As if the way he was looking at her made her shy, she bent forward to pat her horse on the neck.
“Where do we – go now?” she enquired hesitantly.
Even as she spoke she felt a sudden fear that he would say it was time to return.
“We climb up to the path again,” he answered, “and I will show you the way to a lake that I find very beautiful.”
“That will be lovely,” Mariska exclaimed.
They did as Lord Arkley suggested, found the path that wound between the trees and then unexpectedly came to a lake.
It was not large, but as he had said beautiful.
Surrounded by trees it reflected the blue of the sky above and at this time of the morning there was no one to be seen except for themselves.
Lord Arkley pointed with his riding whip to where at the far end of the lake there was a red roof.
“There is a small café there,” he told her. “I may be mistaken, but I fancy that you did not have any breakfast this morning.”
“How do you know that?”
“I thought you would be in too much of a hurry and perhaps too excited – ”
She did not answer and after a moment he quizzed her,
“Am I right?”
“Yes – of course you are – right, but I was just wondering how – you know such – things.”
Because he did not wish to embarrass her, he did not reply that her eyes were very revealing and he felt as if he could read her thoughts in them.
He also guessed that she had crept out before Prince Friederich was awake.
They rode towards the café and there was only the jingle of their horses’ bridles besides the buzz of the bees and an occasional note from a songbird.
It was, when they reached it, a very small café that had been built beside a wooden landing stage.
There were only two tables outside in the sunshine and, having given their horses to the charge of a young boy, Lord Arkley and Mariska sat down at one of them.
She could lean against the rough balcony made of untreated trees and look down at the hundreds of small fish moving about in the clear water.
There was a soft mist over the far end of the lake where the silvery surface reflected the trees making it a magical mystery, so that Mariska told herself that the whole place was enchanted.
“What shall I order you to eat?” Lord Arkley asked. “A proper English breakfast?”
“No – please,” she protested, “that would be too much. But I would – love some coffee.”
A pretty Bohemian girl in national dress with its black velvet corset and embroidered blouse took Lord Arkley’s order, which he gave in perfect German.
When he had gone, Mariska commented,
“I have always thought that German is a very ugly language, but when spoken by you it sounds somehow different.”
“I believe you are paying me a compliment,” Lord Arkley smiled.
“Actually I was – stating a fact,” Mariska replied.
“I shall take it as a compliment. And now I will pay you one. I have never seen a woman who rode so well or who looked better on a horse!”
He knew by the sudden light in her eyes how much he had pleased her and she replied,
“I have not yet thanked you for letting me ride with you this morning, my Lord. I felt that Friederich had – forced me on you and it was very – embarrassing.”
Lord Arkley noted the way that for the moment she had forgotten formality and spoken of her husband without his Royal title.
“If I tell you it is a pleasure,” he said aloud, “it is not a word that begins to express how much I have enjoyed our ride so far.”
“Do you – really mean that?” she asked. “I am sure that you either prefer to be – alone or else – perhaps there is – someone else you would rather have – chosen as your companion.”
The words were spoken hesitatingly and Lord Arkley responded gently,
“Before you trouble your head again with such ideas let me tell you completely truthfully that I would much rather you rode with me than that I should ride alone and there is no one in Marienbad whom I would prefer to be with me at this very moment.”
There was a note in his voice which made Mariska’s heart beat in a very strange manner.
Because she was embarrassed, she looked away from him at the fish swimming beneath them.
“Do you think,” she asked after a moment, “that they have their troubles and problems as we do?”
“If they do,” Lord Arkley answered, “then they have their joys as well.”
“You mean – the two go – hand-in-hand?”
“In this dimension at any rate,” he replied, “it is impossible to prevent the rise and fall, the ebb and flow of happiness and unhappiness.”
“Like the – tides.”
“Exactly.”
She put her arm on the table and rested her cheek against her hand.
“You are so wise. Whenever I talk to you, things seem to fall into their proper perspective and apart from – anything else seem – so sensible.”
“And when you are not talking to me?”
“Then I am – lost and – bewildered. I seem to be – unable to think – things out for myself.”
“Then don’t try,” he said. “Stop thinking. Half the trouble in this world is because people keep planning for tomorrow, the day after and so on and then they forget to live today.”
“Do you think that would make – everything – easier?”
“I am sure of it,” he answered. “And may I tell you, although you will not believe me, that more than half the difficulties we anticipate turn out not as bad as we imagine they are going to be.”
He saw as he spoke that the thought of Prince Friederich came instantly to Mariska’s mind and he added quickly,
“Think of the present. Remember only that you are here and we can talk to each other without interruption and without anyone criticising what we are saying.”
“And I can – enjoy every – second of it,” Mariska said in a voice he could hardly hear.
