Royal Highness Part 22

"No more had I; so you can imagine what an impression it made on me when she came to us. Well, then, Count Lowenjoul bolted to America with the police at his heels, leaving pretty considerable debts behind of course.

And the Countess went with him."

"She went with him? Why?"

"Because she still loved him, in spite of everything--she loves him still--and because she was determined to share his life whatever happened. He took her with him, though, because he had a better chance of getting help from her relations as long as she was with him. The relations sent him one further instalment of money from home, and then stopped--they finally b.u.t.toned up their pockets; and when Count Lowenjoul saw that his wife was no more use to him, he just left her--left her in absolute dest.i.tution and cleared out."

"I knew it," said Klaus Heinrich, "I expected as much. Just what does happen."

But Imma Spoelmann went on: "So there she was, dest.i.tute and helpless, and, since she had never learned to earn her own living, she was left alone to face want and hunger. And you must remember that life in the States is much harder and meaner than here in your country; also that the Countess has always been a gentle, sensitive creature, and has been cruelly treated for years. In a word, she was no fit subject for the impressions of life to which she was unceasingly exposed. And then the blessing fell to her."

"What blessing? She told me about that too. What was the blessing, Miss Spoelmann?"

"The blessing consisted in a mental disturbance. At the crisis of her troubles something in her cracked--that's the expression she used to me--so that she no longer needed to face life and to bring a clear, sober mind to bear upon it, but was permitted, so to speak, to let herself go, to relax the tension of her nerves and to drivel when she liked. In a word, the blessing was that she went wrong in her head."

"Certainly I was under the impression," said Klaus Heinrich, "that the Countess was letting herself go when she drivelled."

"That's how it is, Prince. She is quite conscious of drivelling, and often laughs as she does so, or lets her hearers understand that she doesn't mean any harm by it. Her strangeness is a beneficent disorder, which she can control to a certain extent, and which she allows herself to indulge in. It is, if you prefer it, a want of----"

"Of self-restraint," said Klaus Heinrich, and looked down at his reins.

"Right, of self-restraint," she repeated, and looked at him. "You don't seem to approve of that want, Prince."

"I consider as a general rule," he answered quietly, "that it is not right to let oneself go and to make oneself at home, but that self-restraint should always be exercised, whatever the circ.u.mstances."

"Your Highness's doctrine," she answered, "is a praiseworthy austerity."

Then she pouted, and, wagging her dark head in its three-cornered hat, she added in her broken voice: "I'll tell you something, Highness, and please note it well. If your Eminence is not inclined to show a little sympathy and indulgence and mildness, I shall have to decline the pleasure of your distinguished company once and for all."

He dropped his head, and they rode a while in silence.

"Won't you go on to tell me how the Countess came to you?" he asked at last.

"No, I won't," she said, and looked straight in front of her. But he pressed her so pleadingly that she finished her story and said: "And although fifty other companions applied, my choice--for the choice rested with me--fell at once on her, I was so much taken with her at my first interview. She was odd, I could see that: but she was odd only from too rich an experience of misery and wickedness, that was clear in every word she said; and as for me, I had always been a little lonely and cut off, and absolutely without experience, except what I got at my University lectures."

"Of course, you had always been a little lonely and cut off!" repeated Klaus Heinrich, with a ring of joy in his voice.

"That's what I said. It was a dull, simple life in some ways that I led, and still lead, because it has not altered much, and is all much the same. There were parties with 'lions' and b.a.l.l.s, and often a dash in a closed motor to the Opera House, where I sat in one of the little boxes above the stalls, so as to be well observed by everybody, for show, as we say. That was a necessary part of my position."

"For show?"

"Yes, for show; I mean the duty of showing oneself off, of not raising walls against the public, but letting them come into the garden and walk on the lawn and gaze at the terrace, watching us at tea. My father, Mr.

Spoelmann, disliked it intensely. But it was a necessary consequence of our position."

"What did you usually do besides, Miss Spoelmann?"

"In the spring we went to our house in the Adirondacks and in the summer to our house at Newport-on-Sea. There were garden-parties of course, and battles of flowers and lawn-tennis tournaments, and we went for rides and drove four-in-hand or motored, and the people stood and gaped, because I was Samuel Spoelmann's daughter. And many shouted rude remarks after me."

"Rude remarks?"

"Yes, and they probably had reason to. At any rate it was something of a life in the limelight that we led, and one that invited discussion."

"And between whiles," he said, "you played in the breezes, didn't you, or rather in a vacuum, where no dust came----"

"That's right. Your Highness is pleased to mock my excess of candour.

But in view of all this you can guess how extraordinarily welcome the Countess was to me, when she came to see me in Fifth Avenue. She does not express herself very clearly, but rather in a mysterious sort of way, and the boundary line at which she begins to drivel is not always quite clearly apparent. But that only strikes me as right and instructive, as it gives a good idea of the boundlessness of misery and wickedness in the world. You envy me the Countess, don't you?"

"Envy? H'm. You seem to a.s.sume, Miss Spoelmann, that I have never had my eyes opened."

"Have you?"

"Once or twice, maybe. For instance, things have come to my ears about our lackeys, which you would scarcely dream of."

"Are your lackeys so bad?"

"Bad? Good-for-nothing, that's what they are. For one thing they play into each other's hands, and scheme, and take bribes from the tradesmen----"

"But, Prince, that's comparatively harmless."

