THE PRINCESS ENTRAPPED
'Not princess in England,' could betoken but one thing—an incredible
act of devotion, so great that it stunned my senses, and I thought of
it, and of all it involved, before the vision of Ottilia crossing seas
took possession of me.
'The Princess Ottilia, Miss Goodwin?'
'The Countess of Delzenburg, Harry.'
'To see me? She has come!'
'Harry, you talk like the boy you were when we met before you knew her.
Yes and yes to everything you have to say, but I think you should spare
her name.'
'She comes thinking me ill?'
'Dying.'
'I'm as strong as ever I was.'
'I should imagine you are, only rather pale.'
'Have you, tell me, Clara, seen her yourself? Is she well?'
'Pale: not unwell: anxious.'
'About me?'
'It may be about the political affairs of the Continent; they are
disturbed.'
'She spoke of me?'
'Yes.'
'She is coming by the next boat?'
'It's my fear that she is.'
'Why do you fear?'
'Shall I answer you, Harry? It is useless now. Well, because she has
been deceived. That is why. You will soon find it out.'
'Prince Ernest is at Sarkeld?'
'In Paris, I hear.'
'How will your despatch reach these ladies in time for them to come
over by the next boat?'
'I have sent my father's servant. The General—he is promoted at last,
Harry—attends the ladies in person, and is now waiting for the boat's
arrival over there, to follow my directions.'
'You won't leave me?'
Miss Goodwin had promised to meet the foreign ladies on the pier. We
quarrelled and made it up a dozen times like girl and boy, I calling
her aunt Clara, as in the old days, and she calling me occasionally son
Richie: an imitation of my father's manner of speech to me when we
formed acquaintance first in Venice. But I was very little aware of
what I was saying or doing. The forces of my life were yoked to the
heart, and tumbled as confusedly as the world under Phaethon
charioteer. We walked on the heights above the town. I looked over the
water to the white line of shore and batteries where this wonder stood,
who was what poets dream of, deep-hearted men hope for, none quite
believe in. Hardly could I; and though my relenting spinster friend at
my elbow kept assuring me it was true that she was there, my sceptical
sight fixed on the stale prominences visible in the same features which
they had worn day after empty day of late. This deed of hers was an act
of devotion great as death. I knew it from experience consonant to
Ottilia's character; but could a princess, hereditary, and bound in the
league of governing princes, dare so to brave her condition? Complex of
mind, simplest in character, the uncontrollable nobility of her spirit
was no sooner recognized by me than I was shocked throughout by a
sudden light, contrasting me appallingly with this supreme of women,
who swept the earth aside for truth. I had never before received a
distinct intimation of my littleness of nature, and my first impulse
was to fly from thought, and then, as if to prove myself justly
accused, I caught myself regretting—no, not regretting, gazing, as it
were, on a picture of regrets—that Ottilia was not a romantic little
lady of semi-celestial rank, exquisitely rash, wilful, desperately
enamoured, bearing as many flying hues and peeps of fancy as a
love-ballad, and not more roughly brushing the root-emotions.
If she had but been such an one, what sprightly colours, delicious
sadness, magical transformations, tenderest intermixture of earth and
heaven; what tears and sunbeams, divinest pathos: what descents from
radiance to consolatory twilight, would have surrounded me for poetry
and pride to dwell on! What captivating melody in the minor key would
have been mine, though I lost her—the legacy of it all for ever! Say a
petulant princess, a star of beauty, mad for me, and the whisper of our
passion and sorrows traversing the flushed world! Was she coming? Not
she, but a touchstone, a relentless mirror, a piercing eye, a mind
severe as the Goddess of the God's head: a princess indeed, but
essentially a princess above women: a remorseless intellect, an actual
soul visible in the flesh. She was truth. Was I true? Not so very
false, yet how far from truth! The stains on me (a modern man writing
his history is fugitive and crepuscular in alluding to them, as a woman
kneeling at the ear-guichet) burnt like the blood-spots on the criminal
compelled to touch his victim by savage ordinance, which knew the
savage and how to search him. And these were faults of weakness rather
than the sins of strength. I might as fairly hope for absolution of
them from Ottilia as from offended laws of my natural being, gentle
though she was, and charitable.
