Royal Highness Part 23

He told her about the doctor's obscure origin, and about the money his parents paid to be quit of him; about the child in the marsh or bog, and the medal for saving life; about Ueberbein's plucky and ambitious career, pursued in circ.u.mstances calling for resolution and action, which he used to call favourable circ.u.mstances, and about his friendship with Doctor Sammet, whom Imma knew. He described his by no means attractive appearance and readily owned to the attraction which he had exercised on him from the very beginning. He described his behaviour towards himself, Klaus Heinrich--that fatherly and jolly, bl.u.s.tering camaraderie which had distinguished him so sharply from everybody else--and gave Imma to the best of his ability an insight into his tutor's views of life. Finally he expressed his concern that the doctor seemed not to enjoy any sort of popularity among his fellow-citizens.

"I can quite believe that," said Imma.

He was surprised, and asked why.

"Because I'm convinced," she said, wagging her head, "that your Ueberbein, for all his sparkling conversation, is an unhappy sort of creature. He may swagger about the place; but he lacks reserve, Prince, and that means that he will come to a bad end."

Her words startled Klaus Heinrich, and made him thoughtful. Then turning to the Countess, who awoke with a smile out of a brown study, he said something complimentary about her riding, for which she thanked him gracefully. He said that anybody could see that she had learnt to ride as a child, and she confessed that riding lessons had formed a considerable part of her education. She spoke clearly and cheerfully; but gradually, almost imperceptibly, she began to wander into a strange story about a gallant ride which she had made as a lieutenant in the last manoeuvres, and suddenly started talking about the dreadful wife of a sergeant in the Grenadiers, who had come into her room the previous night and scratched her b.r.e.a.s.t.s all over, meanwhile using language which she could not bring herself to repeat. Klaus Heinrich asked quietly whether she had not shut her door and windows.

"Of course, but anyone could break the gla.s.s!" she answered hastily, and turned pale in one cheek and red in the other. Klaus Heinrich nodded acquiescence, and, dropping his eyes, asked her quietly to let him call her "Frau Meier" now and then, a proposal which she gladly accepted, with a confidential smile and a far-away look which had something strangely attractive about it.

They got up to visit the "Pheasantry," after Klaus Heinrich had taken back his cloak; and as they left the garden, Imma Spoelmann said: "Well done, Prince. You're getting on," a commendation which made him blush, indeed gave him far more pleasure than the most fulsome newspaper report of the valuable effect of his appearance at a ceremony which Councillor Schustermann could ever show him.

Herr Stavenuter escorted his guests into the palisaded enclosure in which six or seven families of pheasants led a comfortable, petted life.

They watched the greedy, red-eyed, and stiff-tailed birds, inspected the hatching house, and looked on while Herr Stavenuter fed the pheasants under a big solitary fig-tree for their benefit. Klaus Heinrich thanked him warmly for all that he had shown them, Imma Spoelmann regarding him the while with her big, searching eyes. Then they mounted at the gate of the tea-garden and rode off homewards with Percival barking and pirouetting under the horses' noses.

But their ride home was destined to give Klaus Heinrich, in the course of his conversation with Imma Spoelmann, yet another significant indication of her real nature and character, a direct revelation of certain sides of her personality which gave him food for much thought.

For soon after they had left the bramble-hedged by-way and joined the high-road, Klaus Heinrich reverted to a subject which had been just touched on at his first visit to Delphinenort during the conversation at tea, and had not ceased to exercise him ever since.

"May I," he said, "ask you one question, Miss Spoelmann? You need not answer it if you don't want to."

"I'll see about that," she answered.

"Four weeks ago," he began, "when I first had the pleasure of a talk with your father, Mr. Spoelmann, I asked him a question which he answered so curtly and abruptly that I could not help feeling that my question had been indiscreet or a false step."

"What was it?"

"I asked him whether he had not found it hard to leave America."

"There you are, Prince, there's another question which is worthy of you, a typical Prince-question. If you had had a little more training in the use of your reasoning powers you would have known without asking that if my father had not been ready and glad to leave America, he most a.s.suredly would not have left it."

"Very probably you are right; forgive me, I don't think enough. But if my question was nothing worse than a want of thought, I shall be quite content. Can you a.s.sure me that that is the case?"

"No, Prince, I'm afraid I cannot," she said, and looked at him suddenly with her big black eyes.

"Then what has want of thought to do with it? Do please explain. I ask you in the name of our friendship."

"Are we friends?"

