She saw her father now only through a mist. She was going to have to oppose him for the first time in her life, and her nature was one which acquiesced and did not oppose. In her wretchedness a doubt stole across her mind as to whether Herr Dremmel was worth this; was anything, in fact, worth fighting about? And with one"s father. And against one"s whole bringing-up. Was she going to be strong enough? Was it a thing one ought to be strong about? Would not true strength rather lie in a calm continuation of life at home? What, when one came to think of it, was East Prussia really to her, and those rye-fields and all that water? She wished she had had at least a piece of bread and b.u.t.ter. She thought perhaps bread and b.u.t.ter would have helped her not to doubt. She looked round vaguely so as not to have to meet her father"s eye for a moment and her glance fell on the tea-table.
"I think," she said faintly, getting up again, "I"ll have some tea."
To the Bishop this seemed outrageous.
He watched her in a condition of icy indignation such as he had not yet in his life experienced. His daughter. His daughter for whom he had done so much. The daughter he had trained for years, sparing no pains, to be a helpful, efficient, Christian woman. The daughter he had honoured with his trust, letting her share in the most private portions of his daily business. Not a letter had he received that she had not seen and been allowed to answer. Not a step in any direction had he taken without permitting her to make the necessary arrangements. Seldom, he supposed bitterly, had a child received so much of a father"s confidence. His daughter. That crumpled and disreputable--yes, now he knew what was the matter with her appearance--disreputable-looking figure cynically pouring itself out tea while he, her father whom she had been deceiving, was left to wait for her explanations until such time as she should have sated her appet.i.te. Positively she had succeeded, he said to himself, bitterly enraged that he should be forced to be bitterly enraged, in making him feel less like a bishop should feel than he had done since he was a boy.
"It"s because I"ve had nothing to eat since Paris," Ingeborg explained apologetically, holding the teapot in both hands because one by itself shook too much, and feeling, too, that the moment was not exactly one for tea.
The Bishop started. "Since where?" he said.
"Paris," said Ingeborg; adding tremulously, having quite lost her nerve and only desiring to fill up the silence, "it--it"s a place abroad."
Mrs. Bullivant murmured a more definitely earnest request that Richards might be rung for to take her to bed.
"Ingeborg," said the Bishop in a voice she did not know. "Paris?"
"Yes, father--last night."
"Ingeborg, come here."
He was pointing to a chair a yard or two from the hearthrug on which he stood, and his voice was very strange.
She put down the cup with a shaking hand and went to him. Her heart was in her mouth.
"What have you been doing?" he said.
"I told you, father. I"m engaged to Herr--"
"How did you get to Paris?"
"By train."
"Will you answer me? What were you doing in Paris?"
"Having dinner."
She was terrified. Her father was talking quite loud. She had never in her life seen him like this. She answered his questions quickly, her heart leaping as he rapped them out, but her answers seemed to make him still angrier. If only he would let her explain, hear her out; but he hurled questions at her, giving her no time at all.
"Father," she said hurriedly, seeing that after that last answer of hers he did for a moment say nothing, but stood looking at her very extraordinarily, "please let me tell you how it all happened. It won"t take a minute--it won"t really. And then, you see, you"ll _know_. I didn"t mean to do anything, I really didn"t; but the dentist pulled my tooth out so quickly, that very first day, and so instead of coming home I went to Lucerne--"
"To--"
"Yes," she nodded, in a frenzy of haste to get it all said, "to Lucerne--I couldn"t tell you why, but I did--I seemed pushed there, and after a little while I got engaged, and I didn"t in the least mean to do that, either, really I didn"t--but somehow--" Was there any use trying to tell him about the white and silver cake and the seven witnesses and the undoubting kind Herr Dremmel and all the endless small links in the chain? Would he ever, ever understand?--"somehow I _did_. You see," she added helplessly, looking up at him with eyes full of an appeal for comprehension, for mercy, "one thing leads to another." And as he still said nothing she added, even more helplessly, "Herr Dremmel sat opposite me in the train."
"You picked him up casually, like any servant girl, in a train?"
"He was one of the party. He was there from the beginning. Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you--it was one of Dent"s Tours."
"You went on a Dent"s Tour?"
"Yes, and he was one of it, too, and we all, of course, always went about together, rather like a school, two and two--I suppose because of the pavement," she said, now saying in her terror anything that came into her head, "and as he was the other one of my two--the half of the couple I was the other one of, you know, father--we--we got engaged."
"Do you take me for a fool?" was the Bishop"s comment.
Ingeborg"s heart stood still. How could her father even _think_--
"Oh, father," was all she could say to that; and she hung her head in the entire hopelessness, the uselessness of trying to tell him anything.
She knew she had been saying it ridiculously, tumbling out a confusion of what must sound sad nonsense, but could he not see she was panic-stricken? Could he not be patient, and help her to make her clean breast?
"I"m stupid," she said, looking up at him through tears, and suddenly dropping into a kind of nakedness of speech, a speech entirely simple and entirely true, "stupid with fright."
"Do you suggest I terrorize you?" inquired the incensed Bishop.
"Yes," she said.
This was terrible. And it was peculiarly terrible because it made the Bishop actually wish he were not a gentleman. Then, indeed, it would be an easy matter to deal with that small defying creature in the chair.
When it comes to women the quickest method is, after all, to be by profession a navvy....
He shuddered, and hastily drew his thoughts back from this abyss. To what dread depths of naturalness was she not by her conduct dragging him?
"Father," said Ingeborg, who had now got down to the very bottom of the very worst, a place where once one has reached it an awful sincerity takes possession of one"s tongue, "do you see this? Look at them."
And she held up her hands and showed him, while she herself watched them as though they were somebody else"s, how they were shaking.
"Isn"t that being afraid? Look at them. It"s fear. It"s fear of you.
It"s you making them do that. And think of it--I"m twenty-two. A woman.
Oh, I--I"m _ashamed_--"
But whether it was a proper shame for what she had done or a shocking shame for her compunctions in sinning, the Bishop was not permitted that afternoon to discover; because when she had got as far as that she was interrupted by being obliged to faint.
There was a moment"s confusion while she tumbled out of the chair and lay, a creased, strange object, on the floor, owing to Mrs. Bullivant"s having produced an exclamation; and this to the Bishop, after years of not having heard her more than murmur, was almost as disconcerting as if, flinging self-restraint to the winds, she had suddenly produced fresh offspring. He quickly, however, recovered the necessary presence of mind and the bell was rung for Richards; who, when she came, knelt down and undid Ingeborg"s travel-worn blouse, and something on a long chain fell out jingling.
It was her father"s cross and Herr Dremmel"s ring metallically hitting each other.
The Bishop left the room without a word.
CHAPTER IX
A pall descended on the Palace and enveloped it blackly for four awful days, during which Mrs. Bullivant and her daughters and the chaplain and the secretary and all the servants did not so much live as feel their way about with a careful solicitude for inconspicuousness.
This pall was the pall of the Bishop"s wrath; and there was so much of it that it actually reached over into the dwellings of the Dean and Chapter and blackened those white spots, and it got into the hitherto calm home of the Mayor, who had the misfortune to have business with the Bishop the very day after Ingeborg"s return, and an edge of it--but quite enough to choke an old man--even invaded the cathedral, where it extinguished the head verger, a sunny octogenarian privileged to have his little joke with the Bishop, and who had it unfortunately as usual, and was instantly m.u.f.fled in murkiness and never joked again.