Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated)

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

  “Your Grand Ducal Highness has been weeping,” said Annalise, whisking the sponge in and out of corners with a skill surprising in one who had only practised the process during the last ten days.

  Priscilla opened her eyes to stare at her in frankest surprise, for never yet had Annalise dared make a remark unrequested. Annalise, by beginning to wash them, forced her to shut them again.

  Priscilla then opened her mouth to tell her what she thought of her. Immediately Annalise’s swift sponge stopped it up.

  “Your Grand Ducal Highness,” said Annalise, washing Priscilla’s mouth with a thoroughness and an amount of water suggestive of its not having been washed for months, “told me only yesterday that weeping was a terrible — schreckliche — waste of time. Therefore, since your Grand Ducal Highness knows that and yet herself weeps, it is easy to see that there exists a reason for weeping which makes weeping inevitable.”

  “Will you—” began Priscilla, only to be stopped instantly by the ready sponge.

  “Your Grand Ducal Highness is unhappy. ’Tis not to be wondered at. Trust a faithful servant, one whose life-blood is at your Grand Ducal Highness’s disposal, and tell her if it is not then true that the Herr Geheimrath has decoyed you from your home and your Grossherzoglicher Herr Papa?”

  “Will you—”

  Again the pouncing sponge.

  “My heart bleeds — indeed it bleeds — to think of the Herr Papa’s sufferings, his fears, his anxieties. It is a picture on which I cannot calmly look. Day and night — for at night I lie sleepless on my bed — I am inquiring of myself what it can be, the spell that the Herr Geheimrath has cast over your Grand Ducal—”

  “Will you—”

  Again the pouncing sponge; but this time Priscilla caught the girl’s hand, and holding it at arm’s length sat up. “Are you mad?” she asked, looking at Annalise as though she saw her for the first time.

  Annalise dropped the sponge and clasped her hands. “Not mad,” she said, “only very, very devoted.”

  “No. Mad. Give me a towel.”

  Priscilla was so angry that she did not dare say more. If she had said a part even of what she wanted to say all would have been over between herself and Annalise; so she dried her face in silence, declining to allow it to be touched. “You can go,” she said, glancing at the door, her face pale with suppressed wrath but also, it must be confessed, very clean; and when she was alone she dropped once again on to the sofa and buried her head in the cushion. How dared Annalise? How dared she? How dared she? Priscilla asked herself over and over again, wincing, furious. Why had she not thought of this, known that she would be in the power of any servant they chose to bring? Surely there was no limit, positively none, to what the girl might do or say? How was she going to bear her about her, endure the sight and sound of that veiled impertinence? She buried her head very deep in the cushion, vainly striving to blot out the world and Annalise in its feathers, but even there there was no peace, for suddenly a great noise of doors going and legs striding penetrated through its stuffiness and she heard Fritzing’s voice very loud and near — all sounds in Creeper Cottage were loud and near — ordering Annalise to ask her Grand Ducal Highness to descend.

  “I won’t,” thought Priscilla, burying her head deeper. “That poor Emma has lost the note and he’s going to fuss. I won’t descend.”

  Then came Annalise’s tap at her door. Priscilla did not answer. Annalise tapped again. Priscilla did not answer, but turning her head face upwards composed herself to an appearance of sleep.

  Annalise tapped a third time. “The Herr Geheimrath wishes to speak to your Grand Ducal Highness,” she called through the door; and after a pause opened it and peeped in. “Her Grand Ducal Highness sleeps,” she informed Fritzing down the stairs, her nose at the angle in the air it always took when she spoke to him.

  “Then wake her! Wake her!” cried Fritzing.

  “Is it possible something has happened?” thought Annalise joyfully, her eyes gleaming as she willingly flew back to Priscilla’s door, — anything, anything, she thought, sooner than the life she was leading.

  Priscilla heard Fritzing’s order and sat up at once, surprised at such an unprecedented indifference to her comfort. Her heart began to beat faster; a swift fear that Kunitz was at her heels seized her; she jumped up and ran out.

