"I can't make up my mind," I repeated.
She stood for a moment rather stiffly, staring away towards the blue
hills of Alsace.
Then she turned with a smiling and undisturbed countenance to the
Fürstin. Her crimson had given place to white. "The triumph of it," she
said with a slight gesture to the flamboyant Teutonism that towered
over us, and boldly repeating words I had used scarcely five minutes
before, "makes me angry. They conquered--ungraciously...."
She had overlooked something in her effort to seem entirely
self-possessed. She collapsed. "My dear!" she cried,--"I forgot!"
"Oh! I'm only a German by marriage!" cried the Fürstin. "And I can
assure you I quite understand--about the triumph of it...." She surveyed
the achievement of her countrymen. "It is--ungracious. But indeed it's
only a sort of artlessness if you see the thing properly.... It's not
vulgarity--it's childishness.... They've hardly got over it yet--their
intense astonishment at being any good at war.... That large throaty
Victory! She's not so militant as she seems. She's too plump.... Of
course what a German really appreciates is nutrition. But I quite agree
with you both.... I'm beginning to want my tea, Mr. Stratton....
Rachel!"
Her eyes had been on Rachel as she chattered. The girl had turned to the
distant hills again, and had forgotten even to pretend to listen to the
answer she had evoked. Now she came back sharply to the sound of her
name.
"Tea?" said the Fürstin.
"Oh!" cried Rachel. "Yes. Yes, certainly. Rather. Tea."
§ 3
It was clear to me that after that I must as people say "have things
out" with Rachel. But before I could do anything of the sort the
Fürstin pounced upon me. She made me sit up that night after her other
guests had gone to their rooms, in the cosy little turret apartment she
called her study and devoted to the reading of whatever was most
notorious in contemporary British fiction. "Sit down," said she, "by the
fire in that chair there and tell me all about it. It's no good your
pretending you don't know what I mean. What are you up to with her, and
why don't you go straight to your manifest destiny as a decent man
should?"
"Because manifestly it isn't my destiny," I said.
"Stuff," said the Fürstin.
"You know perfectly well why I am out of England."
"Everybody knows--except of course quite young persons who are being
carefully brought up."
"Does _she_ know?"
"She doesn't seem to."
"Well, that's what I want to know."
"Need she know?"
"Well, it does seem rather essential----"
"I suppose if you think so----"
"Will you tell her?"
"Tell her yourself, if she must be told. Down there in Surrey, she
_must_ have seen things and heard things. But I don't see that she wants
a lot of ancient history."
"If it is ancient history!"
"Oh! two years and a half,--it's an Era."
I made no answer to that, but sat staring into the fire while my cousin
watched my face. At length I made my confession. "I don't think it is
ancient history at all," I said. "I think if I met Mary again now----"
"You mean Lady Mary Justin?"
"Of course."
"It would be good for your mind if you remembered to call her by her
proper name.... You think if you met her again you two would begin to
carry on. But you see,--you aren't going to meet her. Everybody will see
that doesn't happen."
"I mean that I---- Well----"
"You'd better not say it. Besides, it's nonsense. I doubt if you've
given her a thought for weeks and weeks."
"Until I came here perhaps that was almost nearly true. But you've
stirred me up, sweet cousin, and old things, old memories and habits
have come to the surface again. Mary wrote herself over my life--in all
sorts of places.... I can't tell you. I've never talked of her to
anyone. I'm not able, very well, to talk about my feelings.... Perhaps a
man of my sort--doesn't love twice over."
I disregarded a note of dissent from my cousin. "That was all so magic,
all my youth, all my hope, all the splendid adventure of it. Why should
one pretend?... I'm giving none of that to Rachel. It isn't there any
more to give...."
"One would think," remarked the Fürstin, "there was no gift of healing."
She waited for me to speak, and then irritated by my silence struck at
me sharply with that wicked little tongue of hers.
"Do you think that Lady Mary Justin thinks of you--as you think of her?
Do you think she hasn't settled down?"