Tales of two people

She made no reply and, raising my eyes to her face, I found her looking at me with an unmistakable gleam of amusement.

“Do you think this very funny?” she asked.

“I think it’s deplorable,” I answered promptly.

“It’s very simple. I owe Mr Thistleton two hundred pounds. I do this till I have worked it off.”

“How many years?”

“Several, monsieur.”

“And after that?”

“The children will grow up.”

“Yes. And then?”

“Mrs Thistleton will give Fräulein Friedenburg a good character.”

“Meanwhile you work for nothing?”

“No. For clothes, for food, to pay my debt.”

“And how do you like it?”

That question of mine, which sounds brutal, was inspired and, as I still believe, excused by the satirical amusement in her eyes; our previous meetings had shown me no such expression. Her answer to the question had its irony too. She turned over a dozen pages of the big book and came on a picture. She held the book out to me, saying —

“That’s my home.”

I looked at the picture of her home, the great grim castle towering aloft on the river bank. A few centuries ago the Turks had fallen back beaten from before these giant walls. Then I glanced round Mrs Thistleton’s gentle trim old garden.

“I think you’ve answered my question,” I said.

She closed the book, with a shrug of her thin little shoulders, and sat silent for a moment. The oval of her face was certainly beautiful, and the thick masses of her hair were dark as night, or the inside of a dungeon in her castle of Friedenburg. (I liked to think of her having dungeons, though I really don’t know whether she had.)

“And is it for ever?” I asked.

She leant over towards me and whispered: “They know where I am.” An intense excitement seemed to be fighting against the calm she imposed on herself; but it lasted only a moment. The next instant she fell back in her chair with a sigh of dejection; a listless despair spread over her face; the satirical gleam illuminated no more the depths of her eyes. The veil had fallen over the Princess again. Only Fräulein sat beside me.

Then I made a fool of myself.

“Are there no men in Boravia?” I asked in a low voice.

This at Southam Parva, in the twentieth century, and to the governess! Moreover, from me, who have always been an advanced Liberal in politics, and hold that the Boravians are at entire liberty to change the line of succession, or to set up a republic if they be so disposed! None the less, in the Thistletons’ garden that afternoon, I did ask Fräulein whether there were men in Boravia.

She answered the question in the words she had used before.

“They know where I am,” she said, but now languidly, with half-closed eyes.

That I might be saved from further folly, from offering my strong right arm and all my worldly goods (I was at the moment overdrawn at the bank) as a contribution towards a Legitimist crusade in Boravia – Fortune sent interruption. The family came back from the bazaar, and most of them trooped into the garden. Charley Miles was with them, having joined the party at the fête on his way back from town. As they all came up Fräulein put the big book – with its picture of her home – behind her back; I rose and walked forward to greet Mrs Thistleton. In an instant Charley, passing me with a careless “Hallo, Treg!” had seated himself by Fräulein and begun to talk to her with great vivacity and every appearance of pleasure – indeed of admiration.

I joined Mrs Thistleton – and Bessie, who stood beside her mother. Bessie was frowning; that frown was to me the first announcement of a new situation. Bessie was grown up now, or so held herself, and she and Charley were great friends. Charley was doing remarkably well on the Stock Exchange, making his three or four thousand a year; I remembered that Thistleton had thrown out a conjecture to that effect in conversation with me once. As the father of a family of eight, Thistleton could not neglect such a circumstance. And Charley was a good-looking fellow. The frown on Miss Bessie’s brow set all this train of thought moving in my mind. The fact that, the next moment, Miss Bessie swung round and marched off into the house served to accelerate its progress.

Mrs Thistleton cast a glance at the couple under the tree – Charley Miles and Fräulein – and then suggested that I should go with her and see the chrysanthemums. We went to see the chrysanthemums accordingly, but I think we were both too preoccupied to appreciate them properly.

“It’s a very difficult position in some ways,” said Mrs Thistleton suddenly.

It was so difficult as to be almost impossible. I paid my compliment with absolute sincerity. “You’ve overcome the difficulties wonderfully,” I remarked. “I never admired your tact more. Nobody thinks of her at all now, except just as Fräulein.”

“I have been anxious to do the right thing, and she has improved the children’s French.” She did not add that the liquidation of Thistleton’s bill by services rendered was a further benefit. We cannot be expected always to remember every aspect of our conduct.

