by E. F. Benson
Dodo felt a sudden spasm of anger against the Prince. What right had he to behave like this? He was making it very hard for her, and he would get nothing by it. Her decision was irrevocable; she would not see him again, for some time at any rate. She would get over this ridiculous fear of him. What was he that other men were not? What was the position, after all? He had wanted to marry her; she had refused him because she was engaged to Jack. If there had been no Jack — well, there was a Jack, so it was unnecessary to pursue that any further. He had given her his photograph, and had said several things that he should not have said. Dodo thought of that scene with regret. She had had an opportunity which she had missed; she might easily have made it plain to him that his murmured speeches went beyond mere courtesy. Instead of that she had said she would always regard him as a great friend, and hoped he would see her often. She tapped the ground impatiently as she thought of missed opportunities. It was stupid, inconceivably stupid of her. Then he had followed her to England, and sent this telegram. She did not feel safe. She longed, and dreaded to see him again. It was too absurd that she should have to play this gigantic game of hide-and-seek. “I shall have to put on a blue veil and green goggles when I go back to London,” thought Dodo. “Well, the seekers have to catch the hiders, and he hasn’t caught me yet.”
Meanwhile the Prince was smoking a cigar at Dover Station. The telegram had not come, though he had waited an hour, and he had settled to give it another half-hour and then go on to London. He was not at all angry; it was as good as a game of chess. The Prince was very fond of chess. He enjoyed exercising a calculating long-sightedness, and he felt that the Marchioness of Chesterford elect was a problem that enabled him to exercise this faculty, of which he had plenty, to the full.
He had a sublime sense of certainty as to what he was going to do. He fully intended to marry Dodo, and he admitted no obstacles. She was engaged to Jack, was she? So much the worse for Jack. She wished to marry Jack, did she? So much the worse for her, and none the worse, possibly the better, for him. As it was quite certain that he himself was going to marry Dodo, these little hitches were entertaining than otherwise. It is more fun to catch your salmon after a quarter of an hour’s rather exciting fight with him than to net him. Half the joy of a possession lies in the act of acquisition, and the pleasure of acquisition consists, at least in half of the excitement attendant on it. To say that the Prince ever regarded anyone’s feelings would be understating the truth. The fact that his will worked its way in opposition to, and at the expense of others, afforded him a distinct and appreciable pleasure. If he wanted anything he went straight for it, and regarded neither man, nor devil, nor angel; and he wanted Dodo.
His mind, then, was thoroughly made up. She seemed to him immensely original and very complete. He read her, he thought, like a book, and the book was very interesting reading. His sending of the telegram with “Reply paid,” was a positive stroke of genius. Dodo had told him that she was going straight to London, but, as we have seen, she did not stop the night there, but went straight on to Edith’s home in Berkshire. There were two courses open to her; either to reply “Yes” or “No” to the telegram, or to leave it unanswered. If she left it “unanswered” it would delight him above measure, and it seemed that his wishes were to be realised. Not answering the telegram would imply that she did not think good to see him, and he judged that this decision was probably prompted by something deeper than mere indifference to his company. It must be dictated by a strong motive. His calculations were a little at fault, because Dodo had not stopped in London, but this made no difference, as events had turned out, to the correctness of his deductions.
He very much wished Dodo to be influenced by strong motives in her dealings with him. He would not have accepted, even as a gift, the real, quiet liking she had for Jack. Real, quiet likings seemed to him to be as dull as total indifference. He would not have objected to her regarding him with violent loathing, that would be something to correct; and his experience in such affairs was that strong sympathies and antipathies were more akin to each other than quiet affection or an apathetic indifference were to either. He walked up and down the platform with the smile of a man who is waiting for an interesting situation in a theatrical representation to develop itself. He had no wish to hurry it. The by-play seemed to him to be very suitable, and he bought a morning paper. He glanced through the leaders, and turned to the small society paragraphs. The first that struck his eye was this: “The Marchioness of Chesterford arrived in London yesterday afternoon from the Continent.”
