THE TIME OF ROSES
I sat and thrilled from head to foot with a deeper emotion than joy.
Not I, but a detached self allied to the careering universe and having
life in it.
'Violets are over.'
The first strenuous effort of my mind was to grasp the meaning, subtle
as odour, in these words. Innumerable meanings wreathed away
unattainable to thought. The finer senses could just perceive them ere
they vanished. Then as I grew material, two camps were pitched and two
armies prepared to fight to establish one distinct meaning. 'Violets
are over, so I send you roses'; she writes you simple fact. Nay, 'Our
time of violets is over, now for us the roses'; she gives you heavenly
symbolism.
'From violets to roses, so run the seasons.'
Or is it,
'From violets to roses, thus far have we two travelled?'
But would she merely say, 'I have not this kind of flower, and I send
you another?'
True, but would she dare to say, 'The violets no longer express my
heart; take the roses?'
'Maidenly, and a Princess, yet sweet and grateful, she gives you the
gracefullest good speed.
'Noble above all human distinctions, she binds you to herself, if you
will it.'
The two armies came into collision, the luck of the day going to the
one I sided with.
But it was curiously observable that the opposing force recovered
energy from defeat, while mine languished in victory. I headed them
alternately, and—it invariably happened so.
'She cannot mean so much as this.'
'She must mean more than that.'
Thus the Absolute and the Symbolical factions struggled on. A princess
drew them as the moon the tides.
By degrees they subsided and united, each reserving its view; a point
at which I imagined myself to have regained my proper humility. 'The
princess has sent you these flowers out of her homely friendliness; not
seeing you to speak her farewell, she, for the very reason that she can
do it innocent of any meaning whatsoever, bids you be sure you carry
her esteem with you. Is the sun of blue heavens guilty of the shadow it
casts? Clear your mind. She means nothing. Warmth and beauty come from
her, and are on you for the moment. But full surely she is a thing to
be won: she is human: did not her hand like a gentle snake seek yours,
and detain it, and bear it away into the heart of her sleep?—Be
moderate. Let not a thought or a dream spring from her condescension,
lest you do outrage to her noble simplicity. Look on that high
Hohenzollern hill-top: she also is of the line of those who help to
found illustrious Houses: what are you?'
I turned to my father and stared him in the face. What was he? Were we
not losing precious time in not prosecuting his suit? I put this
question to him, believing that it would sound as too remote from my
thoughts to betray them. He glanced at the roses, and answered gladly,
'Yes!—no, no! we must have our holiday. Mr. Peterborough is for
exploring a battle-field in the neighbourhood of Munich. He shall. I
wish him to see the Salzkammergut, and have a taste of German
Court-life. Allow me to be captain, Richie, will you? I will show you
how battles are gained and mountains are scaled. That young Prince Otto
of Eisenberg is a fine young fellow. Those Austrian cavalry regiments
are good training-schools for the carriage of a young man's head and
limbs. I would match my boy against him in the exercises—fencing,
shooting, riding.'
'As you did at Bath,' said I.
He replied promptly: 'We might give him Anna Penrhys to marry. English
wives are liked here—adored—if they fetch a dowry. Concerning my suit,
Richie, enough if it keeps pace with us: and we are not going slow. It
is a thing certain. Dettermain and Newson have repeatedly said, “Money,
money! hand us money, and we guarantee you a public recognition.” Money
we now have. But we cannot be in two fields at once. Is it your desire
to return to England?'
'Not at all,' said I, with a chill at the prospect.
'If it is—?' he pressed me, and relenting added: 'I confess I enjoy
this Suabian land as much as you do. Indolence is occasionally
charming. I am at work, nevertheless. But, Richie, determine not to
think little of yourself: there is the main point; believe me, that is
half the battle. You, sir, are one of the wealthiest gentlemen in
Europe. You are pronouncedly a gentleman. That is what we can say of
you at present, as you appear in the world's eye. And you are by
descent illustrious. Well, no more of that, but consider if you kneel
down, who will decline to put a foot on you? Princes have the habit,
and they do it as a matter of course. _Challenge_ them. And they,
Richie, are particularly susceptible to pity for the misfortunes of
their class—kind, I should say, for class it is not; now I have done.
All I tell you is, I intend you, under my guidance, to be happy.'
I thought his remarks the acutest worldly wisdom I had ever heard,—his
veiled method of treating my case the shrewdest, delicatest, and most
consoling, most inspiring. It had something of the mystical power of
the Oracles,—the power which belongs to anonymous writing. Had he
disposed of my apparent rival, and exalted me to the level of a
princely family, in open speech, he would have conveyed no balm to me—I
should have classed it as one confident man's opinion. Disguised and
vague, but emphatic, and interpreted by the fine beam of his eye, it
was intoxicating; and when he said subsequently, 'Our majority Burgundy
was good emperor wine, Richie. You approved it? I laid that vintage
down to give you a lesson to show you that my plans come safe to
maturity,'—I credited him with a large share of foresight, though I
well knew his habit of antedating his sagacity, and could not but smile
at the illustration of it.