He knew that she added to herself that it would be something to remember and something to look back on when things became too difficult.
Their waitress then brought them what Lord Arkley had ordered.
Mariska found that there was not only coffee for her and thick whipped cream to float on top of it but also rolls hot from the oven, golden butter and honey that had the fragrance of pines and wild flowers.
There was also a bowl of small peaches and bunches of the little sweet white grapes that grew in the vineyards on the slopes of the hills.
As they ate, Lord Arkley made Mariska laugh as he told her of some of the journeys he had taken with the King, especially of his visit to Paris, which had been a purely personal triumph.
Although neither of them mentioned it, Mariska was aware how much that visit had infuriated the Germans.
They had previously done everything to try to increase French suspicions of what was called ‘English designs and intentions’.
But after the King had been cheered and acclaimed in Paris, the Entente Cordiale that had developed was in the words of the British Ambassador, ‘due entirely to the initiative and political flair of King Edward VII who, had he listened to the objections of his Cabinet, would never have gone to Paris”.
Lord Arkley told Mariska amusing incidents that had happened at the races, in the Social world and at the theatre.
As he did so, he remembered that it was Baron Echardstein who had argued at the time that the real danger for Germany was that England’s sudden initiative in Europe would lead to France, England and Russia coming together in a Triple Entente.
Now the bombastic but shrewd character of the General made Lord Arkley wonder even more insistently than he had already why he had come to Marienbad and why he had chosen to visit Prince Friederich.
He was sure that the reason concerned himself and equally sure that it concerned the King.
But it seemed impossible to imagine that anyone could expect Prince Friederich in his crippled condition to be able to do anything to aid the German Government or add to their already extensive knowledge.
But Lord Arkley told himself that in the German mind there was always undercurrent and a double motive.
There was therefore a reason for his being invited to dinner the first night of his arrival and for Mariska to have been sent riding with him.
Then he told himself that the advice he had given her should also apply to him.
He should be content to live in the present, content to watch the loveliness of her face opposite him and to hear the softness of her voice.
Also to know unaccountably that she was evoking feelings within him that were somehow different from anything he had felt before.
Then he told himself that he was being imaginative. Mariska was a beautiful woman, he was a man and they were alone in a sublime place.
There was nothing more to it than that. Yet he knew that he was deceiving himself, but for the moment he had no wish to face the truth.
Mariska finished the last grape and then said,
“I have not eaten so much for a long time. I had even forgotten that food could taste so delicious.”
“Let me order you something else,” Lord Arkley suggested.
She shook her head.
“I am ashamed of how much I have eaten already.”
“You have no reason to be,” he answered. “I would like to take you to England and make you eat three large meals every day and put on a little weight.”
“I think it unlikely I shall ever do that,” Mariska said, “I often think I am the only person in Marienbad who is not trying to slim.”
“They don’t try very hard,” Lord Arkley replied. “They sip the water and tell themselves it will do miracles. Then they go to parties and eat everything that is put in front of them!”
Mariska knew that he was thinking of King Edward, who was known to eat enormous meals with snacks at various times of the day to keep up his strength.
“The Duchesse told me,” she said, “that she was at a luncheon two years ago given for King Edward and the King of Greece at the Café Rubezuhl.”
Lord Arkley knew that this was the famous restaurant in the forest that was a direct rival to the Spa, for it was very difficult not to increase one’s waistline every time one visited the Café.
“The menu started with grilled Fogosch – ” Mariska began.
“I have always thought,” Lord Arkley interrupted, “that it is the most delicious fish that is ever caught in the Danube.”
“I enjoy it too,” Mariska agreed, “but not followed by lamb cutlets, roast partridge and Prague ham in aspic.”
Lord Arkley laughed.
“I am quite certain that the King did not miss a mouthful of all those dishes!”
“The two Kings finally sampled a compote of fresh fruits and the Duchesse said that they did justice to the finest Austrian wines.”
“I am certain they both deliberately forgot to weigh themselves for the next three days,” Lord Arkley smiled.
“I think it would spoil King Edward if he was thin and he would doubtless be very disagreeable,” Mariska said. “He is so jolly, so kind and enjoys life, which is far more important than a slim waist.”
“I agree with you,” Lord Arkley said. “At the same time we who love him are always afraid that his weight will be too much for his heart. We could not bear to lose him, nor could England do without him.”
There was a note in his voice that made Mariska say,
“You are very fond of him?”
“I think he is a magnificent person and if anyone can keep the peace in Europe he will do so.”
He spoke deliberately, knowing that, if Mariska repeated any of their conversation to her husband, this would be the sort of thing that the Germans would not wish to hear.
“The Duchesse told me,” Mariska went on, “that some people call him ‘the Uncle of Europe’.”
