The cheerful goddess who had brought Fritzing and his Princess safely over from Kunitz was certainly standing by them well. She it was who had driven Priscilla up on to the heath and into the acquaintance of Augustus Shuttleworth, without whom a cottage in Symford would have been for ever unattainable. She it was who had sent the Morrisons, father and son, to drive Priscilla from the churchyard before Fritzing had joined her, without which driving she would never have met Augustus. She it was who had used the trifling circumstance of a mislaid sermon-book to take the vicar and Robin into the church at an unaccustomed time, without which sermon-book they would never have met Priscilla in the churchyard and driven her out of it. Thus are all our doings ruled by Chance; and it is a pleasant pastime for an idle hour to trace back big events to their original and sometimes absurd beginnings. For myself I know that the larger lines of my life were laid down once for all by—but what has this to do with Priscilla? Thus, I say, are all our doings ruled by Chance, who loves to use small means for the working of great wonders. And as for the gay goddess's ugly sister, the lady of the shifty eye and lowering brow called variously Misfortune and Ill Luck, she uses the same tools exactly in her hammering out of lives, meanly taking little follies and little weaknesses, so little and so amiable at first as hardly to be distinguished from little virtues, and with them building up a mighty mass that shall at last come down and crush our souls. Of the crushing of souls, however, my story does not yet treat, and I will not linger round subjects so awful. We who are nestling for the moment like Priscilla beneath the warm wing of Good Fortune can dare to make what the children call a face at her grey sister as she limps scowling past. Shall we not too one day in our turn feel her claws? Let us when we do at least not wince; and he who feeling them can still make a face and laugh, shall be as the prince of the fairy tales, transforming the sour hag by his courage into a bright reward, striking his very griefs into a shining shower of blessing.
From this brief excursion into the realm of barren musings, whither I love above all things to wander and whence I have continually to fetch myself back again by force, I will return to the story.
At Tussie's suggestion when the business part of their talk was over—and it took exactly five minutes for Tussie to sell and Fritzing to buy the cottages, five minutes of the frothiest business talk ever talked, so profound was the ignorance of both parties as to what most people demand of cottages—Fritzing drove to Minehead in the postmistress's son's two-wheeled cart in order to purchase suitable furniture and bring back persons who would paper and paint. Minehead lies about twenty miles to the north of Symford, so Fritzing could not be back before evening. By the time he was back, promised Tussie, the shoemaker and Mrs. Shaw should be cleared out and put into a place so much better according to their views that they would probably make it vocal with their praises.
Fritzing quite loved Tussie. Here was a young man full of the noblest spirit of helpfulness, and who had besides the invaluable gift of seeing no difficulties anywhere. Even Fritzing, airy optimist, saw more than Tussie, and whenever he expressed a doubt it was at once brushed aside by the cheerfullest "Oh, that'll be all right." He was the most practical, businesslike, unaffected, energetic young man, thought Fritzing, that he had even seen. Tussie was surprised himself at his own briskness, and putting the wonderful girl on the heath as much as possible out of his thoughts, told himself that it was the patent food beginning at last to keep its promises.
He took Fritzing to the post-office and ordered the trap for him, cautioned the postmistress's son, who was going to drive, against going too fast down the many hills, for the bare idea of the priceless uncle being brought back in bits or in any state but absolutely whole and happy turned him cold, told Fritzing which shops to go to and where to lunch, begged him to be careful what he ate, since hotel luncheons were good for neither body nor soul, ordered rugs and a mackintosh covering to be put in, and behaved generally with the forethought of a mother. "I'd go with you myself," he said,—and the postmistress, listening with both her ears, recognized that the Baker's Farm lodgers were no longer persons to be criticised—"but I can be of more use to you here. I must see Dawson about clearing out the cottages. Of course it is very important you shouldn't stay a moment longer than can be helped in uncomfortable lodgings."
Here was a young man! Sensible, practical, overflowing with kindness. Fritzing had not met any one he esteemed so much for years. They went down the village street together, for Tussie was bound for Mr. Dawson who was to be set to work at once, and Fritzing for the farm whither the trap was to follow him as soon as ready, and all Symford, curtseying to Tussie, recognized, as the postmistress had recognized, that Fritzing was now raised far above their questionings, seated firmly on the Shuttleworth rock.
They parted at Mr. Dawson's gate, Mrs. Dawson mildly watching their warmth over a wire blind. "When we are settled, young man," said Fritzing, after eloquent words of thanks and appreciation, "you must come in the evenings, and together we will roam across the splendid fields of English literature."
"Ohthanks" exclaimed Tussie, flushing with pleasure. He longed to ask if the divine niece would roam too, but even if she did not, to roam at all would be a delight, and he would besides be doing it under the very roof that sheltered that bright and beautiful head. "Ohthanks," cried Tussie, then, flushing.
His extreme joy surprised Fritzing. "Are you so great a friend of literature?" he inquired.
"I believe," said Tussie, "that without it I'd have drowned myself long ago. And as for the poets—"
He stopped. No one knew what poetry had been to him in his sickly existence—the one supreme interest, the one thing he really cared to live for.
Fritzing now loved him with all his heart. "Ach Gott, ja," he ejaculated, clapping him on the shoulder, "the poets—ja, ja—'Blessings be with them and eternal praise,' what? Young man," he added enthusiastically, "I could wish that you had been my son. I could indeed." And as he said it Robin Morrison coming down the street and seeing the two together and the expression on Tussie's face instantly knew that Tussie had met the niece.
