Majesty Part 20

"ELIZABETH."

CHAPTER IV

1

August, on the Baltic. The grey billows curl against the rocks with high, rounded crests of thick foam. The sky above is one wide cupola, through which drift great mountain-ranges of grey-white clouds. They come up slowly, filling the firmament with their changing, shadowy ma.s.ses, like chains of rocks and Alps floating on the air, and slowly drift away again. The sea has a narrow beach, with many crumbling cliffs; quite close at hand loom sombre green pine-woods. With the gloom of the pine-woods for a background, as it were half out of the cliffs rises old Altseeborgen. It is a weather-beaten castle, at which the writhing waves seem to gnaw; its three tall, uneven towers soar round and ma.s.sive into the sky. The broad road to the castle slants up from the woods terrace-wise and leads to the esplanade at the back, where the main entrance is. Round the castle the wide granite terraces are cut into stairs, with their rugged bal.u.s.trades, whose freestone is worn away by the salt air. These terraces enjoy a more extensive view of the sea as they rise higher, higher; and, seen from the topmost terrace, the sea lies against the beach, to right and left, in one great, strangely mobile expanse, a living element. Across the sea the south-winds blow upon the castle; the pine-woods shelter it to some extent from the northernly gales.

From the tallest tower an imposing standard flaps gaily in the air: two yellow stripes and a white stripe between, with the dark patch of the crenellated fortress which forms the arms of Gothland. It floats there on the sunless morning like a smile in the sky; it swells and falls limp again and then again lets itself be blown high up by the wind, which comes swinging l.u.s.tily over the water.

A young man and a girl are walking on the beach; they talk, smile, look at each other. She is taller than he, with a very fair complexion; under her little sailor-hat a few of her auburn tresses, tangled by the wind, blow across her face; she keeps on smoothing them away. She wears a simple blue serge skirt and a white blouse, with a broad leather belt around her waist. Her dainty little feet, in their black-silk stockings and yellow-leather shoes, are constantly uncovered by the wind. She carelessly swings a pair of gloves in her hand.

The young man wears a light check summer suit and a straw hat. He is short and slender; his black eyes have a look of gentle melancholy. He appears to be telling the girl by his side a tale of travel; she listens, with her smile.

Round about them, in spite of the wind, the atmosphere is full of peace.

Walking along the beach, they go by the castle, pa.s.s round behind it and look up. From one of the windows somebody gaily waves a hand and calls out something. They try to hear, with their hands to their ears, but they shrug their shoulders: the wind has blown the words away. They wave their hands again and walk on.

They do not go far, however, always along the beach. Yonder lies the fishing-village, lie a couple of small villas, almost cottages. One of them seems just to have been taken by a large family, for the holiday-month no doubt; a hum of voices issues from it, children chase one another along the beach; a tiny girl, in running, b.u.mps against the young man.

"Hullo there!" he says, pleasantly, with a laugh.

Laughing they walk on.

The children run along. A fisherman comes with his nets, grins cheerily and mutters a greeting. A fat lady in the verandah has been watching the young people inquisitively; she sees the fisherman touch his cap and beckons to him:

"Who are that lady and gentleman?"

The fisherman points cheerily to Altseeborgen:

"From the castle."

"But who are they?" asks the lady, alarmed.

"Well, the gentleman is the Prince of Liparia and the young lady is an Austrian princess," says the fisherman, as if it could not well be anybody else.

The lady looks in dismay after the princely pair and then in despair at her running children. The young couple are just turning back in their walk; they are now laughing even more gaily than before and are hastening a little towards the castle, as though they had delayed too long. The lady, still pale, does not dare to offer excuses, but makes a low bow; she receives a pleasant greeting in return.

2

The royal family of Gothland were in the habit of spending the whole summer at Altseeborgen. The beach was particularly well-suited for laying out a watering-place around the fishing-village, but King Siegfried would never hear of this: the beach and the village were royal domains; a few modest villas were all that he had granted permission to build. Generally these were visited in the summer by two or three middle-cla.s.s families with their children. Altseeborgen should never become a modern bathing-place, however excellent the fashionable world might consider it as a means of summer display, lying as it did in the immediate neighbourhood of the royal castle.

But the Gothlandic family made a point of guarding the freedom of their summer lives. They lived there for four months, without palace-etiquette, in the greatest simplicity. They formed a numerous family; and there were always many visitors. The king attended to state-affairs in homely fashion at the castle. His grandchildren would run into his room while he was discussing important business with the prime minister, who came down to Altseeborgen on certain days. He just patted their flaxen curls and sent them away to play, with a caress.

