# Royal Highness/Chapter 8

Grave reports were flying around concerning the state of health of the Finance Minister, Doctor Krippenreuther. People hinted at nervous break-down, at a progressive stomach-trouble, which indeed Herr Krippenreuther's flabby yellow complexion was calculated to suggest.… What is Greatness? The daily-breader, the journeyman, might envy this tortured dignitary his title, his chain, his rank at Court, his important office, to which he had climbed so pertinaciously, only to wear himself out in it: but not when these all meant the concomitant of his illness. His retirement was repeatedly announced to be impending. It was said to be due simply and solely to the Grand Duke's dislike of new faces, as well as to the consideration that matters could not be improved by a change of personnel, that his resignation had not already become a fact. Dr. Krippenreuther had spent his summer leave in a health-resort in the hills. Perhaps he might have improved some what up there. But anyhow after his return his recouped strength ebbed away quickly again. For at the very beginning of the Parliamentary session a rift had come between him and the Budget Commission—serious dissensions, which were certainly not from any want of industry on his part, but from the circumstances, from the incurable position of affairs.
In the middle of September Albrecht II opened the ​Landtag in the Old Schloss with the traditional ceremonies. They began with an invocation to God by the Court Chaplain, Dom Wislezenus, in the Schloss Chapel. Then the Grand Duke, accompanied by Prince Klaus Heinrich, went in solemn procession to the Throne Room. Here the members of both Chambers, the Ministers, Court officials, and many others in uniform and civil dress greeted the royal brothers with three cheers, led by the President of the First Chamber, a Count Prenzlau.
Albrecht had earnestly wished to transfer to his brother his duties in the formal ceremony. It was only owing to the urgent objections of Herr von Knobelsdorff that he walked in the procession behind the pages. He was so much ashamed of his braided hussar's coat, his gaudy trousers, and the whole to-do, that he showed clearly in his face his anger and his embarrassment. His shoulder-blades were twisted in his nervousness as he mounted the steps to the throne. Then he took his stand in front of the theatrical chair under the faded baldachin, and sucked at his upper lip. His small, bearded, unmilitary head rested on the white collar, which stuck out far above the silver hussar-collar, and his blue, lonely-looking eyes gazed vacantly in front of him. The jangle of the spurs of the aide-de-camp who handed him the manuscript of his Speech from the Throne rang through the hall, in which silence now reigned. And quietly, with a slight lisp, and more than one sudden burst of coughing, the Grand Duke read what had been written for him.
The speech was the most palliatory that had ever been heard, each humiliating fact from outside being counter balanced by some virtuous trait or other in the people. He began by praising the industrious spirit of the whole country; then admitted that there was no actual increase to show in any branch of manufacture, so that the sources of revenue failed to show under any head the fertility that ​could be desired. He remarked with satisfaction how the feeling for the public good and economical self-sacrifice were spreading more and more through the population; and then declared without mincing matters that "notwithstanding a general most acceptable increase in the taxation returns as the result of the influx of wealthy foreigners" (meaning Mr. Spoelmann) "any relaxation of the calls on the said noble self-sacrifice was not to be thought of."
Even without this, he continued, it had been impossible to budget for all the objects of the financial policy, and should it prove that sufficient reduction in the public debt had not been successfully provided for, the Government considered that the continuation of a policy of moderate loans would prove the best way out of the financial complications. In any event it—the Government—felt itself supported in these most unfavourable circumstances by the confidence of the nation, that faith in the future which was so fair a heritage of our stock.… And the Speech from the Throne left the sinister topic of public economy as soon as possible, to apply itself to less disputatious subjects, such as ecclesiastical, educational, and legal matters. Minister of State von Knobelsdorff declared in the monarch's name the Landtag to be open. And the cheers which accompanied Albrecht when he left the hall sounded somewhat ironical and dubious.
As the weather was still summery, he went straight back to Hollerbrunn, from which necessity alone had driven him to the capital. He had done his part, and the rest was the concern of Herr Krippenreuther and the Landtag. Quarrels began, as has been said, immediately, and about several topics at once: the property tax, the meat tax, and the Civil Service estimates.
For, when the deputies proved adamant against attempts to persuade them to sanction fresh taxes, Doctor Krippen reuther's meditative mind had hit on the idea of converting ​the income tax which had been usual hitherto into a property tax, which on the basis of 13½ per cent, would produce an increment of about a million. How direly needed, indeed how inadequate such an increment was, was clear from the main budget for the new financial year, which, leaving out of account the imposition of new burdens on the Treasury, concluded with an adverse balance, which was calculated to damp the courage of any economical expert. But when it was realized that practically only the towns would be hit by the property tax, the combined indignation of the urban deputies turned against the assess ment at 13½ per cent., and they demanded as compensation at least the abolition of the meat tax, which they called undemocratic and antediluvian. Add to this that the Commission adhered resolutely to the long-promised and always postponed improvement of Civil servants' pay—for it could not be denied that the salaries of the Government officials, clergy, and teachers of the Grand Duchy were miserable.
But Doctor Krippenreuther could not make gold—he said in so many words, "I've never learnt to make gold," and he found himself equally unable to abolish the meat tax and to ameliorate the conditions in the Civil Service. His only resource was to anchor himself to his 13½ per cent., although no one knew better than he that its sanction would not really bring things any nearer their solution. For the position was serious, and despondent spirits painted it in gloomy colours.
The "Almanac of the Grand Ducal Statistical Bureau" contained alarming returns of the harvest for the last year. Agriculture had a succession of bad years to show; storms, hail, droughts, and inordinate rain had been the lot of the peasants; an exceptionally cold and snowless winter had resulted in the seed freezing; and the critics maintained, though with little proof to show for it, that the ​timber-cutting had already influenced the climate. At any rate figures proved that the total yield of corn had decreased in a most disquieting degree. The straw, besides being deficient in quantity, left much to be wished from the point of view of quality, in the opinion of the compilers of the report.
The figures of the potato harvest fell far below the average of the preceding decade, not to mention that no less than 10 per cent. of the potatoes were diseased. As to artificial feeding-stuffs, these showed for the last two years results both in quality and quantity which, for clover and manure, were as bad as the worst of the years under review, and things were no better with the rapeseed harvest or with the first and second hay crops. The decline in agriculture was baldly shown in the increase of forced sales, whose figures in the year under review had advanced in a striking way. But the failure of crops entailed a falling off in the produce of taxation which would have been regrettable in any country, but in ours could not help having a fatal effect.
As to the forests, nothing had been made out of them. One disaster had followed another; blight and moths had attacked the woods more than once. And it will be remembered that owing to over-cutting the woods had lost seriously in capital value.
The silver-mines? They had for a long time proved barren. The work had been interrupted by convulsions of nature, and as the repairs would have cost large sums, and the results had never showed signs of coming up to expectations, it had been found necessary provisionally to suspend the workings, though this threw a number of labourers out of work and caused distress in whole districts.
Enough has been said to explain how matters stood with the ordinary State revenues in this time of trial. The slowly advancing crisis, the deficit carried forward from ​one year to another, had become burning owing to the straits of the people and the unfavourableness of the elements. It had begun to cry aloud for remedy, and, when one looked around despairingly for the remedy, or even for means of alleviation, the most purblind could not fail to see the whole hideousness of our financial condition. There could be no thought of voting for new expenditure, the country was naturally incapable of bearing much taxation. It was now exhausted, its tax-paying powers adversely affected, and the critics declared that the sight of insufficiently nourished human beings was becoming more and more common in the country. They attributed this firstly to the shocking taxes on provisions and secondly to the direct taxation which was known to oblige stock-owners to turn all their full-milk into cash. As to the other less respectable though enticingly easy remedy for dearth of money, of which the financial authorities were well aware, namely the raising of a loan, the time was come when an improper and inconsiderate use of this means must begin to bring its own bitter punishment.
The liquidation of the national debt had been taken in hand for a time in a clumsy and harmful way. Then under Albrecht II it had stopped altogether. The yawning rifts in the State had received an emergency stuffing of new loans and paper issues, and subsequent Finance Ministers had grown pale to find themselves faced with a floating consolidated debt redeemable at an early date, whose total was scandalously large for the total number of heads of the population.
Dr. Krippenreuther had not shrunk from the practical steps open to the State in such a predicament. He had steered clear of big capital obligations, had demanded compulsory redemption of bonds, and, while reducing the rate of interest, had converted short-dated debts over the heads of the creditors into perpetual rent-charges. But ​these rent-charges had to be paid; and while this incumbrance was an unbearable burden on the national economy, the lowness of the rate of exchange caused every fresh issue of bonds to bring in less capital proceeds to the Treasury. Still more: the economic crisis in the Grand Duchy had the effect of making foreign creditors demand payments at an exceptionally early date. This again lowered the rate of exchange and resulted in an increased flow of gold out of the country, and bank-smashes were daily occurrences in the business world.
In a word: our credit was shattered, our paper stood far below its nominal value; and though the Landtag might perhaps have preferred to vote a new loan to voting new taxes, the conditions which would have been imposed upon the country were such that the negotiation seemed difficult, if not impossible. For on the top of everything else came this unpleasant factor, that the people were at that moment suffering from the burden of that general economical disorder, that appreciation in the price of gold, which is still vivid in everybody's memory.
What was to be done to get safe to land? Whither turn to appease the hunger for gold which was devouring us? The disposal of the then unproductive silver-mines and the application of the proceeds to the payment of the debts at high interest was discussed at length. Yet, as matters stood, the sale could not help turning out disadvantageously. Further, not only would the State lose altogether the capital sunk in the mines, but would relinquish its prospect of a return which might perhaps sooner or later materialize. Finally, buyers did not grow on every bush. For one moment—a moment of psychical despondency—the sale of the national forests even was mooted. But it must be said that there was still sense enough in the country to prevent our woods being surrendered to private industry.
To complete the picture: still further rumours of sales ​were current, rumours which suggested that the financial embarrassment penetrated even to quarters which the loyal people had always hoped were far removed from all the rubs of the time. The Courier, which was never used to sacrifice a piece of news to its sympathetic feelings, was the first to publish the news that two of the Grand Duke's schlosses, "Pastime" and "Favourite," in the open country, had been put up for sale. Considering that neither property was of any further use as a residence for the royal family, and that both demanded yearly increasing outlay, the administrators of the Crown trust property had given notice in the proper quarter for steps to be taken to sell them: what did that imply?
It was obviously quite a different case from that of the sale of Delphinenort, which had been the result of a quite exceptional and favourable offer, as well as a smart stroke of business on behalf of the State. People who were brutal enough to give a name to things which finer feeling shrinks from specifying, declared right out that the Treasury had been mercilessly set on by disquieted creditors, and that their consent to such sales showed that they were exposed to relentless pressure.
How far had matters gone? Into whose hands would the schlosses fall? The more benevolent who asked this question were inclined to find comfort in and to believe a further report, which was spread by the wiseacres; namely, that on this occasion too the buyer was no one else but Samuel Spoelmann—an entirely groundless and fantastic report, which, however, proves what a role in the world of popular imagination was played by the lonely, suffering little man who had settled down in such princely style in their midst.
Yonder he lived, with his physician, his electric organ, and his collection of glass, behind the pillars, the bow windows, and the chiselled festoons of the schloss which ​had risen from its ruins at a nod from him. He was hardly ever seen: he was always in bed with poultices. But people saw his daughter, that curious creature with the whimsical features who lived like a princess, had a countess for a companion, studied algebra, and had walked in a temper unimpeded right through the guard. People saw her, and they sometimes saw Prince Klaus Heinrich at her side.
Raoul Ueberbein had used a strong expression when he declared that the public "held their breath" at the sight. But he really was right, and it can be truly said that the population of our town as a whole had never followed a social or public proceeding with such passionate, such surpassing eagerness as Klaus Heinrich's visits to "Delphinenort." The Prince himself acted up to a certain point—namely up to a certain conversation with his Excellency the Minister of State, Knobelsdorff—blindly, without regard to the outside world and in obedience only to an inner impulse. But his tutor was justified in deriding in his fatherly way his idea that his proceedings could be kept hid from the world. For whether it was that the servants on both sides did not hold their tongues, or that the public had the opportunity of direct observation, at any rate Klaus Heinrich had not met Miss Spoelmann once since that first meeting in the Dorothea Hospital, without its being remarked and discussed. Remarked? No, spied on, glared at, and greedily jumped at! Discussed? Rather smothered in floods of talk.
