Royal Highness Part 9

She became light-shy, gave orders that at the Thursday concerts in the Marble Hall all the lights should be shaded red, and flew into a pa.s.sion because she could not have the same thing done at all other festivities, the Court Ball, the Private Ball, the Dinner Party, and the Great Court, as the kind of twilight feeling in the Marble Hall had been enough by itself to call forth many cutting remarks. She spent whole days before her looking-gla.s.ses, and it was noticed that she fondled with her hands those which for some reason or other reflected her image in a more favourable light. Then again she had all the looking-gla.s.ses removed from her rooms, and those fixed in the wall draped, went to bed and prayed for death.

One day Baroness von Schulenburg found her quite distracted and feverish with weeping in the Hall of the Twelve Months before the big portrait which represented her at the height of her beauty.... At the same time a diseased misanthropy began to take possession of her, and both Court and people were distressed to notice how the bearing of this erstwhile G.o.ddess began to lose its a.s.surance, her deportment became strangely awkward, and a pitiful look came into her eyes.

At last she shut herself up altogether, and, at the last Court Ball he attended, Johann Albrecht had escorted his sister Catherine instead of his "indisposed Consort." His death was from one point of view a release for Dorothea, as it relieved her from all her duties as a sovereign. She chose as dower-house Schloss Segenhaus, a monastic-looking old hunting-seat, which lay in a solemn park about one and a half hour's drive from the capital, and had been decorated by some pious old sportsman with religious and sporting emblems curiously intermixed.

There she lived, eclipsed and odd, and excursionists could often watch her from afar, walking in the park with Baroness von Schulenburg-Tressen, and bowing graciously to the trees on each side of the path.

Lastly, Princess Ditlinde had married at the age of twenty, one year after her father's death. She bestowed her hand on a prince of a mediatised house, Prince Philipp zu Ried-Hohenried, a no longer young, but well-preserved, cultured little man of advanced views, who paid her flattering attentions for some considerable time, did all his courting at first-hand, and offered the Princess his heart and hand in an honest bourgeois way at a charity function.

It would be wrong to say that this alliance evoked wild enthusiasm in the country. It was received with indifference; it disappointed. It is true, more ambitious hopes had been secretly entertained for Johann Albrecht's daughter, and all the critics could say was that the marriage could not be called a _mesalliance_ in so many words. It was a fact that Ditlinde, in giving her hand to the Prince--which she did of her own free will, and quite uninfluenced by others--had undoubtedly descended out of her sphere of Highness into a more free and human atmosphere. Her n.o.ble spouse was not only a lover and collector of oil paintings, but also a business man and tradesman on a large scale.

The dynasty had ceased to exercise any sovereign right hundreds of years ago, but Philipp was the first of his house to make up his mind to exploit his private means in a natural way. After spending his youth in travelling, he had looked around for a sphere of activity which would keep him busy and contented, and at the same time (a matter of necessity) would increase his income. So he launched out into various enterprises, started farms, a brewery, a sugar factory, several saw-mills on his property, and began to exploit his extensive peat deposits in a methodical way. As he brought expert knowledge and sound business instincts to all his enterprises, they soon began to pay, and returned profits which, if their origin was not very princely, at any rate provided him with the means of leading a princely existence which he would otherwise not have had.

On the other hand the critics might have been asked what sort of a match they could expect for their Princess, if they viewed the matter soberly.

Ditlinde, who brought her husband scarcely anything except an inexhaustible store of linen, including dozens of out-of-date and useless articles such as night-caps and neckerchiefs, which however by hallowed tradition formed part of her trousseau--she by this marriage acquired a measure of riches and comfort such as she had never been accustomed to at home: and no sacrifice of her affections was necessary to pay for them. She took the step into private life with obvious contentment and determination, and retained, of the trappings of Highness, nothing but her t.i.tle. She remained on friendly terms with her ladies-in-waiting, but divested her relations with them of everything which suggested service, and avoided giving her household the character of a Court.

That might evoke surprise, especially in a Grimmburg and in Ditlinde in particular, but there was no doubt that it was her own choice. The couple spent the summer on the princely estates, the winter in the capital in the stately palace in the Albrechtstra.s.se, which Philipp zu Ried had inherited; and it was here, not in the Old Schloss, that the Grand Ducal family--Klaus Heinrich and Ditlinde, occasionally Albrecht as well--met now and again for a confidential talk.

So it happened that one day at the beginning of autumn, not quite two years after the death of Johann Albrecht, the _Courier_, well-informed as usual, published in its evening edition the news that this afternoon his Royal Highness the Grand Duke and his Grand Ducal Highness Prince Klaus Heinrich had been to tea with her Grand Ducal Highness the Princess zu Ried-Hohenried. That was all. But on that afternoon several topics of importance for the future were discussed between the brothers and sister.