Staying at the castle were the Crown-prince Gunther and the Crown-princess Sofie, a German princess--Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Wendeholm--with their four children, a girl and three boys. Next to the duke came Prince Herman; next to him Princess Wanda, twenty years of age; next to her, the younger princes, Olaf and Christofel. In addition there were always two old princesses, sisters of the king, widows of German princes. From all the courts of Europe, which were as one great family, different members came from time to time to stay, bringing with them their respective _nuances_ of a different nationality, something exotic in voice and manner, so far as all this was not merged in their cosmopolitanism.

Othomar had been three months at sea with Herman; they had touched sh.o.r.e in India, China, j.a.pan and America. They had travelled incognito, so as to escape all official receptions, and Othomar had borne no other t.i.tle than that of Prince Czykirski. The voyage had done Othomar much good: he was even feeling so well that he had written to the Empress Elizabeth that he would like to stay some time longer in the family-circle at Altseeborgen, but that he would afterwards undertake his long-contemplated journey to the European courts.

Their easy life in each other's company had done much to bring the cousins closer together. Herman had learnt to see in Othomar, beneath his stiffness and lack of ease, a young crown-prince who was afraid of his future, but who possessed much reasonableness and was willing to learn to acquiesce in life and to fortify himself for his coming yoke of empire. He understood Othomar and felt sorry for him. He himself took a vital pleasure in life: merely to breathe was an enjoyment; his existence as a second son, with only his naval duties, which he loved by heredity, as a descendant of the old sea-kings might well love them, opened before him a prospect of nothing but continued, cloudless freedom from care; that he was a king's son gave him nothing but satisfaction and delight; and he appreciated his high estate with jovial pleasure, skimming the cream from a chalice out of which Othomar in due time would drink gall and wormwood. If at first he compared Othomar with his brother, the Duke of Wendeholm--a crown-prince too, of Gothland he--Herman now compared them no longer; his judgement had become more reasonable: he understood that no comparison was possible. Liparia was a tremendous, almost despotic empire; the people, especially in the south, always very fickle, always kept in check by force, on account of their childish uncertainty as to what, in their capriciousness, they would do next. The Gothlanders, on the other hand, calmly liberal in temperament, devoid of noisy vehemence, ranged themselves peacefully, with their long-established, ample const.i.tution, round King Siegfried, whom they called the father of his country. That Gunther was not afraid of having to wear the crown one day, was this a reason why Othomar should be without his fear? Did Othomar not possess the gentler qualities, which are valued in the narrow circle of intimate surroundings and arouse esteem among a few sympathetic natures, rather than that fiercer brilliancy of character, which makes its possessor stand out in clear relief in high places and awakens admiration in the mult.i.tude? Was this boy, with his soul full of scruples, his nostalgia after justice, his yearning for love, his easily wounded sensitiveness, was he the son of his ancestors, the descendant of Berengar the Strong, Wenceslas the Cruel, son of the warlike Xaveria, or was he not rather the child of his gentle mother alone?

It was not in Herman's way to reflect much and long on all this, but it came to him suddenly, abruptly, like a new view that is opened out in a brighter light. And what had been antipathy in him became compa.s.sion, friendship and astonishment at the disposition of the universe, which knew not what else to do with a soul like Othomar's but to crush it beneath a crown.

The simple family-life at Altseeborgen worked on Othomar like a cure. He felt himself reviving amid natural surroundings, his humanity developing wide and untrammelled. Accustomed as he was to the ceremonial life of the Imperial, with its court-etiquette strictly maintained by the Emperor Oscar, he was at first surprised, but soon delighted by the almost homely simplicity of his Gothlandic relations. In former years, it is true, he had paid an occasional brief visit to Altseeborgen, but had never stayed long enough to be able to count himself, as now, quite one of themselves.

Othomar was at this moment the only visitor from abroad, except the Archd.u.c.h.ess Valerie, a niece of the Emperor of Austria. Did the young people suspect anything, or not? Were their names coupled together by the younger princes and princesses? Not so, to all outward seeming: only once or twice had Princess Sofie or Princess Wanda found it necessary to hush her young brothers with a glance. And yet it was with a serious intention that the Queen of Gothland, in concert with the Emperor of Liparia and Valerie's parents--the Archduke Albrecht and the Archd.u.c.h.ess of Eudoxie, who lived at Sigismundingen Castle--had brought the young people together. The Emperor Oscar would certainly have preferred one of the young Russian grand-d.u.c.h.esses, a niece of the Czar, for his daughter-in-law; but the difference in religion remained an insurmountable obstacle; and the emperor, despite his preference, had no objection to the Austrian alliance.