“But it is difficult,” Mrs Thistleton went on. “And the worst of it is that Bessie and she aren’t very congenial. With an ordinary governess – Well, the only thing is to treat her like one, isn’t it?”

“Does she object?”

“Oh no, never. But I can’t quite make her out. After all, she’s not English, you see, and one can’t be sure of her moral influence. I sometimes think I must make a change. Oh, I shouldn’t do anything unkind. I should ask her to stay till she was suited, and, of course, do all I could to recommend her. But Bessie doesn’t like her, I’m sorry to say.”

By this time we had walked past all the chrysanthemums twice, and I said that it was time for me to go. Mrs Thistleton gave me her hand.

“You don’t think me unkind?”

“Honestly, I think you have been kind all through, and I don’t think you’ll be unkind now. The situation is so very – ”

“Difficult? Yes,” she sighed.

I had been going to say “absurd,” but I accepted “difficult.” I would have accepted anything, because I wanted to end the conversation and get away. I was surfeited with incongruities – Mrs Thistleton, Bessie, Charley Miles, and, above all, Fräulein – set in contrast with the picture in the big book – with the castle of Friedenburg frowning above the great river, waiting for its mistress, Princess Vera; the mistress who came not because – I couldn’t get away from my own folly – because there were no men in Boravia! “Absurd” was the right word, however.

V

THE next few weeks developed the situation along the lines I had foreseen, but endowed it with a new wealth of irony, so that it became harder than ever to say whether we were dealing with tragedy or with farce. The women of the village took arms against Fräulein. Mrs Marsfold, Miss Dunlop (of the Elms), even the Rector’s gentle wife, became partisans of Bessie Thistleton and demanded the expulsion of Fräulein. Only Mrs Thistleton herself still resisted, still sought after the kind thing, still tried to reconcile the interests of her family with the duty she had undertaken towards the stranger within her gates. But even she grew weaker. They were all against her, and Bessie had the preponderating word with her father now. In fine, there was every prospect that, even as the Princess Vera was banished from Boravia, so Fräulein Friedenburg would be expelled from Southam Parva.

And why? She had designs on Charley Miles! That was the accusation; and it was also, and immediately, the verdict. She wanted to catch Charley Miles – and that three or four thousand a year which, by plausible conjecture, he was making on the Stock Exchange! The Princess was now utterly forgotten – she might never have existed. There was only the designing governess, forgetful of her duty and her station, flying at game too high for her, at the most eligible match in the village, at the suitor (the destined suitor) of her employer’s daughter, at prosperous Charley Miles of the Stock Exchange! The human mind is highly adaptable, and the relativity of things is great. These two conclusions were strongly impressed on my mind by the history of Fräulein Friedenburg’s sojourn in the village of Southam Parva.

Charley had the instincts of a gentleman and was furious with “the old cats,” as he called the ladies I have named, with a warmth which for my part I find it easy to pardon. Yet his mind was as their minds; he was no whit less deeply and firmly rooted in present facts. He may have been a little afraid of Bessie, perhaps in a very little committed to her by previous attentions. But that was not the main difficulty. That he was in love with Fräulein I believed then and believe now; indeed, he came very near to admitting the fact to me on more than one occasion. But he was a young man of social ambitions, and the Thistletons stood high among us. (I began by admitting that we do not dwell on the highest peaks.) Mr Thistleton’s daughter was one thing, Mr Thistleton’s governess another. That was Charley’s point of view, so that he wrestled with erring inclination and overthrew it. He did not offer marriage to Fräulein Friedenburg. He contented himself with denouncing the attempt to banish her, for which, after all, his own conduct was primarily responsible. But I found no time to blame him; he filled me with a wonder which became no less overwhelming because, in regard to present facts, it was in a large measure unreasonable. In truth, I couldn’t stand firm on present facts. The walls, the towers, the dungeons of Friedenburg, and the broad river running down below – these things would not leave the visions of my mind. They stood in obstinate contrast to Charley Miles and three or four thousand on the Stock Exchange.

One evening – it was a Monday, as I remember – Charley came to see me after dinner, and brought with him a copy of The Morning Post, an excellent paper, but one which, owing to the political convictions to which I have already referred in connection with my feelings about the lack of men in Boravia, I do not take in. He pointed to a spot in the advertisement columns, and, without removing his hat from his head or his cigar from his mouth, sank into my arm-chair.

