HER ROYAL HIGHNESS RECEIVES A LETTER
Pledged to secrecy, Mrs. Arbuthnot earned a meed of praise for her behaviour during a crowded and glorious epoch. If you entertain the Crown Princess of an active and potent monarchy it is reasonable to expect that things will happen.
Things did happen in some profusion during the sojourn of her Royal Highness at Dympsfield House. Owing to the course taken by events which I shall have presently to narrate, that sojourn was prolonged indefinitely. The resources of our modest establishment were taxed to the uttermost, but throughout a really trying period it is due to Mrs. Arbuthnot to say that she was a model of tact, discretion, and natural goodness.
She would have been unworthy the name of woman—a title not without pretensions to honour, as sociologists inform us—had she not literally burned to communicate her knowledge of the true identity of "the circus rider from Vienna." But some compensation was culled from the fact that her co-workers in the cause of the Public Decency grew increasingly lofty in their point of view. Even the promptings of a healthy human curiosity would not permit Mrs. Catesby to eat at our board in order that she might see for herself. Mournfully that woman of an unblemished virtue shook her head over us.
"It was not kind to dear Evelyn. It was right, of course, to sympathise with the Fitzwarens in their misfortune. But the place was old, and George understood that it was covered by insurance. And fortunately all the pictures that were worth anything—and some that were not—had been saved. But to take them under one's wing as we had done was quixotic and bound to give offence. Besides, that kind of person would be quite in her element at the village inn, the Coach and Horses."
Nevertheless, Mrs. Arbuthnot bore every reproof with a stoical fortitude. What it cost her "not to give away the show," to indulge in the phrase of Joseph Jocelyn De Vere, it would be idle to estimate. But she was true to the oath she had sworn on the night of the great revelation. Not to a living soul did she yield her secret.
To Jodey himself what he was pleased to call "the royal visit" was a matter for undiluted joy. It is true that he was turned out of his bedroom, the best in the house, which commands an unrivalled view of Knollington Gorse, and had to be content with humbler quarters; but our Bayard was so perfectly au courant with all that had happened, even unto the presence of the four men in plain clothes in the shrubbery, that the situation was much to his taste.
When the Princess was not herself present, it pleased him to treat the whole thing as a matter for somewhat laborious satire.
"Ain't you got a bit o' red carpet and an awning for the front steps, Mops? And why don't Odo sport his order at dinner? Can't see the use, myself, in having an order if you don't sport it for royalty. Must put your best leg first. Buck up a bit, old gal, else her Royal 'Ighness will think you haven't been used to it. Anyhow, you must tell Parkins to be damn careful how he decants that '63."
In the presence of Mrs. Fitz, however, the demeanour of my relation by marriage was not unlike that of a linesman standing at attention on a field day. His deportment was so fearfully correct in every detail; his attire so extraordinarily nice—he discarded gay waistcoats and brilliant neckties as being hardly "the thing"—his hair was groomed so marvellously, and he was so overpoweringly polite that it was a source of wonder how the young fellow contrived to maintain the standard he had prescribed for himself.
It was a period of anxiety, yet it was not without its interest. In a very short time Mrs. Arbuthnot had divined the raison d'être of the four men in the park, but this did nothing to impair her sense of hospitality. Fitz did not favour us with much of his company except in the evening. During the day his energies were absorbed with the arrangements for the rebuilding of the Grange, and, as I gathered, with further provisions for the safety of his wife. All the same, limited as was the time at his disposal, it was our privilege to watch him sustain the domestic character.
Whatever the incongruity of their fortunes, it was clear that Fitz and his wife had a genuine devotion for one another. And in spite of their apartness and the idea they conveyed of living entirely to themselves without reference to the lives of humbler mortals, each seemed to possess a quality worthy to inspire it. In a measure I was privileged to share their confidence during the time they stayed under our roof; and it was characteristic of them both that at heart they had a rather charming and childlike frankness. Each of them revealed unexpected qualities.
I think I am entitled to say that I never shared the hostility they seemed to arouse in others. All his life long Fitz, as far as I had known him, had been condemned to play the part of the black sheep. Partly it may have been due to his habit of refusing to go with the tide; of his declared hatred of any kind of a majority. He had always been a law unto himself, and had given a very free rein to his personality. To me he had ever stood revealed as one capable of anything; of the greatest good or of the greatest evil; and to behold him now in the domestic circle, in close affinity with the magnetic being in whom the whole of his life was centred, was to find him endowed with a charm and a fascination which had no place in the nature of the Nevil Fitzwaren that was seen by the eyes of the world.