"Hullo, Tuss," he called across, hurrying past, for it would rather upset his umbrella plan to be stopped and have to talk to the man Neumann thus prematurely. But Tussie neither saw nor heard him, and "By Jove, hasn't he just seen the niece though," said Robin to himself, his eyes dancing as he strode nimbly along on long and bird-like legs. The conviction seized him that when he and his umbrella should descend upon Baker's that afternoon Tussie would either be there already or would come in immediately afterwards. "Who would have thought old Fuss would be so enterprising?" he wondered, thinking of the extreme cordiality of Fritzing's face. "He's given them those cottages, I'll swear."
So Fritzing went to Minehead. I will not follow his painful footsteps as they ranged about that dreary place, nor will I dwell upon his purchases, which resolved themselves at last, after an infinite and soul-killing amount of walking and bewilderment, into a sofa, a revolving bookstand, and two beds. He forgot a bed for Annalise because he forgot Annalise; and he didn't buy things like sheets because he forgot that beds want them. On the other hand he spent quite two hours in a delightful second-hand bookshop on his way to the place where you buy crockery, and then forgot the crockery. He did, reminded and directed by Mr. Vickerton, the postmistress's son, get to a paperhanger's and order him and his men to come out in shoals to Symford the next morning at daybreak, making the paperhanger vow, who had never seen them, that the cottages should be done by nightfall. Then, happening to come to the seashore, he stood for a moment refreshing his nostrils with saltness, for he was desperately worn out, and what he did after that heaven knows. Anyhow young Vickerton found him hours afterwards walking up and down the shingle in the dark, waving his arms about and crying—
"O, qui me gelidis convallibus HaemiSistat et ingenti ramorum protegat umbra!"
"Talking German out loud to himself," said young Vickerton to his mother that night; and it is possible that he had been doing it all the time.
And while he was doing these things Priscilla was having calls paid her. Nothing could exceed her astonishment when about four o'clock, as she was sitting deep in thought and bored on the arm of a horsehair chair, Mrs. Pearce opened the door and without the least warning let in Mrs. Morrison. Priscilla had promised Fritzing for that one day to stay quietly at the farm, and for the last two hours, finding the farm of an intolerable dulness, she had been engaged in reflections of an extremely complex nature on subjects such as Duty, Will, and Personality. Her morning in the Baker fields and by the banks of that part of the Sym that meanders through them had tuned her mind to meditation. The food at one o'clock and the manner of its bringing in by Annalise—Priscilla had relieved Mrs. Pearce of that office—tuned it still more. The blended slipperiness and prickliness of all the things she tried to sit on helped surprisingly; and if I knew how far it is allowable to write of linen I could explain much of her state of mind by a description of the garments in which she was clothed that day. They were new garments taken straight from the Gerstein box. They were not even linen,—how could they be for Fritzing's three hundred marks? And their newness had not yet been exposed to the softening influence of any wash-tub. Straight did they come, in all their crackling stiffness, out of the shop and on to the Princess. Annalise had been supposed to wash them or cause them to be washed the day before, but Annalise had been far too busy crying to do anything of the sort; and by four o'clock Priscilla was goaded by them into a condition of mind so unworthy that she was thinking quite hard about the Kunitz fine linen and other flesh-pots and actually finding the recollection sweet. It was a place, Priscilla mused, where her body had been exquisitely cared for. Those delicate meals, served in spotlessness, surely they had been rather of the nature of poems? Those web-like garments, soft as a kiss, how beautiful they had been to touch and wear. True her soul had starved; yes, it had cruelly starved. But was it then—she started at her own thought—was it then being fed at Baker's?
And into the middle of this question, a tremendous one to be asked on the very threshold of the new life, walked Mrs. Morrison.
"How d'y do," said Mrs. Morrison. "The vicar asked me to come and see you. I hope the Pearces make you comfortable."
"Well I never," thought Mrs. Pearce, lingering as was her custom on the door-mat, and shaking her head in sorrow rather than in anger.
Priscilla sat for a moment staring at her visitor.
"You are Miss Schultz, are you not?" asked Mrs. Morrison rather nervously.
Priscilla said she was,—her name, that is, was Neumann-Schultz—and got up. She had the vaguest notion as to how Miss Schultz would behave under these trying circumstances, but imagined she would begin by getting up. So she got up, and the sofa being a low one and her movements leisurely, Mrs. Morrison told her husband afterwards there seemed to be no end to the girl. The girl certainly was long, and when at last unfolded and quite straightened out she towered over Mrs. Morrison, who looked up uneasily at the grave young face. Why, Mrs. Morrison asked herself, didn't the girl smile? It was the duty of a Miss Schultz called upon by the vicar's wife to smile; so profound a gravity on such an occasion was surely almost rude. Priscilla offered her hand and hoped it was all right to do so, but still she did not smile. "Are you Mrs. Morrison?" she asked.
"Yes," said Mrs. Morrison with an immense reserve in her voice.
Then Priscilla suggested she should sit down. Mrs. Morrison was already doing it; and Priscilla sank on to her sofa again and wondered what she had better say next. She wondered so much that she became lost in mazes of wonder, and there was so long a silence that Mrs. Pearce outside the door deplored an inconsiderateness that could keep her there for nothing.
