The news of their engagement soon got about the hotel, and caused a
much more favourable view to be taken of Dodo's behaviour to Jack, in
the minds of the hostile camp. "Of course, if she was engaged to Lord
Chesterford all along," said the enemy, "it puts her conduct in an
entirely different light. They say he's immensely rich, and we hope
we shall meet them in London. Her acting the other night was really
extremely clever."
Mrs. Vane gave quite a number of select little teas on the verandah to
the penitent, and showed her teeth most graciously. "Darling Dodo, of
course it's a great happiness to me," she would say, "and the Marquis
is such a very old friend of ours. So charming, isn't he? Yes. And they
are simply devoted to each other."--The speeches seemed quite familiar
still to her.
Dodo regarded the sudden change in the minds of the "shocked section"
with much amusement. "It appears I'm quite proper after all," she
thought. "That's a blessing anyhow. The colonial bishop will certainly
ask me to share his mitre, now he knows I'm a good girl."
"Jack," she called out to him as he passed, "you said the salon smelled
like a church this morning. Well, it's only me. I diffuse an odour of
sanctity, I find."
The Princess expressed her opinions on the engagement.
"I'm sorry that you can't marry my brother," she said. "You would have
suited him admirably, and it would have been only natural for you to
stay with your brother-in-law. What shall I give you for a wedding
present? There's the bear-skin prayer-book, if you like. Waldenech is
very cross about it. He says you told him he mightn't go away, so he
has to stop. Are you going out on the picnic? Waldenech's getting up a
picnic. He's ordered champagne. Do you think it will be amusing? They
will drink the health of you and Lord Chesterford. If you'll promise to
reply in suitable terms I'll come. Why didn't you come and see me this
morning? I suppose you were engaged. Of course my brother was proposing
to you after breakfast, and then you had to go and talk to your young
man. Come to the picnic, Dodo. You shall show me how to throw stones."
They were going to walk up to a sufficiently remote spot in the rising
ground to the east of Zermatt, and find their lunch ready for them. The
Prince had no sympathy with meat sandwiches and a little sherry out
of a flask, and his sister had expressed her antipathy to fresh eggs;
so he had told the hotel-keeper that lunch would be wanted, and that
there were to be no hard-boiled eggs and no sandwiches, and plenty of
deck-chairs.
The Princess firmly refused to walk as far, and ordered what she said
"was less unlike a horse than the others"; and asked Dodo to wait for
her, as she knew she wouldn't be in time. She was one of those people
who find it quite impossible to be punctual at whatever time she
had an engagement. She was always twenty minutes late, but, as Dodo
remarked, "That's the same thing as being punctual when people know
you. I think punctuality is a necessity," she added, "more than a
virtue."
"Haven't you got a proverb about making a virtue of necessity?" said
the Princess vaguely. "That's what I do on the rare occasions on which
I am punctual. All my virtues are the result of necessity, which is
another word for inclination."
"Yes, inclination is necessity when it's sufficiently strong," said
Dodo; "consequently, even when it's weak, it's still got a touch of
necessity about it. That really is a comfortable doctrine. I shall
remember that next time I want not to go to church."
"My husband is a very devout Roman Catholic," remarked the Princess.
"He's got an admirable plan of managing such things. First of all, he
does what his conscience--he's got a very fine conscience--tells him he
shouldn't. It must be very amusing to have a conscience. You need never
feel lonely. Then he goes and confesses, which makes it all right, and
to make himself quite safe he gives a hundred roubles to the poor.
He's very rich, you know; it doesn't matter to him a bit. That gets
him an indulgence. I fancy he's minus about six weeks' purgatory. He's
got a balance. I expect he'll give it me. You have to be very rich to
have a balance. He pays for his pleasures down in hard cash, you see;
it's much better than running up a bill. He is very anxious about my
spiritual welfare sometimes."
"Does he really believe all that?" asked Dodo.
"Dear me, yes," said the Princess. "He has a most childlike faith.
If the priest told him there was an eligible building site in heaven
going cheap, he'd buy it at once. Personally I don't believe all those
things. They don't seem to me in the least probable."
"What do you believe?" asked Dodo.
"Oh, I've got plenty of beliefs," said the Princess. "I believe it's
wiser being good than bad, and fitter being sane than mad. I don't do
obviously low things, I am sorry for the poor devils of this world, I'm
not mean, I'm not coarse, I don't care about taking an unfair advantage
of other people. My taste revolts against immorality; I should as soon
think of going about with dirty nails. If I believed what the priests
tell me I should be a very good woman, according to their lights. As it
is, though my conduct in all matters of right and wrong is identical
with what it would be, I'm one of the lost."
"English people are just as irrational in their way," said Dodo, "only
they don't do such things in cold blood. They appeal to little morbid
emotions, excited by Sunday evening and slow tunes in four sharps. I
went to a country church once, on a lovely summer evening, and we all
sang, 'Hark, hark, my soul!' at the tops of our voices, and I walked
home with my husband, feeling that I'd never do anything naughty any
more, and Maud and her husband, and he and I, sang hymns after dinner.
