Only she herself and a weedy, sallow young man in hercompany could have heard these words. A glint of fright and desperation sprang into her large-pupilled eyes. But I smiled, and we exchanged kindness. She moistened her lips, turned from me, and clutching at the young man's arm, edged her way out of the throng and vanished.
"And what sort be this un?" roared an ox-faced, red-haired man from the back. "This un" hung on his shoulder, tiptoe, fair, young, and blowsy.
"She'llcoinyou money," I cried pleasantly, "and spend it. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world."
"And him, and him? the toad!" cried the girl half-angrily at the shout of merriment that had shaken the tent.
"Why, pretty maid," piped I, "the nearer the wine the sweeter the cork; the plumper the pig the fatter the pork." The yell that followed was a better advertisement than drum or panpipes. The showman had discovered an oracle! For the next half-hour my booth was a mass of "Sixpennies"—the squirming Threepennies were told to wait. It filled and emptied again and again like a black bottle in the Dog Days. And when the spirit moved me, I singled out a tell-tale face and told its fortune—not less shrewdly on the whole, I think, than Mrs Ballard'sBook of Fate.
But it was a strangely exhausting experience. I was inexpressibly relieved when it was over; when the tent-flap descended for the last time, and I could rest from my labours, puffed up, no doubt, with far too rich a conceit of myself, but immeasurably grateful and happy. Comparative quiet descended on the meadows. From a neighbouring tent broke shattering bursts of music, clapping and thumping, the fretful growling of the beasts, the elephant's trumpeting, the firing of guns, whoops, caterwauling, and the jangling of harness. The Grand Circus was in progress, and fantasy made a picture for me of every sound.
Presently my showman reappeared, leading in a pacing, smooth-skinned, cinnamon-and-milk-dappled pony, bridled and saddled with silver and scarlet, his silky mane daintily plaited, his tail a sweeping plume. He stood, I should guess, about half a hand higher than my childhood's Mopsa—the prettiest pygmy creature, though obviously morose and unsettled in temper. I took a good long look at his pink Albino eye. But a knack once acquiredis quickly recovered. I mounted him. The stirrup was adjusted, one of my German plaits was dandled over my shoulder, and after a leisurely turn or two in the open, I nodded that the highborn Angélique was ready.
The showman, leering avariciously at me out of his shifty eyes, led us on towards the huge ballooning tent, its pennon fluttering darkly against the stars. I believe if in that spirituous moment he had muttered, "Fly with me, fairest!" all cares forgotten, I'd have been gone. He held his peace.
The brass band within wrenched and blared into the tune of "The Girl I Left behind Me." Chafing, pawing, snorting, my steed, with its rider, paused in the entry. Then with a last smirk of encouragement from the gipsy woman, the rein was loosed, I bowed my head, and the next moment, as if in a floating vat of light, I found myself cantering wellnigh soundlessly round the ring, its circumference thronged tier above tier in the smoke-laden air with ghost-white rings of faces.
I smiled fixedly, tossing my fingers. A piebald clown came wambling in to meet me, struck his hand on his foolish heart, and fell flat in the tan. Love at first sight. Over his prostrate body we ambled, the ill-tempered little beast naggling at its bit, and doing his utmost to unseat me. The music ceased. The cloud of witnesses loured. Come Night, come Nero, I didn't care! Edging the furious little creature into the centre of the ring, I mastered him, wheeled him, in a series of obeisances—North, South, East, West. A hurricane—such as even Mr Bowater can never have outridden—a hurricane of applause burst bounds and all but swept me out of the saddle. "Good-bye, Sweetheart, Good-bye!" sang cornet and trombone. With a toss, I swept my plaits starwards, brandished my whip at the faces, and galloped out into the night.
Mydébutwas over. I confess it—the very memory of it carries me away even now. And even now I would maintain that it was at least a little more successful than that other less professionaldébutwhich poor Mr Crimble and Lady Pollacke had left unacclaimed in Beechwood High Street.
My showman, his hard face sleek with sweat, insisted on counting out three huge platelike crown pieces into my lap—for a douceur. I brushed them off on to the ground. "Only to clinch the bargain," he said. His teeth grinned at me as if he would gladly have swallowed me whole.
"Pick up the money," said I coldly, determined once and for all to keep him in his place. "It's early days yet." But when my back was turned, covetous Adam took charge of it.
While we trudged along homeward—for in the deserted night the cage was unnecessary, until I was too tired to go further—I listened to the coins clanking softly together in Adam's pocket It was an intoxicating lullaby. But such are the revulsions of success, for hours and hours that night I lay sleepless. Once I got up and put my hand in where the crowns were, to assure myself I was awake. But the dream which visited me—between the watches of remorse—I shall keep to myself.
With next day's sun, the Signorina had become the talk of the country-side, and Adam's vacant face must have stood him in good stead. She had been such "a draw," he told me, that the showman had decided to stay two more nights on the same pitch: which was fortunate for us both. Especially as on the third afternoon heavy rain fell, converting the green field into a morass. With evening the clouds lifted, and a fulling moon glazed the puddles, and dimmed the glow-worm lamps. Impulse is a capricious master. I did my best, for even when intuition fails my sex, there's obstinacy to fall back upon; but all that I had formerly achieved with ease had to be forced out of me that night with endless effort. The Oracle was unwilling. When a genteel yet foxy looking man, with whiskers and a high stiff collar under his chin, sneakishly invited me to tell his fortune, and I replied that "Prudent chickens roost high," the thrust was a little too deft. My audience was amused, but nobody laughed.
He seemed to be well known, and the green look he cast me proved that the truth is not always palatable or discreet. Unseduced by the lumps of sugar which I had pilfered for him, my peevish mount jibbed and bucked and all but flung the Princess of Andalusia into the sodden ring. He succeeded in giving a painful wrench to her wrist, which doubled the applause.