  Fritzing was standing at the foot of the stairs.

  “Come down, ma’am,” he said; “I must speak to you at once.”

  “What’s the matter?” asked Priscilla, getting down the steep little stairs as quickly as was possible without tumbling.

  “Hateful English tongue,” thought Annalise, to whom the habit the Princess and Fritzing had got into of talking English together was a constant annoyance and disappointment.

  Fritzing preceded Priscilla into her parlour, and when she was in he shut the door behind her. Then he leaned his hands on the table to steady himself and confronted her with a twitching face. Priscilla looked at him appalled. Was the Grand Duke round the corner? Lingering, perhaps, among the very tombs just outside her window? “What is it?” she asked faintly.

  “Ma’am, the five pounds has disappeared for ever.”

  “Really Fritzi, you are too absurd about that wretched five pounds,” cried Priscilla, blazing into anger.

  “But it was all we had.”

  “All we — ?”

  “Ma’am, it was positively our last penny.”

  “I — don’t understand.”

  He made her understand. With paper and pencil, with the bills and his own calculations, he made her understand. His hands shook, but he went through with it item by item, through everything they had spent from the moment they left Kunitz. They were in such a corner, so tightly jammed, that all efforts to hide it and pretend there was no corner seemed to him folly. He now saw that such efforts always had been folly, and that he ought to have seen to it that her mind on this important point was from the first perfectly clear; then nothing would have happened. “You have had the misfortune, ma’am, to choose a fool for your protector in this adventure,” he said bitterly, pushing the papers from him as though he loathed the sight of them.

  Priscilla sat dumfoundered. She was looking quite straight for the first time at certain pitiless aspects of life. For the first time she was face to face with the sternness, the hardness, the relentlessness of everything that has to do with money so soon as one has not got any. It seemed almost incredible to her that she who had given so lavishly to anybody and everybody, who had been so glad to give, who had thought of money when she thought of it at all as a thing to be passed on, as a thing that soiled one unless it was passed on, but that, passed on, became strangely glorified and powerful for good — it seemed incredible that she should be in need of it herself, and unable to think of a single person who would give her some. And what a little she needed: just to tide them over the next week or two till they had got theirs from home; yet even that little, the merest nothing compared to what she had flung about in the village, was as unattainable as though it had been a fortune. “Can we — can we not borrow?” she said at last.

  “Yes ma’am, we can and we must. I will proceed this evening to Symford Hall and borrow of Augustus.”

  “No,” said Priscilla; so suddenly and so energetically that Fritzing started.

  “No, ma’am?” he repeated, astonished. “Why, he is the very person. In fact he is our only hope. He must and shall help us.”

  “No,” repeated Priscilla, still more energetically.

  “Pray ma’am,” said Fritzing, shrugging his shoulders, “are these women’s whims — I never comprehended them rightly and doubt if I ever shall — are they to be allowed to lead us even in dangerous crises? To lead us to certain shipwreck, ma’am? The alternatives in this case are three. Permit me to point them out. Either we return to Kunitz—”

  “Oh,” shivered Priscilla, shrinking as from a blow.

  “Or, after a brief period of starvation and other violen
t discomfort, we are cast into gaol for debt—”

  “Oh?” shivered Priscilla, in tones of terrified inquiry.

  “Or, I borrow of Augustus.”

  “No,” said Priscilla, just as energetically as before.

  “Augustus is wealthy. Augustus is willing. Ma’am, I would stake my soul that he is willing.”

  “You shall not borrow of him,” said Priscilla. “He — he’s too ill.”

  “Well then, ma’am,” said Fritzing with a gesture of extreme exasperation, “since you cannot be allowed to be cast into gaol there remains but Kunitz. Like the dogs of the Scriptures we will return—”

  “Why not borrow of the vicar?” interrupted Priscilla. “Surely he would be glad to help any one in difficulties?”

