A STUDENT OF LOVE AFFAIRS.
The departure to Biarritz was carried through without further overt
hostilities. It chanced to be holidays with me, all my tutors were on
their vacation, my governor, Vohrenlorf, on a visit at Berlin. Hearing
of my solitude, he insisted on making arrangements to return speedily;
but for a few days I was left quite alone, saving for the presence of my
French body-servant Baptiste. I liked Baptiste; he was by conviction an
anarchist, by prejudice a freethinker; one shrug of his shoulders
disposed of the institutions of this world, another relegated the next
to the limbo of delusions. He was always respectful, but possessed an
unconquerably intimate manner; he could not forget that man spoke to
man, although one might be putting on the other's boots for him. He
regarded me with mingled affection and pity. I had overheard him
speaking of _le pauvre petit roi_; the point of view was so much my own
that from the instant my heart went out to Baptiste. Since he attributed
to me no sacro-sanctity, he was not officious or persistent in his
attendance while he was on duty; in fact he left me very much to my own
devices. To my mother he was polite but cold; he adored Victoria,
declaring that she was worthy of being French; his great hatred was for
Hammerfeldt, whom he accused of embodying the devil of Teutonism.
Hammerfeldt was aware of his feelings and played with them, while he
trusted Baptiste more than anybody about me. He did not know how
attached I was to the Frenchman, and I did not intend that he should
learn. I had received a sharp lesson with regard to parading my
preferences.
It was through Baptiste that I heard of Baron Fritz's side of the case,
for Baptiste was friendly with Fritz's servants. The Baron, it appeared,
was in despair. "They watch him when he walks by the river," declared
Baptiste with a gesture in which dismay and satisfaction were curiously
blended.
"Poor fellow!" said I, leaning back in the stern of the boat. To be in
such a state on Victoria's account was odd and deplorable.
Baptiste laid down the sculls and leaned forward smiling.
"It is nothing, sire," said he. "It must happen now and again to all of
us. M. le Baron will soon be well. Meanwhile he is--oh, miserable!"
"Is he all alone there?" I asked.
"Absolutely, sire. He will see nobody."
I looked up at Waldenweiter.
"He has not even his mother with him," said Baptiste; the remark, as
Baptiste delivered it, was impertinent, and yet so intangibly
impertinent as to afford no handle for reproof. He meant that the Baron
was free from an aggravation; he said that he lacked a consolation.
"Shall I go and see him?" I asked. In truth I was rather curious about
him; it was a pleasure to me to break out of my own surroundings.
"What would the Prince say?" said Baptiste.
"He need not know. Row ashore there."
"You must not go, sire. It would be known, and they would say----"
Baptiste's shrug was eloquent.
"Do they always talk about everything one does?"
"Certainly, sire, it is your privilege," smiled my servant. "But I think
he might come to you. That could be managed; not in the Schloss, but in
the wood, quite privately. I can contrive it."
Baptiste did contrive it, and Baron Fritz came. I was now just too old
to scorn love, just too young to sympathize fully with it. There is that
age in a boy's life, but since he holds his tongue about it, it is apt
to escape notice, and people jest on the sudden change in his attitude
toward women. Nothing in nature is sudden; no more, then, is this
transition. I looked curiously at Fritz; he was timid with me. I
perceived that he was not an ordinary young nobleman, devoted only to
sport and wine; he had something of Owen's romance, but in him it was
self-centred, not open wide to embrace the universe of things beautiful
and ugly. He thanked me for receiving him in a rather elaborate and
artificial fashion. I wondered at once that he had caught Victoria's
fancy; her temperament seemed too robust for him. He began to speak of
her in some very poetical phrases; he quoted a line of poetry about
Diana and Endymion. I had been made to turn it into Latin verses, and
its sentiment fell cold on my soul. He spoke of his passion with
desperation, and I thought with pride. He said that, happen what might,
his whole life was the Princess's; but he did not mention Victoria's
name, he said "her" with an air of mystery, as though spies lurked in
the woods. There was nobody save Baptiste, standing sentry to guard this
secret meeting. I gave the Baron a cigarette, and lit one myself; I had
begun the habit, though still surreptitiously.
