A Legacy (10 page)

The two men from Berlin were not pleased. Count Bernin could read their thoughts. It was very hard on him.

And yet his compromise was one that might even now accommodate all sides. It consisted of two points. Johannes was to be sent back to Benzheim for a brief period only, and as soon as the purpose of his return had been fulfilled, say, in a month or two, he was to be withdrawn for good. The authorities were to give an assurance that considering the boy's state of health they were ready to waive all punishment devolving on his escape. If this could not be promised the boy would not be sent at all.

The officials bowed. "We all do our duties as we see them, Count," they said, and bowed again. They offered, however, to stop themselves at Benzheim on their way and secure Johannes's amnesty from the commandant.

After they were gone, Count Bernin waited. He could not bring himself to speak of his decision to Clara or to anyone; just as before he had not been able to bring himself to speak in time of her engagement.

The answer came on the Saturday of the same week. It was frank. The commandant, impatient with politics and concerned only with the maintenance of the discipline of his corps, had stated that he could not see his way to making an exception of Cadet von Felden. There was a postscript to the effect that it was not practicable, at this moment, to recall the commandant. Count Bernin was in the thick of entertaining members of the Constituary Court of Freiburg; he enquired whether Gustavus was on hand, and was told that he was sketching in the orchard.

"Do you know when your brother is supposed to leave?" "We haven't been told. Montclair is seeing to it. Papa does not want to know. It may be any time now."

"I can't get away," said Count Bernin, "you must take this note to your father at once. It is urgent. Quite urgent. See that he reads it. Say that I shall be over in the evening." Count Bernin lingered, wondering if it were not safer to tell Gustavus more; hesitated; then let it go and turned back to the house.

The carriage did not come to the front door. Captain Montclair and two orderlies carried Johannes to the stable-yard. Gabriel raised a howl for Julius. Julius battered at his father's door. It was locked and no sound came from within. Julius ran out again and saw Johannes, feet dangling, being lifted in the hired cab. Johannes neither moved nor resisted, but the dogs were massed and Gabriel was hammering at Captain Montclair with his fists. A young groom was trying to set Ursus on the men, but none of the Landen dogs were trained, and, unused to attacking humans, they only yelped and barked.

"Jean—" Julius cried.

Johannes turned his head and looked at him.

Then someone whipped the horses, and they were off, at great speed down the drive. It had all been so fast that only then servants and farmhands began to come running. Gabriel, howling, kept abreast with the carriage and all the

dogs were after it in a fury of dust and noise. Julius stood dazed.

And it was so that Clara, who had been going to the village and had turned halfway on an impulse, found him a minute later, white as paper, standing in the drive.

"Go after him! At once at once— Get a horse, the quickest horse— Hurry."

"What good is it?" said Julius.

"Don't let them stop that train—the express—at Singen —if only you get there before them— Don't let the station-master flag that train—"

"How can I stop him?"

"Order him not to—forbid it—you are the son of the house. Pull him out of the train, or get on yourself, anything, anything, only don't stand here, don't wait, don't waste minutes—Jules do you hear me? Are you a man? Oh! why isn't there a side-saddle in the place—"

"Baron Jules," said the major-domo by his side, "I ordered your horse. It is here."

Julius still hesitated, but once in the saddle he was transformed. He saw his way clear, and he became frantic with anguish—to get there, to pluck his brother from these men, wipe out what he had seen, and he put everything he had in strength and skill and feeling into that ride and all the way he called aloud to Jean. When he got there, they were gone.

"Baron Julius," said the stationmaster. "I am glad to see you. So it was all right? When we stop the express, you know, we like to have it from the family; and there was nothing from your father. And the young gentleman looked so very queer, I didn't know what to think. Still, there he was with an officer . . . Well I'm glad you came, that makes it all square now. Baron Julius, there is nothing wrong? Baron Julius? Oh Baron Julius—!"

"My poor Gustavus," Clara said that night, "I know, I know. But you could not help it, we all know what your
father is like. You could not have made him read that note. He now thinks he did not even see it. Please, Gustavus, do not look like this—you must not feel guilty. It would be a wrong."

Gabriel had run beside Johannes and the carriage as long as he had breath. Then he dropped behind, then he fell. When his heart stopped pounding, he still felt it would burst with misery. He stayed in the fields, swaying, not seeing where he went, not feeling grass nor stone nor hedges. After dark he turned home and crept into the house. He heard his father's, Clara's and Gustavus's voices and went on, up a back stairs to Jules's room. Jules was not there. Gabriel lit a candle and waited. Jules did not come. After midnight he fell asleep on the chair. When he waked an hour or so later he was still alone and very cold. He paced about for some time, then looked among Jules's things for something he might wear. When he saw Clara's rolls of gold, he took them and left the house.

