I MEET THE PRINCESS
Hearing that I had not slept at the hotel, the Rev. Ambrose rushed down
to Riversley with melancholy ejaculations, and was made to rebound by
the squire's contemptuous recommendation to him to learn to know
something of the spirit of young bloods, seeing that he had the nominal
charge of one, and to preach his sermon in secret, if he would be
sermonizing out of church. The good gentleman had not exactly
understood his duties, or how to conduct them. Far from objecting to
find me in company with my father, as he would otherwise have done by
transmitting information of that fact to Riversley, he now
congratulated himself on it, and after the two had conversed apart,
cordially agreed to our scheme of travelling together. The squire had
sickened him. I believe that by comparison he saw in my father a better
friend of youth.
'We shall not be the worse for a ghostly adviser at hand,' my father
said to me with his quaintest air of gravity and humour mixed, which
was not insincerely grave, for the humour was unconscious. 'An
accredited casuist may frequently be a treasure. And I avow it, I like
to travel with my private chaplain.'
Mr. Peterborough's temporary absence had allowed me time for getting
ample funds placed at our disposal through the agency of my father's
solicitors, Messrs. Dettermain and Newson, whom I already knew from
certain transactions with them on his behalf. They were profoundly
courteous to me, and showed me his box, and alluded to his Case—a long
one, and a lamentable, I was taught to apprehend, by their lugubriously
professional tone about it. The question was naturally prompted in me,
'Why do you not go on with it?'
'Want of funds.'
'There's no necessity to name that now,' I insisted. But my father
desired them to postpone any further exposition of the case, saying,
'Pleasure first, business by-and-by. That, I take it, is in the order
of our great mother Nature, gentlemen. I will not have him help
shoulder his father's pack until he has had his fill of entertainment.'
A smooth voyage brought us in view of the towers of Ostend at sunrise.
Standing with my father on deck, and gazing on this fringe of the grand
romantic Continent, I remembered our old travels, and felt myself bound
to him indissolubly, ashamed of my recent critical probings of his
character. My boy's love for him returned in full force. I was
sufficiently cognizant of his history to know that he kept his head
erect, lighted by the fire of his robust heart in the thick of
overhanging natal clouds. As the way is with men when they are too
happy to be sentimental, I chattered of anything but my feelings.
'What a capital idea that was of yours to bring down old Alphonse to
Dipwell! You should have heard old John Thresher and Mark Sweetwinter
and the others grumbling at the interference of “French frogs” with
their beef, though Alphonse vowed he only ordered the ox to be turned
faster, and he dressed their potatoes in six different ways. I doubt if
Dipwell has composed itself yet. You know I sat for president in their
tent while the beef went its first round; and Alphonse was in an awful
hurry to drag me into what he called the royal tent. By the way, you
should have hauled the standard down at sunset.'
'Not when the _son_ had not come down among us,' said my father,
smiling.
'Well, I forgot to tell you about Alphonse. By the way, we'll have him
in our service. There was he plucking at me: “Monsieur Henri-Richie,
Monsieur Henri-Richie! mille complimens... et les potages, Monsieur!—à
la Camérani, à la tortue, aux petits pois... c'est en vrai artiste que
j'ai su tout retarder jusqu'au dernier moment.... Monsieur! cher
Monsieur Henri-Richie, je vous en supplie, laissez-là, ces planteurs de
choux.” And John Thresher, as spokesman for the rest: “Master Harry, we
beg to say, in my name, we can't masticate comfortably while we've got
a notion Mr. Frenchman he's present here to play his Frenchified tricks
with our plain wholesome dishes. Our opinion is, he don't know beef
from hedgehog; and let him trim 'em, and egg 'em, and bread-crumb 'em,
and pound the mess all his might, and then tak' and roll 'em into
balls, we say we wun't, for we can't make English muscle out o'
that.”—And Alphonse, quite indifferent to the vulgar: “Hé! mais pensez
donc au Papa, Monsieur Henri-Richie, sans doute il a une santé de fer:
mais encore faut-il lui ménager le suc gastrique, pancréatique....”'
'Ay, ay!' laughed my father; 'what sets you thinking of Alphonse?'
'I suppose because I shall have to be speaking French in an hour.'
'German, Richie, German.'
