"So it was at last. And Fritzi helped me to shake it off. If he hadn"t I"d have smothered slowly, and perhaps if I"d never known him I"d have done it as gracefully as my sisters did. Why, they don"t know to this day that they are dead."
Robin was silent. He was afraid to speak lest anything he said should remind her of the part she ought to be playing. He had no doubt now at all that she was keeping a secret. A hundred questions were burning on his lips. He hated himself for wanting to ask them, for being so inquisitive, for taking advantage of the girl"s being off her guard, but what are you to do with your inherited failings? Robin"s mother was inquisitive and it had got into his blood, and I know of no moral magnesia that will purify these things away. "You said the other day,"
he burst out at last, quite unable to stop himself, "that you only had your uncle in the world. Are your sisters--are they in London?"
"In London?" Priscilla gazed at him a moment with a vague surprise.
Then fright flashed into her eyes. "Did I not tell you they were dead?
Smothered?" she said, getting up quickly, her face setting into the frown that had so chilled Tussie on the heath.
"But I took that as a parable."
"How can I help how you took it?"
And she instantly left him and went away round the tables, beginning those little pleasant observations to the children again that struck him as so strange.
Well did he know the sort of thing. He had seen Lady Shuttleworth do it fifty times to the tenants, to the cottagers, at flower-shows, bazaars, on all occasions of public hospitality or ceremony; but practised and old as Lady Shuttleworth was this girl seemed yet more practised. She was a finished artist in the work, he said to himself as he leaned against the wall, his handsome face flushed, his eyes sulky, watching her. It was enough to make any good-looking young man sulky, the mixture of mystery and aloofness about Miss Neumann-Schultz. Extraordinary as it seemed, up to this point he had found it quite impossible to indulge with her in that form of more or less ill.u.s.trated dialogue known to Symford youths and maidens as billing and cooing. Very fain would Robin have billed and have cooed.
It was a practice he excelled in. And yet though he had devoted himself for three whole days, stood on ladders, nailed up creepers, bought and carried rum, had a horrible scene with his mother because of her, he had not got an inch nearer things personal and cosy. Miss Neumann-Schultz thanked him quite kindly and graciously for his pains--oh, she was very gracious; gracious in the sort of way Lady Shuttleworth used to be when he came home for the holidays and she patted his head and uttered benignities--and having thanked, apparently forgot him till the next time she wanted anything.
"Fritzi," said Priscilla, when in the course of her progress down the room she met that burdened man, "I"m dreadfully afraid I"ve said some foolish things."
Fritzing put the plate of cake he was carrying down on a dresser and wiped his forehead. "Ma"am," he said looking worried, "I cannot watch you and administer food to these barbarians simultaneously. If your tongue is so unruly I would recommend complete silence."
"I"ve said something about my sisters."
"Sisters, ma"am?" said Fritzing anxiously.
"Does it matter?"
"Matter? I have carefully instructed the woman Pearce, who has certainly informed, as I intended she should inform, the entire village, that you were my brother"s only child. Consequently, ma"am, you have no sisters."
Priscilla made a gesture of despair. "How fearfully difficult it is not to be straightforward," she said.
"Yes, ma"am, it is. Since we started on this adventure the whole race of rogues has become the object of my sincerest admiration. What wits, what quickness, what gifts--so varied and so deftly used--what skill in deception, what resourcefulness in danger, what self-command--"
"Yes but Fritzi what are we to do?"
"Do, ma"am? About your royal sisters? Would to heaven I had been born a rogue!"
"Yes, but as you were not--ought I to go back and say they"re only half-sisters? Or step-sisters? Or sisters in law? Wouldn"t that do?"
"With whom were you speaking?"
"Mr. Morrison."
"Ma"am, let me beg you to be more prudent with that youth than with any one. Our young friend Caesar Augustus is I believe harmlessness itself compared with him. Be on your guard, ma"am. Curb that fatal feminine appendage, your tongue. I have remarked that he watches us.
But a short time since I saw him eagerly conversing with your Grand Ducal Highness"s maid. For me he has already laid several traps that I have only just escaped falling into by an extraordinary presence of mind and a nimbleness in dialectic almost worthy of a born rogue."
"Oh Fritzi," said the frightened Priscilla, laying her hand on his sleeve, "do go and tell him I didn"t mean what I said."
Fritzing wiped his brow again. "I fail to understand," he said, looking at Priscilla with worried eyes, "what there is about us that can possibly attract any one"s attention."
"Why, there isn"t anything," said Priscilla, with conviction. "We"ve been most careful and clever. But just now--I don"t know why--I began to think aloud."
"Think aloud?" exclaimed Fritzing, horrified. "Oh ma"am let me beseech you never again to do that. Better a thousand times not to think at all. What was it that your Grand Ducal Highness thought aloud?"
And Priscilla, shamefaced, told him as well as she could remember.
"I will endeavour to remedy it," said poor Fritzing, running an agitated hand through his hair.
