Royal Highness Part 6

Klaus Heinrich laughed and saluted with his crop, and on they rode.

On another occasion Doctor Ueberbein said casually: "Popularity is a not very profound, but a grand and comprehensive kind of familiarity." And that was all he said on the subject.

Sometimes in summer, during the long intervals between the morning lessons, they would sit together in the empty pavilion, or stroll about the "Pheasants" playground, discussing various topics, and breaking off to drink lemonade provided by Herr Stavenuter. Herr Stavenuter beamed as he wiped the rough table and brought the lemonade with his own hands.

The gla.s.s ball in the bottle-neck had to be pushed in. "Sound stuff!"

said Herr Stavenuter. "The best that can be got. No muck, Grand Ducal Highness, and you, doctor, but just sweetened fruit-juice. I can honestly recommend it!"

Then he made his children sing in honour of the visit. There were three of them, two girls and a boy, and they could sing trios. They stood some way off with the green leaves of the chestnut trees for roof, and sang folk-songs while they blew their noses with their fingers. Once they sang a song beginning: "We are all but mortal men," and Doctor Ueberbein took advantage of the pauses to express his disapproval of this number on the programme. "A paltry song," he said, and leaned over towards Klaus Heinrich. "A really commonplace song, a lazy song, Klaus Heinrich; you must not let it appeal to you."

Later, when the children had stopped singing, he returned to the song and described it as "sloppy." "We are all but mortal men," he repeated.

"G.o.d bless us, yes, no doubt we are. But on the other hand we ought perhaps to remember that it is those of us who count for most who may be the occasion for especially emphasizing this truth.... Look you," he said, leaning back and crossing one leg over the other, while he stroked his beard up from underneath his chin, "look you, Klaus Heinrich, a man who has my intellectual aspirations will not be able to help searching for and clinging to whatever is out of the ordinary in this drab world of ours, wherever and however it appears--he cannot help being put out by such a slovenly song, by such a sheepish abjuration of the exceptional, of the lofty and of the miserable, and of that which is both at once. You may well say: 'That's talking for effect.' I'm only an usher, but there's something in my blood, Heaven knows what--I can't find any pleasure in emphasizing the fact that we are all ushers at bottom. I love the extraordinary in every form and in every sense. I love those who are conscious of the dignity of their exceptional station, the marked men, those one can see are not as other men, all those whom the people stare at open-mouthed--I hope they'll appreciate their destiny, and I do not wish them to make themselves comfortable with the slip-shod and luke-warm truth which we have just heard set to music for three voices. Why have I become your tutor, Klaus Heinrich? I am a gipsy, a hard-working one, maybe, but still a born gipsy. My predestination to the role of squire of princes is not particularly obvious. Why did I gladly obey the call when it came to me, in view of my energy, and although my very birth was a misfortune? Because, Klaus Heinrich, I see in your existence the clearest, most express, and best-preserved form of the extraordinary in the world. I have become your tutor that I might keep your destiny alive in you. Reserve, etiquette, obligation, duty, demeanour, formality--has the man whose life is surrounded by these no right to despise others? Ought he to allow himself to be reminded of humanity and good nature? No, come along, let's go, Klaus Heinrich, if you don't mind. They're tactless brats, these little Stavenuters." Klaus Heinrich laughed, he gave the children some of his pocket-money, and they went.

"Yes, yes," said Doctor Ueberbein in the course of an ordinary walk in the woods to Klaus Heinrich--they had drifted a little distance away from the five "Pheasants"--"nowadays the soul's thirst for veneration has to be satisfied with what it can get. Where will you find greatness?

I only hope you may! But quite apart from all actual greatness and high-calling, there is always what I call Highness, select and sadly isolated forms of life, towards which an att.i.tude of the tenderest sympathy should be adopted. For the rest, greatness is strong, it wears jack-boots, it has no need of the knight-services of the mind. But Highness is affecting--damme if it isn't the most affecting thing on earth."