He walked towards Singen. He knew the goods train that went north at dawn and he knew the bend below the crossing where it curved and slowed and they had often stood to count the carriages of other trains, and he thought he knew the way to board a moving train. When it came it seemed much faster than he thought it would, the clatter and the draught it made unnerved him, and at first he could not make himself get near enough to touch and seize. But it was a long train and he had time to get his bearings; and when he saw another open door approach and some good bars, he leapt and grasped them. Perhaps he did not grasp them hard enough, perhaps it was because he was tired and muddled and exalted, but before he could find a foothold he was thrown off again and hurled on to a heap of slag. His head struck a stone and he was killed at once.

The arrangements consequent to these events were seen to by Count Bernin. Julius lying ill at Bonn was not able
to come back. Clara with her father's permission and a doctor went herself to Benzheim to fetch Johannes. They found him in the infirmary, with the authorities in a state of uneasy alarm. Return to Landen was not considered advisable, and on Father Hauser's recommendation he was taken to a doctor in Switzerland at whose house in the country he remained for several years, living among animals and the doctor's own small children. They were good to him. Visits from his family, after one disastrous attempt by Julius, were not practicable. Julius did not go back to Landen for a long time, and never went back there to live. Clara and Gustavus were married in the chapel at Sig-mundshofen six months after Gabriel's death, and settled down with the old Baron. The new Bishop of Bamberg had proposed to officiate. Count Bernin declined.

l

An the year 1891, Manet and Seurat were already dead; Pissarro, Monet and Renoir were at their height of powers; Cezanne had opened yet another world. Sunday at la Grande Jatte and le Dejeuner dans le Bois, la Musique aux Tuileries, les Dames dans un Jardin, the ochre farms and tawny hills of Aix were there, on canvas, hung, looked at—to be seen by anybody who would learn to see. And so were the shimmering trees, the sunspeckled paths, the fluffy fields, the light, the dancing air, the water— But were they seen? Were they walked, were they lived in? Did ladies come out into the garden in the morning holding a silver teapot? did flesh-and-blood governesses advance towards
one waist-high in corn and poppies, clutching a bunch of blossoms? did young men dip their hands into the pool and young women laugh in swings? did gentlemen really put their tophats on the grass?

For the age of the Impressionists was also still the age of decorum and pomposity, of mahogany and the basement kitchen, the overstuffed interior and the stucco villa; an age that venerated old, rich, malicious women and the clever banker; when places of public entertainment were large, pilastered and vulgar, and anyone who was neither a sportsman, poor, nor very young, sat down on a stiff-backed chair three times a day eating an endless meal indoors.

My father talked little about this middle period of his life. But others knew him, saw him, talked, survived; and I know that on the French Riviera in the Nineties Jules Felden drove a team of mules—
Melanie Merz, delicate, soft, pretty, just turned twenty and exquisitely dressed, sat by the window with her silks and needle. It was the simplest cross-stitch, coarse flowers on a square of stuff, and her small sad face was turned towards the drive and the potted palms outside.

"What would you like to do this morning, my dear?" said her sister-in-law.

Melanie lifted gentle, round brown eyes and said whatever Sarah wished her to do, thank you.

"My dear, you are happy here? You are enjoying yourself?"

Melanie said she was happy.

"You are not missing your mother and father? you're not feeling strange or anything being away?"

"It is very much like home here," said Melanie.

"Oh, is it," said Sarah.

Edu Merz walked in—Edu, not yet forty-five, not yet bankrupt, still almost at his ease with Sarah; Edu freshly valeted, wafting eau-de-Lubin, holding field glasses, with no pressing debts on a fine February morning in the South
of France. "Morning, Sarah; morning, Melanie. Jolly day isn't it? I'm going to take you out with me to watch the tennis, and give you a spot of lunch at the Anglais."

Melanie looked up at her brother, gently, intently, as though he were holding out a nut, or was it a screw of paper? "Thank you, Edu," she said, "I should like to very much."

Sarah said that Melanie was asked to Lady De Moses's luncheon party; and so she believed was Edu.

Oh all right, Edu said; the chef of the Anglais would be doing that too, the old girl always had a crowd; he'd take Melanie then and send the Panhard back for Sarah.

The Panhard, Sarah said, had had three punctures yesterday between the Sporting and Les Ambassadeurs, and she'd rather have the carriage.

"I will get my hat," said Melanie and stood up, chic, exotic, frail; "I shan't be a minute, Edu," and rustled out of the room.

Stunning dress, said her brother. Did Sarah choose it? He shouldn't have thought it looked like Sarah at all; he meant he couldn't see her in those large stripes—

They were right for Melanie, Sarah said. Exactly right.

"Wasn't it a little, Edu said, a little, he didn't know, he meant to say—Melanie being a young girl and all that?

Stagy?

