She looked at him, her big eyes sparkled in dark scrutiny, and it was clear that she, she too, was struggling. But then she would shake her head or break off the conversation, introducing with a pout some topic over which she made merry, incapable of bringing herself to take the responsibility of the “Yes” for which he begged her, that undefined and, as matters stood, absolutely non-committal surrender.
She did not prevent him from coming once or twice a week; she did not prevent him from speaking, from assailing her with prayers and asseverations and from taking her hand now and then between his own. But she was only patient, she remained unmoved, her dread of taking the decisive step, that aversion from leaving her cool and derisive kingdom and confessing herself his, seemed unconquerable; and she could not help, in her anguish and exhaustion, breaking out with the words: “Oh, Prince, we ought never to have met—it would have been best if we hadn't. Then you would have pursued your lofty calling as calmly as ever, and I should have preserved my peace of mind, and neither would have harassed the other!”
The Prince had much difficulty in inducing her to recant, and in extorting from her the confession that she did not entirely regret having made his acquaintance. But all this took time. The summer came to an end, early night-frosts loosened the still-green leaves from the trees, Fatma's, Florian's, and Isabeau's hoofs rustled in the red-and-gold leafage when they went for a ride. Autumn came with its mists and sharp smells—and nobody could have prophesied an end, or indeed any decisive turn in the course of the strangely fluctuating affair.
The credit of having placed things on the foundation of actuality, of having given events the lead in the direction of a happy issue, must for ever be ascribed to the distinguished gentleman who had up till now wisely kept in the background, but at the right moment intervened carefully but firmly. I refer to Excellency von Knobelsdorff, Minister of the Interior, Foreign Affairs, and the Grand Ducal Household.
Dr. Ueberbein had been correct in his assertion that the President of the Council had kept himself posted in the stages of Klaus Heinrich's love affair. What is more, well served by intelligent and sagacious assistants, he had kept himself well in touch with the state of public opinion, with the rôle which Samuel Spoelmann and his daughter played in the imaginative powers of the people, with the royal rank with which the popular idea invested them, with the great and superstitious tension with which the population followed the intercourse between the Schlosses “Hermitage” and Delphinenort, with the popularity of that intercourse: in a word, he was well aware how the Spoelmanns, for everyone who did not deliberately shut his eyes, were the general topic of conversation and rumour, not only in the capital, but in the whole country. A characteristic incident was enough to make Herr Knobelsdorff sure of his ground.
At the beginning of October—the Landtag had been opened a fortnight before, and the disputes with the Budget Commission were in full swing—Imma Spoelmann fell ill, very seriously ill, so it was said at first. It seemed that the imprudent girl, for some whim or mood, while out with her countess, had ventured on a gallop of nearly half an hour's duration on her white Fatma in the teeth of a strong north-east wind, and had come home with an attack of congestion of the lungs, which threatened to end her altogether.
The news soon got about. People said the girl was hovering between life and death, which, as luckily soon emerged, was a great exaggeration. But the consternation, the general sympathy, could not have been greater if a serious accident had happened to a member of the House of Grimmburg, even to the Grand Duke himself. It was the sole topic of conversation. In the humbler parts of the city, near the Dorothea Hospital for instance, the women stood in the evening outside their front doors, pressed the palms of their hands against their breasts, and coughed, as if to show each other what it meant to be short of breath. The evening papers published searching and expert news of the condition of Miss Spoelmann, which passed from hand to hand, were read at family gatherings and cafés, and were discussed in the tram-cars. The Courier's reporter had been seen to drive in a cab to Delphinenort, where, in the hall with the mosaic floor, he had been snubbed by the Spoelmanns' butler, and had talked English to him—though he found that no easy task.
The press, moreover, could not escape the reproach of having magnified the whole business, and made a quite unnecessary fuss about it. There was absolutely no question of any danger. Six days in bed under the care of the Spoelmanns' private physician sufficed to relieve the congestion, and to make Miss Spoelmann's lungs quite well again. But these six days sufficed also to make clear the importance which the Spoelmanns, and Miss Imma's personality in particular, had achieved in our public opinion. Every morning found the envoys of the newspapers, commissioners of the general curiosity, gathered in the mosaic hall at Delphinenort to hear the butler's curt bulletins, which they then reproduced in their papers at the inordinate length which the public desired.
One read of greetings and wishes for recovery sent to Delphinenort by various benevolent institutions which Imma Spoelmann had visited and richly subscribed to (and the wits remarked that the Grand Ducal Treasury might have taken the opportunity of offering their homage in a similar way). The public read also—and dropped the paper to exchange a significant look—of a “beautiful floral tribute,” which Prince Klaus Heinrich had sent with his card (the truth being that the Prince, so long as Miss Spoelmann kept to her bed, sent flowers not once, but daily, to Delphinenort, a fact which was not mentioned by those in the know, so as not to make too great a sensation).
The public read further that the popular young patient had left her bed for the first time, and finally the news came that she was soon to go out for the first time. But this going out, which took place on a sunny autumn morning, eight days after the patient had been taken ill, was calculated to give rise to such an expression of feeling on the part of the population as people of stern self-possession labelled immoderate. For round the Spoelmanns' huge olive-varnished, red-cushioned motor, which, with a pale young chauffeur of an Anglo-Saxon type on the box, waited in front of the main door at Delphinenort, a big crowd had gathered; and when Miss Spoelmann and Countess Löwenjoul, followed by a lackey with a rug, came out, cheers broke out, hats and handkerchiefs were waved, until the motor had forced a way through the crowd and had left the demonstrators behind in a cloud of vapour. It must be confessed that these consisted of those rather doubtful elements who usually collect on such occasions: half-grown youths, a few women with market-baskets, one or two schoolboys, gapers, loafers, and out-of-works of various descriptions.