The intercourse of the two was the topic of conversation in Court circles, salons, sitting- and bedrooms, barbers' shops, public-houses, workrooms, and servants' halls, by cabmen on the ranks and girls at the gates. It occupied the minds of men no less than women, of course with the variations which are inherent in the different ways the sexes have of looking at things. The always sympathetic interest in it had a uniting, levelling effect: it bridged ​over the social gaps, and one might hear the tram con ductor turn to the smart passenger on the platform with the question whether he knew that yesterday afternoon the Prince had again spent an hour at Delphinenort.
But what was at once remarkable in itself and at the same time decisive for the future was that throughout there never seemed for one moment to be any feeling of scandal in the air, nor did all the tongue-wagging seem merely the vulgar pleasure in startling events in high quarters. From the very beginning, before any arriere pensee had had time to form, the thousand-voiced discussion of the subject, however animated, was always pitched in a key of approval and agreement. Indeed, the Prince, if it had occurred to him at an earlier stage to adapt his conduct to public opinion, would have realized at once to his delight how entirely popular that conduct was. For when he called Miss Spoelmann a "princess" to his tutor, he had, quite properly, accurately expressed his people's mind—that people which always surrounds the uncommon and visionary with a cloud of poetry.
Yes, to the people the pale, dark, precious, and strangely lovely creature of mixed blood, who had come to us from the Antipodes to live her lonely and unprecedented life amongst us—to the people she was a princess—or Fairy-child from Fableland, a princess in the word's most wonderful meaning. But everything, her own behaviour as much as the attitude of the world towards her, contributed to make her appear a princess in the ordinary sense of the word also. Did she not live with her companion countess in a schloss, as was meet and right? Did she not drive in her gorgeous motor or her four-in-hand to the benevolent institutions, the homes for the blind, for orphans, and for deaconesses, the public kitchens and the milk-kitchens, to teach herself and to stimulate them by her inspection, like a complete princess?
​Had she not subscribed to support the victims of flood and fire out of her "privy purse," as the Courier was precise enough to declare, subscriptions which nearly equalled those of the Grand Duke (did not exceed them, as was noticed with general satisfaction)? Did not the news papers publish almost daily, immediately under the Court news, reports of Mr. Spoelmann's varying health—whether the colic kept him in bed or whether he had resumed his morning visits to the spa-garden? Were not the white liveries of his servants as much a part of the picture in the streets of the capital as the brown of the Grand Ducal lackeys? Did not foreigners with guide-books ask to be taken out to Delphinenort, there to gloat over the sight of Spoelmann's house—many of them before they had seen the Old Schloss?
Were not both Schlosses, the Old and Delphinenort, about equally centres and foci of the city? To what circle of society belonged that human being who had been born Samuel Spoelmann's daughter, that creature without counterpart, without analogy? To whom should she attach herself, with whom have intercourse? Nothing could be less surprising, nothing more obvious and natural than to see Klaus Heinrich at her side. And even those who had never enjoyed that sight enjoyed it in the spirit and gloated over it: the slim, solemnly familiar figure of the Prince by the side of the daughter and heiress of the prodigious little foreigner, who, ill and peevish as he was, disposed of a fortune which amounted to nearly twice as much as our total national debt!
Then one day a memory, a wonderful disposition of words, took hold of the public conscience; nobody can say who first pointed to it, recalled it—that is quite uncertain. Perhaps it was a woman, perhaps a child with credulous eyes, whom somebody was sending to sleep with stories—heaven only knows. But a ghostly form began to show ​liveliness in the popular imagination: the shadow of an old gipsy-woman, grey and bent, with an inward squint, who drew her stick through the sand, and whose mumbling had been written down and handed down from generation to generation.…" The greatest happiness?" It should come to the land through a Prince "with one hand." He would give the country, the prophecy ran, more with his one hand than others could with two.… With one? But was everything all right with Klaus Heinrich's slim figure?
When one thought of it, was there not a weakness, a defect in his person, which one always avoided seeing when addressing him, partly from shyness, and partly because with charming skill he made it so easy not to notice it? When one saw him in his carriage, he kept his left hand on his sword-hilt covered with his right. One could see him under a baldachin, on a flag-bedecked platform, take up a position slightly turned to the left, with his left hand planted somehow on his hip. His left arm was too short, the hand was stunted, everybody knew that, and knew various explanations of the origin of the defect, although respect and distance had not allowed a clear view of it or even its recognition in so many words. But now everybody saw it. It could never be ascertained who first whispered and quoted the prophecy in this connexion—whether it was a child, or a girl, or a greybeard on the threshold of the beyond.
But what is certain is, that it was the people who started it, the people who imposed certain thoughts and hopes—and quite soon their conception of Miss Spoelmann's personality—on the cultured classes right up to the highest quarters, and exercised a powerful influence on them from below: that the impartial, unprejudiced belief of the people afforded the broad and firm foundation for all that came later. "With one hand?" people asked, and "the greatest happiness?" They saw Klaus Heinrich in the ​spirit by Imma Spoelmann's side with his left hand on his hip, and, still incompetent to think their thought out to its conclusion, they quivered at their half-thought.
At that time everything was still in the clouds, and nobody thought anything out to its conclusion—not even the persons most immediately concerned. For the relations between Klaus Heinrich and Imma Spoelmann were wondrous strange, and their minds—his as well—could not be brought to centre on any immediate, palpable goal. As a matter of fact, that laconic conversation on the afternoon of the Prince's birthday (when Miss Spoelmann had showed him her books) had made but the slightest, if any, alteration in their relations. Klaus Heinrich may have gone back to the "Hermitage" in that condition of heated enthusiasm proper to young people on such occasions, convinced that something decisive had happened: but he soon learned that his wooing of what he had recognized to be his only happiness was only now really beginning.
But, as has been said, this wooing could not aim at any objective result, a bourgeois promise or such-like—such an idea was almost inconceivable, and besides the Prince lived in too great seclusion from the practical world for such an end to present itself to him. In fact the object of Klaus Heinrich's pleadings with looks and words from that time onward was not that Miss Spoelmann should reciprocate the feelings he entertained towards her, but that she might feel impelled to believe in the reality and liveliness of those feelings. For that was what she did not do.
He let two weeks pass before he sent in his name at Delphinenort again, and during these he feasted spiritually on what had already occurred. He was in no hurry to supersede that happening with a new one. Be sides, his time just now was occupied by several representa tive functions, including the annual festival of the Miniature Range Rifle Club, whose well-informed patron he was and ​in whose anniversary festival he annually took part. Here he was received in his green uniform, as if his sole interest in life was rifle-shooting, by the united members of the association with an enthusiastic welcome, was conducted to the butts, and, after an unappetizing luncheon with the distinguished members of the committee, fired several shots in a gracefully expert attitude in the direction of various targets.
When he proceeded—it was the middle of June—to pay another afternoon visit to the Spoelmanns, he found Imma in a very mocking mood, and her mode of expression was unusually Scriptural and solemn. Mr. Spoelmann also was present this time, and although his presence robbed Klaus Heinrich of the tête-à-tête he so much desired with the daughter, yet it helped him in a quite unexpected way to bear up against the wounds which Imma's sharpness gave him; for Samuel Spoelmann was friendly, and almost affectionate towards him.
They had tea on the terrace, sitting in basket-chairs of an ultra-modern shape, with the breezes from the flower-garden softly fanning them. The master of the house lay under a green-silk, fur-lined, and parrot-embroidered cover let, stretched by the table on a cane couch fitted with silk cushions. He had left his bed for the sake of the mild air, but his cheeks to-day were not inflamed, but of a sallow paleness, and his eyes were muddy; his chin protruded sharply, his prominent nose looked longer than ever, and his tone was not cross, as usual, but sad—a bad sign. By his head sat Doctor Watercloose with his continual soft smile.
"Hullo, young Prince …" said Mr. Spoelmann in a tired tone, and answered the other's inquiry as to his health merely with half a grunt. Imma, in a shimmering dress with a high waist and green-velvet bolero, poured water into the pot out of the electric kettle. She congratulated ​the Prince with a pout on his personal prowess at the rifle festival. She had, she said, as she wagged her head back wards and forwards, "read an account of it in the daily press with deep satisfaction," and had read aloud the description of his exploits as marksman to the Countess. The latter was sitting bolt upright in her tight brown dress at the table, and handling her spoon gracefully, without in any way letting herself go. It was Mr. Spoelmann who did the talking this time. He did it, as has been said, in a soft, sad way, the result of all his suffering.
He recounted an occurrence, an experience of years gone by, which was obviously still fresh to him, and which always brought him new suffering on the days when his health was bad. He recounted the short and simple story twice, with even greater self-torture the second time than the first. He had wished to make one of his endowments—not one of the first rank, but a pretty considerable one—he had given a big philanthropic institute in the United States to understand in writing that he wished to devote a million in railway bonds to the furtherance of their noble work—safe paper of the South Pacific Railway, said Mr. Spoelmann, and slapped the palm of his hand, as if to show the paper. But what had the philanthropic institute done? It had refused the gift, rejected it—adding in so many words that it preferred to go without the support of questionable and ill-gotten plunder. They had actually done that. Mr. Spoelmann's lips quivered as he recounted it, the first time no less than the second, and, longing for comfort and expressions of disapproval, he looked round the table with his little, close-set, metallic eyes.
"That was not philanthropic of the philanthropic in stitute," said Klaus Heinrich. "No, it certainly was not." And the shake of his head was so decided, his disgust and sympathy so obvious, that Mr. Spoelmann cheered up a little and declared that it was lovely outside to-day and ​the trees down yonder smelt nice. Indeed, he took the first opportunity of showing his young guest his appreciation and satisfaction in the clearest manner. For Klaus Heinrich had caught a chill with this summer's constant alternations between warm weather and cooling showers and hail storms. His neck was swollen, his throat felt sore when he swallowed; and as his lofty calling and a certain amount of molly-coddling of his person, in request as it was for ex hibition, had necessarily made him rather delicate, he could not help alluding to it and complaining of the pain in his neck.
"You must have wet compresses," said Mr. Spoelmann. "Have you any oil-silk?" Klaus Heinrich had none. Then Mr. Spoelmann threw off the parrot coverlet, stood up, and went inside the Schloss. He would not answer any questions, insisted on going, and went. When he had gone, the others asked each other what he intended to do, and Doctor Watercloose, fearing lest an attack of pain had seized his patient, hurried after him. But when Mr. Spoelmann returned he had in his hand a piece of oil-silk, whose existence in some drawer he had remembered: a rather creased piece, which he handed to the Prince with precise directions how to use it, so as to get the most good out of it. Klaus Heinrich thanked him delightedly, and Mr. Spoelmann got contentedly back on to his couch. This time he stayed there till the end of tea, when he proposed a general walk round the park, in the following order: Mr. Spoelmann in his soft slippers between Imma and Klaus Heinrich, while Countess Löwenjoul followed at a short distance with Dr. Watercloose.
When the Prince took leave for the day, Imma Spoelmann made some sharp remark about his neck and the wet compresses, adjured him half-mockingly to nurse himself and to take the utmost care of his sacred person. But although Klaus Heinrich had no adequate repartee ready ​for her—she did not expect or want one—yet it was in a fairly cheerful frame of mind that he mounted his dog-cart; for the piece of creased oil-silk in the back pocket of his uniform coat seemed to him, though unconsciously, a pledge of a happy future.
However that might be, for the present his struggle was only beginning. It was the struggle for Imma Spoelmann's faith, the struggle to make her so far trust him as to be capable of deciding to leave the clear and frosty sphere wherein she had been wont to play, to descend from the realms of algebra and conversational ridicule, and to venture with him into the untrodden zone, that warmer, more fragrant, more fruitful zone to which he showed her the way. For she was overpoweringly shy of making any such decision.
Next time he was alone with her, or as good as alone, because Countess Lowenjoul was the third, it was a cool, over-cast morning, after a break in the weather the night before. They rode along the meadow-woods, Klaus Heinrich in high boots, with the crook of his crop suspended between the buttons of his grey cloak. The sluices at the wooden bridge up stream were shut, the bed of the stream lay empty and stony. Percival, whose first outburst had died down, jumped here and there or trotted sideways, dog-fashion, in front of the horses. The Countess, on Isabeau, kept her head on one side and smiled. Klaus Heinrich was saying: "I'm always thinking, night and day, about something which must have been a dream. I lie at night and can hear Florian over in the stall snuffling, it's so quiet. And then I think, for certain it was ho dream. But when I see you as I do to-day, and did the other day at tea, I cannot possibly think it anything more substantial."
She replied: "I must ask you to explain yourself. Sire."
