The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight Part 14

The sitting-room at Baker's was a small, straightforward place, with no screens, no big furniture, no plants in pots, nothing that could for a moment conceal the persons already in it from the persons coming in, and Robin entering jauntily with the umbrella under his arm fell straight as it were into his mother's angry gaze. "Hullo mater, you here?" he exclaimed genially, his face broadening with apparent satisfaction.

"Yes, Robin, I am here," she said, drawing herself up.

"How do you do, Miss Schultz. I seem to have got shown into the wrong room. It's a Mr. Neumann I've come to see; doesn't he live here?"

Priscilla looked at him from her sofa seat and wondered what she had done that she should be scourged in this manner by Morrisons.

"You know my son, I believe?" said Mrs. Morrison in the stiffest voice; for the girl's face showed neither recognition nor pleasure, and though she would have been angry if she had looked unduly pleased she was still angrier that she should look indifferent.

"Yes. I met him yesterday. Did you want my uncle? His name is Neumann.

Neumann-Schultz. He's out."

"I only wanted to give him this umbrella," said Robin, with a swift glance at his mother as he drew it from under his arm. Would she recognize it? He had chosen one of the most ancient; the one most appropriate, as he thought, to the general appearance of the man Neumann.

"What umbrella is that, Robin?" asked his mother suspiciously. Really, it was more than odd that Robin, whom she had left immersed in study, should have got into Baker's Farm so quickly. Could he have been expected? And had Providence, in its care for the righteous cause of mothers, brought her here just in time to save him from this girl's toils? The girl's indifference could not be real; and if it was not, her good acting only betrayed the depths of her experience and balefulness. "What umbrella is that?" asked Mrs. Morrison.

"It's his," said Robin, throwing his head back and looking at his mother as he laid it with elaborate care on the table.

"My uncle's?" said Priscilla. "Had he lost it? Oh thank you--he would have been dreadfully unhappy. Sit down." And she indicated with her head the chair she would allow him to sit on.

"The way she tells us to sit down!" thought Mrs. Morrison indignantly.

"As though she were a queen." Aloud she said, "You could have sent Joyce round with it"--Joyce being that gardener whose baby's perambulator was wheeled by another Ethel--"and need not have interrupted your work."

"So I could," said Robin, as though much struck by the suggestion.

"But it was a pleasure," he added to Priscilla, "to be able to return it myself. It's a frightful bore losing one's umbrella--especially if it's an old friend."

"Uncle Fritzi's looks as if it were a very old friend," said Priscilla, smiling at it.

Mrs. Morrison glanced at it too, and then glanced again. When she glanced a third time and her glance turned into a look that lingered Robin jumped up and inquired if he should not put it in the pa.s.sage.

"It's in the way here," he explained; though in whose way it could be was not apparent, the table being perfectly empty.

Priscilla made no objection, and he at once removed it beyond the reach of his mother's eye, propping it up in a dark corner of the pa.s.sage and telling Mrs. Pearce, whom he found there that it was Mr.

Neumann's umbrella.

"No it ain't," said Mrs. Pearce.

"Yes it is," said Robin.

"No it ain't. He's took his to Minehead," said Mrs. Pearce.

"It is, and he has not," said Robin.

"I see him take it," said Mrs. Pearce.

"You did not," said Robin.

This would have been the moment, Mrs. Morrison felt, for her to go and to carry off Robin with her, but she was held in her seat by the certainty that Robin would not let himself be carried off; and sooner than say good-bye and then find he was staying on alone she would sit there all night. Thus do mothers sacrifice themselves for their children, thought Mrs. Morrison, for their all too frequently thankless children. But though she would do it to any extent in order to guard her boy she need not, she said to herself, be pleasant besides,--she need not, so to speak, be the primroses on his path of dalliance. Accordingly she behaved as little like a primrose as possible, sitting in stony silence while he skirmished in the pa.s.sage with Mrs. Pearce, and the instant he came in again asked him where he had found the umbrella.

"I found it--not far from the church," said Robin, desiring to be truthful as long as he could. "But mater, bother the umbrella. It isn't so very n.o.ble to bring a man back his own. Did you get your cottages?" he asked, turning quickly to Priscilla.

"Robin, are you sure it is his own?" said his mother.

"My dear mother, I'm never sure of anything. Nor are you. Nor is Miss Schultz. Nor is anybody who is really intelligent. But I found the thing, and Mr. Neumann--"

"The name to-day is Neumann-Schultz," said Mrs. Morrison, in a voice heavy with implications.

"Mr. Neumann-Schultz, then, had been that way just before, and so I felt somehow it must be his."

"Your Uncle c.o.x had one just like it when he stayed with us last time," remarked Mrs. Morrison.

"Had he? I say, mater, what an eye you must have for an umbrella. That must be five years ago."

"Oh, he left it behind, and I see it in the stand every time I go through the hall."

