Part 45

"Of course, you had to fire at the targets for show. I read all about it. As usual, you had a rousing success to show for it. You stood there in your fancy dress, and let a whole meadowful of people love you."

"Halt, Imma, I beg you, don't gallop.... One can't get a word out.... Love, you say. But what sort of love is it? A meadow-love, a casual, superficial love, a love at a distance, which means nothing--a love in full dress with no familiarity about it. No, you've absolutely no reason to be angry because I express myself pleased with it, for I get no good from it; only the people do, who are elevated by it, and that's their desire. But I too have my desire, Imma, and it's to you that I turn."

"How can I help you, Prince?"

"Oh, you know well! It's confidence, Imma; couldn't you have a little confidence in me?"

She looked at him, and the scrutiny of her big eyes had never before been so dark and piercing. But for all the urgency of his dumb pleading, she turned away, and said with a look which betrayed no secrets: "No, Prince Klaus Heinrich, I cannot."

He uttered a cry of grief, and his voice shook, as he asked: "And why can't you?"

She replied: "Because you prevent me."

"How do I prevent you? Please tell me, I beg."

And, with the reserved expression still on her face, her eyes dropped on her white reins, and rocking lightly to her horse's walk, she replied: "Through everything, through your conduct, through the way and manner of your being, through your highly distinguished personality. You know well enough how you prevented the poor Countess from letting herself go, and forced her to be clear-brained and reasonable, although it is expressly on the ground of her excessive experiences that the blessing of craziness and oddness has been vouchsafed to her, and that I told you that I was well aware how you had set out to sober her. Yes, I know it well, for you prevent me too from letting myself go, you sober me too, continually, in every way, through your words, through your look, through your way of sitting and standing, and it is quite impossible to have confidence in you. I've had the opportunity of watching you in your intercourse with other people; but whether it was Doctor Sammet in the Dorothea Hospital or Herr Stavenüter in the 'Pheasantry' Tea-garden, it was always the same, and it always made me shiver. You hold yourself erect, and ask questions, but you don't do so out of sympathy, you don't care what the questions are about--no, you don't care about anything, and you lay nothing to heart. I've often seen it--you speak, you express an opinion, but you might just as well express a quite different one, for in reality you have no opinion and no belief, and the only thing you care about is your princely self-possession. You say sometimes that your calling is not an easy one, but as you have challenged me, I'll ask you to notice that it would be easier to you if you had an opinion and a belief, Prince, that's my opinion and belief. How could anyone have confidence in you! No, it's not confidence that you inspire, but coldness and embarrassment; and if I put myself out to get closer to you, that kind of embarrassment and awkwardness would prevent me from doing so,--there's my answer for you."

He had listened to her with painful tension, had looked more than once at her pale face while she was speaking, and then again, like her, dropped his eyes on the reins.

"I must indeed thank you, Imma," he answered, "for speaking so earnestly, for you know that you don't always do so, but generally speak only derisively, and in your way take things as little seriously as I in mine."

"How else but derisively can I speak to you, Prince?"

"And sometimes you are so hard and cruel, as for instance towards the head sister in the Dorothea Hospital, whom you threw into such confusion."

"Oh, I'm well aware that I too have my faults, and need somebody to help me to give them up."

"I'll be that somebody, Imma; we'll help each other."

"I don't think we can help each other, Prince."

"Yes, we can. Didn't you speak just now quite seriously and unsatirically? But as for me, you are not right when you say that I care about nothing at all and lay nothing to heart, for I care about you, Imma--about you, I have laid you to heart; and as this matter is one of such inexpressible seriousness to me, I cannot fail finally to win your confidence. Were you aware of my joy when I heard you talk of putting yourself out and coming nearer to me? Yes, put yourself out a little, and do not let yourself ever again be confused with that sort of awkwardness, or whatever it is, which you are so liable to feel in my presence. Ah, I know it, I know only too well, how much to blame I am for that! But laugh at yourself and at me when I make you feel like that, and attach yourself to me. Will you promise me to put yourself out a little?"

But Imma Spoelmann promised nothing, but insisted now on her gallop; and many a subsequent conversation remained, like this, without result.

Sometimes, when Klaus Heinrich had come to tea, the Prince, Miss Spoelmann, the Countess, and Percival went into the park. The splendid collie kept decorously at Imma's side, and Countess Löwenjoul walked two or three yards behind the young people; for soon after they had started she had stopped for a second, to twine her bent and bony fingers round a blossom, and she had never made good the distance she had then lost. So Klaus Heinrich and Imma walked in front of her, and talked. But when they had covered a certain distance, they turned round, thus getting the Countess two or three yards in front of them. Then Klaus Heinrich followed up his conversational efforts, and, carefully and without looking up, took Imma Spoelmann's small, ringless hand from her side and clasped it in both his, the while he imploringly asked whether she was taking pains, and had made any progress in her confidence in him.