"Did you show me your books nineteen days ago, Miss Spoelmann—or not?"
​"Nineteen days ago! I must count up. No; let's see, it's eighteen and a half days, unless I'm quite out."
"You did show me your books, then?"
"That is undoubtedly correct, Prince. And I delude myself with the hope that you liked them."
"Oh, Imma, you mustn't talk like that, not now and not to me! My heart is so heavy, and I have such lots still to say to you, which I couldn't get out nineteen days ago, when you showed me your books … your masses of books. How I should love to carry on where we broke off then, and to forget all that lies in between.…"
"For heaven's sake, Prince, rather forget the other. Why go back to it? Why remind yourself and me? I thought you had good reason to observe the strictest silence on such subjects. Fancy letting yourself go like that! Losing your self-possession to such a degree!"
"If you only knew, Imma, how unutterably pleasant it is for me to lose my self-possession!"
"No, thanks. That's insulting, do you know that? I insist on your showing the same self-possession towards me as towards the rest of the world. I'm not here to provide you with relaxation from your princely existence."
"How entirely you misunderstand me, Imma! But I am well aware that you do so deliberately and only in fun, and that shows me that you don't believe me and don't take what I say seriously.…"
"No, Prince, you really ask too much. Haven't you told me about your life? You went to school for show, to the University for show, you served as a soldier for show, and still wear the uniform for show, you hold audiences for show, and play at rifle-shooting and heaven knows what else for show; you came into the world for show, and am I suddenly to believe that there is anything serious about you?"
Tears came to his eyes while she said this: her words ​hurt him so much. He answered gently: "You are right, Imma, there is a lot of fiction in my life. But I didn't make it or choose it, you must remember, but have done my duty precisely and sternly as it was prescribed to me for the edification of the people. And it is not enough that it has been a hard one, and full of prohibitions and privations; it must now take revenge on me, by causing you not to believe me."
"You are proud," she said," of your calling and your life, Prince, I know well, and I cannot wish you to break faith with yourself."
"Oh," he cried, "leave that to me, that about being true to myself, and don't give it a thought! I have had experiences, I have been untrue to myself and have tried to get round the prohibitions, and it ended in my disgrace. But since I have known you, I know, I know for the first time, that I may for the first time, without remorse or harm to what is described as my lofty calling, let myself go like anybody else, although Doctor Ueberbein says, and says in Latin, that that must never be."
"There, you see what your friend said."
"Didn't you yourself call him a poor wretch, who would come to a sad end? He's a fine character; I esteem him greatly, and owe him many hints about myself and things in general. But I've often thought about him recently, and as you expressed so unfavourable a verdict upon him then, I have spent hours considering your verdict, and was forced to own you right. For I'll tell you, Imma, how things stand with Doctor Ueberbein. His whole life is hostile to happiness, that's what it is."
"That seems to me a very proper hostility," said Imma Spoelmann.
"Proper," he answered," but wretched, as you yourself said, and what's more, sinful, for it is a sin against some thing nobler than his severe propriety, as I now see, and it's ​this sin in which he wished to educate me in his fatherly fashion. But I've now grown out of his education, at this point I have, I'm now independent and know better; and though I may not have convinced Ueberbein, I'll convince you, Imma, sooner or later."
"Yes, Prince, I must grant you that! You have the powers of conviction, your zeal carries one along irresistibly with it! Nineteen days, didn't you say? I maintain that eighteen and a half is right, but it comes to much the same thing. In that time you have condescended to appear at Delphinenort once—four days ago."
He threw a startled look at her.
"But, Imma, you must have patience with me, and some indulgence. Consider, I'm still awkward … this is strange ground. I don't know how it was.… I believe I wanted to let us have time. And then there came several calls upon me."
"Of course, you had to fire at the targets for show. I read all about it. As usual, you had a rousing success to show for it. You stood there in your fancy dress, and let a whole meadowful of people love you."
"Halt, Imma, I beg you, don't gallop.… One can't get a word out.… Love, you say. But what sort of love is it? A meadow-love, a casual, superficial love, a love at a distance, which means nothing—a love in full dress with no familiarity about it. No, you've absolutely no reason to be angry because I express myself pleased with it, for I get no good from it; only the people do, who are elevated by it, and that's their desire. But I too have my desire, Imma, and it's to you that I turn."
"How can I help you, Prince?"
"Oh, you know well! It's confidence, Imma; couldn't you have a little confidence in me?"
She looked at him, and the scrutiny of her big eyes had never before been so dark and piercing. But for all the ​urgency of his dumb pleading, she turned away, and said with a look which betrayed no secrets: "No, Prince Klaus Heinrich, I cannot."
He uttered a cry of grief, and his voice shook, as he asked: "And why can't you?"
She replied: "Because you prevent me."
"How do I prevent you? Please tell me, I beg." And, with the reserved expression still on her face, her eyes dropped on her white reins, and rocking lightly to her horse's walk, she replied: "Through everything, through your conduct, through the way and manner of your being, through your highly distinguished personality. You know well enough how you prevented the poor Countess from letting herself go, and forced her to be clear-brained and reasonable, although it is expressly on the ground of her excessive experiences that the blessing of craziness and oddness has been vouchsafed to her, and that I told you that I was well aware how you had set out to sober her. Yes, I know it well, for you prevent me too from letting myself go, you sober me too, continually, in every way, through your words, through your look, through your way of sitting and standing, and it is quite impossible to have confidence in you. I've had the opportunity of watching you in your intercourse with other people; but whether it was Doctor Sammet in the Dorothea Hospital or Herr Stavenüter in the 'Pheasantry' Tea-garden, it was always the same, and it always made me shiver. You hold yourself erect, and ask questions, but you don't do so out of sympathy, you don't care what the questions are about—no, you don't care about anything, and you lay nothing to heart. I've often seen it—you speak, you express an opinion, but you might just as well express a quite different one, for in reality you have no opinion and no belief, and the only thing you care about is your princely self-possession. You say sometimes that your calling is ​not an easy one, but as you have challenged me, I'll ask you to notice that it would be easier to you if you had an opinion and a belief, Prince, that's my opinion and belief. How could anyone have confidence in you! No, it's not confidence that you inspire, but coldness and embarrassment; and if I put myself out to get closer to you, that kind of embarrassment and awkwardness would prevent me from doing so,—there's my answer for you."
He had listened to her with painful tension, had looked more than once at her pale face while she was speaking, and then again, like her, dropped his eyes on the reins.
"I must indeed thank you, Imma," he answered, "for speaking so earnestly, for you know that you don't always do so, but generally speak only derisively, and in your way take things as little seriously as I in mine."
"How else but derisively can I speak to you, Prince?"
"And sometimes you are so hard and cruel, as for instance towads the head sister in the Dorothea Hospital, whom you threw into such confusion."
"Oh, I'm well aware that I too have my faults, and need somebody to help me to give them up."
"I'll be that somebody, Imma; we'll help each other."
"I don't think we can help each other, Prince."
"Yes, we can. Didn't you speak just now quite seriously and unsatirically? But as for me, you are not right when you say that I care about nothing at all and lay nothing to heart, for I care about you, Imma—about you, I have laid you to heart; and as this matter is one of such inexpressible seriousness to me, I cannot fail finally to win your confidence. Were you aware of my joy when I heard you talk of putting yourself out and coming nearer to me? Yes, put yourself out a little, and do not let yourself ever again be confused with that sort of awkwardness, or what ever it is, which you are so liable to feel in my presence. Ah, I know it, I know only too well, how much to blame ​I am for that! But laugh at yourself and at me when I make you feel like that, and attach yourself to me. Will you promise me to put yourself out a little?"
But Imma Spoelmann promised nothing, but insisted now on her gallop; and many a subsequent conversation remained, like this, without result.
Sometimes, when Klaus Heinrich had come to tea, the Prince, Miss Spoelmann, the Countess, and Percival went into the park. The splendid collie kept decorously at Imma's side, and Countess Lowenjoul walked two or three yards behind the young people; for soon after they had started she had stopped for a second, to twine her bent and bony fingers round a blosspm, and she had never made good the distance she had then lost. So Klaus Heinrich and Imma walked in front of her, and talked. But when they had covered a certain distance, they turned round, thus getting the Countess two or three yards in front of them. Then Klaus Heinrich followed up his conversational efforts, and, carefully and without looking up, took Imma Spoelmann's small, ringless hand from her side and clasped it in both his, the while he imploringly asked whether she was taking pains, and had made any progress in her confidence in him.
It displeased him to hear that she had been working, poring over algebra and playing in the lofty spheres since they had last met. He would beg her to lay her books aside now, as they might distract her and divert her from the matter to which all her thinking powers must now be devoted. He talked also about himself, about that sobering effect and awkwardness which, according to her, his existence inspired; he tried to explain it, and in doing so to weaken it. He spoke about the cold, stern, and barren existence which had been his hitherto, he described to her how everybody had always flocked to gaze at him, while it had been his lofty calling to show himself and to be gazed ​at, a much more difficult task. He did his best to make her recognize that the remedy for that which caused him to prevent the poor Countess from drivelling and to estrange her to his own sorrow, that this remedy could be found in her, only in her, and was given over absolutely into her hands.
She looked at him, her big eyes sparkled in dark scrutiny, and it was clear that she, she too, was struggling. But then she would shake her head or break off the conversation, introducing with a pout some topic over which she made merry, incapable of bringing herself to take the responsibility of the "Yes" for which he begged her, that undefined and, as matters stood, absolutely non-committal surrender.
She did not prevent him from coming once or twice a week; she did not prevent him from speaking, from assailing her with prayers and asseverations and from taking her hand now and then between his own. But she was only patient, she remained unmoved, her dread of taking the decisive step, that aversion from leaving her cool and derisive kingdom and confessing herself his, seemed unconquerable; and she could not help, in her anguish and exhaustion, breaking out with the words: "Oh, Prince, we ought never to have met—it would have been best if we hadn't. Then you would have pursued your lofty calling as calmly as ever, and I should have preserved my peace of mind, and neither would have harassed the other!"
The Prince had much difficulty in inducing her to recant, and in extorting from her the confession that she did not entirely regret having made his acquaintance. But all this took time. The summer came to an end, early night-frosts loosened the still-green leaves from the trees, Fatma's, Florian's, and Isabeau's hoofs rustled in the red-and-gold leafage when they went for a ride. Autumn came with its ​mists and sharp smells—and nobody could have prophesied an end, or indeed any decisive turn in the course of the strangely fluctuating affair.
The credit of having placed things on the foundation of actuality, of having given events the lead in the direction of a happy issue, must for ever be ascribed to the distinguished gentleman who had up till now wisely kept in the background, but at the right moment intervened carefully but firmly. I refer to Excellency von Knobelsdorff, Minister of the Interior, Foreign Affairs, and the Grand Ducal Household.
Dr. Ueberbein had been correct in his assertion that the President of the Council had kept himself posted in the stages of Klaus Heinrich's love affair. What is more, well served by intelligent and sagacious assistants, he had kept himself well in touch with the state of public opinion, with the role which Samuel Spoelmann and his daughter played in the imaginative powers of the people, with the royal rank with which the popular idea invested them, with the great and superstitious tension with which the population followed the intercourse between the Schlosses "Hermitage" and Delphinenort, with the popularity of that intercourse: in a word, he was well aware how the Spoelmanns, for everyone who did not deliberately shut his eyes, were the general topic of conversation and rumour, not only in the capital, but in the whole country. A characteristic incident was enough to make Herr Knobelsdorff sure of his ground.
At the beginning of October—the Landtag had been opened a fortnight before, and the disputes with the Budget Commission were in full swing—Imma Spoelmann fell ill, very seriously ill, so it was said at first. It seemed that the imprudent girl, for some whim or mood, while out with her countess, had ventured on a gallop of nearly half an hour's duration on her white Fatma in the teeth of a strong ​north-east wind, and had come home with an attack of congestion of the lungs, which threatened to end her altogether.
The news soon got about. People said the girl was hovering between life and death, which, as luckily soon emerged, was a great exaggeration. But the consternation, the general sympathy, could not have been greater if a serious accident had happened to a member of the House of Grimmburg, even to the Grand Duke himself. It was the sole topic of conversation. In the humbler parts of the city, near the Dorothea Hospital for instance, the women stood in the evening outside their front doors, pressed the palms of their hands against their breasts, and coughed, as if to show each other what it meant to be short of breath. The evening papers published searching and expert news of the condition of Miss Spoelmann, which passed from hand to hand, were read at family gatherings and cafés, and were discussed in the tram-cars. The Courier's reporter had been seen to drive in a cab to Delphinenort, where, in the hall with the mosaic floor, he had been snubbed by the Spoelmanns' butler, and had talked English to him—though he found that no easy task.
