IV

But nobody was waiting for them at Dover. Fritzing's agonies might all

have been spared. They passed quite unnoticed through the crowd of

idlers to the train, and putting Priscilla and her maid into it he

rushed at the nearest newspaper-boy, pouncing on him, tearing a

handful of his papers from him, and was devouring their contents

before the astonished boy had well finished his request that he should

hold hard. The boy, who had been brought up in the simple faith that

one should pay one's pennies first and read next, said a few things

under his breath about Germans--crude short things not worth

repeating--and jerking his thumb towards the intent Fritzing, winked

at a detective who was standing near. The detective did not need the

wink. His bland, abstracted eyes were already on Fritzing, and he was

making rapid mental notes of the goggles, the muffler, the cap pulled

down over the ears. Truly it is a great art, that of running away, and

needs incessant practice.

And after all there was not a word about the Princess in the papers.

They were full, as the Englishmen on the turbine had been full, of

something the Russians, who at that time were always doing something,

had just done--something that had struck England from end to end into

a blaze of indignation and that has nothing to do with my story.

Fritzing dropped the papers on the platform, and had so little public

spirit that he groaned aloud with relief.

"Shilling and a penny 'alfpenny, please, sir," said the newspaper-boy

glibly. "_Westminster Gazette_, sir, _Daily Mail_, _Sporting and

Dramatic_, one _Lady_, and two _Standards_." From which it will be

seen that Fritzing had seized his handful very much at random.

He paid the boy without heeding his earnest suggestions that he should

try _Tit-Bits_, the _Saturday Review_, and _Mother_, to complete, said

the boy, in substance if not in words, his bird's-eye view over the

field of representative English journalism, and went back to the

Princess with a lighter heart than he had had for months. The

detective, apparently one of Nature's gentlemen, picked up the

scattered papers, and following Fritzing offered them him in the

politest way imaginable just as Priscilla was saying she wanted to see

what tea-baskets were like.

"Sir," said the detective, taking off his hat, "I believe these are

yours."

"Sir," said Fritzing, taking off his cap in his turn and bowing with

all the ceremony of foreigners, "I am much obliged to you."

"Pray don't mention it, sir," said the detective, on whose brain the

three were in that instant photographed--the veiled Priscilla, the

maid sitting on the edge of the seat as though hardly daring to sit

at all, and Fritzing's fine head and mop of grey hair.

Priscilla, as she caught his departing eye, bowed and smiled

graciously. He withdrew to a little distance, and fell into a

reverie: where had he seen just that mechanically gracious bow and

smile? They were very familiar to him.

As the train slowly left the station he saw the lady in the veil once

more. She was alone with her maid, and was looking out of the window

at nothing in particular, and the station-master, who was watching the

train go, chanced to meet her glance. Again there was the same smile

and bow, quite mechanical, quite absent-minded, distinctly gracious.

The station-master stared in astonishment after the receding carriage.

The detective roused himself from his reverie sufficiently to step

forward and neatly swing himself into the guard's van: there being

nothing to do in Dover he thought he would go to London.

I believe I have forgotten, in the heat of narration, to say that the

fugitives were bound for Somersetshire. Fritzing had been a great

walker in the days when he lived in England, and among other places

had walked about Somersetshire. It is a pleasant county; fruitful,

leafy, and mild. Down in the valleys myrtles and rhododendrons have

been known to flower all through the winter. Devonshire junkets and

Devonshire cider are made there with the same skill precisely as in

Devonshire; and the parts of it that lie round Exmoor are esteemed by

those who hunt.

Fritzing quite well remembered certain villages buried among the

hills, miles from the nearest railway, and he also remembered the

farmhouses round about these villages where he had lodged. To one of

these he had caused a friend in London to write engaging rooms for

himself and his niece, and there he proposed to stay till they should

have found the cottage the Princess had set her heart on.

This cottage, as far as he could gather from the descriptions she

gave him from time to time, was going to be rather difficult to

find. He feared also that it would be a very insect-ridden place,

and that their calm pursuits would often be interrupted by things

like earwigs. It was to be ancient, and much thatched and latticed

and rose-overgrown. It was, too, to be very small; the smallest of

labourers' cottages. Yet though so small and so ancient it was to

have several bathrooms--one for each of them, so he understood;

"For," said the Princess, "if Annalise hasn't a bathroom how can

she have a bath? And if she hasn't had a bath how can I let her

touch me?"

