever been sure that they understood him; except, of course, the fools who think that they understood everybody.
As far as my private life is concerned, one incident only on this expedition is of moment. We paid a visit to my father's cousins, the Bartensteins, whopossessed a singularly charming place in Tirol. The Duke was moderately rich, very able, and very indolent. He was a connoisseur in music and the arts. His wife, my Cousin Elizabeth, was a very good-natured woman of seven or eight and thirty, noted for her dairy and fond of out-of-door pursuits; her devotion to these last had resulted in her complexion being rather reddened and weather-beaten. We were to stay a week, an unusually long halt; and even before we arrived I detected a simple slyness in my good Vohrenlorf's demeanour. When a secret was afoot, Vohrenlorf's first apparent effort was to draw everybody's attention to the fact of its existence. Out of perversity I asked no questions, and left him to seethe in his over-boiling mystery. I knew that I should be enlightened soon enough. I was quite right; before I had been a day with my relatives it became obvious that Elsa was the mystery. I suppose that it is not altogether a common thing for a youth of eighteen, feeling himself a man, trying to think himself one, just become fully conscious of the power and attraction of the women he meets, to be shown a child of twelve, and given to understand that in six years' time she will be ready to become his wife. The position, even if not as uncommon as I suppose, is curious enough to justify a few words of description.
I saw Elsa first as she was rolling down a hill, with a scandalized governess in full chase. Elsa rolled quickly, marking her progress by triumphant cries. She "brought up" at the foot of the slope in an excessively crumpled state; her short skirts were being smoothed down when her mother and I arrived. She was a pretty, fair, blue-eyed child, with a natural merriment about her attractive enough.She was well made, having escaped the square solidity of figure that characterized Cousin Elizabeth. Her features were still in an undeveloped condition, and her hair, brushed smooth and plastered down on her forehead, was tormented into ringlets behind. She looked at my lanky form with some apprehension.
"Was it a good roll, Elsa?" I asked.
"Splendid!" she answered.
"You didn't know Cousin Augustin was looking on, did you?" asked her mother.
"No, I didn't." But it was plain that she did not care either.
I felt that Cousin Elizabeth's honest eyes were searching my face.
"Give me a kiss, won't you, Elsa?" I asked.
Elsa turned her chubby cheek up to me in a perfection of indifference. In fact, both Elsa and I were performing family duties. Thus we kissed for the first time.
"Now go and let nurse put on a clean frock for you," said Cousin Elizabeth. "You're to come downstairs to-day, and you're not fit to be seen. Don't roll any more when you've changed your frock."
Elsa smiled, shook her head, and ran off. I gathered the impression that even in the clean frock she would roll again if she chanced to be disposed to that exercise. The air of Bartenstein was not the air of Artenberg. A milder climate reigned. There was no Styrian discipline for Elsa. I believe that in all her life she did at her parents' instance only one thing that she seriously disliked. Cousin Elizabeth and I walked on.
"She's a baby still," said Cousin Elizabeth presently, "but I assure you that she has begun to develop."
"There's no hurry, is there?"
"No. You know, I think you're too old for your age, Augustin. I suppose it was inevitable."
I felt much younger in many ways than I had at fifteen; the gates of the world were opening, and showing me prospects unknown to the lonely boy at Artenberg.
"And she has the sweetest disposition. So loving!" said Cousin Elizabeth.
I did not find anything appropriate to answer. The next day found me fully, although delicately, apprised of the situation. It seemed to me a strange one. The Duke was guarded in his hints, and profuse of declarations that it was too soon to think of anything. Good Cousin Elizabeth strove to conceal her eagerness and repress the haste born of it by similar but more clumsy speeches. I spoke openly on the subject to Vohrenlorf.
"Ah, well, even if it should be so, you have six years," he reminded me in good-natured consolation. "And she will grow up."
"She won't roll down hills always, of course," I answered rather peevishly.
