66 'Ah, what is that?" "That," said Bell, suddenly recovering from her trance, "is a hotel for German princes." She had no sooner uttered the words, however, than she looked thoroughly alarmed; and with a prodigious shame and mortification she begged the Count's pardon, who merely laughed, and said he regretted he was not a Prince. "It is Windsor, is it not?" he said. "Yes," replied Bell humbly, while her face was still pained and glowing. "II hope you will forgive my rudeness I think I must have heard some one say that recently, and it escaped me before I thought what it meant." Of course, the Lieutenant passed the matter off lightly, as a very harmless saying; but all the same Bell seemed determined for some time after to make him amends, and quite took away my Lady's occupation by pointing out to our young Uhlan, in a very respectful and submissive manner, whatever she thought of note on the road. Whether the Lieutenant perceived this intention or not, I do not know; but at all events he took enormous pains to be interested in what she said, and paid far more attention to her than to his own companion. Moreover he once or twice, in looking back, pretty nearly ran us into a cart, insomuch that Queen Tita had laughingly to recall him to his duties. In this wise we went down through the sweetly-smelling country, with its lines of wood and hedge and its breadths of field and meadow still suffering from the gloom of a darkened sky. We cut through the village of Slough, passed the famous Salthill, got over the Two Mill Brook at Cuckfield Bridge, and were rapidly nearing Maidenhead, where we proposed to rest an hour or two and dine. Bell had pledged her word there would be a bright evening, and had thrown out vague hints about a boating-excursion up to the wooded heights of Cliefden. In the meantime, the sun had made little way in breaking through the clouds. There were faint indica tions here and there of a luminous greyish-yellow lying in the interstices of the heavy sky; but the pale and shimmering comb in the west had disappeared. "What has come over your fine weather, Bell?" said my Lady. you remember how you used to dream of our setting out, and what heaps of colour and sunshine you lavished on your picture?" "My dear," said Bell, "you are unacquainted with the art of a stagemanager. Do you think I would begin my pantomime with a blaze of light, and bright music, and a great show of costume? No! First of all, comes the dungeon scene-darkness and gloom. -thunder and solemn music-nothing but demons appearing through the smoke; and then, when you have all got impressed and terrified and attentive, you will hear in the distance a little sound of melody, there will be a flutter of wings, just as if the fairies were preparing a surprise, and then all at once into the darkness leaps the queen herself, and a blaze of sunlight dashes on to her silver wings, and you see her gauzy costume, and the scarlet and gold of a thousand attendants who have all swarmed into the light." "How long have we to wait, mademoiselle?" said the Lieutenant, seriously. "I have not quite settled that," replied Bell, with a fine air of reflection, "but I will see about it while you are having dinner." Comforted by these promises-which ought, however, to have come from Queen Titania, if the fairies were supposed to be invoked-we drove underneath the railway-line and past the station of Taplow, and so forward to the hotel by the bridge. When, having, with some exercise of patience, seen Castor and Pollux housed and fed, I went into the parlour, I found dinner on the point of being served, and the Count grown almost eloquent about the comforts of English inns. Indeed, there was a considerable difference, as he pointed out, between the hard, bright, cheery public-room of a German inn, and this long, low-roofed apartment, with its old-fashioned furniture, its carpets, and general air of gravity and respectability. Then the series of pictures around the walls-venerable lithographs, glazed and yellow, representing all manner of wild adventures in driving and hunting-amused him much. "That is very like your English humour," he said,-" of the country, I mean. The joke is a man thrown into a ditch, and many horses coming over on him; or it is a carriage upset in the road, and men crawling from underneath, and women trying to get through the window. It is rough, strong, practical fun, at the expense of unfortunate people that you like." "At least," I point out, "it is quite as good a sort of public-house furniture as pictures of bleeding saints, or lithographs of smooth-headed princes." "Oh, I do not object to it," he said, "not in the least. I do like your sporting pictures very much." "And when you talk of German lithographs," struck in Bell, quite warmly, "I suppose you know that it is to the German printsellers our poorer classes owe all the possession of art they can afford. They would never have a picture in their house but for those cheap lithographs that come over from Germany; and, although they are very bad, and even carelessly bad often, they are surely better than nothing for cottages and country inns, that would never otherwise have anything to show but coarse patterns of wall-p l-paper." 