Irretrievable (14 page)

“But surely your Royal Highness feels quite certain of the discretion of her suite?”

“No, thank God,” retorted the Princess, “and you cannot imagine how seriously I say that. Discretion
à tout prix
can, of course, exist but if only because it is so unconditional, it is frightful; it ought never to exist unconditionally. Particularly at a court, men and women need to develop a sense of tact as to what can and what cannot be said; but anyone who lacks this sense and merely says nothing all the time, is not only boring but dangerous. There is something inhuman about it because, after all, the most human attribute is speech and we are given it in order to be able to talk …. I know that where I'm concerned, I make an inordinate use of it, but I refuse to be ashamed; on the contrary, I'm delighted.”

In the second carriage, similar meetings and greetings were taking place; but the chief topic of conversation was Holk. Pentz wanted to hear from Fräulein von Rosenberg what she had thought of him at the audience that morning. Erichsen played no part in all these questions and answers but listened very attentively because he was very fond of this sort of badinage, all the more because he felt himself personally incapable of it.

“He's a Schleswig-Holsteiner,” said Ebba. “Germans don't make good courtiers.”

Pentz laughed. “It really is too obvious, my dear lady, that Denmark didn't have the honour of giving birth to you. The Schleswig-Holsteiners no courtiers! You forget the Ranzaus, the Bernstorffs, the Moltkes …”

“They were Ministers, not courtiers.”

“But that's almost the same thing.”

“Not at all, my dear Baron. I read a good deal of history, if only in French novels, but that's sufficient for a lady at court, and I venture to state that there is all the difference in the world between a Minister and a courtier. At least, if they really deserve their name. The Germans have a certain brutal gift for ruling—forgive the adjective, because I can't bear the Germans—but it's because they know so much about ruling that they are bad courtiers. Ruling is a rough-and-ready business. Ask Erichsen if I'm not right.”

The latter solemnly shook his head and the young woman laughed as she continued: “And all that applies more or less to the count. He might perhaps be turned into a Minister …”

“For Heaven's sake …”

“But he has absolutely nothing to recommend him as a companion for the Princess. He stands there as solemn as a high priest and has no idea when to laugh. And that's something very important. Our gracious Princess, as I think we all agree, has a number of tiny foibles, one of which is trying to play the part of an eighteenth-century
femme d'esprit
. As a result, she has a liking for out-of-date anecdotes and quotations and not only expects you to understand them but to be amused by them. But the count doesn't understand even the rudiments of the matter.”

“And you managed to discover all that from the poor count's face during an audience of barely ten minutes?”

“I'm not certain whether I can agree with your phrasing, because the important thing was that there was absolutely no expression on his face the whole time. And that is the worst thing of all. For example, the Princess spoke of King Henry IV and mentioned
la poule au pot
, which strictly speaking ought really not to be mentioned any longer. But just because the reference to the
poule au pot
was so feeble, a courtier has a double duty to smile and not to stand there like a dummy, leaving a princess in the lurch when she is looking for applause.”

A look of satisfaction spread over Erichsen's face.

“And then the Princess talked graciously about chlorosis or said that I might be suffering from it. Now, I ask you, Baron, everyone knows that
any
mention of chlorosis must always be greeted with a smile, that's a firm tradition, and when a princess is gracious enough to add something about iron in the blood, thus indicating that she has read Darwin or some other great
savant
, then the smile of amusement must be immediately followed by a smile of admiration, and when absolutely nothing like this happens and a gentleman-in-waiting just stands there like an oaf for all the world as if someone had merely said “It's ten o'clock,” then I'm afraid that I find myself compelled to deny that gentleman-in-waiting any claim to the profession of courtier.”

