Tussie’s temperature, high already, went up by leaps during the few minutes of waiting. He gave feverish directions to the nurse about a comfortable chair being put exactly in the right place, about his pillows being smoothed, his medicine bottles hidden, and was very anxious that the flannel garment he was made to wear when ill, a garment his mother called a nightingale — not after the bird but the lady — and that was the bluest flannel garment ever seen, should be arranged neatly over his narrow chest.
The nurse looked disapproving. She did not like her patients to be happy. Perhaps she was right. It is always better, I believe, to be cautious and careful, to husband your strength, to be deadly prudent and deadly dull. As you would poison, so should you avoid doing what the poet calls living too much in your large hours. The truly prudent never have large hours; nor should you, if you want to be comfortable. And you get your reward, I am told, in living longer; in having, that is, a few more of those years that cluster round the end, during which you are fed and carried and washed by persons who generally grumble. Who wants to be a flame, doomed to be blown out by the same gust of wind that has first fanned it to its very brightest? If you are not a flame you cannot, of course, be blown out. Gusts no longer shake you. Tempests pass you by untouched. And if besides you have the additional advantage of being extremely smug, extremely thick-skinned, you shall go on living till ninety, and not during the whole of that time be stirred by so much as a single draught.
Priscilla came up determined to be so cheerful that she began to smile almost before she got to the door. “I’ve come to tell you how splendidly we’re getting on at the cottage,” she said taking Tussie’s lean hot hand, the shell of her smile remaining but the heart and substance gone out of it, he looked so pitiful and strange.
“Really? Really?” choked Tussie, putting the other lean hot hand over hers and burning all the coolness out of it.
The nurse looked still more disapproving. She had not heard Sir Augustus had a fiancée, and even if he had this was no time for philandering. She too had noticed the voice in which he had said Oh mother, and she saw by his eyes that his temperature had gone up. Who was this shabby young lady? She felt sure that no one so shabby could be his fiancée, and she could only conclude that Lady Shuttleworth must be mad.
“Nurse, I’m going to stay here a little,” said Lady Shuttleworth. “I’ll call you when I want you.”
“I think, madam, Sir Augustus ought not—” began the nurse.
“No, no, he shall not. Go and have forty winks, nurse.”
And the nurse had to go; people generally did when Lady Shuttleworth sent them.
“Sit down — no don’t — stay a moment like this,” said Tussie, his breath coming in little jerks,— “unless you are tired? Did you walk?”
“I’m afraid you are very ill,” said Priscilla, leaving her hand in his and looking down at him with a face that all her efforts could not induce to smile.
“Oh I’ll be all right soon. How good of you to come. You’ve not been hungry since?”
“No, no,” said Priscilla, stroking his hands with her free hand and giving them soothing pats as one would to a sick child.
“Really not? I’ve thought of that ever since. I’ve never got your face that night out of my head. What had happened? While I was away — what had happened?”
“Nothing — nothing had happened,” said Priscilla hastily. “I was tired. I had a mood. I get them, you know. I get angry easily. Then I like to be alone till I’m sorry.”
“But what had made you angry? Had I — ?”
“No, never. You have never been anything but good and kind. You’ve been our protecting spirit since we came here.”
Tussie laughed shrilly, and immediately was seized by a coughing fit. Lady Shuttleworth stood at the foot of the bed watching him with a face from which happiness seemed to have fled for ever. Priscilla grew more and more wretched, caught, obliged to stand there, distractedly stroking his hands in her utter inability to think of anything else to do.
“A nice protecting spirit,” gasped Tussie derisively, when he could speak. “Look at me here, tied down to this bed for heaven knows how long, and not able to do a thing for you.”
“But there’s nothing now to do. We’re quite comfortable. We are really. Do, do believe it.”
“Are you only comfortable, or are you happy as well?”
“Oh, we’re very happy,” said Priscilla with all the emphasis she could get into her voice; and again she tried, quite unsuccessfully, to wrench her mouth into a smile.
“Then, if you’re happy, why do you look so miserable?”