“Mrs Thistles has paid for six insertions, Treg,” he said.

I read the first “insertion.”

“A lady strongly recommends her German nursery governess. Good English. Fluent French. Music. Fond of children. Salary very moderate. A good home principal object. Well-connected. – Mrs T., The Manor House, Southam Parva.”

Well-connected! I looked over to Charley with some sort of a smile. “The good English is, of course, all right?” I said.

“Isn’t it an infernal shame?” he broke out. “She won’t stay a week after that!”

“It may bring an engagement,” said I.

“Look here, do you think it’s my fault?”

“I’m glad she says Fräulein is well-connected.”

“Do you think it’s my fault? I – I’ve tried to play square – by her as well as by myself.”

“I don’t think we need discuss the Princess.”

“Hallo, Treg!”

“Good heavens! – I – I beg pardon! I mean – why need we talk about Fräulein’s affairs?”

“I was talking about mine.”

“I see no connection.”

He was not angry with me, though (as will have been seen) I had lost my temper hopelessly and disastrously. He got up and stood in front of the fire.

“I hadn’t the pluck, Treg, my boy,” he said. His voice sounded rather dreary, but I had no leisure to pity him.

“Good Heavens, do you suppose she’d have looked at you?” I cried. “Remember who she is!”

“That’s all very well, but facts are facts,” said Charley Miles. “I didn’t mean to make trouble, Treg, old boy. On my honour, I didn’t.” He made a long pause. “I hope I shall be asking you to congratulate me soon, Treg,” he went on.

“Ask me in public, and I’ll do it.”

“That’s just being vicious,” he complained, and with entire justice. “Bessie’s a first-rate girl.”

“I’m very sorry, Charley. So she is. She’ll suit you a mile better than – than Fräulein.”

He brightened up. “I’m awfully glad you do think me right in the end,” he said. “But I’m a bit sorry for Fräulein. She’d have had to go soon, anyhow – when the children got a bit older. She’ll get a berth, I expect.”

“No doubt,” said I. “And I’ll congratulate you even in private, Charley.”

“You’re a decent old chap, but you’ve got a queer temper. I don’t above half understand you, Treg.” He hesitated a little. “I say, you might go and have a talk with Fräulein some day. She likes you, you know.”

“Does she?” The eager words leapt from my lips before I could stop them.

“Rather! Will you go?”

“Yes. I’ll have a talk with Fräulein.”

“Before she goes?”

“She’ll go soon?”

“I think so.”

“Yes, before she goes, Charley.”

With that, or, rather, after a little idle talk which added nothing to that, he left me – left me wondering still. He was sorry for Fräulein, and not only because she must go forth into the world; also because she had not been invited to become Mrs Charley Miles! He conceived that he had made a conquest, and he didn’t value it! His mistake of fact was great, but it shrank to nothing before the immensity of his blunder in estimation. I could account for it only in one way – a way so pleasing to my own vanity that I adopted it forthwith. And I’m not sure I was wrong. The veil had not been lifted for him, and he had no eyes to see through it. For me it had been raised once, and henceforth eternally hung transparent.

“That’s my home.” She had looked in that moment as if no other place could be.

Now, however, she was advertising for a situation, and I speculated as to how much of the truth Mrs Thistleton would deem it wise to employ in justifying that sublime “Well-connected.”

VI

I SAW her the next day but one – on the morning when the third “insertion” appeared in The Morning Post. Bessie Thistleton had told me, with obvious annoyance, that there had been no replies yet. “Governesses are really a drug, unless they have a degree, in these days,” she had said. “ ‘Where is she?’ Oh, somewhere in the garden, I think, Mr Tregaskis.”

So I went into the garden and found her again under the tree. But her big book was not with her now; she was sitting idle, looking straight ahead of her, with pondering and, perhaps, fear in her great dark eyes.

She gave me her hand to shake. I kissed it.

“Nobody will kiss my hand in my next place,” she said.

“Why in heaven do you do it?”

“I can’t beg; and if I did, I don’t think I should receive.” She leant forward, resting her hand on the arm of the chair. “We don’t know who I’m to be,” she went on, smiling. “Nobody but Mrs Thistleton could carry it off if I confessed to being myself! Who shall I be, Mr Tregaskis?”