He felt it was the most orthodox way of bringing the scene to its climax. Enter a newsboy, who hands paper to Prince, and exit. Prince unfolds paper and reads the news of — well, of what he is expecting.
He snipped the paragraph neatly out from the paper, and put it in his card-case. His valet was standing by the telegraph office, waiting for the message. The Prince beckoned to him.
“There will be no telegram,” he said. “We leave by the next train.”
The Prince had a carriage reserved for him, and he stepped in with a sense of great satisfaction. He even went so far as to touch his hat in response to the obeisances of the obsequious guard, and told his valet to see that the man got something. He soon determined on his next move — a decided “check,” and rather an awkward one; and for the rest of his journey he amused himself by looking out of the window, and admiring the efficient English farming. All the arrangements seemed to him to be very solid and adequate. The hedges were charming. The cart horses were models of sturdy strength, and the hop harvest promised to be very fine. He was surprised when they drew near London. The journey had been shorter than he expected.
He gave a few directions to his valet about luggage, and drove off to Eaton Square.
The door was opened by an impenetrable caretaker.
“Is Lady Chesterford in?” asked the Prince.
“Her ladyship is not in London, sir,” replied the man.
The Prince smiled. Dodo was evidently acting up to her refusal to answer his telegram.
“Ah, just so,” he remarked. “Please take this to her, and say I am waiting.”
He drew from his pocket a card, and the cutting from the Morning Post.
“Her ladyship is not in London,” the man repeated.
“Perhaps you would let me have her address,” said the Prince, feeling in his pockets.
“A telegram has come to-day, saying that her ladyship’s address is uncertain,” replied the caretaker.
“Would you be so good as to let me see the telegram?”
Certainly, he would fetch it.
The Prince waited serenely. Everything was going admirably.
The telegram was fetched. It had been handed in at Wokingham station at a quarter to one. “After she had received my telegram,” reflected the Prince.
“Do you know with whom she has been staying?” he asked blandly.
“With Miss Staines.”
The Prince was very much obliged. He left a large gratuity in the man’s hand, and wished him good afternoon.
He drove straight to his house, and sent for his valet, whom he could trust implicitly, and who had often been employed on somewhat delicate affairs.
“Take the first train for Wokingham to-morrow morning,” he said. “Find out where a Miss Staines lives. Inquire whether Lady Chesterford left the house to-day.”
“Yes, your Highness.”
“And hold your tongue about the whole business,” said the Prince negligently, turning away and lighting a cigar. “And send me a telegram from Wokingham: ‘Left yesterday,’ or ‘Still here.’”
The Prince was sitting over a late breakfast on the following morning, when a telegram was brought in. He read it, and his eyes twinkled with genuine amusement.
“I think,” he said to himself, “I think that’s rather neat.”
CHAPTER TWENTY.
If Dodo had felt some excusable pride in having torn up the Prince’s photogra
ph, her refusal to let him know where she was gave her a still more vivid sense of something approaching heroism. She did not blame anyone but herself for the position into which she had drifted during those weeks in Switzerland. She was quite conscious that she might have stopped any intimacy of this sort arising, and consequently the establishment of this power over her. But she felt she was regaining her lost position. Each sensible refusal to admit his influence over her was the sensible tearing asunder of the fibres which enveloped her. It was hard work, she admitted, but she was quite surprised to find how comfortable she was becoming. Jack really made a very satisfactory background to her thoughts. She was very fond of him, and she looked forward to their marriage with an eager expectancy, which, was partly, however, the result of another fear.
She was sitting in the drawing-room next day with Miss Grantham, talking about nothing particular very rapidly.
