CHAPTER XVII

MY FATHER BREATHES, MOVES, AND SPEAKS

The people broke away from us like furrowed water as we advanced on each

side of the ropes toward the margravine's carriage.

I became a perfectly mechanical creature: incapable, of observing, just

capable of taking an impression here and there; and in such cases the

impressions that come are stamped on hot wax; they keep the scene fresh;

they partly pervert it as well. Temple's version is, I am sure, the truer

historical picture. He, however, could never repeat it twice exactly

alike, whereas I failed not to render image for image in clear succession

as they had struck me at the time. I could perceive that the figure of

the Prince Albrecht, in its stiff condition, was debarred from vaulting,

or striding, or stooping, so that the ropes were a barrier between us. I

saw the little Princess Ottilia eyeing us with an absorbed comprehensive

air quite unlike the manner of a child. Dots of heads, curious faces,

peering and starting eyes, met my vision. I heard sharp talk in German,

and a rider flung his arm, as if he wished to crash the universe, and

flew off. The margravine seemed to me more an implacable parrot than a

noble lady. I thought to myself: This is my father, and I am not

overjoyed or grateful. In the same way, I felt that the daylight was

bronze, and I did not wonder at it: nay, I reasoned on the probability of

a composition of sun and mould producing that colour. The truth was, the

powers of my heart and will were frozen; I thought and felt at random.

And I crave excuses for dwelling on such trifling phenomena of the

sensations, which have been useful to me by helping me to realize the

scene, even as at the time they obscured it.

According to Temple's description, when the statue moved its head toward

him, a shudder went through the crowd, and a number of forefingers were

levelled at it, and the head moved toward me, marked of them all. Its

voice was answered by a dull puling scream from women, and the men gaped.

When it descended from the saddle, the act was not performed with one

bound, as I fancied, but difficultly; and it walked up to me like a

figure dragging logs at its heels. Half-a-dozen workmen ran to arrest it;

some townswomen fainted. There was a heavy altercation in German between

the statue and the superintendent of the arrangements. The sun shone

brilliantly on our march to the line of carriages where the Prince of

Eppenwelzen was talking to the margravine in a fury, and he dashed away

on his horse, after bellowing certain directions to his foresters and the

workmen, by whom we were surrounded; while the margravine talked loudly

and amiably, as though everything had gone well. Her watch was out. She

acknowledged my father's bow, and overlooked him. She seemed to have made

her courtiers smile. The ladies and gentlemen obeyed the wave of her hand

by quitting the ground; the band headed a long line of the commoner sort,

and a body of foresters gathered the remnants and joined them to the rear

of the procession. A liveried groom led away Temple's horse and mine.

Temple declared he could not sit after seeing the statue descend from its

pedestal.

Her Highness's behaviour roughened as soon as the place was clear of

company. She spoke at my father impetuously, with manifest scorn and

reproach, struck her silver-mounted stick on the carriage panels, again

and again stamped her foot, lifting a most variable emphatic countenance.

Princess Ottilia tried to intercede. The margravine clenched her hands,

and, to one not understanding her speech, appeared literally to blow the

little lady off with the breath of her mouth. Her whole bearing consisted

of volleys of abuse, closed by magisterial interrogations. Temple

compared her Highness's language to the running out of Captain Welsh's

chaincable, and my father's replies to the hauling in: his sentences were

short, they sounded like manful protestations; I barely noticed them.

Temple's version of it went: 'And there was your father apologizing, and

the margravine rating him,' etc. My father, as it happened, was careful

not to open his lips wide on account of the plaster, or thick coating of

paint on his face. No one would have supposed that he was burning with

indignation; the fact being, that to give vent to it, he would have had

to exercise his muscular strength; he was plastered and painted from head

to foot. The fixture of his wig and hat, too, constrained his skin, so

that his looks were no index of his feelings. I longed gloomily for the

moment to come when he would present himself to me in his natural form.