Was I not guilty of letting her come on to me hoodwinked at this
moment? I had a faint memory of Miss Goodwin's saying that she had been
deceived, and I suggested a plan of holding aloof until she had warned
the princess of my perfect recovery, to leave it at her option to see
me.
'Yes,' Miss Goodwin assented: 'if you like, Harry.'
Her compassion for me only tentatively encouraged the idea. 'It would,
perhaps, be right. You are the judge. If you can do it. You are acting
bravely.' She must have laughed at me in her heart.
The hours wore on. My curse of introspection left me, and descending
through the town to the pier, amid the breezy blue skirts and
bonnet-strings, we watched the packet-boat approaching. There was in
advance one of the famous swift island wherries. Something went wrong
with it, for it was overtaken, and the steamer came in first. I jumped
on board, much bawled at. Out of a crowd of unknown visages, Janet
appeared: my aunt Dorothy was near her. The pair began chattering of my
paleness, and wickedness in keeping my illness unknown to them. They
had seen Temple on an excursion to London; he had betrayed me, as he
would have betrayed an archangel to Janet.
'Will you not look at us, Harry?' they both said.
The passengers were quitting the boat, strangers every one.
'Harry, have we really offended you in coming?' said Janet.
My aunt Dorothy took the blame on herself.
I scarcely noticed them, beyond leading them on to the pier-steps and
leaving them under charge of Miss Goodwin, who had, in matters of
luggage and porterage, the practical mind and aplomb of an Englishwoman
that has passed much of her time on the Continent. I fancied myself
vilely duped by this lady. The boat was empty of its passengers; a
grumbling pier-man, wounded in his dignity, notified to me that there
were fines for disregard of the Company's rules and regulations. His
tone altered; he touched his hat: 'Didn't know who you was, my lord.'
Janet overheard him, and her face was humorous.
'We may break the rules, you see,' I said to her.
'We saw him landing on the other side of the water,' she replied; so
spontaneously did the circumstance turn her thoughts on my father.
'Did you speak to him?'
'No.'
'You avoided him?'
'Aunty and I thought it best. He landed... there was a crowd.'
Miss Goodwin interposed: 'You go to Harry's hotel?'
'Grandada is coming down to-morrow or next day,' Janet prompted my aunt
Dorothy.
'If we could seek for a furnished house; Uberly would watch the
luggage,' Dorothy murmured in distress.
'Furnished houses, even rooms at hotels, are doubtful in the height of
the season,' Miss Goodwin remarked. 'Last night I engaged the only
decent set of rooms I could get, for friends of Harry's who are
coming.'
'No wonder he was disappointed at seeing us—he was expecting them!'
said Janet, smiling a little.
'They are sure to come,' said Miss Goodwin.
Near us a couple of yachtsmen were conversing.
'Oh, he'll be back in a day or two,' one said. 'When you've once tasted
that old boy, you can't do without him. I remember when I was a
youngster—it was in Lady Betty Bolton's day; she married old Edbury,
you know, first wife—the Magnificent was then in his prime. He spent
his money in a week: so he hired an eighty-ton schooner; he laid
violent hands on a Jew, bagged him, lugged him on board, and sailed
away.'
'What the deuce did he want with a Jew?' cried the other.
'Oh, the Jew supplied cheques for a three months' cruise in the
Mediterranean, and came home, I heard, very good friends with his
pirate. That's only one of dozens.'
The unconscious slaughterers laughed.
'On another occasion'—I heard it said by the first speaker, as they
swung round to parade the pier, and passed on narrating.
'Not an hotel, if it is possible to avoid it,' my aunt Dorothy, with
heightened colour, urged Miss Goodwin. They talked together.
'Grandada is coming to you, Harry,' Janet said. 'He has business in
London, or he would have been here now. Our horses and carriages follow
us: everything you would like. He does love you! he is very anxious.
I'm afraid his health is worse than he thinks. Temple did not say your
father was here, but grandada must have suspected it when he consented
to our coming, and said he would follow us. So that looks well perhaps.