"I didn't know you had a double name," said Mrs. Morrison, staring at Priscilla and trying to decide whether this was not a case for the application of leaflets and instant departure. The girl was really quite offensively pretty. She herself had been pretty—she thanked heaven that she still was so—but never, never pretty—she thanked heaven again—in this glaringly conspicuous fashion.
"My name is Ethel Maria-Theresa Neumann-Schultz," said Priscilla, very clearly and slowly; and though she was, as we know, absolutely impervious to the steadiest staring, she did wonder whether this good lady could have seen her photograph anywhere in some paper, her stare was so very round and bright and piercing.
"What a long name," said Mrs. Morrison.
"Yes," said Priscilla; and as another silence seemed imminent she added, "I have two hyphens."
"Two what?" said Mrs. Morrison, startled; and so full was her head of doubt and distrust that for one dreadful moment she thought the girl had said two husbands. "Oh, hyphens. Yes. Germans have them a good deal, I believe."
"That sounds as if we were talking about diseases," said Priscilla, a faint smile dawning far away somewhere in the depths of her eyes.
"Yes," said Mrs. Morrison, fidgeting.
Odd that Robin should have said nothing about the girl's face. Anyhow she should be kept off Netta. Better keep her off the parish-room Tuesdays as well. What in the world was she doing in Symford? She was quite the sort of girl to turn the heads of silly boys. And so unfortunate, just as Augustus Shuttleworth had taken to giving Netta little volumes of Browning.
"Is your uncle out?" she asked, some of the sharpness of her thoughts getting into her voice.
"He's gone to Minehead, to see about things for my cottage."
"Your cottage? Have you got Mrs. Shaw's, then?"
"Yes. She is being moved out to-day."
"Dear me," said Mrs. Morrison, greatly struck.
"Is it surprising?"
"Most. So unlike Lady Shuttleworth."
"She has been very kind."
"Do you know her?"
"No; but my uncle was there this morning."
"And managed to persuade her?"
"He is very eloquent," said Priscilla, with a demure downward sweep of her eyelashes.
"Just a little more," thought Mrs. Morrison, watching their dusky golden curve, "and the girl would have had scarlet hair and white-eyebrows and masses of freckles and been frightful." And she sighed an impatient sigh, which, if translated into verse, would undoubtedly have come out—
"Oh the little more and how much it is,And the little less and what worlds away!"
"And poor old Mrs. Shaw—how does she like being turned out?"
"I believe she is being put into something that will seem to her a palace."
"Dear me, your uncle must really be very eloquent."
"I assure you that he is," said Priscilla earnestly.
There was a short pause, during which Mrs. Morrison staring straight into those unfathomable pools, Priscilla's eyes, was very angry with them for being so evidently lovely. "You are very young," she said, "so you will not mind my questions—"
"Don't the young mind questions?" asked Priscilla, for a moment supposing it to be a characteristic of the young of England.
"Not, surely, from experienced and—and married ladies," said Mrs. Morrison tartly.
"Please go on then."
"Oh, I haven't anything particular to go on about," said Mrs. Morrison, offended. "I assure you curiosity is not one of my faults."
"No?" said Priscilla, whose attention had begun to wander.
"Being human I have no doubt many failings, but I'm thankful to say curiosity isn't one of them."
"My uncle says that's just the difference between men and women. He says women might achieve just as much as men if only they were curious about things. But they're not. A man will ask a thousand questions, and never rest till he's found out as much as he can about anything he sees, and a woman is content hardly even to see it."
"I hope your uncle is a Churchman," was Mrs. Morrison's unexpected reply.
Priscilla's mind could not leap like this, and she hesitated a moment and smiled. ("It's the first time she's looked pleasant," thought Mrs. Morrison, "and now it's in the wrong place.")
"He was born, of course, in the Lutheran faith," said Priscilla.
"Oh, a horrid faith. Excuse me, but it really is. I hope he isn't going to upset Symford?"
"Upset Symford?"
"New people holding wrong tenets coming to such a small place do sometimes, you know, and you say he is eloquent. And we are such a simple and God-fearing little community. A few years ago we had a great bother with a Dissenting family that came here. The cottagers quite lost their heads."
"I think I can promise that my uncle will not try to convert anybody," said Priscilla.
"Of course you mean pervert. It would be a pity if he did. It wouldn't last, but it would give us a lot of trouble. We are very good Churchmen here. The vicar, and my son too when he's at home, set beautiful examples. My son is going into the Church himself. It has been his dearest wish from a child. He thinks of nothing else—of nothing else at all," she repeated, fixing her eyes on Priscilla with a look of defiance.
"Really?" said Priscilla, very willing to believe it.
"I assure you it's wonderful how absorbed he is in his studies for it. He reads Church history every spare moment, and he's got it so completely on his mind that I've noticed even when he whistles it's 'The Church's One Foundation.'"
"What is that?" inquired Priscilla.
"Mr. Robin Morrison," announced Mrs. Pearce.
The sitting-room at Baker's was a small, straightforward place, with no screens, no big furniture, no plants in pots, nothing that could for a moment conceal the persons already in it from the persons coming in, and Robin entering jauntily with the umbrella under his arm fell straight as it were into his mother's angry gaze. "Hullo mater, you here?" he exclaimed genially, his face broadening with apparent satisfaction.
"Yes, Robin, I am here," she said, drawing herself up.