A strange thing happened to me, too, that night. When for the second or third time the crowd was flocking in to view me, my eyes chanced to fall on a figure standing in the clouded light a little apart. He was dressed in a high-peaked hat and a long and seemingly brown cassock-like garment, with buttoned tunic and silver-buckled leather belt. Spurs were on his boots, a light whip in his hand. Aloof, his head a little bowed down, his face in profile, he stood there, framed in the opening, dusky, level-featured, deep-eyed—a Stranger.
What in me rushed as if on wings into his silent company? A passionate longing beyond words burned in me. I seemed to be carried away into a boundless wilderness—stunted trees, salt in the air, a low, enormous stretch of night sky, space; and this man, master of soul and solitude.
He never heeded me; raised not an eyelid to glance into my tent. If he had, what then? I was a nothing. When next, after the press of people, I looked, he was gone; I saw him no more. Yet the girlish remembrance remains, consoling this superannuated heart like a goblet of flowers in that secret chamber of the mind we call the imagination.
The fall from that giddy moment into this practical world was abrupt. Sulky, tired with the rain and the cumbersome cage and the showman's insults, on our arrival at Monk's House Adam was completely unnerved when he found our usual entry locked and bolted.
He gibbered at me like a mountebank in the windy moonlight, his conical head blotting out half the cloud-wracked sky. These gallivantings were as much as his place was worth. He would wring the showman's neck. He had a nail in his shoe. He had been respectable all his life; and what was I going to do about it? A nice kettle of fish. Oh, yes, he had had "a lick or two of the old lady's tongue" already, and he didn't want another. What's more, there was the mealy-mouthed Marvell to reckon with.
Once free of the cage, I faced him and desired to know whether he would be happier if I wrote at once to Mrs Monnerie and absolved him there and then. "Look at yourself in your own mind," I bade him. "What a sight is a coward!" And I fixed him with none too friendly an eye under the moon.
His clumsiness in opening a window disturbed Mrs French. She came to the head of the staircase and leaned over, while we crouched in a recess beneath. But while the beams of the candle she carried were too feeble to pierce the well of darkness between us, by twisting round my head I could see every movement and changing expression of the shape above me—the frilled, red-flannel dressing-gown, the shawl over her head, and her inflamed peering face surmounted with a "front" of hair in pins. She was talking to herself in peculiar guttural mutterings. But soon, either because she was too sleepy or too indolent to search further, she withdrew again; and Adam and I were free to creep up the glooming shallow staircase into safety.
Last but not least, when I came to undress, I found that my grandfather's little watch was gone. In a fever I tumbled my clothes over again and again. Then I sat down and in memory went over the events of the evening, and came at last to the thief. There was no doubt of him—a small-headed, puny man, who almost with tears in his eyes had besought me to give him one of my buttons to take home to his crippled little daughter. He had pressed close: my thoughts had been far away. I confess this loss unnerved me—a haggard face looked out of my glass. I scrambled into bed, and sought refuge as quickly as possible from these heart-burnings.
After such depressing experiences Adam's resolution was at an even lower ebb next morning. We met together under the sunny whispering pine-trees. I wheedled, argued, adjured him in vain. Almost at my wits' end at last, I solemnly warned him that if we failed the showman the following evening, he would assuredly have the law against us. "A pretty pair we shall look, Adam, standing up there in the dock—with the black cap and the wigs and the policemen and everything. And not a penny for our pains."
He squinted at me in unfeigned alarm at this; the lump in his throat went up and down; and though possibly I had painted the picture in rather sombre colours, this settled the matter. I hopeit taught Adam to fight shy ever afterwards of adventuresses. It certainly taughtthisadventuress that the mind may be "subdued to what it works in, like the dyer's hand." I cast a look of hatred after the weak, silly man as he disappeared between the trees.
The circus, so the showman had warned me, was moving on that day to another market town, Whippington—six miles or so from its present pitch, though not more than four miles further away from Croomham. This would mean a long and wearisome trudge for us the next evening, as I found on consulting an immense map of Kent. Yet my heart sighed with delight at the discovery that, as the dove flies, we should be a full five miles nearer to Beechwood. If this little church on the map was St Peter's, and this faint shading the woody contour of the Hill, why, then, that square dot was Wanderslore. I sprawled over the outspread county with sublime content. My very "last appearance" was at hand; liberty but a few hollow hours away.
It is true I had promised my showman to think over his invitation to me to "sign on" as a permanent member of his troupe of clowns, acrobats, wild beasts, and monstrosities. He had engaged in return to pay me in full, "with a bit over," at the close of the last performance. But I had merely laughed and nodded. Not that I was in any true sense ashamed of what I had done. Notashamed.
But you cannot swallow your pride and your niceness without any discomfort. I was conscious of a hardening of the skin, of a grimness stealing over my mouth, and of a tendency to stare at the world rather more boldly than modesty should. At least, so it seemed. In reality it may have been that Life was merely scraping off the "cream." Quite a wholesome experience.
On the practical side, all was well. Two pounds to Adam, which I had promised to make three if he earned it, would leave me with thirteen or twelve pounds odd, apart from my clumsy "douceur." I thirsted for my wages. With that sum—two five-pound notes and say, four half-sovereigns—sewn up, if possible, in my petticoat, I should once more be my own mistress; and I asked no more for the moment. The future must take care of itself. On one thing I was utterly resolved—never, never to return to Monk's House, or to No. 2—to that old squalid luxury, dissembling and humiliation.
No: my Monnerie days were over; even though it had taken a full pound of their servile honey to secrete this ounce of rebellious wax.
