JUST WHAT WOULD HAPPEN.
Soon after my return my mother and I went into residence at Forstadt. My
time was divided between mastering my public duties under Hammerfeldt's
tuition, and playing a prominent part in the gaieties of the capital.
Just now I was on cordial, if not exactly intimate, terms with the
Princess. She appeared to have resigned herself to Hammerfeldt's
preponderating influence in political affairs, and to accept in
compensation the office of mentor and guide in all social matters. I was
happy in the establishment of a _modus vivendi_ which left me tolerably
free from the harassing trifles of ceremonial and etiquette. To
Hammerfeldt's instructions I listened with avidity and showed a
deference which did not forbid secret criticism. He worked me hard; the
truth is (and it was not then hidden either from him or from me) that
his strength was failing; age had not bent, but it threatened to break
him; the time was short in which he could hope to be by my side, binding
his principles and rivetting his methods on me. He was too shrewd not to
detect in me a curiosity of intellect that only the strongest and
deepest prepossessions could restrain; these it was his untiring effort
to create in my mind and to buttress till they were impregnable. To some
extent he attained his object, but his success was limited; and his
teaching affected by what I can only call a modernness of temperament in
me, which no force of tradition wholly destroyed or stifled. That many
things must be treated as beyond question was the fruit of his maxims;
it is a position which I have never been able to adopt; with me the acid
of doubt bit into every axiom. I took pleasure in the society and
arguments of the liberal politicians and journalists who began to
frequent the court as soon as a rumour of my inclinations spread. I
became the centre and object of a contention between the Right and the
Left, between Conservative and Liberal forces--or, if I apply to each
party the nickname accorded to it by the enemy, between the Reaction and
the Revolution.
Doubtless all this will find an accomplished, and possibly an impartial,
historian. Its significance for these personal memoirs is due chiefly to
the accidental fact that, whereas my mother was the social centre of the
orthodox party and in that capacity gave solid aid to Hammerfeldt, the
unorthodox gathered round the Countess von Sempach. Her husband was
considered no more than a good soldier, a man of high rank, and a
devoted husband; by her own talents and charm this remarkable woman,
although a foreigner, had achieved for herself a position of great
influence. She renewed the glories of the political _salon_ in Forstadt;
but she never talked politics. Eminent men discussed deep secrets with
one another in her rooms. She was content to please their taste without
straining their intellects or seeking to rival them in argument. By the
abdication of a doubtful claim she reigned absolute in her own dominion.
It was from studying her that I first learned both how far-reaching is
the inspiration of a woman's personality, and how it gathers and
conserves strength by remaining within its own boundaries and refusing
alien conquests. The men of the Princess's party, from Hammerfeldt
downward, were sometimes impatient of her suggestions and attempted
control; the Countess's friends were never aware that they received
suggestions, and imagined themselves to exercise control. I think that
the old Prince was almost alone in penetrating the secret of the real
power his charming enemy exercised and the extent of it. They were very
cordial to one another.
"Madame," he said to her once, "you might convince me of anything if I
were not too old."
"Why, Prince," she cried, "you are not going to pretend that your mind
has grown old?"
"No, Countess, my feelings," he replied with a smile. Her answer was a
blush.
This was told to me by Wetter, a young and very brilliant journalist who
had once given me lessons in philosophy, and with whom I maintained a
friendship in spite of his ultra-radical politics. He reminded me now
and then of Geoffrey Owen, but his enthusiasm was of a dryer sort; not
humanity, but the abstract idea of progress inspired him; not the
abolition of individual suffering, but the perfecting of his logical
conceptions in the sphere of politics was his stimulating hope. And
there was in him a strong alloy of personal ambition and a stronger of
personal passion. Rather to my surprise Hammerfeldt showed no uneasiness
at my friendship with him; I joked once on the subject and he answered:
"Wetter only appeals to your intellect, sire. There I am not afraid
now."
