The Second E. F. Benson Megapack

by E. F. Benson

  These arrangements had taken time, but she finished with them soon after eleven, and was on her way to her motor which had been waiting for the last half-hour when a note was brought her with an intimation that it was from Prince Albert.

  “If he says a word more about bisque soup,” thought Dodo, as she tore it open, “he shall have porridge.”

  But the contents of it were even more enraging. The Prince profoundly regretted, in the third person, that matters of great importance compelled him and the Princess to leave London that day, and that he would therefore be unable to honour himself by accepting her invitation.

  “And he besieged me for an invitation only yesterday,” she said to Jack, “and I’ve changed the whole table. Darling, tell them to alter everything back again to what it was. Beastly old fat thing! Really Germans have no manners.… Daddy has been encouraging him too much. If he rings up again say we’re all dead.”

  Dodo instantly recovered herself as she drove down Piccadilly. The streets were teeming with happy, busy people, and she speedily felt herself the happiest and busiest of them all. She had to go to her dressmakers to see about some gowns for Goodwood, and others for Cowes; she had to go to lunch somewhere at one in order to be in time for a wedding at two, she had to give half an hour to an artist who was painting her portrait, and look in at a garden party. Somehow or other, apparently simultaneously, she was due at the rehearsal of a new Russian ballet, and she had definitely promised to attend a lecture in a remote part of Chelsea on the development of the sub-conscious self. Then she was playing bridge at a house in Berkeley Square—what a pity she could not listen to the lecture about the sub-conscious self while she was being dummy—and it was positively necessary to call at Carlton House Terrace and enquire after the German Ambassador. This latter errand had better be done at once, and then she could turn her mind to the task of simplifying the rest of the day.

  There were entrancing distractions all round. She was caught in a block exactly opposite the Ritz Hotel, and cheek to jowl with her motor was that of the Prime Minister, and she told him he would be late for his Cabinet meeting. He got out of the block first by shewing an ivory ticket, and Dodo consoled herself for not being equally well-equipped by seeing a large flimsy portmanteau topple off a luggage trolley which was being loaded opposite the Ritz. It had a large crown painted on the end of it in scarlet, with an “A” below, and it needed but a moment’s conjecture to feel sure that it belonged to Prince Albert. Whatever was the engagement that made him leave London so suddenly, it necessitated an immense amount of luggage, for the trolley was full of boxes with crowns and As to distinguish them. The fall had burst open the flimsy portmanteau, and shirts and socks and thick underwear were being picked off the roadway.… Dodo wondered as her motor moved on again if he was going to quarter himself on her father for the remainder of his stay in England.

  A few minutes later she drew up at the door of the German Embassy, and sent her footman with her card to make enquiries. Even as he rang the bell, the door opened, and Prince Albert was shewn out by the Ambassador. The two shook hands, and the Prince came down the three steps, opposite which Dodo’s motor was drawn up. It was open, there could have been no doubt about his seeing her, but it struck her that his intention was to walk away without appearing to notice her. That, of course, was quite impermissible.

  “Bisque soup,” she said by way of greeting. “And me scouring London for lobsters.”

  He gave the sort of start that a dramatic rhinoceros might be expected to give, if it intended to carry the impression that it was surprised.

  “Ah, Lady Dodo,” said he. “Is it indeed you? I am heartbroken at not coming to your house tonight. But the Princess has to go into the country; there was no getting out of it. So sad. Also, we shall make a long stay in the country; I do not know when we shall get back. I will take your humble compliments to the Princess, will I not? I will take also your regrets that you will not have the honour to receive her tonight. And your amiable Papa; I was to have lunched with him today, but now instead I go into the country. And also, I will step along. Auf wiedersehen, Lady Dodo.”

  Suddenly a perfect shower of fresh straws seemed to join those others which she and Edith had spoken about last night, and they all moved the same way. There was the note which she had received half an hour ago saying that the Prince could not accept the invitation he had so urgently asked for; there was the fact of those piles of luggage leaving the Ritz; there was his call this morning at the German Embassy, above all there was his silence as to where he was going and his obvious embarrassment at meeting her. The tide swept them all along together, and she felt she knew for certain what his destination was.

  “Good-bye, sir,” she said. “I hope you’ll have a pleasant crossing.”

  He looked at her in some confusion.

  “But what crossing do you mean?” he said. “There is no crossing except the road which now I cross. Ha! There is a good choke, Lady Dodo.”

  Dodo made her face quite blank.

  “Is it indeed?” she said. “I should call it a bad fib.”

  She turned to her footman who was standing by the carriage door.

  “Well?” she said.

  “His Excellency is quite well again this morning, my lady,” he said.

  That too was rather straw-like.

  “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 tonight 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 tomorrow, and said good-bye. Or perhaps if we had gone tomorrow we should not go at all. What has Chermany to do with Servia, or what has England either? But no, we must go today 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.

  “He is frightened of everything. He is frightened that he will be pelted in the London streets for being a Cherman prince, just as if anybody knew or cared who he was! He is frightened of being put in prison. He is frightened that the Cherman fleet will surround England and destroy her ships and starve her. He is frightened of being hungry and thirsty. He is as a pig in a poke that squeals till it gets out.”