"How do you do, Miss Schultz. I seem to have got shown into the wrong room. It's a Mr. Neumann I've come to see; doesn't he live here?"
Priscilla looked at him from her sofa seat and wondered what she had done that she should be scourged in this manner by Morrisons.
"You know my son, I believe?" said Mrs. Morrison in the stiffest voice; for the girl's face showed neither recognition nor pleasure, and though she would have been angry if she had looked unduly pleased she was still angrier that she should look indifferent.
"Yes. I met him yesterday. Did you want my uncle? His name is Neumann. Neumann-Schultz. He's out."
"I only wanted to give him this umbrella," said Robin, with a swift glance at his mother as he drew it from under his arm. Would she recognize it? He had chosen one of the most ancient; the one most appropriate, as he thought, to the general appearance of the man Neumann.
"What umbrella is that, Robin?" asked his mother suspiciously. Really, it was more than odd that Robin, whom she had left immersed in study, should have got into Baker's Farm so quickly. Could he have been expected? And had Providence, in its care for the righteous cause of mothers, brought her here just in time to save him from this girl's toils? The girl's indifference could not be real; and if it was not, her good acting only betrayed the depths of her experience and balefulness. "What umbrella is that?" asked Mrs. Morrison.
"It's his," said Robin, throwing his head back and looking at his mother as he laid it with elaborate care on the table.
"My uncle's?" said Priscilla. "Had he lost it? Oh thank you—he would have been dreadfully unhappy. Sit down." And she indicated with her head the chair she would allow him to sit on.
"The way she tells us to sit down!" thought Mrs. Morrison indignantly. "As though she were a queen." Aloud she said, "You could have sent Joyce round with it"—Joyce being that gardener whose baby's perambulator was wheeled by another Ethel—"and need not have interrupted your work."
"So I could," said Robin, as though much struck by the suggestion. "But it was a pleasure," he added to Priscilla, "to be able to return it myself. It's a frightful bore losing one's umbrella—especially if it's an old friend."
"Uncle Fritzi's looks as if it were a very old friend," said Priscilla, smiling at it.
Mrs. Morrison glanced at it too, and then glanced again. When she glanced a third time and her glance turned into a look that lingered Robin jumped up and inquired if he should not put it in the passage. "It's in the way here," he explained; though in whose way it could be was not apparent, the table being perfectly empty.
Priscilla made no objection, and he at once removed it beyond the reach of his mother's eye, propping it up in a dark corner of the passage and telling Mrs. Pearce, whom he found there that it was Mr. Neumann's umbrella.
"No it ain't," said Mrs. Pearce.
"Yes it is," said Robin.
"No it ain't. He's took his to Minehead," said Mrs. Pearce.
"It is, and he has not," said Robin.
"I see him take it," said Mrs. Pearce.
"You did not," said Robin.
This would have been the moment, Mrs. Morrison felt, for her to go and to carry off Robin with her, but she was held in her seat by the certainty that Robin would not let himself be carried off; and sooner than say good-bye and then find he was staying on alone she would sit there all night. Thus do mothers sacrifice themselves for their children, thought Mrs. Morrison, for their all too frequently thankless children. But though she would do it to any extent in order to guard her boy she need not, she said to herself, be pleasant besides,—she need not, so to speak, be the primroses on his path of dalliance. Accordingly she behaved as little like a primrose as possible, sitting in stony silence while he skirmished in the passage with Mrs. Pearce, and the instant he came in again asked him where he had found the umbrella.
"I found it—not far from the church," said Robin, desiring to be truthful as long as he could. "But mater, bother the umbrella. It isn't so very noble to bring a man back his own. Did you get your cottages?" he asked, turning quickly to Priscilla.
"Robin, are you sure it is his own?" said his mother.
"My dear mother, I'm never sure of anything. Nor are you. Nor is Miss Schultz. Nor is anybody who is really intelligent. But I found the thing, and Mr. Neumann—"
"The name to-day is Neumann-Schultz," said Mrs. Morrison, in a voice heavy with implications.
"Mr. Neumann-Schultz, then, had been that way just before, and so I felt somehow it must be his."
"Your Uncle Cox had one just like it when he stayed with us last time," remarked Mrs. Morrison.
"Had he? I say, mater, what an eye you must have for an umbrella. That must be five years ago."
"Oh, he left it behind, and I see it in the stand every time I go through the hall."
"No! Do you?" said Robin, who was hurled by this statement into the corner where his wits ended and where he probably would have stayed ignominiously, for Miss Schultz seemed hardly to be listening and really almost looked—he couldn't believe it, no girl had ever done it in his presence yet, but she did undoubtedly almost look—bored, if Mrs. Pearce had not flung open the door, and holding the torn portions of her apron bunched together in her hands, nervously announced Lady Shuttleworth.
"Oh," thought Priscilla, "what a day I'm having." But she got up and was gracious, for Fritzing had praised this lady as kind and sensible; and the moment Lady Shuttleworth set her eyes on her the mystery of her son's behaviour flashed into clearness. "Tussie's seen her!" she exclaimed inwardly; instantly adding "Upon my word I can't blame the boy."
"My dear," she said, holding Priscilla's hand, "I've come to make friends with you. See what a wise old woman I am. Frankly, I didn't want you in those cottages, but now that my son has sold them I lose no time in making friends. Isn't that true wisdom?"
