CHAPTER VI

The Princess Girla had a very strong sense of duty; from her earliest years she had believed in doing right, and she had known that she ought to have what she wanted. There was a moral compulsion behind her simplest desires; and she never undertook anything without explaining to God what she expected from His co-operation.

She often saw with sympathy the suffering in which people were involved while carrying out her wishes.

This insight never deflected Hermione’s will, but it made her charming to serve.

She was extremely generous in ways which caused her no inconvenience, and her manner in getting her wants made known was little short of exquisite. Hermione’s confidential maid, who was a Roman Catholic, firmly believed that if the Princess could be led to embrace the true faith, she would eventually be canonised.

Hermione was of the stuff out of which the most perfect Mother Superiors are made. As a lady Abbess she would have been feared and adored by all her nuns, and no one except, perhaps, an impotent Father Confessor in a moment of rebellion, would have thought of deposing her.

The trained nurse believed that Hermione suffered from a mysterious disease not yet discovered by the doctors. Hermione had suggested to her that nurses really understood illness far more thoroughly than medical men; and she gave the nurse five guineas a week, and a series of beautiful hats.

Nurse Davies frequently told people that the Princess Girla often reminded her of Florence Nightingale and Joan of Arc. Her body was pathetically frail but her spirit was indomitable.

Torture was nothing to her.

Hermione had an iron self-control even as a child. She had behaved faultlessly. No one had ever had to correct her manners. She had had a young and jealous mother, who first adored and spoiled her, and when Hermione reached the age of fifteen, had turned against her with an antagonism as fierce as it was secret. Hermione had for a time meditated a friendly alliance with her father, but she gave up the idea when she discovered that Mr. Brett refused to take her on her own valuation, and never permitted any criticism of his wife. Theodora fought her daughter for every human soul that came into the house. They both had beauty and wit, Theodora had experience and Hermione youth. They were very evenly matched combatants, but the extra weight of authority possessed by Theodora weighed down the scale. Hermione decided at eighteen that she would leave her home. She gained her father’s consent to travel with friends of his to Europe; but she went without her mother’s approval.

Theodora resented Europe, except for clothes. She would have liked to rule in Paris but Mr. Brett had refused to give her any assistance. European countries were strange as well as illusory. They would not permit Theodora to rule without her husband. So she turned her back upon Europe and took up New York. But an instinct warned her that Hermione would conquer the old world, and leave her perpetually dissatisfied with the new.

When Hermione left America she decided never to return to it except as a visitor, and when she could take precedence of her mother.

She met Prince Girla in Paris, kept him on a tight rope for a year, and then married him. Her precedence was now assured, but she was disappointed when she discovered that in spite of Prince Girla’s connection with the ruling family of Roumania, the fact that he belonged to a younger branch (quite precluding succession) gave her much less social importance than she had expected. They both spoke French perfectly, so that language was no barrier between them. Prince Girla had heavy debts, but he was madly in love with Hermione.

He would have shot himself if he had failed to win her, although it is improbable that he would have suggested marrying her if she had not been able to bring him a magnificent dowry.

At nineteen there was only one thing that Hermione did not know about life—and that was marriage. She had spent much time and ingenuity upon the subject, but marriage is the one experience upon which no correlation of facts, however careful, has much practical bearing.

It took Hermione three days of personal experience to understand married life, but it took her longer than this to teach her husband.

Hermione said afterwards, to her greatest friends, that she was afraid she was not material enough for marriage. In the Roman Catholic Church marriage is accepted as one of the lesser sacraments, but if Hermione had been the Pope she would have altered this definition.

Prince Girla did the best he could with a spiritual tie, but he had not been brought up on those principles, and he was very much in love.

The whole affair was disastrous, and it was complicated by the birth of a boy within a year of the marriage. The Girla family took this as a sign of grace, and not as an omen of destruction. Their rejoicing was premature. Hermione went through her trial with an incredulous serenity. She could not believe that Providence really meant to play her such a trick, but when she found it had, she decided to make the occasion final.

She would never have another child, nor did she mean to be inconvenienced by the one she possessed.

Hermione did nothing to defy the marriage law; she would have thought it very wrong to defy a law as well as rather foolish when it could be so easily adapted to her convenience without defiance. She became seriously ill.

No doctor could quite understand the cause of the Princess’s illness (its chief symptom was the enforced absence of her husband for two years), but of the fact itself there could be no reasonable doubt. Hermione barely ate enough to keep herself alive, she was as frail as a leaf, and suffered intensely, with heroic fortitude—but she chose her sufferings.

At the end of two years Prince Girla had had enough of it, he still admired Hermione but he wanted a wife. He insisted upon an interview and he told her in fluent French with the extreme clarity of the Latin mind what he thought of her.