How oddly chance events knit themselves together. That very morning I had received a belated and re-addressed letter which smote like sunbeams on my hopes and plans. It was from Mrs Bowater:—
"Dear Miss M.,—I send this line to say that I am still in the land of the living. I have buried my poor husband but have hopes some day of bringing him home. England is England when all's said and done, and I can't say I much approve of foreign parts. It's a fine town and not what you might call foreign to look at the buildings, but moist and flat and the streets like a draughtboard. And the thought of the cattle upsets me. Everything topsy-turvy too with Spring coming along and breaking out and we here on the brink of September. It has been an afflicting time though considering all things he made a peaceful end, with a smile on his face as you would hardly consider possible."The next fortnight will see me on board the steamer again, which I can scarcely support the thought of, though, please God, I shall see it through. I have spent many days alone here and the strangeness of it all and the foreign faces bring up memories which are happier forgotten. But I'm often thinking what fine things you must be doing in that fine place. Not as I think riches will buy everything in this world—and a mercy too—or that I'm not anxious at times you don't come to harm with that delicate frame and all. Wrap up warm, miss, be watchful of your victuals and keep early hours. Such being so, I'm still hoping when I come home, if I'm spared, you may be of a mind to come to Beechwood Hill again and maybe settle down."I may say that I had my suspicions for some time that that young Mr Anon was consumptive in the lungs. But from what I gathered he isn't, only suffering from a stomach cough—bad cooking and exposing himself in all weathers. I will say nothing nearer. I shall be easier off as money goes, but you and me needn't think of that. Fanny doesn't write much and which I didn't much expect. She is of an age now which must reap as it has sown, though even allowing for the accident of birth, as they say, a mother's a mother till the end of the chapter. I must now close. May the Lord bless you, miss, wherever you may be.Yours truly,"E. Bowater(Mrs)."
"Dear Miss M.,—I send this line to say that I am still in the land of the living. I have buried my poor husband but have hopes some day of bringing him home. England is England when all's said and done, and I can't say I much approve of foreign parts. It's a fine town and not what you might call foreign to look at the buildings, but moist and flat and the streets like a draughtboard. And the thought of the cattle upsets me. Everything topsy-turvy too with Spring coming along and breaking out and we here on the brink of September. It has been an afflicting time though considering all things he made a peaceful end, with a smile on his face as you would hardly consider possible.
"The next fortnight will see me on board the steamer again, which I can scarcely support the thought of, though, please God, I shall see it through. I have spent many days alone here and the strangeness of it all and the foreign faces bring up memories which are happier forgotten. But I'm often thinking what fine things you must be doing in that fine place. Not as I think riches will buy everything in this world—and a mercy too—or that I'm not anxious at times you don't come to harm with that delicate frame and all. Wrap up warm, miss, be watchful of your victuals and keep early hours. Such being so, I'm still hoping when I come home, if I'm spared, you may be of a mind to come to Beechwood Hill again and maybe settle down.
"I may say that I had my suspicions for some time that that young Mr Anon was consumptive in the lungs. But from what I gathered he isn't, only suffering from a stomach cough—bad cooking and exposing himself in all weathers. I will say nothing nearer. I shall be easier off as money goes, but you and me needn't think of that. Fanny doesn't write much and which I didn't much expect. She is of an age now which must reap as it has sown, though even allowing for the accident of birth, as they say, a mother's a mother till the end of the chapter. I must now close. May the Lord bless you, miss, wherever you may be.
Yours truly,"E. Bowater(Mrs)."
Surely this letter was a good omen. It cheered me, and yet it was disquieting, too. That afternoon I spent in the garden, wandering irresolutely up and down under the blue sky, and fretting at the impenetrable wall of time that separated me from the longed-for hour of freedom. On a sunny stone near a foresty bed of asparagus I sat down at last, tired, and a little dispirited. I was angry with myself for the last night's failure, and for a kind of weakness that had come over me. Yet how different a creature was here to-day from that of only a week ago. From the darkened soil the stalks sprang up, stiffened and green with rain. A snail reared up her horns beneath my stone. An azure butterfly alighted on my knee, slowly fanning its turquoise wings, patterned with a delicate narrow black band on the one side, and spots of black and orange like a Paisley shawl beneath. Between silver-knobbed antennæ its furry perplexed face and shining eyes looked out at me, sharing my warmth. I watched it idly. How long we had been strangers. And surely the closer one looked at anything that was not of man's making.... My thoughts drifted away. I began day-dreaming again.
And it seemed that life was a thing that had neither any plan nor any purpose; that I was sunk, as if in a bog, in ignorance of why or where or who I truly was. The days melted on, to be lost or remembered, the Spring into Summer, and then Winter and death. What was the meaning of it all—this enormous ocean of time and space in which I was lost? Never else than a stranger. That couldn't be true of the men and women who really keep the world's "pot boiling." AllIcould pray for was to sit like this for a while, undisturbed and at peace with my own heart. Peace—did I so much as know the meaning of the word? How dingy a patchwork I had made of everything. And how customary were becoming these little passing fits of repining and remorse. The one sole thing that comforted me—apart from my blue butterfly—was an echo in my head of those clapping hands, whoops and catcalls—and the white staring faces in the glare. And a few months ago this would have seemed an incredible degradation.
There stole into memory that last evening at Wanderslore. What would he think of me now? I had done worse thanforget him, had learned in one single instant that for ever and ever, however dearly I liked and valued him and delighted in his company, I could not be "in love" with him. I hid my face in my hands. Yet a curious quiet wish for his company sprang up in me. How stiff-necked and affected I had been. Love was nothing but cheating. Let me but confess, explain, ask forgiveness, unburden myself. Those hollow temples, that jutting jaw, the way he stooped on his hands and coughed. My great-aunt, Kitilda, had died in her youth of consumption. A sudden dread, like a skeleton out of the sky, stood up in my mind. There was no time to delay. To-morrow night, Adam or no Adam, I would set off to find him: all would be well.
As if in response to my thought, a shadow stole over the stones beside me. I looked up and—aghast—saw Fanny.
