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.