Priscilla sighed, and stood drooping and penitent by the dresser while he went down the room to where Robin still leaned against the wall.
"Sir," said Fritzing--he never called Robin young man, as he did Tussie--"my niece tells me you are unable to distinguish truth from parable."
"What?" said Robin staring.
"You are not, sir, to suppose that when my niece described her sisters as dead that they are not really so."
"All right sir," said Robin, his eyes beginning to twinkle.
"The only portion of the story in which my niece used allegory was when she described them as having been smothered. These young ladies, sir, died in the ordinary way, in their beds."
"Feather beds, sir?" asked Robin briskly.
"Sir, I have not inquired into the nature of the beds," said Fritzing with severity.
"Is it not rather unusual," asked Robin, "for two young ladies in one family to die at once? Were they unhealthy young ladies?"
"Sir, they did not die at once, nor were they unhealthy. They were perfectly healthy until they--until they began to die."
"Indeed," said Robin, with an interest properly tinged with regret.
"At least, sir," he added politely, after a pause in which he and Fritzing stared very hard at each other, "I trust I may be permitted to express my sympathy."
"Sir, you may." And bowing stiffly Fritzing returned to Priscilla, and with a sigh of relief informed her that he had made things right again.
"Dear Fritzi," said Priscilla looking at him with love and admiration, "how clever you are."
XIII
It was on the Tuesday, the day Priscilla and Fritzing left Baker"s and moved into Creeper Cottage, that the fickle G.o.ddess who had let them nestle for more than a week beneath her wing got tired of them and shook them out. Perhaps she was vexed by their clumsiness at pretending, perhaps she thought she had done more than enough for them, perhaps she was an epicure in words and did not like a cottage called Creeper; anyhow she shook them out. And if they had had eyes to see they would not have walked into their new home with such sighs of satisfaction and such a comfortable feeling that now at last the era of systematic serenity and self-realization, beautifully combined with the daily exercise of charity, had begun; for waiting for them in Priscilla"s parlour, established indeed in her easy-chair by the fire and warming her miserable toes on the very hob, sat grey Ill Luck horribly squinting.
Creeper Cottage, it will be remembered, consisted of two cottages, each with two rooms, an attic, and a kitchen, and in the back yard the further accommodation of a coal-hole, a pig-stye, and a pump. Thanks to Tussie"s efforts more furniture had been got from Minehead. Tussie had gone in himself, after a skilful questioning of Fritzing had made him realize how little had been ordered, and had, with Fritzing"s permission, put the whole thing into the hands of a Minehead firm.
Thus there was a bed for Annalise and sheets for everybody, and the place was as decent as it could be made in the time. It was so tiny that it got done, after a great deal of urging from Tussie, by the Tuesday at midday, and Tussie himself had superintended the storing of wood in the coal-hole and the lighting of the fire that was to warm his divine lady and that Ill Luck found so comforting to her toes. The Shuttleworth horses had a busy time on the Friday, Sat.u.r.day, and Monday, trotting up and down between Symford and Minehead; and the Shuttleworth servants and tenants, not being more blind than other people, saw very well that their Augustus had lost his heart to the lady from nowhere. As for Lady Shuttleworth, she only smiled a rueful smile and stroked her poor Tussie"s hair in silence when, having murmured something about the horses being tired, he reproved her by telling her that it was everybody"s duty to do what they could for strangers in difficulties.
Priscilla"s side of Creeper Cottage was the end ab.u.t.ting on the churchyard, and her parlour had one latticed window looking south down the village street, and one looking west opening directly on to the churchyard. The long gra.s.s of the churchyard, its dandelions and daisies, grew right up beneath this window to her wall, and a tall tombstone half-blocked her view of the elm-trees and the church. Over this room, with the same romantic and gloomy outlook, was her bedroom.
Behind her parlour was what had been the shoemaker"s kitchen, but it had been turned into a temporary bathroom. True no water was laid on as yet, but the pump was just outside, and n.o.body thought there would be any difficulty about filling the bath every morning by means of the pump combined with buckets. Over the bathroom was the attic. This was Annalise"s bedroom. n.o.body thought there would be any difficulty about that either; n.o.body, in fact, thought anything about anything. It was a simple place, after the manner of attics, with a window in its sloping ceiling through which stars might be studied with great comfort as one lay in bed. A frugal mind, an earnest soul, would have liked the attic, would have found a healthy enjoyment in a place so plain and fresh, so swept in windy weather by the airs of heaven. A poet, too, would certainly have flooded any parts of it that seemed dark with the splendour of his own inner light; a nature-lover, again, would have quickly discovered the spiders that dwelt in its corners, and spent profitable hours on all fours observing them. But an Annalise--what was she to make of such a place? Is it not true that the less a person has inside him of culture and imagination the more he wants outside him of the upholstery of life? I think it is true; and if it is, then the vacancy of Annalise"s mind may be measured by the fact that what she demanded of life in return for the negative services of not crying and wringing her hands was nothing less filled with food and sofas and servants than a grand ducal palace.