ON BOARD A YACHT
With the heartiest consent I could give, and a blank cheque, my father
returned to England to hire forthwith a commodious yacht, fitted and
manned. Before going he discoursed of prudence in our expenditure;
though not for the sake of the mere money in hand, which was a trifle,
barely more than the half of my future income; but that the squire,
should he by and by bethink him of inspecting our affairs, might
perceive we were not spendthrifts.
'I promised you a surprise, Richie,' said he, 'and you have had it;
whether at all equal to your expectations is for you to determine. I
was aware of the margravine's intention to bring the princess to these
sea-sands; they are famous on the Continent. It was bruited last Winter
and Spring that she would be here in the season for bathing; so I held
it likely we should meet. We have, you behold. In point of fact, we owe
the good margravine some show of hospitality. The princess has a
passion for tossing on the sea. To her a yacht is a thing dropped from
the moon. His Highness the prince her father could as soon present her
with one as with the moon itself. The illustrious Serenity's revenue is
absorbed, my boy, in the state he has to support. As for his daughter's
dowry, the young gentleman who anticipates getting one with her, I
commend to the practise of his whistling. It will be among the sums you
may count, if you are a moderate arithmetician, in groschen. The
margravine's income I should reckon to approach twenty thousand per
annum, and she proves her honourable sense that she holds it in trust
for others by dispersing it rapidly. I fear she loves cards. So, then,
I shall go and hire the yacht through Dettermain and Newson, furnish it
with piano and swing-cot, etc.; and if the ladies shrink from a cruise
they can have an occasional sail. Here are we at their service. I shall
be seriously baffled by fortune if I am not back to you at the end of a
week. You will take your early morning walk, I presume. On Sunday see
that our chaplain, the excellent Mr. Peterborough, officiates for the
assembled Protestants of all nations. It excites our English
enthusiasm. In addition, son Richie, it is peculiarly our duty. I, at
least, hold the view that it is a family duty. Think it over, Richie
boy. Providence, you see, has sent us the man. As for me, I feel as if
I were in the dawn of one life with all the mature experience of
another. I am calm, I am perfectly unexcited, and I tell you, old son,
I believe—pick among the highest—our destinies are about the most
brilliant of any couple in Great Britain.'
His absence relieved me in spite of my renewed pleasure in his talk; I
may call it a thirsty craving to have him inflating me, puffing the
deep unillumined treasure-pits of my nature with laborious hints, as
mines are filled with air to keep the miners going. While he talked he
made these inmost recesses habitable. But the pain lay in my having now
and then to utter replies. The task of speaking was hateful. I found a
sweetness in brooding unrealizingly over hopes and dreams and
possibilities, and I let him go gladly that I might enjoy a week of
silence, just taking impressions as they came, like the sands in the
ebb-tide. The impression of the morning was always enough for a day's
meditation. The green colour and the crimson athwart it, and higher up
the pinky lights, flamingo feathers, on a warm half-circle of heaven,
in hue between amethyst and milky opal; then the rim of the sun's disc
not yet severe; and then the monstrous shadow of tall Schwartz darting
at me along the sand, then the princess. This picture, seen at sunrise,
lasted till I slept. It stirred no thoughts, conjured no images, it
possessed me. In the afternoon the margravine accompanied the princess
to a point facing seaward, within hearing of the military band. She did
me the favour to tell me that she tolerated me until I should become
efficient in German to amuse her, but the dulness of the Belgian city
compared with her lively German watering-places compelled her to try my
powers of fun in French, and in French I had to do duty, and failed in
my office.
'Do you know,' said she, 'that your honourable papa is one in a
million? He has the life of a regiment in his ten fingers. What
astonishes me is that he does not make fury in that England of
yours—that Lapland! Je ne puffs me passer de cet homme! He offends me,
he trifles, he outrages, he dares permit himself to be indignant. Bon!
we part, and absence pleads for him with the eloquence of Satan. I am
his victim. Does he, then, produce no stir whatever in your England?
But what a people! But yes, you resemble us, as bottles—bottles;
seulement, you are emptied of your wine. Ce Monsieur Pétèrbooroo'! Il
m'agace les nerfs. It cannot be blood in his veins. One longs to see
him cuffed, to see if he has the English lion in him, one knows not
where. But you are so, you English, when not intoxicated. And so
censorious! You win your battles, they say, upon beer and cordials: it
is why you never can follow up a success. Je tiens cela du Maréchal
Prince B——. Let that pass. One groans at your intolerable tristesse. La
vie en Angleterre est comme un marais. It is a scandal to human nature.
It blows fogs, foul vapours, joint-stiffnesses, agues, pestilences,
over us here,—yes, here! That is your best side: but your worst is too
atrocious! Mon Dieu! Your men-rascals! Your women-rascals!'
'Good soul!' the princess arrested her, 'I beg that you will not abuse
England.'
'Have I abused England?' exclaimed the margravine. 'Nay, then, it was
because England is shockingly unjust to the most amusing, the most
reviving, charming of men. There is he fresh as a green bubbling well,
and those English decline to do honour to his source. Now tell me,
you!' She addressed me imperiously. 'Are you prosecuting his claims?
Are you besieging your Government? What! you are in the season of
generosity, an affectionate son, wealthy as a Magyar prince of flocks,
herds, mines, and men, and you let him stand in the shade deprived of
his birthright? Are you a purse-proud commoner or an imbecile?'
'My whimsy aunt!' the princess interposed again, 'now you have taken to
abusing a defenceless Englishman.'