66 "My dear child," remarked Queen Tita, we are none of us accusing Germany of any crime whatever." "But it is very good-natured of mademoiselle to defend my country, for all that," said the Lieutenant, with a smile. "We are unpopular with you just now, I believe. That I cannot help. It is a pity. But it is only a family quarrel, you know, and it will go away. And just now, it requires some courage, does it not, to say a word for Germany?" "Why, Bell has been your bitterest enemy all through the war," said Tita, ashamed of the defection of her ancient ally. "I think you behaved very badly to the poor French people," said Bell, looking down, and evidently wishing that some good spirit or bad one would fly away with this embarrassing topic. The spirit appeared. There came to the open space in front of the inn a young girl of about fifteen or sixteen, with a care worn and yet healthilycoloured face, and shrewd blue eyes. She wore a man's jacket, and she had a shillelagh in her hand, which she twirled about as she glanced at the windows of the inn. Then, in a hard, cracked voice, she began to sing a song. It was supposed to be rather a dashing and aristocratic ballad, in which this oddly-clad girl with the shillelagh recounted her experiences of the opera, and told us how she loved champagne, and croquet, and various other fashionable diversions. There was something very curious in the forced gaiety with which she entered into these particulars, the shillelagh meanwhile being kept as still as circumstances would permit. But presently she sang an Irish song, describing herself as some free and easy Irish lover and fighter; and here the bit of wood came into play. She thrust one of her hands, with an audacious air, into the pocket of the jacket she wore, while she twirled the shillelagh with the other; and then, so soon as she had finished, her face dropped into a plaintive and matter-of-fact air, and she came forward to receive pence. "She is scarcely our Lorelei," said the Count, "who sits over the Rhine in the evening. But she is a hard-working girl, you can see that. She has not much pleasure in life. If we give her a shilling, it will be much comfort to her." And with that he went out. But what was Tita's surprise to see him go up to the girl and begin to talk to her! She, looking up to the big, brown-bearded man with a sort of awe, answered his questions with some appearance of shamefaced embarrassment; and then, when he gave her a piece of money, she performed something like a curtsey, and looked after him as he returned whistling to the door of the inn. Then we had dinner-a plain, comfortable, wholesome meal enough; and it seemed somehow in this old-fashioned parlour that we formed quite a family party. We were cut off at last from the world of friends and acquaintances, and thrown upon each other's society in a very peculiar fashion. In what manner should we sit down to our final repast, after all this journey and its perils and accidents were over? Tita, I could see, was rather grave, and perhaps speculating on the future; while Bell and the young Lieutenant had got to talk of some people they recollected as living at Bonn some dozen years before. Nobody said a word about Arthur. 66 CHAPTER V. QUEEN TITANIA AFLOAT. Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen AT length we hit upon one thing that "Is not this like long ago ?" "You talk like an old woman, Tita," says one of the party. "And yet your eyes are as pretty as they were a dozen years ago, when you used to walk along the beach at Eastbourne, and cry because you were afraid of becoming the mistress of a house. And now the house has been too much for you; and you are full of confused facts, and unintelligible figures, and petty anxieties, until your responsibilities have hidden away the old tenderness of your look, except at such a moment as this, when you forget yourself. Tita, do you remember who pricked her finger to sign a document in her own blood, when she was only a schoolgirl, and who produced it years afterwards with something of a shamefaced pride?" "Stuff! says Tita, angrily, but blushing dreadfully all the same; and so, with a frown and an imperious manner, she stepped down to the margin of the river. Now mark this circumstance. In the old days of which my Lady was then thinking, she used to be well convery tent with pulling bow-oar when we two used to go out in the evenings. Now, when the Lieutenant and Bell had been comfortably placed in the stern, Tita daintily stepped into the boat and sat down quite naturally to pull stroke. She made no apology. She took the place as if it were hers by right. Such are the changes which a few years of married life produce. So Bell pulled the white tiller-ropes over her shoulder, and we glided out and up the glassy stream, into that world of greenness and soft sounds and sweet odours that lay all around. Already something of Bell's prophecy was likely to come true; for the clouds were perceptibly growing thinner overhead, and a diffused yellow light falling from no particular place seemed to dwell over the hanging woods of Cliefden. It gave a new look, too, to the smooth river, to the rounded elms and tall poplars on the banks, and the long aits beyond the bridge, where the swans were sailing close in by the reeds. We had got but a short way up the river when our coxswain, without a word of warning, shot us into a halfsubmerged forest that seemed to hide. from us a lake on the other side. Tita had so little time to ship her oar that no protest was possible; and then the Lieutenant catching hold of the branches pulled us through the narrow channel, and lo! we were in a still piece of water, with a smooth curve of the riverbank on one side and a long island on the other, and with a pretty little house looking quietly down at us over this inland sea. We were still in the Thames; but this house seemed so entirely to have become owner of the charming landscape around and its stretch of water in front, that Bell asked in a hurry how we could get away. Tita, being still a little indignant, answered not, but put her oar into the outrigger again, and commenced pulling. And then our coxswain, who was not so familiar with the tricks of the Thames at Maidenhead as some of us, discovered a north-west passage by which it was possible to return into the main channel of the stream, and we continued our voyage. When, at length, we had got past the picturesque old mill, and reached the sea of tumbling white water that came rushing down from the weir, it seemed as though the sky had entered into a compact with Bell to fulfil her predictions. For as we lay and rocked in the surge-watching the long level line of foam come tumbling over in