Majesty: A Novel

by Louis Couperus

3

The sun had appeared through the clouds in the afternoon and made the grey of the sky and the water turn blue with the hazy blueness of a northern summer. The sea glowed and put on scales of gold; the weather-beaten castle stood blistering its broad granite pile in the sun, as an old man does his back. The striped canvas awning was lowered on the top terrace, which led into the great hall through three glass doors. Rugs lay scattered over the ground. Princess Sofie and the Archduchess Valérie sat in great wickerwork chairs, painting in water-colours. From the hall sounded, monotonously, the soft exercises of Princess Elizabeth, the crown-princess' eldest daughter, who was practising. Princess Wanda sat on the ground, romping a trifle boisterously with her youngest two nephews, Erik and Karl. On a long wicker chair lay Prince Herman, with both legs up; next to him was a little table heaped with newspapers and periodicals, some of which had fallen to the ground; a great tumbler of sherry-cobbler stood on the wicker ledge of his chair; the blue smoke rose from a cigarette between his fingers.

Sofie and Valérie compared their sketches and laughed. They looked at the sky, which was bisected by the awning: the clouds, woolly white, surged one above the other; the sea was dazzling with its golden scales, like a giant cuirass.

"What are you two painting there?" asked Herman, who was turning the pages of an illustrated paper.

"Clouds," replied Valérie, "nothing but clouds. I have persuaded Sofie to make studies of clouds with me. Presently, if you're not too lazy, you must come and look at my album." She gave a little laugh. "It contains nothing but clouds!"

"By Jove!" drawled Herman. "How very odd!..."

"Yes," said Sofie, dreamily, "clouds are very nice, but you never know how to catch them: they change every instant."

"Erik," said Herman, "just ask Aunt Valérie to lend me her album."

"No, no," cried Wanda, "go and fetch it yourself, lazybones!..."

But Erik wanted to go; and there came a great struggle. Wanda hugged the little fellow tight in her arms; Karl joined in: there was a general romp and Wanda, laughing, fell sideways to the ground.

"But, Wanda!" said Sofie, reprovingly.

Valérie stood up and went to Herman:

"With all this, you're not seeing my clouds, you lazy boy. I suppose I must take pity on you. Look...."

Herman now suddenly drew himself up and took the album:

"How funny!" he said. "Yellow and white and violet and pink. All sunsets!"

"And sunrises. I dare say I see more of them than you do!"

"The things you see in clouds, Valérie! It's astonishing. How one person differs from another! I should never take it into my head to go and sketch clouds. You ought to come for a cruise with me one day; then you could make whole collections of clouds."

"Why didn't you propose that earlier?" said Valérie, jestingly. "Then I might have joined you and Xara."

"But where is Othomar?" said Herman.

Valérie said that she did not know....

Herman sipped his sherry-cobbler. Wanda wanted a taste, but Herman refused and told her to ring for a glass for herself. Wanda insisted; he seized her by the wrists.

"But Wanda!" Sofie repeated, reprovingly, languidly, drawing her hand over her forehead and laying down her brush.

Wanda laughed gaily:

"But Wanda!" she mimicked.

And they all laughed at Sofie, including Sofie herself:

"Did I speak like that?" she asked, with her languid voice. "I don't know: I get so sleepy here, so lazy...."

They were all making fun of Sofie, when voices sounded from the hall, shrill, old voices. It was the two dowagers, with Othomar; the old ladies were talking in a courtly, mincing way to the young prince, who brought them chairs. The aunts had had a siesta after lunch; they now made their reappearance, with tapestrywork in large reticules. All greeted them with great respect, beneath which lurked a spark of mischief.

"Pardon, lieber Herzog," murmured old Princess Elsa, the older of the two, "I would rather have that little chair...."

Princess Marianne also wanted a small, straight chair; the old ladies thanked Othomar with an obeisance for his gallantry, sat down stiffly and began their embroidery: great coats-of-arms for chair-backs. They were very stately, with clear-cut but wrinkled faces, grey tours and black lace caps; they wore crackling watered-silk gowns, of old-fashioned cut. Now and then they exchanged a quick, sharp word, with a sudden crackling movement of their sharp cockatoo-profiles; they gazed thoughtfully for a moment out to sea, as though they were bound to see something important arriving out of the distance; then they resumed their work. Their old-fashioned, stately, tight-laced, shrivelled figures formed a strange contrast with the easiness of the young people in their simple serge summer suits: they made Princess Wanda's tangled hair and rumpled blouse look perfectly disreputable.