"I hoped so," he said pleadingly.

"Well, well, patience! I didn't know it, but I'm quite ready to learn it. But to return to my father, he really did lose his temper at your question--he has a quick temper, and has plenty of occasion to practise losing it. The fact is that public opinion and sentiment were not over-friendly to us in America. There's such a lot of scheming over there--I may mention that I am not posted in the details, but there was a strong political movement towards setting the crowd, the common people, you know, against us. The result was legislation and restrictions which made my father's life over there a burden to him. You know of course, Prince, that it was not he who made us what we are, but my redoubtable grandfather with his Paradise nugget and Blockhead Farm.

My father could not help it, he was born to his destiny, and it was no gratification to him, because he is naturally shy and sensitive, and would much have preferred to have lived for playing the organ and collecting gla.s.s. I really believe that the hatred which was the result of the scheming against us, so that sometimes the people hurled abuse after me when I motored past them--that the hatred quite probably brought on his stone in the kidneys; it's more than possible."

"I am cordially attached to your father," said Klaus Heinrich with emphasis.

"I should have made that, Prince, a condition of our becoming friends.

But there was another point which made things worse, and made our position over there still more difficult, and that was our origin."

"Your origin?"

"Yes, Prince; we are no aristocratic pheasants, unfortunately we are not descended from Washington or from the Pilgrim Fathers."

"No, for you are German."

"Oh yes, but there's something besides to get over. Please look at me closely. Does it strike you that there is anything to be proud of in having blue-black wispy hair like mine, that's always falling where it's not wanted?"

"Goodness knows, Miss Spoelmann, you've got glorious hair!" said Klaus Heinrich. "I know that you are partly of Southern extraction, for I've read somewhere that your grandfather married in Bolivia or thereabouts."

"He did. But that's where the trouble lies, Prince. I'm a quintroon."

"A what?"

"A quintroon."

"That goes with the Adirondacks and the refraction, Miss Spoelmann. I don't know what it is. I've already told you that I don't know much."

"Well, it's a fact. My grandfather, thoughtless as he always was, married a woman of Indian blood down South."

"Indian blood!"

"Yes. She was of Indian stock at the third remove, daughter of a white and a half-Indian, and so a terceroon as it is called. She must have been wonderfully beautiful. And she was my grandmother. The grandchildren of a terceroon are called quintroons. That's how things are."

"Most interesting. But didn't you say that it had affected people's att.i.tude towards you?"

"You don't understand, Prince. I must tell you that Indian blood over there means a heavy blot--such a blot, that friendships and affections are transformed into hatred and abuse if proof of half-blood descent comes to light. Of course things are not so serious with us, for with quadroons--why, of course, the taint is nothing like so great, and a quintroon is to all intents and purposes untainted. But in our case, exposed to gossip as we were, it was naturally different, and several times when the people shouted abuse after us I heard them say that I was a coloured girl. In short, my descent was made an excuse for insults and annoyances, and raised a barrier between us and the few who were in the same position of life as ourselves--there was always something which we had to hide or to brazen out. My grandfather had brazened it out, he was that sort of man, and knew what he was doing; besides, his blood was pure, it was only his beautiful wife who had the taint. But my father was her son, and, sensitive and quick-tempered as he is, he has always, ever since he was a boy, resented being stared at, and hated and despised at the same time; half a world's wonder and half a monument of iniquity, as he used to say. He was fed up with America. That's the whole history, Prince," said Imma Spoelmann, "and now you know why my father lost his temper over your pointed question."

Klaus Heinrich thanked her for the explanation; indeed, as he saluted and took leave (it was lunch time) of the ladies in front of the Delphinenort Gate, he repeated his thanks for what he had been told, and then rode at foot's pace home, pondering over the events of the morning.

He saw Imma Spoelmann sitting in a languid pose in her red-gold dress at the table, with a look as of a spoilt child on her face; sitting in comfortable a.s.surance, and uttering remarks with a sting in them, such as were good coin in the United States, where clearness, hardness, and a ready wit were essentials of life. And why? Klaus Heinrich could understand now, and never a day pa.s.sed that he did not try to realize it better. Stared at, hated and despised at the same time, half a world's wonder and half a monument of iniquity, that's what her life had been, and that had instilled the poison into her remarks, that acidity and mocking directness, which looked like offence but really were defence, and which evoked a look of bewilderment on the faces of those who had never had any occasion for the weapons of wit.

