Chapter 20

The only inhabitant of Creeper Cottage who slept that night was Annalise. Priscilla spent it walking up and down her bedroom, and Fritzing on the other side of the wall spent it walking up and down his. They could hear each other doing it; it was a melancholy sound. Once Priscilla was seized with laughter—a not very genial mirth, but still laughter—and had to fling herself on her bed and bury her face in the pillows lest Fritzing should hear so blood-curdling a noise. It was when their steps had fallen steadily together for several turns and the church clock, just as she was noticing this, had struck three. Not for this, to tramp up and down their rooms all night, not for this had they left Kunitz. The thought of all they had dreamed life in Creeper Cottage was going to be, of all they had never doubted it was going to be, of peaceful nights passed in wholesome slumber, of days laden with fruitful works, of evenings with the poets, came into her head and made this tormented marching suddenly seem intensely droll. She laughed into her pillow till the tears rolled down her face, and the pains she had to take to keep all sounds from reaching Fritzing only made her laugh more.

It was a windy night, and the wind sighed round the cottage and rattled the casements and rose every now and then to a howl very dreary to hear. While Priscilla was laughing a great gust shook the house, and involuntarily she raised her head to listen. It died away, and her head dropped back on to her arms again, but the laughter was gone. She lay solemn enough, listening to Fritzing’s creakings, and thought of the past day and of the days to come till her soul grew cold. Surely she was a sort of poisonous weed, fatal to every one about her? Fritzing, Tussie, the poor girl Emma—oh, it could not be true about Emma. She had lost the money, and was trying to gather courage to come and say so; or she had simply not been able to change it yet. Fritzing had jumped to the conclusion, because nothing had been heard of her all day at home, that she had run away with it. Priscilla twisted herself about uneasily. It was not the loss of the five pounds that made her twist, bad though that loss was in their utter poverty; it was the thought that if Emma had really run away she, by her careless folly, had driven the girl to ruin. And then Tussie. How dreadful that was. At three in the morning, with the wailing wind rising and falling and the room black with the inky blackness of a moonless October night, the Tussie complication seemed to be gigantic, of a quite appalling size, threatening to choke her, to crush all the spring and youth out of her. If Tussie got well she was going to break his heart; if Tussie died it would be her fault. No one but herself was responsible for his illness, her own selfish, hateful self. Yes, she was a poisonous weed; a baleful, fatal thing, not fit for great undertakings, not fit for a noble life, too foolish to depart successfully from the lines laid down for her by other people; wickedly careless; shamefully shortsighted; spoiling, ruining, everything she touched. Priscilla writhed. Nobody likes being forced to recognize that they are poisonous weeds. Even to be a plain weed is grievous to one’s vanity, but to be a weed and poisonous as well is a very desperate thing to be. She passed a dreadful night. It was the worst she could remember.

And the evening too—how bad it had been; though contrary to her expectations Fritzing showed no desire to fight Tussie. He was not so unreasonable as she had supposed; and besides, he was too completely beaten down by the ever-increasing weight and number of his responsibilities to do anything in regard to that unfortunate youth but be sorry for him. More than once that evening he looked at Priscilla in silent wonder at the amount of trouble one young woman could give. How necessary, he thought, and how wise was that plan at which he used in his ignorance to rail, of setting an elderly female like the Disthal to control the actions and dog the footsteps of the Priscillas of this world. He hated the Disthal and all women like her, women with mountainous bodies and minimal brains—bodies self-indulged into shapelessness, brains neglected into disappearance; but the nobler and simpler and the more generous the girl the more did she need some such mixture of fleshliness and cunning constantly with her. It seemed absurd, and it seemed all wrong; yet surely it was so. He pondered over it long in dejected musings, the fighting tendency gone out of him completely for the time, so dark was his spirit with the shadows of the future.

They had borrowed the wages—it was a dreadful moment—for that day’s cook from Annalise. For their food they decided to run up a bill at the store; but every day each fresh cook would have to be paid, and every day her wages would have to be lent by Annalise. Annalise lent superbly; with an air as of giving freely, with joy. All she required was the Princess’s signature to a memorandum drawn up by herself by which she was promised the money back, doubled, within three months. Priscilla read this, flushed to her hair, signed, and ordered her out of the room. Annalise, who was beginning to enjoy herself, went upstairs singing. In the parlour Priscilla broke the pen she had signed with into quite small pieces and flung them on to the fire, —a useless demonstration, but then she was a quick-tempered young lady. In the attic Annalise sat down and wrote a letter breathing lofty sentiments to the Countess Disthal in Kunitz, telling her she could no longer keep silence in the face of a royal parent’s anxieties and she was willing to reveal the address of the Princess Priscilla and so staunch the bleeding of a noble heart if the Grand Duke would forward her or forward to her parents on her behalf the sum of twenty thousand marks. Gladly would she render this service, which was at the same time her duty, for nothing, if she had not the future to consider and an infirm father. Meanwhile she gave the Symford post-office as an address, assuring the Countess that it was at least fifty miles from the Princess’s present hiding-place, the address of which would only be sent on the conditions named. Then, immensely proud of her cleverness, she trotted down to the post-office, bought stamps, and put the letter herself in the box.