"They've got my measurements. This dress can't stand much more. It's
the one I've worn all the time. The soaking it got yesterday was very
bad for it. You don't see such things, but if you did you'd probably
get a tremendous shock."
"Ma'am, if you write to Paris you must give your own name, which of
course is impossible. They will send nothing to an unknown customer in
England called Neumann-Schultz."
"Oh but we'd send the money with the order. That's quite easy, isn't
it?"
"Perfectly easy," said Fritzing in an oddly exasperated voice; at once
adding, still more snappily, "Might I request your Grand Ducal
Highness to have the goodness not to put my Æschylus--a most valuable
edition--head downwards on the shelf? It is a manner of treating books
often to be observed in housemaids and similar ignorants. But you,
ma'am, have been trained by me I trust in other and more reverent ways
of handling what is left to us of the mighty spirits of the past."
"I'm sorry," said Priscilla, hastily turning the Æschylus right side
up again; and by launching forth into a long and extremely bitter
dissertation on the various ways persons of no intellectual
conscience have of ill-treating books, he got rid of some of his
agitation and fixed her attention for the time on questions less
fraught with complications than clothes from Paris.
About half-past two they were still sitting over the eggs and bread
and butter that Priscilla ordered three times a day and that Fritzing
ate with unquestioning obedience, when the Shuttleworth victoria
stopped in front of the cottage and Lady Shuttleworth got out.
Fritzing, polite man, hastened to meet her, pushing aside the footman
and offering his arm. She looked at him vaguely, and asked if his
niece were at home.
"Certainly," said Fritzing, leading her into Priscilla's parlour.
"Shall I inquire if she will receive you?"
"Do," said Lady Shuttleworth, taking no apparent notice of the odd
wording of this question. "Tussie isn't well," she said the moment
Priscilla appeared, fixing her eyes on her face but looking as though
she hardly saw her, as though she saw past her, through her, to
something beyond, while she said a lesson learned by rote.
"Isn't he? Oh I'm sorry," said Priscilla.
"He caught cold last Sunday at your treat. He oughtn't to have run
those races with the boys. He can't--stand--much."
Priscilla looked at her questioningly. The old lady's face was quite
set and calm, but there had been a queer catch in her voice at the
last words.
"Why does he do such things, then?" asked Priscilla, feeling vaguely
distressed.
"Ah yes, my dear--why? That is a question for you to answer, is it
not?"
"For me?"
"On Tuesday night," continued Lady Shuttleworth, "he was ill when he
left home to come here. He would come. It was a terrible night for a
delicate boy to go out. And he didn't stay here, I understand. He went
out to buy something after closing time, and stood a long while trying
to wake the people up."
"Yes," said Priscilla, feeling guilty, "I--that was my fault. He went
for me."
"Yes my dear. Since then he has been ill. I've come to ask you if
you'll drive back with me and see if--if you cannot persuade him that
you are happy. He seems to be much--troubled."
"Troubled?"
"He seems to be afraid you are not happy. You know," she added with a
little quavering smile, "Tussie is very kind. He is very unselfish. He
takes everybody's burdens on his shoulders. He seems to be quite
haunted by the idea that your life here is unendurably uncomfortable,
and it worries him dreadfully that he can't get to you to set things
straight. I think if he were to see you, and you were very cheerful,
and--and smiled, my dear, it might help to get him over this."
"Get him over this?" echoed Priscilla. "Is he so ill?"
Lady Shuttleworth looked at her and said nothing.
"Of course I'll come," said Priscilla, hastily ringing the bell.
"But you must not look unhappy," said Lady Shuttleworth, laying her
hand on the girl's arm, "that would make matters ten times worse. You
must promise to be as gay as possible."
"Yes, yes--I'll be gay," promised Priscilla, while her heart became as
lead within her at the thought that she was the cause of poor Tussie's
sufferings. But was she really, she asked herself during the drive?
What had she done but accept help eagerly offered? Surely it was very
innocent to do that? It was what she had been doing all her life, and
people had been delighted when she let them be kind to her, and
certainly had not got ill immediately afterwards. Were you never to
let anybody do anything for you lest while they were doing it they
should get wet feet and things, and then their colds would be upon
your head? She was very sorry Tussie should be ill, dreadfully sorry.
He was so kind and good that it was impossible not to like him. She
did like him. She liked him quite as well as most young men and much
better than many. "I'm afraid you are very unhappy," she said suddenly
to Lady Shuttleworth, struck by the look on her face as she leaned
back, silent, in her corner.
"I do feel rather at my wits' end," said Lady Shuttleworth. "For
instance, I'm wondering whether what I'm doing now isn't a great
mistake."
"What you are doing now?"
"Taking you to see Tussie."
"Oh but I promise to be cheerful. I'll tell him how comfortable we
are. He'll see I look well taken care of."
"But for all that I'm afraid he may--he may--"
"Why, we're going to be tremendously taken care of. Even he will see
that. Only think--I've engaged twenty-five cooks."