"You must have known there'd be a row?" I suggested.
"Tell me of her!" he cried. "Is she in great grief?"
I did not want to tell him about Victoria; I wanted him to tell me about
himself. As soon as he understood this, I am bound to say that he
gratified me at once. I sat looking at him while he described his
feelings; all at once he turned and discovered my gaze on him.
"Go on," said I.
The Baron appeared uncomfortable. His eyes fell to the ground, and he
tried to puff at his cigarette which he had allowed to go out. I daresay
he thought me a strange boy; but he could not very well say so.
"You don't understand it?" he asked.
"Partly," I answered.
"We never had any hope," said he, almost luxuriously.
"But you enjoyed it very much?" I suggested; I was quite grave about it
in my mind, as well as in my face.
"Ah!" sighed he softly.
"And now it's all over!"
"I see her no more. I think of her. She thinks of me."
"Perhaps," said I meditatively. I was wondering whether they did not
think more about themselves. "Didn't you think you might manage it?"
"Alas, no. Sorrow was always in our joy."
"What are you going to do now?"
"What is there for me to do?" he asked despairingly. "Sometimes I think
that I can not endure to live."
"Baptiste told me that they watched you when you walked by the river."
He turned to me with a very interested expression of face.
"Do they really?" he asked.
"So Baptiste said."
"I promised her that, whatever happened, I would do nothing rash," said
he. "What would her feelings be?"
"We should all be very much distressed," said I, in my best court
manner.
"Ah, the world, the world!" sighed Baron Fritz. Then with an air of
great courage he went on. "Yet, how am I so different from her?"
"I think you are very much alike," said I.
"But she is--a Princess!"
I felt that he was laying a sort of responsibility on me. I could not
help Victoria being a Princess. He laughed bitterly; I seemed to be put
on my defence.
"I think it just as absurd as you do," I hastened to say.
"Absurd!" he echoed. "I didn't say that I thought it absurd. Would not
your Majesty rather say tragic? There must be kings, princes,
princesses--our hearts pay the price."
I was growing rather weary of this Baron, and wondering more and more
what Victoria had discovered in him. But my lack of knowledge led me
into an error; I attributed what wearied me in no degree to the Baron
himself, but altogether to his condition. "This, then, is what it is to
be in love," I was saying to myself; I summoned up the relics of my
scorn once so abundant and vigorous. The Baron perhaps detected the
beginnings of _ennui_; he rose to his feet.
"Forgive me, if I say that your Majesty will understand my feelings
better in two or three years," he observed.
"I suppose I shall," I answered, rather uneasily.
"Meanwhile I must live it down; I must master it."
"It's the only thing to do."
"And she----"
"Oh, she'll get over it," I assured him, nodding my head.
I am inclined sometimes to count it among my misfortunes, that the first
love affair with which I was brought into intimate connection and
confronted at an age still so impressionable, should have been of the
shallow and somewhat artificial character betrayed by the romance of my
sister and Baron Fritz. She was a headstrong girl; longing to exercise
power over men, surprised when a temporary gust of feeling carried her
into an emotion unexpectedly strong; he was a self-conscious fellow,
hugging his woes and delighting in the picturesqueness of his
misfortune. The notion left on my mind was that there was a great deal
of nonsense about the matter. Baptiste strengthened my opinion.
"I ask your pardon, sire," he said with a shrug, "but we know the
sentimentality of the Germans. What is it? Sighs and then beer, more
sighs and more beer, a deluge of sighs and a deluge of beer. A Frenchman
is not like that in his little affairs."
"What does a Frenchman do, Baptiste?" I had the curiosity to ask.
"Ah," laughed Baptiste, "if I told your Majesty now, you would not care
to visit Paris; and I long to go to Paris with your Majesty."
