XII

It is the practice of Providence often to ignore the claims of poetic

justice. Properly, the Symford children ought to have been choked by

Priscilla's cakes; and if they had been, the parents who had sent them

merrymaking on a Sunday would have been well punished by the

undeniable awfulness of possessing choked children. But nobody was

choked; and when in the early days of the following week there were in

nearly every cottage pangs being assuaged, they were so naturally the

consequence of the strange things that had been eaten that only Mrs.

Morrison was able to see in them weapons being wielded by Providence

in the cause of eternal right. She, however, saw it so plainly that

each time during the next few days that a worried mother came and

asked advice, she left her work or her meals without a murmur, and

went to the castor-oil cupboard with an alacrity that was almost

cheerful; and seldom, I suppose, have such big doses been supplied and

administered as the ones she prescribed for suffering Symford.

But on this dark side of the picture I do not care to look; the

party, anyhow, had been a great success, and Priscilla became at

one stroke as popular among the poor of Symford as she had been in

Lothen-Kunitz. Its success it is true was chiefly owing to the

immense variety of things to eat she had provided; for the

conjuror, merry-go-round, and cocoa-nuts to be shied at that she

had told young Vickerton to bring with him from Minehead, had all

been abandoned on Tussie's earnest advice, who instructed her

innocent German mind that these amusements, undoubtedly admirable

in themselves and on week days, were looked upon askance in England

on Sundays.

"Why?" asked Priscilla, in great surprise.

"It's not keeping the day holy," said Tussie, blushing.

"How funny," said Priscilla.

"Oh, I don't know."

"Why," said Priscilla, "in Kun--" but she pulled herself up just as

she was about to give him a description of the varied nature of Sunday

afternoons in Kunitz.

"You must have noticed," said Tussie, "as you have lived so long in

London, that everything's shut on Sundays. There are no theatres and

things--certainly no cocoa-nuts."

"No, I don't remember any cocoa-nuts," mused Priscilla, her memory

going over those past Sundays she had spent in England.

Tussie tried to make amends for having obstructed her plans by

exerting himself to the utmost to entertain the children as far as

decorum allowed. He encouraged them to sing, he who felt every

ugliness in sound like a blow; he urged them to recite for prizes of

sixpences, he on whose soul Casabianca and Excelsior had much the

effect of scourges on a tender skin; he led them out into a field

between tea and supper and made them run races, himself setting the

example, he who caught cold so easily that he knew it probably meant a

week in bed. Robin helped too, but his exertions were confined to the

near neighbourhood of Priscilla. His mother had been very angry with

him, and he had been very angry with his mother for being angry, and

he had come away from the vicarage with a bad taste in his mouth and a

great defiance in his heart. It was the first time he had said hard

things to her, and it had been a shocking moment,--a moment sometimes

inevitable in the lives of parents and children of strong character

and opposed desires. He had found himself quite unable in his anger to

clothe his hard sayings in forms of speech that would have hidden

their brutal force, and he had turned his back at last on her

answering bitterness and fled to Baker's, thankful to find when he got

there that Priscilla's beauty and the interest of the mystery that

hung about her wiped out every other remembrance.

Priscilla was in the big farm kitchen, looking on at the children

having tea. That was all she did at her party, except go round every

now and then saying pleasant little things to each child; but this

going round was done in so accomplished a manner, she seemed so used

to it, was so well provided with an apparently endless supply of

appropriate remarks, was so kind, and yet so--what was the word?

could it be mechanical?--that Robin for the hundredth time found

himself pondering over something odd, half-remembered, elusive about

the girl. Then there was the uncle; manifestly a man who had never

before been required to assist at a school-treat, manifestly on this

occasion an unhappy man, yet look how he worked while she sat idly

watching, look how he laboured round with cakes and bread-and-butter,

clumsily, strenuously, with all the heat and anxiety of one eager to

please and obey. Yes, that was what he did; Robin had hit on it at

last. This extraordinary uncle obeyed his niece; and Robin knew very

well that Germany was the last country in the world to produce men who

did that. Had he not a cousin who had married a German officer? A

whilom gay and sprightly cousin, who spent her time, as she dolefully

wrote, having her mind weeded of its green growth of little opinions

and gravelled and rolled and stamped with the opinions of her male

relations-in-law. "And I'd rather have weeds than gravel," she wrote

at the beginning of this process when she was still restive under the

roller, "for they at least are green." But long ago she had left off

complaining, long ago she too had entered into the rest that remaineth

for him who has given up, who has become what men praise as reasonable

and gods deplore as dull, who is tired of bothering, tired of trying,

tired of everything but sleep. Then there was the girl's maid. This

was the first time Robin had seen her; and while she was helping Mrs.

Pearce pour out cups of chocolate and put a heaped spoonful of whipped

cream on the top of each cup in the fashion familiar to Germans and

altogether lovely in the eyes of the children of Symford, Robin went

to her and offered help.

Annalise looked at him with heavy eyes, and shook her head.

"She don't speak no English, sir," explained Mrs. Pearce. "This one's

pure heathen."

"No English," echoed Annalise drearily, who had at least learned that

much, "no English, no English."

