Weighed in the Balance (10 page)

Hester hesitated, torn between the two dangers.

Callandra had had far longer to weigh the issues. There was no indecision in her eyes.

“I truly believe there is more regret over what we fail to do than over decisions made which turned out badly,” she said with conviction. “Are you willing to try, at least?”

Hester smiled. “And your third reason?”

“You need a position!” Callandra said simply.

It was true. Since her father’s ruin and death Hester had no means of her own, and she refused to be dependent upon her brother; therefore, she must earn her own living as her skills allowed. Not that it was an issue she resented. It gave her both independence and interest, both of which she prized highly.
The financial urgency of it was less pleasant, but common to most people.

“I should be happy to do what I can,” she said sincerely. “If you feel that Baron and Baroness Ollenheim would find me acceptable.”

“I have already seen to that,” Callandra replied decisively. “The sooner you can take up the position, the better.”

Hester rose to her feet.

“Oh,” Callandra added with bright eyes. “By the way, Oliver Rathbone has taken up the case of the Countess Rostova.”

“What?” Hester stopped abruptly and stood motionless. “I beg your pardon. What did you say?”

Callandra repeated herself.

Hester swung around to stare at her.

“Then I can only believe there must be more to the case than there seems. And pray so!”

“And William is investigating it for him,” Callandra added. “Which, of course, is how I know about it.” Callandra was also William Monk’s patroness, tiding him through his leaner times.

Hester merely said “I see.” But she did not see at all. “Then, if you are sure the Baron and Baroness Ollenheim are expecting me, I had better pack a case and make myself available.”

“I shall be happy to take you,” Callandra said generously. “The house is on Hill Street, near Berkeley Square.”

“Thank you.”

Callandra had prepared the way well, and Baron and Baroness Ollenheim welcomed Hester’s professional services. The burden of caring for their son had fallen heavily upon them, as their emotions were so deeply involved. Hester found the Baroness Dagmar a charming woman who in times less stressful, when not exhausted and strained with grief and anxiety, would have been beautiful. Now she was pale with
fatigue, sleepless nights had left deep shadows under her eyes, and she had no time or interest to dress more than simply.

Baron Bernd was also disturbed by feelings which harrowed him profoundly, but he made a greater effort to conceal them, as was expected of a man and an aristocrat. Nevertheless, he was more than courteous to Hester and permitted her to see his relief at her presence.

Robert Ollenheim himself was a young man of perhaps twenty, with a fair face and thick, light brown hair which fell forward over the left side of his brow. In normal health he would have been most handsome; lying wasted by the recent fever, weak and still aching, he nevertheless managed a certain grace in greeting Hester when she made herself known to him and began her duties. He must have been aware of the seriousness of his situation, and the possibility of permanent disability had to have crossed his mind, but no mention was made of it.

She found caring for him easy in its physical work. It was simply a matter of nursing, keeping him as comfortable as possible, trying to reduce his distress and discomfort, seeing that he drank broth and beef tea frequently and gradually began to take greater nourishment. The doctor called very regularly, and she was left no important decisions to make. The difficulty lay in the concern for him and the fear that lay at the back of all their minds as to how complete his recovery would be. No one spoke of paralysis, but as each day went by, and still he felt no sensation and gained no power of movement below the waist, the fear grew.

She did not forget the extraordinary case with which Monk and Rathbone were involved, and once or twice she overheard Bernd and Dagmar discussing it when they were not aware she was close by.

“Will Prince Friedrich’s death make a great deal of political difference?” she asked one day about a week after her arrival. She and Dagmar were putting away clean linen the laundry maid had brought up. Ever since she first met Monk and
became involved in the murder of Joscelin Gray, she had asked questions almost as of second nature.

“I think so,” Dagmar replied, examining the embroidered corner of a pillow slip. “There is considerable talk of uniting all the German states under one crown, which would naturally mean our being swallowed up. We are far too small to become the center of such a new nation. The King of Prussia has ambitions in that direction, and, of course, Prussia is very military. And then there are Bavaria, Moravia, Hannover, Bohemia, Holstein, Westphalia, Würtemberg, Saxony, Silesia, Pomerania, Nassau, Mecklenburg and Schwerin, not to mention the Thuringian states, the Electorate of Hesse, and above all Brandenburg. Berlin is an immensely tedious city, but it is very well placed to become the capital for all of us.”