I did not pursue the subject. I was conscious of a disenchantment, begun
by Victoria, continued by the Baron. The reaction made in favour of my
mother. I acknowledged the wisdom of her firmness and an excuse for her
anger. I realized her causes for annoyance and shame, and saw the
hollowness of the lovers' pleas. I had thought the Princess very hard; I
was now inclined to think that she had shown as much self-control as
could be expected from her. Rather to my own surprise I found myself
extending this more favourable judgment of her to other matters,
entering with a new sympathy into her disposition, and even forgiving
some harsh thing which I had never pardoned. The idea suggested itself
to my mind, that even the rigours of the Styrian discipline had a
rational relation to the position which the victims of it were destined
to fill. She might be right in supposing that we could not be allowed
the indulgence accorded to the common run of children. We were destined
for a special purpose, and, if we were not made of a special clay, yet
we must be fashioned into a special shape. It is hard to disentangle the
influence of one event from that exerted by another. Perhaps the loss of
Owen, and the consequently increased influence of Hammerfeldt over my
life and thoughts, had as much to do with my new feelings as Victoria's
love affair; but in any case I date from this time a fresh development
of myself. I was growing into my kingship, beginning to realize the
conception of it, and to fill up that conception in my own mind. This
moment was of importance to me; for it marked the beginning of a period
during which this idea of my position was very dominant and coloured
all I did or thought. I did not change my opinion as to the discomfort
of the post; but its importance, its sacredness, and its paramount
claims grew larger and larger in my eyes. It seems curious, but had
Baron Fritz been a different sort of lover, I think that I should have
been in some respects a different sort of a king. It needs a constant
intellectual effort to believe that there is anything except accident in
the course of the world.
Hammerfeldt's persistent pressure drove the love-lorn Baron, still
undrowned (had the watchers been too vigilant?), on a long foreign tour,
and in three months the Princess and Victoria returned. I saw at once
that the new relations were permanently established between them; my
mother displayed an almost ostentatious abdication of authority; her
whole air declared that since Victoria chose to walk alone, alone in
good truth she should walk. It was the attitude of a proud and
domineering nature that answers any objection to its sway by a wholesale
disclaimer at once of power and responsibility. Victoria accepted her
mother's resolution, but rather with resentment than gratitude. They had
managed the affair badly; my mother had lost influence without gaining
affection; my sister had forfeited guidance but not achieved a true
liberty. She was hardly more her own mistress than before; Hammerfeldt,
screened behind me, now trammelled her, and she had a statesman to deal
with instead of a mother. Only once she spoke to me concerning the Baron
and his affair; the three months had wrought some change here also.
"I was very silly," she said impatiently. "I know that well enough."
"Then why don't you make it up with mother?" I ventured to suggest.
"Mother behaved odiously," she declared. "I can never forgive her the
way she treated me."
The grievance then had shifted its ground; not what the Princess had
done, but the manner in which she had done it was now the head and front
of her offence. It needed little acquaintance with the world to
recognise that matters were not improved by this change; one may come to
recognise that common sense was with the enemy; vanity at once takes
refuge in the conviction that his awkwardness, rudeness, or cruelty in
advancing his case was responsible for all the trouble.
"If she had been kind, I should have seen it all directly," said
Victoria. And in this it may very well be that Victoria was not
altogether wrong.
The position was, however, inconsistent with even moderate comfort.
There was a way of ending it, obvious, I suppose, to everybody save
myself, but seeming rather startling to my youthful mind. In six months
now Victoria would be eighteen, and eighteen is a marriageable age.
Victoria must be married; my mother and Hammerfeldt went
husband-hunting. As soon as I heard of the scheme I was ready with
brotherly sympathy, and even cherished the idea of interposing a
hitherto untried royal veto on such premature haste and cruel forcing of
a girl's inclination. Victoria received my advances with visible
surprise. Did I suppose, she asked, that she was so happy at home as to
shrink from marriage? Would not such a step be rather an emancipation
than a banishment? (I paraphrase and condense her observation.) Did I
not perceive that she must hail the prospect with relief? I was to know
that her mother and herself were at one on this matter; she was obliged
for my kindness, but thought that I need not concern myself in the
matter. Considerably relieved, not less puzzled, with a picture of
Victoria sobbing and the Baron walking (well watched) by the river's
brink, I withdrew from my sister's presence. It occurred to me that to
take a husband in order to escape from a mother was a peculiar step; I
have since seen reason to suppose that it is more common than I
imagined.
