The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight by Elizabeth von Arnim Read Free Book Online

creatures--" was the next.
    And the last snatch of all--for though they went on walking Fritzing heard no more after it--was the brief and singular expression "Devils."
    Devils?
What
were they talking about? Devils? Was that, then, how the public stigmatized blameless persons in search of peace? Devils? What, himself and--no, never Priscilla. She was clearly the harmless innocent creature, and he must be the other thing. But why plural? He could only suppose that he and Annalise together formed a sulphurous plural. He clung very hard to the rail. Who could have dreamed it would get so quickly into the papers? Who could have dreamed the news of it would call forth such blazing words? They would be confronted at Dover by horrified authorities. His Princess was going to be put in a most impossible position. What had he done? Heavens and earth, what had he done?
    He clung to the rail, staring miserably over the side into the oily water. Some of the passengers lingered to watch him, at first because they thought he was going to be seasick with so little provocation that it amounted to genius, and afterwards because they were sure he must want to commit suicide. When they found that time passed and he did neither, he became unpopular, and they went away and left him altogether and contemptuously alone.
    "Fritzi, are you worried about anything?" asked Priscilla, coming to where he still stood staring, although they had got to Dover.
    Worried! When all Europe was going to be about their ears? When he was in the eyes of the world a criminal--an aider, abettor, lurer-away of youth and impulsiveness? He loved the Princess so much that he cared nothing for his own risks, but what about hers? In an agony of haste he rushed to his ideals and principles for justification and comfort, tumbling them over, searching feverishly among them. They had forsaken him. They were so much lifeless rubbish. Nowhere in his mind could he find a rag of either comfort or justification with which to stop up his ears against the words of the two Englishmen and his eyes against the dreadful sight he felt sure awaited them on the quay at Dover--the sight of incensed authorities ready to pounce on him and drag him away for ever from his Princess.
    Priscilla gazed at him in astonishment. He was taking no notice of her, and was looking fearfully up and down the row of faces that were watching the turbine's arrival.
    "Fritzi, if you are worried it must be because you've not slept," said Priscilla, laying her hand with a stroking little movement on his sleeve; for what but overwrought nerves could make him look so odd? It was after all Fritzing who had behaved with the braveness of a lion the night before in that matter of the policeman; and it was he who had asked in stern tones of rebuke, when her courage seemed aflicker, whether she repented. "You do not repent?" she asked, imitating that sternness.
    "Ma'am--" he began in a low and dreadful voice, his eyes ceaselessly ranging up and down the figures on the quay.
    "Sh--sh--Niece," interrupted Priscilla, smiling.
    He turned and looked at her as a man may look for the last time at the thing in life that has been most dear to him, and said nothing.
----
    IV
    But nobody was waiting for them at Dover. Fritzing's agonies might all have been spared. They passed quite unnoticed through the crowd of idlers to the train, and putting Priscilla and her maid into it he rushed at the nearest newspaper-boy, pouncing on him, tearing a handful of his papers from him, and was devouring their contents before the astonished boy had well finished his request that he should hold hard. The boy, who had been brought up in the simple faith that one should pay one's pennies first and read next, said a few things under his breath about Germans--crude short things not worth repeating--and jerking his thumb towards the intent Fritzing, winked at a detective who was standing near. The detective did not need the wink. His bland, abstracted eyes