Klaus Heinrich left the Hermitage shortly before five o'clock. As the weather was sunny, he had ordered the dogcart, and the open brown-varnished vehicle, clean and s.h.i.+ning, if not over-new or smart to look at, came slowly up the broad drive of the Schloss, at a quarter to five, from the stables, which with their asphalt yard lay in the right wing of the home farm. The home farm, yellow-painted, old-fas.h.i.+oned buildings of one story, made one long line with, though at some distance from, the plain white mansion, the front of which, adorned with laurels at regular intervals, faced the muddy pond and the public part of the park.

For the front portion of the estate, that which marched with the town gardens, was open to pedestrians and light traffic, and all that was enclosed was the gently rising flower-garden, at the top of which lay the Schloss and the very unkempt park behind, which was divided by hedges and fences from the rubbish-enc.u.mbered waste ground at the edge of the town suburbs. So the cart came up the drive between the pond and the home farm, turned through the high garden gates, adorned with lamps which had once been gilt, pa.s.sed on up the drive and waited in front of the stiff little laurel-planted terrace which led to the garden-room.

Klaus Heinrich came out a few minutes before five. He wore as usual the tight-fitting uniform of a lieutenant of the Grenadier Guards, and his sword-hilt hung on his arm. Neumann, in a violet coat whose arms were too short, ran in front of him down the steps and with his red barber's hands packed his master's folded grey over-coat into the cart. Then, while the coachman, his hand to his c.o.c.kaded hat, inclined a little sideways on the box, the valet arranged the light carriage rug over Klaus Heinrich's knees and stepped back with a silent bow. The horses started off.

Outside the garden gates a few promenaders had collected. They greeted Klaus Heinrich, smiling with knitted brows and hats lifted, and Klaus Heinrich thanked them by raising his white-gloved right hand to the peak of his cap and making a succession of lively nods.

They skirted a piece of waste ground along a birch avenue, whose leaves were already turning, and then drove through the suburb, between poverty-stricken houses, over unpaved streets, where the ragged children left their hoops and tops for a moment to gaze at the carriage with curious eyes. Some cried, Hurrah! and ran for a while by the side of the carriage, with heads turned towards Klaus Heinrich. The carriage might have taken the road by the Spa-gardens; but that through the suburb was shorter, and time pressed. Ditlinde was particular on points of regularity, and easily put out if anybody disturbed her household arrangements by unpunctuality.

Yonder was the Dorothea Children's Hospital of which Doctor Sammet, Ueberbein's friend, was the Director; Klaus Heinrich drove by it. And then the carriage left the squalid neighbourhood and reached the Gartenstra.s.se, a stately tree-planted avenue, in which lay the houses and villas of wealthy citizens, and along which ran the tram-line from the Spa Gardens to the centre of the city. The traffic here was fairly heavy, and Klaus Heinrich was kept busy answering the greetings which met him. Civilians took off their hats and looked from under their eyebrows at him, officers on horse and on foot saluted, policemen front-turned, and Klaus Heinrich in his corner raised his hand to the peak of his cap and thanked on both sides with the well-trained bow and smile which were calculated to confirm the people in their feeling of partic.i.p.ation in his splendid personality.... His way of sitting in his carriage was quite peculiar--he did not lean back indolently and comfortably in the cus.h.i.+ons, but he took just as active a part in the motions of the carriage when driving as in those of his horse when riding; with hands crossed on his sword hilt and one foot a little advanced, he as it were "took" the unevennesses of the ground, and accommodated himself to the motion of the badly hung carriage.

The carriage crossed the Albrechtsplatz, left the Old Schloss, with the two sentries presenting arms, to the right, followed the Albrechtstra.s.se in the direction of the barracks of the Grenadier Guards and rolled to the left into the courtyard of the palace of the Princess of Ried. It was a building of regular proportions in the pedantic style, with a soaring gable over the main door, festooned _oeils-de-boeuf_ in the mezzanine story, high French windows in the first story, and an elegant _cour d'honneur_, which was formed by the two one-storied wings and was separated from the street by a circular railing, on whose pillars stone babies played. But the internal arrangements of the Schloss were, in contradistinction to the historical style of its exterior, conceived throughout in an up-to-date and comfortable bourgeois taste.

Ditlinde received her brother in a large drawing-room on the first floor with several curved sofas in pale green silk; the back part of the room was separated from the front by slender pillars, and filled with palms, plants in metal bowls, and tables covered with brilliant flowers.

"Good afternoon, Klaus Heinrich," said the Princess. She was delicate and thin, and the only luxuriant thing about her was her fair hair, which used to lie like ram's horns round her ears and now was dressed in thick plaits above her face with its high Grimmburg cheek-bones. She wore an indoor dress of soft blue-grey stuff with a white lace collar, cut in a point like a breast-plate and fastened at the waist with an old-fas.h.i.+oned oval brooch. Blue veins and shadows showed here and there through the delicate skin of her face, in the temples, the forehead, at the corners of her soft and calm blue eyes. Signs of approaching maternity were beginning to show themselves.

