Priscilla

“ Priscilla, then, wanted to run away. What is awful in a housemaid and in anybody's wife became in her case stupendous. The spirit that could resolve it, decide to do it without being dragged to it by such things as love or passion, calmly looking the risks and losses in the face, and daring everything to free itself, was, it must be conceded, at least worthy of respect. Fritzing thought it worthy of adoration; the divinest spirit that had ever burned within a woman. ”

“ It was a bigger thing by a thousand times than Priscilla had ever expected to happen in her life. It transcended the most brilliant dream of her imagination. People who had never been very nice to her now treated her with respect. She had a share in the heroic in spite of her watery blue eyes, her faded cheeks, her straw-colored eyebrows and hair. Even Jonas Billings' disparaging and sarcastic remarks could not lower her temperature. Her chance had come at last. She was sure now that Phil was in love with her. ”

“ We who are nestling for the moment like Priscilla beneath the warm wing of Good Fortune can dare to make what the children call a face at her grey sister as she limps scowling past. Shall we not too one day in our turn feel her claws? ”

“ Priscilla smiled, but with a reservation behind her smile that his sensitive spirit felt at once. She was alone, and there was no sign whatever either of her uncle or of preparations for the reading of Shakespeare.
"Is anything not quite right?" Tussie asked, his face falling at once to an anxious pucker.
Priscilla looked at him and smiled again, but this time the smile was real, in her eyes as well as on her lips, dancing in them together with the flickering firelight. "It's rather funny," she said. "It has never happened to me before. What do you think? I'm hungry." ”

“ When Priscilla died there turned up from somewhere a far-removed cousin—a stern, middle-aged woman, who looked at the world through smoked glasses; and no doubt the world looked grey to her. She had no tears, no smiles, no sentiments, only the hardness of middle life, which has left the softness of youth behind and not yet reached the softness of age. She was a business-like person, and ordered everything and everybody as if she had lived all her life in Priscilla’s house. The people wondered if she would get Priscilla’s box of treasure ”

“ Fritzing hastily put the plate and glass down on the floor, and catching up the hand hanging limply by her side passionately kissed it. "You are the noblest woman on earth," he said.
"Oh," said Priscilla, turning away her head and shutting her eyes for very weariness of such futile phrases.
"Ma'am, you are. I would swear it. But you are also a child, and so you are ready at the first reverse to suppose you have done with happiness for ever. ”

“ No fairer sight is to be seen than the glimpse of these grey walls and turrets rising out of a cloud of blossom to be had by him who shall stand in the market place of Kunitz and look eastward up the narrow street on a May morning; and if he who gazes is a dreamer he could easily imagine that where the setting of life is so lovely its days must of necessity be each like a jewel, of perfect brightness and beauty.
The Princess Priscilla, however, knew better. ”

“ Priscilla was overwhelmed by the difficulties of life. The world was too much with her, she felt, a very great deal too much. She sent the Shuttleworth carriage away at the entrance to the village and went in to sit with Mrs. Jones a little, so that her eyes might lose their redness before she faced Fritzing; and Mrs. Jones was so glad to see her, so full of praises of her unselfish goodness in coming in, that once again Priscilla was forced to be ashamed of herself and of everything she did.
"I'm not unselfish, and I'm not good," she said, smoothing the old lady's coverlet. ”

“ Priscilla opened her eyes suddenly and very wide. I don't know what folly he would have perpetrated next, or what sillinesses were on the tip of his tongue, or what meaning he still chose to read in her look, but an instant afterwards he was brought down for ever from the giddy heights of his illusions: Priscilla boxed his ears.
I am sorry to have to record it. It is always sweeter if a woman does not box ears. ”

“ A pitiful bitterness crept into Priscilla's voice; her lips quivered.
"It is all Huntter! Huntter! All men! men! and there stands my dear—alone! No one goes to her to let—her choose; no one but me! Don't you see what I mean? Oh! my love, my love! My good, good man, can you leave her there in ignorance, all of you? Through the ages she has not had her say—about the chance, and that is why——"
Priscilla paused, choked by rising passion.
"Little girl, listen! What do you mean?" Travers was genuinely alarmed and anxious. ”