It was nearly four o'clock when they arrived at Klampenborg. Holk helped the Princess to alight, and having decided to take coffee at the Hermitage, the party moved off towards the adjacent Zoological Gardens, at the north end of which lay the Hermitage. Their way led them first past a large hotel, in front of which was erected a marquee a good hundred feet long and open on one side; it stood on a stretch of lawn between the path and the beach, with the open side facing the path up which the Princess now proceeded. The banquet itself had not yet begun but numerous officers of almost every unit of the Copenhagen garrison were already assembled; everywhere there could be seen the brilliant uniforms of the Horse Guards and the Hussars, and even more colourful than the uniforms were the flags and pennants fluttering from the top of the marquee. When the Princess was still some hundred yards away, she turned sharply left down a gravel side-path, since she did not wish to disturb the festivities but she had already been recognized and de Meza, who had been informed of her presence in Klampenborg, hurried across the lawn and greeted her respectfully.

“My dear General,” she said, “this was not at all my intention. It is just striking four and I can see the soup-column already on the march from the hotel. And I could not bear to be responsible for cold soup, least of all on an October day with a fresh breeze. General de Meza only likes such weather, I believe, when he is on campaign and lying in bivouac amongst his men.”

She said all this with a certain princely graciousness and the General, who was far from insensible to it, left her with renewed expressions of respect. From the tent, various toasts could already be heard and the band struck up the national song: “King Christian stood beside the lofty mast,” and then went on to the “Valiant Soldier Lad.”

Together with her suite, the Princess had now reached the Zoological Gardens, the southern tip of which adjoined the causeway just beyond Klampenborg. Here she gave Erichsen her arm; then followed Countess Schimmelmann with Pentz and, further behind, Holk with Ebba, the former obviously perplexed as to how to start the conversation. It had not escaped his notice that during the audience with the Princess that morning, Ebba had regarded him with a slight air of mockery and superiority and the drive that afternoon had not yet given them the opportunity of speaking to each other. Finally he ventured: “We are going to have a wonderful sunset. And there could be no better place from which to see it than here. What a magnificent plain! It is seven years ago since I was last in Klampenborg and I have never been to the Hermitage.”

“Did the name scare you?”

“No, because I am myself by inclination and habit something of a hermit and, but for the Princess who now and again recalls me to the world, I might almost call myself the hermit of Holkenäs: sky and sea and a lovely castle on a dune.”

“On a dune,” repeated the girl. “And a lovely castle. How enviable and how romantic. It sounds almost like something out of a ballad, the
König von Thule
, for example. It's true that, if I remember rightly, the king of Thule wasn't married.”

“I am not so sure,” replied Holk, now put completely at his ease by the young woman's tone. “I am not so sure. Was he really unmarried? It is almost a subject for a thesis. If I remember rightly, he bequeathed everything to his heirs, which does seem to suggest some sort of family. Of course, it may have been a collateral branch. In spite of that, I should like to assume that he was married and had a wise wife who perhaps, or indeed probably, smiled at her old husband and allowed him to enjoy his youthful enthusiasm with the goblet.”

“Now that really
is
interesting,” cried the girl, her eyes sparkling mischievously. “Really remarkable. Till now that ballad has always seemed to me quite unambiguous: the king dead, the goblet emptied and sunk, and the realm (always the least important thing in a ballad, of course) split up and given away amongst everybody. But if we can assume the existence of a queen—and on second thoughts, I quite agree with you—then when the old man dies, everything is really only just beginning and the
König von Thule
is unfinished, to say the least, and needs a sequel. And why not? In the end I expect a page can be found who up till then had been consumed by a hopeless passion and now gets his colour back—or ‘iron in the blood,' to quote our gracious Princess.”

“Ah, my dear Fräulein von Rosenberg,” said Holk, “you're poking fun at the Romantics and forgetting that your own name is connected with an extremely romantic episode which certainly deserved a ballad.”

“My name?” she laughed. “A romantic episode? Do you mean Ebba? Well, that might well be so, I suppose. After all, most ballads have something to do with Ebba, more or less. As you know, Ebba means Eva, and it is notorious that there's nothing romantic without the apple. But you're shaking your head, so you must mean not Ebba but Rosenberg.”

