V
When I unwillingly came back to consciousness I thought His Serene Highness must be getting under way again. Then I didn’t know what to think. For who should be at my chaste bachelor bedside, shaking me vigorously and shouting something about Nick, but Zephine. It didn’t take me long, however, to make out a strong smell of smoke, a most unpleasant glare, and horrid sounds of crackling. What happened next I don’t quite remember. We only just had time to run for it. You have no idea how quickly a small wooden hotel can burn up at two or three o’clock of a cool June morning. There turned out, thank heaven, to be no casualties. But there were some pretty tight squeezes. And nobody saved much of anything.
As the flames died down and the survivors began to regard each other in the cold light of day, we presented one of the most inspiriting spectacles I ever hope to admire. It made me think of what I have heard described in rural regions as a white shower. The only completely dressed persons in the party were a few sympathetic citizens of Odde, plus my old lady in the white cap and the Englishman of the pockets. A fairly complete exhibition of the night-wear of civilisation was there, hovering for warmth in the neighbourhood of the smoking ruins or lurking for privacy in an orchard I had not noticed the evening before. There were a few blankets and counter-panes in the assembly. Some had clutched odd garments as they fled, and now retired behind apple trees to put them on. One lady had had time to rescue her hat—“only this and nothing more.” A squire of two dames had clothed one of them in his dinner-jacket and the other in the waistcoat appertaining thereto. He himself boasted a pair of pumps and a Baedeker. As for me, I discovered myself to be the happy possessor of a pair of trousers and a travelling rug. The latter in particular was highly comforting, in the air that drew down the valley from the white fjelds.
I likewise discovered, however, that with the rest of my belongings I seemed to have lost my companions. I had been so diverted, for a time, that it did not occur to me to be uneasy about them. And I was unable to imagine that two such competent persons would ever allow themselves to be roasted alive. I began, though, to wonder what had become of them—when in the wearer of a splendid Persian dressing gown I suddenly recognised Nick. We fell, so to speak, upon each other’s necks.
“But where is Zephine?” we simultaneously demanded.
She could scarcely have come to any harm, for she it was who rescued us both. And we both vaguely remembered having, in our excitement, seen her afterward. But where on earth was she? And, poor wretch, in what condition?
Just as we were setting forth to find out, we were arrested by a loud and lamentable “Ach Gott!” This outcry enabled us, indirectly, to identify the Prince of Waldeck-Hohenkugel. I had first picked out for that nobleman the most distinguished looking person present, a blond and curly-haired Apollo who stalked about with an air of proprietorship, classically draped in a sheet. But a squeaky voice, issuing in response to the “Ach Gott!” from an unnaturally distended suit of purple pyjamas, rebuked my ingenuousness. His Highness, less serene than ever and now past all power of English, nevertheless took us at once into his confidence, pouring out the history of his woes from the moment of his arrival in Odde, and intimating that the fire was a just judgment from on high upon an unrighteous Wirthin. As for the princely consort, she shivered in the lee of an apple tree and refused to be comforted. She had reason!
I looked at Nick and Nick looked at me. We had not much more cause for happiness than those disillusioned pleasure seekers. Nor had we burned the roof over their heads. Yet we had, as it were, snatched the pillows from under them. Moreover we could not help being conscious that our own case was less dire than theirs, and that one of them was a lady. So Nick, like a hero, took off his Persian dressing gown. I, not to be outdone, divested myself of my English travelling rug. As one man we advanced toward the princely apple tree, whose branching trunk intervened between us and the shrinking Serenity of Waldeck-Hohenkugel. And each of us, holding out at arm’s length his offering, invited Her Highness, in a strange mixture of tongues, to accept the same.
Her Serene Highness—such is the inconsistency of womankind—eyed us through the fork of her apple tree with no little confusion. In the candle-light of her ancestral halls, or even in the sunlight of the beach at Swinemünde, she would have been unconscious of exposures more expansive than she now presented. But to parley, under a Norwegian apple tree, in a single voluminous garment of white, with two honourably intentioned gentlemen in pyjamas, seemed to shake the serenity even of a mediatised house. Yet that Her Highness’s emotions were of a complex nature was patent from the hungry glances which she cast, now upon the English travelling rug, now upon the Persian dressing gown.
I know not how long this painful scene might have been drawn out, had it not been for Zephine, our lost Zephine, who suddenly reappeared before us, trim and miraculous in her famous écru silk and her famous brown skirt, with the Englishman of the pockets. Behind them marched the curly-haired Apollo in the sheet, respectfully bearing Zephine’s straw suit-case. It was really too much.
