Part 16

Ditlinde received her brother in a large drawing-room on the first floor with several curved sofas in pale green silk; the back part of the room was separated from the front by slender pillars, and filled with palms, plants in metal bowls, and tables covered with brilliant flowers.

"Good afternoon, Klaus Heinrich," said the Princess. She was delicate and thin, and the only luxuriant thing about her was her fair hair, which used to lie like ram's horns round her ears and now was dressed in thick plaits above her face with its high Grimmburg cheek-bones. She wore an indoor dress of soft blue-grey stuff with a white lace collar, cut in a point like a breast-plate and fastened at the waist with an old-fashioned oval brooch. Blue veins and shadows showed here and there through the delicate skin of her face, in the temples, the forehead, at the corners of her soft and calm blue eyes. Signs of approaching maternity were beginning to show themselves.

"Good afternoon, Ditlinde, you and your flowers!" answered Klaus Heinrich, as, clapping his heels together, he bent over her little, white, rather over-broad hand. "How they do smell! And the garden's full of them, I see."

"Yes," she said, "I love flowers. I have always longed to be able to live among quantities of flowers, living, smelling flowers, which I could watch growing--it was a kind of secret wish of mine, Klaus Heinrich, and I might almost say that I married for flowers, for in the Old Schloss, as you know, there were no flowers.... The Old Schloss and flowers! We should have had to rummage a lot to find them, I'm sure. Rat-traps and such things, plenty of them. And really, when one comes to think, the whole thing was like a disused rat-trap, so dusty and horrid ... ugh!..."

"But the rose-bush, Ditlinde."

"Yes, my goodness--one rose-bush. And that's in the guide-books, because its roses smell of decay. And the books say that it will one day smell quite natural and nice, just like any other rose. But I can't believe it."

"You will soon," he said, and looked at her laughingly, "have something better than your flowers to tend, little Ditlinde."

"Yes," she said and blushed lightly and quickly, "yes, Klaus Heinrich, I can hardly believe it. And yet it will be so, if God pleases. But come over here. We'll have a chat together once more...."

The room, on whose threshold they had been talking, was small in comparison with its height, with a grey-blue carpet, and furnished with cheery-looking silver-grey furniture, the chairs of which were upholstered in blue silk. A milk-white china chandelier hung from the white-festooned centre of the ceiling, and the walls were adorned with oil paintings of various sizes, acquisitions of Prince Philipp's, light studies in the new style, representing white goats in the sun, poultry in the sun, sun-bathed meadows and peasants with blinking, sun-sprinkled faces.

The spindle-legged secretaire in the white-curtained window was covered with a hundred carefully arranged articles, knick-knacks, writing materials, and several dainty note-blocks--for the Princess was accustomed to make careful and comprehensive notes about all her duties and plans. In front of the inkstand a housekeeper's book, in which Ditlinde had apparently just been working, lay open, and by the table there hung on the wall a little silk-trimmed block-calendar, under the printed date of which could be seen the pencil note: "5 o'clock: my brothers." Between the sofa and a semicircle of chairs over against the white swing doors into the reception room stood an oval table with a damask cloth and blue-silk border; the flowered tea-service, a jam-pot, long dishes of sweet cakes, and tiny pieces of bread and butter were arranged in ordered disorder on it, and to one side steamed the silver tea-kettle over its spirit-flame on a glass table. But there were flowers everywhere--flowers in the vases on the writing-table, on the tea-table, on the glass table, on the china-cabinet, on the table next the white sofa, and a flower-table full of flower-pots stood in the window.

This room, situated at the side and in a corner of the suite of reception rooms, was Ditlinde's cabinet, her boudoir, the room in which she used to entertain quite intimate friends and to make tea with her own hands. Klaus Heinrich watched her as she washed out the tea-pot with hot water and put the tea in with a silver spoon.

"And Albrecht ... is he coming?" he asked with an involuntarily restrained voice.

"I hope so," she said, bending attentively over the crystal tea-caddy, as if to avoid spilling any tea (and he too avoided looking at her). "I have of course asked him, Klaus Heinrich, but you know he cannot bind himself. It depends on his health whether he comes. I'm making our tea at once, for Albrecht will drink his milk.... Possibly too Jettchen may look in for a bit to-day. You will enjoy seeing her again. She's so lively, and has always got such a lot to tell us."

"Jettchen" meant Fräulein von Isenschnibbe, the Princess's friend and confidant. They had been on Christian-name terms since they were children.

"In armour, too, as usual?" said Ditlinde, placing the filled tea-pot on its stand and examining her brother. "In uniform as usual, Klaus Heinrich?"

