It was nearly eight in the evening, and still bright daylight, when
on the fourth of June the closed carriage drove from the station to
the Schloss Strasse. The wedding ceremony in Berlin, a civil affair
at which Scherer and Tauernheim had acted as witnesses, had taken
only ten minutes. Herr von Wassilko's distant attitude made it
desirable to postpone a visit to him; Sidney had gone away; there was
to be no religious consecration of the marriage; and public mourning
for the late prince had been a good excuse for dispensing with a
reception at the little palace--a formality which would have loosed a
flood of questions of etiquette.
Eduard had wanted to catch the startled burghers when they were still
in the initial confusion into which they had been thrown by the
double interment, a regency, the death of the old prince, another
funeral ceremony which had been attended by the emperor, the
accession, and the taking of the coronation oath--a series of events
which had given quiet people enough to talk about for a long time to
come. When the news leaked out that the new sovereign prince
(concerning whom the darkest rumours were already ripe) had made a
left-handed marriage to a young woman of whom practically nothing was
known, except that she had been the mistress of a count, and so on,
and so on, their capacity for excitement had been exhausted, their
minds had been saturated with alarms and crises, and they accepted
the accomplished fact as one of heaven's decrees. Some even found
the news interesting, looked up the record of similar marriages in
Becker's Universal History, and noted that the children of morganatic
unions had sometimes been granted the right of succession by the
emperor and the estates of the realm. According to the latest
researches, a crossing of blood was useful, and was certainly
preferable to the inroad of strange collaterals into their beloved
country.
When, in the end, the news was generally accepted as true, people
found it impossible to stay at home. Though music and banners were
out of the question because of the public mourning, and though it was
late in the evening, as if by common consent they had decided to
celebrate the occasion by sporting their new summer clothes which at
so sad a Whitsuntide would otherwise have been left in wardrobes and
drawers.
Amid multifarious duties, Eduard had found time to look forward in
particular to this one evening. Accustomed as he had been, for a
long time now, to think of Diana in situations in which he was used
to seeing other women and chiefly women of his own order, and to
watch her adapting herself to all aspects of reality--he now
perceived in her restrained but free demeanour a confirmation of his
premonitions. Thus it had been when the old minister of State had
been introduced to her; again, at the wedding; again, when she had
said good-bye to Scherer; again, when the station master had paid his
respects; again, on getting into the carriage. Consequently, when
they were driving to the palace he could talk to her as easily as if
she had been to the manner born.
"Look, Diana," he said. "They are wearing tall hats, although it is
late in the evening. Highly respectable people, ours!"
"Why are they all standing on one side of the street?"
"Because they thought you'd be sitting on my left."
Diana laughed behind her black veil, but so tonelessly that he was
alarmed when he remembered how frank was her usual laughter,
realizing that a constraint was for the first time imposing itself on
her. To mask his embarrassment, he said:
"Houses pretty low, aren't they? Better than tall barracks!"
"And healthier," she rejoined.
"Do you find the cobbles very rough to drive over?"
"Not a bit."
"Schloss Strasse is going to be repaired soon."
"That will be a good thing."
"It has an excellent bridle path along the side."
"Is that so? Where does it go to?"
"Pretty farmsteads, good farmers, fresh milk."
"How lovely," she said, while thinking to herself: "He is the best of
men, and I am driving straight into the blue of heaven."
"She is tired," mused he; "or sad. I wonder if a glass of champagne
would do her good when we get in?"
"If only I could be vouchsafed a sign," thought Diana, as she sighted
the castle tower.
Now, when the carriage made an unexpected turn, and a wide space in
front of the castle opened into view, the sun, close to the horizon,
dipped behind a small, thick cloud, lighting up its irregular edge
with as much power as at high noon. Diana's heart beat furiously,
but Eduard did not see what she was looking at, for his own gaze was
fixed on the gates, to see if all his directions had been carried out.
Two servants, the minimum number allowed by court etiquette, were
standing on the threshold; and in other respects, likewise, he had
had the standard of reception kept down to that proper to a country
mansion. On the first floor he led Diana into a little suite of
panelled rooms. They were quite unpretentious, and yet Diana felt
that he had chosen every curtain, every chair, every vase, expressly
for her. She went over to the bay window, looked out into the open,
and began to talk to the ancient walnut tree which towered up to the
third story.
"How it rustles," she said in a low tone, turning to him.
"It is welcoming you," he answered.
"How many generations has it greeted already?"
"Three, or perhaps four."
"Are we the fifth? Five is a lucky number."
