Dodo slept long and dreamlessly that night; the deep, dreamless sleep
which an evenly-balanced fatigue of body and mind so often produces,
though we get into bed feeling that our brain is too deep in some
tangle of unsolved thought to be able to extricate itself, and fall
into the dim immensity of sleep. The waking from such a sleep is not so
pleasant. The first moment of conscious thought sometimes throws the
whole burden again on to our brain with a sudden start of pain that
is almost physical. There is no transition. We were asleep and we are
awake, and we find that sleep has brought us only a doubtful gift, for
with our renewed strength of body has come the capability of keener
suffering. When we are tired, mental distress is only a dull ache,
but in the hard, convincing morning it strikes a deadlier and deeper
pain. But sometimes Nature is more merciful. She opens the sluices
of our brain quietly, and, though the water still rushes in turbidly
and roughly, yet the fact that our brain fills by degrees makes us
more able to bear the full weight, than when it comes suddenly with a
wrenching and, perhaps, a rending of our mental machinery.
It was in this way that Dodo woke. The trouble of the day came to her
gradually during the moments of waking. She dreamed she was waiting for
Jack in the garden where she had been sitting the night before. It was
perfectly dark, and she could not see him coming, but she heard a step
along the gravel path, and started up with a vague alarm, for it did
not sound like his. Then a greyness, as of dawn, began to steal over
the night, and she saw the outline of the trees against the sky, and
the outline of a man's figure near her, and it was a figure she knew
well, but it was not Jack. On this dream the sense of waking was pure
relief; it was broad day, and her maid was standing by her and saying
that it was a quarter past nine.
Dodo lay still a few moments longer, feeling a vague joy that her dream
was not true, that the helplessness of that grey moment, when she
saw that it was not Jack, was passed, that she was awake again, and
unfettered, save by thoughts which could be consciously checked and
stifled. It was with a vast sense of satisfaction that she remembered
her last act on the evening before, of which the scattered fragments
in the grate afforded ocular proof. She felt as if she had broken a
visible, tangible fetter--one strand, at any rate, of the cord that
hound her was lying broken before her eyes. If she had been quite
securely tied she could not have done that..--
The sense of successful effort, with a visible result, gave her a
sudden feeling of power to do more; the absence of bodily fatigue,
and the presence of superfluous physical health, all seemed part of a
different order of things to that of the night before. She got up and
dressed quickly, feeling more like her own self than she had done for
several days. The destruction of his photograph was really a great
achievement. She had no idea how far things had gone till she felt
the full effect of conscious effort and its result. She could see now
exactly where she had stood on the evening before, very unpleasantly
close to the edge of a nasty place, slippery and steep. Anyhow, she
was one step nearer that pleasant, green-looking spot at the top of
the slope--a quiet, pretty place, not particularly extensive, but very
pleasing, and very safe.
The three others were half-way through breakfast when Dodo came down.
Lady Grantham was feeling a little bored. Dodo flung open the door and
came marching in, whistling "See the Conquering Hero comes."
"That's by Handel, you know, Edith," she said. "Handel is very healthy,
and he never bothers you with abstruse questions in the scandalous way
that Wagner does. I'm going to have a barrel-organ made with twelve
tunes by Handel, you only have to turn the handle and out he comes.
I don't mean that for a pun. Your blood be on your own head if you
notice it. I shall have my barrel-organ put on the box of my victoria,
and the footman shall play tunes all the time I'm driving, and I shall
hold out my hat and ask for pennies. Some of Jack's tenants in Ireland
have refused to pay their rents this year, and he says we'll have to
cut off coffee after dinner if it goes on. But we shall be able to have
coffee after all with the pennies I collect. I talked so much sense
last night that I don't mean to make another coherent remark this week."
Dodo went to the sideboard and cut a large slice of ham, which she
carried back to her place on the end of her fork.
"I'm going for a ride this morning, Edith, if you've got a horse for
me," she said. "I haven't ridden for weeks. I suppose you can give me
something with four legs. Oh, I want to take a big fence again."
Dodo waved her fork triumphantly, and the slice of ham flew into the
milk-jug. She became suddenly serious, and fished for it with the empty
fork.
