Tales of two people

“She’s very nice to them. She’s helping them with their French.” She caught me looking at her and blushed a little. I had not seen Mrs Thistleton blush before. Suddenly the plan came before my eyes. There was no need to blush for it; it seemed to me rather great – rather great, perhaps, on both sides, but greater on Mrs Thistleton’s. “It gives her a sense of – of doing something in return, I suppose,” Mrs Thistleton went on.

The maid brought in tea.

“Is nursery tea ready?” Mrs Thistleton asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then send the children upstairs and tell the Countess that tea is here.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Soon the Countess came – as small, as slight, as dark as ever, even more timid. I rose as she entered; she bowed nervously, and, going to the table, busied herself with making the tea. Mrs Thistleton lay back in her arm-chair.

“Sit down, Mr Tregaskis,” she said. “You like making tea for us, don’t you, Countess?”

“Yes, Mrs Thistleton, thank you,” said Countess Vera von Friedenburg.

But I didn’t sit down – I couldn’t do it. I leant against the table and looked an ass all the time she made tea.

III

THE next chapter, or division, or what you will, of this small history may be very short. I write it with two objects, which seem to me to justify its appearance, in spite of its fragmentary character. In the first place, it serves to exhibit the final stage of the descent of the Princess – the logical conclusion of the process which was begun when Thistleton dropped “Royal” from between “Her” and “Highness” in the train from Liverpool Street to Beechington. In the second place, it exhibits Mrs Thistleton’s good sense and fine feeling for the suitability of things. You couldn’t have princesses – nay, nor countesses – about the house in that sort of position. It would have been absurd.

So here it is. I seldom give even small dinner-parties; such gatherings annoy my cook. But about a month after my return, I got leave to have four or five friends, and I bade to my board the Rector and his wife and Mr and Mrs Thistleton. If for no other reason than to “balance,” I said in my note to Mrs Thistleton that I should be exceedingly pleased if Countess Vera von Friedenburg would do me the honour of accompanying them. Perhaps that was a mistake in taste. I meant no harm, and I don’t think that Mrs Thistleton intended to rebuke me; though she did, I imagine, mean to convey to me a necessary intimation.

“Dear Mr Tregaskis,” she wrote, “Mr Thistleton and I are delighted to accept your very kind invitation, and we shall be charmed, as always, to meet our dear Rector and Mrs Carr. I am told to thank you very sincerely for your kind invitation to our young friend, but Fräulein Friedenburg agrees with me in thinking that during my absence she had better stay with the children. Yours very sincerely,

    “Susan Thistleton.”

Fräulein Friedenburg! Even her particle – her last particle – of nobility gone! Fräulein Friedenburg! Her Royal Highness – ! Let us forget – let us and all Southam Parva forget!

It was not unkind of Mrs Thistleton. It was right and suitable. Who should not come out to dinner, but stay and mind the children? Who save Fräulein – Fräulein Friedenburg? It would have been a ludicrous position for Her Royal Highness Princess Vera of Boravia. Leave it to Fräulein Friedenburg!

So, as Fräulein Friedenburg, she passed into our ordinary lives, and out of our ordinary thoughts, as is the way with things when they become familiar. Mrs Thistleton’s courage and talent had saved the situation – and her own face. The Princess was forgotten, and the Thistletons’ nursery governess little heeded. Who does heed a nursery governess much?

But one night, as I turned over the atlas looking for something else, I came on the map of Boravia and saw the city of Friedenburg set astride the great river, dominating the kingdom, a sentinel at the outposts of Western Europe. If Divine Right were not out of fashion, the key of that citadel should have been in the hand which ruled exercise-books for the Thistleton children. For a few moments after that I went on thinking about the nursery governess.

IV

SO Fräulein – she soon came to be called just “Fräulein” – was not at my dinner-party; but two or three weeks later I had a little talk with her. I went up to the Manor one afternoon in October, seeking a game of croquet with Bessie Thistleton – such are our mild delights at Southam Parva – but found the whole family gone off to a Primrose League bazaar at Beechington. Only Fräulein was at home, said the parlour-maid; and Fräulein was visible in the garden, sitting under a tree, turning over the leaves of a big book. I used the privilege of a friend of the house, strolled out on to the lawn, and raised my hat to the – I mean to Fräulein. She smiled brightly and beckoned to me to come and sit by her; her words were beyond reproach, but her gestures were sometimes obstinately un-Fräuleinish, if I may so express myself. I sat down in the other deck-chair and said that it was very fine for so late in the year.

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.