He has been much quieter since your money was paid back to you. If they
should meet... no, I hope they will not: grandada hates noise. And,
Harry, let me tell you: it may be nothing: if he questions you, do not
take fire; just answer plainly: I'm sure you understand. One in a
temper at a time I'm sure 's enough: you have only to be patient with
him. He has been going to London, to the City, seeing lawyers, bankers,
brokers, and coming back muttering. Ah! dear old man. And when he ought
to have peace! Harry, the poor will regret him in a thousand places. I
write a great deal for him now, and I know how they will. What are you
looking at?'
I was looking at a man of huge stature, of the stiffest build, whose
shoulders showed me their full breadth while he stood displaying
frontwards the open of his hand in a salute.
'Schwartz!' I called. Janet started, imagining some fierce
interjection. The giant did not stir.
But others had heard. A lady stepped forward. 'Dear Mr. Harry Richmond!
Then you are better? We had most alarming news of you.'
I bowed to the Frau von Dittmarsch, anciently Miss Sibley.
'The princess?'
'She is here.'
Frau von Dittmarsch clasped Miss Goodwin's hand. I was touching
Ottilia's. A veil partly swathed her face. She trembled: the breeze
robbed me of her voice.
Our walk down the pier was almost in silence. Miss Goodwin assumed the
guardianship of the foreign ladies. I had to break from them and
provide for my aunt Dorothy and Janet.
'They went over in a little boat, they were so impatient. Who is she?'
Dorothy Beltham asked.
'The Princess Ottilia,' said Janet.
'Are you certain? Is it really, Harry?'
I confirmed it, and my aunt said, 'I should have guessed it could be no
other; she has a foreign grace.'
'General Goodwin was with them when the boat came in from the island,'
said Janet. 'He walked up to Harry's father, and you noticed, aunty,
that the ladies stood away, as if they wished to be unobserved, as we
did, and pulled down their veils. They would not wait for our boat. We
passed them crossing. People joked about the big servant over-weighing
the wherry.'
Dorothy Beltham thought the water too rough for little boats.
'She knows what a sea is,' I said.
Janet gazed steadily after the retreating figures, and then commended
me to the search for rooms. The end of it was that I abandoned my
father's suite to them. An accommodating linen-draper possessed of a
sea-view, and rooms which hurled the tenant to the windows in desire
for it, gave me harbourage.
Till dusk I scoured the town to find Miss Goodwin, without whom there
was no clue to the habitation I was seeking, and I must have passed her
blindly again and again. My aunt Dorothy and Janet thanked me for my
consideration in sitting down to dine with them; they excused my haste
to retire. I heard no reproaches except on account of my not sending
them word of my illness. Janet was not warm. She changed in colour and
voice when I related what I had heard from Miss Goodwin, namely, that
'some one' had informed the princess I was in a dying state. I was
obliged to offer up my father as a shield for Ottilia, lest false ideas
should tarnish the image of her in their minds. Janet did not speak of
him. The thought stood in her eyes; and there lies the evil of a sore
subject among persons of one household: they have not to speak to
exhibit their minds.
After a night of suspense I fell upon old Schwartz and Aennchen out in
the earliest dawn, according to their German habits, to have a gaze at
sea, and strange country and people. Aennchen was all wonder at the
solitary place, Schwartz at the big ships. But when they tried to
direct me to the habitation of their mistress, it was discovered by
them that they had lost their bearings. Aennchen told me the margravine
had been summoned to Rippau just before they left Sarkeld. Her mistress
had informed Baroness Turckems of her intention to visit England.
Prince Ernest was travelling in France.
The hour which brought me to Ottilia was noon. The arrangements of the
ladies could only grant me thirty minutes, for Janet was to drive the
princess out into the country to view the island. She and my aunt
Dorothy had been already introduced. Miss Goodwin, after presenting
them, insisted upon ceremoniously accompanying me to the house. Quite
taking the vulgar view of a proceeding such as the princess had been
guilty of, and perhaps fearing summary audacity and interestedness in
the son of a father like mine, she ventured on lecturing me, as though
it lay with me to restrain the fair romantic head, forbear from calling
up my special advantages, advise, and stand to the wisdom of this
world, and be the man of honour. The princess had said: 'Not see him
when I have come to him?' I reassured my undiscerning friend partly,
not wholly.
