Part 45 (1/2)

His master's words were still all of a piece. Downstairs most had come to the view that their master was simply a little out of his mind, poor gentleman. It was common enough among the great families; and elsewhere for that matter. He was always identifying things and recollecting things and staring at things.

”How are you so sure where this piece of water is?” asked Elmo, not looking at Jurgen, but still staring. ”How can you tell?”

”All of us know, your Highness. We know all our lives. Near enough leastways, your Highness. So that we don't find ourselves there by mistake like. ”

”Would it matter so much if you did?”

”Oh yes, your Highness. As I said to your Highness, it's a piece of water that belongs to no one. That's not natural, is it, your Highness?”

”If this had been a year ago,” said Elmo, ”I should first have had the whole story properly looked into, and then, if there had proved to be anything true about it, I should have sailed out there myself.”

Jurgen was obviously about to demur, and there was a slight but detectable pa.s.sage of time before he replied, ”As your Highness says.”

”But I don't believe a word of it,” commented Elmo petulantly. It was difficult to decide to what extent he was still staring out at the lake and to what extent he was staring at the blackness inside him.

Jurgen bowed more formally and clattered downstairs again.

The survival of the lost beloved being so incomparably more afflicting than his or her death, the bereaved is the more likely to vary bitter grief with occasional episodes of hysterical elation, as the dying man, isolated amid the Polar or Himalayan snows, has quarter hours of almost peaceful confidence that of course he will emerge, even believing that he sees how.

So it was that afternoon with Elmo. He found himself growing more and more wildly excited by what Jurgen had a.s.serted, nonsense though it was. The world seemed to be suddenly lighted up with liberation, as in that case of the Polar or Himalayan castaway. Inwardly he knew that any motion on his part, however minute or merely symbolic, would at once dim and then rapidly extinguish the light: he must simply hold on to the excitement as long as he could, for its own sake. Indeed, he had been through such interludes before during the past year, through two or three of them; and he knew how transitory they were. All the same, if the castle library had offered a modern reference book, he might have consulted it. As it was, it contained nothing of the kind later than works left behind (or ”presented”) by the French officers at the time of the Napoleonic occupation.

When one is dead as Elmo was dead, ideas cease to be big or small, true or false, weighty or trivial: the only distinction is between irritant and anodyne. Long after his false elation had worn off (such conditions seldom last as long as an hour), Jurgen's fantasy still lingered in Elmo's mind as anodyne.

Shortly after three o'clock that afternoon, he picked up the bell and shook it. The wiring of the castle bells had become so defective that Elmo found he did better with a handbell, but it had to be a big, heavy, and noisy one, a veritable crier's bell, or it would not have been heard through the thick walls, and down the corridors.

”Jurgen. I should like to see Herr Spalt. After dinner, of course.”

”But, your Highness-” After all, Jurgen's master had not merely seen no one from the outside world for a twelvemonth, but had given particular directions, with serious penalties attached, that no one was even to be told he was in residence.

”After dinner, Jurgen, I should like to see Herr Spalt.”

”I shall see what can be done, your Highness. I shall do my best.”

”No man can do more,” commented Elmo with a spectral smile.

Herr Spalt was the schoolmaster. In other days, Elmo had not infrequently asked him in, to share some evening concoction he, Elmo, had himself prepared according to regimental tradition. Indeed, Elmo considered that he had learned much from Spalt, whom he deemed to be palpably no ordinary village disciplinarian. He a.s.sumed that, at some point in his career or in his life, Spalt had been in trouble, so that he had sunk below his proper position in scholars.h.i.+p.

As has been said, the grief-stricken sometimes gorge and sometimes starve. That evening Elmo ate little. Some new impulse had entered his bloodstream, though he could not decide whether it helped or harmed, especially as there was so little difference between the two.

It was past eight o'clock when Spalt arrived. The walk from the village was not inconsiderable, notably in the dark. Spalt now was a corpulent man, grey-skinned and bald, and with an overall air of neglect. There was even a triangular tear in the left leg of his trousers. He was noticeably what is described as ”a confirmed bachelor”.

”Spalt, have some Schnapps.” Elmo poured two large measures. ”It's cold in the evenings. It's cold always.”

Spalt made a fat little bow.

Elmo said: ”I do not wish to go into things. There are reasons for all I do and all I do not.”

Spalt bowed again, sucking at the Schnapps. ”Your Highness's confidences are his own.”

”Tell me how is Baron Viktor von Revenstein?”

”As before, your Highness. There is no change that we are aware of.”

”What did you make of it, Spalt?”

”The baron endured a terrible experience, your Highness. Terrible.” Spalt's expression had seldom been seen to change. Possibly this was a qualification for his profession. The young have to be strengthened, especially the young men and boys.

”If I remember rightly, you were among those who thought it was done by a shark?”

”Something like that, your Highness. What else could it have been?”

”A freshwater shark?”

Spalt said nothing.

”Are there such things? You are a well-informed man, Spalt. I have found that you know almost everything. Are there such things as freshwater sharks? Do they exist?”

”The ichthyologists do not know of them, your Highness. That is true. But there must have been something of the kind out there. If not exactly a shark, then something not dissimilar. What other explanation is possible?”

Elmo refilled the gla.s.ses, lavishly.

”Jurgen, my man here, rough, very rough, but not a conscious liar I should say, has been telling me a wild tale about there being a part of the lake which belongs to no one. To no state or ruler; to no one of any kind, as I gather. Have you ever heard of that?”

”Oh yes, your Highness,” replied Spalt. ”It is perfectly true.”

”Really? You astonish me. How can it be possible?”

”There was not always an international law governing the owners.h.i.+p of open water between different states, and even now that law is very imperfect. It is distinctly controversial in various parts of the world. In our case, the international law has never been deemed to apply. The owners.h.i.+p of the lake's surface has been governed by treaty and even by convention. One consequence, doubtless unintended, is that part of the lake's surface belongs to no one. It is quite simple.”

”What about beneath the water?”

The same, your Highness, I imagine. Exactly the same.”

”The lake is very deep, I have always understood?”

”In places, your Highness. Very deep indeed in places. There has never been a complete hydrographical survey.”

”Indeed! Do you not think there should be?”

”It is hard to see what practical purpose could be served.”

”The acquisition of new knowledge is surely a sufficient end in itself?”

”So it is said, your Highness.”

”But you must agree? You are our local savant.”

Instead of replying, Spalt said: ”Your Highness was not then aware that the baron's terrible injury happened on that part of the lake?”

”Of course I was not. Though perhaps since this afternoon I may have suspected it. Perhaps that is why you are here now. But how do you know, in any case? You were not there.”