"Good afternoon, Ditlinde, you and your flowers!" answered Klaus Heinrich, as, clapping his heels together, he bent over her little, white, rather over-broad hand. "How they do smell! And the garden's full of them, I see."

"Yes," she said, "I love flowers. I have always longed to be able to live among quant.i.ties of flowers, living, smelling flowers, which I could watch growing--it was a kind of secret wish of mine, Klaus Heinrich, and I might almost say that I married for flowers, for in the Old Schloss, as you know, there were no flowers.... The Old Schloss and flowers! We should have had to rummage a lot to find them, I'm sure.

Rat-traps and such things, plenty of them. And really, when one comes to think, the whole thing was like a disused rat-trap, so dusty and horrid ... ugh!..."

"But the rose-bush, Ditlinde."

"Yes, my goodness--one rose-bush. And that's in the guide-books, because its roses smell of decay. And the books say that it will one day smell quite natural and nice, just like any other rose. But I can't believe it."

"You will soon," he said, and looked at her laughingly, "have something better than your flowers to tend, little Ditlinde."

"Yes," she said and blushed lightly and quickly, "yes, Klaus Heinrich, I can hardly believe it. And yet it will be so, if G.o.d pleases. But come over here. We'll have a chat together once more...."

The room, on whose threshold they had been talking, was small in comparison with its height, with a grey-blue carpet, and furnished with cheery-looking silver-grey furniture, the chairs of which were upholstered in blue silk. A milk-white china chandelier hung from the white-festooned centre of the ceiling, and the walls were adorned with oil paintings of various sizes, acquisitions of Prince Philipp's, light studies in the new style, representing white goats in the sun, poultry in the sun, sun-bathed meadows and peasants with blinking, sun-sprinkled faces.

The spindle-legged secretaire in the white-curtained window was covered with a hundred carefully arranged articles, knick-knacks, writing materials, and several dainty note-blocks--for the Princess was accustomed to make careful and comprehensive notes about all her duties and plans. In front of the inkstand a housekeeper's book, in which Ditlinde had apparently just been working, lay open, and by the table there hung on the wall a little silk-trimmed block-calendar, under the printed date of which could be seen the pencil note: "5 o'clock: my brothers." Between the sofa and a semicircle of chairs over against the white swing doors into the reception room stood an oval table with a damask cloth and blue-silk border; the flowered tea-service, a jam-pot, long dishes of sweet cakes, and tiny pieces of bread and b.u.t.ter were arranged in ordered disorder on it, and to one side steamed the silver tea-kettle over its spirit-flame on a gla.s.s table. But there were flowers everywhere--flowers in the vases on the writing-table, on the tea-table, on the gla.s.s table, on the china-cabinet, on the table next the white sofa, and a flower-table full of flower-pots stood in the window.

This room, situated at the side and in a corner of the suite of reception rooms, was Ditlinde's cabinet, her boudoir, the room in which she used to entertain quite intimate friends and to make tea with her own hands. Klaus Heinrich watched her as she washed out the tea-pot with hot water and put the tea in with a silver spoon.

"And Albrecht ... is he coming?" he asked with an involuntarily restrained voice.

"I hope so," she said, bending attentively over the crystal tea-caddy, as if to avoid spilling any tea (and he too avoided looking at her). "I have of course asked him, Klaus Heinrich, but you know he cannot bind himself. It depends on his health whether he comes. I'm making our tea at once, for Albrecht will drink his milk.... Possibly too Jettchen may look in for a bit to-day. You will enjoy seeing her again. She's so lively, and has always got such a lot to tell us."

"Jettchen" meant Fraulein von Isenschnibbe, the Princess's friend and confidant. They had been on Christian-name terms since they were children.

"In armour, too, as usual?" said Ditlinde, placing the filled tea-pot on its stand and examining her brother. "In uniform as usual, Klaus Heinrich?"

He stood with heels together and rubbed his left hand, which was cold, on his chest with his right.

"Yes, Ditlinde, I like it, I'd rather. It fits so tight, you see, and it braces me up. Besides, it is cheaper, for a proper civil wardrobe runs into a terrible lot of money, I believe, and Schulenburg is always going on about how dear things are, without that. So I manage with two or three coats, and yet can show myself in my rich relations' houses."

"Rich relations!" laughed Ditlinde. "Still some way off that, Klaus Heinrich!"

They sat down at the tea-table, Ditlinde on a sofa, Klaus Heinrich on a chair opposite the window.

"Rich relations!" she repeated, and the subject obviously excited her.

