Fall of Giants

Maud patted her hair and smoothed her dress. “All right.”

Walter opened the door and they went back into the hall. Otto was chatting amiably to Hermia: he liked respectable old ladies.

“Lady Maud Fitzherbert, may I present my father, Herr Otto von Ulrich.”

Otto bowed over her hand. He had learned not to click his heels: the English thought it comical.

Walter watched them size one another up. Maud smiled as if amused, and Walter guessed she was wondering if this was what he would look like in years to come. Otto took in Maud’s expensive cashmere dress and the fashionable hat with approval. So far, so good.

Otto did not know that they were in love. Walter’s plan was that his father would get to know Maud first. Otto approved of wealthy women doing charitable work, and insisted that Walter’s mother and his sister visit poor families at Zumwald, their country estate in East Prussia. He would find out what a wonderful and exceptional woman Maud was, then his defenses would be down by the time he learned that Walter wanted to marry her.

It was a little foolish, Walter knew, to be so nervous. He was twenty-eight years old: he had a right to choose the woman he loved. But eight years ago he had fallen in love with another woman. Tilde had been passionate and intelligent, like Maud, but she was seventeen and a Catholic. The von Ulrichs were Protestants. Both sets of parents had been angrily hostile to the romance, and Tilde had been unable to defy her father. Now Walter had fallen in love with an unsuitable woman for the second time. It was going to be difficult for his father to accept a feminist and a foreigner. But Walter was older and craftier now, and Maud was stronger and more independent than Tilde had been.

All the same, he was terrified. He had never felt like this about a woman, not even Tilde. He wanted to marry Maud and spend his life with her; in fact he could not imagine being without her. And he did not want his father to make trouble about it.

Maud was on her best behavior. “It is very kind of you to visit us, Herr von Ulrich,” she said. “You must be tremendously busy. For a trusted confidant of a monarch, as you are to your kaiser, I imagine work has no end.”

Otto was flattered, as she had intended. “I’m afraid this is true,” he said. “However your brother, the earl, is such a long-standing friend of Walter’s that I was very keen to come.”

“Let me introduce you to our doctor.” Maud led the way across the room and knocked at the surgery door. Walter was curious: he had never met the doctor. “May we come in?” she called.

They stepped into what must normally have been the pastor’s office, furnished with a small desk and a shelf of ledgers and hymnbooks. The doctor, a handsome young man with black eyebrows and a sensual mouth, was examining Rosie Blatsky’s hand. Walter felt a twinge of jealousy: Maud spent whole days with this attractive fellow.

Maud said: “Dr. Greenward, we have a most distinguished visitor. May I present Herr von Ulrich?”

Otto said stiffly: “How do you do?”

“The doctor works here for no fee,” Maud said. “We’re most grateful to him.”

Greenward nodded curtly. Walter wondered what was causing the evident tension between his father and the doctor.

The doctor returned his attention to his patient. There was an angry-looking cut across her palm, and the hand and wrist were swollen. He looked at the mother and said: “How did she do this?”

The child answered. “My mother doesn’t speak English,” she said. “I cut my hand at work.”

“And your father?”

“My father’s dead.”

Maud said quietly: “The clinic is for fatherless families, though in practise we never turn anyone away.”

Greenward said to Rosie: “How old are you?”

“Eleven.”

Walter murmured: “I thought children were not allowed to work under thirteen.”

“There are loopholes in the law,” Maud replied.

Greenward said: “What work do you do?”

“I clean up at Mannie Litov’s garment factory. There was a blade in the sweepings.”

“Whenever you cut yourself, you must wash the wound and put on a clean bandage. Then you have to change the bandage every day so that it doesn’t get too dirty.” Greenward’s manner was brisk, but not unkind.

The mother barked a question at the daughter in heavily accented Russian. Walter could not understand her, but he got the gist of the child’s reply, which was a translation of what the doctor had said.

The doctor turned to his nurse. “Clean the hand and bandage it, please.” To Rosie he said: “I’m going to give you some ointment. If your arm swells more you must come back and see me next week. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If you let the infection get worse, you may lose your hand.”

Tears came to Rosie’s eyes.

Greenward said: “I’m sorry to frighten you, but I want you to understand how important it is to keep your hand clean.”

The nurse prepared a bowl of what was presumably antiseptic fluid. Walter said: “May I express my admiration and respect for your work here, Doctor.”