“ Who knows," said Fritzing with a great show of bright belief in his own prophecy, the while his heart was a stone, "who knows but what you are now on the very threshold of it?"
"Oh," murmured Priscilla, too beaten to do anything but droop her head.
"It is insisting on the commonplace to remind you, ma'am, that the darkest hour comes before dawn. Yet it is a well-known natural phenomenon." ”

“ Yet despite the blameless speech, Priscilla's hot eyes, slightly trembling and nervous fingers, all of which told a tale of emotion, conveyed to Phil that it was her will to put him in greater danger than she had been from his wild horses and the murderous wheels of his wagon. Suddenly he felt as a man would who must fight an armed enemy with his naked hand. He had no courage at all with women if they were "straight," as he called it.
"Your time in jail will he up in another week." Priscilla said at last. "I wont be a bit happy till you're free again." ”

“ The child, his eyes fixed anxiously on Priscilla's swathed head, began to whimper.
"That child should be in bed," said Priscilla, with a severity born of her anxiety lest, to calm him, humanity should force her to put up her veil. "Persons who are as intelligent as that should never be in trains at night. Their brains cannot bear it. Would he not be happier if he lay down and went to sleep?"
"Yes, yes; that is what I have been telling him ever since we left Kunitz"—Priscilla shivered—"but he will not go. Dost thou hear what the Fräulein says, Hans-Joachim?" ”

“ Priscilla had now grown to be a very pretty girl, and still kept budding and blossoming, and daily putting on some new charm, which you no sooner became sensible of than you thought it worth all that she had previously possessed. So unformed, vague, and without substance, as she had come to us, it seemed as if we could see Nature shaping out a woman before our very eyes, and yet had only a more reverential sense of the mystery of a woman's soul and frame. ”

“ Morrison's and her own conscience's accusations, her soul much beaten and bent by winds of misgiving but still on its feet, still defiant, still sheltering itself when it could behind plain common sense which whispered at intervals that all that had happened was only bad luck. They walked miles that day; often in silence, sometimes in gusty talk—talk gusty with the swift changes of Priscilla's mood scudding across the leaden background of Fritzing's steadier despair—and they got back tired, hungry, their clothes splashed with mud, their minds no nearer light than when they started. ”

“ Into this innocent, frugal, well-managed hamlet Priscilla dropped suddenly from nowhere, trailing with her thunder-clouds of impulsive and childish ideas about doing good, and holding in her hands the dangerous weapon of wealth. It is hard to stand by and see one's life-work broken up before one's eyes by an irresponsible stranger, a foreigner, a girl, a young girl, a pretty girl; especially hard if one was born with an unbending character, tough and determined, ambitious and vain. These are not reproaches being piled up on the vicar's wife; who shall dare reproach another? ”

“ Does one let one's life go? One's hope of salvation go? One's little precious minute of perfect happiness go? When I'm well again I shall be just as dull and stupid as ever, just such a shy fool, not able to speak—"
"But it's a gracious state"—stammered poor Priscilla.
"Loving you? Loving you?"
"No, no—not being able to speak. It's always best—"
"It isn't. It's best to be true to one's self, to show honestly what one feels, as I am now—as I am now—" And he fell to kissing her hands again.
"Tussie, this isn't being honest," said Lady Shuttleworth sternly, "it's being feverish." ”

“ Never was sick woman so much comforted as Mrs. Jones. She who had been disinclined to speak above a whisper when Priscilla went in was able at the end of the visit to pour forth conversation in streams, and quite loud conversation, and even interspersed with chuckles. All Friday Priscilla had tried to help in the arranging of her cottage, and had made herself and Fritzing so tired over it that on Saturday she let him go up alone and decided that she would, for her part, now begin to do good to the people in the village. ”

“ He handed them to Priscilla. The squall increased in violence. The whole sea grew white with foam. A sudden drift of fine spray, blown off the face of the water, swept over Inishbawn, stinging and soaking the watchers at the tents.
“Lord Torrington is on board all right,” said Priscilla, “but it’s not father who’s steering. It’s Peter Walsh.”
The Tortoise flew forward, dipping her bow so that once or twice the water lipped over it. She looked pitiful, like a frightened creature from whose swift flight all joy had departed. She reached the narrow passage between Ardilaun and Inishlean. ”