“Well Zephine,” I was just able to remark, well-nigh overcome by my superhuman attempts to ward off another attack of hysteria, “this is a scene to your taste. Here is an orchard and here are models—more or less as you like them. I think we would make you a stupendous success in the next Academy!”
Zephine, taking in the situation at a glance, wasted no time in unprofitable speech. She made a sign to the Englishman of the pockets, who for a wonder understood it. At least he forthwith presented to our little company his atlas façade. She made another sign to the gentleman in the sheet, who put down her suit-case, pulled his uncombed yellow fore-lock, and stalked away. She then, under the admiring eyes of her travelling companions and of Their Serene Highnesses of Hohenkugel, proceeded to open the suit-case, revealing her palette, her little folding easel, and the rest of her painting paraphernalia.
“Gracious!” I burst out. “Are you going to do it? Or are you going to paint clothes on us?” And at the same instant Nick demanded: “Who’s your friend?”
Zephine evidently considered the latter question more worthy of a reply.
“He’s the stable boy of the hotel,” she said, “and he’s been helping me telephone. I’ve engaged rooms for us all in Bergen. And the captain of the steamer says we can go on board any time we like. They’re making coffee for us there. Keep your clothes, for I’ve saved mine and can lend some to this lady.” As a matter of fact, there they were, under her painting kit! “But first turn your backs and hold this behind you, so that we can have a dressing room.” And she handed us a green silk petticoat.
It is not for me to record what took place behind that petticoat. I can only testify that it was upon a much more serene Highness we were at last permitted to turn—attired in Zephine’s shiny grey skirt of super-state, with other necessary adjuncts, and abounding in the most complicated expressions of gratitude.
“Kolossal!” let out the Prince. “But I—!” he added mournfully, beating his brilliant breast.
“You can wrap this around your shoulders,” said Zephine comfortingly, presenting him with the green silk petticoat. “And you might give him something, Herb,” she added. “You seem to have more than you need.”
“Ah!” archly exclaimed Her Serene Highness. “Then he is the one! I asked myself which of these gentlemen was the gracious lady’s husband.”
The violence of my efforts to maintain a decorum suitable to the occasion must have made me turn a colour not far from that of the princely pyjamas. I hardly dared meet the eyes of my accomplices. Yet when I did so it was to discover in Zephine not quite the amused self-possession I expected.
As for Nick, he stared a little, he drew himself up in his Persian dressing gown, he did his best to click a pair of bare heels, he made Their Serene Highnesses of Waldeck-Hohenkugel such a bow as they knew how to appreciate, and he said:
“Pardon, Highness, but you are mistaken.” Then he turned, somewhat less ceremoniously, to me. “Look here,” he threw out, in a way that made me stare in turn. “I don’t know how much the mantua-makers of Bergen are up to, but Zephine’ll have to get some new clothes, like the rest of us. She’s given away most of her own. And I think it’s about time she tried a new system. Anyhow, the first thing she’s going to have is one non-reversible garment of white bombazine, garnished with mosquito netting and whatever in the flora of the country may answer to orange blossoms. Do you get me?”
I signified, not without a grin of surprise, that I got him.
“I suppose you imagine that I owe you something,” proceeded Nick, “and so I won’t ask you to listen to any remarks on the subject of a habit you have latterly developed of snickering at inopportune moments. I will ask you, though, if you don’t mind, to go to Trondhjem and look up those enamels. I’m afraid Bode may be after them. In the meantime I think Zephine and I will beat it to the North Cape. I shouldn’t wonder if we ran around to Archangel and Nova Zembla too. I’m going to telegraph to England for a yacht. So you can take your time. But you must be ready for us to pick you up on our way back.”
At first, you know, I thought they had cooked the thing up between them. But Nick’s air—rather of a horse with the bit in his teeth—and Zephine’s unmistakable pinkness, and a queer look they at last exchanged, when Nick finished his speech and offered Zephine his arm, told me that not until that moment, when two Serene Highnesses, a baroque Englishman, and I, were staring at them, had those extraordinary young persons come to the point of undertaking the delicate negotiations vulgarly known as getting engaged. Zephine, at any rate, did not refuse Nick’s offered arm. And with a somewhat less magnificent bow they strolled away, leaving me to deal with the situation as best I might.
I did take my time. I bagged the enamels, and then I went on a two months’ walking tour with the Englishman of the pockets.