His answer, denying one apprehension, hinted another. It will cause no
surprise that I had renewed an old acquaintance with the Countess, and
had been present at a dinner in her house. More than this, I fell into
the habit of attending her receptions on Wednesdays; on this night all
parties were welcome, and the gathering was by way of being strictly
non-political. Strictly non-political also were the calls that I made in
the dusk of the evening, when she would recall our earlier meetings, our
glances exchanged, our thoughts of one another, and lead me to talk of
my boyhood. These things did not appeal only to the intellect of a youth
of eighteen or nineteen when they proceeded from the lips of a beautiful
and brilliant woman of twenty-eight.
I approach a very common occurrence; but in my case its progress and
result were specially modified and conditioned. There was the political
aspect, looming large to the alarmed Right; there was the struggle for
more intimate influence over me, in which my mother fought with a grim
intensity; in my own mind there was always the curious dim presence of
an inexorable fate that wore the incongruous mask of Elsa's baby face.
All these were present to me in their full force during the earlier
period of my friendship with the Countess, when I was still concealing
from myself as well as from her and all the world that I could ever
desire to have more than friendship. The first stages past, there came a
time when the secret was still kept from all save myself, but when I
knew it with an exultation not to be conquered, with a dread and a shame
that tormented while they could not prevail. But I went more and more to
her house. I had no evil intent; nay, I had no intent at all in my
going; I could not keep away. She alone had come to satisfy me; with her
alone, all of me--thoughts, feelings, eyes, and ears--seemed to find
some cause for exercise and a worthy employment of their life. The other
presences in my mind grew fainter and intermittent in their visits; I
gave myself up to the stream and floated down the current. Yet I was
never altogether forgetful nor blind to what I did; I knew the
transformation that had come over my friendship; to myself now I could
not but call it love; I knew that others in the palace, in the
chancellery, in drawing-rooms, in newspaper offices, ay, perhaps even in
the very street, called it now, not the king's friendship nor the king's
love, but the king's infatuation. Not even then could I lose altogether
the external view of myself.
We were sitting by the fire one evening in the twilight; she was playing
with a hand-screen, but suffering the flames to paint her face and throw
into relief the sensitive merry lips and the eyes so full of varied
meanings. She had told me to go, and I had not gone; she leaned back
and, after one glance of reproof, fixed her regard on the polished tip
of her shoe that rested on the fender. She meant that she would talk no
more to me; that in her estimation, since I had no business to stay, I
was already gone. An impulse seized me. I do not know what I hoped nor
why that moment broke the silence which I had imposed on myself. But I
told her about the little, fair, chubby child at the Castle of
Bartenstein. I watched her closely, but her eyes never strayed from her
shoe-tip. Well, she had never said a word that showed any concern in
such a matter; even I had done little more than look and hint and come.
[Illustration: The firelight played on the hand that held the screen.]
"It's as if they meant me to marry Toté," I ended. Toté was the pet name
by which we called her own eight-year-old daughter.
The Countess broke her wilful silence, but did not change the direction
of her eyes.
"If Toté were of the proper station," she said ironically, "she'd be
just right for you by the time you're both grown up."
"And you'd be mother-in-law?"
"I should be too old to plague you. I should just sit in my corner in
the sun."
"The sun is always in your corner."
"Don't be so complimentary," she said with a sudden twitching of her
lips. "I shall have to stand up and curtsey, and I don't want to.
Besides, you oughtn't to know how to say things like that, ought you,
Cæsar?"
Cæsar was my--shall I say pet-name?--used when we were alone or with
Count Max, only in a playful satire.
A silence followed for some time. At last she glanced toward me.
"Not gone yet?" said she, raising her brows. "What will the Princess
say?"
"I go when I please," said I, resenting the question as I was meant to
resent it.
"Yes. Certainly not when I please."
Our eyes met now; suddenly she blushed, and then interposed the screen
between herself and me. A glorious thrill of youthful triumph ran
through me; she had paid her first tribute to my manhood in that blush;
the offering was small, but, for its significance, frankincense and
myrrh to me.
"I thought you came to talk about Wetter's Bill," she suggested
presently in a voice lower than her usual tones.
"The deuce take Wetter's Bill," said I.
"I am very interested in it."
"Just now?"
"Even just now, Cæsar." I heard a little laugh behind the screen.
"Hammerfeldt hates it," said I.
"Oh, then that settles it. You'll be against us, of course!"
"Why of course?"
"You always do as the Prince tells you, don't you?"