Hermione lay on a sofa with her eyes shut, breathing softly. There were moments in his long and emphatic speeches when Prince Girla pulled himself up short and wondered if Hermione, who was as still as a statue, was really alive at all.

But Hermione was alive; she waited until the Prince had said all that had accumulated in his goaded and troubled spirit for the space of two years, then she slowly opened her eyes, and selecting a few gentle words which had occurred to her while he was stamping about the room, she uttered them. They were perfectly wifely phrases and they gave Prince Girla no justification whatever for what took place.

He struck Hermione.

This was the end of the marriage.

Prince Girla could not get a divorce on account of his religion, nor was Hermione anxious for one.

She preferred to keep her title, and she had had enough of marriage. Prince Girla apologised for the blow, and from time to time offered abject terms of reconciliation; but Hermione refused to see him again. She said she forgave him from the bottom of her heart and mentioned meeting him at the judgment seat of Heaven where there was—as she was thankful to reflect—no marrying nor giving in marriage, but she would not meet him upon earth where the arrangements were less satisfactory.

Her relations-in-law wrote her letters which Hermione described as “terribly Roumanian,” but they failed either to move her, or, as they subsequently attempted, to cause her social destruction.

Hermione despised the Roumanian court which she privately described as “potty,” and in the larger field of Europe her character remained unblemished. She lived with perfect discretion; she was a Princess, and she had an enormous income. She made no complaints, and yet every one who mattered knew that Girla had beaten her black and blue continually.

Men raved against her ill-treatment and black-balled Girla out of their clubs; but Hermione’s best and strongest supporters were those of her own sex. She accepted passively and up to a certain point the admiration of men; at this point she definitely checked it; but she made efforts to attract women, and their admiration never became inconvenient to her.

Hermione was said to have a purifying influence over young married women, and if they sometimes became very unhappy with their husbands, she became an increasing support to them.

It was with this theory in mind that the Princess Girla came to Mambles. If she had been able to help other young married women, how much more ought she not to help Elise?

In her first twenty-four hours Hermione had pointed out to her sister, with infinite tact and gentleness, that there is a selfishness of two, as well as a selfishness of one, and that Elise might very easily fall into it.

That evening Elise forbore to go out into the garden with John, and sang Gounod’s “There Is a Green Hill Far Away” instead, in the presence of the assembled family. John had never appreciated sacred music, and he hated Gounod from that hour.

Hermione warned Elise how soon she could exhaust the affections of her husband by permitting a demonstrative regard.

“Do not rebuff him,” she explained gently, “but evade him.”

Elise tried to evade John, and neither of them liked it.

Hermione told Elise how difficult young married life is, and Elise, to whom it had come as easily as sunshine, began to see in it obstacles and perils to John’s happiness and her own, which would have been exaggerated in a jungle exclusively tenanted by wild beasts.

It never occurred to Elise that Hermione could be wrong; because Hermione loved her so much and had been so unhappy herself, and only wanted to save and shield Elise from a similar unhappiness.

Elise became pale with apprehension over the disasters and pitfalls which lay ahead of herself and John, and even for the gardener’s wife who had been married the week before, and did not look as if it had made any difference.

Elise would have liked to ask her father’s help but that might seem as if she had not perfect confidence in John, and she would have loved to talk to John about it, only that might seem as if she had not perfect confidence in Hermione, so that she decided to keep her anxieties to herself.

She struggled manfully on, evading John, and seeing that Mr. Brett was regularly and carefully attended to, even when he wanted to be left alone.

“I should never,” Hermione carefully explained to Elise, “leave dear Papa to stroll about by himself, or even sit for any length of time, without running in to see if he is still alive. At any moment we may lose him.”

Of course Hermione could not take this duty upon herself, partly because of Mr. Brett’s inexplicable dislike to her company, brought on, no doubt, by a diseased state of mind; and partly because her own health required the utmost watchfulness and repose. But Elise could make a point of running in and out and following Mr. Brett up, without any grave consequences to anybody, and if it interrupted her persistent tête-à-tête with John, so much the more precious would she make this rare companionship.

“I do not want you ever to think of me,” Hermione said tenderly, “if I never see your face from one day’s end to the other, Childie, I shall not complain! All yesterday I sat alone, hour after hour, while you went fishing with John. I thought of Papa once or twice and I was anxious at your staying out so late—but for the rest, I want you to dismiss your little old sister from your mind. I am one of those whose path in life is cut out for loneliness.”