"Perhaps," said Fritzing, bold in his ignorance of Annalise's real

nature, "she could wash at the pump. People do, I believe, in the

country. I remember there were always pumps."

"But do pumps make you clean enough?" inquired the Princess,

doubtfully.

"We can try her with one. I fancy, ma'am, it will be less difficult

to find a cottage that has only two bathrooms than one that has three.

And I know there are invariably pumps."

Searching his memory he could recollect no bathrooms at all, but he

did not say so, and silently hoped the best.

To the Somerset village of Symford and to the farm about a mile

outside it known as Baker's, no longer, however, belonging to Baker,

but rented by a Mr. Pearce, they journeyed down from Dover without a

break. Nothing alarming happened on the way. They were at Victoria by

five, and the Princess sat joyfully making the acquaintance of a

four-wheeler's inside for twenty minutes during which Fritzing and

Annalise got the luggage through the customs. Fritzing's goggles and

other accessories of flight inspired so much interest in the customs

that they could hardly bear to let him go and it seemed as if they

would never tire of feeling about in the harmless depths of

Priscilla's neat box. They had however ultimately to part from him,

for never was luggage more innocent; and rattling past Buckingham

Palace on the way to Paddington Priscilla blew it a cheerful kiss,

symbolic of a happiness too great to bear ill-will. Later on Windsor

Castle would have got one too, if it had not been so dark that she

could not see it. The detective, who felt himself oddly drawn towards

the trio, went down into Somersetshire by the same train as they did,

but parted from them at Ullerton, the station you get out at when you

go to Symford. He did not consider it necessary to go further; and

taking a bedroom at Ullerton in the same little hotel from which

Fritzing had ordered the conveyance that was to drive them their last

seven miles he went to bed, it being close on midnight, with Mr.

Pearce's address neatly written in his notebook.

This, at present, is the last of the detective. I will leave him

sleeping with a smile on his face, and follow the dog-cart as it drove

along that beautiful road between wooded hills that joins Ullerton to

Symford, on its way to Baker's Farm.

At the risk of exhausting Priscilla Fritzing had urged pushing on

without a stop, and Priscilla made no objection. This is how it came

about that the ostler attached to the Ullerton Arms found himself

driving to Symford in the middle of the night. He could not recollect

ever having done such a thing before, and the memory of it would be

quite unlikely to do anything but remain fixed in his mind till his

dying day. Fritzing was a curiously conspicuous fugitive.

It was a clear and beautiful night, and the stars twinkled brightly

over the black tree-tops. Down in the narrow gorge through which the

road runs they could not feel the keen wind that was blowing up on

Exmoor. The waters of the Sym, whose windings they followed, gurgled

over their stones almost as quietly as in summer. There was a fresh

wet smell, consoling and delicious after the train, the smell of

country puddles and country mud and dank dead leaves that had been

rained upon all day. Fritzing sat with the Princess on the back seat

of the dog-cart, and busied himself keeping the rug well round her,

the while his soul was full of thankfulness that their journey should

after all have been so easy. He was weary in body, but very jubilant

in mind. The Princess was so weary in body that she had no mind at

all, and dozed and nodded and threatened to fall out, and would have

fallen out a dozen times but for Fritzing's watchfulness. As for

Annalise, who can guess what thoughts were hers while she was being

jogged along to Baker's? That they were dark I have not a doubt. No

one had told her this was to be a journey into the Ideal; no one had

told her anything but that she was promoted to travelling with the

Princess and that she would be well paid so long as she held her

tongue. She had never travelled before, yet there were some

circumstances of the journey that could not fail to strike the most

inexperienced. This midnight jogging in the dog-cart, for instance. It

was the second night spent out of bed, and all day long she had

expected every moment would end the journey, and the end, she had

naturally supposed, would be a palace. There would be a palace, and

warmth, and light, and food, and welcome, and honour, and appreciative

lacqueys with beautiful white silk calves--alas, Annalise's ideal, her

one ideal, was to be for ever where there were beautiful white silk

calves. The road between Ullerton and Symford conveyed to her mind no

assurance whatever of the near neighbourhood of such things; and as

for the dog-cart--"_Himmel_," said Annalise to herself, whenever she

thought of the dog-cart.