"Unless somebody more powerful forbids me."
"Who is more powerful--except Cæsar himself?"
I made no answer, but I rose and, crossing the rug, stood by her. I
remember the look and the feel of the room very well; she lay back in a
low chair upholstered in blue; the firelight, forbidden her face, played
on the hand that held the screen, flushing its white to red. I could see
her hair gleaming in the fantastically varying light that the flames
gave as they left and fell. I was in a tumult of excitement and
timidity.
"More powerful than Cæsar?" I asked, and my voice shook.
"Don't call yourself Cæsar."
"Why not?"
There was a momentary hesitation before the answer came low:
"Because you mustn't laugh at yourself. I may laugh at you, but you
mustn't yourself."
I wondered at the words, the tone, the strange diffidence that infected
even a speech so full of her gay bravery. A moment later she added a
reason for her command.
"You're so absurd that you mustn't laugh at yourself. And, Cæsar, if
you stay any longer, or--come again soon--other people will laugh at
you."
To this day I do not know whether she meant to give a genuine warning,
or to strike a chord that should sound back defiance.
"If ten thousand of them laugh, what is it to me? They dare laugh only
behind my back," I said.
She laughed before my face; the screen fell, and she laughed, saying
softly, "Cæsar, Cæsar!"
I was wonderfully happy in my perturbation. The great charm she had for
me was to-day alloyed less than ever before by the sense of rawness
which she, above all others, could compel me to feel. To-day she herself
was not wholly calm, not mistress of herself without a struggle, without
her moments of faintness. Yet now she appeared composed again, and there
was nothing but merriment in her eyes. She seemed to have forgotten that
I was supposed to be gone. I daresay that not to her, any more than to
myself, could I seem quite like an ordinary boy; perhaps the more I
forgot what was peculiar about me the more she remembered it, my
oblivion serving to point her triumph.
"And the Princess?" she asked, laughing still, but now again a little
nervously.
My exultation, finding vent in mischief and impelled by curiosity, drove
me to a venture.
"I shall tell the Princess that I kissed you," said I.
The Countess suddenly sat upright.
"And that you kissed me--several times," I continued.
"How dare you?" she cried in a whisper; and her cheeks flamed in
blushes and in firelight. My little device was a triumph. I began to
laugh.
"Oh, of course, if she asks me when," I added, "I shall confess that it
was ten years ago."
Many emotions mingled in my companion's glance as she sank back in her
chair; she was indignant at the trap, amused at having been caught in
it, not fully relieved from embarrassment, not wholly convinced that the
explanation of my daring speech covered all the intent with which it had
been uttered, perhaps not desirous of being convinced too thoroughly. A
long pause followed. Timidity held me back from further advance. For
that evening enough seemed to have passed; I had made a start--to go
further might be to risk all. I was about to take my leave when she
looked up again, saying:
"And about Wetter's Bill, Cæsar?"
"You know I can do nothing."
"Can Cæsar do nothing? If you were known to favour it fifty votes would
be changed." Her face was eager and animated. I looked down at her and
smiled. She flushed again, and cried hastily:
"No, no, never mind; at least, not to-night."
I suppose that my smile persisted, and was not a mirthful one. It
stirred anger and resentment in her.
"I know why you're smiling," she exclaimed. "I suppose that when I was
kind to you as a baby, I wanted something from you too, did I?"
She had detected the thought that had come so inevitably into my mind,
that she should resent it so passionately almost persuaded me of its
injustice. I turned from it to the pleasant memory of her earlier
impulsive kindness. I put out my hands and grasped hers. She let me hold
them for an instant and then drew them away. She gave rather a forced
laugh.
"You're too young to be bothered about Bills," she said, "and too young
for--for all sorts of other things, too. Run away; never mind me with my
Bills and my wrinkles."
"Your wrinkles!"
"Oh, if not now, in a year or two; by the time you're ready to marry
Elsa."
As she spoke she rose and stood facing me. A new sense of her beauty
came over me; her beauty's tragedy, already before her eyes, was to me
remote and impossible. Because it was not yet very near she exaggerated
its nearness; because it was inevitable I turned away from it. Indeed,
who could remember, seeing her then? Who save herself, as she looked on
my youth?