I made no answer, and she gave a little laugh.

“You like to go?” I asked.

“No. I’m frightened. And suppose there’s another Mr Miles?”

“The infernal idiot!”

“He’s wise. Only – I’m amused. They’re right to send me away, though. I’m such an absurdity.”

“Yes,” I assented mournfully. “I’m afraid you are.”

She leant nearer still to me, half whispering in her talk. “I should never have liked him, but yet it hardly seemed strange that he should think of it. I’m forgetting myself, I think. In my next place I wonder if I shall remember at all!”

“You have your book and the picture.”

“Yes, but they seem dim now. I suppose it would be best to forget, as everybody else does.”

“Not everybody,” I said very low.

“No, you don’t forget. I’ve noticed that. It’s foolish, but I like someone to remember. Suppose you forgot too!”

One of her rare smiles lit up her face. But I did not tell her what would happen if I forgot too. I knew very well in my own mind, though. I was not trammelled by previous attentions, nor was I making three or four thousand a year.

“You’ll tell me when you go – and where?” I asked.

“Yes, if you like to know.”

“And will ‘they’ know too?”

She looked at me with searching eyes. “Are you laughing?” she asked, and it seemed to me that there was a break in her voice.

“God forbid, madam!” said I.

“Ah, but I think you should be. How the present can make the past ridiculous!”

“Neither the past ridiculous nor the future impossible,” I said.

She laid her hand on my arm for a moment with a gentle pressure.

“We have an Order at home called The Knights of Faith. Shall I send you the Cross some day – in that impossible future?”

“No. Send me your big book, with the picture of the great castle and the broad river flowing by its base.”

She looked at me a moment, flushed but the slightest, and answered: “Yes.” Then, as I remember, we sat silent for a while.

That silence was waste of time, as it proved. For, before it ended, Mrs Thistleton came bounding (really the expression is excusable in view of her unrestrained elation) out of the house, holding a letter in her hand.

“Fräulein, an answer!” she cried.

We both rose, and she came up to us.

“And it sounds most suitable. I do hope you don’t mind London – though really it doesn’t do to be fussy. A Mrs Perkyns, on Maida Hill – nice and high! Only two little children, and she offers – Oh, well, we can talk about the salary presently.”

That last remark constituted an evident hint to me. I grasped my hat and gave my hand to Mrs Thistleton.

“Good news, isn’t it?” said she. “And Mrs Perkyns says she has such confidence in me – it appears she knew my sister Mary at Cheltenham – that she waives any other references. Isn’t that convenient?”

“Very,” I agreed.

“You’re to go the day after to-morrow if you can be ready. Can you?” asked Mrs Thistleton.

“I can be ready,” Fräulein said.

“In the morning, Mrs Perkyns suggested.”

“I can be ready in the morning.” Then she turned to me. “This is good-bye, then, I’m afraid, Mr Tregaskis.”

“I shall come and see you off,” said I, taking her hand.

Mrs Thistleton raised her brows for a moment, but her words were gracious.

“We shall all be down to wish her a good journey and a happy home.”

I made up my mind to say my farewell at the station – and I took my leave. As I walked out of the front gate I met Thistleton coming from the station. I took upon myself to tell him the news.

“Good,” said Thistleton. “It ends what was always a false, and has become an impossible, situation.”

How about poor Mrs Perkyns, then? But I did not put that point to him. She was forewarned by that “Well-connected.” As I walked home I pictured Thistleton putting up a board before his residence: “Princesses, beware!”

VII

IT was no use telling me – as the Rector had told me more than once – that the same sort of thing had happened before in history, that a French marquis of the old régime was at least as good as a Boravian princess, and that if the one had taught dancing as an émigré the other might teach French verbs in her banishment. The consideration was no doubt just, and even assuaged to some degree the absurdity of the situation – since absurd things that have happened before seem rather less absurd somehow – but it did not console my feelings, nor reconcile my imagination to Mrs Perkyns of Maida Hill, “nice and high” though Maida Hill might be. On the morning of Fräulein’s departure I rose out of temper with the world.