"Twenty-five cooks?" echoed Lady Shuttleworth, staring in spite of her
sorrows. "But isn't my kitchenmaid--?"
"Oh she left us almost at once. She couldn't stand my uncle. He is
rather difficult to stand at first. You have to know him quite a long
while before you can begin to like him. And I don't think kitchenmaids
ever would begin."
"But my dear, twenty-five cooks?"
And Priscilla explained how and why she had come by them; and though
Lady Shuttleworth, remembering the order till now prevailing in the
village and the lowness of the wages, could not help thinking that
here was a girl more potent for mischief than any girl she had ever
met, yet a feeble gleam of amusement did, as she listened, slant
across the inky blackness of her soul.
Tussie was sitting up in bed with a great many pillows behind him,
finding immense difficulty in breathing, when his mother, her bonnet
off and every trace of having been out removed, came in and said Miss
Neumann-Schultz was downstairs.
"Downstairs? Here? In this house?" gasped Tussie, his eyes round with
wonder and joy.
"Yes. She--called. Would you like her to come up and see you?"
"Oh mother!"
Lady Shuttleworth hurried out. How could she bear this, she thought,
stumbling a little as though she did not see very well. She went
downstairs with the sound of that Oh mother throbbing in her ears.
Tussie's temperature, high already, went up by leaps during the few
minutes of waiting. He gave feverish directions to the nurse about a
comfortable chair being put exactly in the right place, about his
pillows being smoothed, his medicine bottles hidden, and was very
anxious that the flannel garment he was made to wear when ill, a
garment his mother called a nightingale--not after the bird but the
lady--and that was the bluest flannel garment ever seen, should be
arranged neatly over his narrow chest.
The nurse looked disapproving. She did not like her patients to be
happy. Perhaps she was right. It is always better, I believe, to be
cautious and careful, to husband your strength, to be deadly prudent
and deadly dull. As you would poison, so should you avoid doing what
the poet calls living too much in your large hours. The truly prudent
never have large hours; nor should you, if you want to be comfortable.
And you get your reward, I am told, in living longer; in having, that
is, a few more of those years that cluster round the end, during which
you are fed and carried and washed by persons who generally grumble.
Who wants to be a flame, doomed to be blown out by the same gust of
wind that has first fanned it to its very brightest? If you are not a
flame you cannot, of course, be blown out. Gusts no longer shake you.
Tempests pass you by untouched. And if besides you have the additional
advantage of being extremely smug, extremely thick-skinned, you shall
go on living till ninety, and not during the whole of that time be
stirred by so much as a single draught.
Priscilla came up determined to be so cheerful that she began to smile
almost before she got to the door. "I've come to tell you how
splendidly we're getting on at the cottage," she said taking Tussie's
lean hot hand, the shell of her smile remaining but the heart and
substance gone out of it, he looked so pitiful and strange.
"Really? Really?" choked Tussie, putting the other lean hot hand over
hers and burning all the coolness out of it.
The nurse looked still more disapproving. She had not heard Sir
Augustus had a _fiancée_, and even if he had this was no time for
philandering. She too had noticed the voice in which he had said Oh
mother, and she saw by his eyes that his temperature had gone up. Who
was this shabby young lady? She felt sure that no one so shabby could
be his _fiancée_, and she could only conclude that Lady Shuttleworth
must be mad.
"Nurse, I'm going to stay here a little," said Lady Shuttleworth.
"I'll call you when I want you."
"I think, madam, Sir Augustus ought not--" began the nurse.
"No, no, he shall not. Go and have forty winks, nurse."
And the nurse had to go; people generally did when Lady Shuttleworth
sent them.
"Sit down--no don't--stay a moment like this," said Tussie, his breath
coming in little jerks,--"unless you are tired? Did you walk?"
"I'm afraid you are very ill," said Priscilla, leaving her hand in his
and looking down at him with a face that all her efforts could not
induce to smile.
"Oh I'll be all right soon. How good of you to come. You've not been
hungry since?"
"No, no," said Priscilla, stroking his hands with her free hand and
giving them soothing pats as one would to a sick child.
"Really not? I've thought of that ever since. I've never got your face
that night out of my head. What had happened? While I was away--what
had happened?"
"Nothing--nothing had happened," said Priscilla hastily. "I was tired.
I had a mood. I get them, you know. I get angry easily. Then I like
to be alone till I'm sorry."
"But what had made you angry? Had I--?"
"No, never. You have never been anything but good and kind. You've
been our protecting spirit since we came here."
Tussie laughed shrilly, and immediately was seized by a coughing fit.
Lady Shuttleworth stood at the foot of the bed watching him with a
face from which happiness seemed to have fled for ever. Priscilla grew
more and more wretched, caught, obliged to stand there, distractedly
stroking his hands in her utter inability to think of anything else to
do.