He was gazing up into her face with eyes whose piercing brightness would have frightened the nurse. There was no shyness now about Tussie. There never is about persons whose temperature is 102.
“Miserable?” repeated Priscilla. She tried to smile; looked helplessly at Lady Shuttleworth; looked down again at Tussie; and stammering “Because you are so ill and it’s all my fault,” to her horror, to her boundless indignation at herself, two tears, big and not to be hidden, rolled down her face and dropped on to Tussie’s and her clasped hands.
Tussie struggled to sit up straight. “Look, mother, look—” he cried, gasping, “my beautiful one — my dear and lovely one — my darling — she’s crying — I’ve made her cry — now never tell me I’m not a brute again — see, see what I’ve done!”
“Oh” — murmured Priscilla, in great distress and amazement. Was the poor dear delirious? And she tried to get her hands away.
But Tussie would not let them go. He held them in a clutch that seemed like hot iron in both his, and dragging himself nearer to them covered them with wild kisses.
Lady Shuttleworth was appalled. “Tussie,” she said in a very even voice, “you must let Miss Neumann-Schultz go now. You must be quiet again now. Let her go, dear. Perhaps she’ll — come again.”
“Oh mother, leave me alone,” cried Tussie, lying right across his pillows, his face on Priscilla’s hands. “What do you know of these things? This is my darling — this is my wife — dream of my spirit — star of my soul—”
“Never in this world!” cried Lady Shuttleworth, coming round to the head of the bed as quickly as her shaking limbs would take her.
“Yes, yes, come here if you like, mother — come close — listen while I tell her how I love her. I don’t care who hears. Why should I? If I weren’t ill I’d care. I’d be tongue-tied — I’d have gone on being tongue-tied for ever. Oh I bless being ill, I bless being ill — I can say anything, anything—”
“Tussie, don’t say it,” entreated his mother. “The less you say now the more grateful you’ll be later on. Let her go.”
“Listen to her!” cried Tussie, interrupting his kissing of her hands to look up at Priscilla and smile with a sort of pitying wonder, “Let you go? Does one let one’s life go? One’s hope of salvation go? One’s little precious minute of perfect happiness go? When I’m well again I shall be just as dull and stupid as ever, just such a shy fool, not able to speak—”
“But it’s a gracious state” — stammered poor Priscilla.
“Loving you? Loving you?”
“No, no — not being able to speak. It’s always best—”
“It isn’t. It’s best to be true to one’s self, to show honestly what one feels, as I am now — as I am now—” And he fell to kissing her hands again.
“Tussie, this isn’t being honest,” said Lady Shuttleworth sternly, “it’s being feverish.”
“Listen to her! Was ever a man interrupted like this in the act of asking a girl to marry him?”
“Tussie!” cried Lady Shuttleworth.
“Ethel, will you marry me? Because I love you so? It’s an absurd reason — the most magnificently absurd reason, but I know there’s no other why you should—”
Priscilla was shaken and stricken as she had never yet been; shaken with pity, stricken with remorse. She looked down at him in dismay while he kisse
d her hands with desperate, overwhelming love. What was she to do? Lady Shuttleworth tried to draw her away. What was she to do? If Tussie was overwhelmed with love, she was overwhelmed with pity.
“Ethel — Ethel—” gasped Tussie, kissing her hands, looking up at her, kissing them again.
Pity overcame her, engulfed her. She bent her head down to his and laid her cheek an instant on the absurd flannel nightingale, tenderly, apologetically.
“Ethel — Ethel,” choked Tussie, “will you marry me?”
“Dear Tussie,” she whispered in a shaky whisper, “I promise to answer you when you are well. Not yet. Not now. Get quite well, and then if you still want an answer I promise to give you one. Now let me go.”
“Ethel,” implored Tussie, looking at her with a wild entreaty in his eyes, “will you kiss me? Just once — to help me to live—”
And in her desire to comfort him she stooped down again and did kiss him, soberly, almost gingerly, on the forehead.
He let her hands slide away from between his and lay back on his pillows in a state for the moment of absolute beatitude. He shut his eyes, and did not move while she crept softly out of the room.