Robin gathered up his crumbs of German and presented them to her with

a smile. Immediately on hearing her own tongue she flared into life,

and whipping out a little pocket-book and pencil asked him eagerly

where she was.

"Where you are?" repeated Robin, astonished.

"_Ja, Ja_. The address. This address. What is it? Where am I?"

"What, don't you know?"

"Tell me--quick," begged Annalise.

"But why--I don't understand. You must know you are in England?"

"England! Naturally I know it is England. But this--where is it? What

is its address? For letters to reach me? Quick--tell me quick!"

Robin, however, would not be quick. "Why has no one told you?" he

asked, with an immense curiosity.

"_Ach_, I have not been told. I know nothing. I am kept in the dark

like--like a prisoner." And Annalise dragged her handkerchief out of

her pocket, and put it to her eyes just in time to stop her ready

tears from falling into the whipped cream and spoiling it.

"There she goes again," sniffed Mrs. Pearce. "It's cry, cry, from

morning till night, and nothing good enough for her. It's a mercy she

goes out of this to-morrow. I never see such an image."

"Tell me," implored Annalise, "tell me quick, before my mistress--"

"I'll write it for you," said Robin, taking the note-book from her.

"You know you go into a cottage next week, so I'll put your new

address." And he wrote it in a large round hand and gave it to her

quickly, for Mrs. Pearce was listening to all this German and watching

him write with a look that made him feel cheap. So cheap did it make

him feel that he resisted for the present his desire to go on

questioning Annalise, and putting his hands in his pockets sauntered

away to the other end of the kitchen where Priscilla sat looking on.

"I'm afraid that really was cheap of me," he thought ruefully, when he

came once more into Priscilla's sweet presence; but he comforted

himself with the reflection that no girl ought to be mysterious,

and if this one chose to be so it was fair to cross her plans

occasionally. Yet he went on feeling cheap; and when Tussie who was

hurrying along with a cup of chocolate in each hand ran into him and

spilt some on his sleeve the sudden rage with which he said "Confound

you, Tussie," had little to do with the hot stuff soaking through to

his skin and a great deal with the conviction that Tussie, despised

from their common childhood for his weakness, smallness and ugliness,

would never have done what he had just done and betrayed what the girl

had chosen to keep secret from her maid.

"But why secret? Why? Why?" asked Robin, torn with desire to find out

all about Priscilla.

"I'm going to do this often," said Priscilla, looking up at him with a

pleased smile. "I never saw such easily amused little creatures. Don't

you think it is beautiful, to give poor people a few happy moments

sometimes?"

"Very beautiful," said Robin, his eyes on her face.

"It is what I mean to do in future," she said dreamily, her chin on

her hand.

"It will be expensive," remarked Robin; for there were nearly two

hundred children, and Priscilla had collected the strangest things in

food on the long tables as a result of her method, when inviting, of

asking each mother what her child best liked to eat and then ordering

it with the lavishness of ignorance from Minehead.

"Oh, we shall live so simply ourselves that there will be enough left

to do all I want. And it will be the most blessed change and

refreshment, living simply. Fritzi hated the fuss and luxury quite as

much as I did."

"Did he?" said Robin, holding his breath. The girl was evidently off

her guard. He had not heard her call her uncle baldly Fritzi before;

and what fuss and luxury could a German teacher's life have known?

"He it was who first made me see that the body is more than meat and

the soul than raiment," mused Priscilla.

"Was he?"

"He pulled my soul out of the flesh-pots. I'm a sort of Israel come

out of Egypt, but an Egypt that was altogether too comfortable."

"Too comfortable? Can one be too comfortable?"

"I was. I couldn't move or see or breathe for comfort. It was like a

feather bed all over me."

"I wouldn't call that comfort," said Robin, for she paused, and he was

afraid she was not going on. "It sounds much more like torture."

"So it was at last. And Fritzi helped me to shake it off. If he hadn't

I'd have smothered slowly, and perhaps if I'd never known him I'd have

done it as gracefully as my sisters did. Why, they don't know to this

day that they are dead."

Robin was silent. He was afraid to speak lest anything he said should

remind her of the part she ought to be playing. He had no doubt now

at all that she was keeping a secret. A hundred questions were burning

on his lips. He hated himself for wanting to ask them, for being so

inquisitive, for taking advantage of the girl's being off her guard,

but what are you to do with your inherited failings? Robin's mother

was inquisitive and it had got into his blood, and I know of no moral

magnesia that will purify these things away. "You said the other day,"

he burst out at last, quite unable to stop himself, "that you only had

your uncle in the world. Are your sisters--are they in London?"

"In London?" Priscilla gazed at him a moment with a vague surprise.

Then fright flashed into her eyes. "Did I not tell you they were dead?

Smothered?" she said, getting up quickly, her face setting into the

frown that had so chilled Tussie on the heath.

"But I took that as a parable."

"How can I help how you took it?"

And she instantly left him and went away round the tables, beginning

those little pleasant observations to the children again that struck

him as so strange.