"It's true niceness," said Priscilla, smiling down at the little old lady whose eyes were twinkling all over her. "I don't think you'll find us in any way a nuisance. All we want is to be quiet."
Mrs. Morrison sniffed.
"Do you really?" said Lady Shuttleworth. "Then we shall get on capitally. It's what I like best myself. And you've come too," she went on, turning to Mrs. Morrison, "to make friends with your new parishioner? Why, Robin, and you too?"
"Oh, I'm only accidental," said Robin quickly. "Only a restorer of lost property. And I'm just going," he added, beginning to make hasty adieux; for Lady Shuttleworth invariably produced a conviction in him that his clothes didn't fit and wanted brushing badly, and no young man so attentive to his appearance as Robin could be expected to enjoy that. He fled therefore, feeling that even Miss Schultz's loveliness would not make up for Lady Shuttleworth's eyes; and in the passage, from whence Mrs. Pearce had retreated, removing herself as far as might be from the awful lady to whom her father-in-law owed rent and who saw every hole, Robin pounced on his Uncle Cox's umbrella, tucked is once more beneath his arm, and bore it swiftly back to the stand where it had spent five peaceful years. "Really old women are rather terrible things," he thought as he dropped it in again. "I wonder what they're here for."
"Ah, it's there, I see," remarked his mother that night as she passed through the hall on her way to dinner.
"What is?" inquired Robin who was just behind her.
"Your Uncle Cox's umbrella."
"Dear mater, why this extreme interest in my Uncle Cox's umbrella?"
"I'm glad to see it back again, that's all. One gets so used to things."
Lady Shuttleworth and his mother—I shudder to think that it is possible Robin included his mother in the reflection about old women, but on the other hand one never can tell—had stayed on at the farm for another twenty minutes after he left. They would have stayed longer, for Lady Shuttleworth was more interested in Priscilla than she had ever been in any girl before, and Mrs. Morrison, who saw this interest and heard the kind speeches, had changed altogether from ice to amiability, crushing her leaflets in her hand and more than once expressing hopes that Miss Neumann-Schultz would soon come up to tea and learn to know and like Netta—I repeat, they would have stayed much longer, but that an extremely odd thing happened.
Priscilla had been charming; chatting with what seemed absolute frankness about her future life in the cottages, answering little questionings of Lady Shuttleworth's with a discretion and plausibility that would have warmed Fritzing's anxious heart, dwelling most, for here the ground was safest, on her uncle, his work, his gifts and character, and Lady Shuttleworth, completely fascinated, had offered her help of every sort, help in the arranging of her little home, in the planting of its garden, even in the building of those bathrooms about which Tussie had been told by Mr. Dawson. She thought the desire for many bathrooms entirely praiseworthy, and only a sign of lunacy in persons of small means. Fritzing had assured Tussie that he had money enough for the bathrooms; and if his poetic niece liked everybody about her to be nicely washed was not that a taste to be applauded? Perhaps Lady Shuttleworth expatiated on plans and probable building-costs longer than Priscilla was able to be interested; perhaps she was over-explanatory of practical details; anyhow Priscilla's attention began to wander, and she gradually became very tired of her callers. She answered in monosyllables, and her smile grew vague. Then suddenly, at the first full stop Lady Shuttleworth reached in a sentence about sanitation—the entire paragraph was never finished—she got up with her usual deliberate grace, and held out her hand.
"It has been very kind of you to come and see me," she said to the astounded lady, with a little gracious smile. "I hope you will both come again another time."
For an instant Lady Shuttleworth thought she was mad. Then to her own amazement she found her body rising obediently and letting its hand be taken.
Mrs. Morrison did the same. Both had their hands slightly pressed, both were smiled upon, and both went out at once and speechless. Priscilla stood calmly while they walked to the door, with the little smile fixed on her face.
"Is it possible we've been insulted?" burst out Mrs. Morrison when they got outside.
"I don't know," said Lady Shuttleworth, who looked extremely thoughtful.
"Do you think it can possibly be the barbarous German custom?"
"I don't know," said Lady Shuttleworth again.
And all the way to the vicarage, whither she drove Mrs. Morrison, she was very silent, and no exclamations and conjectures of that indignant lady's could get a word out of her.
Kunitz meanwhile was keeping strangely quiet. Not a breath, not a whisper, had reached the newspapers from that afflicted little town of the dreadful thing that had happened to it. It will be remembered that the Princess ran away on a Monday, arrived at Baker's in the small hours of Wednesday morning, and had now spent both Wednesday and Thursday in Symford. There had, then, been ample time for Europe to receive in its startled ears the news of her flight; yet Europe, judging from its silence, knew nothing at all about it. In Minehead on the Thursday evening Fritzing bought papers, no longer it is true with the frenzy he had displayed at Dover when every moment seemed packed with peril, but still with eagerness; and not a paper mentioned Kunitz. On the Saturday he did find the laconic information in the London paper he had ordered to be sent him every day that the Grand Duke of Lothen-Kunitz who was shooting in East Prussia had been joined there by that Prince—I will not reveal his august name—who had so badly wanted to marry Priscilla. And on the Sunday—it was of course the paper published in London on Saturday—he read that the Princess Priscilla of Lothen-Kunitz, the second and only unmarried daughter of the Grand Duke, was confined to her bed by a sharp attack of influenza. After that there was utter silence. Fritzing showed Priscilla the paragraph about her influenza, and she was at first very merry over it. The ease with which a princess can shake off her fetters the moment she seriously tries to surprised her, and amused her too, for a little. It surprised Fritzing, but without amusing him, for he was a man who was never amused. Indeed, I am unable to recall any single occasion on which I saw him smile. Other emotions shook him vigorously as we know, but laughter never visited him with its pleasant ticklings under the ribs; it slunk away abashed before a task so awful, and left him at his happiest to a mood of mild contentment. "Your Royal Parent," he remarked to Priscilla, "has chosen that which is ever the better part of valour, and is hushing the incident up."
