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 towards 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 whatever 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 Löwenjoul 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 blossom, 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 rôle 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 northeast 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 newspapers, 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 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 was firmly bolstered up on both sides, which had kept their intercourse 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 ob
jects 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 comforting, 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 Knobelsdorff 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?