Sophie and the Sibyl (13 page)

‘Tell Herr Halmers that I have arranged for the money to be paid directly to his agent. The balance is already waiting for him at the hotel. And I shall expect the signed papers, including the documentation and the bill of sale, to be delivered to me by the end of the day, so that I can arrange transportation by train.’

She swung round to Max. ‘Come! Look.’

And she pranced into the long dim tunnel of the stables with loose boxes ranged on either side. His eyes gradually adjusted to the dark; the sweet warm smells of crushed hay and horses mingled and thickened in the gloom. Sophie gently opened a box door and spoke quietly to a huge bay mare that raised her head and snorted slightly. Behind the mare stood another young horse, a smaller bay with two white socks, perhaps a yearling. Max caught the flicker of the creatures’ startled, retreating eyes. Sophie fastened a halter on the mare; the animal bent her neck and shivered. The Countess talked softly to both horses all the time.

‘There you are. They’re mine now. Both of them.’

Max stood well back, open-mouthed, batting the flies away with his hat.

‘Are you telling me that you were gambling in the Kursaal just to win money and buy horses?’

‘Yes. And I won a lot more than I needed as it turned out.’

Was she thinking of the redeemed necklace? Max couldn’t ask without giving himself away.

‘Mind. Stand back. I’m going to lead her out.’

And into the warm autumn sun stepped the dark bay, her neck arched, her powerful flanks trembling slightly as she raised her tail and deposited a pile of steaming golden turds dangerously close to Max’s recently polished boots. Sophie laughed out loud at his elegant withdrawal to safer ground, and stood back herself to let the young filly trot out past her mother, nickering with excitement in the fresh air. The still-stabled horses began to stamp and neigh, calling to their two companions, now smelling freedom and open fields. The head groom slapped the yearling’s rump and she circled the yard rapidly, her unshod hooves slithering on the cobbles. Both animals shimmered with unspent energy and strength.

‘I’ll let them loose in the meadows this morning and ride her tomorrow. I have to get a wider side saddle that fits. Herr Halmers keeps his horses shut up in boxes. But they are like us. They need to gallop and roll in the sunshine.’

Max concluded that Sophie would hate to be shut up in crinolines and drawing rooms. What could he offer this Daughter of Artemis? A wave of doubt almost drowned his restored confidence. He acknowledged himself a man of hesitations, while Sophie glowed with decisiveness. Here she stood, gloating over the magnificent bay and her foal, stroking their black manes and surging shoulders as they danced about her, the mare nuzzling Sophie’s fingers, eagerly pulling on the rope, their breaths generating huge gusts of steam. The groom threw open the gates and Sophie slipped the rope from the mare’s halter, turning her loose. The two horses, freed at last, raised their heads high, and clattered forth into the meadows, their excitement palpable with every stride. They felt the soft earth beneath them and shuddered. And then they were galloping, tails raised like streaming flags, calling to each other, away down the slopes to the river, a straight trail charted their course through the damp grass, their dark forms sharp against the silver of the willows.

Sophie swung on the gates, crying out with excitement.

‘Look, Max! Look at my horses. Even I – and I chose them – hadn’t thought they were so beautiful.’

Her green eyes filled with tears and she snatched at his shoulder for balance with her gloved hand. This utter abandonment to the moment enchanted Max. The girl galloped with her horses, unaware of his presence, lost in the glamour of their excitement, power and joy. He stood beside her, steadying the gate.

‘Wouldn’t your father have bought them for you?’ The Count granted his daughter’s every wish, like an elderly djinn in a lamp.

‘Oh yes, but then they wouldn’t have been mine. Really mine. And I wanted them so much. And I thought I had to get the money from somewhere. Then I saw women playing in the Spielsaal. And the idea came to me. I could win what I needed at the tables.’

‘But what if you had lost all your savings?’ Max prompted carefully; the origins of her original stake remained her secret, and his.

‘I won. And I’ll win again,’ retorted Sophie, jumping off the gate. Her spurs rattled on the cobbles.