'Nothing of the sort, child. I compliment him on his looks and manners;
he is the only one of his race who does not appear to have marched out
of a sentinel's box with a pocket-mirror in his hand. I thank him from
my soul for not cultivating the national cat's whisker. None can
imagine what I suffer from the oppressive sight of his Monsieur
Peterbooroo'! And they are of one pattern—the entire nation! He! no, he
has the step of a trained blood-horse. Only, as Kaunitz, or somebody,
said of Joseph II., or somebody, he thinks or he chews. Englishmen's
mouths were clearly not made for more purposes than one. In truth, I am
so utterly wearied, I could pray for the diversion of a descent of
rain. The life here is as bad as in Rippau. I might just as well be in
Rippau doing duty: the silly people complain, I hear. I am gathering
dust. These, my dear, these are the experiences which age women at a
prodigious rate. I feel chains on my limbs here.'
'Madame, I would,' said I, 'that I were the Perseus to relieve you of
your monster Ennui, but he is coming quickly.'
'You see he has his pretty phrases!' cried the margravine; adding
encouragingly, 'S'il nest pas tant sort peu impertinent?'
The advance of some German or Russian nobleman spared me further
efforts.
We were on shore, listening to the band in the afternoon, when a sail
like a spark of pure white stood on the purple black edge of a
storm-cloud. It was the yacht. By sunset it was moored off shore, and
at night hung with variegated lamps. Early next morning we went on
board. The ladies were astonished at the extent of the vessel, and its
luxurious fittings and cunning arrangements. My father, in fact, had
negotiated for the hire of the yacht some weeks previously, with his
accustomed forethought.
'House and town and fortress provisioned, and moveable at will!' the
margravine interjected repeatedly.
The princess was laid on raised pillows in her swingcot under an awning
aft, and watched the sailors, the splendid offspring of old sea-fights,
as I could observe her spirited fancy conceiving them. They were a set
of men to point to for an answer to the margravine's strictures on
things English.
'Then, are you the captain, my good Herr Heilbrunn?' the margravine
asked my father.
He was dressed in cheerful blue, wearing his cheerfullest air, and
seemed strongly inclined for the part of captain, but presented the
actual commander of the schooner-yacht, and helped him through the
margravine's interrogations.
'All is excellent,—excellent for a day's sail,' she said. 'I have no
doubt you could nourish my system for a month, but to deal frankly with
you—prepared meats and cold pies!—to face them once is as much as I am
capable of.'
'Dear Lady Field-Marshal,' returned my father, 'the sons of Neptune
would be of poor account, if they could not furnish you cookery at
sea.'
They did, for Alphonse was on board. He and my father had a hot
discussion about the margravine's dishes, Alphonse declaring that it
was against his conscience to season them pungently, and my father
preaching expediency. Alphonse spoke of the artist and his duty to his
art, my father of the wise diplomatist who manipulated individuals
without any sacrifice of principle. They were partly at play, of
course, both having humour.
It ended in the margravine's being enraptured. The delicacy of the
invalid's dishes, was beyond praise. 'So, then, we are absolutely
better housed and accommodated than on shore!' the margravine made her
wonder heard, and from that fell to enthusiasm for the vessel. After a
couple of pleasant smooth-sailing days, she consented to cruise off the
coasts of France and England. Adieu to the sands. Throughout the cruise
she was placable, satisfied with earth and sea, and constantly
eulogizing herself for this novel state of serenity. Cards, and a
collection of tripping French books bound in yellow, danced the gavotte
with time, which made the flying minutes endurable to her: and for
relaxation there was here the view of a shining town dropped between
green hills to dip in sea-water, yonder a ship of merchandise or war to
speculate upon, trawlers, collier-brigs, sea-birds, wave over wave. No
cloud on sun and moon. We had gold and silver in our track, like the
believable children of fairyland.
The princess, lying in her hammock-cot on deck, both day and night, or
for the greater part of the night, let her eyes feast incessantly on a
laughing sea: when she turned them to any of us, pure pleasure sparkled
in them. The breezy salt hours were visible ecstasy to her blood. If
she spoke it was but to utter a few hurried, happy words, and shrink as
you see the lightning behind a cloud-rack, suggestive of fiery swift
emotion within, and she gazed away overjoyed at the swoop and plunge of
the gannet, the sunny spray, the waves curling crested or down-like. At
night a couple of sailors, tender as women, moved her in the cot to her
cabin. We heard her voice in the dark of the morning, and her little
maid Aennchen came out and was met by me; and I at that hour had the
privilege to help move her back to her favourite place, and strap the
iron-stand fast, giving the warm-hooded cot room to swing. The keen
sensations of a return to health amid unwonted scenes made things
magical to her. When she beheld our low green Devon hills she signalled
for help to rise, and 'That is England!' she said, summoning to her
beautiful clear eyeballs the recollection of her first desire to see my
country. Her petition was that the yacht should go in nearer and nearer
to the land till she could discern men, women, and children, and their
occupations. A fisherman and his wife sat in the porch above their
hanging garden, the woman knitting, the man mending his nets,
barefooted boys and girls astride the keel of a boat below them. The
princess eyed them and wept. 'They give me happiness; I can give them
nothing,' she said.
The margravine groaned impatiently at talk of such a dieaway sort.
My father sent a couple of men on shore with a gift of money to their
family in the name of the Princess Ottilia. How she thanked him for his
prompt ideas! 'It is because you are generous you read one well.'
She had never thanked me. I craved for that vibrating music as of her
deep heart penetrated and thrilling, but shrank from grateful words
which would have sounded payment. Running before the wind swiftly on a
night of phosphorescent sea, when the waves opened to white hollows
with frayed white ridges, wreaths of hissing silver, her eyelids
closed, and her hand wandered over the silken coverlet to the hammock
cloth, and up, in a blind effort to touch. Mine joined to it. Little
Aennchen was witness. Ottilia held me softly till her slumber was deep.