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.