Max strolled back into town, wondering if his smart coat smelt of horse and needed to be brushed. He promised himself an emergency dose of cologne when he reached the hotel. His last glimpse of Sophie, disappearing at a brisk, dusty trot down the lanes, filled him with determination. He would court her, win her, earn her confidence, and deserve her love. He wished to see her always, coming towards him, her green eyes filled with the same passion that had possessed her when she beheld her horses. Max saw something tangible and precious in her face, and he wanted that ardour for himself. No man could ever desire a more potent reward – that love poured out unmeasured, profligate. But first he must persuade her, and himself, that he was a serious man, capable of genuine scholarship and distinguished achievements. He settled in the hotel library to peruse the most recent issues of the
Edinburgh Review
.

He was dozing comfortably over an article on natural history in a quiet armchair by the window, when he received a note from the Sibyl, delivered in hushed tones.

My Dear Max

Thank you for your kind enquiry. My husband is much recovered this morning, but we have consulted Dr. Schöngraben who has advised a mild water treatment in addition to the mineral tonics we are both already taking. We have every confidence in him, as he was a pupil of the famous Dr. Gully at Malvern, who worked such wonders for Mr. Darwin some years ago, and whose treatments were not ineffective when we tried them in the past. Would you be so kind as to call upon us this evening? My husband is anxious to finalise the proposals for subsequent reprints and publications with your brother’s house.

Affectionately

M. E. Lewes

PS. I trust there have been no difficult repercussions with our gambling belle, and that she has received our little packet. I confess I am eager to hear more of her adventures. She is a young lady who interests me greatly.

Max decided to draw a veil over Sophie’s horse-trading. Her motives still appeared obscure, unintelligible. He could not understand her need to act independently of her father. The Count’s famous generosity overflowed; his household, family and friends lived brimful with comfort and riches in the wake of his excess. The hotel staff flung themselves into action whenever he appeared and fought over his gratuities. Had she so wished, Sophie von Hahn could have demanded an entire stable of racehorses. This complex doubleness in his fiancée-to-be troubled him greatly. Was she in fact a reckless, headstrong girl, capable of impatience, temper and deceit? Was her affectionate and docile obedience to her father merely a calculated performance? And were all those kisses and caresses a way of blinding the old gentleman to her real aims and purposes? And what on earth did she actually want? Most men think they want a wife with spirit. But the challenge, usually unacknowledged, is to break that spirit, and bend her will to his own, for the real issue, as Humpty Dumpty so eloquently put the case, is this: who is to be master?

Max replied at once to the Sibyl’s message, adding that the package was received at breakfast with baffled embarrassment, but that Herr Wiener could rest assured that the matter would go no further. Privately, he doubted that the bumptious Mr. Lewes would be up to any robust discussion of figures and reprints after the fearsome ordeal of the water treatment. Hydrotherapy and its sister cure, thalassotherapy, commonly known as sea bathing, had both gained a terrific reputation, in the 1840s and ’50s, for miraculous improvements, no matter what the ailment; the Homburg cure followed the English model. Each patient was placed on a strict regime of copious vegetables, little meat and no alcohol, which purged the body of all noxious toxins. Then, a pattern of soaking and washing different parts of the body, to awaken sluggish organs within, would be prescribed, depending on the seriousness of the complaint. Lewes was diagnosed as ‘liverish’, and therefore wrapped in wet sheets for hours, then ‘sweated’ with a lamp under a blanket. But his nervous system was considered by the resourceful Schöngraben as too sensitive to be plunged under a douche. The douche consisted of a huge tank of icy water, suddenly released upon the patient from a great height. The resulting shock worked wonders apparently, both for the circulation and for anyone with a delicate digestion, and had been known to ease the suffering caused by dreadful, persistent vomiting.

Max, like all young men blessed with good health, mistrusted all drugs and doctors, and put his faith in two things: eating less and going for walks. He was proved right about the water treatment. The unfortunate Mr. Lewes, flattened by the sweating and the wet sheets, proved quite incapable of receiving visitors that evening.