The press, moreover, could not escape the reproach of having magnified the whole business, and made a quite unnecessary fuss about it. There was absolutely no question of any danger. Six days in bed under the care of the Spoelmanns' private physician sufficed to relieve the congestion, and to make Miss Spoelmann's lungs quite well again. But these six days sufficed also to make clear the importance which the Spoelmanns, and Miss Imma's personality in particular, had achieved in our public opinion. Every morning found the envoys of the news papers, commissioners of the general curiosity, gathered in the mosaic hall at Delphinenort to hear the butler's ​curt bulletins, which they then reproduced in their papers at the inordinate length which the public desired.
One read of greetings and wishes for recovery sent to Delphinenort by various benevolent institutions which Imma Spoelmann had visited and richly subscribed to (and the wits remarked that the Grand Ducal Treasury might have taken the opportunity of offering their homage in a similar way). The public read also—and dropped the paper to exchange a significant look—of a "beautiful floral tribute," which Prince Klaus Heinrich had sent with his card (the truth being that the Prince, so long as Miss Spoelmann kept to her bed, sent flowers not once, but daily, to Delphinenort, a fact which was not mentioned by those in the know, so as not to make too great a sensation).
The public read further that the popular young patient had left her bed for the first time, and finally the news came that she was soon to go out for the first time. But this going out, which took place on a sunny autumn morning, eight days after the patient had been taken ill, was calculated to give rise to such an expression of feeling on the part of the population as people of stern self-possession labelled immoderate. For round the Spoelmanns' huge olive-varnished, red-cushioned motor, which, with a pale young chauffeur of an Anglo-Saxon type on the box, waited in front of the main door at Delphinenort, a big crowd had gathered; and when Miss Spoelmann and Countess Löwenjoul, followed by a lackey with a rug, came out, cheers broke out, hats and handkerchiefs were waved, until the motor had forced a way through the crowd and had left the demonstrators behind in a cloud of vapour. It must be confessed that these consisted of those rather doubtful elements who usually collect on such occasions: half-grown youths, a few women with market-baskets, one or two schoolboys, gapers, loafers, and out-of-works of various descriptions.
​But what is the public and what should its composition be to make it an average public? One further assertion must not be passed over entirely in silence which was later disseminated by the cynics. It was to the effect that among the crowd round the motor there was an agent in Herr von Knobelsdorff's pay, a member of the secret police, who had started the cheers and vigorously kept them going. We can leave that in doubt, and not grudge the belittlers of important events their satisfaction.
At least, in the case of this particular crowd, it only amounts to saying that the agent's task was the mechanical release of feelings which must have been there and must have been vivid. At any rate this scene, which of course was described at length in the daily press, did not fail to impress everybody, and persons with any acumen for the connexion of things felt no doubt that a further piece of news, which busied men's minds a few days later, stood in hidden relation to all these phenomena and symptoms.
The news ran that his Royal Highness Prince Klaus Heinrich had received his Excellency the Minister of State von Knobelsdorff in audience at the Schloss "Hermitage," and had been closeted with him from three o'clock in the afternoon till seven o'clock in the evening. A whole four hours! What had they discussed? Surely not the next Court Ball? As a matter of fact, the Court Ball had been one among several topics of conversation.
Herr von Knobelsdorff had preferred his request for a confidential talk with the Prince in connexion with the Court Hunt, which had taken place on October 10th in the woods to the west near Schloss "Jägerpreis," and in which Klaus Heinrich and his red-haired cousins, dressed in green uniforms, soft felt hats, and top-boots, and hung with field-glasses, hangers, hunting-knives, bandoliers, and pistol cases, had taken part. Herr von Braunbart-Schellendorf had been consulted, and three o'clock on October 12th ​decided on. Klaus Heinrich himself had offered to visit the old gentleman at his official residence, but Herr von Knobelsdorff had preferred coming to the "Hermitage." He came punctually, and was received with all the affection and warmth which Klaus Heinrich thought that propriety demanded in the case of the aged counsellor of his father and his brother. The sober little room, in which stood the three fine mahogany Empire arm-chairs, with the blue lyre-embroidery on the yellow ground, was the scene of the interview.
Though close on seventy, Excellency von Knobelsdorff was vigorous both in body and in mind. His frock-coat showed not one senile wrinkle, but was tightly and well filled with the compact and comfortable form of a man of happy disposition. His well-preserved hair was pure white, like his short moustache, and parted smoothly in the middle; his chin had a sympathetic pit in it, which might pass for a dimple. The fan-shaped wrinkles at the corners of his eyes played as livelily as ever—indeed, they had gained with the years some little branches and additional lines, so that the whole complication of ever-shifting wrinkles imparted to his blue eyes an expression of humorous subtlety.
Klaus Heinrich was attached to Herr von Knobelsdorff, though no closer relations had been established between them. The Minister of State had actually superintended and organized the Prince's life. He had begun by fixing on Dröge to be his first tutor; had then called the "Pheasantry" into life for him; had sent him later to the University with Dr. Ueberbein; had also arranged his military service for show, and had put Schloss "Hermitage" at his disposal to live in. But all this he had done at second hand, and had rarely interviewed him in person. Indeed, when Herr von Knobelsdorff had met Klaus Heinrich during those years of education, he had inquired ​most respectfully as to the Prince's resolves and plans for the future, as if he were in complete ignorance of them; and perhaps it was just this fiction, which i was firmly bolstered up on both sides, which had kept their inter-course throughout within the bounds of formality.
Herr von Knobelsdorff began the conversation in an easy though respectful tone, while Klaus Heinrich tried to discover the objects of his visit. The former then chatted about the hunt of the day before yesterday, made some pleasant reference to the amount of ground they had covered, and then mentioned casually his admirable colleague at the Treasury, Dr. Krippenreuther, who had also taken part in the hunt, and whose invalid appearance he regretted. Herr Krippenreuther had really not hit a thing.
"Yes, worry makes the hand unsteady," remarked Herr von Knobelsdorff, and so gave the Prince the cue for a direct reference to this worry. He spoke about the "by no means trifling" shortage in the estimates, about the Minister's discussions with the Budget Commission, the new property-tax, the rate of 13½ per cent., and the bitter opposition of the urban deputies, of the antediluvian meat tax, and the Civil Service's cries of hunger; and Klaus Heinrich, who had been surprised at first by so many dry facts, listened to him intently and nodded his head repeatedly.
The two men, the old and young, sat side by side on a slender, hardish sofa with yellow upholstery and wreath like brass mountings, which stood behind the round table opposite the narrow glass door. The latter opened on to the terrace, and through it one could see the half-bare park and the duck pond floating in the autumn mist. The low, white, smooth stove, in which a fire was crackling, diffused a gentle warmth through the severely and scantily furnished room. Klaus Heinrich, though not quite able ​to follow the political proceedings, yet proud and happy at being so seriously talked to by the experienced dignitary, felt his mood growing more and more grateful and confidential. Herr von Knobelsdorff spoke pleasantly about the most unpleasant subjects. His voice was com forting, his remarks ably strung together and insinuating—and suddenly Klaus Heinrich became aware that he had dropped the subject of the State finances, and had passed on from Doctor Krippenreuther's worries to his, Klaus Heinrich's, own condition. Was Herr von Knobels dorff mistaken? His eyes were beginning occasionally to play him tricks. But he wished he could think that his Royal Highness looked a little better, fresher, brighter—a look of tiredness, of worry, was unmistakable.… Herr von Knobelsdorff feared to seem importunate; but he must hope that these symptoms did not arise from any malady, bodily or mental?
Klaus Heinrich looked out at the mist. His look was still sealed: but though he sat on the hard sofa in his usual stiff, upright attitude, his feet crossed, his right hand over his left, and the upper part of his body turned towards Herr von Knobelsdorff, yet inwardly his stiffness relaxed at this juncture, and, worn out as he was by his strangely ineffectual struggle, it did not want much more to make his eyes fill with tears. He was so lonely, so destitute of counsellors. Dr. Ueberbein had recently kept far away from the "Hermitage." … Klaus Heinrich merely said: "Ah, Excellency, that would take us too far."
But Herr von Knobelsdorff answered: "Too far? No, your Royal Highness need not be afraid of being too prolix. I confess that my knowledge of your Royal Highness's experiences is greater than I allowed to appear just now. Your Royal Highness can scarcely have anything new to tell me, apart from those refinements and ​details which rumour can never collect. But if it might comfort your Royal Highness to open his heart to an old servant, who carried you in his arms … perhaps I might not be quite incapable of standing by your Royal Highness in word and deed."
And then it happened that something gave way in Klaus Heinrich's bosom, and poured out in a stream of confession: he told Herr von Knobelsdorff the whole story. He told it as one tells when the heart is full and everything comes tumbling out all at once through the lips; according to no plan, no chronological order, and with undue emphasis on unessentials, but with a burst of passion, and with that concreteness which is the product of passionate observation. He began in the middle, jumped unexpectedly to the beginning, hurried on to the conclusion (which did not exist), tumbled over himself, and more than once hesitated and stuck fast.
But Herr von Knobelsdorff's fore-knowledge made the review easier for him, enabled him by slipping in suggestive questions to float the ship again. And at last the picture of Klaus Heinrich's experiences with all their characters and leading actors, with the figures of Samuel Spoelmann, of the crazy Countess Lowenjoul, even of the collie, Percival, and especially that of Imma Spoelmann, with all its contrariness, lay there complete and full, ready to be discussed. The piece of oil-silk was referred to in full detail, for Herr von Knobelsdorff seemed to attach importance to it. Nothing was omitted, from the impressive incident at the changing of the guard to the last intimate and distressing struggles on horseback and on foot.
Klaus Heinrich was much wrought up when he finished, and his steel-blue eyes in the national cheekbones were full of tears. He had left the sofa, thereby forcing Herr von Knobelsdorff also to get up, and wished on account ​of the heat to open the glass door into the little veranda, but Herr von Knobelsdorff stopped this by calling attention to the risk of a chill. He begged the Prince humbly to sit down again, as his Royal Highness could not conceal from himself the need for a calm discussion of the state of affairs. And both sat down again on the thinly cushioned sofa.
Herr von Knobelsdorff meditated awhile, and his face was as serious as it ever could be with his dimpled chin and the play of his eye-wrinkles. Then, breaking silence, he thanked the Prince with emotion for the great honour he had shown him by confiding in him. And in direct connexion with this Herr von Knobelsdorff, emphasizing each word, announced that whatever attitude the Prince had expected him, Herr von Knobelsdorff, to assume at this juncture, he, Herr von Knobelsdorff, was certainly not the man to oppose the wishes and hopes of the Prince, but much rather to show his Royal Highness the way to the longed-for goal to the best of his power.
Long silence ensued. Klaus Heinrich looked rapturously at Herr von Knobelsdorff's eyes with the fan-like wrinkles. Had he these wishes and hopes? Was there a goal? He was not sure of his ears. He said: "Your Excellency is kind enough …"
Then Herr von Knobelsdorff added to his declaration a condition, and said: Frankly, on one condition only did he, as first official of the State, dare to exercise his modest influence on behalf of his Royal Highness.
"On one condition?"
"On condition that your Royal Highness does not take account only of your own happiness in a selfish and frivolous way, but, as your lofty calling demands, regards your personal destiny from the point of view of the Mass, the Whole."
Klaus Heinrich was silent, and his eyes were heavy in thought.
​"Perhaps your Royal Highness," continued Herr von Knobelsdorff after a pause, "will allow me to leave this delicate and yet quite unavoidable topic for a while, and to turn to more general matters! This is the hour of confidence and mutual understanding … I respectfully beg to be allowed to take advantage of it. Your Royal Highness is through your exalted position cut off from rude actuality, severed from it by delicate precautions. I shall not forget that this actuality is not—or only at second hand—a matter for your Royal Highness. And yet the moment seems to me to have come for bringing at least a certain portion of this rude world to the immediate notice of your Royal Highness, entirely for your own sake. I plead beforehand for forgiveness, if I chance to stir up your Royal Highness's emotions too harshly by what I tell you."
"Please speak on, Excellency," said Klaus Heinrich hastily. Involuntarily he sat upright, just as one sits up straight in a dentist's chair and collects one's natural powers to withstand an attack of pain.