'Would it be commonly sensible or civil, to refuse to see me, having
come?'
Miss Goodwin doubted.
I could indicate forcibly, because I felt, the clear-judging brain and
tempered self-command whereby Ottilia had gained her decision.
Miss Goodwin nodded and gave me the still-born affirmative of
politeness. Her English mind expressed itself willing to have
exonerated the rash great lady for visiting a dying lover, but he was
not the same person now that he was on his feet, consequently her
expedition wore a different aspect:—my not dying condemned her. She
entreated me to keep the fact of the princess's arrival unknown to my
father, on which point we were one. Intensely enthusiastic for the men
of her race, she would have me, above all things, by a form of
adjuration designed to be a masterpiece of persuasive rhetoric, 'prove
myself an Englishman.' I was to show that 'the honour, interests,
reputation and position of any lady (demented or not,' she added) 'were
as precious to me as to the owner': that 'no woman was ever in peril of
a shadow of loss in the hands of an English gentleman,' and so forth,
rather surprisingly to me, remembering her off-hand manner of the
foregoing day. But the sense of responsibility thrown upon her ideas of
our superior national dignity had awakened her fervider
naturalness—made her a different person, as we say when accounting, in
our fashion, for what a little added heat may do.
The half hour allotted to me fled. I went from the room and the house,
feeling that I had seen and heard her who was barely of the world of
humankind for me, so strongly did imagination fly with her. I kissed
her fingers, I gazed in her eyes, I heard the beloved voice. All passed
too swift for happiness. Recollections set me throbbing, but
recollection brought longing. She said, 'Now I have come I must see
you, Harry.' Did it signify that to see me was a piece of kindness at
war with her judgement? She rejoiced at my perfect recovery, though it
robbed her of the plea in extenuation of this step she had taken. She
praised me for abstaining to write to her, when I was stammering a set
of hastily-impressed reasons to excuse myself for the omission. She
praised my step into Parliament. It did not seem to involve a nearer
approach to her. She said, 'You have not wasted your time in England.'
It was for my solitary interests that she cared, then.
I brooded desperately. I could conceive an overlooking height that made
her utterance simple and consecutive: I could not reach it. Topics
which to me were palpitating, had no terror for her. She said, 'I have
offended my father; I have written to him; he will take me away.' In
speaking of the letter which had caused her to offend, she did not
blame the writer. I was suffered to run my eyes over it, and was
ashamed. It read to me too palpably as an outcry to delude and draw her
hither:—pathos and pathos: the father holding his dying son in his
arms, his sole son, Harry Richmond; the son set upon by enemies in the
night: the lover never daring to beg for a sight of his beloved ere he
passed away:—not an ill-worded letter; read uncritically, it may have
been touching: it must have been, though it was the reverse for me. I
frowned, broke down in regrets, under sharp humiliation.
She said, 'You knew nothing of it. A little transgression is the real
offender. When we are once out of the way traced for us, we are in
danger of offending at every step; we are as lawless as the outcasts.'
That meant, 'My turning aside to you originally was the blameable
thing.' It might mean, 'My love of you sets my ideas of duty at
variance with my father's.'
She smiled; nothing was uttered in a tone of despondency. Her high
courage and breeding gave her even in this pitfall the smoothness which
most women keep for society. Why she had not sent me any message or
tidings of herself to Riversley was not a matter that she could imagine
to perplex me: she could not imagine my losing faith in her. The least
we could do, I construed it, the religious bond between us was a faith
in one another that should sanctify to our souls the external injuries
it caused us to commit. But she talked in no such strain. Her delight
in treading English ground was her happy theme. She said, 'It is as
young as when we met in the forest'; namely, the feeling revived for
England. How far off we were from the green Devonshire coast, was one
of her questions, suggestive of our old yacht-voyage lying among her
dreams. Excepting an extreme and terrorizing paleness, there was little
to fever me with the thought that she suffered mortally. Of reproach,
not a word; nor of regret. At the first touch of hands, when we stood
together, alone, she said, 'Would hearing of your recovery have given
me peace?' My privileges were the touch of hands, the touch of her
fingers to my lips, a painless hearing and seeing, and passionate
recollection. She said, 'Impatience is not for us, Harry': I was not to
see her again before the evening. These were the last words she said,
and seemed the lightest until my hot brain made a harvest of them
transcending thrice-told vows of love. Did they not mean, 'We two
wait': therefore, 'The years are bondmen to our stedfastness.' Could
sweeter have been said? They might mean nothing!