Nothing for it then, but to scrub himself down and dress himself up, trim his fashionable moustache into points, wax his opulent curls, cram himself into a fresh white shirt, stiff-starched white collar and cuffs, a deep white waistcoat decorated with tiny gold studs, and determine, well beforehand, to ask the Countess Sophie von Hahn for the first dance. Max checked the visitors’ list at the hotel. There were no very dangerous virgins of his acquaintance, accompanied by their mothers, married sisters, cousins or aunts, lurking in Homburg, attempting to get the season off to a flirtatious start. Had the Countess von Hahn returned from her ride? Yes, the young lady, ensconced in her suite, had already sent down to the kitchen for copious refreshments. As the lamps came on in all the houses, the hotel braced itself for the evening’s festivities. Much rearrangement of furniture and decorating of tables went on during the day, and now came the time for lighting the gaseliers in all the hallways and down the main corridors. The ballroom, famed as a
Prunkkammer
, shimmering with gilt and mirrors, remained golden in candlelight, untouched by modernity, and, as yet, empty of music, satin slippers and leather soles. The parquet smelt strongly of beeswax.

Years later, people in Homburg still recalled that evening of celebration, which became known as the Architect’s Ball. Schloss Homburg vor der Höhe, once the residence of the ruling Landgraf von Hessen-Homburg, now belonged to Kaiser Wilhelm I, whose grandson Kaiser Wilhelm II became cheerfully known to the British at a later date as Kaiser Bill. He decided to make Schloss Homburg his regular summer residence, and after perusing various estimates and proposals, transformed the
Königsflügel
into luxurious modern living apartments, with English water closets discreetly hidden in cupboards. The town, already galvanised out of its medieval torpor by its position as a fashionable Kurort, now prepared itself for royal visits. Great expectations were entertained on all sides: fresh stables, horses, hunts, hotels, building projects, a new brewery, landscaped gardens, parks laid out in the English style, lakes dug, new housing, roads relaid, an extension of the gas streetlighting, clinics, quacks and haberdashery, dressmakers, jewellers, tailors from Berlin and full employment. Upholsterers from Frankfurt arrived in full cry; surely there would be an orgy of refurbishment, a great measuring for new curtains and a rising middle class, bellowing for fine porcelain?

The extension of gas lighting in the town proved uncontroversial. The Kurverwaltung had already built a gas factory on the Frankfurt Landstraße near Gonzenheim; all the streets and squares glowed brightly at dusk and the Kurhaus sported gas lights in every room. Sophie von Hahn repeated her mother’s views on gas lighting. She wouldn’t have it in the house, because all the dirt she had been scraping from side to side over the years with the aid of the housemaids would suddenly become visible. The Count, all in favour of every modern development, no matter how outlandish, grunted, and folded his arms. All the English households took gas light for granted. Even in the kitchens.

The Architect and the Baumeister from Darmstadt visited the Schloss, to draw up preparatory studies for the Kaiser’s state apartments. The Court comes to Homburg, and these fine, anticipated visitors will leave a trail of wealth in their wake, rich pickings for all, an earthly abundance of prosperity and happiness. The invitations arrived, printed on ivory cards.
You are cordially invited by the Town Council to a formal dinner and a ball at the Grand Continental Hotel (Louisenstraße 12).
But an undercurrent of anxious desperation simmered beneath these bright declarations of confidence. Spare the Spielsaal, wailed the Council, smelling disaster; but there was no reprieve for the gambling. The Großer Spielsaal would be closed by the end of the year. The town lived in terrible fear of the consequences. The number of visitors would probably halve in one season. The Architect’s Ball was a last-ditch attempt to salvage the town’s economy from the jaws of the oncoming Prussians.

A select number of guests, Sophie and the Count included, attended the dinner, but invitations to the ball were less exclusive, and all manner of men and women sauntered through the doors of the Grand Continental. Several decorated doxies, unaccompanied, excessively rouged, skimmed past and made straight for the ladies’ dressing room. Max, lurking in the lobby, and hoping to apprehend Sophie, ran into an acquaintance; the artist arrived in acceptable, if slightly shabby clothes, curls tied well back, no hat.