"He never loved me," said Priscilla, wistfully. On thinking it over she was not quite sure that she liked being allowed to run away so easily. Did nobody care, then, what became of her? Was she of positively no value at all? Running away is all very well, but your pride demands that those runned from shall at least show some sign of not liking it, make some effort, however humble, to fetch you back. If they do not, if they remain perfectly quiescent and resigned, not even sending forth a wail that shall be audible, you are naturally extremely crushed. "My father," said Priscilla bitterly, "doesn't care a bit. He'll give out I'm dangerously ill, and then you'll see, Fritzi—I shall either die, or be sent away for an interminable yachting cruise with the Countess. And so dust will be thrown in people's eyes. My father is very good at that, and the Countess is a perfect genius. You'll see."
But Fritzing never saw, for there was no more mention at all either of Kunitz or of influenza. And just then he was so much taken up by his efforts to get into the cottages as quickly as possible that after a passing feeling of thankfulness that the Grand Duke should be of such a convenient indifference to his daughter's fate it dropped from his mind in the easy fashion in which matters of importance always did drop from it. What was the use, briefly reflected this philosopher, of worrying about what they were or were not thinking at Kunitz? There would be time enough for that when they actually began to do something. He felt very safe from Kunitz in the folds of the Somerset hills, and as the days passed calmly by he felt still safer. But though no dangers seemed to threaten from without there were certain dangers within that made it most desirable for them to get away from Baker's and into their own little home without a moment's unnecessary delay. He could not always be watching his tongue, and he found for instance that it positively refused to call the Princess Ethel. It had an almost equal objection to addressing her as niece; and it had a most fatal habit of slipping out Grand Ducal Highnesses. True, at first they mostly talked German together, but the tendency to talk English grew more marked every day; it was in the air they breathed, and they both could talk it so fatally well. Up at the cottages among the workmen, or when they were joined by Mr. Dawson, grown zealous to help, or by either of the young men Robin and Tussie, who seemed constantly to be passing, the danger too was great. Fritzing was so conscious of it that he used to break out into perspirations whenever Priscilla was with him in public, and his very perspirations were conspicuous. The strain made his manner oddly nervous when speaking to or of his niece, and he became the subject of much conjecture to the observant Robin. Robin thought that in spite of her caressing ways with her uncle the girl must be privately a dreadful tyrant. It seemed difficult to believe, but Robin prided himself on being ready to believe anything at a moment's notice, especially if it was the worst, and he called it having an open mind. The girl was obviously the most spoilt of girls. No one could help seeing that. Her least wish seemed to be for the uncle a command that was not even to be talked about. Yet the uncle was never openly affectionate to her. It almost seemed as though she must have some secret hold over him, be in possession, perhaps, of some fact connected with a guilty past. But then this girl and guilty pasts! Why, from the look in her eyes she could never even have heard of such things. Robin thought himself fairly experienced in knowledge of human nature, but he had to admit that he had never yet met so incomprehensible a pair. He wanted to talk to Tussie Shuttleworth about them, but Tussie would not talk. To Tussie it seemed impossible to talk about Priscilla because she was sacred to him, and she was sacred to him because he adored her so. He adored her to an extent that amazes me to think of, worshipping her beauty with all the headlong self-abasement of a very young man who is also a poet. His soul was as wax within him, softest wax punched all over with little pictures of Priscilla. No mother is happy while her child's soul is in this state, and though he was extremely decent, and hid it and smothered it and choked it with all the energy he possessed, Lady Shuttleworth knew very well what was going on inside him and spent her spare time trying to decide whether to laugh or to cry over her poor Tussie. "When does Robin go back to Cambridge?" she asked Mrs. Morrison the next time she met her, which was in the front garden of a sick old woman's cottage.
Mrs. Morrison was going in with a leaflet; Lady Shuttleworth was going in with a pound of tea. From this place they could see Priscilla's cottage, and Robin was nailing up its creepers in the sight of all Symford.
"Ah—I know what you mean," said Mrs. Morrison quickly.
"It is always such a pity to see emotions wasted," said Lady Shuttleworth slowly, as if weighing each word.
"Wasted? You do think she's an adventuress, then?" said Mrs. Morrison eagerly.
"Sh-sh. My dear, how could I think anything so unkind? But we who are old"—Mrs. Morrison jerked up her chin—"and can look on calmly, do see the pity of it when beautiful emotions are lavished and wasted. So much force, so much time frittered away in dreams. And all so useless, so barren. Nothing I think is so sad as waste, and nothing is so wasteful as a one-sided love."
