CHAPTER FOUR

"Here's a revised sketch of the thing. Kraus has just sent it. You'll be able to judge from a glance at it whether you are mistaken or not."

Scherer, who was pacing the deck with Diana, stopped in his walk to extract a sheet of paper from a yellow folder. The wind caught the sheet and wrestled for its possession, but Scherer took refuge behind a screen where Diana rejoined him. Each held a corner of the refractory paper in order the better to study it.

"The red lines indicate the numbers of the first-rate hotels throughout Germany, don't they?"

"Yes. And the blue the bigger clubs. They are used as yet only by the editorial staffs of newspapers, by ministers and stockbrokers, whose numbers are reckoned up in the yellow column. But the figures are grossly exaggerated. The small figures at the foot of the page indicate that the cost of the news service should be reduced by from ten to twenty per cent, if we are to get a decent dividend out of the concern."

He pocketed the document once more, and the two resumed their morning walk, still discussing business affairs as was their habit at this hour of the morning.

"That's all right, I quite understand. Wouldn't it be better to increase the rate of subscription than to lower the cost of production?"

"There's your English training peeping out," laughed Scherer. "A club or hotel in Germany would far rather pay twelve hundred marks for a glass-doored cupboard wherein it could store all the news of the world to be gaped at by every passer-by; they would sooner expend thousands in subscriptions to periodicals which they could file in ancient presses as if they were some rare plants, than subscribe liberally to such a news service as I propose, which is a much less tangible asset."

"I've never heard any one rail against newspapers as you do," retorted Diana merrily. "There's nothing in the world you have your knife into so much!"

Scherer, who in this matter had very definite principles to guide him, answered half ironically:

"The newspaper is a thing that needs to be conquered."

"Thus spake Zarathustra," came a voice from the recesses of a deck chair. The two paused for a moment by the owner of the voice, who was engaged in a conversation with Kyril. Diana was used now to the prince's badinage, and she surmised that his sudden intrusion into an alien tête-à-tête must mean that he had come to a knotty point in his discussion with the Russian. She was, therefore, somewhat surprised when Kyril himself gave sanction to the prince's interpolation by saying:

"But not until the kings have spoken, Herr Scherer!"

"Oh, they never read the papers," answered Scherer good-humouredly, "and yet they are the very people who need them most!"

He turned on his heel to resume his walk, and as Diana prepared to follow, a gust of wind took her skirt and lifted it high. As she turned on herself to bring it to reason, Scherer noticed that the two young men, who had obviously been having an argument over contentious points, with equal seriousness were now regarding Diana's legs.

"They look as if they were faced with a very intricate problem," said Diana as she rejoined the financier.

Scherer, amused by the ambiguity of the words, which he knew to be spoken in perfect innocence, answered nothing. She was puzzled by his silence and his obvious amusement.

"You are smiling," she said. "Have I ... have you...?"

"No, no! Nothing," protested Scherer kindly, and he was delighted to see a blush mounting to her cheeks. "Their talk may have come to a dead point just as we came up."

Diana, patting her blouse and skirt with a very feminine gesture in case there should still be a certain disorder in her appearance, racked her brains to discover what he was hiding from her.

"Well now," said Scherer coming back to the point in a businesslike manner, "a news service for Germans must be run cheaply or not at all. Otherwise our worthy compatriots will reproach us, saying: the Wolff Information Bureau gave us just as good service for a quarter the price."

"Wolff's!" cried Diana, disdainfully.

"A poor, miserable tapeworm," rejoined Scherer zealously, "never stopping once it is set going, and provides the reader with the pleasure of seeing world history printed before his very eyes. A fantastical freak of a thing!"

Diana listened to his tirade with amusement. These rare moments of enthusiasm in a man who habitually assumed an attitude of reserve, were congenial to her. It pleased her to see his ripe experience irradiated with youthful ardour.

"I surrender," she said merrily, bringing her hand to the salute, and speaking with the smartness of a young midshipman on duty. "As soon as we are back in Berlin, I'll get to work on our budget and see whether I can't make a reduction in its figures of at least ten per cent a year."

"Ten to twenty."

"That means fifteen."

"Which is not quite the same thing, you know!"

They discussed the issue thus raised, and while they did so the figures they mentioned were wafted over to Franklin as he stood gazing seaward from the bows. Wilhelm was lounging in a deck chair by his side, blinking his eyes in the sunlight, wrapped in reverie. Diana, as she and Scherer turned, caught him saying:

"You are deceiving me. There aren't any dolphins in reality. This is the tenth day of our cruise and I haven't seen a sign of one yet!"