spouts, and jets, and white masses, listening to the roar of the fall, and regarding the swirling circles of white bells that swept away downward on the stream-there appeared in the west, just over the line of the weir, a parallel line of dark blood-red. It was but a streak as yet; but presently it widened and grew more intense-a great glow of crimson colour came shining forthand it seemed as if all the western heavens, just over that line of white foam, were becoming a mass of fire. Bell's transformation-scene was positively blinding; and the bewilderment of the splendid colours was not lessened by the roar of the tumbling river, that seemed strangely wild in the stillness of the evening. But when we turned to drop quietly down stream, the scene around was so lovely that Queen Titania had no heart to pull away from it. For now the hanging woods of beach and birch and oak had caught a glow of the sunset along their masses of yellow and green, and the broad stream had the purple of its glassy sweeps dashed here and there with red, and in the far east a reflected tinge of pink mingled with the cold green, and lay soft and pure and clear over the low woods, and the river, and the bridge. As if by magic, the world had grown suddenly light, etherial, and full of beautiful colours; and the clouds that still remained overhead had parted into long cirrhous lines, with pearly edges, and a touch of scarlet and gold along their western side. "What a drive we shall have this evening!" cried Bell. "It will be a clear night when we get to Henley, and there will be stars over the river, and perhaps a moon, who knows?" "I thought you would have provided a moon, mademoiselle," said the Lieutenant, gravely. "You have done very well for us this evening-oh! very well indeed. I have not seen any such beautiful picture for many years. You did very well to keep a dark day all day, and make us tired of cold colours and green trees; and then you surprise us by this picture of magic-oh! it is very well done." "All that it wants," said Bell, with a critical eye, "is a little woman in a scarlet shawl under the trees there, and over the green of the rushes-one of those nice fat little women who always wear bright shawls just to please landscape-painters-making a little blob of strong colour, you know, just like a ladybird among green moss. Do you know, I am quite grateful to a pleasant little countrywoman when she dresses herself ridiculously merely to make a landscape look fine; and how can you laugh at her when she comes near? I sometimes think that she wears those colours, especially those in her bonnet, out of mere modesty. She does not know what will please you-she puts in a little of everything to give you a choice. She holds up to you a whole bouquet of flowers, and says, 'Please, miss, do you like blue?-for here is corn-cockle; or red-for here are poppies ; or yellow?-for here are rock-roses.' She is like Perdita, you know, going about with an armful of blossoms, and giving to everyone what she thinks will please them." "My dear," said Tita, "you are too generous; I am afraid the woman wears those things out of vanity. She does not know what colour suits her complexion best, and so wears a variety, quite sure that one of them must be the right one. And there are plenty of women in town, as well as in the country, who do that too." "I hope you don't mean me," said Bell, contritely, as she leant her arm over the side of the boat, and dipped the tips of her fingers into the glassy stream. But if we were to get to Henley that night, there was no time for lingering longer about that bend by the river, with its islands and mills and woods. That great burst of colour in the west had been the expiring effort of the sun; and when we got back to the inn, there was nothing left in the sky but the last golden and crimson traces of his going down. The river was becoming grey, and the Cliefden woods were preparing for the night by drawing over themselves a thin veil of mist, which rendered them distant and shadowy, as they lay under the lambent sky. The phaeton was at the door; our bill paid; an extra shawl got out of the imperial-although, in that operation, the Lieutenant nearly succeeded in smashing Bell's guitar. "It will be dark before we get to Henley," says Tita. "Yes," I answer obediently. "And we are going now by crossroads," she remarks. "The road is a very good one," I venture to reply. "But still it is a cross-road," she says. Very well, then, my dear," I say, wondering what the little woman is after. "You must drive," she continues, "for none of us know the road." 66 'Yes, m'm, please m'm: any more orders?" "Oh, Bell," says my Lady, with a gracious air (she can change the expression of her face in a second), "would you mind taking Count von Rosen under your charge until we get to Henley? I am afraid it will take both of us to find the road in the dark." "No, I will take you under my charge, mademoiselle," said the Lieutenant, frankly; and therewith he helped Bell into the phaeton, and followed himself. The consequence of this little arrange ment was that while Tita and I were in front, the young folks were behind; and no sooner had we started from the inn, got across the bridge, and were going down the road towards the village of Maidenhead proper, than Titania says, in a very low voice "Do you know, my dear, our pulling together in that boat quite brought back old times; and-and-and I wanted to be sitting up here beside you for a while, just to recall the old, old drives we used to have, you know, about here, and Henley, and Reading. How long ago is it, do you think?" That wife of mine is a wonderful creature. You would have thought she was as innocent as a lamb when she uttered these words, looking up with a world of sincerity and pathos in the big, clear, earnest, brown eyes. And the courage of the small creature, too, who thought she could deceive her husband by this open, transparent, audacious piece of hypocrisy ! |