Perhaps Othomar and Valerie divined this intention, but the secret caused no constraint between them; they were both so accustomed to hearing the names of well-known princes or princesses connected with theirs and even to seeing them mentioned in the papers: announcements of betrothals which were immediately contradicted; they had even jested together about the number of times that public opinion had married them to this one or to that, each time to somebody else; sometimes even the news came as a surprise to themselves, which they found in the newspapers and laughed at. They paid no heed therefore to the rare mischievous remarks of Prince Olaf or Prince Christofel, st.u.r.dy lads of seventeen and fifteen, who thought it great fun to tease. And all this time Queen Olga, so sensible and reasonable, brought not the least influence to bear upon them. She had invited them together, but she did nothing more. Perhaps she observed silently how they behaved towards each other and wrote just one letter on the subject to her sister, but she kept quite outside the meshes which were weaving between their two crowned lives. Yet it was difficult for her to stand aloof. She was fond of Valerie and thought that this marriage would be in every way good.

But added to that came urgent letters from Sigismundingen and even from Vienna, where they wished for nothing more eagerly than to see the young archd.u.c.h.ess d.u.c.h.ess of Xara. For this, apart from the natural inclination of the Austrian court to set store by a renewed alliance with Liparia, there were other reasons of a more intimate character.

3

The sun had appeared through the clouds in the afternoon and made the grey of the sky and the water turn blue with the hazy blueness of a northern summer. The sea glowed and put on scales of gold; the weather-beaten castle stood blistering its broad granite pile in the sun, as an old man does his back. The striped canvas awning was lowered on the top terrace, which led into the great hall through three gla.s.s doors. Rugs lay scattered over the ground. Princess Sofie and the Archd.u.c.h.ess Valerie sat in great wickerwork chairs, painting in water-colours. From the hall sounded, monotonously, the soft exercises of Princess Elizabeth, the crown-princess' eldest daughter, who was practising. Princess Wanda sat on the ground, romping a trifle boisterously with her youngest two nephews, Erik and Karl. On a long wicker chair lay Prince Herman, with both legs up; next to him was a little table heaped with newspapers and periodicals, some of which had fallen to the ground; a great tumbler of sherry-cobbler stood on the wicker ledge of his chair; the blue smoke rose from a cigarette between his fingers.

Sofie and Valerie compared their sketches and laughed. They looked at the sky, which was bisected by the awning: the clouds, woolly white, surged one above the other; the sea was dazzling with its golden scales, like a giant cuira.s.s.

"What are you two painting there?" asked Herman, who was turning the pages of an ill.u.s.trated paper.

"Clouds," replied Valerie, "nothing but clouds. I have persuaded Sofie to make studies of clouds with me. Presently, if you're not too lazy, you must come and look at my alb.u.m." She gave a little laugh. "It contains nothing but clouds!"

"By Jove!" drawled Herman. "How very odd!..."

"Yes," said Sofie, dreamily, "clouds are very nice, but you never know how to catch them: they change every instant."

"Erik," said Herman, "just ask Aunt Valerie to lend me her alb.u.m."

"No, no," cried Wanda, "go and fetch it yourself, lazybones!..."

But Erik wanted to go; and there came a great struggle. Wanda hugged the little fellow tight in her arms; Karl joined in: there was a general romp and Wanda, laughing, fell sideways to the ground.

"But, Wanda!" said Sofie, reprovingly.

Valerie stood up and went to Herman:

"With all this, you're not seeing my clouds, you lazy boy. I suppose I must take pity on you. Look...."

Herman now suddenly drew himself up and took the alb.u.m:

"How funny!" he said. "Yellow and white and violet and pink. All sunsets!"

"And sunrises. I dare say I see more of them than you do!"

"The things you see in clouds, Valerie! It's astonishing. How one person differs from another! I should never take it into my head to go and sketch clouds. You ought to come for a cruise with me one day; then you could make whole collections of clouds."

"Why didn't you propose that earlier?" said Valerie, jestingly. "Then I might have joined you and Xara."