Chapter XXIII: Into Whose Hands?

“The Princess Elizabeth and I,” said Her Majesty in a high-up chamber on the west palace-side, “are both clever with our needles, so we have plotted together to make you up some lovely dresses with our own fingers, if you will let us—simple but _chic_. For we consider that it was amiable and good of you to put yourself into my hands, as you have.”

Eulalia curtsied, silent, standing withdrawn, mysteries of pride hiding in her eyes, she understanding that she was being patronised, and condoned, and graciously tolerated, since she was graceful and an interesting little sinner.

So now was the _régime_ of the tape, the fashion-plate, the scissors, the prettiest _mousselines_. A trunkful of fairy linens had already come from (Irish!) Yvonne’s, toilet-things from Bond Street. The Princess Elizabeth measured with tape and spectacles. Eulalia was to be made a thing to kiss the fingers at. It was the Queen’s will.

And as they came out, in went the lady-in-waiting, Lady Julia Newcome, to amuse and be amiable, for Eulalia was never left alone; while outside Her Majesty cast up hand and eyes, sighing: “She is pretty!”

Whereat the Princess had an unease: for the Queen, with all her moral severity, was very well known to be amorous, prone to fancies and fads and favouritisms, often capricious, inconstant, incalculable: and that she should acquire the same taste as her son in respect of Eulalia was not a desirable thing to the Princess, who was now inwardly convinced that Eulalia was a wife.

“How long do you intend her to be here, Mother?” she asked, cutting muslin over the Last Supper at the centre of the satin tablecover in the “Newmarket Parlour” (with three horse-scenes by Wootton)—a favourite retreat of the Queen, a small room, nicely proportioned, lighted by a bay looking west upon the Park, with a north lobby.

The Queen, vacantly staring, presently murmured: “How long will I keep _you_ here, or myself? Whatever it was he was making, he has failed in. He sits like a stone Achilles; no one ventures to address him.... It is well that _you_ take it stoically....”

The Princess now sat down near on a Chancellor of the Exchequer chest (in which Chancellors kept their cash before the age of cheques), and, poring with her spectacles on the Queen, came out with the statement: “Your Majesty, I am not at all afraid of the Chinese.”

At the moment the Queen seemed not to hear, moving her head musingly up and down a little, lost in despondency; and the Princess continued: “Not that I am sublime ... but that I have special knowledge. I _know_ what Teddy was making—a machine to blow thousands of men into quite tiny pieces in a minute; and I have only stood by and seen him fail in it, in order to show him clearly that I am a little worthy of him, in order that _I_, in the day of his failure, might step in and say, ‘Teddy, here is the thing ready made which you have tried to make, and failed to make.’”

At this the Queen started! for it has already been shown, in regard to the charlatanism of this young lady, that there is absolutely _no_ limit to the superstitiousness of men—even of men of some clearness of vision—when the intellect is once predisposed, infected and mesmerised toward a particular creed and epidemic of belief.

The Princess, for her part, knew from Oyone that Eulalia’s black box “blew one into flies’ feet”; knew that Oyone was eager to seize it; had noted that the box made in the Prince’s workshop was exactly like it; and felt that she would have little difficulty in winning the box from Eulalia, who, in her present bashful situation, had a natural tendency to be affable.

As to the Queen, she had seen without seeing Eulalia’s black box like a kodak, nor had seen at all the black box in the Prince’s workshop. She was instantly leaning keenly toward the Princess, breathing: “Tell me, dear....”

“I just say so much to comfort you, Mother,” replied the other with her smile of Isis: “I am not at present prepared to reveal more—except to express the confidence I feel that Teddy, with the help of what I have been able to divine and discover, will find himself quite competent to cope with all these horrors, and many more. Oh, I take no credit to myself!—I _know_ now that there is Something that prompts me, whispers me, like Socrates’ _daimon_—yes, Something, Something. But, as to the girl, send her quickly to America, Mother! Suppose—_just suppose_—that Teddy were to discover her here!”

“She is pretty!” sighed the Queen, vacantly staring at a row of miniatures of the Prince on an old-oak console-table by the hearthplace; then suddenly: “Give her this from me!—that will flatter her,” taking a silver-gilt rose-water dish, engraved with lion and unicorn, from a Queen Anne cabinet.

“Very well”—from the Princess—“though we must not make her think herself a saint.”

“She is not depraved!” said the Queen quickly—“_ça se voit_. What I _can_not understand is her motive for keeping herself so completely from him, that he had to be seeking her; she, meantime, a Prince’s light o’ love, living in penury in the East End! The thing baffles me!”

“He tired of her—that’s it. Such honeys are only delicious for a day, Mother: then men cast them aside.”

“How do you—know?”

“From my study of life! Studiosa sum, Mother, nulla studia a me aliena puto.”

“Very good: let us say, then, that he tired of her; that she resented it; fled from him, hid from him; and that he then repented and sought her afresh. But all this does not explain her poverty! Had he never lavished any presents upon her? Why did she go as a war-nurse? I cannot understand!—unless she is supremely proud! And pride is never depraved.”

“All that does not alter the fact of her stain....”

“Of course not. But it is pitiful that women must reap as men have sown.”

“And does not alter the peril of her being in England....”

“Well, but I have given orders for her passage next Wednesday.”

The Princess smiled. “Shall I go and try this on her? and give her the rose-water dish”—she went out by an east portal, up four steps into a north-and-south corridor,

where, turning left, she passed under a draperied archway on to Eulalia’s apartments on her right. Demurely smiling, the Lady Julia Newcome came out when she went in.

And presently the Princess was saying: “What is in that box of yours? Is it photographic?”

Eulalia answered: “I know nothing of it, except that I dug it out of the ground for a dead man, to send it to America.”

“Curious”—the Princess stood off, inspecting the fit of a bodice—“is it dangerous to touch, by chance?”

“Not that I know of—though it has marked on it, ‘Do Not Touch.’”

“Curious. Pick it up, let me see how you handle it.”

“There is no particular way,” said Eulalia, complacently raising it from a Louis XIV. writing-table where it lay.

“It strikes me as curious,” the Princess then remarked—“something scientific, maybe? You will no doubt permit me to take it to my apartments and _analyse_ it a little.”

“If that pleases Your Imperial Highness.”

And the fitting went on.