Part 47

The lesson extended further to the debentures, conditions for interest and repayment. It came back to Doctor Krippenreuther's present anxiety, and described the seriousness of the situation. Suddenly pulling the "Annual of the Statistical Bureau" out of his pocket, Herr von Knobelsdorff instructed his pupil in the harvest returns for the previous years, summed up the untoward events which had caused their decline, pointed to the deficiencies in the taxes, the figures of which he had brought with him, and referred to the underfed adults and children whom one might see throughout the country-side. Then he turned to the general condition of the gold market, discoursed on the rise in the value of gold and the general economic unsoundness. Klaus Heinrich learned also about the lowness of the Exchange, the restlessness of the creditors, the leakage of gold, and the bank smashes; he saw our credit shaken, our paper valueless, and grasped to the full that the raising of a new loan was almost impossible.

The night was closing in, it was long past five, when Herr von Knobelsdorff ended his statement of the national economics. At this time Klaus Heinrich usually had his tea, but this time he only gave a passing thought to it, and nobody outside dared to disturb a conversation whose importance was shown by its duration. Klaus Heinrich listened and listened. He scarcely realized how much affected he was. But how could the other bring himself to say all that to him? He had not called him "Royal Highness" one single time during the interview, he had to some extent forced him, and grossly ignored the fact that he was "born to be king." And yet it was good and stimulating to hear all that and to have to bury oneself in it for reality's sake. He forgot to have the lights brought, his attention was so much occupied.

"It was these circumstances," concluded Herr von Knobelsdorff, "which I had in mind when I begged your Royal Highness to regard your personal wishes and plans continually in the light of the general good. I have no doubt that your Royal Highness will profit by this talk and by the facts I have been bold enough to put before you. And in this connexion I beg your Royal Highness to allow me to revert to your more personal case."

Herr von Knobelsdorff waited till Klaus Heinrich had made a sign of consent with his hand, and then went on: "If this affair is to have any future, it is desirable that it should now advance a step in its development. It is stagnating, it remains as formless and prospectless as the mist outside. That's intolerable. We must give it form, must thicken it out, must mark its outlines more clearly before the eyes of the world."

"Quite so! quite so! Give it form ... thicken it out.... That's it. That's absolutely necessary," agreed Klaus Heinrich, so much excited that he left the sofa and began to walk up and down the room. "But how? For heaven's sake, Excellency, tell me how?"

"The next external step," said Herr von Knobelsdorff, and remained sitting--so unusual was the occasion--"must be this, that the Spoelmanns be seen at Court."

Klaus Heinrich stopped still.

"No," he said, "never, if I know Mr. Spoelmann, will he let himself be persuaded to go to Court."

"Which," answered Herr von Knobelsdorff, "doesn't prevent his daughter from doing us this pleasure. The Court Ball's not so very far off; it rests with you, Royal Highness, to induce Miss Spoelmann to take part in it. Her companion is a countess ... a peculiar one, perhaps, but a countess, and that helps things. When I assure your Royal Highness that the Court will not fail to make things easy, I am speaking with the approbation of the Chief Master of the Ceremonies, Herr von Bühl zu Bühl."

The conversation now turned for three-quarters of an hour on questions of precedence, and the ceremonial conditions under which the presentation must be carried out. The distribution of cards was always left to Princess Catherine's Mistress of the Robes, a widowed Countess Trümmerhauff, who led the ladies' world at the festivities in the Old Castle.

But as to the act of presentation itself, Herr von Knobelsdorff had managed to secure some concessions of a deliberate, in fact definite character. There was no American Consul in the place--no reason on that account, explained Herr von Knobelsdorff, for letting the ladies be presented by any casual chamberlain; no, the Master of the Ceremonies himself requested the honour of presenting them to the Grand Duke. When? At what point of the prescribed procession? Why, undoubtedly, unusual circumstances demand exceptions. In the first place, then, in front of all the débutantes of the various ranks--Klaus Heinrich might assure Miss Spoelmann that this would be arranged. It would give rise to talk and sensation at Court and in the city. But never mind, so much the better. Sensation was by no means undesirable, sensation was useful, even necessary....