Mrs. Morrison gave the pink tulle bow she liked to wear in the afternoons at her throat an agitated pat, and tried to conceal her misery that Augustus Shuttleworth should also have succumbed to Miss Neumann-Schultz. That he had done so was very clear from Lady Shuttleworth's portentous remarks, for it was not in human nature for a woman to be thus solemn about the wasted emotions of other people's sons. His doing so might save Robin's future, but it would ruin Netta's. We all have our little plans for the future—dear rosy things that we dote on and hug to our bosoms with more tenderness even than we hug the babies of our bodies, and the very rosiest and best developed of Mrs. Morrison's darling plans was the marriage of her daughter Netta with the rich young man Augustus. It was receiving a rude knock on its hopeful little head at this moment in old Mrs. Jones's front garden, and naturally the author of its being winced. Augustus, she feared, must be extremely far gone in love, and it was not likely that the girl would let such a chance go. It was a consolation that the marriage would be a scandal,—this person from nowhere, this niece of a German teacher, carrying off the wealthiest young man in the county. The ways of so-called Providence were quite criminally inscrutable, she thought, in stark defiance of what a vicar's wife should think; but then she was greatly goaded.
Priscilla herself came out of Mrs. Jones's door at that moment with a very happy face. She had succeeded in comforting the sick woman to an extent that surprised her. The sick woman had cheered up so suddenly and so much that Priscilla, delighted, had at once concluded that work among the sick poor was her true vocation. And how easy it had been! A few smiles, a few kind words, a five-pound note put gently into the withered old hands, and behold the thing was done. Never was sick woman so much comforted as Mrs. Jones. She who had been disinclined to speak above a whisper when Priscilla went in was able at the end of the visit to pour forth conversation in streams, and quite loud conversation, and even interspersed with chuckles. All Friday Priscilla had tried to help in the arranging of her cottage, and had made herself and Fritzing so tired over it that on Saturday she let him go up alone and decided that she would, for her part, now begin to do good to the people in the village. It was what she intended to do in future. It was to be the chief work of her new life. She was going to live like the poor and among them, smooth away their sorrows and increase their joys, give them, as it were, a cheery arm along the rough path of poverty, and in doing it get down herself out of the clouds to the very soil, to the very beginnings and solid elementary facts of life. And she would do it at once, and not sit idle at the farm. It was on such idle days as the day Fritzing went to Minehead that sillinesses assailed her soul—shrinkings of the flesh from honest calico, disgust at the cooking, impatience at Annalise's swollen eyes. Priscilla could have cried that night when she went to bed, if she had not held tears in scorn, at the sickliness of her spirit, her spirit that she had thought more than able to keep her body in subjection, that she had hoped was unalterably firm and brave. But see the uses of foolishness,—the reaction from it is so great that it sends us with a bound twice as far again along the right road as we were while we were wise and picking our way with clean shoes slowly among the puddles. Who does not know that fresh impulse, so strong and gracious, towards good that surges up in us after a period of sitting still in mud? What an experience it is, that vigorous shake and eager turning of our soiled face once more towards the blessed light. "I will arise and go to my Father"—of all the experiences of the spirit surely this is the most glorious; and behold the prudent, the virtuous, the steadfast—dogged workers in the vineyard in the heat of the day—are shut out from it for ever.
Priscilla had not backslided much; but short as her tarrying had been among the puddles she too sprang forward after it with renewed strength along the path she had chosen as the best, and having completed the second of her good works—the first had been performed just previously, and had been a warm invitation made personally from door to door to all the Symford mothers to send their children to tea and games at Baker's Farm the next day, which was Sunday—she came away very happy from the comforted Mrs. Jones, and met the two arriving comforters in the front garden.
Now Priscilla's and Mrs. Jones's last words together had been these:
"Is there anything else I can do for you?" Priscilla had asked, leaning over the old lady and patting her arm in farewell.
"No, deary—you've done enough already, God bless your pretty face," said Mrs. Jones, squeezing the five-pound note ecstatically in her hands.
"But isn't there anything you'd like? Can't I get you anything? See, I can run about and you are here in bed. Tell me what I can do."
Mrs. Jones blinked and worked her mouth and blinked again and wheezed and cleared her throat. "Well, I do know of something would comfort me," she said at last, amid much embarrassed coughing.
"Tell me," said Priscilla.
"I don't like," coughed Mrs. Jones.
"Tell me," said Priscilla.
"I'll whisper it, deary."
Priscilla bent down her head, and the old lady put her twitching mouth to her ear.
"Why, of course," said Priscilla smiling, "I'll go and get you some at once."
"Now God for ever bless your beautiful face, darlin'!" shrilled Mrs. Jones, quite beside herself with delight. "The Cock and 'Ens, deary—that's the place. And the quart bottles are the best; one gets more comfort out of them, and they're the cheapest in the end."
And Priscilla issuing forth on this errand met the arriving visitors in the garden.
"How do you do," she said in a happy voice, smiling gaily at both of them. She had seen neither since she had dismissed them, but naturally she had never given that strange proceeding a thought.
"Oh—how do you do," said Lady Shuttleworth, surprised to see her there, and with a slight and very unusual confusion of manner.
Mrs. Morrison said nothing but stood stiffly in the background, answering Priscilla's smile with a stern, reluctant nod.
"I've been talking to poor old Mrs. Jones. Your son"—she looked at Mrs. Morrison—"told me how ill she was."
"Did he?" said Mrs. Morrison, hardly raising her eyes a moment from the ground. This girl was her double enemy: bound, whatever she did, to make either a fool of her son or of her daughter.
