The Adventures of Harry Richmond. Volume 4. George Meredith
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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