She had demanded of him sympathy and tenderness towards the poor Countess, when she let herself go; but she herself had a claim to sympathy and tenderness, for she was lonely and her life, like his, was a hard one. At the same time a memory haunted him, a long-ago, painful memory, whose scene was the refreshment room of the "Citizen Garden,"

and which ended in a tureen lid----"Little sister!" he said to himself, as he quickly dismissed the scene from his thoughts. "Little sister!"

But most of all his thoughts were busy with planning how soonest to enjoy Miss Spoelmann's society again.

He enjoyed it soon and often, in all sorts of circ.u.mstances. February gave place to threatening March, fickle April and soft May. And all these months Klaus Heinrich visited Schloss Delphinenort at least once a week, in the morning or in the afternoon, and always in the irresponsible mood in which he had presented himself at the Spoelmanns'

that February morning, as if led by fate without any action of his own will. The proximity of the Schlosses made the visits easy, the short distance through the park from the "Hermitage" to Delphinenort was easily crossed on horseback or in a dogcart, without exciting much attention; and when the advancing season brought more people to the neighbourhood and made it harder and harder for them to go for rides without attracting public attention, the Prince had by this time reached a state of mind which can only be described as complete indifference and blind recklessness towards the world, the Court, the capital, and the countryside. It was not till later that the public interest began to play a really important--and encouraging--part in his thoughts and actions.

He had not taken leave of the ladies after the first ride without suggesting another expedition, a suggestion to which Imma Spoelmann, pouting and wagging her head from side to side, had failed to bring any serious objection. So he came again; and they rode to the Royal Kennels, on the north side of the Town Gardens; on the third occasion they chose a third place to ride to, which also they could reach without going near the town. Then, when spring enticed the townspeople into the open air and the tea-gardens filled up, they preferred an out-of-the-way path, which really was no path, but a richly wooded d.y.k.e, which stretched far away to the north along a swift-running stream.

The quietest way of reaching it was by riding out at the back of the "Hermitage" park, and past the river meadows on the edge of the northern Town Garden up to the Royal Kennels; then not crossing the river by the wooden bridge at the weir, but keeping along this side. The Kennels Farm was left behind on the right, and the ride went on through the fir-plantations. On the left lay spreading meadows, white and gaily coloured with hemlock and anemones, b.u.t.tercups and bluebells, clover, daisies, and forget-me-nots; a village church tower rose in front of them beyond the plough-lands, and the busy high-road lay far away at a safe distance from the riders. Farther on, the meadows with their nut-hedges came close up to the plantations on the left, shutting out the view, and enabling them to ride in complete seclusion, generally side by side with the Countess behind, as the path was narrow. They talked or rode in silence, while Percival jumped over the stream and back again, or plunged into it for a bath or a hurried drink. They came back the same way as they went.

When, however, the quicksilver fell owing to the lowness of the atmospheric pressure, when rain followed, and Klaus Heinrich nevertheless felt another peep at Imma Spoelmann to be a necessity, he presented himself in his dogcart at Delphinenort at tea time, and they stayed indoors. Mr. Spoelmann joined them at tea not more than two or three times. His malady got worse about this time, and on several days he was obliged to stay in bed with hot poultices. When he did come, he used to say: "Hullo, young Prince," with his thin, white-cuffed hand dip a rusk in his tea, throw in a cross word here and there into the conversation, and end by offering his guest his gold cigarette-case, whereupon he left the garden room with Dr. Watercloose, who had sat silent and smiling at the table. In fine weather too they sometimes preferred not to go outside the park, but to play lawn tennis on the trim lawn below the terrace. On one occasion they went for a rapid drive in Mr. Spoelmann's motor far out beyond the "Pheasantry."

One day Klaus Heinrich asked: "Is what I have read true, Miss Spoelmann, that your father gets such a tremendous lot of letters and appeals every day?"

Then she described to him subscription lists which kept pouring in to Delphinenort, and which were dealt with as thoroughly as was practicable; of the piles of begging letters by every post from Europe and America which Messrs. Phlebs and Slippers ran through and weeded out for submission to Mr. Spoelmann. Sometimes, she said, she amused herself by glancing through the heaps, and reading the addresses; for these were often quite fantastic. For the needy or speculative senders tried to outdo each other in the deference and servility of their address on the envelopes, and every conceivable t.i.tle and distinction could be found mixed up in the strangest way on the letters. But one begging-letter writer had quite recently carried off the prize by addressing his envelope to: "His Royal Highness Mr. Samuel Spoelmann." But it did not get him any more than the others.