“Certainly, my dear young lady, I mean Rosenberg. Genealogy happens to be a hobby of mine and my great-uncle's second wife was a Rosenberg so that I know something about the traditions of your family. All the Rosenbergs—at least all the Rosenberg-Gruszczinskys, because the Lipinskys are rather different—descend from a brother of the Archbishop of Prague who was dragged from the pulpit on the so-called Amber Coast and murdered by heathen Prussians. This pulpit still exists as a family shrine, even although it is all decrepit and worm-eaten.”

“And I am afraid that I have never even heard of it,” said Fräulein von Rosenberg, seemingly, or perhaps really, in earnest for a moment.

“From which I should deduce that you probably belong to the Lipinsky and not to the Gruszczinsky branch of the family.”

“To my great regret, not even that. True, if I'm allowed to put Lipeson instead of Lipinsky, a boldness which that illustrious family will, I trust, forgive, then perhaps I might claim a link between me and that family by using that form of the name. You see, I'm a Rosenberg-Meyer or more correctly a Meyer-Rosenberg, granddaughter of the Meyer-Rosenberg who was well known in Swedish history as King Gustav III's personal pet Jew.”

Holk could not repress a slight movement of shocked surprise but the young woman continued in an affectedly casual tone: “Granddaughter of Meyer-Rosenberg whom King Gustav later ennobled under the title of Baron Rosenberg, Baron Rosenberg of Filehne, a place on the Prusso-Polish border, where our family had lived for several centuries. And since you're interested in genealogical curiosities, let me briefly add that the act of nobility came not one moment too soon, because three days later the chivalrous and, as far as our family is concerned, unforgettable, king was murdered by Lieutenant Anckarström. In fact, an event just as suited for a ballad as the murdered archbishop but I suppose rather loosely connected with my family. But you mustn't give me up just for that reason. The grass has grown over all that and my father married a Wrangel, in Paris at that, where I was born exactly on the same day the July Revolution broke out. Some people say that they can see cause and effect. In any case, it enables you to calculate how old I am.”

Holk was an out-and-out aristocrat who never failed to take for granted the closest connexion between the continuance of his family and the continuance of the Divine order, and normally refrained from talking about such matters only because he considered them too sacred. In this sphere he would, indeed, have been glad to reintroduce the most medieval practices, and the more searching the probe into his and his family's ancestry, the better it would have pleased him, since his name would have emerged with all the greater lustre. His easy and agreeable manners, as agreeable to his middle-class friends as to his equals, sprang from this feeling of complete assurance as to this most important matter of origins. But the more confident he was about his own family tree, the greater his doubts about any other, not excluding certain ducal houses, and as a result, you could speak with him very freely about such matters—as long as his own family was not in question. This is what now happened: quickly recovering from his first shock on hearing about the first Meyer-Rosenberg and particularly the rather strange epithet that had been used to describe him, he now found it highly piquant to see such an obviously intelligent person treating with levity a question which, in the majority of cases, from his extremely strict viewpoint, could hardly be taken lightly enough.

Their
path ran along the eastern edge of the Zoological Gardens, mainly beneath high plane-trees whose branches, many still bearing their yellow foliage, hung down, obscuring the view, so that it was only after coming out of the avenue that they saw the Hermitage standing in the middle of a sunny forest glade. The two leading couples were familiar with the view, but Holk and Fräulein von Rosenberg who were seeing it for the first time, stopped in their tracks, almost taken aback by the entrancing sight of the solitary castle which they could perceive, still some distance away, towering up to the clear autumn sky. No smoke was rising from its chimneys and the sun shone brightly over the broad meadows, still green, while in the steel-blue sky above hovered hundreds of gulls, resting on their way from the sound towards Lake Fure.

“Your own castle can hardly be more solitary than this,” said Ebba as they walked along a narrow path which led diagonally across the glade towards the Hermitage.

“No, neither more solitary nor more beautiful. But lovely though this is, I still shouldn't want to change. I find this stillness oppresses me. In Holkenäs there's always a slight swell and a breeze comes up from the sea and blows in the tops of the trees in my park. But here even the blades of grass aren't moving and every word you utter sounds as if the whole world could overhear it.”