"So I went in and tried to cheer her up. And I really believe I did."
"Well that was very kind of you," said Lady Shuttleworth, smiling in spite of herself, unable to withstand the charm of Priscilla's personality. How supremely ridiculous of Mrs. Morrison to think that this girl was an adventuress. Such are the depths of ignorance one can descend to if one is buried long enough in the country.
"Now," said Priscilla cheerfully, "she wants rum, and I'm just going to buy her some."
"Rum?" cried Lady Shuttleworth in a voice of horror; and Mrs. Morrison started violently.
"Is it bad for her?" said Priscilla, surprised.
"Bad!" cried Lady Shuttleworth.
"It is," said Mrs. Morrison with her eyes on the ground, "poison for both body and soul."
"Dear me," said Priscilla, her face falling. "Why, she said it would comfort her."
"It will poison both her body and her soul," repeated Mrs. Morrison grimly.
"My dear," said Lady Shuttleworth, "our efforts are all directed towards training our people to keep from drinking."
"But she doesn't want to drink," said Priscilla. "She only wants to taste it now and then. I'm afraid she's dying. Mustn't she die happy?"
"It is our duty," said Mrs. Morrison, "to see that our parishioners die sober."
"But I've promised," said Priscilla.
"Did she—did she ask for it herself?" asked Lady Shuttleworth, a great anxiety in her voice.
"Yes, and I promised."
Both the women looked very grave. Mrs. Jones, who was extremely old and certainly dying—not from any special disease but from mere inability to go on living—had been up to this a shining example to Symford of the manner in which Christian old ladies ought to die. As such she was continually quoted by the vicar's wife, and Lady Shuttleworth had felt an honest pride in this ordered and seemly death-bed. The vicar went every day and sat with her and said that he came away refreshed. Mrs. Morrison read her all those of her leaflets that described the enthusiasm with which other good persons behave in a like case. Lady Shuttleworth never drove through the village without taking her some pleasant gift—tea, or fruit, or eggs, or even little pots of jam, to be eaten discreetly and in spoonfuls. She also paid a woman to look in at short intervals during the day and shake up her pillow. Kindness and attention and even affection could not, it will be admitted, go further; all three had been heaped on Mrs. Jones with generous hands; and in return she had expressed no sentiments that were not appropriate, and never, never had breathed the faintest suggestion to any of her benefactors that what she really wanted most was rum. It shocked both the women inexpressibly, and positively pained Lady Shuttleworth. Mrs. Morrison privately believed Priscilla had put the idea into the old lady's head, and began to regard her in something of the light of a fiend.
"Suppose," said Priscilla, "we look upon it as medicine."
"But my dear, it is not medicine," said Lady Shuttleworth.
"It is poison," repeated Mrs. Morrison.
"How can it be if it does her so much good? I must keep my promise. I wouldn't disappoint her for the world. If only you'd seen her delight"—they quivered—"you'd agree that she mustn't be disappointed, poor old dying thing. Why, it might kill her. But suppose we treat it as a medicine, and I lock up the bottle and go round and give her a little myself three or four times a day—wouldn't that be a good plan? Surely it couldn't hurt?"
"There is no law to stop you," said Mrs. Morrison; and Lady Shuttleworth stared at the girl in silent dismay.
"I can try it at least," said Priscilla; "and if I find it's really doing her harm I'll leave off. But I promised, and she's expecting it now every minute. I can't break my promise. Do tell me—is the Cock and Hens that inn round the corner? She told me it was best there."
"But you cannot go yourself to the Cock and Hens and buy rum," exclaimed Lady Shuttleworth, roused to energy; and her voice was full of so determined a protest that the vicar's wife, who thought it didn't matter at all where such a young woman went, received a fresh shock.
"Why not?" inquired Priscilla.
"My dear, sooner than you should do that I'll—I'll go and buy it myself," cried Lady Shuttleworth.
"Gracious heavens," thought Mrs. Morrison, perfectly staggered by this speech. Had Lady Shuttleworth suddenly lost her reason? Or was she already accepting the girl as her son's wife? Priscilla looked at her a moment with grave eyes. "Is it because I'm a girl that I mustn't?" she asked.
"Yes. For one thing. But—" Lady Shuttleworth shut her mouth.
"But what?" asked Priscilla.
"Oh, nothing."
"If it's not the custom of the country for a girl to go I'll send Mr. Morrison," said Priscilla.
"Send Mr. Morrison?" gasped the vicar's wife.
"What, the vicar?" exclaimed Lady Shuttleworth.
"No, no," said Priscilla smiling, "young Mr. Morrison. I see him over there tying up my creepers. He's so kind. He'll go. I'll ask him."
And nodding good-bye she hurried out of the garden and over to her cottage, almost running in her desire not to keep Mrs. Jones any longer in suspense.
The two women, rooted to the ground, watched her as if fascinated, saw her speak to Robin on his ladder, saw how he started and dropped his nails, saw how nimbly he clambered down, and how after the shortest parley the infatuated youth rushed away at once in the direction of the Cock and Hens. The only thing they did not see from where they stood was the twinkle in his eye.
"I don't think," murmured Lady Shuttleworth, "I don't think, my dear, that I quite care to go in to Mrs. Jones to-day. I—I think I'll go home."
"So shall I," said Mrs. Morrison, biting her lips to keep them steady. "I shall go and speak to the vicar."