“What have you done?” asked Lady Shuttleworth trembling, when they were safely in the passage and the door shut behind them.
“I can’t think — I can’t think,” groaned Priscilla, wringing her hands. And, leaning against the balusters, then and there in that most public situation she began very bitterly to cry.
XIX
Priscilla went home dazed. All her suitors hitherto had approached her ceremoniously, timidly, through the Grand Duke; and we know they had not approached very near. But here was one, timid enough in health, who was positively reckless under circumstances that made most people meek. He had proposed to her arrayed in a blue flannel nightingale, and Priscilla felt that headlong self-effacement could go no further. “He must have a great soul,” she said to herself over and over again during the drive home, “a great, great soul.” And it seemed of little use wiping her tears away, so many fresh ones immediately took their place.
She ached over Tussie and Tussie’s mother. What had she done? She felt she had done wrong; yet how, except by just existing? and she did feel she couldn’t help doing that. Certainly she had made two kind hearts extremely miserable, — one was miserable now, and the other didn’t yet know how miserable it was going to be. She ought to have known, she ought to have thought, she ought to have foreseen. She of all persons in the world ought to have been careful with young men who believed her to be of their own class. Contrition and woe took possession of Priscilla’s soul. She knew it was true that she could not help existing, but she knew besides, far back in a remote and seldom investigated corner of her mind, a corner on which she did not care to turn the light of careful criticism, that she ought not to be existing in Symford. It was because she was there, out of her proper sphere, in a place she had no business to be in at all, that these strange and heart-wringing scenes with young men occurred. And Fritzing would notice her red eyes and ask what had happened; and here within two days was a second story to be told of a young man unintentionally hurried to his doom. Would Fritzing be angry? She never knew beforehand. Would he, only remembering she was grand ducal, regard it as an insult and want to fight Tussie? The vision of poor Tussie, weak, fevered, embedded in pillows, swathed in flannel, receiving bloodthirsty messages of defiance from Fritzing upset her into more tears. Fritzing, she felt at that moment, was a trial. He burdened her with his gigantic efforts to keep her from burdens. He burdened her with his inflated notions of how burdenless she ought to be. He was admirable, unselfish, devoted; but she felt it was possible to be too admirable, too unselfish, too devoted. In a word Priscilla’s mind was in a state of upheaval, and the only ray of light she saw anywhere — and never was ray more watery — was that Tussie, for the moment at least, was content. The attitude of his mother, on the other hand, was distressing and disturbing. There had been no more My dears and other kind ways. She had watched her crying on the stairs in stony silence, had gone down with her to the door in stony silence, and just at the last had said in an unmistakably stony voice, “All this is very cruel.”
Priscilla was overwhelmed by the difficulties of life. The world was too much with her, she felt, a very great deal too much. She sent the Shuttleworth carriage away at the entrance to the village and went in to sit with Mrs. Jones a little, so that her eyes might lose their redness before she faced Fritzing; and Mrs. Jones was so glad to see her, so full of praises of her unselfish goodness in coming in, that once again Priscilla was forced to be ashamed of herself and of everything she did.
“I’m not unselfish, and I’m not good,” she said, smoothing the old lady’s coverlet.
Mrs. Jones chuckled faintly. “Pretty dear,” was her only comment.
“I don’t think I’m pretty and I know I’m not a dear,” said Priscilla, quite vexed.
“Ain’t you then, deary,” murmured Mrs. Jones soothingly.