It was simply delicious. The world was going to be a different place
ever afterwards, and I expected to die in the night. But I didn't, you
know, and next morning all the difference was that I'd caught a cold
sitting in a hayfield--and that was the end."
"No, it's no use," said the Princess. "But I envy those who have 'the
religion,' as they say in our country. It makes things so much easier."
"What I couldn't help wondering," said Dodo, "was whether I should be
any better if I had kept up the feeling of that Sunday night. I should
have stopped at home singing hymns, I suppose, instead of going out
to dinner; but what then? Should I have been less objectionable when
things went wrong? Should I have been any kinder to--to anybody? I
don't believe it."
"Of course you wouldn't," said the Princess. "You go about it the wrong
way. We neither of us can help it, because we're not made like that.
It would be as sensible to cultivate eccentricity in order to become
a genius. People who have 'the religion' like singing hymns, but they
didn't get the religion by singing hymns. They sing hymns because
they've got it. What is so absurd is to suppose, as my husband does,
that a hundred roubles at stated intervals produces salvation. That's
his form of singing hymns, and the priests encourage him. I gave it up
long ago. If I thought singing hymns or encouraging priests would do
any good, I'd sell my diamonds and buy a harmonium, and give the rest
away. But I don't think anything so absurd."
"David was so sensible," said Dodo. "I've got a great affection for
David. He told his people to sing praises with understanding. You see
you've got to understand it first. I wonder if he would have understood
'Hark, hark, my soul!' I didn't, but it made me feel good inside."
"Somebody said religion was morality touched with emotion," said the
Princess. "My husband hasn't got any morality, and his emotions are
those excited by killing bears. Yet the priests say he's wonderfully
religious."
"There's something wrong somewhere," said Dodo.
The party were waiting for them when they came up. The Prince led Dodo
to a place next him, and the Princess sat next Jack.
"I'm so sorry," said Dodo; "I'm afraid we're dreadfully late."
"My sister is never in time," said the Prince. "She kept the Emperor
waiting half an hour once. His Imperial Majesty swore."
"Oh, you're doing me an injustice,", said she. "I was in time the other
day."
"Let us do her justice," said the Prince. "She was in time, but that
was because she forgot what the time was."
"That's the cause of my being unpunctual, dear," remarked the Princess.
"To-day it was also because the thing like a horse wouldn't go, and
Dodo and I talked a good deal."
Mrs. Vane was eating her chicken with great satisfaction. A picnic with
a Prince was so much capital to her.
"I can't think why we don't all go and live in the country always,"
she said, "and have little picnics like this every day. Such a good
idea of your Highness. So original--_and_ such a charming day."
The Prince remarked that picnics were not his invention, and that the
credit for the weather was due elsewhere.
"Oh, but you said last night you were sure it was going to be fine,"
said Mrs. Vane, floundering a little. "Dodo, dear, didn't you hear the
Prince say so?"
"Here's to the health of our Zadkiel," said Dodo, "may his shadow, etc:
Drink to old Zadkiel, Jack, the founder of the feast, who stands us
champagne. I'll stand you a drink when you come to see us in England.
His Serenity," she said, emptying her glass.
"What a lot of things I am," murmured the Prince. "Don't forget I'm a
poor devil whom you pity as well."
"Do you find pity a satisfactory diet?" asked Dodo saucily.
She was determined not to be frightened of him any more.
The Prince decided on a bold stroke.
"Pity is akin to love," he said below his breath.
But he had found his match, for the time being, at any rate.
"Don't mistake it for it's cousin, then," laughed Dodo.
The conversation became more general. The Princess said the mountains
were too high and large, and she didn't like them. Jack remarked that
it was purely a matter of degree, and the Princess explained that it
was exactly what she meant, they were so much bigger than she was. Mr.
Spencer plunged violently into the conversation, and said that Mount
Everest was twice as high as the Matterhorn, and you never saw the top.
The Princess said, "Oh," and Jack asked how they knew how high it was,
if the top was never seen, and Mr. Spencer explained vaguely that they
did it with sextants. Maud said she thought he meant theodolites, and
Dodo asked a bad riddle about sextons. On the whole the picnic went off
as well as could be expected, and Dodo determined to have lunch out of
doors every day for the rest of her natural life.
After lunch Mr. Spencer and Maud wandered away to pick flowers,
presumably. Mrs. Vane moved her chair into the shade, in such a
position that she could command a view of the mountain, and fell
asleep. Jack smoked a short black pipe, chiefly because the Prince
offered him a cigar, and Dodo smoked cigarettes and ate cherries
backwards, beginning with the stalk, and induced the Princess to do the
same, receiving two seconds' start. "It's a form of throwing stones,"
Dodo explained. The "most distressin'" old gentleman was sighted under
a large white umbrella, moving slowly up the path a little below them,
and Dodo insisted on inviting him to lunch, as it was certain that
he had just left the _table d'hôte_. "He thought it simply charming
of me," she said, as she came back. "He's quite forgiven Jack for
shouting. Besides, I took him the Princess's compliments. He's English,
you know."