Her head was turned away from me, a striped parasol leaned over her shoulder. With a faintly defiant tilt of her beautiful head, as if exclaiming, "See, Strangeness, I come!" she stepped firmly on over the turf. A breath of some delicate indoor perfume was wafted across to my nostrils. I clung to my stone, watching her.
Simply because it seemed a meanness to play the spy on her in her solitude, I called her name. But her start of surprise was mere feigning. The silk of her parasol encircled her shoulders like an immense nimbus. Her eyes dwelt on me, as if gathering up the strands of an unpleasing memory.
"Ah, Midgetina," she called softly, "it is you, is it, on your little stone? Are you better?" The very voice seemed conscious of its own cadences. "What a delicious old garden. The contrast!"
The contrast. With a cold gathering apprehension at my heart I glanced around me. Why was it that of all people only Fanny could so shrink me up like this into my body? And there floated back to remembrance the vast, dazzling room, the flower-clotted table, and, in that hideous vertigo, a face frenzied with disgust and rage, a hand flung out to cast me off. But I entered her trap none the less.
"Contrast, Fanny?"
"No,no, now, my dear! Not quite so disingenuous as all that,please. You can't have quite forgotten the last time we met."
"There was nothing in that, Fanny. Only that the midge was drunk. You should see the wasps over there in the nectarines."
"Only?" she echoed lightly, raising her eyebrows. "I am not sure that every one would put it quite like that. You couldn't see yourself, you see. They call you little Miss Cassandra now. Woe! Woe! you know. Mrs Monnerie asked me if Ithought you were—you know—'all there,' as they say."
"I don't care what they say."
"If I weren't an old friend," she returned with crooked lip, "you might be made to care. I have brought the money you were kind enough to lend me; I'll give it you when I have unpacked—to-morrow night."
My body sank into a stillness that might well have betrayed its mind's confusion to a close observer.Hadshe lingered satirically, meaningly, on those two last words? "I don't want the money, Fanny: aren't you generous enough to accept a gift?"
"Well," said she, "it needs a good deal of generosity sometimes. Surely, a gift depends upon the spirit in which it is given. That last little message, now—was that, shall we say, an acceptable gift?" Her tones lost their silkiness. "See here, Midgetina," she went on harshly, "you and I are going to talk all this out. But I'm thirsty. I hate this spawning sun. Where are the nectarines?"
Much against my will I turned my back on her, and led her off to the beehives.
"One for you," she said, stooping forward, balancing the sheeny toe of her shoe on the brown mould, "and the rest for me. Catch!" She dropped a wasp-bitten, pulpy fruit into my hands. "Now then. It's shadier here. No eavesdroppers. Just you and me and God.Pleasesit down?"
There was no choice. Down I sat; and she on a low wooden seat opposite me in the shade, her folded parasol beside her, the leaf-hung wall behind. She bit daintily into the juicy nectarine poised between finger and thumb, and watched me with a peculiar fixed smile, as if of admiration, on her pale face.
"Tell me, pretty Binbin," she began again, "what is the name of that spiked red and blue and violet thing behind your back? It colours the edges of your delicate china cheeks. Most becoming!"
It was viper's bugloss—a stray, I told her, shifting my head uneasily beneath her scrutiny.
"Ah, yes,viper'sbugloss. Personally I prefer the common variety. Though no doubt that may stray, too. But fie, fie! You naughty thing," she sprang up and plucked anothernectarine, "you have been blacking your eyebrows. I shouldn't have dreamt it of you. What would mother say?"
"Listen, Fanny," I said, pronouncing the words as best I could with a tongue that seemed to be sticking to the roof of my mouth; "I am tired of the garden. What do you really want to say to me? I don't much care for your—your fun."
"And I just beginning to enjoy it! There's contrariness!—Tosay? Well, now, a good deal, my dear. I thought of writing. But it's better—safer to talk. The first thing is this. While you have been malingering down here I have had to face the whole Monnerie orchestra. It hasn't been playing quite in tune; and you know why. That lovesick Susan, now, and her nice young man. But since you seem to be quite yourself again—more of yourself than ever, in fact: listen." I gazed, almost hypnotized, through the sunshine into her shady face.
"What I am going to suggest," she went on smoothly, "concerns only you and me. If you and I are to go on living in the same house—which heaven forbid—I give you fair warning that we shall have nothing more to do with one another than is absolutely inevitable. I am not so forgiving as I ought to be, Midgetina, and insults rankle. Treachery, still more." The low voice trembled.
"Oh, yes, you may roll your innocent little eyes and look as harmless as a Chinese god, but answer me this: AmIa hypocrite? Am I? And while you are thinking it over, hadn't you better tumble that absurd little pumpkin off your knee? It's staining your charming frock."
"I never said you were a hypocrite," I choked.
"No?" The light gleamed on the whites of her eyes as they roved to and fro. "Then I say,youare. Fair to face, false to back. Who first trapped me out star-gazing in the small hours, then played informer? Who wheedled her way on with her mincing humbug—poof!naïveté!—and set my own mother against me? Who told some one—youknow who—that I was not to be trusted, and far better cast-off? Who stuffed that lackadaisical idiot of a Sukie Monnerie with allthoseold horrors? Who warned that miserable little piece of deformity that I might come—borrowing? Who hoped to betray me by sending an envelope through the post packed with mousey bits of paper?Who made me a guy, a laughing-stock and poisoned—— Oh, it's a long score, Miss M. When I think of it all, what I've endured—well, honestly when a wasp crawls out of my jam, I remind myself that it's stinged."
The light smouldering eyes held me fast. "You mean, I suppose, Fanny, that you'd just kill it," I mumbled, looking up into her distorted face. "I don't think I should much mind even that. But it's no use. It would take hours to answer your questions. You have only put them your own way. They may sound true. But in your heart you know they are false. Why should you bother to hurt me? You know—you know how idiotically I loved you."
