Royal Highness Part 28

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 inst.i.tutions 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-cus.h.i.+oned 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 Lowenjoul, 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 a.s.sertion must not be pa.s.sed 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 k.n.o.belsdorff'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 ac.u.men 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 k.n.o.belsdorff 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 k.n.o.belsdorff 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 "Jagerpreis," and in which Klaus Heinrich and his red-haired cousins, dressed in green uniforms, soft felt hats, and top-boots, and hung with field-gla.s.ses, hangers, hunting-knives, bandoliers, and pistol cases, had taken part.

Herr von Braunbart-Sch.e.l.lendorf 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 k.n.o.belsdorff 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 k.n.o.belsdorff 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 pa.s.s 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-s.h.i.+fting wrinkles imparted to his blue eyes an expression of humorous subtlety.

Klaus Heinrich was attached to Herr von k.n.o.belsdorff, 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 Droge 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 k.n.o.belsdorff 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 k.n.o.belsdorff 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 k.n.o.belsdorff, 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 13 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 bra.s.s mountings, which stood behind the round table opposite the narrow gla.s.s 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 k.n.o.belsdorff 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 pa.s.sed on from Doctor Krippenreuther's worries to his, Klaus Heinrich's, own condition. Was Herr von k.n.o.belsdorff 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 k.n.o.belsdorff 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 att.i.tude, his feet crossed, his right hand over his left, and the upper part of his body turned towards Herr von k.n.o.belsdorff, 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 dest.i.tute 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 k.n.o.belsdorff 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 k.n.o.belsdorff 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 pa.s.sion, and with that concreteness which is the product of pa.s.sionate 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 k.n.o.belsdorff's fore-knowledge made the review easier for him, enabled him by slipping in suggestive questions to float the s.h.i.+p 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 k.n.o.belsdorff 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 cheek-bones were full of tears. He had left the sofa, thereby forcing Herr von k.n.o.belsdorff also to get up, and wished on account of the heat to open the gla.s.s door into the little veranda, but Herr von k.n.o.belsdorff 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 cus.h.i.+oned sofa.

Herr von k.n.o.belsdorff 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 k.n.o.belsdorff, emphasizing each word, announced that whatever att.i.tude the Prince had expected him, Herr von k.n.o.belsdorff, to a.s.sume at this juncture, he, Herr von k.n.o.belsdorff, 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 k.n.o.belsdorff'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 k.n.o.belsdorff 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 Ma.s.s, the Whole."

Klaus Heinrich was silent, and his eyes were heavy in thought.

"Perhaps your Royal Highness," continued Herr von k.n.o.belsdorff 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 k.n.o.belsdorff 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 a.s.sumed 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.

Herr von k.n.o.belsdorff 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 k.n.o.belsdorff 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 k.n.o.belsdorff 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 k.n.o.belsdorff 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 k.n.o.belsdorff ended his statement of the national economics. At this time Klaus Heinrich usually had his tea, but this time he only gave a pa.s.sing thought to it, and n.o.body 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 oneself in it for reality's sake. He forgot to have the lights brought, his attention was so much occupied.

"It was these circ.u.mstances," concluded Herr von k.n.o.belsdorff, "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 k.n.o.belsdorff 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 k.n.o.belsdorff, 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 he let himself be persuaded to go to Court."

"Which," answered Herr von k.n.o.belsdorff, "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 a.s.sure 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 Buhl zu Buhl."

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 Trummerhauff, who led the ladies' world at the festivities in the Old Castle.

But as to the act of presentation itself, Herr von k.n.o.belsdorff 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 k.n.o.belsdorff, 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 circ.u.mstances demand exceptions. In the first place, then, in front of all the debutantes of the various ranks--Klaus Heinrich might a.s.sure Miss Spoelmann that this would be 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 k.n.o.belsdorff 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 k.n.o.belsdorff 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 pa.s.sed a restless night and went next morning, despite misty and damp weather, for a long and lonely ride. Herr von k.n.o.belsdorff 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 Stra.s.se: 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.