"The deep waters have drowned it," she remarked, "and it will be
totally uneatable for evermore. Make it into ham-sandwiches and send it
to the workhouse, Edith. _Jambon au lait_. I'm sure it would be very
supporting."
"It's unlucky to spill things, isn't it?" Dodo went on. "I suppose
it means I shall die, and shall go, we hope, to heaven, at the age
of twenty-seven. I'm twenty-nine really. I don't look it, do I, Lady
Grantham? How old are you, Edith? You're twenty-nine too, aren't you?
We're two twin dewdrops, you and I; you can be the dewdrops, and I'll
be the twin. I suppose if two babies are twins, each of them is a twin.
Twin sounds like a sort of calico. Two yards of twin, please, miss.
There was a horrid fat man in the carriage across France, who called
me miss. Jack behaved abominably. He called me miss, too, and wore the
broadest grin on his silly face all the time. He really is a perfect
baby, and I'm another, and how we shall keep house together I can't
think. It'll be like a sort of game."
Dodo was eating her breakfast with an immense appetite and alarming
rapidity, and she had finished as soon as the others.
"I want to smoke this instant minute," she said, going to the door
as soon as she had eaten all she wanted. "Where do you keep your
cigarettes, Edith? Oh, how you startled me!"
As she opened the door two large collies came bouncing in, panting from
sheer excitement.
"Oh, you sweet animals," said Dodo, sitting down on the floor and going
off at another tangent. "Come here and talk at once. Edith, may I give
them the milky ham? Here you are; drink the milk first, and then eat
the ham, and then say grace, and then you may get down."
Dodo poured the milk into two clean saucers, and set them on the floor.
There were a few drops left at the bottom of the jug, and she made a
neat little pool on the head of each of the dogs.
"What are their names?" she asked. "They ought to be Tweedledum and
Tweedledee, or Huz and Buz, or Ananias and Sapphira, or Darby and
Joan, or Harris and Ainsworth. It ought to be Harris and Ainsworth.
I'm sure, no one man could have written all that rot himself. Little
Spencer is very fond of Harrison Ainsworth; he said it was instructive
as well as palatable. I don't want to be instructed, and it isn't
palatable. I hate having little bits of information wrapped up and
given to me to swallow, like a powder in jam. Did you have to take
powders when you were little, Lady Grantham?"
Dodo's questions were purely rhetorical; they required no answer, and
she did not expect one.
"It is much nicer being completely ignorant and foolish like me," she
said. "Nobody ever expects me to know anything, or to be instructive on
any subject under the sun. Jack and I are going to be a simple little
couple, who are very nice and not at all wise. Nobody dislikes one if
one never pretends to be wise. But I like people to have a large number
of theories on every subject. Everyone is bound to form conclusions,
but what I dislike are people who have got good grounds for their
conclusions, who knock you slap down with statistics, if you try to
argue with them. It's impossible to argue with anyone who has reasons
for what he says, because you get to know sooner or later, and then the
argument is over. Arguments ought to be like Epic poems, they leave
off, they don't come to an end."
Dodo delivered herself of these surprising statements with great
rapidity, and left the room to get her cigarettes. She left the door
wide open, and in a minute or two her voice was heard from the
drawing-room, screaming to Edith.
"Edith, here's the 'Dodo Symphony'; come and play it to me this moment."
"There's not much wrong with her this morning," thought Edith, as she
went to the drawing-room, where Dodo was playing snatches of dance
music.
"Play the scherzo, Edith," commanded Dodo. "Here you are. Now, quicker,
quicker, rattle it out; make it buzz."
"Oh, I remember your playing that so well," said Dodo, as Edith
finished. "It was that morning at Winston when you insisted on going
shooting. You shot rather well, too, if I remember right."
Lady Grantham had followed Edith, and sat down, with her atmosphere of
impenetrable leisure, near the piano.
Dodo made her feel uncomfortably old. She felt Dodo's extravagantly
high spirits were a sort of milestone to show, how far she herself
had travelled from youth. It was impossible to conceive of Dodo ever
getting middle-aged or elderly. She had racked her brains in vain
to try to think of any woman of her own age who could possibly ever
have been as insolently young as Dodo. She had the habit, as I have
mentioned before, of making strangely direct remarks, and she turned to
Dodo and said:--
"I should so like to see you ten years hence. I wonder if people like
you ever grow old."