To me there was something beautiful and also a little pathetic in the relationship which seemed to exist between these two diverse souls. Their implicit faith in the rightness of each other, their sense of adequacy, was a very rare thing. So many of the ignoble things of life, questions of material expediency, of shallow prejudice, of partial judgment, they seemed to have ruled out altogether. And this could not have been otherwise if one reflected that a veritable kingdom of this world was the price that had been paid for this true fellowship.
My previous encounters with Mrs. Fitz had been of a somewhat trying nature. But on the domestic hearth she was much less formidable. The impetuous arrogance which had proved so disconcerting to everybody was not so much in evidence. Her charm seemed to become rarefied as it grew more humane. The childlike directness of her point of view began to emerge more and more and to enhance her fascination; indeed, her way of looking at things became a perpetual delight to such sophisticated minds as ours.
Her total inability to take us seriously was quite piquant. Our England and all that was in it amused her vastly. She would compare it to an enchanted land in one of Perrault's fairy-tales. But our code of life, our manners and customs, our ideals, our mechanical contrivances and, above all, our solemnity concerning them, never failed to appeal to her sense of humour.
It was my especial pleasure to converse with her after dinner. I should not say that the art of conversation was her strong point, and it was not until she had been a week in our midst that I was able to come to anything approaching close quarters with her. But it was worth making the effort to get past the barrier that was unconsciously erected by her air of disillusion, of patient, plaintive tolerance.
There was a quaint definiteness about her ideas. Touching all questions that had real significance her thinking seemed to have been done for her generations ago. All that lay outside the life of the emotions was to her the wearisome iteration of a constitutional practice, a necessary but somewhat painful part of the order of things.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about her was her humility. The pomp of kingship was to her the hollowest of all chimeras. It merely resolved itself into the guardianship of a profoundly ignorant, an undeveloped and an extremely thankless proletariat. "Hélas! poor souls, they don't know what is good," was a phrase she used with a maternal sigh. The divine right of kings was part and parcel of the cosmic order; a fact as pregnant and inviolable as the presence of the sun and the planets in the firmament. To be called to the state of kingship was an extremely honourable condition, "but you had always to be praying." It was also honourable and not so irksome to be an unregarded unit of the proletariat.
I am not sure, but I incline to the belief, that the fact that I had a seat in the House enabled her to support my curiosity with more tolerance than she might have done had I been without some sort of official sanction. She regarded me as a chosen servant of le bon roi Edouard; either my own personal grace or that of my kindred had commended itself to the guardian of the state.
"Are not," said I, "the members of the Illyrian Parliament elected by the people?"
"Yes, my father gave the people the franchise in 1890, and the nobles have never forgiven him. So now the people choose their sixty deputies out of a list he draws up for their guidance; the lords of the land choose another sixty from among themselves; and then, as so often happens, if the two Chambers cannot agree, the King gives advice."
"The King of Illyria has heavy duties!"
"My father loves hard work."
"Are you troubled, ma'am, with a democratic movement in Illyria, as all the rest of Europe appears to be at the present time?"
The gesture of her Royal Highness was one of pity.
"Hélas, poor souls!"
It was delicate ground upon which to tread. But the fascination of such an inquiry lured me on where doubtless the canons of good taste would have had me stay.
"Would you not say, ma'am, your Republican Party was a menace to the state?"
"They don't know what is good, poor souls." Her voice was gentle. "They will have to learn."
"Will the King be the means of teaching them?"
"Hélas! he is too old. It must be left to fate. Poor souls, poor souls!"
During the sojourn of her Royal Highness at Dympsfield House, we saw a good deal of the Chief Constable of our county. In a sense he had made himself responsible for the safety of us all. His vigilance was great, and its unobtrusiveness was part of the man. No precaution was neglected which could minister to our security; and he gave his personal attention to matters of detail which less thorough-going individuals might have considered to be beneath their notice.
He was particularly insistent that the Princess should give up her hunting, and that she should confine the scope of her activities, as far as possible, to the grounds of the house. To this she was not in the least amenable. An out-and-out believer in fate, and a subscriber to the doctrine of what has to be will be, the bullets of the anarchist had no terrors for her. To Coverdale's annoyance, she continued to hunt in spite of his solemn and repeated warnings. And when he was moved to remonstrate with Fitz upon the subject, he met with the reply, "She pleases herself entirely."
"But, my dear fellow," said the Chief Constable, "surely you must know that she is exposing herself to grave risks."
"If a thing seems good to her she does it," was Fitz's unprofitable rejoinder.
The great man was frankly annoyed.
"That is very wrong, to my mind," he said with some heat. "It is unfair to those who have made themselves responsible for her safety."