"Loved me, false, kill," echoed Fanny scornfully, with a leer which transformed her beauty into a mere vulgar grimace. "Is there any end to the deceits of the little gaby? Do you really suppose that to be loved is a new experience for me; that I'm not smeared with it wherever I go; that I care a snap of my fingers whether I'm loved or not; that I couldn't win through without that? Is that what you suppose? Well, then, here's one more secret. Open your ears. I am going to marry Percy Maudlen. Yes,thatweed of a creature. You may remember my little prophecy when he brought his Aunt Alice's manikin some lollipops. Well, the grace of God is too leisurely, and since you and I are both, I suppose, of the same sex, I tell you I care no more for him than that——" She flung the nectarine stone at the beehive. "And Idefyyou, defy you to utter a word. I am glad I was born what I am. All your pretty little triumphs, first to last, what are they?—accidents and insults. Isn't half the world kicking down the faces of those beneath them on the ladder?Ihave had to fight for a place. And I tell you this: I am going to teach these supercilious money-smelling ladies a lesson. I am going to climb till I can sneer down onthem. And Mrs Monnerie is going to help me. She doesn't care a jot for God or man. But she enjoys intelligence, and loves a fighter. Is that candour? Is it now?"
"I detest Percy Maudlen," I replied faintly. "And as for sneering, that only makes another wall. Oh, Fanny, do listen to yourself, to what you are. I swear I'm not the sneak youthink me. I'd help you, if I could, to my last breath. Indeed, I would. Yes, and soon Ican."
"Thank you: and I'd rather suffocate than accept your help—now. Listen to myself, indeed! That's just the pious hypocrite all over. Well, declarations of love you know quite enough about for your—for your age. Now you shall hear one of a different kind. I tell you, Midgetina, I hate you: I can't endure the sight or sound or creep or thought of you any longer. Why? Because of your unspeakable masquerade. You play the pygmy; pygmy you are: carried about, cosseted, smirked at, fattened on nightingales' tongues—the last, though, you'll ever eat. But where have you come from? What are you in your past—in your mind? I ask you that: a thing more everywhere, more thief-like, more detestable than a conscience. Look at me, as we sit here now.Iam the monstrosity. You see it, you think it, you hate even to touch me. From first moment to last you have secretly despised me—me! I'm not accusing you. You weren't your own maker. As often as not you don't know what you are saying. You are just an automaton. But these last nights I have lain awake and thought of it all. It came on me as if my life had been nothing but a filthy, aimless nightmare; and chiefly because of you. I've worked, I've thought, I've contrived and forced my way. Oh, that house, the wranglings, the sermons. Did I make myself what I am, ask to be born? No, it's all a devilish plot. And I say this, that while things are as they are, and this life is life, and this worldmyworld, I refuse to be watched and taunted and goaded and defamed."
Her face stooped closer, fascinating, chilling me like a cold cloud with its bright, hunted, malevolent stare. She stretched out a hand and wrung my shoulder. "Listen, I say. Come out of that trance! I loathe you, you holy imp. You haunt me!"
My eyes shut. I sat shivering, empty of self, listening, as if lost in a fog in a place desperately strange to me; and only a distant sea breaking and chafing on its stones far below. Then once more I became conscious of the steady and resolute droning of the bees; felt the breathing of actuality on my hair, on my cheek. My eyes opened on a garden sucked dry ofcolour and reality, and sought her out. She had left me, was standing a few paces distant now, looking back, as if dazed, her lips pale, her eyes dark-ringed.
"Perhaps you didn't quite hear all that, Midgetina. You led me on. You force things out of me till I am sick. But some day, when you are as desperate as I have been, it will come back to you. Then you'll know what it is to be human. But there can't be any misunderstanding left now, can there?"
I shook my head. "No, Fanny. I shall know you hate me."
"And I am free?"
What could she mean? I nodded.
She turned, pushed up her parasol. "What a talk! But better done with."
"Yes, Fanny," said I obediently. "Much better done with."
She gave me an odd glance out of the corner of her eye. "The queer thing is," she went on, "what I wanted to say was something quite, quite different. To give you a friendly word of warning, entirely on your own account.... You have a rival, Midgetina."
The words glided away into silence. The doves crooned on the housetop. The sky was empty above the distant hills. I did not stir, and am thankful I had the cowardice to ask no questions.
"Her name is Angélique. She lives in a Castle in Spain"; sighed the calm, silky voice, with the odd break or rasp in it I knew so well. "Oh, I agree a circus-rider is nothing better than a mongrel, a pariah, worse probably. Yet this one has her little advantages. As Midgets go, she beats you by at least four inches, and rides, sings, dances, tells fortunes. Quite a little Woman of the World. The only really troublesome thing about it is that she makes you jiltable, my dear. They are so very seductive, these flounced up, painted things.Noprinciple! And, oh, my dear; all this just as dear Mrs Monnerie has set her heart on finding her Queen Bee a nice little adequate drone for a husband!"
It was her last taunt. It was over. I had heard the worst. The arrow I had been waiting for had sprung true to its mark. Its barb was sticking there in my side. And yet, as I mutely looked up at her, I knew there was a word between us whichneither could utter. The empty air had swallowed up the sound of our voices. Its enormous looking-glass remained placid and indifferent. It was as if all that we had said, or, for that matter, suffered, was of no account, simply because we were not alone. For the first instant in the intimacy of my love and hatred, Fanny seemed to be just any young woman standing there, spiteful, meaningless. The virtue had gone out of her. She made up her mouth, glanced uneasily over her shoulder and turned away.
We were never again to be alone together, except in remembrance.
I sat on in the garden till the last thin ray of sunlight was gone. Then, in dread that my enemy might be looking down from the windows of the house, I slipped and shuffled from bush to bush in the dusk, and so at last made my way into the house, and climbed the dark polished staircase. As, stealthily, I passed a bedroom door ajar, my look pierced through the crevice. It was a long, stretching, shallow room, and at the end of it, in the crystal quiet, stood Fanny, her arms laid on the chimney-piece, her shoulder blades sticking out of her muslin gown, her face hidden in her hands.
