The Adventures of Harry Richmond, v4
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George Meredith >> The Adventures of Harry Richmond, v4
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'Not when the son had not come down among us,' said my father, smiling.
'Well, I forgot to tell you about Alphonse. By the way, we'll have him
in our service. There was he plucking at me: "Monsieur Henri-Richie,
Monsieur Henri-Richie! mille complimens . . . et les potages,
Monsieur! --a la Camerani, a la tortue, aux petits pois . . . c'est en
vrai artiste que j'ai su tout retarder jusqu'au dernier moment . . . .
Monsieur! cher Monsieur Henri-Richie, je vous en supplie, laissez-la,
ces planteurs de choux." And John Thresher, as spokesman for the rest:
"Master Harry, we beg to say, in my name, we can't masticate comfortably
while we've got a notion Mr. Frenchman he 's present here to play his
Frenchified tricks with our plain wholesome dishes. Our opinion is, he
don't know beef from hedgehog; and let him trim 'em, and egg 'em,' and
bread-crumb 'em, and pound the mess all his might, and then tak' and roll
'em into balls, we say we wun't, for we can't make English muscle out o'
that."--And Alphonse, quite indifferent to the vulgar: "He! mais pensez
donc au Papa, Monsieur Henri-Richie, sans doute il a une sante de fer:
mais encore faut-il lui menager le suc gastrique, pancreatique . . . ."'
'Ay, ay!' laughed my father; 'what sets you thinking of Alphonse?'
'I suppose because I shall have to be speaking French in an hour.'
'German, Richie, German.'
'But these Belgians speak French.'
'Such French as it is. You will, however, be engaged in a German
conversation first, I suspect.'
'Very well, I'll stumble on. I don't much like it.'
'In six hours from this second of time, Richie, boy, I undertake to
warrant you fonder of the German tongue than of any other spoken
language.'
I looked at him. He gave me a broad pleasant smile, without sign of a
jest lurking in one corner.
The scene attracted me. Laughing fishwife faces radiant with sea-bloom
in among the weedy pier-piles, and sombre blue-cheeked officers of the
douane, with their double row of buttons extending the breadth of their
shoulders. My father won Mr. Peterborough's approval by declaring cigars
which he might easily have passed.
'And now, sir,'--he used the commanding unction of a lady's doctor,--'you
to bed, and a short repose. We will, if it pleases you, breakfast at
eight. I have a surprise for Mr. Richie. We are about to beat the drum
in the market-place, and sing out for echoes.'
'Indeed, sir?' said the simple man.
'I promise you we shall not disturb you, Mr. Peterborough. You have
reached that middle age, have you not, when sleep is, so to put it, your
capital? And your activity is the interest you draw from it to live on.
You have three good hours. So, then, till we meet at the breakfast-
table.'
My father's first proceeding at the hotel was to examine the list of
visitors. He questioned one of the waiters aside, took information from
him, and seized my arm rather tremulously, saying,
'They are here. 'Tis as I expected. And she is taking the morning
breath of sea-air on the dunes. Come, Richie, come.'
'Who's the "she"?' I asked incuriously.
'Well, she is young, she is of high birth, she is charming. We have a
crowned head or two here. I observe in you, Richie, an extraordinary
deficiency of memory. She has had an illness; Neptune speed her
recovery! Now for a turn at our German. Die Strassen ruhen; die Stadt
schlaft; aber dort, siehst Du, dort liegt das blaue Meer, das nimmer-
schlafende! She is gazing on it, and breathing it, Richie. Ach! ihr
jauchzende Seejungfern. On my soul, I expect to see the very loveliest
of her sex!
You must not be dismayed at pale cheeks-blasse Wangen. Her illness has
been alarming. Why, this air is the top of life; it will, and it shall,
revive her. How will she address him?--"Freund," in my presence,
perchance: she has her invalid's privilege. "Theure Prinzessin" you
might venture on. No ice! Ay, there she is!'
Solitary, on the long level of the sand-bank, I perceived a group that
became discernible as three persons attached to an invalid's chair,
moving leisurely toward us. I was in the state of mind between
divination and doubt when the riddle is not impossible to read, would but
the heart cease its hurry an instant; a tumbled sky where the break is
coming. It came. The dear old days of my wanderings with Temple framed
her face. I knew her without need of pause or retrospect. The crocus
raising its cup pointed as when it pierced the earth, and the crocus
stretched out on earth, wounded by frost, is the same flower. The face
was the same, though the features were changed. Unaltered in expression,
but wan, and the kind blue eyes large upon lean brows, her aspect was
that of one who had been half caught away and still shook faintly in the
relaxing invisible grasp.