Their journey ended at two in the morning. Almost exactly at that hour

they stopped at the garden gate of Baker's Farm, and a woman came out

with a lantern and helped them down and lighted them up the path to

the porch. The Princess, who could hardly make her eyes open

themselves, leaned on Fritzing's arm in a sort of confused dream, got

somehow up a little staircase that seemed extraordinarily steep and

curly, and was sound asleep in a knobbly bed before Annalise realized

she had done with her. Priscilla had forgotten all about the Ideal,

all about her eager aspirations. Sleep, dear Mother with the cool

hand, had smoothed them all away, the whole rubbish of those daylight

toys, and for the next twelve hours sat tenderly by her pillow, her

finger on her lips.

V

No better place than Symford can be imagined for those in search of a

spot, picturesque and with creepers, where they may spend quiet years

guiding their feet along the way of peace. It is one of the prettiest

of English villages. It does and has and is everything the ideal

village ought to. It nestles, for instance, in the folds of hills; it

is very small, and far away from other places; its cottages are old

and thatched; its little inn is the inn of a story-book, with a quaint

signboard and an apparently genial landlord; its church stands

beautifully on rising ground among ancient trees, besides being hoary;

its vicarage is so charming that to see it makes you long to marry a

vicar; its vicar is venerable, with an eye so mild that to catch it is

to receive a blessing; pleasant little children with happy morning

faces pick butter-cups and go a-nutting at the proper seasons and

curtsey to you as you pass; old women with clean caps and suitable

faces read their Bibles behind latticed windows; hearths are scrubbed

and snowy; appropriate kettles simmer on hobs; climbing roses and trim

gardens are abundant; and it has a lady bountiful of so untiring a

kindness that each of its female inhabitants gets a new flannel

petticoat every Christmas and nothing is asked of her in return but

that she shall, during the ensuing year, be warm and happy and good.

The same thing was asked, I believe, of the male inhabitants, who get

comforters, and also that they should drink seltzer-water whenever

their lower natures urged them to drink rum; but comforters are so

much smaller than petticoats that the men of Symford's sense of

justice rebelled, and since the only time they ever felt really warm

and happy and good was when they were drinking rum they decided that

on the whole it would be more in accordance with their benefactress's

wishes to go on doing it.

Lady Shuttleworth, the lady from whom these comforters and petticoats

proceeded, was a just woman who required no more of others than she

required of herself, and who was busy and kind, and, I am sure happy

and good, on cold water. But then she did not like rum; and I suppose

there are few things quite so easy as not to drink rum if you don't

like it. She lived at Symford Hall, two miles away in another fold of

the hills, and managed the estate of her son who was a minor--at this

time on the very verge of ceasing to be one--with great precision and

skill. All the old cottages in Symford were his, and so were the farms

dotted about the hills. Any one, therefore, seeking a cottage would

have to address himself to the Shuttleworth agent, Mr. Dawson, who too

lived in a house so picturesque that merely to see it made you long

either to poison or to marry Mr. Dawson--preferably, I think, to

poison him.

These facts, stripped of the redundances with which I have

garnished them, were told Fritzing on the day after his arrival

at Baker's Farm by Mrs. Pearce the younger, old Mr. Pearce's

daughter-in-law, a dreary woman with a rent in her apron, who

brought in the bacon for Fritzing's solitary breakfast and the chop

for his solitary luncheon. She also brought in a junket so liquid

that the innocent Fritzing told her politely that he always drank

his milk out of a glass when he did drink milk, but that, as he

never did drink milk, she need not trouble to bring him any.

"Sir," said Mrs. Pearce in her slow sad voice, after a glance at his

face in search of sarcasm, "'tisn't milk. 'Tis a junket that hasn't

junked."

"Indeed?" said Fritzing, bland because ignorant.