"They're always discussing percentage," muttered Franklin, who had not heard what Wilhelm was saying. He was invariably more of the poet and less of the diplomat when he had to do with men of the world. "It's amazing the way he parcels out the wealth of Mother Earth!"

Franklin seemed to have forgotten Wilhelm's presence, to have forgotten the ship, and above all to have forgotten his own position in the world, as he continued to utter his thoughts aloud oblivious of whether he was overheard or not.

"A woman of genius, daring to the verge of indiscretion.... A man, emerging from the mist, revealing himself for one minute of time, and realizing that he stands on the edge of an abyss..." He turned abruptly towards Wilhelm, leaning over him, his hands working as if he were moulding clay: "Can't you understand? The man of the world's clarity of vision dimmed by sensual charms which he, and he alone, must never, never allow himself to enjoy unless he breaks the laws of his own being."

He pulled himself together, turned away, and once more contemplated the expanse of waters.

Wilhelm had followed his discourse with composure. He did not budge from his chair, but continued to lie back among the comfortable cushions as he said:

"You've fallen into one of your mad moods again, I see. Hardly twenty minutes have passed by since you were informing me that there was nothing in the whole world to equal movement, motion. You even raised your voice to exclaim: 'Swimming, Wilhelm, swimming!' And the sailor over there, whose name is likewise Wilhelm, was preparing to come to our assistance with a life-belt. 'To swim with a comrade, breasting the current together, and to reach the goal before him. That's better by far than to sit shivering on the bank and make sketches of the swimmers.'"

"What the devil are you talking about?" interrupted Franklin crossly.

"I assure you," continued Wilhelm quietly, "that's exactly what you said. It was eleven o'clock precisely when you made your proclamation--I'd just looked at my watch--and it is not quite half-past now."

"There'll be no such embassies in the future," Kyril was saying at the other end of the vessel, just as Diana and Scherer turned in their walk. "Red plush. Gobelin tapestry, birthday celebrations, tea-parties as background to decisions concerning foreign policy, all will come to an end; and we'll have business conducted in offices, soberly decorated, with grey walls and carpets and easy chairs such as we affect in clubs and smoking rooms..."

"Are you so profoundly convinced of the ethical value of leather?" asked the prince mockingly. But Kyril continued unheeding:

"No conversation shall take place save in the presence of a dictaphone, set up somewhere conspicuous so that everyone can see it, a dictaphone which will reproduce the talk within the walls of parliament. Everything must be clear, unambiguous, sober. Business, not diplomacy!"

"Shall we be allowed to smoke cigarettes?"

"Each member of the community will eat and smoke according to individual preference. But the State will no longer foot the bill for what its representative sets before the representative of another State and his wife in order that through the exploitation of the indigestion of the former or the taste for good wines of the latter, he may elicit from his guests certain useful information."

"Rather a dreary world, Doctor. Doesn't it seem to you that such representation abroad is very similar to the interior functioning of a certain police-ridden State which is far from being to your taste?"

Kyril stood motionless, pipe in hand.

"The common things of everyday life will be irradiated with the Idea," he said at length.

"The Idea? Ah, yes, of course! But what about the persons who carry out the Idea?"

"They will devote themselves whole-heartedly to the carrying out of the Idea."

"And they'll all be in complete sympathy with it, eh? As a matter of principle, there will be no such thing as hatred in your community, I suppose? Les passions seront tout à fait nivelées?"

"Les passions," echoed Kyril gloomily, a savage tone coming into his voice, and Eduard, who had quite casually lapsed into the foreign idiom, was surprised at having inveigled the young man into speaking French, and equally surprised at the excellent way the words were pronounced. He also noticed that the thick, blond brows were drawn together, the eyes, which had been shining and happy, were clouded, and the whole man, hitherto so motionless, leaning against the rail, was stirring, was pulling himself away from the support, and was slowly turning round to contemplate upon the sea the yacht's wake.

Eduard noted all these things, and held his peace. It is always so, he mused. Whenever such ideologues leave the party rut, they invariably lapse into being dragons from a primitive age. Just as he begins to be interesting, he ceases to talk--much as I do myself!

That evening the prince stood with Diana, on the bridge. A fresh breeze had been blowing all day from the east, and the yacht was under sail. Now the air was very still and very warm. They were rounding Cape Matapan, and knew that they were in for a spell of balmy weather. Diana had thrown a white cape over her evening gown, and was wearing it toga fashion, like an Italian officer. She stood bare-headed just in front of Eduard, who was likewise wrapped in a cloak, and towering head and shoulders above her. From a distance, they might have been taken for one person, standing alone.