We stopped at a distance of half-a-dozen paces to allow her time for
recollection. She eyed us softly in a fixed manner, while the sea-wind
blew her thick redbrown hair to threads on her cheek. Colour on the fair
skin told us we were recognized.
'Princess Ottilia!' said my father.
'It is I, my friend,' she answered. 'And you?'
'With more health than I am in need of, dearest princess.'
'And he?'
'Harry Richmond! my son, now of age, commencing his tour; and he has not
forgotten the farewell bunch of violets.'
Her eyelids gently lifted, asking me.
'Nor the mount you did me the honour to give me on the little Hungarian,'
said I.
'How nice this sea-air is!' she spoke in English. 'England and sea go
together in my thoughts. And you are here! I have been down very low,
near the lowest. But your good old sea makes me breathe again. I want
to toss on it. Have you yet seen the Markgrafin?'
My father explained that we had just landed from the boat.
'Is our meeting, then, an accident?'
'Dear princess, I heard of your being out by the shore.'
'Ah! kind: and you walked to meet me? I love that as well, though I
love chance. And it is chance that brings you here! I looked out on the
boat from England while they were dressing me: I cannot have too much of
the morning, for then I have all to myself: sea and sky and I. The night
people are all asleep, and you come like an old Marchen.'
Her eyelids dropped without closing.
'Speak no more to her just at present,' said an English voice, Miss
Silbey's. Schwartz, the huge dragoon, whose big black horse hung near
him in my memory like a phantom, pulled the chair at a quiet pace, head
downward. A young girl clad in plain black walked beside Miss Sibley,
following the wheels.
'Danger is over,' Miss Sibley answered my gaze. 'She is convalescent.
You see how weak she is.'
I praised the lady for what I deemed her great merit in not having
quitted the service of the princess.
'Oh!' said she, 'my adieux to Sarkeld were uttered years ago. But when I
heard of her fall from the horse I went and nursed her. We were once in
dread of her leaving us. She sank as if she had taken some internal
injury. It may have been only the shock to her system and the cessation
of her accustomed exercise. She has a little over-studied.'
'The margravine?'
'The margravine is really very good and affectionate, and has won my
esteem. So you and your father are united at last? We have often talked
of you. Oh! that day up by the tower. But, do you know, the statue is
positively there now, and no one--no one who had the privilege of
beholding the first bronze Albrecht Wohlgemuth, Furst von Eppenwelzen-
Sarkeld, no one will admit that the second is half worthy of him. I can
feel to this day the leap of the heart in my mouth when the statue
dismounted. The prince sulked for a month: the margravine still longer
at your father's evasion. She could not make allowance for the impulsive
man: such a father; such a son!'
'Thank you, thank you most humbly,' said I, bowing to her shadow of a
mock curtsey.
The princess's hand appeared at a side of the chair. We hastened to her.
'Let me laugh, too,' she prayed.
Miss Sibley was about to reply, but stared, and delight sprang to her
lips in a quick cry.
'What medicine is this? Why, the light of morning has come to you, my
darling!'
'I am better, dearest, better.'
'You sigh, my own.'
'No; I breathe lots, lots of salt air now, and lift like a boat. Ask
him--he had a little friend, much shorter than himself, who came the
whole way with him out of true friendship--ask him where is the friend?'
Miss Sibley turned her head to me.
'Temple,' said I; 'Temple is a midshipman; he is at sea.'
'That is something to think of,' the princess murmured, and dropped her
eyelids a moment. She resumed 'The Grand Seigneur was at Vienna last
year, and would not come to Sarkeld, though he knew I was ill.'
My father stooped low.
'The Grand Seigneur, your servant, dear princess, was an Ottoman Turk,
and his Grand Vizier advised him to send flowers in his place weekly.'
'I had them, and when we could get those flowers nowhere else,' she
replied. 'So it was you! So my friends have been about me.'
During the remainder of the walk I was on one side of the chair, and her
little maid on the other, while my father to rearward conversed with Miss
Sibley. The princess took a pleasure in telling me that this Aennchen of
hers knew me well, and had known me before ever her mistress had seen me.
Aennchen was the eldest of the two children Temple and I had eaten
breakfast with in the forester's hut. I felt myself as if in the forest
again, merely wondering at the growth of the trees, and the narrowness of
my vision in those days.
At parting, the princess said,
'Is my English improved? You smiled at it once. I will ask you when I
meet you next.'
'It is my question,' I whispered to my own ears.
