CHAPTER TEN

It was nearly eight in the evening, and still bright daylight, when on the fourth of June the closed carriage drove from the station to the Schloss Strasse. The wedding ceremony in Berlin, a civil affair at which Scherer and Tauernheim had acted as witnesses, had taken only ten minutes. Herr von Wassilko's distant attitude made it desirable to postpone a visit to him; Sidney had gone away; there was to be no religious consecration of the marriage; and public mourning for the late prince had been a good excuse for dispensing with a reception at the little palace--a formality which would have loosed a flood of questions of etiquette.

Eduard had wanted to catch the startled burghers when they were still in the initial confusion into which they had been thrown by the double interment, a regency, the death of the old prince, another funeral ceremony which had been attended by the emperor, the accession, and the taking of the coronation oath--a series of events which had given quiet people enough to talk about for a long time to come. When the news leaked out that the new sovereign prince (concerning whom the darkest rumours were already ripe) had made a left-handed marriage to a young woman of whom practically nothing was known, except that she had been the mistress of a count, and so on, and so on, their capacity for excitement had been exhausted, their minds had been saturated with alarms and crises, and they accepted the accomplished fact as one of heaven's decrees. Some even found the news interesting, looked up the record of similar marriages in Becker's Universal History, and noted that the children of morganatic unions had sometimes been granted the right of succession by the emperor and the estates of the realm. According to the latest researches, a crossing of blood was useful, and was certainly preferable to the inroad of strange collaterals into their beloved country.

When, in the end, the news was generally accepted as true, people found it impossible to stay at home. Though music and banners were out of the question because of the public mourning, and though it was late in the evening, as if by common consent they had decided to celebrate the occasion by sporting their new summer clothes which at so sad a Whitsuntide would otherwise have been left in wardrobes and drawers.

Amid multifarious duties, Eduard had found time to look forward in particular to this one evening. Accustomed as he had been, for a long time now, to think of Diana in situations in which he was used to seeing other women and chiefly women of his own order, and to watch her adapting herself to all aspects of reality--he now perceived in her restrained but free demeanour a confirmation of his premonitions. Thus it had been when the old minister of State had been introduced to her; again, at the wedding; again, when she had said good-bye to Scherer; again, when the station master had paid his respects; again, on getting into the carriage. Consequently, when they were driving to the palace he could talk to her as easily as if she had been to the manner born.

"Look, Diana," he said. "They are wearing tall hats, although it is late in the evening. Highly respectable people, ours!"

"Why are they all standing on one side of the street?"

"Because they thought you'd be sitting on my left."

Diana laughed behind her black veil, but so tonelessly that he was alarmed when he remembered how frank was her usual laughter, realizing that a constraint was for the first time imposing itself on her. To mask his embarrassment, he said:

"Houses pretty low, aren't they? Better than tall barracks!"

"And healthier," she rejoined.

"Do you find the cobbles very rough to drive over?"

"Not a bit."

"Schloss Strasse is going to be repaired soon."

"That will be a good thing."

"It has an excellent bridle path along the side."

"Is that so? Where does it go to?"

"Pretty farmsteads, good farmers, fresh milk."

"How lovely," she said, while thinking to herself: "He is the best of men, and I am driving straight into the blue of heaven."

"She is tired," mused he; "or sad. I wonder if a glass of champagne would do her good when we get in?"

"If only I could be vouchsafed a sign," thought Diana, as she sighted the castle tower.

Now, when the carriage made an unexpected turn, and a wide space in front of the castle opened into view, the sun, close to the horizon, dipped behind a small, thick cloud, lighting up its irregular edge with as much power as at high noon. Diana's heart beat furiously, but Eduard did not see what she was looking at, for his own gaze was fixed on the gates, to see if all his directions had been carried out.

Two servants, the minimum number allowed by court etiquette, were standing on the threshold; and in other respects, likewise, he had had the standard of reception kept down to that proper to a country mansion. On the first floor he led Diana into a little suite of panelled rooms. They were quite unpretentious, and yet Diana felt that he had chosen every curtain, every chair, every vase, expressly for her. She went over to the bay window, looked out into the open, and began to talk to the ancient walnut tree which towered up to the third story.

"How it rustles," she said in a low tone, turning to him.

"It is welcoming you," he answered.

"How many generations has it greeted already?"

"Three, or perhaps four."

"Are we the fifth? Five is a lucky number."