Herr von Knobelsdorff went. It had become so dark when he took his leave that the Prince and he could scarcely see each other. Klaus Heinrich, who now first became aware of it, excused himself in some confusion, but Herr von Knobelsdorff declared it to be a matter of no importance in what sort of light a conversation like that was carried on. He took the hand which Klaus Heinrich offered him, and grasped it in both his.

"Never," he said warmly, and these were his last words before he went, "never was the happiness of a prince more inseparable from that of his people. No, whatever your Royal Highness ponders and does, you will bear in mind that the happiness of your Royal Highness by the disposition of destiny has become a condition of the public weal, but that your Royal Highness on your side must recognize in the weal of your country the indispensable condition and justification of your own happiness."

Much moved, and not yet in a condition to arrange the thoughts which poured in on him in thousands, Klaus Heinrich remained behind in his homely Empire room.

He passed a restless night and went next morning, despite misty and damp weather, for a long and lonely ride. Herr von Knobelsdorff had talked clearly and voluminously, had given and accepted facts; but, for the fusion, modelling, and working up of these multifarious raw products he had given only curt, aphoristic instructions, and Klaus Heinrich found himself doomed to some heavy thinking while he lay awake at night, and later when he went for a ride on Florian.

When he got back to the "Hermitage" he did a remarkable thing. He wrote with a pencil on a piece of paper an order, a certain commission, and sent Neumann, the valet, with it to the Academy Bookshop in the University Strasse: Neumann came back with a package of books, which Klaus Heinrich had set out in his room, and which he began at once to read.

They were works of a sober and school-bookish appearance, with glazed paper backs, ugly leather sides, and coarse paper, and the contents were divided up minutely into sections, main divisions, sub-divisions, and paragraphs. Their titles were not stimulating. They were manuals and hand-hooks of economy, abstracts and outlines of State finance, systematic treatises on political economy. The Prince shut himself up in his study with these books, and gave instructions that he wished on no account to be disturbed.

The autumn was damp, and Klaus Heinrich felt little tempted to leave the "Hermitage." On Saturday he drove to the Old Schloss to give free audiences: otherwise his time was his own all this week, and he knew how to make use of it. Wrapped in his dressing-gown, he sat in the warmth of the low stove at his small, old-fashioned, little-used desk, and pored over his books on finance, with his temples resting in his hands. He read about the State expenditure and what it always consisted of, about the receipts and whence they flowed in when things were going well; he ploughed through the whole subject of taxation in all its branches; he buried himself in the doctrine of the budget, of the balance, of the surplus, and particularly of the deficit; he lingered longest over, and went deepest into, the public debt and its varieties, into loans, and relation between interest and capital and liquidation, and from time to time he raised his head from the book and dreamed with a smile about what he had read, as if it had been the gayest poetry.

For the rest, he found that it was not hard to grasp it all, when one set one's mind to it. No, this really serious actuality, in which he now played a part, this simple and rude texture of interests, this system of down-right logical needs and necessities, which countless young men of ordinary birth had to stuff into their heads, to be able to pass examinations in it, it was by no means so difficult to get hold of as he in his Highness had thought. The rôle of representation, in his opinion, was harder. And much, much more ticklish and difficult were his gentle struggles with Imma Spoelmann on horseback and on foot. His studies made him warm and happy, he felt that his zeal was making his cheeks hot, like those of his brother-in-law zu Ried-Hohenried over his peat.

After thus giving the facts which he had learnt from Herr von Knobelsdorff a general academic basis, and also accomplishing a feat of hard thinking in bringing together inward connexions and weighing possibilities, he again presented himself at Delphinenort at tea-time. The lights in the candelabra with the lions' feet and the big crystal lustres were burning in the garden room. The ladies were alone.

