They crossed from Calais in the turbine. Their quickest route would
have been Cologne-Ostend-Dover, and every moment being infinitely
valuable Fritzing wanted to go that way, but Priscilla was determined
to try whether turbines are really as steady as she had heard they
were. The turbine was so steady that no one could have told it was
doing anything but being quiescent on solid earth; but that was
because, as Fritzing explained, there was a dead calm, and in dead
calms--briefly, he explained the conduct of boats in dead calms with
much patience, and Priscilla remarked when he had done that they might
then, after all, have crossed by Ostend.
"We might, ma'am, and we would be in London now if we had," said
Fritzing.
They had, indeed, lost several hours and some money coming by Calais,
and Fritzing had lost his temper as well.
Fritzing, you remember, was sixty, and had not closed his eyes all
night. He had not, so far as that goes, closed his eyes for nights
without number; and what his soul had gone through during those nights
was more than any soul no longer in its first youth should be called
upon to bear. In the train between Cologne and Calais he had even,
writhing in his seat, cursed every single one of his long-cherished
ideals, called them fools, shaken his fist at them; a dreadful state
of mind to get to. He did not reveal anything of this to his dear
Princess, and talking to her on the turbine wore the clear brow of the
philosopher; but he did feel that he was a much-tried man, and he
behaved to the maid Annalise exactly in the way much-tried men do
behave when they have found some one they think defenceless.
Unfortunately Annalise was only apparently defenceless. Fritzing would
have known it if he had been more used to running away. He did, in his
calmer moments, dimly opine it. The plain fact was that Annalise held
both him and Priscilla in the hollow of her hand.
At this point she had not realized it. She still was awestruck by her
promotion, and looked so small and black and uncertain among her new
surroundings on the turbine that if not clever of him it was at least
natural that he should address her in a manner familiar to those who
have had to do with men when they are being tried. He behaved, that
is, to Annalise, as he had behaved to his ideals in the night; he
shook his fist at her, and called her fool. It was because she had
broken the Princess's umbrella. This was the new umbrella bought by
him with so much trouble in Gerstein two days before, and therefore
presumably of a sufficient toughness to stand any reasonable treatment
for a time. There was a mist and a drizzle at Calais, and Priscilla,
refusing to go under shelter, had sent Fritzing to fetch her umbrella,
and when he demanded it of Annalise, she offered it him in two pieces.
This alone was enough to upset a wise man, because wise men are easily
upset; but Annalise declared besides that the umbrella had broken
itself. It probably had. What may not one expect of anything so cheap?
Fritzing, however, was maddened by this explanation, and wasted quite
a long time pointing out to her in passionate language that it was an
inanimate object, and that inanimate objects have no initiative and
never therefore break themselves. To which Annalise, with a stoutness
ominous as a revelation of character, replied by repeating her
declaration that the umbrella had certainly broken itself. Then it was
that he shook his fist at her and called her fool. So greatly was he
moved that, after walking away and thinking it over, he went to her a
second time and shook his fist at her and called her knave.