"A nice protecting spirit," gasped Tussie derisively, when he could
speak. "Look at me here, tied down to this bed for heaven knows how
long, and not able to do a thing for you."
"But there's nothing now to do. We're quite comfortable. We are
really. Do, do believe it."
"Are you only comfortable, or are you happy as well?"
"Oh, we're _very_ happy," said Priscilla with all the emphasis she
could get into her voice; and again she tried, quite unsuccessfully,
to wrench her mouth into a smile.
"Then, if you're happy, why do you look so miserable?"
He was gazing up into her face with eyes whose piercing brightness
would have frightened the nurse. There was no shyness now about
Tussie. There never is about persons whose temperature is 102.
"Miserable?" repeated Priscilla. She tried to smile; looked helplessly
at Lady Shuttleworth; looked down again at Tussie; and stammering
"Because you are so ill and it's all my fault," to her horror, to her
boundless indignation at herself, two tears, big and not to be hidden,
rolled down her face and dropped on to Tussie's and her clasped hands.
Tussie struggled to sit up straight. "Look, mother, look--" he cried,
gasping, "my beautiful one--my dear and lovely one--my darling--she's
crying--I've made her cry--now never tell me I'm not a brute
again--see, see what I've done!"
"Oh"--murmured Priscilla, in great distress and amazement. Was the
poor dear delirious? And she tried to get her hands away.
But Tussie would not let them go. He held them in a clutch that seemed
like hot iron in both his, and dragging himself nearer to them covered
them with wild kisses.
Lady Shuttleworth was appalled. "Tussie," she said in a very even
voice, "you must let Miss Neumann-Schultz go now. You must be quiet
again now. Let her go, dear. Perhaps she'll--come again."
"Oh mother, leave me alone," cried Tussie, lying right across his
pillows, his face on Priscilla's hands. "What do you know of these
things? This is my darling--this is my wife--dream of my spirit--star
of my soul--"
"Never in this world!" cried Lady Shuttleworth, coming round to the
head of the bed as quickly as her shaking limbs would take her.
"Yes, yes, come here if you like, mother--come close--listen while I
tell her how I love her. I don't care who hears. Why should I? If I
weren't ill I'd care. I'd be tongue-tied--I'd have gone on being
tongue-tied for ever. Oh I bless being ill, I bless being ill--I can
say anything, anything--"
"Tussie, don't say it," entreated his mother. "The less you say now
the more grateful you'll be later on. Let her go."
"Listen to her!" cried Tussie, interrupting his kissing of her hands
to look up at Priscilla and smile with a sort of pitying wonder, "Let
you go? Does one let one's life go? One's hope of salvation go? One's
little precious minute of perfect happiness go? When I'm well again I
shall be just as dull and stupid as ever, just such a shy fool, not
able to speak--"
"But it's a gracious state"--stammered poor Priscilla.
"Loving you? Loving you?"
"No, no--not being able to speak. It's always best--"
"It isn't. It's best to be true to one's self, to show honestly what
one feels, as I am now--as I am now--" And he fell to kissing her
hands again.
"Tussie, this isn't being honest," said Lady Shuttleworth sternly,
"it's being feverish."
"Listen to her! Was ever a man interrupted like this in the act of
asking a girl to marry him?"
"Tussie!" cried Lady Shuttleworth.
"Ethel, will you marry me? Because I love you so? It's an absurd
reason--the most magnificently absurd reason, but I know there's no
other why you should--"
Priscilla was shaken and stricken as she had never yet been; shaken
with pity, stricken with remorse. She looked down at him in dismay
while he kissed her hands with desperate, overwhelming love. What was
she to do? Lady Shuttleworth tried to draw her away. What was she to
do? If Tussie was overwhelmed with love, she was overwhelmed with
pity.
"Ethel--Ethel--" gasped Tussie, kissing her hands, looking up at her,
kissing them again.
Pity overcame her, engulfed her. She bent her head down to his and
laid her cheek an instant on the absurd flannel nightingale, tenderly,
apologetically.
"Ethel--Ethel," choked Tussie, "will you marry me?"
"Dear Tussie," she whispered in a shaky whisper, "I promise to answer
you when you are well. Not yet. Not now. Get quite well, and then if
you still want an answer I promise to give you one. Now let me go."
"Ethel," implored Tussie, looking at her with a wild entreaty in his
eyes, "will you kiss me? Just once--to help me to live--"
And in her desire to comfort him she stooped down again and did kiss
him, soberly, almost gingerly, on the forehead.
He let her hands slide away from between his and lay back on his
pillows in a state for the moment of absolute beatitude. He shut his
eyes, and did not move while she crept softly out of the room.
"What have you done?" asked Lady Shuttleworth trembling, when they
were safely in the passage and the door shut behind them.
"I can't think--I can't think," groaned Priscilla, wringing her hands.
And, leaning against the balusters, then and there in that most
public situation she began very bitterly to cry.