“You mean all the German states as one country?” Hester had never really thought of such a thing.

“There is much talk of it. I don’t know if it will ever happen.” Dagmar picked out another of the slips. “This needs mending. If one caught a finger in this it would ruin it. Some of us are for unification, others against. The King is very frail now, and possibly will not live more than another year or two. Then Waldo will be king, and he is in favor of unification.”

“Are you?” Perhaps it was an intrusive question, but she asked it before thinking. It seemed to spring naturally from the statement.

Dagmar hesitated several moments before replying, her hands motionless on the linen, her brow furrowed.

“I don’t know,” she said finally. “I’ve thought about it. One has to be reasonable about these things. To begin with, I was utterly against it. I wanted to keep my identity.” She bit her lip, as if laughing at her own foolishness, looking directly at Hester. “I know that may seem silly to you, since you are British and at the heart of the largest empire in the world, but it mattered to me.”

“It’s not foolish at all,” Hester said sincerely. “Knowing
who you are is part of happiness.” Unexpectedly, a sharp thought of Monk came to her mind, because he had been injured three years before in an accident and had lost every shred of his memory. Even his own face in the glass woke no familiarity in him at all. She had watched him struggle with remnants of his past as they flashed to his mind, or some event forced upon him evidence of who and what he had been. Not all of it was pleasant or easy to accept. Even now it was only fragments, pieces here and there. The vast bulk of it was closed within recesses of his mind he could not reach. He felt too vulnerable to ask questions of those few who knew anything. Too many of them were enemies, rivals, or simply people he had worked with and ignored. “To know your own roots is a great gift,” she said aloud. “To tear them up, willingly, is an injury one might not survive.”

“It is also an injury to refuse to acknowledge change,” Dagmar answered thoughtfully. “And to hold out against unification, if the other states seem to want it, could leave us very isolated. Or far worse than that, it could provoke war. We could be swallowed whether we want it or not.”

“Could you?” Hester took the slip from Dagmar and placed it in a separate pile.

“Oh, yes.” The Baroness picked up the last sheet. “And far better to be allied as part of a larger Germany in general than to be taken over in war as a subject province of Prussia. If you know anything of Prussian politics, you’d think the same, believe me. The King of Prussia isn’t bad at heart, but even he can’t keep the army under control—or the bureaucrats or the landowners. That is a lot of what the revolutions of ’48 were all about, a sort of middle class trying to obtain some rights, some freedom for the press and literature, and a wider franchise.”

“In Prussia or in your country?”

“Everywhere, really.” Dagmar shrugged. “There were revolutions
in just about every part of Europe that year. Only France seemed to have succeeded in winning anything. Certainly Prussia didn’t.”

“And you think that if you try to remain independent there could be war?” Hester was horrified. She had seen too much of the reality of war, the broken bodies on the battlefield, the physical agony, the maiming and the death. For her, war was not a political idea but an endless unfolding and living of pain, exhaustion, fear, hunger, and heat in the summer and cold even to death in the winter. No sane person would enter into it unless occupation and slavery were the only alternatives.

“There might.” Dagmar’s voice came from far away, although she was standing only a yard from Hester in the corridor with the sunlit landing beyond. But Hester’s mind had been in the rat-infested, disease-ridden hospital in Scutari, and in the carnage of Balaclava and Sebastopol. “There are many people who make money from war,” Dagmar went on somberly, the sheet forgotten. “They see it primarily as an opportunity to profit from the sale of guns and munitions, horses, rations, uniforms, all kinds of things.”

Unconsciously, Hester winced. To wish such a horror upon any people in order to make money from it seemed like the ultimate wickedness.

Dagmar’s fingers examined the hem of the sheet absent-mindedly, tracing the embroidered flowers and monogram.

