Читать книгу The Life and Exploits of the Scarlet Pimpernel - Emmuska Orczy - Страница 19

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Just after this episode, in the month of February of that year, Lady Blakeney seemed to recover her senses: her health was better and an improvement in her mental condition became markedly noticeable. So Percy was immediately dragged to Berlin.

A childish letter, treasured by Anne Derwent, gives us an amusing insight into Percy’s mind when he first went to Germany.

“My dearest cousin Anne,” he wrote six weeks after his installation in Berlin, “The Prussians are beastly people, I hate them all. I am not allowed to play those lovely games that we played together last year. Everybody is so stiff and the do not know how to enjoy themselves as we used to.

“I wish you were here. You would laugh at Hans who thinks such a lot of himself. He is a coward and would not fight me. He said such a thing was simply not done and that boys in Germany did not behave so stupidly. I like Mister Ingram. He is English and I stay with him, but I wish he would not talk German all the time. Father says I must learn to speak it and Mister Ingram gives me lessons every day and gives me cakes if I learn well. Hans does not like Mister Ingram who teaches him English. I don’t think Mister Ingram gives him cakes after the lesson.

“Father rides with me every morning. I love that. The German soldiers are very smart, but very ugly.

“Dear cousin Anne, do come and take me away.”

As a matter of fact, the journey to Germany had a great and lasting effect upon the immature lad. The laxity and the offensive morals of the French had made a deep impression upon him. His duel with de Bonnefin with its sad consequences, and his association with young boys who had never been taught to put a curb upon their desires, had developed in him some sense of revolt against his father’s strict discipline, and especially against the life which he knew he would have to lead in England sooner or later.

“Sir, let us live in France for ever,” Percy is reported to have said to his father when he first heard of the imminent departure for Germany.

But German respectability, the outcome of the spirit of Martin Luther, exercised a more steadying influence on his character. Here in Berlin he learnt many useful lessons in decorum and manners. The effeminate and elaborate courtesies demanded in France cut no ice in Germany. Percy found himself laughed at by his equals and deliberately snubbed. This brought him down to earth and he soon realized that frivolity and love of pleasure were not the real hall-marks of a gentleman and that personality was the only thing that counted.

Such a complete reversal of childish ideas might have been a task beyond the ordinary powers of a mere lad. But Percy, though still very young, had already a certain strength of character — though most people who knew him at the time would have denied it — this helped him, no doubt, to surmount many difficulties and to bend his young mind to this entirely new outlook on life. The lesson was hard, but he learnt it in the end.

Then, within a year, came the death of Lady Blakeney: this was a merciful release for all concerned after nearly ten years of sorrow and terror and it put an end to Sir Algernon’s foreign wanderings.

He returned to England with Percy and took up residence at Blake, endeavouring to gather up the threads of a tangled life. But existence seemed a paltry affair for this disillusioned and unhappy man. Though friends and relations gathered round him to ease his loneliness and to apply the healing balm of friendship to his wounds, he could not forget the tormented years. The stress of continual worry and the strain of perpetual anxiety had added years to his age and put a blight upon his mind which nothing seemed to cure or even alleviate. He sank deeper and deeper into the gloom of misery and wretchedness, unable to endure the slightest reference to the beloved departed. A restlessness, born of this spiritual ache, forbade him peace: it pushed him to the grave-side of his wife in his longing to be as near as possible to her earthly remains. He became a wanderer on the face of the earth, knowing no rest.

In the meantime, Percy was growing up in this brooding, mournful atmosphere.