“ I suppose so,” said Priscilla.
“You look pretty miserable, Priscie. I wonder why, seeing all that Mabel and I have done for you.”
“All that I have done for you, you mean,” said Priscilla.
“Well, I like that,” said Annie.
“I will speak out for once,” said Priscilla, her eyes flashing fire and her pale face becoming suffused with colour. “I have gone under, and I hate myself. The hour of triumph to-day ought to have been mine. Don’t you suppose that I feel it? I loathe myself so deeply that I don’t think I am even a good enough girl to help my aunt in the house-work at home ”

“ The biggest and fiercest thought-midge of all stung Priscilla with so sharp a point that she started as if she had been pricked with a needle. In a flash she saw how she could revenge herself on Polly, could punish her so that her face would look as queer and terrified as it had done a little while ago when she had been afraid Priscilla would fall over the ledge of Pine Lodge and had implored her to come away from it; in fact had made her getting down from the bench the condition on which the doll was to be brought. Priscilla had gotten down, as she had promised to do. ”

“ You see I have never had real children in my life. The kinds passed out to nice girls like me were sad travesties. Since I saw the darling of to-day I've been wondering—do not laugh, Priscilla—but I've been wondering what poor, cheated little morsel of humanity, in the unreal world, would find herself in that eleventh miracle of the wretched hovel? And what an art yours is, dear Priscilla! How you soothed away the suffering by your touch. ”

“ Ma'am, there are depths of infamy to which even a desperate man will not descend."
Priscilla dug holes in the tablecloth with the point of the pencil. "I can't conceive," she said, "why you gave Annalise all that money. So much."
"Why, ma'am, she refused, unless I did, to prepare your Grand Ducal Highness's tea."
"Oh Fritzi!" Priscilla looked up at him, shaking her head and smiling through all her troubles. Was ever so much love and so much folly united in one wise old man? Was ever, for that matter, so expensive a tea? ”

“ She sat looking at him, wondering how he could possibly even for an instant forget the actual and the present.
"'Xerxes went forth, Xerxes perished, Xerxes mismanaged all things in the depths of the sea—'" declaimed Fritzing.
"He must have been like us," murmured Priscilla.
"'O for Darius the scatheless, the protector! No woman ever mourned for deed of his—'"
"What a nice man," sighed Priscilla. "'O for Darius!'"
"Ma'am, if you interrupt how can I read? And it is a most beautiful passage."
"But we do want a Darius badly," moaned Priscilla. ”

“ In this open stretch of trees and rock Priscilla set up her own god. She had found the bleached skull of a cow in one of her father's pastures; this gruesome thing mounted upon a forked stick, its empty eye-sockets and ears filled with twigs and dried grasses, was sufficiently pagan and horrible to demand an entirely unique form of worship, and this Priscilla proceeded to evolve. ”

“ Priscilla hauled at the rope of the centreboard.
“Run her up on the beach,” she shouted. “If we do knock a hole in her it can’t be helped. Oh glory, glory! look at that!”
One of the tents tore itself from its fastenings, flapped wildly in the air and then collapsed on the ground, a writhing heaving mass of soaked canvas. The Tortoise struck heavily on the shore. Priscilla leaped over her bows and ran up the beach with the anchor in her hand. She rammed one of its flukes deep into the gravel. Then she turned towards the boat and shouted:
“You help Frank out, Miss Rutherford. ”

“ Fritzing wiped his brow again. "I fail to understand," he said, looking at Priscilla with worried eyes, "what there is about us that can possibly attract any one's attention."
"Why, there isn't anything," said Priscilla, with conviction. "We've been most careful and clever. But just now—I don't know why—I began to think aloud."
"Think aloud?" exclaimed Fritzing, horrified. "Oh ma'am let me beseech you never again to do that. Better a thousand times not to think at all. What was it that your Grand Ducal Highness thought aloud?" ”