In truth the thing would not assume an appearance of reality for me; it was too utterly opposed to the current of my thoughts and dreams. A boy of my age will readily contemplate marriage with a woman ten years his senior; in regard to a child six years younger than himself the idea seems absurd. Yet I did not put it from me; I had been well tutored in the strength of family arrangements, and the force of destiny had been brought home to me on several occasions. I had no doubt at all that my visit toBartenstein was part of a deliberate plan. The person who contrived my meeting with Elsa had a shrewd knowledge of my character; he knew that ideas long present in my mind became as it were domiciled there, and were hard to expel. I discovered afterward without surprise that the stay with my relatives was added to my tour at Prince von Hammerfeldt's suggestion.
Many men, or youths bordering on manhood, have seen their future brides in short frocks and unmitigated childhood, but they have not been aware of what was before them. I was at once amused and distressed; my humour was touched, but life's avenue seemed shortened. Even if it were not Elsa it would be some other little girl, now playing with her toys and rolling down banks. Imagination was not elastic enough to leap over the years and behold the child transformed. I stuck in the present, and was whimsically apprehensive of a child seen through a magnifying glass, larger, but unchanged in form, air, and raiment. Was this my fate? And for it I must wait till the perfected beauties who had smiled on me passed on to other men, and with them grew old—aye, as it seemed, quite old. I felt myself ludicrously reduced to Elsa's status; a long boy, who had outgrown his clothes, and yet was no nearer to a man.
My trouble was, perhaps unreasonably, aggravated by the fact that Elsa did not take to me. I did my best to be pleasant; I made her several gifts. She accepted my offerings, but was not bought by them; myself she considered dull. I had not the flow of animal spirits that appeals so strongly to children. I played with her, but her young keenness detected the cloven hoof of duty. She told me I need not play unless I liked. Cousin Elizabethapologized for me; Elsa was gentle, but did not change her opinion. The passage of years, I reflected, would increase in me all that the child found least to her taste. I was, as I have said, unable to picture her with tastes changed. But a failure of imagination may occasionally issue in paradoxical rightness, for the imagination relies on the common run of events which the peculiar case may chance to contradict. As a fact, I do not think that Elsa ever did change greatly. I began to be sorry for her as well as for myself. Considered as an outlook in life, as the governing factor in a human being's existence, I did not seem to myself brilliant or even satisfactory. I had at this time remarkable forecasts of feelings that were in later years to be my almost daily companions.
"And what shall your husband be like, Elsa?" asked the Duke, as his little daughter sat on his knee and he played with her ringlets.
I was sitting by, and the Duke's eyes twinkled discreetly. The child looked across to me and studied my appearance for some few moments. Then she gave us a simple but completely lucid description of a gentleman differing from myself in all outward characteristics, and in all such inward traits as Elsa's experience and vocabulary enabled her to touch upon. I learned later that she took hints from a tall grenadier who sometimes stood sentry at the castle. At the moment it seemed as though her ideal were well enough delineated by the picture of my opposite. The Duke laughed, and I laughed also; Elsa was very grave and business-like in defining her requirements. Her inclinations have never been obscure to her. Even then she knew perfectly well what she wanted, and I was not that.
By the indiscretion of somebody (the Duke said his wife, his wife said the governess, the governess said the nurse) on the day before I went, Elsa got a hint of her suggested future. Indeed it was more than a hint; it was enough to entangle her in excitement, interest, and, I must add, dismay. Children play with the words "wife" and "husband" in a happy ignorance; their fairy tales give and restrict their knowledge. Cousin Elizabeth came to me in something of a stir; she was afraid that I should be annoyed, should suspect, perhaps, a forcing of my hand, or some such manœuvre. But I was not annoyed; I was interested to learn what effect the prospect had upon my little cousin. I was so different from the Grenadier, so irreconcilable with Elsa's fancy portrait.
"I'm very terribly vexed!" cried Cousin Elizabeth. "When it's all so—all no more than an idea!"
"She's so young she'll forget all about it," said I soothingly.
"You're not angry?"
"Oh, no. I was only afflicted with a sense of absurdity."