Priscilla saw it was no use arguing, and taking up the Bible that always lay on the table by the bed began to read aloud. She read and read till both were quieted, — Mrs. Jones into an evidently sweet sleep, she herself into peace. Then she left off and sat for some time watching the old lady, the open Bible in-her lap, her soul filled with calm words and consolations, wondering what it could be like being so near death. Must it not be beautiful, thought Priscilla, to slip away so quietly in that sunny room, with no sound to break the peace but the ticking of the clock that marked off the last minutes, and outside the occasional footstep of a passer-by still hurrying on life’s business? Wonderful to have done with everything, to have it all behind one, settled, lived through, endured. The troublous joys as well as the pains, all finished; the griefs and the stinging happinesses, all alike lived down; and now evening, and sleep. In the few days Priscilla had known her the old lady had drawn visibly nearer death. Lying there on the pillow, so little and light that she hardly pressed it down at all, she looked very near it indeed. And how kind Death was, rubbing away the traces of what must have been a sordid existence, set about years back with the usual coarse pleasures and selfish hopes, — how kind Death was, letting all there was of spirit shine out so sweetly at the end. There was an enlarged photograph of Mrs. Jones and her husband over the fireplace, a photograph taken for their silver wedding; she must have been about forty-five; how kind Death was, thought Priscilla, looking from the picture to the figure on the bed. She sighed a little, and got up. Life lay before her, an endless ladder up each of whose steep rungs she would have to clamber; in every sort of weather she would have to clamber, getting more battered, more blistered with every rung.... She looked wistfully at the figure on the bed, and sighed a little. Then she crept out, and softly shut the door.
She walked home lost in thought. As she was going up the hill to her cottage Fritzing suddenly emerged from it and indulged in movements so strange and complicated that they looked like nothing less than a desperate dancing on the doorstep. Priscilla walked faster, staring in astonishment. He made strange gestures, his face was pale, his hair rubbed up into a kind of infuriated mop.
“Why, what in the world—” began the amazed Priscilla, as soon as she was near enough.
“Ma’am, I’ve been robbed,” shouted Fritzing; and all Symford might have heard if it had happened to be listening.
“Robbed?” repeated Priscilla. “What of?”
“Of all my money, ma’am. Of all I had — of all we had — to live on.”
“Nonsense, Fritzi,” said Priscilla; but she did turn a little paler. “Don’t let us stand out here,” she added; and she got him in and shut the street door.
He would have left it open and would have shouted his woes through it as through a trumpet down the street, oblivious of all things under heaven but his misfortune. He tore open the drawer of the writing-table. “In this drawer — in the pocket-book you see in this drawer — in this now empty pocket-book
, did I leave it. It was there yesterday. It was there last night. Now it is gone. Miscreants from without have visited us. Or perhaps, viler still, miscreants from within. A miscreant, I do believe, capable of anything — Annalise—”
“Fritzi, I took a five-pound note out of that last night, if that’s what you miss.”
“You, ma’am?”
“To pay the girl who worked here her wages. You weren’t here. I couldn’t find anything smaller.”
“Gott sei Dank! Gott sei Dank!” cried Fritzing, going back to German in his joy. “Oh ma’am, if you had told me earlier you would have spared me great anguish. Have you the change?”
“Didn’t she bring it?”
“Bring it, ma’am?”
“I gave it to her last night to change. She was to bring it round this morning. Didn’t she?”
Fritzing stared aghast. Then he disappeared into the kitchen. In a moment he was back again. “She has not been here,” he said, in a voice packed once more with torment.
“Perhaps she has forgotten.”
“Ma’am, how came you—”
“Now you’re going to scold me.”
“No, no — but how is it possible that you should have trusted—”
“Fritzi, you are going to scold me, and I’m so tired. What else has been taken? You said all your money—”
He snatched up his hat. “Nothing else, ma’am, nothing else. I will go and seek the girl.” And he clapped it down over his eyes as he always did in moments of great mental stress.
“What a fuss,” thought Priscilla wearily. Aloud she said, “The girl here to-day will tell you where she lives. Of course she has forgotten, or not been able to change it yet.” And she left him, and went out to get into her own half of the house.
Yes, Fritzi really was a trial. Why such a fuss and such big words about five pounds? If it were lost and the girl afraid to come and say so, it didn’t matter much; anyhow nothing like so much as having one’s peace upset. How foolish to be so agitated and talk of having been robbed of everything. Fritzing’s mind, she feared, that large, enlightened mind on whose breadth and serenity she had gazed admiringly ever since she could remember gazing at all, was shrinking to dimensions that would presently exactly match the dimensions of Creeper Cottage. She went upstairs disheartened and tired, and dropping down full length on her sofa desired Annalise to wash her face.
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 79