“It is a very apt title,” Lord Arkley agreed. “And now let’s talk for a moment about you. Why do you never come to stay with your relatives in England?”
“I would love to do so,” Mariska answered, “and my uncle, the Duke of Dorset, invited me to visit him only last year.”
“But you had to refuse?”
“Friederich could not travel so far.”
Lord Arkley did not speak and after a moment Mariska said,
“The Duchesse told me that you have very spectacular French furniture in your house in Hampshire.”
“I would love to show it to you,” Lord Arkley replied. “And I have also some very fine French pictures and one or two of the Impressionists which I would like to have your opinion on.”
“The – Impressionists?”
Mariska’s eyes widened for a moment and then she said,
“Before I married. Papa told me that when he was in Paris he admired the work of a man called ‘Monet’.”
“Your father and I obviously have the same tastes.”
“I longed to hear more about the Impressionists because what they were doing was so controversial,” Mariska said. “But in Germany anything French is derided and the only sort of art they admire is very conventional.”
“But you feel differently?”
“Perhaps I am a rebel at heart,” Mariska said. “I always want to see and try everything new. There is so much in the world – that I shall never hear about, let alone have the – opportunity of seeing.”
The sadness was back in her eyes and he longed to tell her that she must not suffer in such a way and that everything would pass.
But how did he know it would?
Prince Friederich was the same age as himself, only twenty-nine, and there was no reason now he was so much better not to expect, unless drink killed him, that he would live for years and years.
He had a feeling that Mariska would not last under the strain. How could she go on day after day, year after year, sitting as it were on a volcano?
“What are you thinking about?” he asked her.
“I was thinking,” she answered, her face turned towards the end of the lake, “I was thinking that perhaps – if we took a boat and rowed over the water through the mist – we would find a – different world on the other – side of it.”
“How do you know it would be better than this one?” Lord Arkley enquired.
“At least – it would be new and different,” she answered quickly.
He looked at her and then he said,
“I am sure I don’t have to tell you that you can escape into another world.”
“You mean – in my mind?”
“Of course! And with books, music and art like Monet’s pictures.”
“That is what I – try to do,” she answered, “but it is – difficult – very difficult”
“You must try harder,” he admonished her. “Just a moment ago, when you were looking at the mist, you were slipping away. Now look at the pine trees and tell yourself if you walk through them into the shadows you would hear and see things that we cannot perceive from here.”
“I will try – I really will – try,” Mariska promised.
She spoke earnestly.
Then, as her eyes met Lord Arkley’s, they were both suddenly very still.
“Perhaps,” she said in a voice that was little above a whisper, “when I find my – way into the other world – you will be there.”
“I will try to be,” he answered. “But you are well aware that it will not be easy for either of us.”
He was not quite certain what he meant by the words.
As he spoke, he told himself that it seemed almost as if everything he said to Mariska was put into his mind by something or somebody outside of himself.
He could never remember having had such a strange conversation with a woman before.
But then he had never before sat at the side of a lake very early in
the morning with the loveliest woman he had ever seen in his entire life.
There was something about her, he thought, that made every other woman seem coarse and ungraceful.
They were like overblown roses beside a lily-of-the-valley and that, he told himself, was exactly the flower that Mariska resembled. A lily-of-the-valley or perhaps a snowdrop blooming bravely before the snow had melted from the ground.
Mariska gave a little sigh.
“I shall remember this – always. I shall remember too what you have told me to do – and it will help – it will help me almost as if you had thrown me a – lifebelt in a – rough sea.”
“Remember too that rough seas subside,” Lord Arkley commented.
She gave him a little smile and then, because he knew that it would be a great mistake to anger Prince Friederich by keeping her away too long, he asked for his bill.
They rode back almost in silence, but Lord Arkley was sure from the way that Mariska looked around her that she was memorising everything she saw and telling herself that each little vista of beauty was another entrance to the secret world that he had spoken about.
Then, when the roofs of Marienbad came into sight, he asked,
“Will you come with me again tomorrow?”
“I would love it above all things – but I may not be allowed to ride again and perhaps – ”
She hesitated and Lord Arkley said quickly,
“Don’t say it. I have already told you that there is no one else I would wish to accompany me.”
“I am so – afraid of – boring you.”
“You know that you have not done so.”
“Are you – quite sure?”
“You are not to worry your head over my feelings,” Lord Arkley insisted, “but to think of the secret world that you are trying to reach.”
“You know I will,” Mariska said. “I shall think of it every moment – and especially when I am – alone.”
They rode on for a little while and then she said,
“I was reading the teachings of Madame Blavatsky the other day. One of the things that her Society believe is that when one is – ready for a – Master or a Teacher, he appears.”
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