To put an end to the absurd situation, distasteful to my British free-born pride for all my foreign training, I pushed her from me and turned away, to find the lady-in-waiting at my elbow.
Instead, however, of making my weakness a mark for her wit, this latter, to my great relief, and likewise to my astonishment, looked wistfully from the ugly besmeared face to the coin lying on the black soil, then at my countenance, which at that moment was, I felt, that of a detected schoolboy. And then, without a word, she followed me back to her mistress’s side.
My august visitor had not yet regained her wonted serenity. Still fluttered, she showed me something of a pouting visage. I thought to discern in her not only satisfaction at the punishment she had seen administered, but some resentment at my passive attitude. And this, I confess, surprised me in her, who seemed so gentle and womanly. But I told myself then that it was but natural in one born as she was to a throne.
On the other hand, while I confounded myself in excuses and explanations, blaming myself for having (through my inexperience of this country) neglected to prevent the possibility of so untoward an incident, I heard behind me the voice of the young Court lady, rating Schultz in most explicit German for the heaviness of his hand upon my folk. And, as the Princess gradually became mollified towards me and showed me once again her own smiling graciousness, I contrasted her little show of haughtiness with the unreserve of her companion, and convinced myself that it did but become her (being what she was). The while I watched Mademoiselle Ottilie, mingling with peasants as if she had been born among them, with an ever renewed wonder that she should have been chosen for the high position she occupied.
Later on my guest, according to her promise, condescended to rest and refresh herself in the castle. This was the culminating moment of a golden afternoon. I felt the full pride of possession when I led her in through the old halls that bore the mark of so many centuries of noble masters; although indeed, as a Jennico, I had no inherited right to peacock in the glories of the House of Tollendhal. But, at each portrait before which she was gracious enough to halt, I took care to speak of some notable contemporary among the men and women of my own old line, in that distant enchanted island of the North, where the men are so brave and strong and the women so fair. And, without stretching any point, I am sure the line of Jennico lost nothing in the comparison.
She was, I saw, beyond mistake impressed. I rejoiced to note that I was rapidly becoming a person of importance in her eyes. Even the lady-in-waiting continued to measure me with an altered and thoughtful look.
Between the eating of our meal together—which, as I said, was quite a delicate little feast, and did honour to my barefooted kitchen retinue—and the departure of my visitors, I took them through many of the chambers, and showed them some of the treasures, quaint antiquities, and relics that my great-uncle had inherited or himself collected. On a little table under his picture—yonder on that wall it hangs before me—I had spread forth in a glass case, with a sort of tender and pious memory of the rigid old hero, his own personal decorations and honours, from the first cross he had won in comparative youth to the last blazing order that a royal hand had pinned over the shrunken chest of the field-marshal. In this portrait, painted some five years before his death, my uncle had insisted on appearing full face, with a fine scorn of any palliation of the black patch or the broken jaw. It is a grim enough presentment in consequence,—the artist having evidently rather relished his task,—and sometimes, indeed, when I am alone here in this great room at night, and it seems as if the candle-light does but serve to heighten the gloom of the shadows, I find my uncle’s one eye following me with so living a sternness that I can scarce endure it.
But that day of which I am writing, I thought there was benignity in the fierce orb as it surveyed such honourable company, and even an actual touch of geniality in the set of the black patch.
As I opened the case, both the ladies fell, women-like, to fingering the rich jewels. There was a snuff-box set around with diamonds, upon the lid of which was painted a portrait of the Dauphine. This, Maria Theresa had herself given to my uncle on the occasion of her daughter’s marriage, to which it was deemed my uncle’s firm attitude in council over the Franco-Austrian difficulty had not a little contributed.
With a cry of admiration, the Princess took it up. “Ach, what diamonds!” she said. I looked from the exquisite face on the ivory to the no less exquisite countenance bending above it, and I was struck by the resemblance which had no doubt unconsciously been haunting me ever since I first met her. The arch of the dark eyebrow, the supercilious droop of the eyelid, the curve of the short upper lip, and the pout of the full under one, even the high poise of the head on the long throat, were curiously similar. I exclaimed upon the coincidence, while the Princess flushed with a sort of mingled pleasure and bashfulness.