Once or twice a year the "Pheasantry" journeyed to the capital to attend performances of cla.s.sical operas and dramas in the Grand Ducal Court Theatre; Klaus Heinrich's birthday in particular was the signal for a visit to the theatre. He would then sit quietly in his carved arm-chair, leaning against the red plush ledge of the Court box, whose roof rested on the heads of two female figures with crossed hands and empty stern faces, and watched his colleagues, the princes, whose destinies were played out on the stage, while he stood the fire of the opera-gla.s.ses which from time to time, even during the play, were directed at him from the audience. Professor Kurtchen sat on his left hand and Doctor Ueberbein with the "Pheasants" in an adjoining box.

Once they heard the "Magic Flute," and on the way home to "Pheasantry"

station, in the first-cla.s.s carriage, Doctor Ueberbein made the whole collection of them laugh by imitating the way in which singers talk when their roles oblige them to talk in prose. "He is a prince!" he said with pathos, and answered himself in a drawly, sing-song parsonical voice.

"He is more than that, he is a man!" Even Professor Kurtchen was so much amused that he bleated.

But next day, in the course of a private lesson in Klaus Heinrich's study, with the round mahogany table, whitened ceiling, and Greek bust on the stove, Doctor Ueberbein repeated his parody, and said then: "Great heavens, that was something new in its time, it was a piece of news, a startling truth! There are paradoxes which have stood so long on their heads that one has to put them on their feet to make anything even moderately daring out of them, 'He is a man. He is more than that'--that is getting gradually bolder, prettier, even truer. The converse is mere humanity, but I have no hearty love for humanity, I'm quite content to leave it out of account. One must, in a certain sense, be one of those of whom the people say: 'They are, after all, mortal men too'--or one is as deadly dull as an usher. I cannot honestly wish for the general comfortable obliteration of conflicts and gulfs, that's the way I am made, for better or worse, and the idea of the _principe uomo_ is to me, to speak plainly, an abomination. I am not anxious that it should particularly appeal to you.... Look you, there have always been princes and exceptional persons who live their life of exception with a light heart, simply unconscious of their dignity or denying it outright, and capable of playing skittles with the townsfolk in their shirt-sleeves, without the slightest attempt at an inward qualm. But they are not very important, just as nothing is important which lacks mind. For mind, Klaus Heinrich, mind is the tutor which insists inexorably on dignity, indeed actually creates dignity, it is the arch-enemy and chief antagonist of all human good nature. 'More than that?' No! to be a representative, to stand for a number when one appears to be the exalted and refined expression of a mult.i.tude. Representing is naturally something more and higher than simply Being, Klaus Heinrich--and that's why people call you Highness."

So argued Doctor Ueberbein, in loud, hearty, and fluent terms, and what he said influenced Klaus Heinrich's mind and susceptibilities more, perhaps, than was desirable. The prince was then about fifteen years old, and therefore quite competent, if not properly to understand, yet to imbibe the essence of ideas of that sort. The main point was that Doctor Ueberbein's doctrines and apophthegms were so exceptionally supported by his personality.

When Schulrat Droge, the man who used to bow to the lackeys, reminded Klaus Heinrich of his "exalted calling," that was nothing more than an exaggerated form of speech, devoid of inner meaning and calculated mainly to add emphasis to his professional claims. But when Doctor Ueberbein, whose very birth had been a misfortune, as he said, and who had a green complexion because he had been half starved; when this man who had dragged a child out of a bog, who had received "impressions" and "knocked about" in all sorts of ways; when he who not only did not bow to the lackeys, but who bawled at them in strident tones when the fancy took him, and who had called Klaus Heinrich himself straight out by his Christian names when he had known him only three days, without asking leave to do so,--when he with a paternal laugh declared that Klaus Heinrich's "path lay among the heights of mankind" (a favourite expression of his), the effect was a feeling of freedom and originality which awoke an echo deep down in the prince's soul.

When Klaus Heinrich listened to the doctor's loud and jolly anecdotes of his life, of the "bitterness of the cup of life," he felt as he used to when he went rummaging with Ditlinde his sister, and that the man who could tell such anecdotes, that this "rolling stone," as he called himself, did not, like the others, adopt a reserved and deferential att.i.tude towards him, but, without prejudice to a free and cheerful homage, treated him as a comrade in fate and destiny, warmed Klaus Heinrich's heart to inexpressible grat.i.tude and completed the charm which bound him to the usher for ever....