"I must ask for your undivided attention," said Herr von Knobelsdorff almost sternly. And then, as a corollary to the discussions with the Budget Commission, followed the statement, the clear, exhaustive, unembroidered lesson, well primed with figures and explanations of the fundamental facts and technical expressions, which showed the economical position of the country, the State, and brought our whole miserable plight with relentless clearness before the Prince's eyes.
Naturally these things were not entirely new and strange to him. Indeed, ever since he had assumed his representative role, they had served as a motive and subject for those formal questions which he used to address to burgomasters, agriculturists, and high officials, and to which he received answers which were merely answers and ​nothing more, and which were often accompanied by the smile which he had known all his life and which reminded him that he was born to be king. But all this had not yet forced itself upon him in its naked actuality, nor made serious claims on his thinking powers.
Heir von Knobelsdorff was by no means satisfied to get a few of Klaus Heinrich's usual encouraging words; he pressed the matter home, he cross-examined the young man, made him repeat whole sentences; he kept him relentlessly to the point, and reminded the Prince of a dry and skinny index-finger which stopped at each separate place and would not go on until convinced that the pupil really understood the lesson.
Herr von Knobelsdorff began at the rudiments, and talked about the country and its lack of development from a commercial and industrial point of view: he talked about the people, Klaus Heinrich's people, that shrewd and honest, sound and reliable stock; He spoke about the deficiency in the State reserves, the poor dividends paid by the railways, the insufficient coal supply. He touched on the administration of the forests, game preserves and stock-raising; he talked about the woods, the excessive felling, the immoderate stripping of litter, the crippling of the industry, the falling revenues from the forests. Then he went more closely into our stock of gold, discussed the natural inability of the people to pay heavy taxes, described the reckless finance of earlier periods. Thereupon he added up the figures of the State debt, which Herr von Knobelsdorff forced the Prince to repeat several times. They reached six hundred millions.
The lesson extended further to the debentures, conditions for interest and repayment. It came back to Doctor Krippenreuther's present anxiety, and described the seriousness of the situation. Suddenly pulling the "Annual of the Statistical Bureau" out of his pocket, Herr von ​Knobelsdorff instructed his pupil in the harvest returns for the previous years, summed up the untoward events which had caused their decline, pointed to the deficiencies in the taxes, the figures of which he had brought with him, and referred to the underfed adults and children whom one might see throughout the country-side. Then he turned to the general condition of the gold market, discoursed on the rise in the value of gold and the general economic unsoundness. Klaus Heinrich learned also about the lowness of the Exchange, the restlessness of the creditors, the leakage of gold, and the bank smashes; he saw our credit shaken, our paper valueless, and grasped to the full that the raising of a new loan was almost impossible.
The night was closing in, it was long past five, when Herr von Knobelsdorff ended his statement of the national economics. At this time Klaus Heinrich usually had his tea, but this time he only gave a passing thought to it, and nobody outside dared to disturb a conversation whose importance was shown by its duration. Klaus Heinrich listened and listened. He scarcely realized how much affected he was. But how could the other bring himself to say all that to him? He had not called him "Royal Highness" one single time during the interview, he had to some extent forced him, and grossly ignored the fact that he was "born to be king." And yet it was good and stimulating to hear all that and to have to bury one self in it for reality's sake. He forgot to have the lights brought, his attention was so much occupied.
"It was these circumstances," concluded Herr von Knobelsdorff, "which I had in mind when I begged your Royal Highness to regard your personal wishes and plans continually in the light of the general good. I have no doubt that your Royal Highness will profit by this talk and by the facts I have been bold enough to put before ​you. And in this connexion I beg your Royal Highness to allow me to revert to your more personal case."
Herr von Knobelsdorff waited till Klaus Heinrich had made a sign of consent with his hand, and then went on: "If this affair is to have any future, it is desirable that it should now advance a step in its development. It is stagnating, it remains as formless and prospectless as the mist outside. That's intolerable. We must give it form, must thicken it out, must mark its outlines more clearly before the eyes of the world."
"Quite so! quite so! Give it form … thicken it out.… That's it. That's absolutely necessary," agreed Klaus Heinrich, so much excited that he left the sofa and began to walk up and down the room. "But how? For heaven's sake, Excellency, tell me how?"
"The next external step," said Herr von Knobelsdorff, and remained sitting—so unusual was the occasion—"must be this, that the Spoelmanns be seen at Court."
Klaus Heinrich stopped still.
"No," he said, "never, if I know Mr. Spoelmann, will be let himself be persuaded to go to Court."
"Which," answered Herr von Knobelsdorff, "doesn't prevent his daughter from doing us this pleasure. The Court Ball's not so very far off; it rests with you, Royal Highness, to induce Miss Spoelmann to take part in it. Her companion is a countess … a peculiar one, perhaps, but a countess, and that helps things. When I assure your Royal Highness that the Court will not fail to make things easy, I am speaking with the approbation of the Chief Master of the Ceremonies, Herr von Bühl zu Bühl."
The conversation now turned for three-quarters of an hour on questions of precedence, and the ceremonial conditions under which the presentation must be carried out. The distribution of cards was always left to Princess Catherine's Mistress of the Robes, a widowed Countess ​Trümmerhauff, who led the ladies' world at the festivities in the Old Castle.
But as to the act of presentation itself, Herr von Knobelsdorff had managed to secure some concessions of a deliberate, in fact definite character. There was no American Consul in the place—no reason on that account, explained Herr von Knobelsdorff, for letting the ladies be presented by any casual chamberlain; no, the Master of the Ceremonies himself requested the honour of presenting them to the Grand Duke. When? At what point of the prescribed procession? Why, undoubtedly, unusual circumstances demand exceptions. In the first place, then, in front of all the debutantes of the various ranks—Klaus Heinrich might assure Miss Spoelmann that this would b« arranged. It would give rise to talk and sensation at Court and in the city. But never mind, so much the better. Sensation was by no means undesirable, sensation was useful, even necessary.…
Herr von Knobelsdorff went. It had become so dark when he took his leave that the Prince and he could scarcely see each other. Klaus Heinrich, who now first became aware of it, excused himself in some confusion, but Herr von Knobelsdorff declared it to be a matter of no importance in what sort of light a conversation like that was carried on. He took the hand which Klaus Heinrich offered him, and grasped it in both his.
"Never," he said warmly, and these were his last words before he went, "never was the happiness of a prince more inseparable from that of his people. No, whatever your Royal Highness ponders and does, you will bear in mind that the happiness of your Royal Highness by the disposition of destiny has become a condition of the public weal, but that your Royal Highness on your side must recognize in the weal of your country the indispensable condition and justification of your own happiness."
​Much moved, and not yet in a condition to arrange the thoughts which poured in on him in thousands, Klaus Heinrich remained behind in his homely Empire room.
He passed a restless night, and went next morning, despite misty and damp weather, for a long and lonely ride. Herr von Knobelsdorff had talked clearly and voluminously, had given and accepted facts; but for the fusion, modelling, and working up of these multifarious raw products he had given only curt, aphoristic instructions, and Klaus Heinrich found himself doomed to some heavy thinking while he lay awake at night, and later when he went for a ride on Florian.
When he got back to the "Hermitage" he did a remarkable thing. He wrote with a pencil on a piece of paper an order, a certain commission, and sent Neumann, the valet, with it to the Academy Bookshop in the University Strasse: Neumann came back with a package of books, which Klaus Heinrich had set out in his room, and which he began at once to read.
They were works of a sober and school-bookish appearance, with glazed paper backs, ugly leather sides, and coarse paper, and the contents were divided up minutely into sections, main divisions, sub-divisions, and paragraphs. Their titles were not stimulating. They were manuals and hand-books of economy, abstracts and outlines of State finance, systematic treatises on political economy. The Prince shut himself up in his study with these books, and gave instructions that he wished on no account to be disturbed.
The autumn was damp, and Klaus Heinrich felt little tempted to leave the "Hermitage." On Saturday he drove to the Old Schloss to give free audiences: otherwise his time was his own all this week, and he knew how to make use of it. Wrapped in his dressing-gown, he sat in the warmth of the low stove at his small, old-fashioned, ​little-used desk, and pored over his books on finance, with his temples resting in his hands. He read about the State expenditure and what it always consisted of, about the receipts and whence they flowed in when things were going well; he ploughed through the whole subject of taxation in all its branches; he buried himself in the doctrine of the budget, of the balance, of the surplus, and particularly of the deficit; he lingered longest over, and went deepest into, the public debt and its varieties, into loans, and relation between interest and capital and liquidation, and from time to time he raised his head from the book and dreamed with a smile about what he had read, as if it had been the gayest poetry.
For the rest, he found that it was not hard to grasp it all, when one set one's mind to it. No, this really serious actuality, in which he now played a part, this simple and rude texture of interests, this system of down-right logical needs and necessities, which countless young men of ordinary birth had to stuff into their heads, to be able to pass examinations in it, it was by no means so difficult to get hold of as he in his Highness had thought. The rôle of representation, in his opinion, was harder. And much, much more ticklish and difficult were his gentle struggles with Imma Spoelmann on horseback and on foot. His studies made him warm and happy, he felt that his zeal was making his cheeks hot, like those of his brother-in-law zu Ried-Hohenried over his peat.
After thus giving the facts which he had learnt from Herr von Knobelsdorff a general academic basis, and also accomplishing a feat of hard thinking in bringing to gether inward connexions and weighing possibilities, he again presented himself at Delphinenort at tea-time. The lights in the candelabra with the lions' feet and the big crystal lustres were burning in the garden room. The ladies were alone.
​Klaus Heinrich first asked after Mr. Spoelmann's health and Imma's indisposition. He upbraided her freely for her strange impetuosity, to which she answered with a pout that as far as she knew she was her own mistress, and could do as she liked with her health. The conversation then turned to the autumn, to the damp weather which forbade rides, to the advanced time of year, and the proximity of winter, and Klaus Heinrich suddenly mentioned the Court Ball in connexion with which it occurred to him to ask whether the ladies—if unfortunately Mr. Spoelmann were prevented by the state of his health—would not care to take part in one this time. But when Imma answered, "No, really, she had no wish to be rude, but she had absolutely not the faintest desire to go to a Court Ball," he did not press the point, but postponed the question for the time.
What had he done these last few days?—Oh, he'd been very busy, he might say that he'd been chock-a-block with work.—Work? Doubtless he meant the Court Hunt at "Jägerpreis."—The Court Hunt? No. He had gone in for real study which he had by no means got to the bottom of yet; on the contrary he was sticking deep in the literature on the subject.… And Klaus Heinrich began to talk about his ugly books, his peeps into financial science, and he spoke with such pleasure and respect of this discipline that Imma Spoelmann looked at him with her big eyes. But when—almost timidly—she questioned him as to the motive and impulse for this activity, he answered that it was living, only too burning, questions of the day which had brought him to it: circumstances and conditions which were certainly not well suited for a cheerful talk at tea. This remark obviously offended Imma Spoelmann.
"On. what observations," she asked sharply, wagging her head from side to side, "did he base his conviction ​that she was approachable only or preferably by way of cheerful conversation?" And she commanded him rather than asked him to be kind enough to explain about the burning questions of the day.
Then Klaus Heinrich explained what he had learnt from Herr von Knobelsdorff, and talked about the land and its state. He was well posted on every point at which the skinny index-finger had paused: he talked about the natural and the indebted, the general and the particular, the in herited and the intensifying misfortunes; he emphasized particularly the figures of the State debt, and the burden they laid on our national economy—they were six hundred millions—and he did not forget to mention the underfed peasants in the country-side.
He did not speak connectedly; Imma Spoelmann interrupted him with questions and helped him on with questions. She listened carefully, and asked for explanations of what she did not at once understand. Dressed in her loose-sleeved, red-silk dress with the broad embroidery on the yoke, an old-Spanish chain round her child-like neck, she sat leaning on one elbow over the table, her chin buried in her ringless hand, and listened with her whole soul, while her big, dark eyes scrutinized the Prince's face.
But while he spoke, in answer to Imma's verbal and ocular questions, worked at his subject, grew excited and entirely absorbed in it, Countess Löwenjoul no longer felt herself restricted to sober clarity by his presence, but let herself go and indulged in the luxury of drivelling. All the misery, she explained with dignified gestures, even the bad harvest, the burden of debt and the rise in the price of gold, were due to the shameless women who swarmed everywhere, and unfortunately had discovered the way through the floor, as last night the wife of a sergeant from the Grenadiers' Barracks had scratched her breasts and pommelled her in a horrible way. Then she alluded to her ​Schlosses in Burgundy, through the roofs of which the rain came, and went so far as to relate that she had gone as lieutenant in an expedition against the Turks, on which she had been the only one who "had not lost her head." Imma Spoelmann and Klaus Heinrich threw her a kind word now and then, readily promised to call her Frau Meier in future, and for the rest took no notice of her.