'But these Belgians speak French.'
'Such French as it is. You will, however, be engaged in a German
conversation first, I suspect.'
'Very well, I'll stumble on. I don't much like it.'
'In six hours from this second of time, Richie, boy, I undertake to
warrant you fonder of the German tongue than of any other spoken
language.'
I looked at him. He gave me a broad pleasant smile, without sign of a
jest lurking in one corner.
The scene attracted me. Laughing fishwife faces radiant with sea-bloom
in among the weedy pier-piles, and sombre blue-cheeked officers of the
douane, with their double row of buttons extending the breadth of their
shoulders. My father won Mr. Peterborough's approval by declaring
cigars which he might easily have passed.
'And now, sir,'—he used the commanding unction of a lady's doctor,—'you
to bed, and a short repose. We will, if it pleases you, breakfast at
eight. I have a surprise for Mr. Richie. We are about to beat the drum
in the market-place, and sing out for echoes.'
'Indeed, sir?' said the simple man.
'I promise you we shall not disturb you, Mr. Peterborough. You have
reached that middle age, have you not, when sleep is, so to put it,
your capital? And your activity is the interest you draw from it to
live on. You have three good hours. So, then, till we meet at the
breakfast-table.'
My father's first proceeding at the hotel was to examine the list of
visitors. He questioned one of the waiters aside, took information from
him, and seized my arm rather tremulously, saying,
'They are here. 'Tis as I expected. And she is taking the morning
breath of sea-air on the dunes. Come, Richie, come.'
'Who's the “she”?' I asked incuriously.
'Well, she is young, she is of high birth, she is charming. We have a
crowned head or two here. I observe in you, Richie, an extraordinary
deficiency of memory. She has had an illness; Neptune speed her
recovery! Now for a turn at our German. Die Strassen ruhen; die Stadt
schläft; aber dort, siehst Du, dort liegt das blaue Meer, das
nimmer-schlafende! She is gazing on it, and breathing it, Richie. Ach!
ihr jauchzende Seejungfern. On my soul, I expect to see the very
loveliest of her sex!
You must not be dismayed at pale cheeks-blasse Wangen. Her illness has
been alarming. Why, this air is the top of life; it will, and it shall,
revive her. How will she address him?—“Freund,” in my presence,
perchance: she has her invalid's privilege. “Theure Prinzessin” you
might venture on. No ice! Ay, there she is!'
Solitary, on the long level of the sand-bank, I perceived a group that
became discernible as three persons attached to an invalid's chair,
moving leisurely toward us. I was in the state of mind between
divination and doubt when the riddle is not impossible to read, would
but the heart cease its hurry an instant; a tumbled sky where the break
is coming. It came. The dear old days of my wanderings with Temple
framed her face. I knew her without need of pause or retrospect. The
crocus raising its cup pointed as when it pierced the earth, and the
crocus stretched out on earth, wounded by frost, is the same flower.
The face was the same, though the features were changed. Unaltered in
expression, but wan, and the kind blue eyes large upon lean brows, her
aspect was that of one who had been half caught away and still shook
faintly in the relaxing invisible grasp.
We stopped at a distance of half-a-dozen paces to allow her time for
recollection. She eyed us softly in a fixed manner, while the sea-wind
blew her thick redbrown hair to threads on her cheek. Colour on the
fair skin told us we were recognized.
'Princess Ottilia!' said my father.
'It is I, my friend,' she answered. 'And you?'
'With more health than I am in need of, dearest princess.'
'And he?'
'Harry Richmond! my son, now of age, commencing his tour; and he has
not forgotten the farewell bunch of violets.'
Her eyelids gently lifted, asking me.
'Nor the mount you did me the honour to give me on the little
Hungarian,' said I.
'How nice this sea-air is!' she spoke in English. 'England and sea go
together in my thoughts. And you are here! I have been down very low,
near the lowest. But your good old sea makes me breathe again. I want
to toss on it. Have you yet seen the Markgräfin?'
My father explained that we had just landed from the boat.
'Is our meeting, then, an accident?'
'Dear princess, I heard of your being out by the shore.'
'Ah! kind: and you walked to meet me? I love that as well, though I
love chance. And it is chance that brings you here! I looked out on the
boat from England while they were dressing me: I cannot have too much
of the morning, for then I have all to myself: sea and sky and I. The
night people are all asleep, and you come like an old Marchen.'