Yes, perhaps, that was it.

Exactly right, said Sarah. That Commedia dell' Arte touch. And the girl knew how to put on her clothes, that girl could wear anything. God knew where she had it from. Sarah looked at Edu.

Yes, he said. For a girl who'd never been further from Berlin than Bad Kissingen . . .

"The child was telling me that she finds life on the Riviera like Voss Strasse."

"What rot," said Edu.

"You know I think I will skip Lady De Moses today," said Sarah. "It's such a day. It's you they want anyhow.

I'm going to take Melanie for a country drive, I'm sure it's good for her to have the air. We might go up to Jules's." Melanie had come in with her parasol, buttoning gloves. "Would you like to do that, my dear?" "The young man with the mules?" "Not so young. He must be my age. At least." "Not really?" said Melanie.

It was a day. Still, blue, very still—and the warmth lay gently across the ladies' shoulders like a blessing. A bee got into the carriage. In the Valee du Loup the almonds were out among the peach trees, the young slim peach trees, rows and rows of them pink and white, all over the hillsides.

"His villa is not by the sea?" said Melanie.

"It isn't a villa," said Sarah.

It was in an olive grove, at the end of an abominable bit of road, and it was a priory, or what was left of one—a low wing, round arches, the fragments of a cloister.

Julius, wearing a tussore jacket and a black Spanish straw hat, came out to meet them.

They did not go indoors.

Over the balustrade and down the sides of fat oil jars, great manes of flowering leaves trailed lemon-scented, rose-scented, spice-scented, pure red and tender white. Below, two cypresses formalized the view. Julius shook out a hammock for Melanie. "You will be in the shade," he said. "Not too much. Just enough. It is Tzara's—she is so uncareful about her hair. With this cushion you'll be tolerably comfortable." He stepped back.

"You know—this is a wonderful dress. So chic.'*

Melanie smiled.

He also looked wonderful. Like a man and a gentleman and a lily in the field—turned-out and natural, exquisite and masculine, with a fine profile and sharp nose, tall, balanced, large and light.

"Jules," said Sarah. "I must have your advice on that Chippendale. Those people have written again. I don't

know, their price seems wrong. I brought the sketches they sent me."

"I've something for you to see too," said Julius.

"Such very pretty flowers," said Melanie. "What are they?"

"Oh you know the ivy-leaved kind. I get the cuttings from across in Italy, Cascante, they call them."

"Cascante?" said Melanie.

"Geraniums," said Sarah.

"Geraniums?" said Melanie.

"We are fugitives from Lady De Moses's," Sarah said. "Jules, can you give us lunch?"

"She doesn't ask me any more. It took three seasons. I went to Nice this morning; early. You ought to have seen the fish come in—so beautiful. But do you know there wasn't a cat there today, no one one knew at all except Prince Lichnovsky's kitchen maid. Some vague men from the hotels, no one from Beau-lieu, not a single chef from the villas, none of the Queen of England's people—though they do eat quite well—no one at all in the fish market on the first calm morning after all that wind. No wonder— Well, we are going to have oursins presently; they are opening them now. And a loup. Grilled."

"Oursins," said Sarah. "My cook refuses to cope with them. He pretends they don't exist."

"They are three sous a dozen. He ought to wear a leather glove. On his left hand. Mademoiselle—would you like to see them?"

"I shall never be able to tell him," said Sarah.

"Yes, please," said Melanie.

Julius brought her a rough, dark-skinned fish, two foot long, and held it up in the air for her to see. "Look at it: a loup-de-mer, a sea-bass, though not quite. The best fish there is in these waters. Look how firm he is, how fresh; caught at dawn this morning, look at the gills, feel him. . . ."

The fish was compact and supple and marked all over in deep indigo and mat maroon: it seemed to have no

scales, yet it shone. In all her life Melanie had not had a young man hold up a whole fish to her in the sun. She blinked at him; put out two fingertips and touched its side. It was dry.

"And here." He took the basket from the boy. Melanie looked inside.

"They move . . ."

"Of course," said Julius. "They're alive. They wouldn't be good if they were not. Let me put one on your hand. No—keep it flat; the spikes won't hurt you if you keep your hand flat."

"Oh—" said Melanie, "a black hedgehog."

"No, no, no," said Julius. "No one would eat a hedgehog, charming animals. Though I believe gypsies do. Very cruel."

"Why?" said Sarah.

"Eat a hedgehog?"

"Why sea-urchins and not a hedgehog?"

"Quite different. They're something in the sea."

"You were just telling us that they were alive. I daresay water dulls the natural feelings. I cannot follow all your fine distinctions, Jules; mind, I don't share your Franciscan sentiments, but aren't lambs as charming as hedgehogs? And I've seen you eat lambs. Of course you'd call it cutlets or saddle. Your position is interesting."