It displeased him to hear that she had been working, poring over algebra and playing in the lofty spheres since they had last met. He would beg her to lay her books aside now, as they might distract her and divert her from the matter to which all her thinking powers must now be devoted. He talked also about himself, about that sobering effect and awkwardness which, according to her, his existence inspired; he tried to explain it, and in doing so to weaken it. He spoke about the cold, stern, and barren existence which had been his hitherto, he described to her how everybody had always flocked to gaze at him, while it had been his lofty calling to show himself and to be gazed at, a much more difficult task. He did his best to make her recognize that the remedy for that which caused him to prevent the poor Countess from drivelling and to estrange her to his own sorrow, that this remedy could be found in her, only in her, and was given over absolutely into her hands.

She looked at him, her big eyes sparkled in dark scrutiny, and it was clear that she, she too, was struggling. But then she would shake her head or break off the conversation, introducing with a pout some topic over which she made merry, incapable of bringing herself to take the responsibility of the "Yes" for which he begged her, that undefined and, as matters stood, absolutely non-committal surrender.

She did not prevent him from coming once or twice a week; she did not prevent him from speaking, from assailing her with prayers and asseverations and from taking her hand now and then between his own. But she was only patient, she remained unmoved, her dread of taking the decisive step, that aversion from leaving her cool and derisive kingdom and confessing herself his, seemed unconquerable; and she could not help, in her anguish and exhaustion, breaking out with the words: "Oh, Prince, we ought never to have met--it would have been best if we hadn't. Then you would have pursued your lofty calling as calmly as ever, and I should have preserved my peace of mind, and neither would have harassed the other!"

The Prince had much difficulty in inducing her to recant, and in extorting from her the confession that she did not entirely regret having made his acquaintance. But all this took time. The summer came to an end, early night-frosts loosened the still-green leaves from the trees, Fatma's, Florian's, and Isabeau's hoofs rustled in the red-and-gold leafage when they went for a ride. Autumn came with its mists and sharp smells--and nobody could have prophesied an end, or indeed any decisive turn in the course of the strangely fluctuating affair.

The credit of having placed things on the foundation of actuality, of having given events the lead in the direction of a happy issue, must for ever be ascribed to the distinguished gentleman who had up till now wisely kept in the background, but at the right moment intervened carefully but firmly. I refer to Excellency von Knobelsdorff, Minister of the Interior, Foreign Affairs, and the Grand Ducal Household.

Dr. Ueberbein had been correct in his assertion that the President of the Council had kept himself posted in the stages of Klaus Heinrich's love affair. What is more, well served by intelligent and sagacious assistants, he had kept himself well in touch with the state of public opinion, with the rôle which Samuel Spoelmann and his daughter played in the imaginative powers of the people, with the royal rank with which the popular idea invested them, with the great and superstitious tension with which the population followed the intercourse between the Schlosses "Hermitage" and Delphinenort, with the popularity of that intercourse: in a word, he was well aware how the Spoelmanns, for everyone who did not deliberately shut his eyes, were the general topic of conversation and rumour, not only in the capital, but in the whole country. A characteristic incident was enough to make Herr Knobelsdorff sure of his ground.

At the beginning of October--the Landtag had been opened a fortnight before, and the disputes with the Budget Commission were in full swing--Imma Spoelmann fell ill, very seriously ill, so it was said at first. It seemed that the imprudent girl, for some whim or mood, while out with her countess, had ventured on a gallop of nearly half an hour's duration on her white Fatma in the teeth of a strong north-east wind, and had come home with an attack of congestion of the lungs, which threatened to end her altogether.

The news soon got about. People said the girl was hovering between life and death, which, as luckily soon emerged, was a great exaggeration. But the consternation, the general sympathy, could not have been greater if a serious accident had happened to a member of the House of Grimmburg, even to the Grand Duke himself. It was the sole topic of conversation. In the humbler parts of the city, near the Dorothea Hospital for instance, the women stood in the evening outside their front doors, pressed the palms of their hands against their breasts, and coughed, as if to show each other what it meant to be short of breath. The evening papers published searching and expert news of the condition of Miss Spoelmann, which passed from hand to hand, were read at family gatherings and cafés, and were discussed in the tram-cars. The Courier's reporter had been seen to drive in a cab to Delphinenort, where, in the hall with the mosaic floor, he had been snubbed by the Spoelmanns' butler, and had talked English to him--though he found that no easy task.

The press, moreover, could not escape the reproach of having magnified the whole business, and made a quite unnecessary fuss about it. There was absolutely no question of any danger. Six days in bed under the care of the Spoelmanns' private physician sufficed to relieve the congestion, and to make Miss Spoelmann's lungs quite well again. But these six days sufficed also to make clear the importance which the Spoelmanns, and Miss Imma's personality in particular, had achieved in our public opinion. Every morning found the envoys of the newspapers, commissioners of the general curiosity, gathered in the mosaic hall at Delphinenort to hear the butler's curt bulletins, which they then reproduced in their papers at the inordinate length which the public desired.