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.