But what was at once remarkable in itself and at the same time decisive for the future was that throughout there never seemed for one moment to be any feeling of scandal in the air, nor did all the tongue-wagging seem merely the vulgar pleasure in startling events in high quarters. From the very beginning, before any arrière pensée had had time to form, the thousand-voiced discussion of the subject, however animated, was always pitched in a key of approval and agreement. Indeed, the Prince, if it had occurred to him at an earlier stage to adapt his conduct to public opinion, would have realized at once to his delight how entirely popular that conduct was. For when he called Miss Spoelmann a “princess” to his tutor, he had, quite properly, accurately expressed his people's mind—that people which always surrounds the uncommon and visionary with a cloud of poetry.
Yes, to the people the pale, dark, precious, and strangely lovely creature of mixed blood, who had come to us from the Antipodes to live her lonely and unprecedented life amongst us—to the people she was a princess—or Fairy-child from Fableland, a princess in the world's most wonderful meaning. But everything, her own behaviour as much as the attitude of the world towards her, contributed to make her appear a princess in the ordinary sense of the word also. Did she not live with her companion countess in a schloss, as was meet and right? Did she not drive in her gorgeous motor or her four-in-hand to the benevolent institutions, the homes for the blind, for orphans, and for deaconesses, the public kitchens and the milk-kitchens, to teach herself and to stimulate them by her inspection, like a complete princess?
Had she not subscribed to support the victims of flood and fire out of her “privy purse,” as the Courier was precise enough to declare, subscriptions which nearly equalled those of the Grand Duke (did not exceed them, as was noticed with general satisfaction)? Did not the newspapers publish almost daily, immediately under the Court news, reports of Mr. Spoelmann's varying health—whether the colic kept him in bed or whether he had resumed his morning visits to the Spa-gardens? Were not the white liveries of his servants as much a part of the picture in the streets of the capital as the brown of the Grand Ducal lackeys? Did not foreigners with guide-books ask to be taken out to Delphinenort, there to gloat over the sight of Spoelmann's house—many of them before they had seen the Old Schloss?
Were not both Schlosses, the Old and Delphinenort, about equally centres and foci of the city? To what circle of society belonged that human being who had been born Samuel Spoelmann's daughter, that creature without counterpart, without analogy? To whom should she attach herself, with whom have intercourse? Nothing could be less surprising, nothing more obvious and natural than to see Klaus Heinrich at her side. And even those who had never enjoyed that sight enjoyed it in the spirit and gloated over it: the slim, solemnly familiar figure of the Prince by the side of the daughter and heiress of the prodigious little foreigner, who, ill and peevish as he was, disposed of a fortune which amounted to nearly twice as much as our national debt!
Then one day a memory, a wonderful disposition of words, took hold of the public conscience; nobody can say who first pointed to it, recalled it—that is quite uncertain. Perhaps it was a woman, perhaps a child with credulous eyes, whom somebody was sending to sleep with stories—heaven only knows. But a ghostly form began to show liveliness in the popular imagination: the shadow of an old gipsy-woman, grey and bent, with an inward squint, who drew her stick through the sand, and whose mumbling had been written down and handed down from generation to generation…. “The greatest happiness?” It should come to the land through a Prince “with one hand.” He would give the country, the prophecy ran, more with his one hand than others could with two…. With one? But was everything all right with Klaus Heinrich's slim figure?
When one thought of it, was there not a weakness, a defect in his person, which one always avoided seeing when addressing him, partly from shyness, and partly because with charming skill he made it so easy not to notice it? When one saw him in his carriage, he kept his left hand on his sword-hilt covered with his right. One could see him under a baldachin, on a flag-bedecked platform, take up a position slightly turned to the left, with his left hand planted somehow on his hip. His left arm was too short, the hand was stunted, everybody knew that, and knew various explanations of the origin of the defect, although respect and distance had not allowed a clear view of it or even its recognition in so many words. But now everybody saw it. It could never be ascertained who first whispered and quoted the prophecy in this connexion—whether it was a child, or a girl, or a greybeard on the threshold of the beyond.
But what is certain is, that it was the people who started it, the people who imposed certain thoughts and hopes—and quite soon their conception of Miss Spoelmann's personality—on the cultured classes right up to the highest quarters, and exercised a powerful influence on them from below: that the impartial, unprejudiced belief of the people afforded the broad and firm foundation for all that came later. “With one hand?” people asked, and “the greatest happiness?” They saw Klaus Heinrich in the spirit by Imma Spoelmann's side with his left hand on his hip, and, still incompetent to think their thought out to its conclusion, they quivered at their half-thought.
At that time everything was still in the clouds, and nobody thought anything out to its conclusion—not even the persons most immediately concerned. For the relations between Klaus Heinrich and Imma Spoelmann were wondrous strange, and their minds—his as well—could not be brought to centre on any immediate, palpable goal. As a matter of fact, that laconic conversation on the afternoon of the Prince's birthday (when Miss Spoelmann had showed him her books) had made but the slightest, if any, alteration in their relations. Klaus Heinrich may have gone back to the “Hermitage” in that condition of heated enthusiasm proper to young people on such occasions, convinced that something decisive had happened: but he soon learned that his wooing of what he had recognized to be his only happiness was only now really beginning.
But, as has been said, this wooing could not aim at any objective result, a bourgeois promise or such-like—such an idea was almost inconceivable, and besides the Prince lived in too great seclusion from the practical world for such an end to present itself to him. In fact the object of Klaus Heinrich's pleadings with looks and words from that time onward was not that Miss Spoelmann should reciprocate the feelings he entertained towards her, but that she might feel impelled to believe in the reality and liveliness of those feelings. For that was what she did not do.
He let two weeks pass before he sent in his name at Delphinenort again, and during these he feasted spiritually on what had already occurred. He was in no hurry to supersede that happening with a new one. Besides, his time just now was occupied by several representative functions, including the annual festival of the Miniature Range Rifle Club, whose well-informed patron he was and in whose anniversary festival he annually took part. Here he was received in his green uniform, as if his sole interest in life was rifle-shooting, by the united members of the association with an enthusiastic welcome, was conducted to the butts, and, after an unappetizing luncheon with the distinguished members of the committee, fired several shots in a gracefully expert attitude in the direction of various targets.