“Of course, one must be good to begin with,” she was saying; “one takes that for granted. The idea of being wicked never comes into my reckoning at all. I should do lots of things if I didn’t care what I did, that I shouldn’t think of doing at all now. I’ve got an admirable conscience. It is quite good, without being at all priggish. It isn’t exactly what you might call in holy orders, but it is an ecclesiastical layman, and has great sympathy with the Church. A sort of lay-reader, you know.”
“I haven’t got any conscience at all,” said Miss Grantham. “I believe I am fastidious in a way, though, which prevents me doing conspicuously beastly things.”
“Oh, get a conscience, Grantie,” said Dodo fervently, “it is such a convenience. It’s like having someone to make up your mind for you. I like making up other people’s minds, but I cannot make up my own; however, my conscience does that for me. It isn’t me a bit. I just give it a handful of questions which I want an answer upon, and it gives me them back, neatly docketed, with ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ upon them.”
“That’s no use,” said Miss Grantham. “I know the obvious ‘Yeses’ and ‘Noes’ myself. What I don’t know are the host of things that don’t matter much in themselves, which you can’t put down either right or wrong.”
“Oh, I do all those,” said Dodo serenely, “if I want to, and if I don’t, I have an excellent reason for not doing them, because I am not sure whether they are right. When I set up my general advice office, which I shall do before I die, I shall make a special point of that for other people. I shall give decided answers in most cases, but I shall reserve a class of things indifferent, which are simply to be settled by inclination.”
“What do you call indifferent things?” asked Miss Grantham, pursuing the Socratic method.
“Oh, whether you are to play lawn tennis on Sunday afternoon,” said Dodo, “or wear mourning for second cousins, or sing alto in church for the sake of the choir; all that sort of thing.”
“Your conscience evidently hasn’t taken orders,” remarked Miss Grantham.
“That’s got nothing to do with my conscience,” said Dodo. “My conscience doesn’t touch those things at all. It only concerns itself with right and wrong.”
“You’re very moral this morning,” said Miss Grantham. “Edith,” she went on, as Miss Staines entered in a howling wilderness of dogs, “Dodo has discovered a conscience.”
“Whose?” asked Edith.
“Why, my own, of course,” said Dodo; “but it’s no discovery. I always knew I had one.”
“There’s someone waiting to see you,” said Edith. “I brought his card in.”
She handed Dodo a card.
“Prince Waldenech,” she said quietly to herself, “let him come in here, Edith. You need not go away.”
Dodo got up and stood by the mantelpiece, and displayed an elaborate attention to one of Edith’s dogs. She was angry with herself for needing this minute of preparation, but she certainly used it to the best advantage; and when the Prince entered she greeted him with an entirely natural smile of welcome.
“Ah, this is charming,” she said, advancing to him. “How clever of you to find out my address.”
“I am staying at a house down here,” said the Prince, lying with conscious satisfaction as he could not be contradicted, “and I could not resist the pleasure.”
Dodo introduced him to Edith and Miss Grantham, and sat down again.
“I sent no address, as I really did not know where I might be going,” she said, following the Prince’s lead. “That I was not in London was all my message meant. I did not know you would be down here.”
“Lord Chesterford is in England?” asked the Prince.
“Oh, yes, Jack came with me as far as Dover, and then he left me for the superior attractions of partridge-shooting. Wasn’t it rude of him?”
“He deserves not to be forgiven,” said the Prince.
“I think I shall send you to call him out for insulting me,” said Dodo lightly; “and you can kill each other comfortably while I look on. Dear old Jack.”
“I should feel great pleasure in fighting Lord Chesterford if you told me to,” said the Prince, “or if you told him to, I’m sure he would feel equal pleasure in killing me.”
Dodo laughed.
“Duelling has quite gone out,” she said. “I sha’n’t require you ever to do anything of that kind.”
“I am at your service,” he said.
“I wish you’d open that window then,” said Dodo; “it is dreadfully stuffy. Edith, you really have too many flowers in the room.”
“Why do you say that duelling has done out?” he asked. “You might as well say that devotion has gone out.”