Well did he know the sort of thing. He had seen Lady Shuttleworth do

it fifty times to the tenants, to the cottagers, at flower-shows,

bazaars, on all occasions of public hospitality or ceremony; but

practised and old as Lady Shuttleworth was this girl seemed yet more

practised. She was a finished artist in the work, he said to himself

as he leaned against the wall, his handsome face flushed, his eyes

sulky, watching her. It was enough to make any good-looking young

man sulky, the mixture of mystery and aloofness about Miss

Neumann-Schultz. Extraordinary as it seemed, up to this point he had

found it quite impossible to indulge with her in that form of more or

less illustrated dialogue known to Symford youths and maidens as

billing and cooing. Very fain would Robin have billed and have cooed.

It was a practice he excelled in. And yet though he had devoted

himself for three whole days, stood on ladders, nailed up creepers,

bought and carried rum, had a horrible scene with his mother because

of her, he had not got an inch nearer things personal and cosy. Miss

Neumann-Schultz thanked him quite kindly and graciously for his

pains--oh, she was very gracious; gracious in the sort of way Lady

Shuttleworth used to be when he came home for the holidays and she

patted his head and uttered benignities--and having thanked,

apparently forgot him till the next time she wanted anything.

"Fritzi," said Priscilla, when in the course of her progress down the

room she met that burdened man, "I'm dreadfully afraid I've said some

foolish things."

Fritzing put the plate of cake he was carrying down on a dresser and

wiped his forehead. "Ma'am," he said looking worried, "I cannot watch

you and administer food to these barbarians simultaneously. If your

tongue is so unruly I would recommend complete silence."

"I've said something about my sisters."

"Sisters, ma'am?" said Fritzing anxiously.

"Does it matter?"

"Matter? I have carefully instructed the woman Pearce, who has

certainly informed, as I intended she should inform, the entire

village, that you were my brother's only child. Consequently, ma'am,

you have no sisters."

Priscilla made a gesture of despair. "How fearfully difficult it is

not to be straightforward," she said.

"Yes, ma'am, it is. Since we started on this adventure the whole race

of rogues has become the object of my sincerest admiration. What wits,

what quickness, what gifts--so varied and so deftly used--what skill

in deception, what resourcefulness in danger, what self-command--"

"Yes but Fritzi what are we to do?"

"Do, ma'am? About your royal sisters? Would to heaven I had been born

a rogue!"

"Yes, but as you were not--ought I to go back and say they're only

half-sisters? Or step-sisters? Or sisters in law? Wouldn't that do?"

"With whom were you speaking?"

"Mr. Morrison."

"Ma'am, let me beg you to be more prudent with that youth than with

any one. Our young friend Cæsar Augustus is I believe harmlessness

itself compared with him. Be on your guard, ma'am. Curb that fatal

feminine appendage, your tongue. I have remarked that he watches us.

But a short time since I saw him eagerly conversing with your Grand

Ducal Highness's maid. For me he has already laid several traps that I

have only just escaped falling into by an extraordinary presence of

mind and a nimbleness in dialectic almost worthy of a born rogue."

"Oh Fritzi," said the frightened Priscilla, laying her hand on his

sleeve, "do go and tell him I didn't mean what I said."

Fritzing wiped his brow again. "I fail to understand," he said,

looking at Priscilla with worried eyes, "what there is about us that

can possibly attract any one's attention."

"Why, there isn't anything," said Priscilla, with conviction. "We've

been most careful and clever. But just now--I don't know why--I began

to think aloud."

"Think aloud?" exclaimed Fritzing, horrified. "Oh ma'am let me beseech

you never again to do that. Better a thousand times not to think at

all. What was it that your Grand Ducal Highness thought aloud?"

And Priscilla, shamefaced, told him as well as she could remember.

"I will endeavour to remedy it," said poor Fritzing, running an

agitated hand through his hair.

Priscilla sighed, and stood drooping and penitent by the dresser while

he went down the room to where Robin still leaned against the wall.

"Sir," said Fritzing--he never called Robin young man, as he did

Tussie--"my niece tells me you are unable to distinguish truth from

parable."

"What?" said Robin staring.

"You are not, sir, to suppose that when my niece described her sisters

as dead that they are not really so."

"All right sir," said Robin, his eyes beginning to twinkle.

"The only portion of the story in which my niece used allegory was

when she described them as having been smothered. These young ladies,

sir, died in the ordinary way, in their beds."

"Feather beds, sir?" asked Robin briskly.

"Sir, I have not inquired into the nature of the beds," said Fritzing

with severity.

"Is it not rather unusual," asked Robin, "for two young ladies in one

family to die at once? Were they unhealthy young ladies?"

"Sir, they did not die at once, nor were they unhealthy. They were

perfectly healthy until they--until they began to die."

"Indeed," said Robin, with an interest properly tinged with regret.

"At least, sir," he added politely, after a pause in which he and

Fritzing stared very hard at each other, "I trust I may be permitted

to express my sympathy."

"Sir, you may." And bowing stiffly Fritzing returned to Priscilla, and

with a sigh of relief informed her that he had made things right

again.

"Dear Fritzi," said Priscilla looking at him with love and admiration,

"how clever you are."