You perceive my state without rendering it necessary for me to label
myself.
I saw her next in a pinewood between Ischl and the Traun. I had climbed
the steep hill alone, while my father and Mr. Peterborough drove round
the carriage-road to the margravine's white villa. Ottilia was leaning
on the arm of Baroness Turckems, walking—a miracle that disentangled
her cruelly from my net of fancies. The baroness placed a second hand
upon her as soon as I was seen standing in the path. Ottilia's face
coloured like the cyclamen at her feet.
'You!' she said.
'I might ask, is it you, princess?'
'Some wonder has been worked, you see.'
'I thank heaven.'
'You had a part in it.'
'The poorest possible.'
'Yet I shall presume to call you Doctor Oceanus,'
'Will you repeat his medicine? The yacht awaits you always.'
'When I am well I study. Do not you?'
'I have never studied in my life.'
'Ah, lose no more time. The yacht is delicious idleness, but it is
idleness. I am longing for it now, I am still so very weak. My dear
Sibley has left me to be married. She marries a Hanoverian officer. We
change countries—I mean,' the princess caught back her tongue, 'she
will become German, not compatriot of your ships of war. My English
rebukes me. I cease to express... It is like my walking, done half for
pride, I think. Baroness, lower me, and let me rest.'
The baroness laid her gently on the dry brown pine-sheddings, and blew
a whistle that hung at her girdle, by which old Schwartzy kept out of
sight to encourage the princess's delusion of pride in her walking, was
summoned. Ottilia had fainted. The baroness shot a suspicious glance at
me. 'It comes of this everlasting English talk,' I heard her mutter.
She was quick to interpose between me and the form I had once raised
and borne undisputedly.
'Schwartz is the princess's attendant, sir,' she said. 'In future, may
I request you to talk German?'
The Prince of Eppenwelzen and Prince Otto were shooting in the
mountains. The margravine, after conversing with the baroness, received
me stiffly. She seemed eager to be rid of us; was barely hospitable. My
mind was too confused to take much note of words and signs. I made an
appointment to meet my father the day following, and walked away and
returned at night, encountered Schwartz and fed on the crumbs of
tidings I got from him, a good, rough old faithful fellow, far past the
age for sympathy, but he had carried Ottilia when she was an infant,
and meant to die in her service. I thought him enviable above most
creatures.
His principal anxiety was about my finding sleeping quarters. When he
had delivered himself three times over of all that I could lead him to
say, I left him still puffing at his pipe. He continued on guard to be
in readiness to run for a doctor, should one be wanted. Twice in the
night I came across his path. The night was quiet, dark blue, and
starry; the morning soft and fragrant. The burden of the night was
bearable, but that of daylight I fled from, and all day I was like one
expecting a crisis. Laughter, with so much to arouse it, hardly had any
foothold within me to stir my wits. For if I said 'Folly!' I did not
feel it, and what I felt I did not understand. My heart and head were
positively divided. Days and weeks were spent in reconciling them a
little; days passed with a pencil and scribbled slips of paper—the
lines written with regular commencements and irregular terminations;
you know them. Why had Ottilia fainted? She recommended hard
study—thinks me idle, worthless; she has a grave intelligence, a
serious estimation of life; she thinks me intrinsically of the value of
a summer fly. But why did she say, 'We change countries,' and
immediately flush, break and falter, lose command of her English, grow
pale and swoon; why? With this question my disastrous big heart came
thundering up to the closed doors of comprehension. It was
unanswerable. 'We change countries.' That is, she and Miss Sibley
change countries, because the English woman marries a German, and the
German princess—oh! enormous folly. Pierce it, slay it, trample it
under. Is that what the insane heart is big with? Throughout my
night-watch I had been free of it, as one who walks meditating in
cloisters on a sentence that once issued from divine lips. There was no
relief, save in those pencilled lines which gave honest laughter a
chance; they stood like such a hasty levy of raw recruits raised for
war, going through the goose-step, with pretty accurate shoulders, and
feet of distracting degrees of extension, enough to craze a rhythmical
drill-sergeant. I exulted at the first reading, shuddered at the
second, and at the third felt desperate, destroyed them and sat staring
at vacancy as if I had now lost the power of speech.