“No one fights duels now,” said Dodo; “except in Prance, and no one, even there, is ever hurt, unless they catch cold in the morning air, like Mark Twain.”
“Certainly no one goes out with a pistol-case, and a second, and a doctor,” said the Prince; “that was an absurd way of duelling. It is no satisfaction to know that you are a better shot than your antagonist.”
“Still less to know that he is a better shot than you,” remarked Miss Grantham.
“Charming,” said the Prince; “that is worthy of Lady Chesterford. And higher praise—”
“Go on about duelling,” said Dodo, unceremoniously.
“The old system was no satisfaction, because the quarrel was not about who was the better shot. Duelling is now strictly decided by merit. Two men quarrel about a woman. They both make love to her; in other words, they both try to cut each other’s throats, and one succeeds. It is far more sensible. Pistols are stupid bull-headed weapons. Words are much finer. They are exquisite sharp daggers. There is no unnecessary noise or smoke, and they are quite orderly.”
“Are those the weapons you would fight Lord Chesterford with, if Dodo told you to?” asked Edith, who was growing uneasy.
The Prince, as Dodo once said, never made a fool of himself. It was a position in which it was extremely easy for a stupid man to say something very awkward. Lady Grantham, with all her talent for asking inconvenient questions, could not have formed a more unpleasant one. He looked across at Dodo a moment, and said, without a perceptible pause, —
“If I ever was the challenger of Lady Chesterford’s husband, the receiver of the challenge has the right to choose the weapons.”
The words startled Dodo somehow. She looked up and met his eye.
“Your system is no better than the old one,” she said. “Words become the weapons instead of pistols, and the man who is most skilful with words has the same advantage as the good shot. You are not quarrelling about words, but about a woman.”
“But words are the expression of what a man is,” said the Prince. “You are pitting merit against merit.”
Dodo rose and began to laugh.
“Don’t quarrel with Jack, then,” she said. “He would tell the footman to show you the door. You would have to fight the footman. Jack would not speak to you.”
Dodo felt strongly the necessity of putting an end to this conversation, which was effectuall
y done by this somewhat uncourteous speech. The fencing had become rather too serious to please her, and she did not wish to be serious. But she felt oppressively conscious of this man’s personality, and saw that he was stronger than she was herself. She decided to retreat, and made a desperate effort to be entirely flippant.
“I hope the Princess has profited by the advice I gave her,” she said. “I told her how to be happy though married, and how not to be bored though a Russian. But she’s a very bad case.”
“She said to me dreamily as I left,” said the Prince, “‘You’ll hear of my death on the Matterhorn. Tell Lady Chesterford it was her fault.’”
Dodo laughed.
“Poor dear thing,” she said, “I really am sorry for her. It’s a great pity she didn’t marry a day labourer and have to cook the dinner and slap the children. It would have been the making of her.”
“It would have been a different sort of making,” remarked the Prince.
“I believe you can even get blasé of being bored,” said Miss Grantham, “and then, of course, you don’t get bored any longer, because you are bored with it.”
This remarkable statement was instantly contradicted by Edith.
“Being bored is a bottomless pit,” she remarked. “You never get to the end, and the deeper you go the longer it takes to get out. I was never bored in my life. I like listening to what the dullest people say.”
“Oh, but it’s when they don’t say anything that they’re so trying,” said Miss Grantham.
“I don’t mind that a bit,” remarked Dodo. “I simply think aloud to them. The less a person says the more I talk, and then suddenly I see that they’re shocked at me, or that they don’t understand. The Prince is often shocked at me, only he’s too polite to say so. I don’t mean that you’re a dull person, you know, but he always understands. You know he’s quite intelligent,” Dodo went on, introducing him with a wave of her hand, like a showman with a performing animal. “He knows several languages. He will talk on almost any subject you wish. He was thirty-five years of age last May, and will be thirty-six next May.”