She sat down on the deep window seat in the bay, and, as she motioned
him to her side, he saw her smile for the first time in her
reflective way.
He seized her hand.
"Are you sad?"
"A little."
"Are you tired?"
"Not very."
"Are you ready for your dinner?"
"Yes."
He rang, and to the servant who answered, he said:
"The countess wishes to have dinner served."
"Very good, Your Highness."
The formality and baldness of these few words, the mechanical
appearance and disappearance of the lackey, had all at once revived
Diana's spirits. Sportively, as he turned back towards her, she
flung her arms round his neck and exclaimed:
"Oh you! That was much older than the walnut tree. It dated from
the Thirty Years' War!"
He was a trifle astonished, having given the order quite
mechanically; but he was glad that the tension had been relieved. He
said:
"Are you going to dress for dinner?"
"Very good, Your Highness!"
They dined at a small round table, waited on by two footmen who
discreetly watched their prince's young wife in her low-cut dress
with its crape edging, and noted that her short curls escaped from
the mourning bonnet prescribed by custom. Diana and Eduard,
meanwhile, refreshed by food and good wine, and enlivened by the
conversation they had carried on in French, had recovered their
natural gaiety. Having led her back to her boudoir, he said:
"Would your ladyship rather smoke her cigarette on deck?"
"Don't you think it rather too windy tonight, Prince?"
"North-west, eleven knots, we'll have to take in a reef!"
"And Giorgino?"
"Dr. Sergievitch must climb into the rigging."
The name had been spoken. As they sat opposite one another in the
wide, tapestried chairs, Eduard saw a shade flit across her face, as
if rising from her heart. But now he felt sure of himself, sitting
under his forefathers' roof, with his ring on Diana's finger. Taking
the bull by the horns, he said:
"With regard to Sergievitch, I have made sure of him for us."
"Us?" Diana gripped the arm of her chair.
"I mean, for this little country of mine."
"In what way?"
"I wrote to him before my father's death to ask whether he would be
willing to attend to the much neglected matter of working-class
welfare in this part of the world. He is an expert, took his degree
in kindred topics, and would long since have been called to a
professional chair in Leipzig or elsewhere had he not been a Russian.
Since he is a foreigner, I shall have to make him accessory to our
little ministry. Nominally he'll be librarian, though of course we
have one or two learned men of our own to attend to that work. Does
the idea please you?"
She smiled.
"What have I got to do with the matter?"
"Everything, Diana," he said gravely.
Standing up, he moved to lay his hand on her head. The bonnet was in
his way, and he gently removed it.
"When did you write to him?"
"Some time during the week between my arrival and my father's death.
Why do you ask?"
She thought: "The Russian kept that to himself when we met outside
the jeweller's. Why? And why should Eduard single out this man in
particular?"
She said:
"Eduard?"
"How pale you are."
"Why did you summon this Russian?"
Removing his hand from, her head, he strode twice up and down the
room, and then, stopping short in front of her, said uneasily:
"Why? Not for the sake of welfare work or a library. We travelled
to Vienna in the night train, and were arguing the whole time, as
usual. I wanted to make sure that this explosive material would be
safely housed. A hygienic precaution. The fellow incorporates the
future, and we--we want to make the impossible possible, here, in
Germany, the first, the only ones: you, and I!"
"Do you want a revolution?" she asked quietly.
"If I did, I should have renounced you, and should not have worried
you today by putting that ring on your finger. What I want is that
the call of the dissatisfied should always sound in my ears. While
we are modernizing ourselves here, I want to go on hearing the voice
which says: 'All that, so far, has achieved nothing!' Sergievitch
represents the spire of a Gothic cathedral...."
While he still contemplated in imagination the figure of the handsome
Russian, he turned the new ring round and round on his finger.
Diana, standing up, said resolutely:
"You are young, and I, too, am still young! We will build a great
work and make a splendid road! Whomsoever we need, we will swallow
without winking, were it even a bomb-thrower!"
She stood in front of him, the brown eyes flashing into his blue
ones. A wave of perfect happiness flowed through his taut frame.
His eyes were fixed on the young woman who, after long hesitation,
was at length to become his; he took note of the black trimming on
her gown. Slowly stretching out his hand to her breast, he
unfastened her brooch, she raised her arms a little, laughing at this
sport of love. In the same deliberate way, he removed the sign of
mourning from her shoulders, a double veil, which he dropped to the
floor behind her. He looked at her, his lips trembling slightly.
Then, precipitately, he clasped her in his arms.