She caught the words.
'Why do you say--" It is my question"?'
I was constrained to remind her of her old forms of English speech.
'You remember that? Adieu,' she said.
My father considerately left me to carry on my promenade alone. I
crossed the ground she had traversed, noting every feature surrounding
it, the curving wheel-track, the thin prickly sand-herbage, the wave-
mounds, the sparse wet shells and pebbles, the gleaming flatness of the
water, and the vast horizon-boundary of pale flat land level with shore,
looking like a dead sister of the sea. By a careful examination of my
watch and the sun's altitude, I was able to calculate what would, in all
likelihood, have been his height above yonder waves when her chair was
turned toward the city, at a point I reached in the track. But of the
matter then simultaneously occupying my mind, to recover which was the
second supreme task I proposed to myself-of what. I also was thinking
upon the stroke of five o'clock, I could recollect nothing. I could not
even recollect whether I happened to be looking on sun and waves when she
must have had them full and glorious in her face.
CHAPTER XXV
ON BOARD A YACHT
With the heartiest consent I could give, and a blank cheque, my father
returned to England to hire forthwith a commodious yacht, fitted and
manned. Before going he discoursed of prudence in our expenditure;
though not for the sake of the mere money in hand, which was a trifle,
barely more than the half of my future income; but that the squire,
should he by and by bethink him of inspecting our affairs, might perceive
we were not spendthrifts.
'I promised you a surprise, Richie,' said he, 'and you have had it;
whether at all equal to your expectations is for you to determine. I was
aware of the margravine's intention to bring the princess to these sea-
sands; they are famous on the Continent. It was bruited last Winter and
Spring that she would be here in the season for bathing; so I held it
likely we should meet. We have, you behold. In point of fact, we owe
the good margravine some show of hospitality. The princess has a passion
for tossing on the sea. To her a yacht is a thing dropped from the moon.
His Highness the prince her father could as soon present her with one as
with the moon itself. The illustrious Serenity's revenue is absorbed, my
boy, in the state he has to support. As for his daughter's dowry, the
young gentleman who anticipates getting one with her, I commend to the
practise of his whistling. It will be among the sums you may count, if
you are a moderate arithmetician, in groschen. The margravine's income I
should reckon to approach twenty thousand per annum, and she proves her
honourable sense that she holds it in trust for others by dispersing it
rapidly. I fear she loves cards. So, then, I shall go and hire the
yacht through Dettermain and Newson, furnish it with piano and swing-cot,
etc.; and if the ladies shrink from a cruise they can have an occasional
sail. Here are we at their service. I shall be seriously baffled by
fortune if I am not back to you at the end of a week. You will take your
early morning walk, I presume. On Sunday see that our chaplain, the
excellent Mr. Peterborough, officiates for the assembled Protestants of
all nations. It excites our English enthusiasm. In addition, son
Richie, it is peculiarly our duty. I, at least, hold the view that it is
a family duty. Think it over, Richie boy. Providence, you see, has sent
us the man. As for me, I feel as if I were in the dawn of one life with
all the mature experience of another. I am calm, I am perfectly
unexcited, and I tell you, old son, I believe--pick among the highest--
our destinies are about the most brilliant of any couple in Great
Britain.'
His absence relieved me in spite of my renewed pleasure in his talk; I
may call it a thirsty craving to have him inflating me, puffing the deep
unillumined treasure-pits of my nature with laborious hints, as mines are
filled with air to keep the miners going. While he talked he made these
inmost recesses habitable. But the pain lay in my having now and then to
utter replies. The task of speaking was hateful. I found a sweetness in
brooding unrealizingly over hopes and dreams and possibilities, and I let
him go gladly that I might enjoy a week of silence, just taking
impressions as they came, like the sands in the ebb-tide. The impression
of the morning was always enough for a day's meditation. The green
colour and the crimson athwart it, and higher up the pinky lights,
flamingo feathers, on a warm half-circle of heaven, in hue between
amethyst and milky opal; then the rim of the sun's disc not yet severe;
and then the monstrous shadow of tall Schwartz darting at me along the
sand, then the princess. This picture, seen at sunrise, lasted till I
slept. It stirred no thoughts, conjured no images, it possessed me. In
the afternoon the margravine accompanied the princess to a point facing
seaward, within hearing of the military band. She did me the favour to
tell me that she tolerated me until I should become efficient in German
to amuse her, but the dulness of the Belgian city compared with her
lively German watering-places compelled her to try my powers of fun in
French, and in French I had to do duty, and failed in my office.