"It is a question of free-will," said Fitz, "and she knows far more about that than most people. And when it comes to a matter of choosing right, she has a special faculty."
So inconclusive a reply merely ministered to the wrath of the Chief Constable, who in private complained to me bitterly.
"I wish to heaven they would quit the country," he said. "They are a source of endless worry and expense. We do all we can to help them, and I must say the Yard is wonderful, yet they can't be induced to take the most elementary precautions. I regret now, Arbuthnot, that I urged you to shelter them. I had hoped they were rational and sensible people, but I now find they are not."
"You think, Coverdale, the danger is as real as ever?"
"Frankly I do. Ferdinand the Twelfth has played it up so high in Illyria that the Republicans are determined to make an end of the monarchy."
"But didn't she renounce her right to the throne when she married Fitz?"
"In effect she may have done so, but the Illyrian law of succession will not contemplate such an act. Ferdinand makes no secret of the fact, apparently, that he will compel her to marry the Archduke Joseph, and that she must succeed to the throne."
"How is it possible for him to give effect to his will?"
"He is a strong man, and if he sets his mind upon a particular course of action few have been able to deny him."
"Then you think her marriage with Fitz is merely an episode in what is likely to be a brilliant but stormy career?"
"Always provided it is not cut short by one of those bullets it is our duty to anticipate. I can only tell you that the Foreign Office is now very anxious to get her out of the country, and that if they dared they would deport her."
"Ho, ho!"
An academic admirer of our constitutional practice, I was fain to indulge in a whistle.
"And, strictly between ourselves," said the Chief Constable, "if only the right government were in, deported she would be."
"A fine proceeding, I am bound to say, for a country with our pretensions to liberalism!"
"Under the rose, of course." The Chief Constable permitted himself a dour smile. "I daresay it would make a precedent, and yet one is not so sure about that. But one thing I am sure about, and that is that some of us are devilish unpopular in high places. They would not be averse from making things rather warm for certain individuals who shall be nameless. They are pretty well agreed that we ought to have kept our fingers out of the pie. As old L. said to me yesterday, she has got to leave the country, and the sooner she goes the better it will be for all concerned."
All this tended to bring no comfort to the married man, the father of the family, and the county member. If anything, it deepened his anxiety.
It is only just to state, however, that this feeling was not shared by Mrs. Arbuthnot. To be sure, she was not acquainted with all that happened. But as far as she was concerned the element of danger in the case was an essential and rather delightful concomitant to its romance.
The Vane-Anstruther hyper-sensitiveness to that mysterious ideal "good form" rendered it necessary that Mrs. Arbuthnot should perform a volte-face. This she proceeded to do with really amazing completeness and efficiency. No sooner was the true identity of our visitor established, than, as far as the ruler of Dympsfield House was concerned, there was an end of the circus rider from Vienna and all her works. The ingrained Vane-Anstruther reverence for royalty, due I have ever been led to believe to an uncle who held a Household appointment, received full play. The lightest whim of the Princess—except before the servants it was ever the Princess—was law.
Mrs. Arbuthnot did not go without a reward. Such an incursion did she make upon the royal regard that in a surprisingly short time she was addressed as Irene, and about the end of the first week of the visit the intelligence was confided to me that the Princess had asked to be called Sonia. Without a doubt we were living in a crowded and glorious epoch. And I do not think its glamour was in any degree impaired by the strictures of the world.
It is not too much to say that the Crackanthorpe ladies were scandalised by the open and flagrant treason of Mrs. Arbuthnot. She had taken the queen of the sawdust into the bosom of her family. Together they hunted the fox; together they overrode the Crackanthorpe Hounds. Loud and bitter were the lamentations of Mrs. Catesby. The whole county shook its head.
Mrs. Arbuthnot wore the crown of martyrdom with extraordinary grace and nerve. Her conduct in public was marked by a cynical impropriety, a flagrant audacity at which the world rubbed its eyes and wondered.
"I really believe," said Mrs. Catesby one day as together we made our way home through the January twilight, "that if Irene belonged to me I should chastise her. Can you be unaware that she allows the creature to call her by her first name? And Laura Glendinning assures me that with her own ears she heard her address her as Matilda, or whatever the name is she received in baptism."
"Yes, it's a desperate situation," I agreed, with a sigh which had perhaps a greater sincerity than it was allowed the credit.
"I hold you entirely responsible," said the Great Lady. "And so does everybody who knows the true facts of the case. That deplorable evening at the Savoy—and now you actually find her house-room in order that she may demoralise your wife! What a merciful thing it is that your dear, good, devoted mother, the most refined of women, is no longer with us! By the way, Odo, I suppose you have heard that there is some talk of asking you to resign your seat?"