At last I flung away idleness and came to a good resolution; and I
carried it through. I studied at a famous German university, not far
from Hanover. My father, after discussing my project with me from the
point of view of amazement, settled himself in the University town, a
place of hopeless dulness, where the stones of the streets and the
houses seemed to have got their knotty problem to brood over, and never
knew holiday. A fire for acquisition possessed me, and soon an
ungovernable scorn for English systems of teaching—sound enough for the
producing of gentlemen, and perhaps of merchants; but gentlemen rather
bare of graces, and merchants not too scientific in finance. Mr.
Peterborough conducted the argument against me until my stout display
of facts, or it may have been my insolence, combined with the ponderous
pressure of the atmosphere upon one who was not imbibing a
counteracting force, drove him on a tour among German cathedrals.
Letters from Riversley informed me that my proceedings were approved,
though the squire wanted me near him. We offered entertainments to the
students on a vast scale. The local newspaper spoke of my father as the
great Lord Roy. So it happened that the margravine at Sarkeld heard of
us. Returning from a visit to the prince's palace, my father told me
that he saw an opportunity for our being useful to the prince, who
wanted money to work a newly-discovered coal-mine in his narrow
dominions, and he suggested that I might induce the squire to supply
it; as a last extremity I could advance the money. Meanwhile he had
engaged to accompany the prince in mufti to England to examine into the
working of coal-mines, and hire an overseer and workmen to commence
operations on the Sarkeld property. It would be obligatory to entertain
him fitly in London.
'Certainly,' said I.
'During our absence the margravine will do her best to console you,
Richie. The prince chafes at his poverty. We give him a display of
wealth in England; here we are particularly discreet. We shall be surer
of our ground in time. I set Dettermain and Newson at work. I have
written for them to hire a furnished mansion for a couple of months,
carriages, horses, lacqueys. But over here we must really be—goodness
me! I know how hard it is!—we must hold the reins on ourselves tight.
Baroness Turckems is a most estimable person on the side of her duty.
Why, the Dragon of Wantley sat on its eggs, you may be convinced! She
is a praiseworthy dragon. The side she presents to us is horny, and not
so agreeable. Talk German when she is on guard. Further I need not
counsel a clever old son. Counsel me, Richie. Would it be adviseable to
run the prince down to Riversley?—a Prince!'
'Oh! decidedly not,' was my advice.
'Well, well,' he assented.
I empowered him to sell out Bank stock.
He wrote word from England of a very successful expedition. The prince,
travelling under the title of Count Delzenburg, had been suitably
entertained, received by Lady Wilts, Serena Marchioness of Edbury, Lady
Denewdney, Lady Sampleman, and others. He had visited my grandfather's
mine, and that of Miss Penrhys, and was astounded; had said of me that
I wanted but a title to be as brilliant a parti as any in Europe.
The margravine must have received orders from her brother to be civil
to me; she sent me an imperious invitation from her villa, and for this
fruit of my father's diplomacy I yielded him up my daintier feelings,
my judgement into the bargain.
Snows of early Spring were on the pinewood country I had traversed with
Temple. Ottilia greeted me in health and vivacity. The margravine led
me up to her in the very saloon where Temple, my father, and I had sat
after the finale of the statue scene, saying—
'Our sea-lieutenant.'
'It delights me to hear he has turned University student,' she said;
and in English: 'You have made friends of your books?'
She was dressed in blue velvet to the throat; the hair was brushed from
the temples and bound in a simple knot. Her face and speech, fair and
unconstrained, had neither shadow nor beam directed specially for me. I
replied,
'At least I have been taught to despise idleness.'
'My Professor tells me it is strange for any of your countrymen to love
books.'
'We have some good scholars, princess.'
'You have your Bentley and Porson. Oh! I know many of the world's men
have grown in England. Who can deny that? What we mean is, your society
is not penetrated with learning. But my Professor shall dispute with
you. Now you are facile in our German you can defend yourself. He is a
deep scholar, broad over tongues and dialects, European, Asiatic—a lion
to me, poor little mouse! I am speaking of Herr Professor von Karsteg,
lady aunt.'
'Speak intelligibly, and don't drum on my ear with that hybrid
language,' rejoined the margravine.
'Hybrid! It is my Herr Professor's word. But English is the choice
gathering of languages, and honey is hybrid, unless you condemn the bee
to suck at a single flower.'
'Ha! you strain compliments like the poet Fretzel,' the margravine
exclaimed. 'Luckily, they're not addressed to human creatures. You will
find the villa dull, Herr Harry Richmond. For my part, every place is
dull to me that your father does not enliven. We receive no company in
the prince's absence, so we are utterly cut off from fools; we have
simply none about us.'
'The deprivation is one we are immensely sensible of!' said the
princess.
'Laugh on! you will some day be aware of their importance in daily
life, Ottilia.'
