OTTILIA
She was on horseback; I on foot, Schwartz for sole witness, and a wide
space of rolling silent white country around us.
We had met in the fall of the winter noon by accident. 'You like my
Professor?' said Ottilia.
'I do: I respect him for his learning.'
'You forgive him his irony? It is not meant to be personal to you.
England is the object; and partly, I may tell you, it springs from
jealousy. You have such wealth! You embrace half the world: you are
such a little island! All this is wonderful. The bitterness is, you are
such a mindless people—I do but quote to explain my Professor's ideas.
“Mindless,” he says, “and arrogant, and neither in the material nor in
the spiritual kingdom of noble or gracious stature, and ceasing to have
a brave aspect.” He calls you squat Goths. Can you bear to hear me?'
'Princess!'
'And to his conception, you, who were pioneers when the earth had to be
shaped for implements and dug for gold, will turn upon us and stop our
march; you are to be overthrown and left behind, there to gain humility
from the only teacher you can understand—from poverty. Will you defend
yourself?'
'Well, no, frankly, I will not. The proper defence for a nation is its
history.'
'For an individual?'
'For a man, his readiness to abide by his word.'
'For a woman—what?'
'For a princess, her ancestry.'
'Ah! but I spoke of women. There, there is my ground of love for my
Professor! I meet my equals, princes, princesses, and the man, the
woman, is out of them, gone, flown! They are out of the tide of
humanity; they are walking titles, “Now,” says my Professor, “that tide
is the blood of our being; the blood is the life-giver; and to be cut
off from it is to perish.” Our princely houses he esteems as dead wood.
Not near so much say I: yet I hear my equals talk, and I think, “Oh! my
Professor, they testify to your wisdom.” I love him because he has
given my every sense a face-forward attitude (you will complain of my
feebleness of speech) to exterior existence. There is a princely view
of life which is a true one; but it is a false one if it is the sole
one. In your Parliament your House of Commons shows us real princes,
your Throne merely titled ones. I speak what everybody knows, and you,
I am sure, are astonished to hear me.'
'I am,' said I.
'It is owing to my Professor, my mind's father and mother. They say it
is the pleasure of low-born people to feel themselves princes; mine it
is to share their natural feelings. “For a princess, her ancestry.”
Yes; but for a princess who is no more than princess, her ancestors are
a bundle of faggots, and she, with her mind and heart tied fast to
them, is, at least a good half of her, dead wood. This is our opinion.
May I guess at your thoughts?'
'It's more than I could dare to do myself, princess.'
How different from the Ottilia I had known, or could have imagined!
That was one thought.
'Out of the number, then, this,' she resumed: 'you think that your
English young ladies have command over their tongues: is it not so?'
'There are prattlers among them.'
'Are they educated strictly?'
'I know little of them. They seem to me to be educated to conceal their
education.'
'They reject ideas?'
'It is uncertain whether they have had the offer.'
Ottilia smiled. 'Would it be a home in their midst?'
Something moved my soul to lift wings, but the passion sank.
'I questioned you of English ladies,' she resumed, 'because we read
your writings of us. Your kindness to us is that which passes from
nurse to infant; your criticism reminds one of paedagogue and urchin.
You make us sorry for our manners and habits, if they are so bad; but
most of all you are merry at our simplicity. Not only we say what we
feel, we display it. Now, I am so German, this offence is especially
mine.'
I touched her horse's neck, and said, 'I have not seen it.'
'Yet you understand me. You know me well. How is that?'
The murmur of honest confession came from me: 'I have seen it!'
She laughed. 'I bring you to be German, you see. Could you forsake your
England?'
'Instantly, though not willingly.'
'Not regrettingly?'
'Cheerfully, if I had my work and my—my friend.'
'No; but well I know a man's field of labour is his country. You have
your ambition.'
'Yes, now I have.'
She struck a fir-branch with her riding-whip, scattering flakes on my
head. 'Would that extinguish it?'
'In the form of an avalanche perhaps it would.'
'Then you make your aims a part of your life?'
'I do.'
'Then you win! or it is written of you that you never knew failure! So
with me. I set my life upon my aim when I feel that the object is of
true worth. I win, or death hides from me my missing it.
This I look to; this obtains my Professor's nod, and the approval of my
conscience. Worthiness, however!—the mind must be trained to discern
it. We can err very easily in youth; and to find ourselves shooting at
a false mark uncontrollably must be a cruel thing. I cannot say it is
undeserving the scourge of derision. Do you know yourself? I do not;
and I am told by my Professor that it is the sole subject to which you
should not give a close attention. I can believe him. For who beguiles
so much as Self? Tell her to play, she plays her sweetest. Lurk to
surprise her, and what a serpent she becomes! She is not to be aware
that you are watching her. You have to review her acts, observe her
methods. Always be above her; then by-and-by you catch her hesitating
at cross-roads; then she is bare: you catch her bewailing or exulting;
then she can no longer pretend she is other than she seems. I make self
the feminine, for she is the weaker, and the soul has to purify and
raise her. On that point my Professor and I disagree. Dr. Julius,
unlike our modern Germans, esteems women over men, or it is a further
stroke of his irony. He does not think your English ladies have heads:
of us he is proud as a laurelled poet. Have I talked you dumb?'
'Princess, you have given me matter to think upon.'
She shook her head, smiling with closed eyelids.
I, now that speech had been summoned to my lips, could not restrain it,
and proceeded, scarcely governing the words, quite without ideas; 'For
you to be indifferent to rank—yes, you may well be; you have intellect;
you are high above me in both—' So on, against good taste and common
sense.
She cried: 'Oh! no compliments from you to me. I will receive them, if
you please, by deputy. Let my Professor hear your immense admiration
for his pupil's accomplishments. Hear him then in return! He will beat
at me like the rainy West wind on a lily. “See,” he will say, when I am
broken and bespattered, “she is fair, she is stately, is she not!” And
really I feel, at the sound of praise, though I like it, that the
opposite, satire, condemnation, has its good right to pelt me. Look;
there is the tower, there's the statue, and under that line of
pine-trees the path we ran up;—“dear English boys!” as I remember
saying to myself; and what did you say of me?'
Her hand was hanging loose. I grasped it. She drew a sudden long
breath, and murmured, without fretting to disengage herself,
'My friend, not that!'
Her voice carried an unmistakeable command. I kissed above the fingers
and released them.
'Are you still able to run?' said she, leading with an easy canter,
face averted. She put on fresh speed; I was outstripped.
Had she quitted me in anger? Had she parted from me out of view of the
villa windows to make it possible for us to meet accidentally again in
the shadow of her old protecting Warhead, as we named him from his
appearance, gaunt Schwartz?