"No! Do you?" said Robin, who was hurled by this statement into the corner where his wits ended and where he probably would have stayed ignominiously, for Miss Schultz seemed hardly to be listening and really almost looked--he couldn't believe it, no girl had ever done it in his presence yet, but she did undoubtedly almost look--bored, if Mrs. Pearce had not flung open the door, and holding the torn portions of her ap.r.o.n bunched together in her hands, nervously announced Lady Shuttleworth.

"Oh," thought Priscilla, "what a day I'm having." But she got up and was gracious, for Fritzing had praised this lady as kind and sensible; and the moment Lady Shuttleworth set her eyes on her the mystery of her son's behaviour flashed into clearness. "Tussie's seen her!" she exclaimed inwardly; instantly adding "Upon my word I can't blame the boy."

"My dear," she said, holding Priscilla's hand, "I've come to make friends with you. See what a wise old woman I am. Frankly, I didn't want you in those cottages, but now that my son has sold them I lose no time in making friends. Isn't that true wisdom?"

"It's true niceness," said Priscilla, smiling down at the little old lady whose eyes were twinkling all over her. "I don't think you'll find us in any way a nuisance. All we want is to be quiet."

Mrs. Morrison sniffed.

"Do you really?" said Lady Shuttleworth. "Then we shall get on capitally. It's what I like best myself. And you've come too," she went on, turning to Mrs. Morrison, "to make friends with your new paris.h.i.+oner? Why, Robin, and you too?"

"Oh, I'm only accidental," said Robin quickly. "Only a restorer of lost property. And I'm just going," he added, beginning to make hasty adieux; for Lady Shuttleworth invariably produced a conviction in him that his clothes didn't fit and wanted brus.h.i.+ng badly, and no young man so attentive to his appearance as Robin could be expected to enjoy that. He fled therefore, feeling that even Miss Schultz's loveliness would not make up for Lady Shuttleworth's eyes; and in the pa.s.sage, from whence Mrs. Pearce had retreated, removing herself as far as might be from the awful lady to whom her father-in-law owed rent and who saw every hole, Robin pounced on his Uncle c.o.x's umbrella, tucked is once more beneath his arm, and bore it swiftly back to the stand where it had spent five peaceful years. "Really old women are rather terrible things," he thought as he dropped it in again. "I wonder what they're here for."

"Ah, it's there, I see," remarked his mother that night as she pa.s.sed through the hall on her way to dinner.

"What is?" inquired Robin who was just behind her.

"Your Uncle c.o.x's umbrella."

"Dear mater, why this extreme interest in my Uncle c.o.x's umbrella?"

"I'm glad to see it back again, that's all. One gets so used to things."

Lady Shuttleworth and his mother--I shudder to think that it is possible Robin included his mother in the reflection about old women, but on the other hand one never can tell--had stayed on at the farm for another twenty minutes after he left. They would have stayed longer, for Lady Shuttleworth was more interested in Priscilla than she had ever been in any girl before, and Mrs. Morrison, who saw this interest and heard the kind speeches, had changed altogether from ice to amiability, crus.h.i.+ng her leaflets in her hand and more than once expressing hopes that Miss Neumann-Schultz would soon come up to tea and learn to know and like Netta--I repeat, they would have stayed much longer, but that an extremely odd thing happened.

Priscilla had been charming; chatting with what seemed absolute frankness about her future life in the cottages, answering little questionings of Lady Shuttleworth's with a discretion and plausibility that would have warmed Fritzing's anxious heart, dwelling most, for here the ground was safest, on her uncle, his work, his gifts and character, and Lady Shuttleworth, completely fascinated, had offered her help of every sort, help in the arranging of her little home, in the planting of its garden, even in the building of those bathrooms about which Tussie had been told by Mr. Dawson. She thought the desire for many bathrooms entirely praiseworthy, and only a sign of lunacy in persons of small means. Fritzing had a.s.sured Tussie that he had money enough for the bathrooms; and if his poetic niece liked everybody about her to be nicely washed was not that a taste to be applauded?

Perhaps Lady Shuttleworth expatiated on plans and probable building-costs longer than Priscilla was able to be interested; perhaps she was over-explanatory of practical details; anyhow Priscilla's attention began to wander, and she gradually became very tired of her callers. She answered in monosyllables, and her smile grew vague. Then suddenly, at the first full stop Lady Shuttleworth reached in a sentence about sanitation--the entire paragraph was never finished--she got up with her usual deliberate grace, and held out her hand.

"It has been very kind of you to come and see me," she said to the astounded lady, with a little gracious smile. "I hope you will both come again another time."

For an instant Lady Shuttleworth thought she was mad. Then to her own amazement she found her body rising obediently and letting its hand be taken.

Mrs. Morrison did the same. Both had their hands slightly pressed, both were smiled upon, and both went out at once and speechless.

Priscilla stood calmly while they walked to the door, with the little smile fixed on her face.