A third old lady came sailing up; she seemed as though she were related to the two dowagers, but was actually Countess von Altenburg, who used to be mistress of the household to Princess Elsa. Behind her were two footmen, carrying trays with coffee and pastry, the old princesses' goûter. The countess made a stately curtsey before the young princes.

"The territory is occupied," whispered Herman to Valérie.

They had all sat down again and among themselves were teasing Othomar with his three Fates, as they called them, unheard by the aunts or the countess, who was rather deaf. A noisy babel of tongues ensued: the aunts spoke German and screamed, to make themselves heard, something about the calmness of the sea into the poor old ears of the countess, who poured out the coffee and nodded that she understood. The younger princes talked English for the most part; Herman sometimes spoke a word or two of Liparian to Othomar; and the children, who had gone to play on a lower terrace, chattered noisily in Gothlandic and French indifferently.

The footmen had brought out afternoon tea and placed it before Princess Sofie, when a lady-in-waiting appeared. She bowed to the young crown-princess and said, in Gothlandic:

"Her majesty requests your royal highness to come to her in the small drawing-room."

"Mamma has sent for me," said Princess Sofie, in English, rising from her chair. "Wanda, will you pour out the tea? Children, will you go upstairs and get dressed? Wanda, tell them again, will you?"

The crown-princess went through the hall, a great, round, dome-shaped apartment, full of stags' antlers, elks' heads, hunting-trophies, and then up a staircase. In the queen's anteroom the footman opened the door for her. Queen Olga was sitting alone; she was some years older than her sister, the Empress of Liparia, taller and more heavily built; her features, however, had much in common with Elizabeth's, but were more filled out.

"Sofie," she at once began, in German, "I have had a letter from Sigismundingen...."

The Duchess of Wendeholm had sat down:

"Anything to do with Valérie?" she asked, in alarm.

"Yes," the queen said, with a reflective glance. "Poor child!..."

"But what is it, Mamma?"

"There, read for yourself...."

The queen handed the letter to her daughter-in-law, who read it hurriedly. The letter was from the Archduchess Eudoxie, Valérie's mother, written with a feverish, excited hand, and said, in phrases which tried to seem indifferent but which betrayed a great satisfaction, that Prince Leopold of Lohe-Obkowitz was at Nice with Estelle Desvaux, the well-known actress, that he was proposing to resign his titular rights in favour of his younger brother and that he would then marry his mistress. The letter requested the queen or the crown-princess to tell this to Valérie, in the hope that it would not prove too great a shock to her. Further, the letter ended with violent attacks upon Prince Leopold, who had caused such a scandal, but at the same time with manifest expressions of delight that now perhaps Valérie would no longer dream of becoming the lady of a domain measuring six yards square! The archduke added a postscript to say that this was not a vague report but a certainty and that Prince Leopold himself had told it to their own relations at Nice, who had written to Sigismundingen.

"Has Valérie ever spoken to you about Prince Lohe?" asked the queen.

"Only once in a way, mamma," replied the Duchess of Wendeholm, handing back the letter. "But we all know well enough that this news will be a great blow to her. Is she not in the least prepared for it?"

"Probably not: you see, we had none of us heard or read anything about it! Shall I tell her? Poor child!..."

"Shall I do so, mamma? As I told you, Valérie has spoken to me...."

"Very well, you do it...."

The duchess reflected, looked at the clock:

"It is so late now: I'll tell her after dinner; we are none of us dressed yet.... What do you think?"

"Very well then, after dinner...."