  “Of the vicar? What, of the father of the young man who insulted your Grand Ducal Highness and whom I propose to kill in duel my first leisure moment? Ma’am, there are depths of infamy to which even a desperate man will not descend.”

  Priscilla dug holes in the tablecloth with the point of the pencil. “I can’t conceive,” she said, “why you gave Annalise all that money. So much.”

  “Why, ma’am, she refused, unless I did, to prepare your Grand Ducal Highness’s tea.”

  “Oh Fritzi!” Priscilla looked up at him, shaking her head and smiling through all her troubles. Was ever so much love and so much folly united in one wise old man? Was ever, for that matter, so expensive a tea?

  “I admit I permitted the immediate, the passing, moment to blot out the future from my clearer vision on that occasion.”

  “On that occasion? Oh Fritzi. What about all the other occasions? When you gave me all I asked for — for the poor people, for my party. You must have suffered tortures of anxiety. And all by yourself. Oh Fritzi. It was dear of you — perfectly, wonderfully, dear. But you ought to have been different with me from the beginning — treated me exactly as you would have treated a real niece—”

  “Ma’am,” cried Fritzing, jumping up, “this is waste of time. Our case is very urgent. Money must be obtained. You must allow me to judge in this matter, however ill I have acquitted myself up to now. I shall start at once for Symford Hall and obtain a loan of Augustus.”

  Priscilla pushed back her chair and got up too. “My dear Fritzi, please leave that unfortunate young man out of the question,” she said, flushing. “How can you worry a person who is ill in bed with such things?”

  “His mother is not ill in bed and will do quite as well. I am certainly going.”

  “You are not going. I won’t have you ask his mother. I — forbid you to do anything of the sort. Oh Fritzi,” she added in despair, for he had picked up the hat and stick he had flung down on coming in and was evidently not going to take the least notice of her commands— “oh Fritzi, you can’t ask Tussie for money. It would kill him to know we were in difficulties.”

  “Kill him, ma’am? Why should it kill him?” shouted Fritzing, exasperated by such a picture of softness.

  “It wouldn’t only kill him — it would be simply too dreadful besides,” said Priscilla, greatly distressed. “Why, he asked me this afternoon — wasn’t going to tell you, but you force me to — he asked me this very afternoon to marry him, and the dreadful part is that I’m afraid he thinks — he hopes — that I’m going to.”

  XX

  The only inhabitant of Creeper Cottage who slept that night was Annalise. Priscilla spent it walking up and down her bedroom, and Fritzing on the other side of the wall spent it walking up and down his. They could hear each other doing it; it was a melancholy sound. Once Priscilla was seized with laughter — a not very genial mirth, but still laughter — and had to fling herself on her bed and bury her face in the pillows lest Fritzing should hear so blood-curdling a noise. It was when their steps had fallen steadily together for several turns and the church clock, just as she was noticing this, had struck three. Not for this, to tramp up and down their rooms all night, not for this had they left Kunitz. The thought of all they had dreamed life in Creeper Cottage was going to be, of all they had never doubted it was going to be, of peaceful nights passed in wholesome slumber, of days laden with fruitful works, of evenings with the poets, came into her head and made this tormented marching suddenly seem intensely droll. She laughed into her pillow till the tears rolled down her face, and the pains she had to take to keep all sounds from reaching Fritzing only made her laugh more.