He stood with heels together and rubbed his left hand, which was cold, on his chest with his right.

"Yes, Ditlinde, I like it, I'd rather. It fits so tight, you see, and it braces me up. Besides, it is cheaper, for a proper civil wardrobe runs into a terrible lot of money, I believe, and Schulenburg is always going on about how dear things are, without that. So I manage with two or three coats, and yet can show myself in my rich relations' houses."

"Rich relations!" laughed Ditlinde. "Still some way off that, Klaus Heinrich!"

They sat down at the tea-table, Ditlinde on a sofa, Klaus Heinrich on a chair opposite the window.

"Rich relations!" she repeated, and the subject obviously excited her. "No, far from it; how can we expect to be rich, where cash is so short and everything is sunk in various enterprises, Klaus Heinrich? And they are young and in the making, they're all in the development stage, as dear Philipp says, and won't bear full fruit till others have succeeded us. But things are improving, that much is true, and I keep the household straight...."

"Yes, Ditlinde, you do keep it straight and no mistake!"

"Keep it straight, and write everything down and look after the servants, and after all the payments which one's duty to the world demands have been made, there is a nice little sum to put by every year for the children. And dear Philipp.... He sends his greetings, Klaus Heinrich--I forgot, he's very sorry not to be able to be here to-day.... We've only just got back from Hohenried, and there he is already under way, at his office, on his properties--he's small and delicate naturally, but when his peat or his saw-mills are in question he gets red cheeks, and he says himself that he has been much better since he has had so much to do."

"Does he say so?" asked Klaus Heinrich, and a sad look came into his eyes, as he looked straight beyond the flower-table at the bright window.... "Yes, I can quite believe that it must be very stimulating to be so really splendidly busy. In my park too the meadows have been mowed a second time this year already, and I love seeing the hay built up in steep heaps with a stick through the middle of each, looking for all the world like a camp of little Indians' huts, and then Schulenburg intends to sell it. But of course that cannot be compared ..."

"Oh, you!" said Ditlinde, and drew her chin in. "With you it's quite different, Klaus Heinrich! The next to the throne! You are called to other things, I imagine. My goodness, yes! You enjoy your popularity with the people...."

They were silent for a while. Then he said:

"And you, Ditlinde, if I'm not mistaken you're as happy as, even happier than, before. I don't say that you have got red cheeks, like Philipp from his peat; you always were a bit transparent, and you are still. But you look flourishing. I haven't yet asked, since you married, but I think there's nothing to worry about in connexion with you."

She sat in an easy position, with her arm lightly folded across her lap.

"Yes," she said, "I'm all right, Klaus Heinrich, your eyes don't deceive you, and it would be ungrateful of me not to acknowledge my good fortune. You see, I know quite well that many people in the country are disappointed by my marriage and say that I have ruined myself, and demeaned myself, and so on. And such people are not far to seek, for brother Albrecht, as you know as well as I do, in his heart despises my dear Philipp and me into the bargain, and can't abide him, and calls him privately a tradesman and shopkeeper. But that doesn't bother me, for I meant it when I accepted Philipp's hand--seized it, I would say, if it didn't sound so wild--accepted it because it was warm and honest, and offered to take me away from the Old Schloss. For when I look back and think of the Old Schloss and life in it as I should have gone on living if it had not been for dear Philipp, I shudder, Klaus Heinrich, and I feel that I could not have borne it and should have become strange and queer like poor mamma. I am a bit delicate naturally, as you know, I should have simply gone under in so much desolation and sadness, and when dear Philipp came, I thought: now's your chance. And when people say that I am a bad Princess, because I have in a way abdicated, and fled here where it is rather warmer and more friendly, and when they say that I lack dignity or consciousness of Highness, or whatever they call it, they are stupid and ignorant, Klaus Heinrich, because I have too much, I have on the contrary too much of it, that's a fact, otherwise the Old Schloss would not have had such an effect upon me, and Albrecht ought to see that, for he too, in his way, has too much of it--all we Grimmburgers have too much of it, and that's why it sometimes looks as if we had too little of it. And sometimes, when Philipp is under way, as he is now, and I sit here among my flowers and Philipp's pictures with all their sun--it's lucky that it's painted sun, for bless me! otherwise we should have to get sun-blinds--and everything is tidy and clean, and I think of the blessing, as you call it, in store for me, then I seem to myself like the little mermaid in the fairy-tale which the Swiss governess read to us, if you remember--who married a mortal and got legs instead of her fish's tail.... I don't know if you understand me...."