'Do you know,' said she, 'that your honourable papa is one in a million?
He has the life of a regiment in his ten fingers. What astonishes me is
that he does not make fury in that England of yours--that Lapland! Je ne
puffs me passer de cet homme! He offends me, he trifles, he outrages, he
dares permit himself to be indignant. Bon! we part, and absence pleads
for him with the eloquence of Satan. I am his victim. Does he, then,
produce no stir whatever in your England? But what a people! But yes,
you resemble us, as bottles--bottles; seulement, you are emptied of your
wine. Ce Monsieur Peterbooroo'! Il m'agace les nerfs. It cannot be
blood in his veins. One longs to see him cuffed, to see if he has the
English lion in him, one knows not where. But you are so, you English,
when not intoxicated. And so censorious! You win your battles, they
say, upon beer and cordials: it is why you never can follow up a success.
Je tiens cela du Marechal Prince B-----. Let that pass. One groans at
your intolerable tristesse. La vie en Angleterre est comme un marais.
It is a scandal to human nature. It blows fogs, foul vapours, joint-
stiffnesses, agues, pestilences, over us here,--yes, here! That is your
best side: but your worst is too atrocious! Mon Dieu! Your men-rascals!
Your women-rascals!'
'Good soul!' the princess arrested her, 'I beg that you will not abuse
England.'
'Have I abused England?' exclaimed the margravine. 'Nay, then, it was
because England is shockingly unjust to the most amusing, the most
reviving, charming of men. There is he fresh as a green bubbling well,
and those English decline to do honour to his source. Now tell me, you!'
She addressed me imperiously. 'Are you prosecuting his claims? Are you
besieging your Government? What! you are in the season of generosity,
an affectionate son, wealthy as a Magyar prince of flocks, herds, mines,
and men, and you let him stand in the shade deprived of his birthright?
Are you a purse-proud commoner or an imbecile?'
'My whimsy aunt!' the princess interposed again, 'now you have taken to
abusing a defenceless Englishman.'
'Nothing of the sort, child. I compliment him on his looks and manners;
he is the only one of his race who does not appear to have marched out of
a sentinel's box with a pocket-mirror in his hand. I thank him from my
soul for not cultivating the national cat's whisker. None can imagine
what I suffer from the oppressive sight of his Monsieur Peterbooroo'!
And they are of one pattern--the entire nation! He! no, he has the step
of a trained blood-horse. Only, as Kaunitz, or somebody, said of Joseph
II., or somebody, he thinks or he chews. Englishmen's mouths were
clearly not made for more purposes than one. In truth, I am so utterly
wearied, I could pray for the diversion of a descent of rain. The life
here is as bad as in Rippau. I might just as well be in Rippau doing
duty: the silly people complain, I hear. I am gathering dust. These,
my dear, these are the experiences which age women at a prodigious rate.
I feel chains on my limbs here.'
'Madame, I would,' said I, 'that I were the Perseus to relieve you of
your monster Ennui, but he is coming quickly.'
'You see he has his pretty phrases!' cried the margravine; adding
encouragingly, 'S'il nest pas tant sort peu impertinent?'
The advance of some German or Russian nobleman spared me further efforts.
We were on shore, listening to the band in the afternoon, when a sail
like a spark of pure white stood on the purple black edge of a storm-
cloud. It was the yacht. By sunset it was moored off shore, and at
night hung with variegated lamps. Early next morning we went on board.
The ladies were astonished at the extent of the vessel, and its luxurious
fittings and cunning arrangements. My father, in fact, had negotiated
for the hire of the yacht some weeks previously, with his accustomed
forethought.
'House and town and fortress provisioned, and moveable at will!' the
margravine interjected repeatedly.
The princess was laid on raised pillows in her swingcot under an awning
aft, and watched the sailors, the splendid offspring of old sea-fights,
as I could observe her spirited fancy conceiving them. They were a set
of men to point to for an answer to the margravine's strictures on things
English.
'Then, are you the captain, my good Herr Heilbrunn?' the margravine asked
my father.
He was dressed in cheerful blue, wearing his cheerfullest air, and seemed
strongly inclined for the part of captain, but presented the actual
commander of the schooner-yacht, and helped him through the margravine's
interrogations.
'All is excellent,--excellent for a day's sail,' she said. 'I have no
doubt you could nourish my system for a month, but to deal frankly with
you--prepared meats and cold pies!--to face them once is as much as I am
capable of.'
'Dear Lady Field-Marshal,' returned my father, 'the sons of Neptune would
be of poor account, if they could not furnish you cookery at sea.'