"I shall never grow old," declared Dodo confidently. "Something, I
feel sure, will happen to prevent that. I shall stop young till I go
out like a candle, or am carried off in a whirlwind or something. I
couldn't be old; it isn't in me. I shall go on talking nonsense till
the end of my life, and I can't talk nonsense if I have to sit by the
fire and keep a shawl over my mouth, which I shall have to do if I get
old. Wherefore I never shall. It's a great relief to be certain of
that. I used to bother my head about it at one time! and it suddenly
flashed upon me, about ten days ago, that I needn't bother about it any
more, as I never should be old."
"Would you dislike having to be serious very much?" asked Edith.
"It isn't that I should dislike it," said Dodo; "I simply am incapable
of it. I was serious last night for at least an hour, and a feverish
reaction has set in. I couldn't be serious for a week together, if I
was going to be beheaded the next moment, all the time. I daresay it
would be very nice to be serious, just as I'm sure it would be very
nice to live at the bottom of the sea and pull the fishes' tails, but
it isn't possible."
Dodo had quite forgotten that she had intended to go for a ride, and
she went into the garden with Nora, and played ducks and drakes on the
pond, and punted herself about, and gathered water-lilies. Then she was
seized with an irresistible desire to fish, and caught a large pike,
which refused to be killed, and Dodo had to fetch the gardener to slay
it. She then talked an astonishing amount of perfect nonsense, and
thought that it must be lunch-time. Accordingly, she went back to the
house, and was found by Edith, a quarter of an hour later, playing
hide-and-seek with the coachman's children, whom she had lured in from
the stable-yard as she went by. The rules were that the searchers
were to catch the hiders, and Dodo had entrenched herself behind the
piano, and erected an impregnable barricade, consisting of a revolving
bookcase and the music-stool. The two seekers entirely declined to
consider that she had won, and Dodo, with a show of reason, was telling
them that they hadn't caught her yet at any rate. The situation seemed
to admit of no compromise and no solution, unless, as Dodo suggested,
they got a pound or two of blasting powder and destroyed her defences.
However, a _deus ex machina_ appeared in the person of the coachman
himself, who had come in for orders, and hinted darkly that maternal
vengeance was brewing if certain persons did not wash their hands in
time for dinner, which was imminent.
"There's a telegram for you somewhere," said Edith to Dodo, as she
emerged hot and victorious. "I sent a man out into the garden with it.
The messenger is waiting for an answer."
Dodo became suddenly grave.
"I suppose he's gone to the pond," she said; "that's where I was seen
last. I'll go and get it."
She met the man walking back to the house, having looked for her in
vain. She took the telegram and opened it. It had been forwarded from
her London house. It was very short.
"I arrive in London to-day. May I call?
--"WALDENECH."
Dodo experienced, in epitome at that moment, all she had gone through
the night before. She went to a garden-seat, and remained there in
silence so long that the footman asked her: "Will there be an answer,
my lady? The messenger is waiting."
Dodo held out her hand for the telegraph form. She addressed it to the
caretaker at her London house. It also was very short:
"Address uncertain; I leave here to-day. Forward nothing."
She handed it to the man, and gave orders that it should go at once.
Dodo did not move. She sat still with her hands clasped in front of
her, unconscious of active thought, only knowing that a stream of
pictures seemed to pass before her eyes. She saw the Prince standing
on her doorstep, learning with surprise that Lady Chesterford was not
at home, and that her address was not known. She saw him turn away,
baffled but not beaten; she saw him remaining in London day after day,
waiting for the house in Eaton Square to show some signs of life. She
saw--ah, she dismissed that picture quickly.
She had one sudden impulse to call back the footman and ask for another
telegraph form; but she felt if she could only keep a firm hand on
herself for a few moments, the worst would be passed; and it was with
a sense of overwhelming relief that she saw the telegraph boy walk off
down the drive with the reply in his hand.