Shortly after his sixteenth birthday (Albrecht, the Heir Apparent, was at the time in the South for his health) the Prince was confirmed, together with the five "Pheasants," in the Court Church. The _Courier_ reported the fact without making any sensation of it. Dom Wislezenus, the President of the High Consistory, treated a Bible text in counterpoint, this time to the choice of the Grand Duke, and Klaus Heinrich was on this occasion gazetted a Lieutenant, although he had not the foggiest notion of things military.... His existence was becoming more and more barren of _expertise_. The ceremonial of the confirmation also lacked incisive significance, and the Prince returned immediately afterwards quietly back to the "Pheasantry" to continue his life amongst his tutors and schoolfellows without any alteration.

It was not till one year later that he left his old-fashioned homely schoolroom with the torso on the stove; the seminary was broken up, and while his five n.o.ble comrades were transferred to the Corps of Cadets, Klaus Heinrich again took up his abode in the Old Schloss, intending, in accordance with an agreement which Herr von k.n.o.belsdorff had come to with the Grand Duke, to spend a year at the upper gymnasium cla.s.ses in the capital. This was a well-calculated and popular step, which however did not make much difference from the point of view of _expertise_.

Professor Kurtchen had gone back to his post at the public academy, he instructed Klaus Heinrich as before in several branches of knowledge, and showed even greater zeal than he had at the seminary, being determined to let everybody see how tactful he was. It also appeared that he had told the rest of the staff of the agreement reached with regard to the two ways in which the Prince should announce his feelings with regard to answering a question.

As to Doctor Ueberbein, who had also returned to the academy, he had not yet advanced so far in his unusual career as to teach the highest cla.s.s.

But at Klaus Heinrich's lively, even insistent request, preferred by him to the Grand Duke, not by word of mouth but by official channels, so to speak, through the benevolent Herr von k.n.o.belsdorff, the usher was appointed tutor and superintendent of home studies, came daily to the Schloss, bawled at the lackeys, and had every opportunity of working on the Prince with his intellectual and enthusiastic talk. Perhaps it was partly the fault of this influence that Klaus Heinrich's relations with the young people with whom he shared the much-hacked school-benches continued even looser and more distant than his connexion with the five at the "Pheasantry"; and if thus the popularity which this year was intended to secure was not attained, the intervals, which both in summer and in winter were spent by all the scholars in the roomy paved courtyard, offered opportunities for camaraderie.

But these intervals, intended to refresh the ordinary scholars, brought with them for Klaus Heinrich the first actual effort of the kind of which his life was to be full. He was naturally, at least during the first term, the cynosure of every eye in the play-ground--no easy matter for him, in view of the fact that here the surroundings deprived him of every external support and attribute of dignity, and he was obliged to play on the same pavement as those whose common idea was to stare at him. The little boys, full of childlike irresponsibility, hung about close to him and gaped, while the bigger ones hovered around with wide-open eyes and looked at him out of the corners of them or from under their eyelids.... The excitement dwindled in course of time, but even then--whether the fault was Klaus Heinrich's or the others'--even later the camaraderie somehow did not make much progress. One might see the prince, on the right of the head master or the usher-in-charge, followed and surrounded by the curious, strolling up and down the courtyard. One could see him, too, chatting with his schoolfellows.

What a charming sight it was! There he leaned, half-sitting on the slope of the glazed-brick wall, with his feet crossed, and his left hand thrust far behind on his hips, with the fifteen members of the first cla.s.s in a half-circle round him. There were only fifteen this year, for the last promotions had been made with the object in view that the select should contain no elements which were unfitted by origin or personality to be for a year on Christian-name terms with Klaus Heinrich. For the use of Christian names was ordered. Klaus Heinrich conversed with one of them, who had advanced a little towards him out of the semicircle, and answered him with little short bows. Both laughed, everybody laughed directly they began to talk to Klaus Heinrich. He asked him for instance: "Have you yet done your German essay for next Tuesday?"

"No, Prince Klaus Heinrich, not quite yet; I haven't yet done the last part."

"It's a difficult subject. I haven't any idea yet what to write."

"Oh, your Highness will.... You'll soon think of something!"

"No, it's difficult.... You got an alpha in arithmetic, didn't you?"

"Yes, Prince Klaus Heinrich, I was lucky."