The cheeks of both were burning when Klaus Heinrich had said all he knew—even on Miss Spoelmann's usually pearl-white cheeks there was a shade of red to be seen. They then stopped, the Countess too kept quiet, with her little head inclined on her shoulder, and staring into vacancy. Klaus Heinrich played on the white and sharply folded table-cloth with the stem of an orchid, which had stood in a glass by his plate; but as soon as he raised his head he met Imma Spoelmann's large, flaming eyes, which spoke a message of secret entreaty across the table, a darkly eloquent language.
"It has been nice to-day," she said in her broken voice, when she said good-bye this time, and he felt her small, soft hands clasp his with a firm squeeze. "Next time your Highness honours our unworthy house, do bring me one or two of those excellent books you have bought." She could not entirely resist mocking him, but she asked him for his finance books, and he brought them to her.
He brought her two of them, which he considered the most informative and comprehensive; he brought them some days later in his carriage through the damp Town Garden, and she thanked him for doing so. As soon as tea-was over, they retired to a corner of the room, and there, while the Countess absently continued sitting at the tea-table, they began their common studies in throne-like chairs at a gilt table, bending over the first page of a manual called "The Science of Finance." They even read the headings to the sections, each reading a sentence softly in ​turn; for Imma Spoelmann insisted on going methodically to work and beginning at the beginning.
Klaus Heinrich, well prepared as he was, acted as guide through the paragraphs, and nobody could have followed more smartly or clear-headedly than Imma.
"It's quite easy!" she said and looked up with a laugh. "I'm surprised that it is at bottom so simple. Algebra is much harder, Prince."
But as they went so deeply into things, they did not get far in one afternoon, so made a mark in the book at which to start next time.
And so they went on, and the Prince's visits to Delphinenort were devoted to dull realities. Whenever. Mr. Spoelmann did not come to tea, or, with Dr. Watercloose, left them, after eating his rusk, Imma and Klaus Heinrich sat down at the gilt table with their books, and plunged heads together into the Science of Economics. But as they progressed, they compared what they learned with the reality, applied what they read to the circumstances of the country, as Klaus Heinrich conceived them to be, and made their studies profitable, though it happened not seldom that their investigations were interrupted by considerations of a personal kind.
"It seems, then," said Imma, "that the issue may be effected either directly or indirectly—yes, that's obvious. Either the State turns directly to the capitalists and opens a subscription list … Your hand is twice as broad as mine," she said; "look, Prince."
And they looked laughingly at their hands, his right and her left, as they lay next each other on the gilt table.
"Or," went on Imma, "the loan is procured by negotiation, and it is some big bank, or group of banks, to which the State …"
"Wait!" he said softly. "Wait, Imma, and answer me one question. Aren't you missing the main point? ​Are you making progress? What about the disenchant ment and embarrassment, dear little Imma? Have you now just one spark of confidence in me?" His lips asked the question close to her hair, from which a delicate fragrance arose, and she held her dark head still and bent over the book, though she did not answer his question frankly.
"But must it be a bank or group of banks?" she pondered. "There's nothing about it there; I can't think it would be necessary in practice."
She spoke gravely and deliberately on these occasions, for she too for her part had to grapple with the mental exercises which Klaus Heinrich had successfully managed after the conversation with Herr von Knobelsdorff. And when some weeks later he repeated his question, whether she would not like to go to the Court Ball, and told her of the ceremonial conditions which had been sanctioned for this occasion, behold, she replied that she would like to, and would go next day with Countess Löwenjoul and leave cards on the widowed Countess Trümmerhauff.
This year the Court Ball took place earlier than usual; at the end of November—an arrangement which was said to be due to the wishes of the Grand Ducal Party. Herr von Bühl zu Bühl bitterly bewailed this precipitation, which obliged him and his subordinates to cancel the arrangements for the most important Court function, especially the improvements which the Gala Rooms in the Old Schloss so much needed. But the wish of the particular member of the Grand Ducal family had had the support of Herr von Knobelsdorff, and the Court Marshal had to give way. But it happened thus that people's minds scarcely had time to prepare themselves sufficiently for what really was the event of the evening, in comparison with which the unusual date seemed as nothing. Indeed, when the Courier published in leaded type the news of the leaving of cards and the invitation—not without expressing in rather smaller ​type and in glowing words its satisfaction thereat, and welcoming Spoelmann's daughter to the Court—the important evening was already close at hand, and before tongues could get fairly wagging the whole thing was a completed reality.
Never had more envy attached to thefive hundred favoured ones whose names stood on the Court Ball list, never had the bourgeois more eagerly devoured the account in the Courier—those dazzling columns which were written every year by a nobleman who had degenerated through drink, and which were such glorious reading that one felt they gave one a peep into Fairyland, while as a matter of fact the ball in the Old Schloss went off quite modestly and soberly. But the report only extended to the supper, including the French menu, and everything that came later, especially all the delicate significance of the great occasion, were necessarily left to be reported by word of mouth.
The ladies, in a huge olive-coloured motor, had pulled up in front of the Albrechtstor at the Old Schloss fairly punctually, though not so punctually that Herr von Bühl zu Bühl had not had time to get anxious. From a quarter-past seven onwards he had waited in full uniform, covered with orders down to his waist, with a bright brown toupee and his gold pince-nez on his nose, in the middle of the armour-hung Knights' Hall where the Grand Ducal family and the chief officials were collected; standing now on one foot, then on the other, and every now and then dispatching a footman to the ballroom to find out whether Miss Spoelmann had not yet come. He thought of all sorts of unheard-of possibilities. If this Queen of Sheba came too late—and what might one not expect of a girl who had walked right through the guard?—the entry of the Grand Ducal cortege would have to be delayed, and the Court would have to wait for her, for she simply must be introduced first, and it was out of the question that she should enter the ballroom after the Grand Duke.
​But thank heaven! a bare minute before half-past seven she arrived with her Countess; and it made a great sensation when the Chamberlains who received them arranged them next the diplomats, and so in front of the nobility, the Court ladies, the Ministers, the Generals, the Presidents of Chambers, and all the Court world. Aide-de-camp von Platow had fetched the Grand Duke from his rooms. Albrecht, in hussar uniform, had greeted the members of his House with down-cast eyes in the Knights' Hall, had offered his arm to Aunt Catherine, and then, after Herr von Bühl had tapped three times with his staff on the parquet in the open doors, the procession of the Court into the ballroom had begun.
Eye-witnesses asserted later that the general inattention had verged on the scandalous during the perambulation of the Grand Duke. As Albrecht reached successive spots with his dignified aunt, a hasty bowing and billowing with out the fitting composure ensued, but otherwise all faces were turned to one point only in the ball, all eyes directed with burning curiosity on this point alone.… She who stood yonder had had enemies in the hall, at least among the women, the female Trümmerhauffs, Prenzlaus, Wehrzahns, and Platows, who were plying their fans here, and sharp and cold female glances had scrutinized her. But whether her position was now too well established for criticism to venture to assail her, or her personality itself had conquered the secret opposition—all had declared with one voice that Imma Spoelmann was as fine as the daughter of the King of the Mountains.
The whole town, the clerk in the Government office, the messenger at the street corner, knew her toilette by heart next morning. It had been a gown of pale-green crepe de chine, with silver embroidery and priceless old silver lace on the bodice. A tiara of diamonds had glittered in her dark hair, which showed a tendency to fall in smooth ​wisps across her forehead, and a long hanging chain of the same stones was wound two or three times round her brown throat. Small and child-like, yet strangely earnest and sensible-looking, with her pale face and big, strangely speaking eyes, she had stood in her place of honour by the side of Countess Löwenjoul, who had been dressed in brown as usual, though this time in satin. When the cortege reached her, she had, with a kind of coy pertness, made a suggestion of a curtsey, without completing it; but when Prince Klaus Heinrich, with the yellow ribbon and the flat chain of the Family Order "For Constancy" over his tunic, the silver star of the Grimmburg Griffin on his chest, and his anaemic cousin on his arm whose conversation was limited to "Yes," passed by her directly after the Grand Duke, she had smiled with closed lips and nodded to him like a comrade—which sent something like a quiver through the company.
Then, after the diplomats had been received by the Grand Ducal party, the presentations had begun—begun with Imma Spoelmann, although there had been two Countess Hundskeels and one Baroness von Schulenburg-Tressen among the debutantes. With an ingratiating smile, which showed his false teeth, Herr von Bühl had presented Spoelmann's daughter to his master. And Albrecht, sucking his lower lip against his upper, had looked down on her coy semi-curtsey, from which she had raised herself to scrutinize with her speaking eyes the suffering Hussar Colonel in his silent pride. The Grand Duke had addressed several questions to her, an exception to an otherwise strict rule; he had asked her how her father was, what effect the Ditlinde Spa had, and how she liked on the whole being with us—questions which she had answered in her broken voice with a pout and a wag of her dark head. Then, after a pause, a pause perhaps of internal struggle, Albrecht had expressed his pleasure at seeing her ​at Court; whereupon Countess L6wenjoul had executed her curtsey, with an evasive glance from her eyes.
This scene, Imma Spoelmann in the presence of Albrecht, long remained the favourite topic of conversation, and although it had passed, as it was bound to pass, without anything unusual happening, yet its charm and importance must not be overlooked. It was not indeed the climax of the evening. That, in the eyes of many, was the Quadrille d'honneur; in the eyes of others, the supper,—in reality, however, it was a secret duologue between the two chief actors in the piece, a short, unnoticed exchange of words, whose contents and actual result the public could only guess—the settlement of certain tender struggles on horseback and on foot.
As to the Quadrille d'honneur, there were people who declared next day that Miss Spoelmann had danced in it, with Prince Klaus Heinrich as her partner. Only the first part of this story was correct. Miss Spoelmann had taken part in the solemn dance, but as the British Consul's part ner and Prince Klaus Heinrich's vis-à-vis. This was fairly strong, but what was still stronger was that the majority of the guests did not consider it an unheard-of thing, but on the contrary almost a matter of course.
Yes, Imma Spoelmann's position was established; the popular conception of her personality—as the public learned next day—had prevailed in the Court ballroom, and, what is more, Herr von Knobelsdorff had taken care that this conception should be expressed with all the publicity he thought desirable. Not with distinctive or aggressive respect; no, Imma Spoelmann had been treated ceremoniously, and at the same time with systematic, intentional emphasis. The two Masters of the Ceremonies on duty—Chamberlains in rank—had introduced selected dancers to her; and when she had left her place, close by the low red platform where the Grand Ducal family sat on damask ​chairs, to dance with her partners, they had busied themselves, just as when the princesses danced, in clearing her a space under the chandelier in the middle and protecting her from collisions—an easy task in any case, for a protective circle of curiosity had formed round her when she danced.
It was reported that when Prince Klaus Heinrich asked Miss Spoelmann for the first time, a deep drawing of breath, a formal "Sh" of excitement had been heard in the ballroom, and the Masters of the Ceremonies had found it difficult to keep the ball going and to prevent the whole company standing round the dancers in gaping curiosity. The women especially had watched the pair with an excited delight, which, had Miss Spoelmann's position been only a little weaker, would undoubtedly have taken on the form of rage and malice. But the pressure and influence of public feeling, that powerful inspiration from below, had worked too powerfully on every one of the five hundred guests for them to be able to regard this spectacle through any eyes other than those of the people. It did not seem to have occurred to the Prince to impose any restraint upon himself. His name—shortened to "K. H."—appeared twice on Miss Spoelmann's programme, and besides he had sat out several other dances with her. They had danced yonder. Her brown arm had rested on the yellow-silk ribbon that crossed his shoulder, and his right arm had encircled her light and child-like figure, while, as usual when he danced, he had placed the left on his hip and guided his partner with one hand only. With one hand! …
When supper-time came, a further article in the ceremonial conditions which Herr von Knobelsdorff had contrived for Imma Spoelmann's visit to Court came into staggering force. It was the article which dealt with the order of seating at the table. For while the majority of the guests supped at long tables in the picture gallery and in the Hall ​of the Twelve Months, supper was laid in the Silver Hall for the Grand Ducal family, diplomats, and leading Court officials. In solemn procession, as when they entered the ballroom, Albrecht and his party entered the supper-room punctually at eleven o'clock. And Imma Spoelmann passed by the lackeys, who kept the doors and repelled the uninvited, on the arm of the British Consul, and entered the Silver Hall to take her place at the Grand Ducal table.
