INTO WHOSE HANDS?
“The Princess Elizabeth and I,” said Her Majesty in a high-up chamber
on the west palace-side, “are both clever with our needles, so we
have plotted together to make you up some lovely dresses with our own
fingers, if you will let us—simple but _chic_. For we consider that it
was amiable and good of you to put yourself into my hands, as you have.”
Eulalia curtsied, silent, standing withdrawn, mysteries of pride
hiding in her eyes, she understanding that she was being patronised,
and condoned, and graciously tolerated, since she was graceful and an
interesting little sinner.
So now was the _régime_ of the tape, the fashion-plate, the scissors,
the prettiest _mousselines_. A trunkful of fairy linens had already
come from (Irish!) Yvonne’s, toilet-things from Bond Street. The
Princess Elizabeth measured with tape and spectacles. Eulalia was to be
made a thing to kiss the fingers at. It was the Queen’s will.
And as they came out, in went the lady-in-waiting, Lady Julia Newcome,
to amuse and be amiable, for Eulalia was never left alone; while
outside Her Majesty cast up hand and eyes, sighing: “She is pretty!”
Whereat the Princess had an unease: for the Queen, with all her moral
severity, was very well known to be amorous, prone to fancies and fads
and favouritisms, often capricious, inconstant, incalculable: and that
she should acquire the same taste as her son in respect of Eulalia was
not a desirable thing to the Princess, who was now inwardly convinced
that Eulalia was a wife.
“How long do you intend her to be here, Mother?” she asked, cutting
muslin over the Last Supper at the centre of the satin tablecover
in the “Newmarket Parlour” (with three horse-scenes by Wootton)—a
favourite retreat of the Queen, a small room, nicely proportioned,
lighted by a bay looking west upon the Park, with a north lobby.
The Queen, vacantly staring, presently murmured: “How long will I keep
_you_ here, or myself? Whatever it was he was making, he has failed in.
He sits like a stone Achilles; no one ventures to address him.... It is
well that _you_ take it stoically....”
The Princess now sat down near on a Chancellor of the Exchequer chest
(in which Chancellors kept their cash before the age of cheques), and,
poring with her spectacles on the Queen, came out with the statement:
“Your Majesty, I am not at all afraid of the Chinese.”
At the moment the Queen seemed not to hear, moving her head musingly
up and down a little, lost in despondency; and the Princess continued:
“Not that I am sublime ... but that I have special knowledge. I _know_
what Teddy was making—a machine to blow thousands of men into quite
tiny pieces in a minute; and I have only stood by and seen him fail
in it, in order to show him clearly that I am a little worthy of him,
in order that _I_, in the day of his failure, might step in and say,
‘Teddy, here is the thing ready made which you have tried to make, and
failed to make.’”
At this the Queen started! for it has already been shown, in regard
to the charlatanism of this young lady, that there is absolutely _no_
limit to the superstitiousness of men—even of men of some clearness of
vision—when the intellect is once predisposed, infected and mesmerised
toward a particular creed and epidemic of belief.
The Princess, for her part, knew from Oyone that Eulalia’s black box
“blew one into flies’ feet”; knew that Oyone was eager to seize it; had
noted that the box made in the Prince’s workshop was exactly like it;
and felt that she would have little difficulty in winning the box from
Eulalia, who, in her present bashful situation, had a natural tendency
to be affable.
As to the Queen, she had seen without seeing Eulalia’s black box like
a kodak, nor had seen at all the black box in the Prince’s workshop.
She was instantly leaning keenly toward the Princess, breathing: “Tell
me, dear....”
“I just say so much to comfort you, Mother,” replied the other with her
smile of Isis: “I am not at present prepared to reveal more—except to
express the confidence I feel that Teddy, with the help of what I have
been able to divine and discover, will find himself quite competent to
cope with all these horrors, and many more. Oh, I take no credit to
myself!—I _know_ now that there is Something that prompts me, whispers
me, like Socrates’ _daimon_—yes, Something, Something. But, as to the
girl, send her quickly to America, Mother! Suppose—_just suppose_—that
Teddy were to discover her here!”
“She is pretty!” sighed the Queen, vacantly staring at a row
of miniatures of the Prince on an old-oak console-table by the
hearthplace; then suddenly: “Give her this from me!—that will flatter
her,” taking a silver-gilt rose-water dish, engraved with lion and
unicorn, from a Queen Anne cabinet.
“Very well”—from the Princess—“though we must not make her think
herself a saint.”
“She is not depraved!” said the Queen quickly—“_ça se voit_. What I
_can_not understand is her motive for keeping herself so completely
from him, that he had to be seeking her; she, meantime, a Prince’s
light o’ love, living in penury in the East End! The thing baffles me!”
“He tired of her—that’s it. Such honeys are only delicious for a day,
Mother: then men cast them aside.”
“How do you—know?”
“From my study of life! Studiosa sum, Mother, nulla studia a me aliena
puto.”
“Very good: let us say, then, that he tired of her; that she resented
it; fled from him, hid from him; and that he then repented and sought
her afresh. But all this does not explain her poverty! Had he never
lavished any presents upon her? Why did she go as a war-nurse? I cannot
understand!—unless she is supremely proud! And pride is never depraved.”
“All that does not alter the fact of her stain....”
“Of course not. But it is pitiful that women must reap as men have
sown.”
“And does not alter the peril of her being in England....”
“Well, but I have given orders for her passage next Wednesday.”
The Princess smiled. “Shall I go and try this on her? and give her the
rose-water dish”—she went out by an east portal, up four steps into
a north-and-south corridor,
[Illustration]
where, turning left, she passed under a draperied archway on to
Eulalia’s apartments on her right. Demurely smiling, the Lady Julia
Newcome came out when she went in.
And presently the Princess was saying: “What is in that box of yours?
Is it photographic?”
Eulalia answered: “I know nothing of it, except that I dug it out of
the ground for a dead man, to send it to America.”
“Curious”—the Princess stood off, inspecting the fit of a bodice—“is it
dangerous to touch, by chance?”
“Not that I know of—though it has marked on it, ‘Do Not Touch.’”
“Curious. Pick it up, let me see how you handle it.”
“There is no particular way,” said Eulalia, complacently raising it
from a Louis XIV. writing-table where it lay.
“It strikes me as curious,” the Princess then remarked—“something
scientific, maybe? You will no doubt permit me to take it to my
apartments and _analyse_ it a little.”
“If that pleases Your Imperial Highness.”
And the fitting went on.