Of course Hermione’s path was very rarely lonely at Mambles. Elise made constant opportunities to be with her sister, her little feet grew weary with running to and fro, her heart beat fast with suppressed fears, and she often lay awake for hours haunted by remorse. Had she neglected Hermione? Would Papa die suddenly while she was out of the room? Was John’s crossness when she left him quite the reward she had expected from her evasive tactfulness?

The cook, too, was difficult. She said she couldn’t see the sense of the Princess’s meals. She had no objection to Mr. Brett’s, which were no trouble, and took place at the same time as other people’s, though she wondered that he could keep alive on them, such stuff would kill a healthy rabbit if exclusively condemned to it! But the Princess liked her meals to be ordered at different times on different days, so that nobody knew when they sat down how soon they would have to be up again, and they were all new-fangled dishes which had to be cooked just right—a slice off anything cold, even off a loaf of bread, was simply sent down again as so much rat poison.

Elise wrinkled her delicate eyebrows, and wondered distractedly if she ought to get an extra cook for Hermione, and if she did, wouldn’t she (cooks’ tempers being what they were) have to ask John to build an extra kitchen, and would John build an extra kitchen while there was a war on?

She would have liked to consult John about it, but Hermione had expressly told her, “Never take your domestic difficulties to your husband, many married lives are ruined by just that lack of self-control on the part of young wives. Always meet him with a smiling face and tell him that everything is perfectly easy.”

Life became more and more complicated for Elise, and she often wondered if she would have been able to bear it at all if Hermione had not been there.

This state of tension was unexpectedly broken by Bodger.

One Sunday afternoon they were all sitting out on the lawn having tea. Mr. Brett had a glass of milk with digestive biscuits, Hermione had chocolate with whipped cream and savoury sandwiches, and John and Elise real tea with bread and butter. The Poms took what they could get from each table, and shrieked over it.

It was a lovely south-west day, high clouds sailed swiftly overhead, passing each other on different levels, in a clear blue sky. The garden was full of light movements, travelling scents and midsummer colours. John had moved the wind-screen five times for Hermione, quite good-naturedly. Elise was just wondering whether it would affect her married life irreparably if she should suggest a walk with John after tea, when Bodger, having gnawed through a substantial rope and missed the detaining hand of the stable boy by a fraction of a second, burst upon the scene.

The peaceful lawn rocked in chaos. There was a table between Bodger and one Pom: for a fleeting moment the rampart stood erect, and then in jangled pieces bestrewed the lawn.

Mr. Brett reached out an arm, seized the Pom nearest him, and stuffed it, screaming, into a capacious pocket; John ought to have caught the other Pom—he nearly caught it, but unfortunately the sight of Bodger passing imperturbably through hot chocolate and whipped cream (it was Hermione’s table he had overturned) checked him, by a gust of laughter. The chuckle cost him the life of the Pom.

Bichon dived past him, making foolishly away from Hermione towards the open lawn. Hermione screamed and deflected Bodger from her chair. He was on the Pom’s trail in a second and an instant later Bichon was painlessly shaken into Eternity.

John caught Bodger only a moment afterwards, but there was nothing left to catch of Bichon: he had entered upon the first unbroken silence of his career.

John beat Bodger sternly and without mercy, but Bodger merely licked his lips, writhed as a matter of form, and hunted for the other Pom, out of the corner of a wicked eye.

Bichette had hysterics in Mr. Brett’s waistcoat.

Hermione missed a great opportunity. She should have fainted, probably she would have fainted, only a spontaneous faint comes off quicker than one which is premeditated. Before she had time to think of it, Elise had forestalled her.

Elise had spent a long hot day trying to make everybody happy and comfortable, and bloodshed upon the top of these efforts was more than she could stand.

“Now,” said Hermione with her grey eyes cold with hatred, “perhaps John you will be content to part with that unspeakable monster, when you see what it has done to your poor wife!”

“Hermione,” said Mr. Brett, suddenly depositing the remaining Pom upon her lap. “Quit this lawn and take this demented muff with you. You and your dogs between you have done enough mischief for one bright summer’s day.”

Hermione murmured that dear Papa was of course upset, but she did leave the lawn with Bichette under her arm, casting a glance of terror and aversion at the recumbent, contemplative form of Bodger.

John was on his knees beside his wife.

“She’s round, John,” said Mr. Brett very gently. “I guess the thing that will suit her best is for you to stay there quietly with her till dinner time.”

Elise whispered that she was perfectly all right, but some one must go at once to help and comfort Hermione.

“Sure,” agreed Mr. Brett with alacrity. “I’ll go right in and see to Hermione. I’ve assisted her some already, but it ain’t anything to what I _might_ do if I put my mind to it.”

Mr. Brett moved off with unusual quickness across the lawn, and in a fit of absent-mindedness called out “Good dog” as he passed Bodger.