The Princess Priscilla's FortnightVon Arnim, Elizabeth
General
The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight
Von Arnim, Elizabeth
Germans -- England -- Fiction; Princesses -- Fiction
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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