She sat down on the deep window seat in the bay, and, as she motioned him to her side, he saw her smile for the first time in her reflective way.

He seized her hand.

"Are you sad?"

"A little."

"Are you tired?"

"Not very."

"Are you ready for your dinner?"

"Yes."

He rang, and to the servant who answered, he said:

"The countess wishes to have dinner served."

"Very good, Your Highness."

The formality and baldness of these few words, the mechanical appearance and disappearance of the lackey, had all at once revived Diana's spirits. Sportively, as he turned back towards her, she flung her arms round his neck and exclaimed:

"Oh you! That was much older than the walnut tree. It dated from the Thirty Years' War!"

He was a trifle astonished, having given the order quite mechanically; but he was glad that the tension had been relieved. He said:

"Are you going to dress for dinner?"

"Very good, Your Highness!"

They dined at a small round table, waited on by two footmen who discreetly watched their prince's young wife in her low-cut dress with its crape edging, and noted that her short curls escaped from the mourning bonnet prescribed by custom. Diana and Eduard, meanwhile, refreshed by food and good wine, and enlivened by the conversation they had carried on in French, had recovered their natural gaiety. Having led her back to her boudoir, he said:

"Would your ladyship rather smoke her cigarette on deck?"

"Don't you think it rather too windy tonight, Prince?"

"North-west, eleven knots, we'll have to take in a reef!"

"And Giorgino?"

"Dr. Sergievitch must climb into the rigging."

The name had been spoken. As they sat opposite one another in the wide, tapestried chairs, Eduard saw a shade flit across her face, as if rising from her heart. But now he felt sure of himself, sitting under his forefathers' roof, with his ring on Diana's finger. Taking the bull by the horns, he said:

"With regard to Sergievitch, I have made sure of him for us."

"Us?" Diana gripped the arm of her chair.

"I mean, for this little country of mine."

"In what way?"

"I wrote to him before my father's death to ask whether he would be willing to attend to the much neglected matter of working-class welfare in this part of the world. He is an expert, took his degree in kindred topics, and would long since have been called to a professional chair in Leipzig or elsewhere had he not been a Russian. Since he is a foreigner, I shall have to make him accessory to our little ministry. Nominally he'll be librarian, though of course we have one or two learned men of our own to attend to that work. Does the idea please you?"

She smiled.

"What have I got to do with the matter?"

"Everything, Diana," he said gravely.

Standing up, he moved to lay his hand on her head. The bonnet was in his way, and he gently removed it.

"When did you write to him?"

"Some time during the week between my arrival and my father's death. Why do you ask?"

She thought: "The Russian kept that to himself when we met outside the jeweller's. Why? And why should Eduard single out this man in particular?"

She said:

"Eduard?"

"How pale you are."

"Why did you summon this Russian?"

Removing his hand from, her head, he strode twice up and down the room, and then, stopping short in front of her, said uneasily:

"Why? Not for the sake of welfare work or a library. We travelled to Vienna in the night train, and were arguing the whole time, as usual. I wanted to make sure that this explosive material would be safely housed. A hygienic precaution. The fellow incorporates the future, and we--we want to make the impossible possible, here, in Germany, the first, the only ones: you, and I!"

"Do you want a revolution?" she asked quietly.

"If I did, I should have renounced you, and should not have worried you today by putting that ring on your finger. What I want is that the call of the dissatisfied should always sound in my ears. While we are modernizing ourselves here, I want to go on hearing the voice which says: 'All that, so far, has achieved nothing!' Sergievitch represents the spire of a Gothic cathedral...."

While he still contemplated in imagination the figure of the handsome Russian, he turned the new ring round and round on his finger. Diana, standing up, said resolutely:

"You are young, and I, too, am still young! We will build a great work and make a splendid road! Whomsoever we need, we will swallow without winking, were it even a bomb-thrower!"

She stood in front of him, the brown eyes flashing into his blue ones. A wave of perfect happiness flowed through his taut frame. His eyes were fixed on the young woman who, after long hesitation, was at length to become his; he took note of the black trimming on her gown. Slowly stretching out his hand to her breast, he unfastened her brooch, she raised her arms a little, laughing at this sport of love. In the same deliberate way, he removed the sign of mourning from her shoulders, a double veil, which he dropped to the floor behind her. He looked at her, his lips trembling slightly. Then, precipitately, he clasped her in his arms.

THE END