Then it suddenly struck her that the Prince was waiting for the answer
at Dover Station.
"How savage he will be," thought Dodo. "There will be murder at the
telegraph office if he waits for his answer there. Well, somebody must
suffer, and it will be the telegraph boys."
The idea of the Prince waiting at Dover was distinctly amusing, and
Dodo found a broad smile to bestow on the thought before she continued
examining the state of her feelings and position. The Prince's
influence over her she felt was local and personal, so to speak, and
now she had made her decision, she was surprised at the ease with
which it had been made. Had he been there in person, with his courtly
presence and his serene remoteness from anything ordinary, and had
said, in that smooth, well-modulated, voice, "May I hope to find you in
to-morrow?" Dodo felt that she would have said "Come." Her pride was in
frantic rebellion at these admissions; even the telegram she had sent
was a confession of weakness. She would not see him, because she was
afraid. Was there any other reason? she asked herself. Yes; she could
not see him because she longed to see him.
"Has it come to that?" she thought, as she crumpled up the telegram
which had fluttered down from her lap on to the grass. Dodo felt she
was quite unnecessarily honest with herself in making this admission.
But what followed? Nothing followed. She was going to marry Jack, and
be remarkably happy, and Prince Waldenech should come and stay with
them because she liked him very much, and she would be delightfully
kind to him, and Jack should like him too. Dear old Jack, she would
write him a line this minute, saying when she would be back in London.
Dodo felt a sudden spasm of anger against the Prince. What right had he
to behave like this? He was making it very hard for her, and he would
get nothing by it. Her decision was irrevocable; she would not see him
again, for some time at any rate. She would get over this ridiculous
fear of him. What was he that other men were not? What was the
position, after all? He had wanted to marry her; she had refused him
because she was engaged to Jack. If there had been no Jack--well, there
was a Jack, so it was unnecessary to pursue that any further. He had
given her his photograph, and had said several things that he should
not have said. Dodo thought of that scene with regret. She had had an
opportunity which she had missed; she might easily have made it plain
to him that his murmured speeches went beyond mere courtesy. Instead of
that she had said she would always regard him as a great friend, and
hoped he would see her often. She tapped the ground impatiently as she
thought of missed opportunities. It was stupid, inconceivably stupid
of her. Then he had followed her to England, and sent this telegram.
She did not feel safe. She longed, and dreaded to see him again. It
was too absurd that she should have to play this gigantic game of
hide-and-seek. "I shall have to put on a blue veil and green goggles
when I go back to London," thought Dodo. "Well, the seekers have to
catch the hiders, and he hasn't caught me yet."
Meanwhile the Prince was smoking a cigar at Dover Station. The telegram
had not come, though he had waited an hour, and he had settled to give
it another half-hour and then go on to London. He was not at all angry;
it was as good as a game of chess. The Prince was very fond of chess.
He enjoyed exercising a calculating long-sightedness, and he felt that
the Marchioness of Chesterford elect was a problem that enabled him to
exercise this faculty, of which he had plenty, to the full.
He had a sublime sense of certainty as to what he was going to do. He
fully intended to marry Dodo, and he admitted no obstacles. She was
engaged to Jack, was she? So much the worse for Jack. She wished to
marry Jack, did she? So much the worse for her, and none the worse,
possibly the better, for him. As it was quite certain that he himself
was going to marry Dodo, these little hitches were entertaining than
otherwise. It is more fun to catch your salmon after a quarter of an
hour's rather exciting fight with him than to net him. Half the joy
of a possession lies in the act of acquisition, and the pleasure of
acquisition consists, at least in half of the excitement attendant
on it. To say that the Prince ever regarded anyone's feelings would
be understating the truth. The fact that his will worked its way in
opposition to, and at the expense of others, afforded him a distinct
and appreciable pleasure. If he wanted anything he went straight for
it, and regarded neither man, nor devil, nor angel; and he wanted Dodo.