The princess answered: 'If I could hate, it would be such persons.' A
sentence that hung in the memory of one knowing himself to be animated
by the wildest genius of folly.
We drove to the statue of Prince Albrecht Wohlgemuth, overlooking
leagues of snow-roofed branches. Again Ottilia reverted to Temple,
'That dear little friend of yours who wandered out with you to seek
your father, and is now a sailor! I cannot forget him. It strikes me as
a beautiful piece of the heroism of boys. You both crossed the sea to
travel over the whole Continent until you should find him, did you not?
What is hard to understand, is your father's not writing to you while
he did us the favour to reside at the palace.'
'Roy is a butterfly,' said the margravine.
'That I cannot think.'
'Roy was busy, he was occupied. I won't have him abused. Besides, one
can't be always caressing and cajoling one's pretty brats.'
'He is an intensely loving father.'
'Very well; establish that, and what does it matter whether he wrote or
not? A good reputation is the best vindication.'
The princess smiled. 'See here, dearest aunty, the two boys passed half
the night here, until my Aennchen's father gave them shelter.'
'Apparently he passes half or all the night in the open air
everywhere,' said the margravine.
I glanced hurriedly over both faces. The margravine was snuffing her
nostrils up contemptuously. The princess had vividly reddened. Her face
was luminous over the nest of white fur folding her neck.
'Yes, I must have the taste for it: for when I was a child,' said I,
plunging at anything to catch a careless topic, 'I was out in my
father's arms through a winter night, and I still look back on it as
one of the most delightful I have ever known. I wish I could describe
the effect it had on me. A track of blood in the snow could not be
brighter.'
The margravine repeated,
'A track of blood in the snow! My good young man, you have excited
forms of speech.'
I shuddered. Ottilia divined that her burning blush had involved me.
Divination is fiery in the season of blushes, and I, too, fell on the
track of her fair spirit, setting out from the transparent betrayal by
Schwartz of my night-watch in the pine-wood near the Traun river-falls.
My feelings were as if a wave had rolled me helpless to land, at the
margravine's mercy should she put another question. She startled us
with a loud outburst of laughter.
'No! no man upon this earth but Roy could have sat that horse I don't
know how many minutes by the clock, as a figure of bronze,' she
exclaimed.
Ottilia and I exchanged a grave look. The gentleness of the old time
was sweet to us both: but we had the wish that my father's extravagant
prominency in it might be forgotten.
At the dinner-table I made the acquaintance of the Herr Professor Dr.
Julius von Karsteg, tutor to the princess, a grey, broad-headed man,
whose chin remained imbedded in his neck-cloth when his eyelids were
raised on a speaker. The first impression of him was, that he was
chiefly neck-cloth, coat-collar, grand head, and gruffness. He had not
joined the ceremonial step from the reception to the dining saloon, but
had shuffled in from a side-door. No one paid him any deference save
the princess. The margravine had the habit of thrumming the table
thrice as soon as she heard his voice: nor was I displeased by such an
exhibition of impatience, considering that he spoke merely for the
purpose of snubbing me. His powers were placed in evidence by her not
daring to utter a sarcasm, which was possibly the main cause of her
burning fretfulness.
I believe there was not a word uttered by me throughout the dinner that
escaped him. Nevertheless, he did his business of catching and worrying
my poor unwary sentences too neatly for me, an admirer of real force
and aptitude, to feel vindictive. I behaved to him like a gentleman, as
we phrase it, and obtained once an encouraging nod from the margravine.
She leaned to me to say, that they were accustomed to think themselves
lucky if no learned talk came on between the Professor and his pupil.
The truth was, that his residence in Sarkeld was an honour to the
prince, and his acceptance of the tutorship a signal condescension,
accounted for by his appreciation of the princess's intelligence. He
was a man distinguished even in Germany for scholarship, rather
notorious for his political and social opinions too. The margravine,
with infinite humour in her countenance, informed me that he wished to
fit the princess for the dignity of a Doctor of Laws.
'It says much for her that he has not spoilt her manners; her health,
you know, he succeeded in almost totally destroying, and he is at it
again. The man is, I suspect, at heart arrant Republican. He may teach
a girl whatever nonsensical politics he likes—it goes at the lifting of
the bridegroom's little finger. We could not permit him to be near a
young prince. Alas! we have none.'
The Professor allowed himself extraordinary liberties with strangers,
the guests of the margravine. I met him crossing an inner court next
day. He interrupted me in the middle of a commonplace remark, and to
this effect:
'You are either a most fortunate or a most unfortunate young man!'
So profoundly penetrated with thoughtfulness was the tone of his voice
that I could not take umbrage. The attempt to analyze his signification
cost me an aching forehead, perhaps because I knew it too acutely.