The history of my private life is (to speak broadly) the record of the
reaction of my public capacity on my personal position; the effect of
this reaction has been almost uniformly unfortunate. The case of
Victoria's marriage affords a good instance. It might have been that
here at least I should be suffered to play a fraternal and grateful
part. My fate and Hammerfeldt ruled otherwise. There were two persons
who suggested themselves as suitable mates for my sister; one was the
reigning king of a country which I need not name, the other was Prince
William Adolphus of Alt-Gronenstahl, a prince of considerable wealth and
unexceptionable descent but not in the direct succession to a throne,
not likely to occupy a prominent position in Europe. Victoria had never
quite forgiven fortune (or perhaps me either) for not making her a queen
in the first instance; she was eager to repair the error. She came to me
and begged me to exert my influence in behalf of the king, who was
understood through his advisers to favour the suggestion. I was most
happy to second her wishes, although entirely sceptical as to the value
of my assistance. I recollect very well the interview that followed
between Hammerfeldt and myself; throughout the Prince treated me _en
roi_, speaking with absolute candour, disclosing to me the whole
question, and assuming in me an elevation of spirit superior to merely
personal feelings.
"After your Majesty," said he, "the Princess is heir to the throne. We
have received representations that the union of the two countries in one
hand could not be contemplated by the Powers. Now you, sire, are young;
you are and must be for some years unmarried; life is uncertain and"
(here he looked at me steadily) "your physicians are of opinion that
certain seeds of weakness, sown by your severe illness, have not yet
been eradicated from your constitution. It is necessary for me to offer
these observations to your Majesty."
The old man's eyes were very kind.
"It's all right, sir," said I. "Go on."
"We all trust that you may live through a long reign, and that your son
may reign after you. It is, indeed, the only strong wish that I have
left in a world which I have well-nigh done with. But the other
possibility has been set before us and we can not ignore it."
From that moment I myself never ignored it.
"It was suggested that Princess Victoria should renounce her rights of
succession. I need not remind your Majesty that the result would be to
make your cousin Prince Ferdinand heir-presumptive. I desire to speak
with all respect of the Prince, but his succession would be an unmixed
calamity." The Prince took a pinch of snuff.
Ferdinand was very liberal in his theories; and equally so, in a rather
different sense, in his mode of life.
I thought for a moment.
"I shouldn't like the succession to go out of our branch," said I.
"I was sure of it, sire," he said, bowing. "It would break your mother's
heart and mine."
I was greatly troubled. What of my ready inconsiderate promise to
Victoria? And apart from the promise I would most eagerly have helped
her to her way. I had felt severely the lack of confidence and affection
that had recently come about between us; I was hungry for her love, and
hoped to buy it of her gratitude. I believe old Hammerfeldt's keen eyes
saw all that passed in my thoughts. The Styrian teaching had left its
mark on my mind, as had the Styrian discipline on my soul. "God did not
make you king for your own pleasure," Krak used to say with that
instinctive knowledge of the Deity which marks those who train the
young. No, nor for my sister's, nor even that I might conciliate my
sister's love. Nay, again, nor even that I might make my sister happy.
For none of these ends did I sit where I sat. But I felt very forlorn
and sad as I looked at the old Prince.
"Victoria will be very angry," said I. "I wanted to please her so much."
"The Princess has her duties, and will recognise yours," he answered.
"Of course, if I die it'll be all right. But if I live she'll say I did
it just out of ill-nature."
The old man rose from his chair, laying his snuffbox on the table by
him. He came up to me and held out both his hands; I put mine into them,
and looked up into his face. It was moved by a most rare emotion. I had
never seen him like this before.
"Sire," said he in a low tone, "do not think that nobody loves you; for
from that mood it may come that a man will love nobody. There is an old
man that loves you, as he loved your father and your grandfather; and
your people shall love you." He bent down and kissed me on either cheek.
Then he released my hands and stood before me. There was a long silence.
Then he said:
"Have I your Majesty's authority and support in acting for the good of
the kingdom?"
"Yes," said I.
But, alas! for Victoria's hopes, ambitions, and vanity for her crown,
and her crowned husband. Alas, poor sister! And, alas, poor brother,
hungry to be friends again!