"You'll soon be old and ugly?" I asked, laughing.
"Yes, soon; it will seem very soon to you."
"What's the moral?" said I.
She laughed uneasily, twisting the screen in her hands. For an instant
she raised her eyes to mine, and as they dropped again she whispered:
"A short life and a merry one?"
My hand flew out to her again; she took it, and, after a laughing
glance, curtseyed low over it, as though in formal farewell. I had not
meant that, and laughed in my turn.
"I shan't be old--well, by to-morrow," she murmured, and glanced
ostentatiously at the clock.
"May I come to-morrow?"
"I never invite you."
"Shall you be here?"
"It's not one of my receiving days."
"I like a good chance better than a poor certainty. At least there will
be nobody else here."
"Max, perhaps."
"I don't think so."
"You don't think so? What do you mean by that, Cæsar? No, I don't want
to know. I believe it was impertinent. Are you going?"
"Yes," said I, "when I have kissed your hand."
She said nothing, but held it out to me. She smiled, but there seemed to
me to be pain in her eyes. I pressed her hand to my lips and went out
without speaking again. As I closed the door I heard her fling herself
back into her chair with a curious little sound, half-cry, half-sigh.
I left the house quickly and silently; no servant was summoned to escort
me. I walked a few yards along the street to where Wetter lived. My
carriage was ordered to come for me at Wetter's; it had not yet arrived.
To be known to visit Wetter was to accept the blame of a smaller
indiscretion as the price of hiding a greater. The deputy was at home,
writing in his study; he received me with an admirable unconsciousness
of where I had come from. I was still in a state of excitement, and was
glad to sit smoking quietly while his animated, fluent talk ran on. He
was full of this Bill of his, and explained its provisions to me with
the air of desiring that I should understand its spirit and aim, and of
being willing then to leave it to my candid consideration. He did not
attempt to blink the difficulties.
"Of course we have the Prince and all the party of Reaction against us,"
he said. "But your Majesty is not a member of any party."
"Not even of yours yet," said I with a laugh.
He laughed in his turn, openly and merrily.
"I'm a poor schemer," he said. "But I don't know why it should be wrong
for you to hear my views any more than Hammerfeldt's."
The servant entered and announced the arrival of my carriage. Wetter
escorted me to it.
"I'll promise not to mention the Bill, if you'll honour me by coming
again, sire," he said as he held the brougham door.
"I shall be delighted to come again; I like to hear about it," I
answered. His bow and smile conveyed absolutely nothing but a respectful
gratification and a friendly pleasure. Yet he knew that the situation of
his house was more responsible for my visit than the interest of his
projects.
In part I saw clear enough even at this time. It was the design and hope
of Wetter and his friends to break down Hammerfeldt's power and obtain a
political influence over me. Hammerfeldt's political dominance seemed to
them to be based on a personal ascendency; this they must contrive to
match. Their instrument was not far to seek. The Countess was ready to
their hand, a beautiful woman, sharpest weapon of all in such a strife.
They put her forward against the Prince in the fight whereof I was the
prize. All this I saw, against it all I was forewarned, and forearmed.
Knowledge gave security. But there was more, and here with the failure
of insight safety was compromised. What was her mind? What was her part,
not as it seemed to these busy politicians, but as her own heart taught
it her? Here came to me the excitement of uncertainty, the impulse of
youth, the prick of vanity, the longing for that intimate love of which
my life had given me so little. Was I to her also only something to be
used in the game of politics, a tool that she, a defter tool, must
shape and point before it could be of use? I tried to say this to
myself and to make a barrier of the knowledge. But was it all the truth?
Remembering her eyes and tones, her words and hesitations, I could not
accept it for the whole truth. There was more, what more I knew not.
Even if there had been no more I was falling so deep into the gulf of
passion that it crossed my mind to take while I gave; and, if I were to
be used, to exact my hire. In a tumult of these thoughts, embracing now
what in the next moment I rejected, revolting in a sudden fear from the
plan which just before seemed so attractive, I passed the evening and
the night. For I had taken up that mixed heritage of good and evil, of
pain and power, that goes by the name of manhood; and when a new heir
enters on his inheritance there is a time before he can order it.