Mrs. Pearce fidgeted a little, wrestling perhaps with her conscience,

before she added defiantly, "It wouldn't."

"Indeed?" said Fritzing once more; and he looked at the junket through

his spectacles with that air of extreme and intelligent interest with

which persons who wish to please look at other people's babies.

He was desirous of being on good terms with Symford, and had been very

pleasant all the morning to Mrs. Pearce. That mood in which, shaken

himself to his foundations by anxiety, he had shaken his fist to

Annalise, was gone as completely as yesterday's wet mist. The golden

sunshine of October lay beautifully among the gentle hills and seemed

to lie as well in Fritzing's heart. He had gone through so much for so

many weeks that merely to be free from worries for the moment filled

him with thankfulness. So may he feel who has lived through days of

bodily torture in that first hour when his pain has gone: beaten,

crushed, and cowed by suffering, he melts with gratitude because he is

being left alone, he gasps with a relief so utter that it is almost

abject praise of the Cruelty that has for a little loosened its hold.

In this abjectly thankful mood was Fritzing when he found his worst

agonies were done. What was to come after he really for the moment did

not care. It was sufficient to exist untormented and to let his soul

stretch itself in the privacy and peace of Baker's. He and his

Princess had made a great and noble effort towards the realization of

dreams that he felt were lofty, and the gods so far had been with

them. All that first morning in Symford he had an oddly restful,

unburdened feeling, as of having been born again and born aged

twenty-five; and those persons who used to be twenty-five themselves

will perhaps agree that this must have been rather nice. He did not

stir from the parlour lest the Princess should come down and want him,

and he spent the waiting hours getting information from Mrs. Pearce

and informing her mind in his turn with just that amount of knowledge

about himself and his niece that he wished Symford to possess. With

impressive earnestness he told her his name was Neumann, repeating it

three times, almost as if in defiance of contradiction; that his niece

was his deceased brother's child; that her Christian name--here he was

swept away by inspiration--was Maria-Theresa; that he had saved enough

as a teacher of German in London to retire into the country; and that

he was looking for a cottage in which to spend his few remaining

years.

It all sounded very innocent. Mrs. Pearce listened with her head on

one side and with something of the air of a sparrow who doesn't feel

well. She complimented him sadly on the fluency of his English, and

told him with a sigh that in no cottage would he ever again find the

comforts with which Baker's was now surrounding him.

Fritzing was surprised to hear her say so, for his impressions had

all been the other way. As far as he, inexperienced man, could

tell, Baker's was a singularly draughty and unscrubbed place. He

smelt that its fires smoked, he heard that its windows rattled, he

knew that its mattresses had lumps in them, and he saw that its

food was inextricably mixed up with objects of a black and gritty

nature. But her calm face and sorrowful assurance shook the

evidence of his senses, and gazing at her in silence over his

spectacles a feeling crept dimly across his brain that if the

future held many dealings with women like Mrs. Pearce he was going

to be very helpless.

Priscilla appeared while he was gazing. She was dressed for going out

and came in buttoning her gloves, and I suppose it was a long time

since Baker's had seen anything quite so radiant in the way of nieces

within its dusty walls. She had on the clothes she had travelled in,

for a search among the garments bought by Fritzing had resulted in

nothing but a sitting on the side of the bed and laughing tears, so it

was clearly not the clothes that made her seem all of a sparkle with

lovely youth and blitheness. Kunitz would not have recognized its

ivory Princess in this bright being. She was the statue come to life,

the cool perfection kissed by expectation into a bewitching living

woman. I doubt whether Fritzing had ever noticed her beauty while at

Kunitz. He had seen her every day from childhood on, and it is

probable that his attention being always riveted on her soul he had

never really known when her body left off being lanky and freckled. He

saw it now, however; he would have been blind if he had not; and it

set him vibrating with the throb of a new responsibility. Mrs. Pearce

saw it too, and stared astonished at this oddly inappropriate niece.

She stared still more when Fritzing, jumping up from his chair, bent

over the hand Priscilla held out and kissed it with a devotion and

respect wholly absent from the manner of Mrs. Pearce's own uncles.