Chance threw me in Elsa's way that afternoon. She was with her nurse in the gardens. She ran up to me at once, but stopped about a yard from the seat on which I was sitting. I became the victim of a grave, searching, and long inspection. There was a roundness of surprise in her baby blue eyes. Embarrassed and amused (I am inclined sometimes to think that more than half my life has been a mixture of these not implacable enemies), I took the bull by the horns.
"I'm thin, and sallow, and hook-nosed, and I can't sing, and I don't laugh in a jolly way, and Ican't fly kites," said I, having the description of her ideal in my mind. "You wouldn't like me to be your husband, would you?"
Elsa, unlike myself, was neither embarrassed nor amused. The mild and interested gravity of her face persisted unchanged.
"I don't know," she said meditatively.
With most of the faults that can beset one of my station, I do not plead guilty to any excessive degree of vainglory. I was flattered that the child hesitated.
"Then you like me rather?" I asked.
"Yes—rather." She paused, and then added: "If I married you I should be queen, shouldn't I, Cousin Augustin?"
"Yes," I assured her.
"I should think that's rather nice, isn't it?"
"It isn't any particular fun being king," said I in a burst of confidence.
"Isn't it?" she asked, her eyes growing rounder. "Still, I think I should like it." Her tone was quite confident; even at that age, as I have observed, she knew very well what she liked. For my part I remembered so vividly my own early dreams and later awakenings that I would not cut short her guileless visions; moreover, to generalize from one's self is the most fatal foolishness, even while it is the most inevitable.
During the remaining hours of my visit Elsa treated me, I must not say with more affection, but certainly with more attention. She was interested in me; I had become to her a source of possibilities, dim to vision but gorgeous to imagination. I knew so well the images that floated before a childish mind, able to gape at them, only half able to grasp them.I had been through this stage. It is odd to reflect that I was in an unlike but almost equally great delusion myself. I had ceased to expect immoderate enjoyment from my position, but I had conceived an exaggerated idea of its power and influence on the world and mankind. Of this mistake I was then unconscious; I smiled to think that Elsa could play at being a queen, the doll, the bolster, the dog, or whatever else might chance to come handy acting the regalrôlein my place. I do not now altogether quarrel with my substitutes.
The hour of departure came. I have a vivid recollection of Cousin Elizabeth's overwhelming tact; she was so anxious that I should not exaggerate the meaning or importance of the suggestion which had been made, that she succeeded in filling my mind with it, to the exclusion of everything else. The Duke, having tried in vain to stop her, fell into silence, cigarettes, and drolly resigned glances. But he caught me alone for a few moments, and gave me his word of advice.
"Think no more about this nonsense for six years," said he. "The women will match-make, you know."
I promised, with a laugh, not to anticipate troubles. He smiled at my phrase, but did not dispute its justice. I think he shared the sort of regret which I felt, that such things should be so much as talked about in connection with Elsa. A man keeps that feeling about his daughter long after her mother has marked a husband and chosen a priest.
My visit to my cousins was the last stage of my journey. From their house Vohrenlorf and I travelled through to Forstadt. I was received at the railway station by a large and distinguished company.My mother was at Artenberg, where I was to join her that evening, but Hammerfeldt awaited me, and some of the gentlemen attached to the Court. I was too much given to introspection and self-appraisement not to be aware that my experiences had given me a lift toward manhood; my shyness was smothered, though not killed, by a kind of mechanical ease born of practice. After greeting Hammerfeldt I received the welcome of the company with a composed courtesy of which the Prince's approval was very manifest. Ceremonial occasions such as these are worthy of record and meditation only when they surround, and, as it were, frame some incident really material. Such an incident occurred now. My inner mind was still full of my sojourn with the Bartensteins, of the pathetic, whimsical, hypothetical connection between little Elsa and myself, and of the chains that seemed to bind my life in bonds not of my making. These reflections went on in an undercurrent while I was bowing, saluting, grasping hands, listening and responding to appropriate observations. Suddenly I found the Count von Sempach before me. His name brought back my mind in an instant from its wanderings. The Countess was recalled very vividly to my recollection; I asked after her; Sempach, much gratified, pointed to a row of ladies who (the occasion being official) stood somewhat in the background. There she was, now in the maturity of her remarkable beauty, seeming to me the embodiment of perfect accomplishment. I saluted her with marked graciousness; fifty heads turned instantly from me toward her. She blushed very slightly and curtseyed very low. Sempach murmured gratification; Hammerfeldt smiled. I was vaguely conscious of a subdued sensation running all through the company, but my mind was occupied with the contrast between this finished woman and the little girl I had left behind. From feeling old, too old, sad, and knowing for poor little Elsa, I was suddenly transported into an oppressive consciousness of youth and rawness. Involuntarily I drew myself up to my full height and assumed the best air of dignity that was at my command. So posed, I crossed the station to my carriage between Hammerfeldt and Vohrenlorf.