The night sky, clear as crystal, brilliant as it can only be in the south, was studded with stars. Diana did not speak. She looked this way and that, bending over the rail, gazing upward at the constellations which, as she picked them out, she named quietly, for her own gratification. Eduard pressed close against the rail so as not to hinder her in her movements, for, though she herself had invited him to come with her, she seemed to have forgotten his presence, and to be averse to being reminded that he was at her side. He was, therefore, taken unawares when she cried:

"There it is!"

"What?"

"The Scales. Don't you see? Over there!"

"Where?"

"There, just in line with the helmsman's cap is Lyra, and two spans away the four bright stars--over there! Do you see them now?"

He leaned forward to follow her indications, and as he did so, she placed her left hand on his shoulder. Eduard saw nothing, but he kept very still. He wanted to prolong this moment, to eke it out to the utmost. He wondered if he had better say that he saw the constellation, but that might put an end to her present position. Perhaps he had better ask her once more to point it out; but that might cause her to make some other movement. At last he felt that he dared not allow any more time to elapse before speaking, so he forced himself to say:

"Four stars, of course, yes, that's the Scales."

His tone affected Diana disagreeably; she made for the ladder, and climbed down before he had collected his wits sufficiently to give her a helping hand. But she knew the prince too well now to feel piqued; and he, though annoyed with himself, was determined not to spoil their stroll together. They walked forward in silence, and after a while he said:

"Is that your constellation?"

"A balance! Could one have a better guiding star?" She paused in her walk and leaned against the rail.

Again the prince was silent. She had opened her cloak in order to throw the end over her shoulder again for it had become dislodged, and as she did so the fragrance of her body and her gown was wafted to him on the night air, confusing his thoughts once more. Could this woman, speaking so calmly under the stars, be the one whose slim, boylike legs a wanton wind had displayed this same morning, whose sun-tanned neck had spoken to him of youth and vigour as the company had sat over dinner, and whose bronzed figure he had seen for one second of time when she had posed as the goddess of the chase?

Determined to come back to the present, he said:

"Someone was talking to me only this morning about balance in the government of a State, as if we need no longer reckon with the human, emotional factor. At last I asked him: 'And what about the passions?'

"La passione," Diana softly murmured, turning round to peer into the sea.

Eduard was taken aback by her choice of such romantic words in so romantic a tongue; he was no less struck by the similarity between Kyril's reaction and Diana's to his shaft. He was annoyed at finding any similarity between two such alien natures, and said with some asperity:

"Si, signorina! Or is the constellation to become obscured as soon as we are driven to do something ill-balanced?"

She looked over her shoulder, and asked coldly:

"Are you afraid of ill-balanced things?"

He did not yield ground under her gaze, and retorted:

"You yourself chose the Scales as your guiding star, not I!"

"My life," she continued in a gentler voice, "has been one long stare at that constellation--and yet, judging by the course my life has hitherto taken, one would think that Mars had been my guiding star."

She raised her head as she spoke, and looked up as if seeking the planet she had just named. He gazed at her in speechless devotion, and when she, calmed by her own words, rested her arms once more on the rail and cast her eyes upon the water, he said tranquilly:

"And yet your life seems to me, as I contemplate it from afar, to have been constructive rather than destructive."

She was wholly reconciled by his words, and said softly:

"Mars lives within me, Prince, as he lives within us all."

Eduard watched her as, her arms wrapped in her cloak, she leaned over the yacht's side. A tiny hem of her silk dress gleamed beneath the lower edge of her cloak. He took in every detail, as he mused: "In an hour's time she will be alone, looking into the small, triangular glass I caught a glimpse of as I passed by her open door yesterday..." At length he said, almost in a whisper:

"Mars and the Scales. Maybe they are both alternatively the guiding stars of wanderers?"

Diana raised her eyes to his, as she said:

"And yet one of them guides the steadfast, while the other illumines the path of the warrior. Surely of all the company aboard the 'Excelsior,' you are the one who should choose the Scales for your emblem."

He felt that he had been dissected, that the words were hemming him in, and was about to answer somewhat warmly, when the sound of a lute broke upon the stillness of the night. Diana's harshness evaporated as the strains were carried towards her, and she said, smiling happily:

"Listen! Wilhelm is going to sing," and she began to hum the song.

Quant' é bella giovinezza mà si fugge tuttavia...

With the sprightliness of a girl of seventeen, and as unwittingly as a princess, she slipped her hand through Eduard's arm, and rejoined the circle of her friends.