"No, you deserved it. I shall never be able to make anything of it!"

Murmurs of amus.e.m.e.nt and gratification in the semicircle. Klaus Heinrich turned to another schoolfellow, and the first stepped quickly back.

Everybody felt that the really important point was not the essay nor the arithmetic, but the conversation as an event and an undertaking, one's att.i.tude and tone, the way one advanced or retired, the success with which one a.s.sumed a sympathetic, self-collected, and refined demeanour.

Perhaps it was the consciousness of this which brought the smile to everybody's lips.

Sometimes, when he had the semicircle in front of him, Klaus Heinrich would say some such words as "Professor Nicolovius looks an owl."

Great then was the merriment among the others. Such a remark was the signal for general unbending, they kicked over the traces, "Ho, ho, ho!" 'd in chorus in their newly cracked voices, and one would declare Klaus Heinrich to be a "ripping chap." But Klaus Heinrich did not often say such things, he only said them when he saw the smile on the others'

faces grow faint and wan, and signs of boredom or even of impatience showing themselves; he said them by way of cheering them up, and at the extravagant laughter by which they were followed he wore a look half of curiosity, half of dismay.

It was not Anselm Schickedanz who called him a "ripping chap," and yet it was directly on his account that Klaus Heinrich had compared Professor Nicolovius to an owl. Anselm Schickedanz had laughed like the others at the joke, but not in quite the same approving way, but with an intonation which implied, "Gracious heavens!" He was a dark boy, with narrow hips, who enjoyed the reputation throughout the school of being a devil of a chap. The tone of the top cla.s.s this year was admirable. The obligations which membership of Klaus Heinrich's cla.s.s entailed had been impressed on every boy from various quarters, and Klaus Heinrich was not the boy to tempt them to forget these obligations. But that Anselm Schickedanz was a devil of a chap had often come to his ears, and Klaus Heinrich, when he looked at him, felt a kind of satisfaction in believing what he heard, although it was an obscure problem to him how he could have come by his reputation.

He made several inquiries privately, broached the subject apparently by chance, and tried to find out from one or other of his comrades something about Schickedanz's devilry. He discovered nothing definite.

But the answers, whether disparaging or complimentary, filled him with the suspicion of a mad amiability, an unlawful glorious humanity, which was there for the eyes of all, save his own, to see--and this suspicion was almost a sorrow. Everybody said at once, with reference to Anselm Schickedanz, and in saying it dropped into the forbidden form of address: "Yes, Highness, you ought to see him when you are not there!"

Klaus Heinrich would never see him when he was not there, would never get near him, never get to know him. He stole peeps at him when he stood with the others in a semicircle before him, laughing and braced up like all the rest. Everybody braced himself up in Klaus Heinrich's presence, his very existence was accountable for that, as he well knew, and he would never see what Schickedanz was like, how he behaved when he let himself go. At the thought he felt a twinge of envy, a tiny spark of regret.

At this juncture something painful, in fact revolting, occurred, of which nothing came to the ears of the Grand Ducal couple, because Doctor Ueberbein kept his mouth closed and about which scarcely any rumour spread in the capital because everybody who had had a share or any responsibility in the matter, obviously from a kind of feeling of shame, preserved strict silence about it. I refer to the improprieties which occurred in connexion with Prince Klaus Heinrich's presence at that year's citizens' ball, and in which a Fraulein Unschlitt, daughter of the wealthy soap-boiler, was especially concerned.

The citizens' ball was a chronic fixture in the social life of the capital, an official and at the same time informal festivity, which was given by the city every winter in the "Townpark Hotel," a big, recently enlarged and renovated establishment in the southern suburbs, and provided the bourgeois circles with an opportunity of establishing friendly relations with the Court. It was known that Johann Albrecht III had never cultivated a taste for this civil and rather free-and-easy entertainment, at which he appeared in a black frock-coat in order to lead off the polonaise with the Lady Mayoress, and that he was wont to withdraw from it at the earliest possible moment. This only heightened the general satisfaction when his second son, although not yet bound to do so, already made his appearance at the ball that year--indeed, it became known that he did so at his own express request. It was said that the Prince had employed Excellency von k.n.o.belsdorff to transmit his earnest wish to the Grand d.u.c.h.ess, who in her turn had contrived to obtain her husband's consent.