They did, for Alphonse was on board. He and my father had a hot
discussion about the margravine's dishes, Alphonse declaring that it was
against his conscience to season them pungently, and my father preaching
expediency. Alphonse spoke of the artist and his duty to his art, my
father of the wise diplomatist who manipulated individuals without any
sacrifice of principle. They were partly at play, of course, both having
humour.
It ended in the margravine's being enraptured. The delicacy of the
invalid's dishes, was beyond praise. 'So, then, we are absolutely better
housed and accommodated than on shore!' the margravine made her wonder
heard, and from that fell to enthusiasm for the vessel. After a couple
of pleasant smooth-sailing days, she consented to cruise off the coasts
of France and England. Adieu to the sands. Throughout the cruise she
was placable, satisfied with earth and sea, and constantly eulogizing
herself for this novel state of serenity. Cards, and a collection of
tripping French books bound in yellow, danced the gavotte with time,
which made the flying minutes endurable to her: and for relaxation there
was here the view of a shining town dropped between green hills to dip in
sea-water, yonder a ship of merchandise or war to speculate upon,
trawlers, collier-brigs, sea-birds, wave over wave. No cloud on sun and
moon. We had gold and silver in our track, like the believable children
of fairyland.
The princess, lying in her hammock-cot on deck, both day and night, or
for the greater part of the night, let her eyes feast incessantly on a
laughing sea: when she turned them to any of us, pure pleasure sparkled
in them. The breezy salt hours were visible ecstasy to her blood. If
she spoke it was but to utter a few hurried, happy words, and shrink as
you see the lightning behind a cloud-rack, suggestive of fiery swift
emotion within, and she gazed away overjoyed at the swoop and plunge of
the gannet, the sunny spray, the waves curling crested or down-like. At
night a couple of sailors, tender as women, moved her in the cot to her
cabin. We heard her voice in the dark of the morning, and her little
maid Aennchen came out and was met by me; and I at that hour had the
privilege to help move her back to her favourite place, and strap the
iron-stand fast, giving the warm-hooded cot room to swing. The keen
sensations of a return to health amid unwonted scenes made things magical
to her. When she beheld our low green Devon hills she signalled for help
to rise, and 'That is England!' she said, summoning to her beautiful
clear eyeballs the recollection of her first desire to see my country.
Her petition was that the yacht should go in nearer and nearer to the
land till she could discern men, women, and children, and their
occupations. A fisherman and his wife sat in the porch above their
hanging garden, the woman knitting, the man mending his nets, barefooted
boys and girls astride the keel of a boat below them. The princess eyed
them and wept. 'They give me happiness; I can give them nothing,' she
said.
The margravine groaned impatiently at talk of such a dieaway sort.
My father sent a couple of men on shore with a gift of money to their
family in the name of the Princess Ottilia. How she thanked him for his
prompt ideas! 'It is because you are generous you read one well.'
She had never thanked me. I craved for that vibrating music as of her
deep heart penetrated and thrilling, but shrank from grateful words which
would have sounded payment. Running before the wind swiftly on a night
of phosphorescent sea, when the waves opened to white hollows with frayed
white ridges, wreaths of hissing silver, her eyelids closed, and her hand
wandered over the silken coverlet to the hammock cloth, and up, in a
blind effort to touch. Mine joined to it. Little Aennchen was witness.
Ottilia held me softly till her slumber was deep.
CHAPTER XXVI
IN VIEW OF THE HOHENZOLLERN'S BIRTHPLACE
Our cruise came to an end in time to save the margravine from yawning.
The last day of it was windless, and we hung in sight of the colourless
low Flemish coast for hours, my father tasking his ingenuity to amuse
her. He sang with Miss Sibley, rallied Mr. Peterborough, played picquet
to lose, threw over the lead line to count the fathoms, and whistling for
the breeze, said to me, 'We shall decidedly have to offer her an
exhibition of tipsy British seamen as a final resource. The case is
grave either way; but we cannot allow the concluding impression to be a
dull one.'
It struck me with astonishment to see the vigilant watch she kept over
the princess this day, after having left her almost uninterruptedly to my
care.
'You are better?' She addressed Ottilia. 'You can sit up? You think you
can walk? Then I have acted rightly, nay, judiciously,--I have not made
a sacrifice for nothing. I took the cruise, mind you, on your account.
You would study yourself to the bone, till you looked like a canary's
quill, with that Herr Professor of yours. Now I 've given you a dose of
life. Yes, you begin to look like human flesh. Something has done you
good.'
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