She was veiled when Janet drove her out; Janet sitting upright in her
masterly way, smoothing her pet ponies with the curl of her whip,
chatting and smiling; the princess slightly leaning back. I strode up
to the country roads, proud of our land's beauty under a complacent
sky. By happy chance, which in a generous mood I ascribed to Janet's
good nature, I came across them at a seven miles' distance. They were
talking spiritedly: what was wonderful, they gave not much heed to me:
they seemed on edge for one another's conversation: each face was
turned to the other's, and after nodding an adieu, they resumed the
animated discourse. I had been rather in alarm lest Ottilia should
think little of Janet. They passed out of sight without recurring to a
thought of me behind them.
In the evening I was one among a group of ladies. I had the opportunity
of hearing the running interchange between Ottilia and Janet, which
appeared to be upon equal terms; indeed, Janet led. The subjects were
not very deep. Plain wits, candour, and an unpretending tongue, it
seemed, could make common subjects attractive, as fair weather does our
English woods and fields. The princess was attracted by something in
Janet. I myself felt the sway of something, while observing Ottilia's
rapt pleasure in her talk and her laughter, with those funny familiar
frowns and current dimples twisting and melting away like a play of
shadows on the eddies of the brook.
'I'm glad to be with her,' Janet said of Ottilia.
It was just in that manner she spoke in Ottilia's presence. Why it
should sound elsewhere unsatisfactorily blunt, and there possess a
finished charm, I could not understand.
I mentioned to Janet that I feared my father would be returning.
She contained herself with a bridled 'Oh!'
We were of one mind as to the necessity for keeping him absent, if
possible.
'Harry, you'll pardon me; I can't talk of him,' said she.
I proposed half-earnestly to foil his return by going to London at
once.
'That's manly; that's nice of you,' Janet said.
This was on our walk from the house at night. My aunt Dorothy listened,
pressing my arm. The next morning Janet urged me to go at once. 'Keep
him away, bring down grandada, Harry. She cannot quit the island,
because she has given Prince Ernest immediate rendezvous here. You must
not delay to go. Yes, the Countess of Delzenburg shall have your
excuses. And no, I promise you I will run nobody down. Besides, if I
do, aunty will be at hand to plead for the defence, and she can! She
has a way that binds one to accept everything she says, and Temple
ought to study with her for a year or two before he wears his gown.
Bring him back with you and grandada. He is esteemed here at his true
worth. I love him for making her in love with English boys. I leave the
men for those who know them, but English boys are unrivalled, I
declare. Honesty, bravery, modesty, and nice looks! They are so nice in
their style and their way of talking. I tell her, our men may be shy
and sneering,—awkward, I daresay; but our boys beat the world. Do bring
down Temple. I should so like her to see a cricket-match between two
good elevens of our boys, Harry, while she is in England! We could have
arranged for one at Riversley.'
I went, and I repressed the idea, on my way, that Janet had manoeuvred
by sending me off to get rid of me, but I felt myself a living
testimony to her heartlessness: for no girl of any heart, acting the
part of friend, would have allowed me to go without a leave-taking of
her I loved: few would have been so cruel as to declare it a duty to go
at all, especially when the chances were that I might return to find
the princess wafted away. Ottilia's condescension had done her no good.
'Turn to the right, that's your path; on.' She seemed to speak in this
style, much as she made her touch of the reins understood by her
ponies. 'I'll take every care of the princess,' she said. Her conceit
was unbounded. I revelled in contemptuous laughter at her assumption of
the post of leader with Ottilia. However, it was as well that I should
go: there was no trusting my father.