Tales of two people

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.