She, therefore, withdrew into her kitchen, and being a person of

little culture crudely expressed her wonder by thinking "Lor." To

which, after an interval of vague meanderings among saucepans, she

added the elucidation, "Foreigners."

Half an hour later Lady Shuttleworth's agent, Mr. Dawson, was

disturbed at his tea by the announcement that a gentleman wished to

speak to him. Mr. Dawson was a bluff person, and something of a

tyrant, for he reigned supreme in Symford after Lady Shuttleworth, and

to reign supreme over anybody, even over a handful of cottagers, does

bring out what a man may have in him of tyrant. Another circumstance

that brings this out is the possession of a meek wife; and Mr.

Dawson's wife was really so very meek that I fear when the Day of

Reckoning comes much of this tyranny will be forgiven him and laid to

her account. Mr. Dawson, in fact, represented an unending series of

pitfalls set along his wife's path by Fate, into every one of which

she fell; and since we are not supposed, on pain of punishment, to do

anything but keep very upright on our feet as we trudge along the

dusty road of life, no doubt all those amiable stumblings will be

imputed to her in the end for sin. "This man was handed over to you

quite nice and kind," one can imagine Justice saying in an awful

voice; "his intentions to start with were beyond reproach. Do you not

remember, on the eve of your wedding, how he swore with tears he would

be good to you? Look, now, what you have made of him. You have

prevented his being good to you by your own excessive goodness to

him. You have spent your time nourishing his bad qualities. Though he

still swears, he never does it with tears. Do you not know the

enormous, the almost insurmountable difficulty there is in not

bullying meekness, in not responding to the cringer with a kick? Weak

and unteachable woman, away with you."

Certainly it is a great responsibility taking a man into one's life.

It is also an astonishment to me that I write thus in detail of Mrs.

Dawson, for she has nothing whatever to do with the story.

"Who is it?" asked Mr. Dawson; immediately adding, "Say I'm engaged."

"He gave no name, sir. He says he wishes to see you on business."

"Business! I don't do business at tea time. Send him away."

But Fritzing, for he it was, would not be sent away. Priscilla had

seen the cottage of her dreams, seen it almost at once on entering the

village, fallen instantly and very violently in love with it

regardless of what its inside might be, and had sent him to buy it.

She was waiting while he bought it in the adjoining churchyard sitting

on a tombstone, and he could neither let her sit there indefinitely

nor dare, so great was her eagerness to have the thing, go back

without at least a hope of it. Therefore he would not be sent away.

"Your master's in," he retorted, when the maid suggested he should

depart, "and I must see him. Tell him my business is pressing."

"Will you give me your card, sir?" said the maid, wavering before

this determination.

Fritzing, of course, had no card, so he wrote his new name in pencil

on a leaf of his notebook, adding his temporary address.

"Tell Mr. Dawson," he said, tearing it out and giving it to her, "that

if he is so much engaged as to be unable to see me I shall go direct

to Lady Shuttleworth. My business will not wait."

"Show him in, then," growled Mr. Dawson on receiving this message; for

he feared Lady Shuttleworth every bit as much as Mrs. Dawson feared

him.

Fritzing was accordingly shown into the room used as an office, and

was allowed to cool himself there while Mr. Dawson finished his tea.

The thought of his Princess waiting on a tombstone that must be

growing colder every moment, for the sun was setting, made him at last

so impatient that he rang the bell.

"Tell your master," he said when the maid appeared, "that I am now

going to Lady Shuttleworth." And he seized his hat and was making

indignantly for the door when Mr. Dawson appeared.

Mr. Dawson was wiping his mouth. "You seem to be in a great hurry," he

said; and glancing at the slip of paper in his hand added, "Mr.

Newman."

"Sir," said Fritzing, bowing with a freezing dignity, "I am."

"Well, so am I. Sit down. What can I do for you? Time's money, you

know, and I'm a busy man. You're German, ain't you?"

"I am, sir. My name is Neumann. I am here--"

"Oh, Noyman, is it? I thought it was Newman." And he glanced again at

the paper.

"Sir," said Fritzing, with a wave of his hand, "I am here to buy a

cottage, and the sooner we come to terms the better. I will not waste

valuable moments considering niceties of pronunciation."