"Your time has not been wasted," old Hammerfeldt whispered to me. "You are ready now to take up what I am more than ready to lay down."
I started slightly; I had for the moment forgotten that the Council of Regency was now discharged of its office, and that I was to assume the full burden of my responsibilities. I had looked forward to this time with eagerness and ambition. But a man's emotions at a given moment are very seldom what he has expected them to be. Some foreign thought intrudes and predominates; something accidental supplants what has seemed so appropriate and certain. While I travelled down to Artenberg that evening, with Vohrenlorf opposite to me (Vohrenlorf who himself was about to lay down his functions), the assumption of full power was not what occupied my mind. I was engrossed with thoughts of Elsa, with fancies about my Countess, with strange dim speculations that touched me—the young man, not the king about whom all the coil was. Had I been called upon to condense those vague meditations and emotions into a sentence, I would have borrowed what Vohrenlorf had said to me when we were with the Bartensteins. He did not often hit the nail exactlyon the head, but just now I could give no better summary of all I felt than his soberly optimistic reminder: "Ah, well, even if it should be so, you have six years!"
The thought that I treasured on the way to Artenberg that evening was the thought of my six years.
Soon after my return my mother and I went into residence at Forstadt. My time was divided between mastering my public duties under Hammerfeldt's tuition, and playing a prominent part in the gaieties of the capital. Just now I was on cordial, if not exactly intimate, terms with the Princess. She appeared to have resigned herself to Hammerfeldt's preponderating influence in political affairs, and to accept in compensation the office of mentor and guide in all social matters. I was happy in the establishment of amodus vivendiwhich left me tolerably free from the harassing trifles of ceremonial and etiquette. To Hammerfeldt's instructions I listened with avidity and showed a deference which did not forbid secret criticism. He worked me hard; the truth is (and it was not then hidden either from him or from me) that his strength was failing; age had not bent, but it threatened to break him; the time was short in which he could hope to be by my side, binding his principles and rivetting his methods on me. He was too shrewd not to detect in me a curiosity of intellect that only the strongest and deepest prepossessions could restrain; these it was his untiring effort to create in my mind and to buttress till they were impregnable. To some extent he attained his object, but his success was limited; and his teaching affected by what I can only call a modernness of temperament in me, which no force of tradition wholly destroyed or stifled. That many things must be treated as beyond question was the fruit of his maxims; it is a position which I have never been able to adopt; with me the acid of doubt bit into every axiom. I took pleasure in the society and arguments of the liberal politicians and journalists who began to frequent the court as soon as a rumour of my inclinations spread. I became the centre and object of a contention between the Right and the Left, between Conservative and Liberal forces—or, if I apply to each party the nickname accorded to it by the enemy, between the Reaction and the Revolution.
Doubtless all this will find an accomplished, and possibly an impartial, historian. Its significance for these personal memoirs is due chiefly to the accidental fact that, whereas my mother was the social centre of the orthodox party and in that capacity gave solid aid to Hammerfeldt, the unorthodox gathered round the Countess von Sempach. Her husband was considered no more than a good soldier, a man of high rank, and a devoted husband; by her own talents and charm this remarkable woman, although a foreigner, had achieved for herself a position of great influence. She renewed the glories of the politicalsalonin Forstadt; but she never talked politics. Eminent men discussed deep secrets with one another in her rooms. She was content to please their taste without straining their intellects or seeking to rival them in argument. By the abdication of a doubtful claim she reigned absolute in her own dominion. It was from studying her that I firstlearned both how far-reaching is the inspiration of a woman's personality, and how it gathers and conserves strength by remaining within its own boundaries and refusing alien conquests. The men of the Princess's party, from Hammerfeldt downward, were sometimes impatient of her suggestions and attempted control; the Countess's friends were never aware that they received suggestions, and imagined themselves to exercise control. I think that the old Prince was almost alone in penetrating the secret of the real power his charming enemy exercised and the extent of it. They were very cordial to one another.
