The Princess Priscillas Fortnight | Page 8

the first time," she pleaded, "so naturally I am rather
overwhelmed."
Privately she had thought, his eyes, which he had never taken off her,
kind and pleasant; and if she had known of his having said Bosh who
knows but that he might have had a chance? As it was, the moment she
was alone she sent flying for Fritzing. "What," she said, "do you say to

my marrying this man?"
"If you do, ma'am," said Fritzing, and his face seemed one blaze of
white conviction, "you will undoubtedly be eternally lost."

II
They fled on bicycles in the dusk. The goddess Good Luck, who seems
to have a predilection for sinners, helped them in a hundred ways.
Without her they would certainly not have got far, for both were very
ignorant of the art of running away. Once flight was decided on
Fritzing planned elaborately and feverishly, got things thought out and
arranged as well as he, poor harassed man, possibly could. But what in
this law-bound world can sinners do without the help of Luck? She,
amused and smiling dame, walked into the castle and smote the
Countess Disthal with influenza, crushing her down helpless into her
bed, and holding her there for days by the throat. While one hand was
doing this, with the other she gaily swept the Grand Duke into East
Prussia, a terrific distance, whither, all unaware of how he was being
trifled with, he thought he was being swept by an irresistible desire to
go, before the business of Priscilla's public betrothal should begin, and
shoot the roebucks of a friend.
The Countess was thrust into her bed at noon of a Monday in October.
At three the Grand Duke started for East Prussia, incognito in a
motor--you know the difficulty news has in reaching persons in motors.
At four one of Priscilla's maids, an obscure damsel who had been at the
mercy of the others and was chosen because she hated them, tripped out
of the castle with shining eyes and pockets heavy with bribes, and
caused herself to be whisked away by the afternoon express to Cologne.
At six, just as the castle guard was being relieved, two persons led their
bicycles through the archway and down across the bridge. It was dark,
and nobody recognized them. Fritzing was got up sportingly, almost
waggishly--heaven knows his soul was not feeling waggish--as
differently as possible from his usual sober clothes. Somehow he
reminded Priscilla of a circus, and she found it extremely hard not to

laugh. On his head he had a cap with ear-pieces that hid his grey hair;
round his neck a gaudy handkerchief muffled well about his face;
immense goggles cloaked the familiar overhanging eyebrows and
deep-set eyes, goggles curiously at variance with the dapper briskness
of his gaitered legs. The Princess was in ordinary blue serge, short and
rather shabby, it having been subjected for hours daily during the past
week to rough treatment by the maid now travelling to Cologne. As for
her face and hair, they were completely hidden in the swathings of a
motor-veil.
The sentinels stared rather as these two figures pushed their bicycles
through the gates, and undoubtedly did for some time afterwards
wonder who they could have been. The same thing happened down
below on the bridge; but once over that and in the town all they had to
do was to ride straight ahead. They were going to bicycle fifteen miles
to Rühl, a small town with a railway station on the main line between
Kunitz and Cologne. Express trains do not stop at Rühl, but there was a
slow train at eight which would get them to Gerstein, the capital of the
next duchy, by midnight. Here they would change into the Cologne
express; here they would join the bribed maid; here luggage had been
sent by Fritzing,--a neat bag for himself, and a neat box for his niece.
The neat box was filled with neat garments suggested to him by the
young lady in the shop in Gerstein where he had been two days before
to buy them. She told him of many other articles which, she said, no
lady's wardrobe could be considered complete without; and the
distracted man, fearing the whole shop would presently be put into
trunks and sent to the station to meet them, had ended by flinging down
two notes for a hundred marks each and bidding her keep strictly within
that limit. The young lady became very scornful. She told him that she
had never heard of any one being clothed from head to foot inside and
out, even to brushes, soap, and an umbrella, for two hundred marks.
Fritzing, in dread of conspicuous masses of luggage, yet staggered by
the girl's conviction, pulled