Why did I not venture in to speak to her? I had never seen a figure so desolate and forsaken. Could things ever be so far gone as to say No to that? I hesitated; turned away: she would think I had come only to beg for mercy.
For hours I sat dully brooding. What a trap I was in. In my rummagings in the Monnerie library I had once chanced on a few yellow cardboard-covered novels tucked away in a cupboard, and had paddled in one or two of them. Now I realized that my life also was nothing but "a Shocker." So people actually suffered and endured the horrible things written about in cheap, common books.
One by one I faced Fanny's charges in my mind. None was true, yet none was wholly false. And none was of any consequence beside the fact that she execrated the very self in me of which I could not be conscious. And what would she do? What did all those covert threats and insinuations mean? A "husband"—why had that such a dreadful power to wound me?I heard my teeth begin to chatter again. There was no defence, no refuge anywhere. If I could get no quiet, I should go mad. I looked up from my stool. It was dark. It was a scene made for me. I could watch the miserable little occupant of its stage roving to and fro like one of my showman's cowed, mangy beasts.
The thought of the day still ahead of me, through which I must somehow press on, keep alive, half stupefied me with dread. We can shut our eyes and our mouths and our hearts; why cannot we stop thinking? The awful passive order of life: its mechanicalness. All that I could see was the blank white face of its clock—but no more of the wheels than of the Winder. No haste, no intervention, no stretching-out beyond one's finger tips. So the world wore away; life decayed; the dunghill smoked. Mrs Monnerie there; stepping into her brougham, ebony cane in hand, Marvell at her elbow; Mrs Bowater languishing on board ship, limp head in stiff frilling; Sir Walter dumb; the showman cursing his wretched men; the bills being posted, the implacable future mutely yawning, the past unutterable. Everything in its orbit. Was there no help, no refuge?
The door opened and the skimpy little country girl who waited on me in Fleming's absence, brought in my supper. She bobbed me a scared curtsey, and withdrew. Then she, too, had been poisoned against me. I flung myself down on the floor, crushing my hands against my ears. Yet, through all this dazed helplessness, in one resolve I never faltered. I would keep my word to the showman, and this night that was now in my room should be the last I would spend alive in Monk's House. Fanny must do her worst. Thoughts of her, of my unhappy love and of her cruelty, could bring no good. Yet I thought of her no less. Her very presence in the house lurked in the air, in the silence, like an apparition's.
Still stretched on the floor, I woke to find the September constellations faintly silvering the pale blue crystal of the Northern Lights; and the earth sighing as if for refuge from the rising moon. My fears and troubles had fallen to rest beneath my dreams, and I prepared myself for the morrow's flight.
When next Fanny and I met, it was in the cool grey-green summery drawing-room at Monk's House, and Mrs Monnerie and Susan shared tea with us. One covert glance at Mrs Monnerie's face had reassured me. That strange mask was as vigilant and secretive, but as serene, as when it had first smiled on me in the mauves and gildings of Brunswick House. She had set her world right again and was at peace with mankind. As complacently as ever she stretched me out her finger. She had not even taken the trouble to forgive me for my little "scene"; had let it perish of its own insignificance. Oh, I thought, if I could be as life-size as that! I did not learn till many days afterwards, however, that she had had news of me from France.Goodnews, which Sir W., trusting in my patience and commonsense, had kept back from me until he could deliver it in person and we could enjoy it together.
Only one topic of conversation was ours that afternoon—that "amazing Prodigy of Nature," the Spanish Princess; Mrs Monnerie's one regret that she herself had not discovered a star of such ineffably minute magnitude. Yet her teasing and sarcasm were so nimble and good-humoured; she insinuated so pleasantly her little drolleries and innuendoes; that even if Miss M. had had true cause for envy and malice, she could have taken no offence. Far from it.
I looked out of the long open windows at the dipping, flittering wagtails on the lawn; shrugged my shoulders; made little mouths at her with every appearance of wounded vanity. Did she really think, I inquired earnestly, that that shameless creature was as lovely as the showman's bills made her out to be? Mightn't it all be a cheat, a trick? Didn't they always exaggerate—just to make money? The more jovially she enjoyed my discomfiture, nodding her head, swaying in her chair, the more I enjoyed my duplicity. The real danger was thatI should be a little too clever, over-act my part, and arouse her suspicions.
"Ah, you little know, you little know," I muttered to myself, sharply conscious the while of the still, threatening presence of Fanny. But she meant to let me go—that was enough. It was to be good riddance to bad rubbish. There was nothing to fear from her—yet. Her eyes lightly dwelling on me over her Chelsea teacup, she sat drinking us in. Well, she should never taunt me with not having played up to her conception of me.
"Well, well," Mrs Monnerie concluded, "all it means, my dear, is that you are not quite such a rarity as we supposed. Who is? There's nothing unique in this old world; though character, even bad character, never fails to make its mark. Ask Mr Pellew."
"But, surely, Mrs Monnerie," said I, "it isn't character to sell yourself at twopence a look."
"Mere scruples, Poppet," she retorted. "Think of it. If only you could have pocketed that pretty little fastidiousness of yours, the newspapers would now be ringing with your fame. And the fortune! You are too pernickety. Aren't we all of us on show? And aren't nine out of ten of us striving to be more on show than we are entitled to be? If man's first disobedience and the rest of it doesn't mean that, then what, I ask you, MademoiselleBas Bleu, was the sour old Puritan so concerned about? Assist me, Susan, if I stumble."
"I wish I could, Aunt Alice," said Susan sweetly, cutting the cake. "You must ask Miss Bowater."
"Please, Miss Monnerie," drawled Fanny.