"No, far from it; how can we expect to be rich, where cash is so short and everything is sunk in various enterprises, Klaus Heinrich? And they are young and in the making, they're all in the development stage, as dear Philipp says, and won't bear full fruit till others have succeeded us. But things are improving, that much is true, and I keep the household straight...."

"Yes, Ditlinde, you do keep it straight and no mistake!"

"Keep it straight, and write everything down and look after the servants, and after all the payments which one's duty to the world demands have been made, there is a nice little sum to put by every year for the children. And dear Philipp.... He sends his greetings, Klaus Heinrich--I forgot, he's very sorry not to be able to be here to-day....

We've only just got back from Hohenried, and there he is already under way, at his office, on his properties--he's small and delicate naturally, but when his peat or his saw-mills are in question he gets red cheeks, and he says himself that he has been much better since he has had so much to do."

"Does he say so?" asked Klaus Heinrich, and a sad look came into his eyes, as he looked straight beyond the flower-table at the bright window.... "Yes, I can quite believe that it must be very stimulating to be so really splendidly busy. In my park too the meadows have been mowed a second time this year already, and I love seeing the hay built up in steep heaps with a stick through the middle of each, looking for all the world like a camp of little Indians' huts, and then Schulenburg intends to sell it. But of course that cannot be compared ..."

"Oh, you!" said Ditlinde, and drew her chin in. "With you it's quite different, Klaus Heinrich! The next to the throne! You are called to other things, I imagine. My goodness, yes! You enjoy your popularity with the people...."

They were silent for a while. Then he said:

"And you, Ditlinde, if I'm not mistaken you're as happy as, even happier than, before. I don't say that you have got red cheeks, like Philipp from his peat; you always were a bit transparent, and you are still. But you look flouris.h.i.+ng. I haven't yet asked, since you married, but I think there's nothing to worry about in connexion with you."

She sat in an easy position, with her arm lightly folded across her lap.

"Yes," she said, "I'm all right, Klaus Heinrich, your eyes don't deceive you, and it would be ungrateful of me not to acknowledge my good fortune. You see, I know quite well that many people in the country are disappointed by my marriage and say that I have ruined myself, and demeaned myself, and so on. And such people are not far to seek, for brother Albrecht, as you know as well as I do, in his heart despises my dear Philipp and me into the bargain, and can't abide him, and calls him privately a tradesman and shopkeeper. But that doesn't bother me, for I meant it when I accepted Philipp's hand--seized it, I would say, if it didn't sound so wild--accepted it because it was warm and honest, and offered to take me away from the Old Schloss. For when I look back and think of the Old Schloss and life in it as I should have gone on living if it had not been for dear Philipp, I shudder, Klaus Heinrich, and I feel that I could not have borne it and should have become strange and queer like poor mamma. I am a bit delicate naturally, as you know, I should have simply gone under in so much desolation and sadness, and when dear Philipp came, I thought: now's your chance. And when people say that I am a bad Princess, because I have in a way abdicated, and fled here where it is rather warmer and more friendly, and when they say that I lack dignity or consciousness of Highness, or whatever they call it, they are stupid and ignorant, Klaus Heinrich, because I have too much, I have on the contrary too much of it, that's a fact, otherwise the Old Schloss would not have had such an effect upon me, and Albrecht ought to see that, for he too, in his way, has too much of it--all we Grimmburgers have too much of it, and that's why it sometimes looks as if we had too little of it. And sometimes, when Philipp is under way, as he is now, and I sit here among my flowers and Philipp's pictures with all their sun--it's lucky that it's painted sun, for bless me! otherwise we should have to get sun-blinds--and everything is tidy and clean, and I think of the blessing, as you call it, in store for me, then I seem to myself like the little mermaid in the fairy-tale which the Swiss governess read to us, if you remember--who married a mortal and got legs instead of her fish's tail.... I don't know if you understand me...."

"Oh yes, Ditlinde, of course, I understand you perfectly. And I am really glad that everything has turned out so well and happily for you.

For it is dangerous, I may tell you, in my experience it is difficult for us to be suitably happy. It's so easy to go wrong and be misunderstood, for the nuisance is that n.o.body protects our dignity for us if we don't do it ourselves, and then blame and scandal so readily follow.... But which is the right way? You have found it. They have quite recently announced my engagement with Cousin Griseldis in the newspapers. That was a _ballon d'essai_, as they call it, and they think it was a very happy one. But Griseldis is a silly girl, and half-dead with anaemia, and never says anything but 'yes,' so far as I know. I've never given her a thought, nor has k.n.o.belsdorff, thank goodness. The news was at once announced to be unfounded.... Here comes Albrecht!" he said, and stood up.

A cough was heard outside. A footman in olive-green livery threw open the swing doors with a quick, firm, and noiseless movement of both arms, and announced in a subdued voice: "His Royal Highness the Grand Duke."

Then he stepped aside with a bow. Albrecht advanced through the room.