"Yes, true, it's nothing to compare with the way the Countess has had her eyes opened."

They broke into a trot, and, leaving at the sign-post the gently rising and falling high-road, which they had followed through the pine-woods, turned into the sandy short cut, between high blackberry-covered banks, which led into the tufted meadow-land round the "Pheasantry." Klaus Heinrich was at home in these parts: he stretched out his arm (the right one) to point out everything to his companions, though there was not much worth seeing. Yonder lay the Schloss, closed and silent, with its s.h.i.+ngle-roof and its lightning-conductors on the edge of the wood. On one side was the pheasants' enclosure, which gave the place its name, and on the other Stavenuter's tea-garden, where he had sometimes sat with Raoul Ueberbein. The spring sun shone mildly over the damp meadow-land and shed a soft haze over the distant woods.

They reined in their horses in front of the tea-garden, and Imma Spoelmann took stock of the prosaic country-house which rejoiced in the name of the "Pheasantry."

"Your childhood," she said with a pout, "does not seem to have been surrounded by much giddy splendour."

"No," he laughed, "there's nothing to see in the Schloss. It's the same inside as out. No comparison with Delphinenort, even before you restored it----"

"Let's put our horses up," she said. "One must put one's horses up on an expedition, mustn't one, Countess? Dismount, Prince. I'm thirsty, and want to see what your friend Stavenuter has got to drink."

There stood Herr Stavenuter in green ap.r.o.n and stockings, bowing and pressing his knitted cap to his chest with both hands, while he laughed till his gums showed.

"Royal Highness!" he said, with joy in his voice, "does your Royal Highness mean to honour me once again? And the young lady!" he added, with a tinge of deference in his voice; for he knew Samuel Spoelmann's daughter quite well, and there had been in the whole Grand Duchy no more eager reader of the newspaper articles which coupled Prince Klaus Heinrich's and Imma's names together. He helped the Countess to dismount, while Klaus Heinrich, who was the first to the ground, devoted himself to Miss Spoelmann, and he called to a lad, who, with the Spoelmanns' groom, took charge of the horses. Then followed the reception and welcome to which Klaus Heinrich was accustomed. He addressed a few formal questions in a reserved tone of voice to Herr Stavenuter, graciously asked how he was and how his business prospered, and received the answers with nods and a show of real interest. Imma Spoelmann watched his artificial, cold demeanour with serious, searching eyes, while she swung her riding-whip backwards and forwards.

"May I be so bold as to remind you that I am thirsty?" she said at last sharply and decisively, whereupon they walked into the garden and discussed whether they need go in to the coffee-room. Klaus Heinrich urged that it was still so damp under the trees; but Imma insisted on sitting outside, and herself chose one of the long narrow tables with benches on each side, which Herr Stavenuter hastened to cover with a white cloth.

"Lemonade!" he said. "That's best for a thirst, and it's sound stuff! no trash, Royal Highness, and you, ladies, but natural juice sweetened--there's no better!"

Followed the driving-in of the gla.s.s b.a.l.l.s in the necks of the bottles; and, while his distinguished guests tasted the drink, Herr Stavenuter dawdled a little longer at the table, meaning to serve them up a little gossip. He had long been a widower, and his three children, who in days gone by had sung here under the trees the song about common humanity, the while blowing their noses with their fingers, had now left him. The son was a soldier in the capital, one of the daughters had married a neighbouring farmer, the other, with a soul for higher things, had gone into service in the capital.

So Herr Stavenuter was in solitary control in this remote spot, in the three-fold capacity of farmer of the Schloss lands, caretaker of the Schloss, and head keeper of the "Pheasantry," and was well content with his lot. Soon, if the weather permitted, the season for bicyclists and walkers would come round, when the garden was filled on Sundays. Then business hummed. Would not his Highness and the ladies like to take a peep at the "Pheasantry"?

Yes, they would, later; so Herr Stavenuter withdrew for the present, after placing a saucer of milk for Percival by the table.

The collie had been in some muddy water on the way, and looked horrible.

His legs were thin with wet, and the white parts of his ragged coat covered with dirt. His gaping mouth was black to the throat from nuzzling for field-mice, and his dark red tongue hung dripping out of his mouth. He quickly lapped up his milk, and then lay with panting sides by his mistress's feet, flat on his side, his head thrown back in an att.i.tude of repose.

Klaus Heinrich declared it to be inexcusable for Imma to expose herself after her ride to the invidious springtime air without any wrap. "Take my cloak," he said. "I really do not want it, I'm quite warm, and my coat is padded on the chest!" She would not hear of it; but he went on asking her so insistently that she consented, and let him lay his grey military coat with a major's shoulder-straps round her shoulders. Then, resting her dark head in its three-cornered hat in the hollow of her hand, she watched him as, with arm outstretched towards the Schloss, he described to her the life he had once led there.

There, where the tall window opened on to the ground, had been the mess-room, then the school-room, and up above Klaus Heinrich's room with the plaster torso on the stove. He told her too about Professor Kurtchen and his tactful way of instructing his pupils, about Captain Amelung's widow, and the aristocratic "Pheasants," who called everything "hog-wash," and especially about Raoul Ueberbein, his friend, of whom Imma Spoelmann more than once asked him to tell her some more.