The crown-princess went out: it was time to hurry and dress. At seven o'clock a loud, long bell sounded. They assembled in the hall; the dining-room looked out with its large bow-windows upon the pine-forest. It was a long table: King Siegfried, a hale old sovereign with a full, grey beard; Queen Olga; the Crown-prince Gunther, tall, fair, two-and-thirty; Princess Sofie and her children; Othomar, sitting between his aunt and Valérie; Herman and Wanda; Olaf and Christofel; the two dowagers with Countess von Altenburg; equerries, ladies-in-waiting, chamberlains, Princess Elizabeth's governess, the little princes' tutors....

The conversation was cheerful and unconstrained. The ladies wore simple evening-frocks; the king was in dress-clothes, the younger princes and equerries in dinner-jackets. The young princesses wore light summer dresses of white serge or pink mousseline-de-laine; they had stuck a flower or two from the conservatory into their waist-bands.

Valérie talked merrily; Herman once more teased her about her cloud-sketches, but Othomar said that he admired them very much. Queen Olga and Princess Sofie exchanged a glance and were quieter than the others. The king also looked very thoughtfully at the young people. After dinner the family dispersed; the crown-prince and Herman went for a row on the sea, with the younger princes and the children, in two boats. Wanda and Valérie, their arms wound around each other's waists, strolled up and down along the front-terrace; the awning was already drawn up for the night. The sea was still blue, the sky pearl-grey and no longer so bright; above the horizon the sun still burnt ragged rents in the widely scattered clouds.

The girls strolled about, laughed, looked at the two little boats on the sea and waved to them. Very far away, a steamer passed, finely outlined, with a dirty little ribbon of smoke. The young princes shouted, "Hurrah! Hurrah!" and hoisted their little flag.

"Do look at those papers of Herman's!" said Valérie. "Aunt Olga hates that untidiness...."

She pointed to all the magazines and newspapers which the servants had forgotten to clear away. They lay over the long wicker chair, on the table and on the ground.

"Shall I ring to have them cleared away?" asked Wanda.

"Oh, never mind!" said Valérie.

She herself picked up one or two papers, folded them, put them together; Wanda again waved to the boats with her handkerchief.

"My God!" she suddenly heard Valérie murmur, faintly.

She looked round: the young archduchess had turned pale and sunk into a chair. She had dropped the papers again; one of them she held tight, crushing it convulsively; she looked down at it with eyes vacant with terror:

"It's not true," she stammered. "They always lie.... They lie!"

"What is it, Valérie?" cried Wanda, frightened.

At this moment the Duchess of Wendeholm came out through the hall:

"Valérie!" she called.

The girl did not hear. The duchess came nearer:

"Valérie!" she repeated. "Could I talk to you for a moment, alone?"

The archduchess raised her pale little face. She seemed not to hear, not to understand.

"My God!" whispered the duchess to Wanda. "Does she know?"

"What?" asked Wanda.

But a footman also came through the hall; he carried a silver tray with letters. There were a couple of letters for the duchess; he presented them to her first; then one to Valérie. In spite of her blurred eyes, the archduchess seemed to see the letter; she snatched at it greedily. The man withdrew.

"O ... God!..." she stammered at last.

She pulled the letter from the envelope, half-tearing it in her eagerness, and read with crazy eyes. Sofie and Wanda looked at her in dismay.

"O ... God!" screamed the archduchess in agony. "It's true ... it's true ... it's true! ... Oh!..."

She rose, trembling, looked about her with wild eyes and threw herself madly into the duchess' arms. A loud sob burst from her throat, as though a pistol-shot had gone through her heart.

"He writes it to me himself!" she cried out. "Himself! It's true what the paper says.... Oh!..."

And she broke down, with her head on Sofie's shoulder. Sofie led her back into the hall; Valérie allowed herself to be dragged along like a child. Wanda followed, crying, wringing her hands, without knowing why. From the boats, which were now very far away, the young princes waved once more; little Princess Elizabeth even tried to call out something; she could not understand why Wanda and Valérie were such muffs as not to wave back.

The sun sank on the horizon; the glowing clouds were all masked in little frothy, gold-rose mists with shining edges; but evening fell, the sky grew dark: one by one the little pink clouds melted away; still one last cloud, as though with two wings formed of the last rays of the setting sun, flickered up softly, as if to fly, and then suddenly sank, with broken wings, into the violet dusk. The first stars twinkled, brightly visible.