His mind, then, was thoroughly made up. She seemed to him immensely
original and very complete. He read her, he thought, like a book, and
the book was very interesting reading. His sending of the telegram
with "Reply paid," was a positive stroke of genius. Dodo had told him
that she was going straight to London, but, as we have seen, she did
not stop the night there, but went straight on to Edith's home in
Berkshire. There were two courses open to her; either to reply "Yes"
or "No" to the telegram, or to leave it unanswered. If she left it
"unanswered" it would delight him above measure, and it seemed that his
wishes were to be realised. Not answering the telegram would imply that
she did not think good to see him, and he judged that this decision was
probably prompted by something deeper than mere indifference to his
company. It must be dictated by a strong motive. His calculations were
a little at fault, because Dodo had not stopped in London, but this
made no difference, as events had turned out, to the correctness of his
deductions.
He very much wished Dodo to be influenced by strong motives in her
dealings with him. He would not have accepted, even as a gift, the
real, quiet liking she had for Jack. Real, quiet likings seemed to him
to be as dull as total indifference. He would not have objected to
her regarding him with violent loathing, that would be something to
correct; and his experience in such affairs was that strong sympathies
and antipathies were more akin to each other than quiet affection or
an apathetic indifference were to either. He walked up and down the
platform with the smile of a man who is waiting for an interesting
situation in a theatrical representation to develop itself. He had no
wish to hurry it. The by-play seemed to him to be very suitable, and he
bought a morning paper. He glanced through the leaders, and turned to
the small society paragraphs. The first that struck his eye was this:
"The Marchioness of Chesterford arrived in London yesterday afternoon
from the Continent."
He felt it was the most orthodox way of bringing the scene to its
climax. Enter a newsboy, who hands paper to Prince, and exit. Prince
unfolds paper and reads the news of--well, of what he is expecting.
He snipped the paragraph neatly out from the paper, and put it in his
card-case. His valet was standing by the telegraph office, waiting for
the message. The Prince beckoned to him.
"There will be no telegram," he said. "We leave by the next train."
The Prince had a carriage reserved for him, and he stepped in with a
sense of great satisfaction. He even went so far as to touch his hat
in response to the obeisances of the obsequious guard, and told his
valet to see that the man got something. He soon determined on his next
move--a decided "check," and rather an awkward one; and for the rest
of his journey he amused himself by looking out of the window, and
admiring the efficient English farming. All the arrangements seemed to
him to be very solid and adequate. The hedges were charming. The cart
horses were models of sturdy strength, and the hop harvest promised to
be very fine. He was surprised when they drew near London. The journey
had been shorter than he expected.
He gave a few directions to his valet about luggage, and drove off to
Eaton Square.
The door was opened by an impenetrable caretaker.
"Is Lady Chesterford in?" asked the Prince.
"Her ladyship is not in London, sir," replied the man.
The Prince smiled. Dodo was evidently acting up to her refusal to
answer his telegram.
"Ah, just so," he remarked. "Please take this to her, and say I am
waiting."
He drew from his pocket a card, and the cutting from the _Morning Post_.
"Her ladyship is not in London," the man repeated.
"Perhaps you would let me have her address," said the Prince, feeling
in his pockets.
"A telegram has come to-day, saying that her ladyship's address is
uncertain," replied the caretaker.
"Would you be so good as to let me see the telegram?"
Certainly, he would fetch it.
The Prince waited serenely. Everything was going admirably.
The telegram was fetched. It had been handed in at Wokingham station at
a quarter to one. "After she had received my telegram," reflected the
Prince.
"Do you know with whom she has been staying?" he asked blandly.
"With Miss Staines."
The Prince was very much obliged. He left a large gratuity in the man's
hand, and wished him good afternoon.
He drove straight to his house, and sent for his valet, whom he could
trust implicitly, and who had often been employed on somewhat delicate
affairs.
"Take the first train for Wokingham to-morrow morning," he said. "Find
out where a Miss Staines lives. Inquire whether Lady Chesterford left
the house to-day."
"Yes, your Highness."
"And hold your tongue about the whole business," said the Prince
negligently, turning away and lighting a cigar. "And send me a telegram
from Wokingham: 'Left yesterday,' or 'Still here.'"
The Prince was sitting over a late breakfast on the following morning,
when a telegram was brought in. He read it, and his eyes twinkled with
genuine amusement.
"I think," he said to himself, "I think that's rather neat."