He was not sensible of the touch of my hand, nor I of his. There we had

to stand until the voluble portion of the margravine's anger came to an

end. She shut her eyes and bowed curtly to our salute.

'You have seen the last of me, madam,' my father said to her whirling

carriage-wheels.

He tried to shake, and strained in his ponderous garments. Temple gazed

abashed. I knew not how to act. My father kept lifting his knees on the

spot as if practising a walk.

The tent was in its old place covering the bronze horse. A workman

stepped ahead of us, and we all went at a strange leisurely pace down the

hill through tall pinetrees to where a closed vehicle awaited us. Here

were also a couple of lackeys, who deposited my father on a bed of moss,

and with much effort pulled his huge boots off, leaving him in red silk

stockings. Temple and I snatched his gauntlets; Temple fell backward, but

we had no thought of laughter; people were seen approaching, and the

three of us jumped into the carriage. I had my father's living hand in

mine to squeeze; feeling him scarcely yet the living man I had sought,

and with no great warmth of feeling. His hand was very moist. Often I

said, 'Dear father!--Papa, I'm so glad at last,' in answer to his

short-breathed 'Richie, my little lad, my son Richmond! You found me out;

you found me!' We were conscious that his thick case of varnished

clothing was against us. One would have fancied from his way of speaking

that he suffered from asthma. I was now gifted with a tenfold power of

observation, and let nothing escape me.

Temple, sitting opposite, grinned cheerfully at times to encourage our

spirits; he had not recovered from his wonderment, nor had I introduced

him. My father, however, had caught his name. Temple (who might as well

have talked, I thought) was perpetually stealing secret glances of

abstracted perusal at him with a pair of round infant's eyes, sucking his

reflections the while. My father broke our silence.

'Mr. Temple, I have the honour,' he said, as if about to cough; 'the

honour of making your acquaintance; I fear you must surrender the hope of

making mine at present.'

Temple started and reddened like a little fellow detected in straying

from his spelling-book, which was the window-frame. In a minute or so the

fascination proved too strong for him; his eyes wandered from the window

and he renewed his shy inspection bit by bit as if casting up a column of

figures.

'Yes, Mr. Temple, we are in high Germany,' said my father.

It must have cost Temple cruel pain, for he was a thoroughly gentlemanly

boy, and he could not resist it. Finally he surprised himself in his

stealthy reckoning: arrived at the full-breech or buttoned waistband,

about half-way up his ascent from the red silk stocking, he would pause

and blink rapidly, sometimes jump and cough.

To put him at his ease, my father exclaimed, 'As to this exterior,' he

knocked his knuckles on the heaving hard surface, 'I can only affirm that

it was, on horseback--ahem! particularly as the horse betrayed no

restivity, pronounced perfect! The sole complaint of our interior

concerns the resemblance we bear to a lobster. Human somewhere, I do

believe myself to be. I shall have to be relieved of my shell before I

can at all satisfactorily proclaim the fact. I am a human being, believe

me.'

He begged permission to take breath a minute.

'I know you for my son's friend, Mr. Temple: here is my son, my boy,

Harry Lepel Richmond Roy. Have patience: I shall presently stand

unshelled. I have much to relate; you likewise have your narrative in

store. That you should have lit on me at the critical instant is one of

those miracles which combine to produce overwhelming testimony--ay,

Richie! without a doubt there is a hand directing our destiny.' His

speaking in such a strain, out of pure kindness to Temple, huskily, with

his painful attempt to talk like himself, revived his image as the father

of my heart and dreams, and stirred my torpid affection, though it was

still torpid enough, as may be imagined, when I state that I remained

plunged in contemplation of his stocking of red silk emerging from the

full bronzed breech, considering whether his comparison of himself to a

shell-fish might not be a really just one. We neither of us regained our

true natures until he was free of every vestige of the garb of Prince

Albrecht Wohlgemuth. Attendants were awaiting him at the garden-gate of a

beautiful villa partly girdled by rising fir-woods on its footing of

bright green meadow. They led him away, and us to bath-rooms.