Klaus Heinrich first asked after Mr. Spoelmann's health and Imma's indisposition. He upbraided her freely for her strange impetuosity, to which she answered with a pout that as far as she knew she was her own mistress, and could do as she liked with her health. The conversation then turned to the autumn, to the damp weather which forbade rides, to the advanced time of year, and the proximity of winter, and Klaus Heinrich suddenly mentioned the Court Ball in connexion with which it occurred to him to ask whether the ladies--if unfortunately Mr. Spoelmann were prevented by the state of his health--would not care to take part in one this time. But when Imma answered, "No, really, she had no wish to be rude, but she had absolutely not the faintest desire to go to a Court Ball," he did not press the point, but postponed the question for the time.

What had he done these last few days?--Oh, he'd been very busy, he might say that he'd been chock-a-block with work.--Work? Doubtless he meant the Court Hunt at "Jägerpreis."--The Court Hunt? No. He had gone in for real study which he had by no means got to the bottom of yet; on the contrary he was sticking deep in the literature on the subject.... And Klaus Heinrich began to talk about his ugly books, his peeps into financial science, and he spoke with such pleasure and respect of this discipline that Imma Spoelmann looked at him with her big eyes. But when--almost timidly--she questioned him as to the motive and impulse for this activity, he answered that it was living, only too burning, questions of the day which had brought him to it: circumstances and conditions which were certainly not well suited for a cheerful talk at tea. This remark obviously offended Imma Spoelmann.

"On what observations," she asked sharply, wagging her head from side to side, "did he base his conviction that she was approachable only or preferably by way of cheerful conversation?" And she commanded him rather than asked him to be kind enough to explain about the burning questions of the day.

Then Klaus Heinrich explained what he had learnt from Herr von Knobelsdorff, and talked about the land and its state. He was well posted on every point at which the skinny index-finger had paused: he talked about the natural and the indebted, the general and the particular, the inherited and the intensifying misfortunes; he emphasized particularly the figures of the State debt, and the burden they laid on our national economy--they were six hundred millions--and he did not forget to mention the underfed peasants in the country-side.

He did not speak connectedly; Imma Spoelmann interrupted him with questions and helped him on with questions. She listened carefully, and asked for explanations of what she did not at once understand. Dressed in her loose-sleeved, red-silk dress with the broad embroidery on the yoke, an old-Spanish chain round her child-like neck, she sat leaning on one elbow over the table, her chin buried in her ringless hand, and listened with her whole soul, while her big, dark eyes scrutinized the Prince's face.

But while he spoke, in answer to Imma's verbal and ocular questions, worked at his subject, grew excited and entirely absorbed in it, Countess Löwenjoul no longer felt herself restricted to sober clarity by his presence, but let herself go and indulged in the luxury of drivelling. All the misery, she explained with dignified gestures, even the bad harvest, the burden of debt and the rise in the price of gold, were due to the shameless women who swarmed everywhere, and unfortunately had discovered the way through the floor, as last night the wife of a sergeant from the Grenadiers' Barracks had scratched her breasts and pommelled her in a horrible way. Then she alluded to her Schlosses in Burgundy, through the roofs of which the rain came, and went so far as to relate that she had gone as lieutenant in an expedition against the Turks, on which she had been the only one who "had not lost her head." Imma Spoelmann and Klaus Heinrich threw her a kind word now and then, readily promised to call her Frau Meier in future, and for the rest took no notice of her.

The cheeks of both were burning when Klaus Heinrich had said all he knew--even on Miss Spoelmann's usually pearl-white cheeks there was a shade of red to be seen. They then stopped, the Countess too kept quiet, with her little head inclined on her shoulder, and staring into vacancy. Klaus Heinrich played on the white and sharply folded table-cloth with the stem of an orchid, which had stood in a glass by his plate; but as soon as he raised his head he met Imma Spoelmann's large, flaming eyes, which spoke a message of secret entreaty across the table, a darkly eloquent language.

"It has been nice to-day," she said in her broken voice, when she said good-bye this time, and he felt her small, soft hands clasp his with a firm squeeze. "Next time your Highness honours our unworthy house, do bring me one or two of those excellent books you have bought." She could not entirely resist mocking him, but she asked him for his finance books, and he brought them to her.