Then I opened the morning paper, and there it was! In a moment it seemed neither strange nor unexpected. It was bound to be there some morning. It chanced to be there this morning by happy fortune, because this was the last morning in which I could help, the last morning when I could see her eyes. But it was glorious. I am afraid it sent me half mad; yet I was very practical. In a minute I had made up my mind what she would want to do and what I could do. In another five minutes I was on my bicycle, “scorching” to Beechington with that paper in one pocket, and a cheque on the local branch of the London and County Bank in the other. And humming in my ears was “Rising in Boravia!” “Rumoured Abdication of the King!” “An Appeal to the Pretender!” Then, in smaller print: “Something about Princess Vera of Friedenburg.”

I hoped she would get away before the Thistletons knew! Very likely she would, for by now Thistleton was in the train for town, and he picked up his Times at the station; the family waited for it till the evening.

From the bank I raced to the station, and reached it ten minutes before her train was due to leave Beechington. There she was, sitting on a bench, all alone. She was dressed in plain black and looked very small and forlorn. She seemed deep in thought, and she did not see me till I was close to her. Then she looked up with a start. I suppose she read my face, for she smiled, held out her hand, and said —

“Yes, I had a telegram late last night.”

“You’ve told them?” I jerked my thumb in the direction of the Manor.

“No,” she said rather brusquely.

“You’re going, of course?”

“To Mrs Perkyns’,” she answered, smiling still. “What else can I do?”

“Wire them that you’re starting for Vienna, and that they must communicate with you there. Ah, there are men in Boravia!”

“And Mrs Perkyns? I should never get another character!”

“You’ll go, surely? It might make all the difference. Let them see you, let them see you!”

She shook her head, giving at the same time a short nervous laugh. I sat down by her. Her purse lay in her lap. I took it up; the Princess made no movement; her eyes were fixed on mine. I opened the purse and slipped in the notes I had procured at the bank. Her eyes did not forbid me. I snapped the purse to and laid it down again.

“I had a third-class to London, and eight shillings and threepence,” she said.

“You’ll go now?”

“Yes,” she whispered, rising to her feet.

We stood side by side now, waiting for the train. It was very hard to speak. Presently she passed her hand through my arm and let it rest there. She said no more about the money, which I was glad of. Not that I was thinking much of that. I was still rather mad, and my thoughts were full of one insane idea; it was – though I am ashamed to write it – that just as the train was starting, at the last moment, at the moment of her going, she might say: “Come with me.”

“Did it surprise you?” I said at last, breaking the silence at the cost of asking a very stupid question.

“I had given up all hope. Yet somehow I wasn’t very surprised. You were?”

“No. I had always believed in it.”

“Not at first?”

“No; of late.”

She looked away from me now, but I saw her lips curve in a reluctant little smile. I laughed.

“I don’t think my ideas about it had any particular relation to external facts,” I confessed. “I had become a Legitimist, and Legitimists are always allowed to dream.”

She gave my arm a little pat and then drew her hand gently away.

“If it all comes to nothing, I shall have one friend still,” she said.

“And one faithful hopeful adherent. And there’s your train.”

When I put her in the carriage, my madness came back to me. I actually watched her eyes as though to see the invitation I waited for take its birth there. Of course I saw no such thing. But I seemed to see a great friendliness for me. At the last, when I had pressed her hand and then shut the door, I whispered —

“Are you afraid?”

She smiled. “No. Boravia isn’t Southam Parva. I am not afraid.”

Then – well, she went away.

VIII

MRS THISTLETON is great. I said so before, and I remain firmly of that opinion. The last time I called at the Manor, I found her in the drawing-room with Molly, the youngest daughter, a pretty and intelligent child. After some conversation, Mrs Thistleton said to me —

“A little while ago I had an idea, which my husband thought so graceful that he insisted on carrying it out. I wonder if you’ll like it! I should really like to show it to you.”

I expressed a polite interest and a proper desire to see it, whatever it was.

“Then I’ll take you upstairs,” said she, rising with a gracious smile.

Upstairs we went, accompanied by Molly, who is rather a friend of mine and who was hanging on to my arm. Reaching the first floor, we turned to the left, and Mrs Thistleton ushered me into an exceedingly pleasant and handsome bedroom, with a delightful view of the garden. Not conceiving that I could be privileged to view Mrs Thistleton’s own chamber, I concluded that this desirable apartment must be the best or principal guest-room of the house.