Her eyelids dropped without closing.
'Speak no more to her just at present,' said an English voice, Miss
Silbey's. Schwartz, the huge dragoon, whose big black horse hung near
him in my memory like a phantom, pulled the chair at a quiet pace, head
downward. A young girl clad in plain black walked beside Miss Sibley,
following the wheels.
'Danger is over,' Miss Sibley answered my gaze. 'She is convalescent.
You see how weak she is.'
I praised the lady for what I deemed her great merit in not having
quitted the service of the princess.
'Oh!' said she, 'my adieux to Sarkeld were uttered years ago. But when
I heard of her fall from the horse I went and nursed her. We were once
in dread of her leaving us. She sank as if she had taken some internal
injury. It may have been only the shock to her system and the cessation
of her accustomed exercise. She has a little over-studied.'
'The margravine?'
'The margravine is really very good and affectionate, and has won my
esteem. So you and your father are united at last? We have often talked
of you. Oh! that day up by the tower. But, do you know, the statue is
positively there now, and no one—no one who had the privilege of
beholding the first bronze Albrecht Wohlgemuth, Furst von
Eppenwelzen-Sarkeld, no one will admit that the second is half worthy
of him. I can feel to this day the leap of the heart in my mouth when
the statue dismounted. The prince sulked for a month: the margravine
still longer at your father's evasion. She could not make allowance for
the impulsive man: such a father; such a son!'
'Thank you, thank you most humbly,' said I, bowing to her shadow of a
mock curtsey.
The princess's hand appeared at a side of the chair. We hastened to
her.
'Let me laugh, too,' she prayed.
Miss Sibley was about to reply, but stared, and delight sprang to her
lips in a quick cry.
'What medicine is this? Why, the light of morning has come to you, my
darling!'
'I am better, dearest, better.'
'You sigh, my own.'
'No; I breathe lots, lots of salt air now, and lift like a boat. Ask
him—he had a little friend, much shorter than himself, who came the
whole way with him out of true friendship—ask him where is the friend?'
Miss Sibley turned her head to me.
'Temple,' said I; 'Temple is a midshipman; he is at sea.'
'That is something to think of,' the princess murmured, and dropped her
eyelids a moment. She resumed 'The Grand Seigneur was at Vienna last
year, and would not come to Sarkeld, though he knew I was ill.'
My father stooped low.
'The Grand Seigneur, your servant, dear princess, was an Ottoman Turk,
and his Grand Vizier advised him to send flowers in his place weekly.'
'I had them, and when we could get those flowers nowhere else,' she
replied. 'So it was you! So my friends have been about me.'
During the remainder of the walk I was on one side of the chair, and
her little maid on the other, while my father to rearward conversed
with Miss Sibley. The princess took a pleasure in telling me that this
Aennchen of hers knew me well, and had known me before ever her
mistress had seen me. Aennchen was the eldest of the two children
Temple and I had eaten breakfast with in the forester's hut. I felt
myself as if in the forest again, merely wondering at the growth of the
trees, and the narrowness of my vision in those days.
At parting, the princess said,
'Is my English improved? You smiled at it once. I will ask you when I
meet you next.'
'It is my question,' I whispered to my own ears.
She caught the words.
'Why do you say—“It is my question”?'
I was constrained to remind her of her old forms of English speech.
'You remember that? Adieu,' she said.
My father considerately left me to carry on my promenade alone. I
crossed the ground she had traversed, noting every feature surrounding
it, the curving wheel-track, the thin prickly sand-herbage, the
wave-mounds, the sparse wet shells and pebbles, the gleaming flatness
of the water, and the vast horizon-boundary of pale flat land level
with shore, looking like a dead sister of the sea. By a careful
examination of my watch and the sun's altitude, I was able to calculate
what would, in all likelihood, have been his height above yonder waves
when her chair was turned toward the city, at a point I reached in the
track. But of the matter then simultaneously occupying my mind, to
recover which was the second supreme task I proposed to myself—of what
I also was thinking upon the stroke of five o'clock, I could recollect
nothing. I could not even recollect whether I happened to be looking on
sun and waves when she must have had them full and glorious in her
face.