That was unheard of—and at the same time, after all that had gone before, so logically consequential, that any surprise or disgust would have been idiotic. The motto for the day was to be prepared for anything in the way of omens and phenomena. But after supper, when the Grand Duke had withdrawn and Princess Griseldis had opened the cotillon with a Chamberlain, expectation was again raised to fever point, for the general question was, had the Prince been allowed to present Miss Spoelmann with a bouquet? His instructions had obviously been not to give her the first. He had first given one each to his Aunt Katharine and a red-haired cousin; but he had then advanced towards Imma Spoelmann with a bouquet of lilac from the Court gardens. As she was about to raise the lovely bunch to her nose, she had hesitated for some unknown reason with a look of apprehension, and it was not till he had encouraged her with a laugh and a nod that she decided to test the fragrance of the bouquet. Then they had danced and chatted quietly together for a long time.
And yet it was during this dance that that unnoticed duologue, that conversation of a palpably bourgeois tenor and practical result, had taken place—and this is what it was.
"Are you satisfied this time, Imma, with the flowers I bring you?"
"Of course, Prince, your lilac is lovely and smells quite as it should. I love it."
​"Really, Imma? But I'm sorry for the poor rosebush down in the court, because its roses disgust you with their mouldy smell."
"I won't say that they disgust me, Prince."
"But they disenchant and chill you, don't they?"
"Yes, perhaps."
"But have I ever told you of the popular belief that the rosebush will one day be redeemed, on a day of general happiness, and will bear roses which will add to their great beauty the gift of a lovely natural scent?"
"Well, Prince, we'll have to wait for that."
"No, Imma, we must help and act! We must decide, and have done with all hesitation, little Imma! Tell me—tell me to-day—have you confidence in me?"
"Yes, Prince. I have gained confidence in you latterly."
"There you are! Thank heaven! Didn't I say that I must succeed in the long run? And so you think now that I am in earnest, real, serious earnest about you and about us?"
"Yes, Prince; latterly I have thought that I can think so."
"At last, at last, irresolute little Imma! Oh, how I thank you, I thank you! But in that case you're not afraid, and will let the whole world know that you belong to me?"
"Let them know that you belong to me, Royal Highness, if it's all the same to you."
"That I will, Imma, loudly and surely. But only on one condition, namely, that we don't only think of our own happiness in a selfish and frivolous way, but regard it all from the point of view of the Mass, the Whole. For the public weal and our happiness, you see, are interdependent."
"Well said, Prince. For without our studies of the public weal I should have found it difficult to decide to have confidence in you."
​"And without you, Imma, to warm my heart, I should have found it difficult to tackle such practical problems."
"Right; then we'll see what we can do, each in our own place. You with your folk and I—with my father."
"Little sister," he answered quietly, and pressed her more closely to him in the dance. "Little bride."
Undoubtedly a peculiar plighting of troth.
To be frank, everything was not yet settled, or nearly settled. Looking back, one must say that, if one factor in the whole had been altered or removed, the whole would have been in imminent danger of coming to nothing. What a blessing, the chronicler feels tempted to cry, what a blessing that there was a man at the head of affairs who faced the music firmly and undaunted, indeed not without a dash of rashness, and did not judge a thing to be impossible just because it had never happened before.
The conversation which Excellency von Knobelsdorff had about eight days after the memorable Court Ball with Grand Duke Albrecht II in the Old Schloss belongs to the history of the times. The day before, the President of Council had presided over a session of the Cabinet, about which the Courier had been in the position to report that questions of finance and the private affairs of the Grand Ducal family had been discussed, and further—added the newspaper in spaced type—that complete unanimity of opinion had been reached among the Ministers. So Herr von Knobelsdorff found himself in a strong position towards his young Monarch at the audience; for he had not only the swarming mass of the people, but also the unanimous will of the Government at his back.
The conversation in Albrecht's draughty study took scarcely less time than that in the little yellow room at Schloss "Hermitage." A pause was made while the Grand Duke had a lemonade and Herr von Knobelsdorff a glass of port and biscuits. The long duration of the ​conversation was due only to the importance of the material to be discussed, not to the Monarch's opposition; for Albrecht raised none. In his close frock-coat, with his thin, sensitive hands crossed on his lap, his proud, refined head with its pointed beard and narrow temples raised and his eyelids sunk, he sucked gently with his lower lip against his upper, and accompanied Herr von Knobelsdorff's remarks with an occasional slight nod, which expressed agreement and disagreement at the same time, an uninterested formal agreement without prejudice to his unassailable personal dignity.
Herr von Knobelsdorff plunged straight into the middle of things, and spoke about Prince Klaus Heinrich's visits to Schloss Delphinenort. Albrecht knew of them. A subdued echo of the events which kept the city and the country on tip-toe had penetrated even into his loneliness; he knew, too, his brother Klaus Heinrich, who had "rummaged" and gossiped with the lackeys, and, when he knocked his forehead against the big table, had wept for sympathy with his forehead—and in effect he needed no coaching. Lisping and reddening slightly, he gave Herr von Knobelsdorff to understand this, and added that, seeing that the other had not intervened, but had caused the millionaire's daughter to be introduced to him, he concluded that Herr von Knobelsdorff approved of the Prince's behaviour, although he, the Grand Duke, could not clearly see what they would lead to.
"The Government," answered Herr von Knobelsdorff, "would set itself in prejudicial and estranging opposition to the will of the people if it thwarted the Prince's projects."
"Has my brother, then, definite projects?"
"For a long time," corrected Herr von Knobelsdorff, "he acted without any plan and merely as his heart dictated; but since he has found himself with the people on terms of reality, his wishes have taken a practical form.'
​"All of which means that the public approves the steps taken by the Prince?"
"That it acclaims them, Royal Highness—that its dearest hopes are fixed on them."
And now Herr von Knobelsdorff unrolled once more the dark picture of the state of the country, of its distress, of the serious embarrassment. Where was a remedy to be found? Yonder, only yonder, in the Town Park, in the second centre of the city, in the house of the invalid Money-Prince, our guest and resident, round whose person the people wove their dreams, and for whom it would be a small matter to put an end to all our difficulties. If he could be induced to take upon himself our national finances, their recovery would be assured. Would he be induced? But fate had ordained an exchange of sympathy between the mighty man's only daughter and Prince Klaus Heinrich. And was this wise and gracious ordinance to be flouted? Ought one for the sake of mulish, out-of-date traditions to prevent a union which embraced so immeasurable a blessing for the country and its people? For that it did was a necessary hypothesis, from which the union must draw its justification and validity. But if this condition were fulfilled, if Samuel Spoelmann were ready, not to mince words, to finance the State, then this union was not only admissible, it was necessary, it was salvation, the welfare of the State demanded it, and prayers rose to heaven for it, far beyond the frontiers, wherever any interest was felt in the restoration of our finances and the avoidance of an economic panic.
At this point the Grand Duke asked a question quietly, with a mocking smile and without looking up.
"And the succession to the throne?" he asked.
"The law," answered Herr von Knobelsdorff, unshaken, "places it in your Royal Highness's hand to put aside dynastic scruples. With us the grant of an advance in ​rank and even of equal birth belongs to the prerogatives of the monarch, and when could history show a more potent motive for the exercise of these privileges? This union bears the mark of its own genuineness, preparations have been long in making for its reception in the hearts of the people, and your entire princely and State approval would signify to the people nothing more than an outward satisfaction of their inmost convictions."
And Herr von Knobelsdorff went on to speak of Imma Spoelmann's popularity, of the significant demonstration in connexion with her recovery from a slight indisposition, of the position of equal birth which this exceptional person assumed in popular fancy—and the wrinkles played round his eyes as he reminded Albrecht of the old prophecy current among the people, which told of a prince who would give the country more with one hand than others had given it with two, and eloquently demonstrated how the union between Klaus Heinrich and Spoelmann's daughter must seem to the people the fulfilment of the oracle, and thus God's will and right and proper.
Herr von Knobelsdorff said a great deal more which was clever, honest, and good. He alluded to the fourfold mixture of blood in Imma Spoelmann—for besides the Anglo-Saxon, Portuguese and German, some drops of ancient Indian blood were said to flow in her veins—and emphasized the fact that he expected the dynasty to benefit greatly by the quickening effect of the mixture of races on ancient stocks. But the artless old gentleman made his greatest effect when he talked about the huge and beneficial alterations which would be caused in the economical state of the Court itself, our debt-laden and sore-pressed Court, through the heir to the throne's bold marriage.
It was at this point that Albrecht sucked most proudly at his upper lip. The value of gold was falling, the out goings were increasing—increasing in. pursuance of an ​economic law which held for the Court finances just as much as for every private household; and there was no possibility of increasing the revenues. But it was not right that the monarch's means should be inferior to those of many of his subjects; it was from the monarch's point of view in tolerable that soap-boiler Unschlitt's house should have had central heating a long time ago, but that the Old Schloss should not have got it yet. A remedy was necessary, in more than one way, and lucky was the princely house to which so grand a remedy as this offered itself.
It was noteworthy in our times that all the old-time modesty as to busying oneself in the financial concerns of the Court had vanished. That self-renunciation with which princely families used formerly to make the heaviest sacrifices, so as to keep the public from disenchanting glimpses into their financial affairs, was no longer to be found, and law-suits and questionable sales were the order of the day. But was not an alliance with sovereign riches preferable to this petty and bourgeois kind of device—a union which would exalt the monarch for ever high above all economic worries and place him in a position to reveal himself to the people with all those outward signs for which they longed?
So ran Herr von Knobelsdorff's questions, which he him self answered with an unqualified Yes! In short, his speech was so clever and so irresistible that he did not leave the Old Schloss without taking with him consents and authorizations, delivered to him with a proud lisp, which were quite comprehensive enough to warrant unprecedented conclusions, if only Miss Spoelmann had done her share.
And so things ran their memorable course to a happy conclusion. Even before the end of December names were mentioned of people who had seen (not only heard tell of) Lord Marshal von Buhl zu Buhl in a fur coat, a top-hat on his brown head, and his gold pince-nez on his nose, get out of a Court carriage at Delphinenort, at n o'clock on ​a snow-dark morning, and disappear waddling into the Schloss. At the beginning of January there were individuals going about the town who swore that the man who, this time also in the morning and in a fur coat and top-hat, had passed by the grinning negro in plush, through the door of Delphinenort, and, with feverish haste, had flung himself into a cab which was waiting for him, was undoubtedly our Finance Minister, Dr. Krippenreuther. And at the same time there appeared in the semi-official Courier the first preparatory notices of rumours touching an impending betrothal in the Grand Ducal House—tentative notifications which, becoming carefully clearer and clearer, at last exhibited the two names, Klaus Heinrich and Imma Spoelmann, in clear print next each other.… It was no new collocation, but to see it in black on white had the same effect as strong wine.
It was most absorbing to notice what attitude, in the journalistic discussions which ensued, our enlightened and open-minded press took up towards the popular aspect of the affair, namely, the prophecy, which had won too great political significance not to demand education and in telligence to deal satisfactorily with it. Sooth-saying, chiromancy, and similar magic, explained the Courier, were, so far as the destiny of individuals was concerned, to be relegated to the murky regions of superstition. They belonged to the grey middle ages, and no ridicule was too severe for the idiots who (very rarely in the cities nowa days) let experienced pick-pockets empty their purses in return for reading, from their hands, the cards, or coffee-grounds, their insignificant fortunes, or for invoking sound health, for a homoeopathic cure, or for freeing their sick cattle from invading demons—as if the Apostle had not already asked: "Doth God take care for oxen?"
But, surveyed as a whole and restricted to decisive turns in the destiny of whole nations or dynasties, the proposition ​did not necessarily repel a well-trained and scientific mind, that, as time is only an illusion and, truly viewed, all happenings are stationary in eternity, such revolutions while still in the lap of the future might give the human brain a premonitory shock and reveal themselves palpably to it. And in proof of this the zealous newspaper published an exhaustive composition, kindly put at its disposal by one of our high-school professors, which gave a conspectus of all the cases in the history of mankind in which oracle and horoscope, somnambulism, clairvoyance, dreams, sleep-walking, second-sight, and inspiration had played a rôle, a most meritorious production, which produced the due effect in cultured circles.