Outwardly the festivity pursued its wonted course. The most distinguished guests, Princess Catherine, in a coloured silk dress and cap, accompanied by her red-haired children, Prince Lambert with his pretty wife, and last of all Johann Albrecht and Dorothea with Prince Klaus Heinrich, made their appearance in the "Townpark Hotel," greeted by city officials, with long-ribboned rosettes pinned on their coats.

Several Ministers, aides-de-camp in mufti, numbers of men and women of the Court, the leaders of society, as well as landowners from the surrounding country, were present. In the big white hall the Grand Ducal pairs first received a string of presentations, and then, to the strains of the band which sat in the curved gallery up above, Johann Albrecht with the Lady Mayoress, Dorothea with the Lord Mayor, opened the ball by a procession round the room.

Then, while the polonaise gave place to a round dance, contentment spread, cheeks glowed, the heat of the throng kindled feelings of fondness, faintness, and foreboding among the dancers, the distinguished guests stood as distinguished guests are wont to stand on such occasions--apart and smiling graciously on the platform, at the top of the hall under the gallery. From time to time Johann Albrecht engaged a distinguished man, and Dorothea engaged his wife, in conversation. Those addressed stepped quickly and smartly forward and back, kept their distance half-bowing with their heads bent, nodded, shook their heads, laughed in this att.i.tude at the questions and remarks addressed to them--answered eagerly on the spur of the moment, with sudden and antic.i.p.atory changes from hearty amus.e.m.e.nt to the deepest earnestness, with a pa.s.sionateness which was doubtless unusual to them, and obviously in a state of tension. Curious guests, still panting from the dance, stood in a semicircle round and stared at these purposely trivial conversations with a peculiarly tense expression on their faces.

Klaus Heinrich was the object of much attention. Together with two red-headed cousins who were already in the army, but were wearing mufti that evening, he kept a little behind his parents, resting on one leg, his left hand placed far back on his hip, his face turned with his right half-profile to the public. A reporter of the _Courier_ who had been bidden to the ball made notes upon him in a corner. The Prince could be seen to greet with his white-gloved right hand his tutor, Doctor Ueberbein, who with his red beard and greenish tint came along the fence of spectators; he was seen even to advance some way into the hall to meet him.

The doctor, with big enamel studs in his shirt front, began by bowing when Klaus Heinrich stretched out his hand to him, but then at once spoke to him in his free and fatherly way. The Prince seemed to be rejecting a proposal, and laughed uneasily as he did so, but then a number of people distinctly heard Doctor Ueberbein say: "No--nonsense, Klaus Heinrich, what was the good of learning? Why did the Swiss governess teach you your steps in your tenderest years? I can't understand why you go to b.a.l.l.s if you won't dance? One, two, three, we'll soon find you a partner!" And with a continual shower of witticisms he presented to the Prince four or five young maidens, whom he dropped on without ceremony and dragged forward. They ducked and shot up again, one after the other, in the trailing fluctuations of the Court curtsey, set their teeth and did their best. Klaus Heinrich stood with his heels together and murmured, "Delighted, quite delighted."

To one he went so far as to say: "It's a jolly ball, isn't it?"

"Yes, Grand Ducal Highness, we are having great fun," answered she in a high chirping voice. She was a tall, rather bony bourgeoise maiden, dressed in white muslin, with fair wavy hair dressed over a pad, and a pretty face, a gold chain round her bare neck, the collar-bones of which showed prominently, and big white hands in mittens. She added: "The quadrille is coming next. Will your Grand Ducal Highness dance it with me?"

"I don't know ..." he said. "I really don't know ..."

He looked round. The machinery of the ball was already falling into geometrical order. Lines were being drawn, squares were forming, couples came forward and called to _vis-a-vis_. The music had not yet started.

Klaus Heinrich asked his cousins. Yes, they were taking part in the lancers, they already had their lucky partners on their arms.

Klaus Heinrich was seen to go up behind his mother's red damask chair and whisper something excitedly to her, whereupon she turned her lovely neck and pa.s.sed on the question to her husband, and the Grand Duke nodded. And then some laughter was caused by the youthful impetuosity with which the Prince ran down, so as not to miss the beginning of the square dance.