i met rachel again in germany through the devices of my cousin the fürstin letzlingen. i had finished seeing what i wanted to see in westphalia and i was preparing to go to the united states. there i thought i should be able to complete and round off that large view of the human process i had been developing in my mind. but my departure was delayed by an attack of influenza that i picked up at a socialist congress in munich, and the dear durchlaucht, hearing of this and having her own views of my destiny, descended upon me while i was still in bed there, made me get up and carried me off in her car, to take care of me herself at her villa at boppard, telling me nothing of any fellow-guests i might encounter.
she had a villa upon the rhine under a hill of vineyards, where she devoted herself—she was a widow—to matchmaking and belated regrets for the childlessness that necessitated a perpetual borrowing of material for her pursuit. she had a motor-car, a steam-launch, several rowing boats and canoes, a tennis-lawn, a rambling garden, a devious house and a rapid mind, and in fact everything that was necessary for throwing young people together. she made her surprise seem easy and natural, and with returning health i found myself already back upon my old footing of friendly intimacy with rachel.
i found her a new and yet a familiar rachel. she had grown up, she was no longer a schoolgirl, crystalline clear with gleams of emotion and understanding, and what she had lost in transparency she had gained in depth. and she had become well-informed, she had been reading very widely and well, i could see, and not simply reading but talking and listening and thinking. she showed a vivid interest in the current of home politics,—at that time the last government of mr. balfour was ebbing to its end and my old transvaal friends, the chinese coolies, were to avenge themselves on their importers. the tariff reformers my father detested were still struggling to unseat the premier from his leadership of conservatism....
it was queer to hear once more, after my asiatic wanderings and dreamings, those west-end dinner-table politics, those speculations about "winston's" future and the possibility of lloyd george or ramsay macdonald or macnamara taking office with the liberals and whether there might not ultimately be a middle party in which haldane and balfour, grey and the cecils could meet upon common ground. it seemed now not only very small but very far off. she told me too of the huge popularity of king edward. he had proved to be interested, curious, understanding and clever, an unexpectedly successful king. she described how he was breaking out of the narrow official limits that had kept his mother in a kind of social bandbox, extending his solvent informality of friendliness to all sorts of men. he had won the heart of will crooks, the labor member for poplar, for example, made john burns a social success and warmed all france for england.
i surveyed this novel picture of the english throne diffusing amiability.
"i suppose it's what the throne ought to do," said rachel. "if it can't be inspiration, at any rate it can tolerate and reconcile and take the ill-bred bitterness out of politics."
"my father might have said that."
"i got that from your father," she said; and added after a momentary pause, "i go over and talk to him."
"you talk to my father!"
"i like to. or rather i listen and take it in. i go over in the afternoon. i go sometimes twice or three times a week."
"that's kind of you."
"not at all. you see—— it sounds impudent, i know, for a girl to say so, but we've so many interests in common."