"Alas. 'Les tristes lois de la cruelle Nature . .

"We could not live on vegetables alone," said Melanie.

"Very true," said Julius.

"I'm glad to see you profit by your lesson in natural history, Melanie," said Sarah.

Melanie shrank back into her hammock.

"I must get us some white wine," Julius said. "Cellar temperature, don't you think?"

Luncheon was laid on bare pink marble under a trellis of mulberry.

There was a loaf of butter on a leaf, the bread was on a board; there was a dish of lemons and there were wooden
mills for black pepper and grey pepper and the salt; the china was eighteenth-century Moustier and the wine stood, undecanted, in a row of thick green cool unlabelled bottles. Julius drew the corks himself; poured, held up, handed glasses. Below the olive trees they could see the valley, the linear terraced hill, and the other slope, soft again, in full sunlight now, feathery with mimosa.

"How good," said Sarah.

"When it is like this, it is like this," said Julius.

"After six days of mistral."

"Der Silden. . . ."

"I could never live anywhere else," said Julius.

"I have never been before," said Melanie.

The sea-urchins came heaped in a great armorial pile, sable and violet, tiered on their burnished quills, like the unexplained detail on the hill by the thistles and the hermitage of a quattrocento background, exposing now inside each severed shell the pattern of a tender sea star.

"With a spoon," Julius said. "Like this."

Presently he struck a match and set fire to the next course. The flames, fed by rosemary and fennel, crackled, aromatic, invisible almost in the brilliant air.

"Like plum pudding!"

"So overrated," said Julius. In a flash of silver blades he laid bare the nut-white fish inside the charred, barklike crust.

Melanie looked for the sauce boat. There seemed to be no potatoes.

Julius helped her to a few drops of limpid oil.

"Perfection, Jules," said Sarah.

Julius lifted a small bell. "Will you see please that Tzara and Robert are tidied up a bit before they come in."

"They are not back, Monsieur le Baron. They went to the Plan de Grasse this morning. They took a picnic."

"Oh thank God," said Sarah.

"They ought to be back for dessert," said Julius, looking at two watches.

"I will have them sent in as soon as they return, sir."

"Where is Leon?"

"Leon is in the kitchen, sir. He's breaking plates. He is angry because Robert would not take him."

"Tell him to stop at once. Robert is jealous because Leon adores Tzara and Tzara is flattered."

"They all seem to have the most appalling characters," said Sarah.

"Leon breaks a good deal. Have you been to Monte Carlo, Mademoiselle?"

"Edu took her to the kitchen."

"Any luck?"

"I lost two louis d'or," said Melanie.

"On what?"

"The game."

"Your mise? What did you put it on?"

"Oh. A number."

"Very hard to choose," said Julius. "I have a system. My father taught it to us."

"It is infallible," said Sarah.

"How did you know?" said Julius. "Of course the maximum is against one. Would you like me to teach it to you, Mademoiselle? Well you see, you start on the First Dozen, you don't waste anything a cheval, nor on the even chances, but you've got to think of the Zero—"

"Yes?" said Melanie.

"Of course that weakens your total; then after you've lost the fifth time running, you triple your mise, you see, and change to the Second Dozen."

"It sounds very interesting," said Melanie. "My brother has a system too, but yours is more interesting."

"Jules: I want to go to Le Thoronet," said Sarah.

"You must."

"How does one get there?"

"You've never been? Never been to Le Thoronet? The only perfect Romanesque there is round here? And it is perfect; perfect. Your sister-in-law ought to see it. What have you seen? Eze?—rather touched up. Haute Cagne? Cimiez? St.-Maximin? The Islands?"

Melanie looked at Sarah. Sarah said nothing.

"We saw the Bataille des Fleurs. And we went to the races, and for a drive on the Grande Corniche, and we saw the scent being made at Grasse."

"Very bad scent I'm afraid," said Julius. "You must go to Les Tourettes, and to Biot and to Valauris; if your head's good you might go up to that Monastery on the Gourdon, most of their stuff is fake—do you know, Sarah, I believe they're selling altar pieces. No, not that pear. Let me choose one for you."

They came in, freshly brushed, wearing woollen cardigans. Tzara went to Julius at once, felt his pockets, and began explaining something to him. Robert stood by with an air of conscious tolerance.

"Sit down, Robert," said Julius.

Robert made an ironic little bow to Sarah, and took a chair.

Sarah looked at him without affection.

"Have some fruit," said Julius.

Tzara, leaning against him, took a fig, looked at it, showed it to him, then chewed with assured contentment. Robert pulled up the dish, picked out a Calville apple, put it down again and, looking steadily at Sarah, handled every piece of fruit. Leon appeared, frowning, tiny beside the others, hovered uncertainly. Then he saw Melanie.