"Whether or not," said Mrs Monnerie crisply, "I beseech you, children, don't quarrel about it. There is our beloved Sovereign on her throne; and there the last innocent little victim in its cradle; and there's the old sun waggishly illuminating the whole creaking stage. Blind beggar and dog, Toby, artists, authors, parsons, statesmen—heart and everything else, or everything else but heart, on sleeve—and all on show—every one of them—atsomethinga look. No, my dear, there's only one private life, the next: and, according to some accounts, that will be more public than ever. And so twirls the Merry-go-Round."
Her voice relapsed, as it were, into herself again, and she drew in her lips. She looked about her as if in faint surprise; and in returning to its usual expression, it seemed to me that her countenance had paused an instant in an exceedingly melancholy condition. Perhaps she had caught the glint of sympathy in my eye.
"But isn't that all choice, Mrs Monnerie?" I leaned forward to ask. "And aren't some people what one might call conspicuous, simply because they are really and truly, as it were, superior to other people? I don't mean better—just superior."
"Ithink, Mrs Monnerie," murmured Fanny deprecatingly, "she's referring to that 'ad infinitum' jingle—about the fleas, you know. Or was it Dr Watts, Midgetina?"
"Never mind about Dr Watts," said Mrs Monnerie flatly. "The point from which we have strayed, my dear, is that even if you were not born great, you were born exquisite; and now here's this Angélique rigmarole——" Her face creased up into its old good-humoured facetiousness: "Was it three inches, Miss Bowater?"
"Four, Mrs Monnerie," lipped Fanny suavely.
"Four! pooh! Still, that's what they say; half a head or more, my dear, more exquisite! Perfect nonsense, of course. It's physically impossible. These Radical newspapers! And the absinthe, too." Her small black-brown eyes roamed round a little emptily. Absinthe! was that a Fanny story? "But there, my child," she added easily, "you shall see for yourself. We dine with the Padgwick-Steggals; and then go on together. So that's settled. It will be my first travelling circus since I was a child. Most amusing: if the lion doesn't get out, and there's none of those horrible accidents on the trapeze one goes in hope to see. By the way, Miss Bowater, your letter was posted?"
"Oh, yes, Mrs Monnerie—this afternoon; but, as you know, I was a little doubtful about the address." She hastened to pass me a plate of button-sized ratafias; and Mrs Monnerie slowly turned a smiling but not quite ingenuous face aside.
"What a curious experience the circus will be for you, Midgetina," Fanny was murmuring softly, glancing back over her shoulder towards the tea-table. "Personally, I believe theSignorina Angélique and the rest of it is only one of those horrible twisted up prodigies with all the bones out of place. Mightn't it, Mrs Monnerie, be a sort of shock, you know, for Miss M.? She's still a little pale and peaky."
"She shall come, I say, and see for herself," replied Mrs Monnerie petulantly.
There was a pause. Mrs Monnerie gazed vacantly at the tiers of hot-house flowers that decorated the window-recess. Susan sate with a little forked frown between her brows. She never seemed to derive the least enjoyment from this amiable, harmless midget-baiting. Not at any rate one hundredth part as much as I did. Fanny set Plum begging for yet another ratafia. And then, after a long, deep breath, my skin all "gooseflesh," I looked straight across at my old friend.
"I don't think, Mrs Monnerie," I said, "if you don't mind—I don't think I reallywishto go."
As if Joshua had spoken, the world stood still.
Mrs Monnerie slowly turned her head. "Another headache?"
"No, I'm perfectly well, thank you. But, whatever I may have said, I don't approve of that poor creature showing herself for—for money. She is selling herself. Itmustbe because there's no other way out."
Finger and thumb outstretched above the cringing little dog, Fanny was steadily watching me. With a jerk of my whole body I turned on her. "You agreed with me, Fanny, didn't you, in the garden yesterday afternoon?"
Placidly drooped her lids: "Trust, Plum, trust!"
"What!" croaked Mrs Monnerie, "you, Miss Bowater! Guilty of that silly punctilio! She was merely humouring you, child. It will be a most valuable experience. You shall be perfectly protected. Pride, eh? Or is it jealousy? Now what would you say if I promise to try and ransom the poor creature?—buy her out? pension her off? Wouldthatbe a nice charitable little thing to do? She might make you quite a pleasant companion."
"Ah, Mrs Monnerie, please letmebuy her out. Let me be the intermediary!" I found myself, hands clasped in lap, yearningly stooping towards her, just like a passionate young lady in a novel.
She replied ominously, knitting her thick, dark eyebrows. "And how's that to be done, pray, if you sulk here at home?"
"I think, Aunt Alice, it's an excellent plan," cried Susan, "much, much more considerate. She could write. Think of all those horrible people! The poor thing may have been kidnapped, forced to do her silly tricks like one of those wretched, little barbered-up French poodles. Anyhow, I don't suppose she's there—or anywhere else, for that matter—forfun!"
Even Susan's sympathy had its sting.
"Thank you, Susan," was Mrs Monnerie's acid retort. "Yourdelicate soul can always be counted on. But advice, my child, is much the more valuable when asked for."
"Of course I mustn't interfere, Mrs Monnerie," interposed Fanny sweetly; "but wouldn't it perhaps be as well for you to see the poor thing first? She mayn't be quite—quite a proper kind of person, may she? At least that's what the newspapers seem to suggest. Not, of course, that Miss M. wouldn't soon teach her better manners."
Mrs Monnerie's head wagged gently in time to her shoe. "H'm. There's something in that, Miss Worldly-Wise. Reports don't seem to flatter her. But still, I like my own way best. Poppet mustcome and see. After all, she should be the better judge."
Never before had Mrs Monnerie so closely resembled a puffed-out tawny owl.
I looked at her fixedly: shook my head. "No: no judge," I spluttered. "I'm sorry, Mrs Monnerie, but Iwon'tgo."