  This remarkable simile was hardly out of the Princess’s mouth before she squealed on her own account.

  “Ach, and here he is,” she said. “Now he will scold me, and you shall see how I also scold him.”

  He came lumbering up the passage towards them with a red, furious face.

  “And what did I tell you, Sophy?” he said. “Did I not tell you to sit and wait for me and speak to no one, and here are you holding the hand of Lady Dodo, to whom already I have said good-bye, and so now I do not see her. It is done, also it is finished, and it is time we went to the station. You are for ever talking, though I have said there shall be no more talking. What have you been saying?”

  Princess Albert still held Dodo’s hand.

  “I have been saying that your new portmanteau burst, and I must take your vests and your socks and your pants in my water-proof sheet. Also I have been saying—”

  “But your water-proof sheet, how will your water-proof sheet hold all that was in my portmanteau? It is impossible. Where is your water-proof sheet? Show it me.”

  “You will see it at Charing Cross. And if it is wet on the boat I will take out again your vests and your socks and your pants, and they may get wet instead of me.”

  “So! Then I tell you that if it is wet on the boat, you will go to your cabin, and if you are sick you will be sick. You shall not take my clothes from your water-proof sheet.”

  “We will see to that. Also, I have been saying good-bye to dearest Dodo, and I have been saying to her that it was not I who was so rude to her, but also that it was you, Albert. And I say now that I beg her pardon for your rudeness, but that I hope she will excuse you because you were in a fonk, and when you are in a fonk, you no longer know what you do, and in a fonk you will be till you are safe back in Germany. All that I say, dearest Albert, and if you are not good I will tell it to the mob at Charing Cross. I will say, ‘This is the Prince of Allenstein, and he is a Prussian soldier, and therefore he is running away from England.’ Do not provoke me, heart’s dearest. You will now get them to send for a cab, and we will go because you are a fonk. There will be no special train for us, there will be no one of our cousins to see us off, there will be no red carpet, and it is all your fault. And as for dearest Dodo, I kiss her on both cheeks, and I thank her for her kindness, and I pray for a happier meeting than is also our parting.”

  * * * *

  That afternoon there began to be publicly felt the beginning of that tension which grew until the breaking-point came in the first days of August, and but for Dodo’s shining example and precept, her ball that night might easily have resolved itself into a mere conference. Again and again at the beginning of the evening the floor was empty long after the band had struck up, while round the room groups of people collected and talked together on one subject. But Dodo seemed to be absolutely ubiquitous, and whenever she saw earnest conversationalists at work, she plunged into the middle of them, and broke them up like a dog charging a flock of sheep. Tomorrow would do for talk, tonight it was her ball. Her special prey was any group which had as its centre an excited female fount of gossip who began her sentences with “They tell me.…” Whenever that fatal phrase caught Dodo’s remarkably sharp ears, she instantly led the utterer of it away to be introduced to someone on the great red dais, managed to lose her in the crowd, and “went for” the next offender. The rumour that the Allensteins had left Charing Cross that afternoon for Germany was a dangerously interesting topic, and whenever Dodo came across it, she strenuously denied it, regardless of truth, and asserted that as a matter of fact they were going down again tomorrow to stay with her father at Vane Royal. Then perceiving him not far off, looking at the dais with the expression of Dante beholding the Beatific vision, she had dived into the crowd again, and told him that if he would assert beyond
the possibility of contradiction that this was the case, she would presently introduce him to anyone on the red dais whom he might select. As he pondered on the embarrassment of such richness, she was off again to break up another dangerous focus of conversation.

  An hour of wild activity was sufficient to set things really moving, and avert the danger of her ball becoming a mere meeting for the discussion of the European situation, and presently she found five minutes rest in the window of the music gallery from which she could survey both the ballroom and the marquee adjoining it. In all her thirty years’ experience, as hostess or guest, she had never been present at a ball which seemed quite to touch the high-water mark here, and she felt that without Lord Cookham’s assistance she had provided exactly the sort of evening that he had designed, in honour of Jumbo. It had happened like that; everybody was present in that riot of colour and rhythm that seethed about her, and at the moment the dais which stretched from side to side of the huge room was empty, for every one of its occupants was dancing, and she observed that even Lord Cookham (who had come in an official capacity) had deserted his place behind the row of chairs, and was majestically revolving with a princess, making little obeisances as he cannoned heavily into other exalted personages. The whole of the diplomatic corps was there, German and Austrian included, and there was the German ambassador, quite recovered from his curious indisposition, waltzing with the Italian ambassadress. The same spirit that had animated Dodo in breaking up serious conjectures and conversation seemed now to have spread broadcast; all were conspirators to make this ball, the last of the year, the most brilliant and memorable. From a utilitarian point of view there was no more to be said for it than for some gorgeously-plumaged bird that strutted and spread its jewelled wings, and yet all the time it was a symbol, expressing not itself alone but what it stood for. The glory of great names, wide-world commerce, invincible navies, all the endorsements of Empire, lay behind it. It glittered and shone like some great diamond in an illumination which at any moment might be obscured by the menace of thundercloud, but, if this was the last ray that should shine on it before the darkness that even now lapped the edge of it enveloped it entirely, that gloom would but suck the light from it, and not soften nor crush its heart of adamant.…