So press, Government, Court, and public closed their ranks in complete understanding, and assuredly the Courier would have held its tongue had its philosophical contributions been premature and politically dangerous at that time—in a word, had not the negotiations at Delphinenort already advanced far in a favourable direction. It is pretty accurately known by now how these negotiations developed, and what a difficult, indeed painful, task our Counsel had in them: the Counsel, to whom as proxy of the Court the delicate mission had fallen of preparing the way for Prince Klaus Heinrich's courtship, as well as the Chief Financial Assessor, who, notwithstanding his infirm state of health, insisted on nursing his country's interests by a personal interview with Samuel Spoelmann.
In this connexion account must be taken firstly of Mr. Spoelmann's fiery and excitable disposition, and secondly of the fact that to the prodigious little man a favourable termination to the business from our point of view seemed far less important than it did to us. Apart from Mr. Spoelmann's love for his daughter, who had opened her heart to him and told him of her pretty wish to make herself useful in her love, our proxies had not one trump ​to play against him, and he was the last man to whom Dr. Krippenreuther could dictate conditions in virtue of what Herr von Buhl had to offer. Mr. Spoelmann always spoke of Prince Klaus Heinrich as "the young man," and expressed so little pleasure at the prospect of giving his daughter to a Royal Highness to wife, that Dr. Krippen reuther, as well as Herr von Buhl, were more than once plunged into deadly embarrassment.
"If he'd only learnt something, had some respectable business," he snarled peevishly. "But a young man who only knows how to get cheered …" He was really furious, the first time a remark was dropped about morganatic marriage. His daughter, he declared once for all, was no concubine, and would be no left-handed wife. Who marries her, marries her.… But the interests of the dynasty and the country coincided at this point with his own. The obtaining of issue entitled to succeed was a necessity, and Herr von Bühl was equipped with all the powers which Herr von Knobelsdorff had succeeded in extracting from the Grand Duke. As for Dr. Krippen reuther's mission, however, it owed its success not to the envoy's eloquence, but simply to Mr. Spoelmann's paternal affection, the complaisance of a suffering, weary father, whose abnormal existence had long ago made him a paradox, towards his only daughter and heiress, whom he allowed to choose for herself the public funds in which she wished to invest her fortune.
And so came into existence the agreements, which were at first shrouded in deep secrecy and only came to light bit by bit, as events developed themselves, though here they can be summarized in a few plain words.
The betrothal of Klaus Heinrich with Imma Spoelmann was approved and recognized by Samuel Spoelmann and by the House of Grimmburg. Simultaneously with the publication of the betrothal in the Gazette appeared the ​announcement of the elevation of the bride to the rank of countess—under a fancy name of romantic sound, like that which Klaus Heinrich had borne during his educational tour in the fair southern lands; and on the day of their wedding the wife of the heir-presumptive was to be given the dignity of a princess. The two rises in rank, which might have cost four thousand eight hundred marks, were to be free of duty.
The wedding was to be only preliminarily a left-handed one, till the world had got used to it: for on the day on which it appeared that the bride was to be blessed with offspring, Albrecht II, in view of the unparalleled circumstances, would declare his brother's morganatic wife to be of equal birth, and would give her the rank of a princess of the Grand Ducal House with the title of Royal Highness. The new member of the ruling House would waive all claim to an appanage. As for the Court ceremony, only a semi-Court was appointed for the celebration of the left-handed marriage, but a Processional Court, that highest and completest form of showing allegiance, was fixed for the celebration of the declaration of equal birth. Samuel Spoelmann, for his part, granted the State a loan of three hundred and fifty million marks, and on such fatherly conditions that the loan showed all the symptoms of being a gift.
It was the Grand Duke Albrecht who acquainted the Heir Presumptive with these conclusions. Once more Klaus Heinrich stood in the great, draughty study under the battered ceiling-paintings, in front of his brother, as once before when Albrecht had delegated to him his representative duties, and standing in an official attitude received the great news. He had put on the tunic of a major in the Fusiliers of the Guard for this audience, while the Grand Duke had lately added to his black frock-coat a pair of dark-red wool mittens, which his aunt had made ​him to protect him from the draught through the high windows of the Old Schloss.
When Albrecht had finished, Klaus Heinrich stepped one pace sideways, closed his heels with a fresh salute, and said: "I beg, dear Albrecht, to offer my heart-felt and respectful thanks, in my own name and that of the whole country. For it is you in the long run who make all these blessings possible, and the redoubled love of the people will be your reward for your magnanimous resolutions."
He pressed his brother's thin, sensitive hand, which he kept close to his chest, and extended to him only to the extent of moving his forearm. The Grand Duke had thrust forward his short, round underlip, and his eyelids were half-closed. He answered softly with a lisp:
"I am the less inclined to entertain illusions about the people's love, as I can, as you know, dispense with such questionable love without a pang. So the question whether I deserve it is scarcely worth notice. When it's time to start, I go to the station and give the signal to the engine-driver, which is silly rather than dutiful, but it's my duty. But you're in a different position. You're a Sunday child. Everything turns out trumps for you.… I wish you luck," he said, raising the lids from his lonely-looking, blue eyes. And it was clear at this moment that he loved Klaus Heinrich. "I wish you happiness, Klaus Heinrich—but not too much, and that you may not repose too comfortably in the love of the people. I have already said that everything turns out trumps for you. The girl of your choice is very strange, very undomesticated, and, most important of all, very original. She has a mixture of blood, I've been told that Indian blood flows in her veins. That's perhaps a good thing. With a wife like that, there's less danger, perhaps, of your having too easy a time."
"Neither happiness," said Klaus Heinrich, "nor the ​people's love will have the effect of making me cease to be your brother."
He left to face a difficult interview, a tête-à-tête with Mr. Spoelmann, his personal proposal for Imma's hand. He found he had to swallow what his negotiators had swallowed, for Samuel Spoelmann showed not the smallest pleasure and snarled several refreshing truths at him. But it was over at last, and the morning came when the be trothal appeared in the Gazette. The long tension resolved into endless jubilation. Dignified men waved pocket-handkerchiefs at one another, and embraced in the open square: bunting flew from every flag-staff.
But the same day the news reached Schloss "Hermitage," that Raoul Ueberbein had committed suicide.
The story was a vile as well as stupid one, and would not be worth relating had not its end been so horrible. No attempt will be made here to apportion the blame. The Doctor's death gave rise to two opposing factions. One affirmed that he had been driven to take his life owing to the misgivings which his desperate act had evoked: the others declared with a shrug that his conduct was imimpossible and crazy, and that he had shown all his life a total lack of self-control. The point need not be decided. At any rate nothing justified so tragic an end; indeed, a man with the gifts of Raoul Ueberbein deserved something better than ruin.… Here is the story.
At Easter the year before the professor in charge of the top class but one at our Grammar School, who suffered from heart-weakness, had been temporarily retired on the ground of his illness, and Doctor Ueberbein, notwithstanding his comparative youth, had been given the first vacant chair simply in view of his professional zeal and his undeniably remarkable success in a lower class. It was a happy experiment, as events proved; the class had never done so well as this year. The professor on leave, a ​popular man with his colleagues, had become a peevish as well as careless and indolent man as the result of his infirmity, with which was combined a sociable but immoderate inclination for beer. He had shut his eyes to details and had sent up every year an extremely badly prepared batch of pupils into the Select. A new spirit had come into the class with the temporary professor, and nobody was surprised at it. People knew his uncomfortable professional zeal, his single-minded and never-resting energy. They foresaw that he would not miss such an opportunity for self-advancement, round which he had doubtless built ambitious hopes.
So an end had soon been put to laziness and boredom in the second class. Dr. Ueberbein had pitched his expectations high, and his skill in inspiring even the most recalcitrant had proved irresistible. The boys worshipped him. His superior, fatherly, and jolly, swaggering way kept them on the alert, shook them up, and made them feel it a point of honour to follow their teacher through thick and thin. He won their hearts by going for Sunday excursions with them, when they were allowed to smoke, while he be witched their imaginations by boyishly conceived rodo montades about the greatness and severity of public life. And on Monday the members of yesterday's expedition would meet for work in a cheerful and eager frame of mind.
Three-quarters of the school year had thus passed, when the news went round, before Christmas, that the professor on leave, now fairly strong again, would resume his duties after the holidays, and would again act as professor of the second class. And now it came out what sort of man Doctor Ueberbein was, with his green complexion and superior manner. He objected and remonstrated; he lodged a vigorous and, in form, not incontestable protest against the class with which he had spent three-quarters of ​the year, and whose work and recreation he had shared up to the very mouth of the goal, being taken from its professor for the last quarter and restored to the official who had spent three-quarters of the year on leave. His action was intelligible and comprehensible, and one must sympathize with it. He had undoubtedly hoped to send up a model class to the head master, who taught the Select, a class whose forwardness would put his skill in the best light and would hasten his promotion; and it must grieve him to look forward to another's reaping the fruits of his devotion. But though his disgust might be excusable, his frenzy was not: and it is an unfortunate fact that, when the head master proved deaf to his representations, he became simply frenzied. He lost his head, he lost all balance, he set heaven and hell to work to prevent this loafer, this alcohol-heart, this blankety-blank, as he did not hesitate to describe the professor on leave, from taking his class from him. And when he found no support among his colleagues, as was natural in the case of so unsociable a man, the poor wretch had so far forgotten himself as to incite the pupils entrusted to him to rebel.
He had put the question to them from his desk—Whom do you want for your master for the last quarter, me or that other fellow? And, wound up by his stirring appeal, they had shouted that they wanted him. Then, he said, they must take matters into their own hands, show their colours, and act as one boy—though goodness knows what in his excitement he meant by that. But when after the holidays the returned professor entered the class-room, they screamed Doctor Ueberbein's name at him for minutes on end—and there was a fine scandal.
It was kept as quiet as possible. The revolutionaries got off almost unpunished, as Doctor Ueberbein himself put on record, at the inquiry which was at once initiated, his appeal to them. As to the Doctor himself, too, the ​authorities seemed generally inclined to close their eyes to what had happened. His zeal and skill were highly valued, certain learned works, the fruits of his mighty industry, had made his name known, he was popular in high quarters—quarters, be it noticed, with which he personally did not come into contact, and which therefore he could not incense by his patronizing bearing. Further, his record as tutor of Prince Klaus Heinrich weighed in the scales. In short, he was not simply dismissed, as one might have expected him to be. The President of the Grand Ducal Council of Education, before whom the matter came, administered a grave reprimand to him, and Doctor Ueberbein, who had stopped teaching directly after the scandal, was provisionally retired. But people who knew declared later that nothing was intended beyond the professor's transfer to another grammar school; that in high quarters the only wish was to hush up the whole business, and that the promise of a brilliant future had been actually extended to the Doctor. Everything would have turned out all right.
But the milder the authorities showed themselves to wards the Doctor, the more hostile was the attitude of his colleagues towards him. The "Teachers' Union" at once established a court of honour, whose object was to secure satisfaction for their beloved member, the alcohol-hearted professor rejected of his pupils. The written statement laid before Ueberbein in his retirement in his lodgings ran as follows: Whereas Ueberbein had resisted the return of the colleague for whom he acted to the professorship of the second class; whereas further he had agitated against him and in the end had actually incited the pupils to in subordination against him, he had been guilty of disloyal conduct to his colleague of such a kind as must be considered dishonourable not only in a professional, but also in a general sense. That was the verdict. The expected result was that Doctor Ueberbein, who had only been a ​nominal member of the "Teachers' Union," withdrew his membership—and there, so many thought, he might well have let the matter rest.
But whether it was that in his seclusion he did not know the goodwill he inspired in higher quarters; that he thought his prospects more hopeless than they were; that he could not stand idleness, unreconciled as he was to the premature loss of his beloved class; that the expression "dishonourable" poisoned his blood, or that his mind was not strong enough to stand all the shocks it received at this time: five weeks after the New Year his landlady found him on the threadbare carpet of his room, no greener than usual, but with a bullet through his heart.
Such was the end of Raoul Ueberbein, such his false step, such the cause of his fall. "I told you so," was the burden of all the discussions of his pitiful break-down. The quarrelsome and uncongenial man, who had never been a man amongst men at his club, who had haughtily resisted all familiarity, and had ordered his life cold-bloodedly with a view to results alone, and had supposed that that gave him the right to patronize the whole world—there he lay now: the first hitch, the first obstacle in the field of accomplishment, had brought him to a miserable end. Few of the bourgeois regretted, none of them mourned him—with one single exception, the chief surgeon at the Dorothea Hospital, Ueberbein's congenial friend, and perhaps a fair lady with whom he used once to play Casino. But Klaus Heinrich always cherished an honourable and cordial memory of his ill-fated tutor.