“Papa is coming back to-morrow morning,” she says gleefully, “and then you’ll see him. I expect you’re looking forward to it very much. I shall tell Papa all about you. You are just like all English people—very thin. Why don’t you eat more and try and get fatter?”
“I don’t want to get fat,” I reply indignantly; “and if I did, what would be the use when I have to run about all day after you children? I expect I ran at least ten miles this afternoon when we were playing hide-and-seek.”
“I expect you did,” answered the Princess regretfully. “It was a splendid game, wasn’t it? Georgie hid in a bath once and Alexander turned the tap on him; but,” returning to an earlier subject, “Papa will want to know all about you, and I shall tell him you are very thin. Won’t you be very pleased to see Papa?”
I murmur something politely appropriate and noncommittal, but the fearful joy reserved for the morrow somewhat troubles my thoughts that night. Life seems already to be almost sufficiently strenuous.
CHAPTER II
HOMBURG-VOR-DER-HÖHE
IT does not take long to discover that my small charge has inherited the temperament of her race. What Carlyle calls “Hohenzollern choler,” and a certain foot-stamping manner of expressing opinion, exhibit themselves at an early stage of our acquaintance. She is a highly-strung, nervous, excitable child of generous wayward impulses, who needs an existence of calm routine for the healthy development and cultivation of her mind, but by the circumstances of her life is kept in a restless vortex of activity which places considerable difficulties in the way of her education.
She is in her tenth year when I first know her, a well-grown child of her age, with rather pale features and a lively, alert expression. She wears her fair hair cut in a straight fringe across her forehead and hanging in long “nursery ringlets” over her shoulders. These ringlets are produced, in what is naturally perfectly straight hair, by the art of her English nurse, whom I often watch with a certain fascination as she brushes the shining strands round her finger, forming without any extraneous aid the most beautiful and regular curls possible.
There are but two people of whom the Princess really stands in awe. Her “Papa” of course is one, and I am not sure if her English nurse does not occupy an almost equal position with His Majesty in this respect. “Nanna” is a disciplinarian of the first water, and like other disciplinarians, brooks no interference with her own laws, which, in a court where many overlapping interests exist, is apt to breed many difficulties. She has been thirteen years in the service of the Empress, has brought up the younger children from birth, watched by them together with their mother many nights when they were ill, and practically saved the life of Prince Joachim, the youngest of the Kaiser’s six sons, by her constant and faithful care of his delicate infancy. But one by one her nurslings have been taken from her, not without a certain fierce opposition on her part. Prussian princes are given early into military hands. It is a tradition of their training, and the shrewd old nurse has a very strong opinion, shared by the Kaiserin, that an inexperienced young officer is no person to be entrusted with the superintendence of a young child’s physical and mental needs. She has battled indomitably, and often successfully, for her charges, invading even the professorial departments; and, aided and abetted by the Court doctor, who naturally considers physical before intellectual development, has often entirely routed the educational authorities, who have had to retire baffled and disconcerted.
But her triumphs were short-lived. An elaborate educational machine equipped with expert professors for every subject, with a carefully thought-out programme, in which every hour of the day is rigidly mapped out, cannot be stayed for the whims of one obstructive woman obviously prejudiced against German institutions. The frequent skirmishes had developed into something of the nature of a campaign. It is not good for children to be, as they frequently are even in less illustrious circles, the centre of warring elements; so at last the inevitable happened, and with much reluctance “Nanna’s” dismissal to England, of course with an ample pension, was finally decided upon. When I first made her acquaintance in Homburg her influence was a waning one; her autocratic rule was loosening—her departure delayed only by the beneficent hand of Majesty, which shrank from the final severance from a faithful if somewhat injudicious servant.
“Nanna” subsequently asserted that I had been specially deputed as an instrument of Providence to console her during those last few weeks; and though I myself am not personally conscious of any qualifications for the office of consoler, I may at any rate lay claim to the credit of having been a very efficient safety-valve for her emotions, which poured over me in a constant flood of retrospect and admonition. She was uncompromisingly British, in spite of her thirteen years’ residence abroad. It was at once her strength and her undoing. She refused to strike her flag to any mere lady-in-waiting or German Ober-Gouvernante, and maintained an inflexible principle of behaviour in situations where the tact and pliability indispensable to diplomatic relations were most needed.