  It was a windy night, and the wind sighed round the cottage and rattled the casements and rose every now and then to a howl very dreary to hear. While Priscilla was laughing a great gust shook the house, and involuntarily she raised her head to listen. It died away, and her head dropped back on to her arms again, but the laughter was gone. She lay solemn enough, listening to Fritzing’s creakings, and thought of the past day and of the days to come till her soul grew cold. Surely she was a sort of poisonous weed, fatal to every one about her? Fritzing, Tussie, the poor girl Emma — oh, it could not be true about Emma. She had lost the money, and was trying to gather courage to come and say so; or she had simply not been able to change it yet. Fritzing had jumped to the conclusion, because nothing had been heard of her all day at home, that she had run away with it. Priscilla twisted herself about uneasily. It was not the loss of the five pounds that made her twist, bad though that loss was in their utter poverty; it was the thought that if Emma had really run away she, by her careless folly, had driven the girl to ruin. And then Tussie. How dreadful that was. At three in the morning, with the wailing wind rising and falling and the room black with the inky blackness of a moonless October night, the Tussie complication seemed to be gigantic, of a quite appalling size, threatening to choke her, to crush all the spring and youth out of her. If Tussie got well she was going to break his heart; if Tussie died it would be her fault. No one but herself was responsible for his illness, her own selfish, hateful self. Yes, she was a poisonous weed; a baleful, fatal thing, not fit for great undertakings, not fit for a noble life, too foolish to depart successfully from the lines laid down for her by other people; wickedly careless; shamefully shortsighted; spoiling, ruining, everything she touched. Priscilla writhed. Nobody likes being forced to recognize that they are poisonous weeds. Even to be a plain weed is grievous to one’s vanity, but to be a weed and poisonous as well is a very desperate thing to be. She passed a dreadful night. It was the worst she could remember.

  And the evening too — how bad it had been; though contrary to her expectations Fritzing showed no desire to fight Tussie. He was not so unreasonable as she had supposed; and besides, he was too completely beaten down by the ever-increasing weight and number of his responsibilities to do anything in regard to that unfortunate youth but be sorry for him. More than once that evening he looked at Priscilla in silent wonder at the amount of trouble one young woman could give. How necessary, he thought, and how wise was that plan at which he used in his ignorance to rail, of setting an elderly female like the Disthal to control the actions and dog the footsteps of the Priscillas of this world. He hated the Disthal and all women like her, women with mountainous bodies and minimal brains — bodies self-indulged into shapelessness, brains neglected into disappearance; but the nobler and simpler and the more generous the girl the more did she need some such mixture of fleshliness and cunning constantly with her. It seemed absurd, and it seemed all wrong; yet surely it was so. He pondered over it long in dejected musings, the fighting tendency gone out of him completely for the time, so dark was his spirit with the shadows of the future.

  They had borrowed the wages — it was a dreadful moment — for that day’s cook from Annalise. For their food they decided to run up a bill at the store; but every day each fresh cook would have to be paid, and every day her wages would have to be lent by Annalise. Annalise lent superbly; with an air as of giving freely, with joy. All she required was the Princess’s signature to a memorandum drawn up by herself by which she was promised the money back, doubled, within three months. Priscilla read this, flush
ed to her hair, signed, and ordered her out of the room. Annalise, who was beginning to enjoy herself, went upstairs singing. In the parlour Priscilla broke the pen she had signed with into quite small pieces and flung them on to the fire, — a useless demonstration, but then she was a quick-tempered young lady. In the attic Annalise sat down and wrote a letter breathing lofty sentiments to the Countess Disthal in Kunitz, telling her she could no longer keep silence in the face of a royal parent’s anxieties and she was willing to reveal the address of the Princess Priscilla and so staunch the bleeding of a noble heart if the Grand Duke would forward her or forward to her parents on her behalf the sum of twenty thousand marks. Gladly would she render this service, which was at the same time her duty, for nothing, if she had not the future to consider and an infirm father. Meanwhile she gave the Symford post-office as an address, assuring the Countess that it was at least fifty miles from the Princess’s present hiding-place, the address of which would only be sent on the conditions named. Then, immensely proud of her cleverness, she trotted down to the post-office, bought stamps, and put the letter herself in the box.

  That evening she sang in the kitchen, she sang in the bath-room, she sang in the attic and on the stairs to the attic. What she sang, persistently, over and over again, and loudest outside Fritzing’s door, was a German song about how beautiful it is at evening when the bells ring one to rest, and the refrain at the end of each verse was ding-dong twice repeated. Priscilla rang her own bell, unable to endure it, but Annalise did not consider this to be one of those that are beautiful and did not answer it till it had been rung three times.