"That is news to me, my dear Mary, I assure you."
"The Vicar thinks you ought. He seems to think that if you have any Christian feeling about things you will do so on your own initiative."
"It is so like the Church of England not to realise that by the time a man reaches the age of forty he has gone over to Buddha."
"I don't know in the least what you mean, but I hope it is nothing improper. But I can assure you that the Vicar's opinion is shared by others. The Castle is dreadfully wounded. Poor dear Evelyn will never forgive it—never! No more fishing in Scotland and no more shooting. At any rate, it will be a mere waste of time and money for you to stand again."
It only remained for me to agree very cordially with Mrs. Catesby, and to confess to surprise that my constituents had not made the discovery sooner.
"But," said I, cheerfully, "here we are at that fine example of late Jacobean art known as Dympsfield House. I would that I could prevail upon you, Mary, to honour our guest by drinking a cup of tea in her presence. It would be a graceful act which I am sure we should all appreciate."
"I have a conscience, Odo Arbuthnot," said the Great Lady, with a severity of mien that rendered the announcement superfluous. "Also I have some kind of a standard of morals, manners and general conduct which I strive to live up to."
At the gate I said au revoir to the outraged matron. Having disposed of my horse, I made my way indoors. The ladies had come home in the car and were at the tea-table already. Among a number of other weaknesses which go with a strong infusion of the feminine temperament, I confess to a decided partiality for the cup which cheers yet does not inebriate.
Mrs. Arbuthnot was pouring out the tea and her Royal Highness was standing in front of the fire. She was reading a letter, and to judge by her brilliantly expressive countenance, its contents were affording a good deal of exercise for her emotions.
"I wish, Sonia, I could convert you to cream and sugar," said Mrs. Arbuthnot, declining to entrust the cup to my care, but rising importantly and personally handing it to the occupant of the hearthrug.
"Oh, no, t'ank you. Lemon à la Russe. What a people to take cream and sugar in their tea!"
She enforced her idea of the absurdity by giving Mrs. Arbuthnot a playfully affectionate pinch of the ear.
"I have a piece of news for you, my child. Now, you must not laugh."
"Oh, no, Sonia, I will not laugh."
The somewhat exaggerated note of Mrs. Arbuthnot's obedience was not unlike that of the model girl of the class being examined by the head mistress.
"Now, Irene, be quite good. Not even a smile." The Princess held up a finger of mock imperiousness. "Dis is most serious. Shall I tell you now, or shall I to-morrow tell you?"
"Oh, please, please," piped Mrs. Arbuthnot, "please tell me at once. Is it those absurd Republicans?"
"Oh no, my child; it is something much more interesting. My father is on his way to England."
In sheer exultation Mrs. Arbuthnot gave a little leap into the air.
"O-oh!" she gasped.
"Think of it, my child! The royal and august one coming to this funny little island, where everything is according to Perrault. He is coming with old Schalk."
"O-oh!" gasped Mrs. Arbuthnot.
"You don't know Schalk. Wait till you have seen Schalk and then you will die. He will kill you quite. He looks like dis, and he walks so."
Her Royal Highness made a face that was really comic and took a few steps across the carpet in imitation of Schalk going to the House of Deputies.
"Are they really coming?"
"On Thursday they arrive at Southampton."
"They will go straight to Windsor, of course?"
"Oh no, my child; it is not a visit of state. It is quite a secret, what you call incognito. The king is coming to make obedient his wicked daughter. Helas!"
With tragic suddenness the Princess dropped her voice and the laughter died in her eyes. But Mrs. Arbuthnot was too far deeply engrossed in her own wild and extravagant thoughts to pay heed to the change.
"But if the King does not go to Windsor, where else can he go?" said she. "An hotel doesn't seem right, somehow, although, of course, there are some rather nice ones in London."
"I think, my child," said the Princess, "it were best that my father came to us. They have anarchists in London. Besides, I insist that you see Schalk. He will make you laugh until you shed tears."
It was as much as ever Mrs. Arbuthnot could do to keep herself in hand.
"Oh, Sonia," she cried, "do you really think the King will come to us?"
"Mais oui, certainement, that is his intention. But it is a secret, a grand secret, you must not fail to remember. Le bon roi Edouard must not know he is in this country. His name will be Count Zhygny; and perhaps our good Odo here will be able to find him a little shooting. Hares, partridges, anything that goes on four legs will amuse him; and you must never forget, my good Odo, that he is the best player at Britch in Illyria. Now mind you don't play very high, or he will ruin you. And so will Schalk."
"I thank you, ma'am, for the information," said I, gravely.