“Please God it won’t come to that. Friedrich was for independence, even if he had to fight for it, but I don’t know who else is who could lead us. Anyway, it doesn’t matter anymore. Friedrich is dead, and he wouldn’t have returned without Gisela. And it seems as if the Queen would not have allowed him back with her, no matter what the cost or the alternative.”

Hester had to ask.

“Would he ever have gone without her—if it were to save his country, to keep Felzburg independent?”

Dagmar looked at her steadily, her face suddenly tense, her eyes very level.

“I don’t know. I used to think not … but I don’t know.”

A day went by, and another, and another. Robert’s fever was gone now. He was beginning to eat proper meals, and to enjoy them. But he still had no sensation or power of movement below the waist.

Bernd came every evening to sit and talk with his son. Hester naturally did not remain in the room, but she knew from the remarks she overheard, and from Robert’s own attitude after his father had left, that Bernd was still, at least outwardly, convinced that complete healing was only a matter of waiting.

Dagmar kept up the same manner on the surface, but when she left Robert’s room and was alone with Hester on the landing, or downstairs, she allowed her anxiety to show through.

“It seems as if he is not getting any better,” she said tensely on the fourth day after their discussion of German reunification politics. Her eyes were dark with anxiety, her shoulders stiff under her fine woolen day bodice with its white lawn collar. “Am I expecting too much too quickly? I thought he would have been able to move his feet now. He just lies there. I dare not even ask what he is thinking.” She was desperate for Hester to reassure her, waiting for the word that would ease her fears, at least for a while.

Was it kinder, or crueler, to say something that was not true? Surely trust also mattered? In the future it might matter even more.

“Perhaps you shouldn’t ask,” Hester replied. She had seen many men face maiming and loss of limbs, disfigurement of face or body. There were things for which no one could offer help. There was nothing to do but stand and wait for the time or the depth of pain when another person was needed. It might come sooner or later. “He will talk about it when he is ready.
Perhaps a visitor would take his mind from thinking of it. I believe Lady Callandra mentioned a Miss Victoria Stanhope, who has suffered some misfortune herself and might be of encouragement …” She did not know how to finish.

Dagmar looked startled and seemed about to dismiss the idea.

“Someone who is less close, less obviously anxious, may be helpful,” Hester urged.

“Yes …” Dagmar agreed hopefully. “Yes, perhaps she may. I shall ask him.”

The following day, Victoria Stanhope, still thin, still pale and moving with slight awkwardness, paid a call upon Hester, who conducted her to Robert.

Dagmar had remained uncertain about the suitability of a young, single woman’s visiting in such circumstances, but when she saw Victoria, her shyness and her obvious disability, she changed her mind. And apart from that, the girl’s dress immediately proclaimed her lack of means or social position. The fact that she spoke with dignity and intelligence made her otherwise most agreeable. The name Stanhope was familiar to Dagmar, but she did not immediately place it.

Victoria stood on the landing beside Hester. Now that the moment had come, her courage failed her.

“I can’t go in,” she whispered. “What can I say to him? He won’t remember me, and if he does, it will only be that I rebuffed him. Anyway”—she gulped and turned, white-faced, to Hester—“what about my family? He’ll remember that, and he won’t want to have anything to do with me. I can’t—”

“Your family’s situation is nothing to do with you,” Hester said gently, putting her hand on Victoria’s arm. “Robert is far too fair to make such a judgment. Go in there thinking of his need, not your own, and I promise you, you will have nothing at the end which you can look back on with regret.” The
moment she had said it, she realized how bold she had been, but Victoria’s smile prevented her from withdrawing it.

Victoria took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh, then knocked on the door again.

“May I come in?”

Robert looked at her with curiosity. Hester had prepared him for the visit, naturally, and had been surprised how clearly he had recalled their one brief encounter over a year before.

“Please do, Miss Stanhope,” he said with a slight smile. “I apologize for the hospitality I can offer, but I am at a slight disadvantage right at the moment. Please sit down. That chair”—he pointed to the one beside the bed—“is quite comfortable.”