"Madame," he said to her once, "you might convince me of anything if I were not too old."
"Why, Prince," she cried, "you are not going to pretend that your mind has grown old?"
"No, Countess, my feelings," he replied with a smile. Her answer was a blush.
This was told to me by Wetter, a young and very brilliant journalist who had once given me lessons in philosophy, and with whom I maintained a friendship in spite of his ultra-radical politics. He reminded me now and then of Geoffrey Owen, but his enthusiasm was of a dryer sort; not humanity, but the abstract idea of progress inspired him; not the abolition of individual suffering, but the perfecting of his logical conceptions in the sphere of politics was his stimulating hope. And there was in him a strong alloy of personal ambition and a stronger of personal passion. Rather to my surprise Hammerfeldt showed no uneasiness at my friendship with him; I joked once on the subject and he answered:
"Wetter only appeals to your intellect, sire. There I am not afraid now."
His answer, denying one apprehension, hintedanother. It will cause no surprise that I had renewed an old acquaintance with the Countess, and had been present at a dinner in her house. More than this, I fell into the habit of attending her receptions on Wednesdays; on this night all parties were welcome, and the gathering was by way of being strictly non-political. Strictly non-political also were the calls that I made in the dusk of the evening, when she would recall our earlier meetings, our glances exchanged, our thoughts of one another, and lead me to talk of my boyhood. These things did not appeal only to the intellect of a youth of eighteen or nineteen when they proceeded from the lips of a beautiful and brilliant woman of twenty-eight.
I approach a very common occurrence; but in my case its progress and result were specially modified and conditioned. There was the political aspect, looming large to the alarmed Right; there was the struggle for more intimate influence over me, in which my mother fought with a grim intensity; in my own mind there was always the curious dim presence of an inexorable fate that wore the incongruous mask of Elsa's baby face. All these were present to me in their full force during the earlier period of my friendship with the Countess, when I was still concealing from myself as well as from her and all the world that I could ever desire to have more than friendship. The first stages past, there came a time when the secret was still kept from all save myself, but when I knew it with an exultation not to be conquered, with a dread and a shame that tormented while they could not prevail. But I went more and more to her house. I had no evil intent; nay, I had no intent at all in my going; I could not keep away. She alone had come to satisfy me; with her alone,all of me—thoughts, feelings, eyes, and ears—seemed to find some cause for exercise and a worthy employment of their life. The other presences in my mind grew fainter and intermittent in their visits; I gave myself up to the stream and floated down the current. Yet I was never altogether forgetful nor blind to what I did; I knew the transformation that had come over my friendship; to myself now I could not but call it love; I knew that others in the palace, in the chancellery, in drawing-rooms, in newspaper offices, ay, perhaps even in the very street, called it now, not the king's friendship nor the king's love, but the king's infatuation. Not even then could I lose altogether the external view of myself.
We were sitting by the fire one evening in the twilight; she was playing with a hand-screen, but suffering the flames to paint her face and throw into relief the sensitive merry lips and the eyes so full of varied meanings. She had told me to go, and I had not gone; she leaned back and, after one glance of reproof, fixed her regard on the polished tip of her shoe that rested on the fender. She meant that she would talk no more to me; that in her estimation, since I had no business to stay, I was already gone. An impulse seized me. I do not know what I hoped nor why that moment broke the silence which I had imposed on myself. But I told her about the little, fair, chubby child at the Castle of Bartenstein. I watched her closely, but her eyes never strayed from her shoe-tip. Well, she had never said a word that showed any concern in such a matter; even I had done little more than look and hint and come.