"Drive on," she said.
Just as impulse rather than design governed the greater part of Dodo's conduct, so intuition rather than logic was responsible for her conclusions. She had not agreed last night with Edith's reasonings, but now with these glimpses of her own, she jumped to her deduction, and landed, so to speak, by Edith's side. As yet there was nothing definite except the unpublished news of an Austrian ultimatum to Servia, and the hurried meeting of the Cabinet this morning to warrant grounds for any real uneasiness as to the European situation generally, nor, as far as Dodo knew, anything definite or indefinite to connect Germany with that. But now with the fact that her dinner had been put off last night and the ambassador was quite well this morning, coupled with her own sudden intuition that the Allensteins were going back post-haste to Germany, she leaped to a conclusion that seemed firm to her landing. In a flash she simply found herself believing that Germany intended to provoke a European war.... And then characteristically enough, instead of dwelling for a moment on the menace of this hideous calamity or contemplating the huge unspeakable nightmare thus unveiled, she found herself exclusively and entrancedly interested in the situation as it at this moment was. She expected the entire diplomatic world, German and Austrian included, at her ball that night; already the telegraph wires between London and the European capitals must be tingling and twitching with the cypher messages that flew backwards and forwards over the Austrian ultimatum, and her eyes danced with anticipation of the swift silent current of drama that would be roaring under the conventional ice of the mutual salutations with which diplomatists would greet each other this evening at her house. Hands unseen were hewing at the foundations of empires, others were feverishly buttressing and strengthening them, and all the hours of to-night until dawn brought on another fateful day, those same hands, smooth and polite, would be crossing in the dance, and the voices that had been dictating all day the messages with which the balance of peace and war was weighted, would be glib with little compliments and airy with light laughter. She felt no doubt that Germans and Austrians alike would all be there, she felt also that the very strain of the situation would inspire them with a more elaborate cordiality than usual. She felt she would respect that; it would be like the well-bred courtesies that preceded a duel to the death between gentlemen. Prince Albert, it is true, in his anxiety to get back without delay to his fortressed fatherland had failed in the amenities, but surely Germany, the romantic, the chivalrous, the mother of music and science, would, now and henceforth, whatever the issue might be, prove herself worthy of her traditions.
Once more Dodo was caught in a block at the top of St. James's street, and she suddenly made up her mind to stop at the hotel and say good-bye to Princess Albert. Two motives contributed to this, the first being that though she and he alike had been very rude throwing her over with so needless an absence of ceremony and politeness, she had better not descend to their level; the second, which it must be confessed was far the stronger, being an overwhelming curiosity to know for certain whether she was right in her conjecture that they were going to get behind the Rhine as soon as possible.
Dodo found the Princess sitting in the hall exactly opposite the entrance, hatted, cloaked, umbrellaed and jewel-bagged, with a short-sighted but impatient eye on the revolving door, towards which, whenever it moved, she directed a glance through her lorgnette. As Dodo came towards her, the Princess turned her head aside, as if, like her husband, seeking to avoid the meeting. But next moment, even while Dodo paused aghast at these intolerable manners, she changed her mind, and dropping her umbrella, came waddling towards her with both hands outstretched.
"Ah, dear Dodo," she said, "I was wondering, just now I was wondering what you thought of me! I would have written to you, but Albert said 'No!' Positively he forbade me to write to you, he called on me as his wife not so to do. Instead he wrote himself, and such a letter too, for he shewed it me, all in the third person, after he had asked for bisque soup only yesterday! And I may not say good-bye to your good father or anyone; you will all think I do not know how to behave, but I know very well how to behave; it is Albert who is so boor. I am crying, look, I am crying, and I do not easily cry. We have said good-bye and thank you to nobody, we are going away like burglars on the tiptoe for fear of being heard, and it is all Albert's fault. In five minutes had our luggage to be packed, and there was Albert's new portmanteau which he was so proud of for its cheapness and made in Germany, bursting and covering Piccadilly with his pants, is it, that you call them? It was too screaming. I could have laughed at how he was served right. All Albert's pants and his new thick vests and his bed-socks being brought in by the porter and the valets and the waiters, covered with the dust from Piccadilly!"
"Yes, ma'am, I saw it myself," said Dodo, "when I was passing half an hour ago."
The Princess was momentarily diverted from the main situation on to this thrilling topic.
"Ach! Albert would turn purple with shame," she said, "if he knew you had seen his pants, and yet he is not at all ashamed of running away like a burglar. That is his Cherman delicacy. 'Your new bed-socks,' I said to him, 'and your winter vests and your pants you must have made of them another package. They will not go in your new portmanteau; there is not room for them, and it is weak. It has to go in the train, and again it has to go on the boat, and also again in the train.' It is not as if we but went to Winston—ah, that nice Winston!—but we go to Chermany. That is what I said, but Albert would not hear. 'By the two o'clock train we go,' he said, 'and my new vests and my socks and my pants go in my new Cherman portmanteau which was so cheap and strong.' But now they cannot go like that, and they will have to go in my water-proof sheet which was to keep me dry on the boat from the spray, for if I go in the cabin I am ill. It is all too terrible, and there was no need for us to go like this. We should have waited till to-morrow, and said good-bye. Or perhaps if we had gone to-morrow we should not go at all. What has Chermany to do with Servia, or what has England either? But no, we must go to-day just because there have been telegrams, and Cousin Willie says, 'Come back to Allenstein.' And here am I so rude seeming to all my friends. But one thing I tell you, dearest Dodo; we chiefly go, because Albert is in a Fonk. He is a Fonk!"
"But what is he frightened of?" asked Dodo. The Princess was letting so many cats out of the bag that she had ceased counting them.