There was no misdoubting her anger now. The brows forked. The loose-skinned hands twitched. She lifted herself in her chair, "Won't," she said. "You vex me, child. And pray don't wriggle at me in that hysterical fashion. You are beside yourself; trembling like a mouse. You have been mooning alone too much, I can see. Run away and nurse that silly head, and at the same time thank heaven that you have more time and less need of the luxury than some one else we know of. It may be a low life, but it needs courage. I'll saythatfor her."
She swept her hands to her knees over her silken lap, and turned upon Susan.
I had been dismissed. But Mrs Monnerie's anger had a curious potency. For a moment I could scarcely see out of my eyes, and the floor swayed under me as I scrambled down from my chair. It took me at least a minute, even with the help of a stool, to open the door.
Like a naughty child I had been put in the corner and then sent to bed. Good. There could be no going back now. I could count on Fanny—the one thing she asked was to be free of me. As for Mrs Monnerie, her flushed and sullen countenance convinced me that my respite would be undisturbed. There was only impulsive Susan to think of. And as if in answer, there came a faint tap, and the door softly opened to admit her gentle head and shoulders.
"Ah, my dear," she whispered across at me. "I'msosorry; and so helpless. Don't take it too hardly. I have been having my turn, too."
I twisted round, wet face and hands, as I stood stooping over my washbowl on its stool, scrutinized her speechlessly, and shook a dizzy head. The door shut. Dearest Susan: as I think of her I seem to see one of those tiny, tiny "building rotifers" collecting out of reality its exquisite house. Grace, courage, loving-kindness. If I had been the merest Miss Hop-o'-my-Thumb, I should still have been the coarsest little monster by comparison.
Scarce three safe hours remained to me; I must be off at once. To go looking for Adam was out of the question. Even if I could find him, I dared not risk him. Would it be possible for me to cover my six miles or more across undiscovered country in a hundred and eighty minutes? In my Bowater days, perhaps; but there had been months of idle, fatted, indoor No. 2 in between. A last forlorn dishonest project, banished already more than once from my mind, again thrust itself up—to creep off to the nearestPost Office and with one of my crown pieces for a telegram, cast myself on the generosity of Mr Anon. No, no: I couldn't cheat myself like that.
I was ready. I pinned to the carpet a message for Adam, in case he should dare to be faithful to me—just four scribbled uncompromising words: "The Bird is flown." With eyes fixed on a starry knot of wood at the threshold, I stood for a while, with head bent, listening at my door. I might have been pausing between two worlds. The house was quiet. No voice cried "Stay." I bowed solemnly to the gentle, silent room behind me, and, with a prayer between my teeth, bundle in hand, stepped out into the future.
Unchallenged, unobserved, I slipped along the blue-carpeted corridor, down the wide stairs and out of the porch. After dodging from tree to tree, from shrub to shrub, along the meandering drive, I turned off, and, skirting the lodge through a seeding forest of weeds and grasses, squeezed through the railings and was in the lane. From my map of Kent I had traced out a rough little sketch of the route I must follow. With the sun on my left hand I set off almost due north. How still the world was. In that silk-blue sky with its placid, mountainous clouds there was no heed of human doings.
The shoes I had chosen were good sound Bowaters, and as I trudged on my spirits rose high. I breathed in deep draughts of the sweet September air. Thomasina of Bedlam had been "summoned to tourney." "The wide world's end.... No journey!" In sober fact, it was a sorry little wretch of a young female, scarcely more than a girl, that went panting along in the dust and stones, scrambling into cover of ditch and hedge at every sound or sight of life. I look at her now, and smile. Poor thing; it needed at any rate a pinch of "courage."
Cottages came into sight. At an open door I heard the clatter of crockery, and a woman scolding a child. Two gates beyond, motionless as a block of wood, an old, old man stood leaning out of his garden of dahlias and tarnishing golden-rod. In an instant in the dumb dust I was under his nose. His clay pipe shattered on the stone. Like a wagtail I flitted and scampered all in a breath. That little danger was safely over; but it was not ruminating old gentlemen who caused me apprehension. Youthful Adam Waggetts were my dread.
At the foot of the slope there came a stile, and a footpath winding off NW. but still curving in my direction. I hesitated. Any risk seemed better than the hedged-in publicity of this dusty lane. Ducking under the stile, I climbed the hill and presently found myself clambering across an immense hummocky field, part stubble, part fresh plough. Then a meadow and cows. Then once more downhill, a drowsy farm-yard, with its stacks and calves and chickens, to the left, and at bottom of the slope a filthy quagmire where an immense sow wallowed, giving suck to her squalling piglets. Her glinting, amorous eyes took me in. Stone on to stone, I skipped across a brook, dowsing one leg to the thigh in its bubbling water. It was balm in Gilead, for I was in a perfect fume of heat, and my lungs were panting like bellows.
I sat down for a breathing space on the sunset side of a haystack. In the shade of the hazels, on the verge of the green descending field, rabbits were feeding and playing. And I began to think. Supposing I did reach the new pitch in time: the wreck I should be. Then Mrs Monnerie—and Fanny: my thoughts skimmed hastily on. What then? As soon as my showman had paid me I must creep away by myself out of sightat once; that was certain. I must tell him that Adam was waiting for me. And then? Well, after a few hours' rest in some shed or under a haystack, somehow or other I should have to find out the way, and press on to Wanderslore. There'd be a full moon. That would be a comfort. I knew the night. Once safely there, with money in my pocket, I could with a perfectly free conscience ask Mr Anon to find me a lodging, perhaps not very far from his own. A laughable situation. But we would be the best of friends; now that all that—that nonsense was over. A deep sigh, drawn, as it were, from the depths of my bowels, rose up and subsided. What a strange thing that one must fall in love, couldn't jump into it. And then? Well, Mrs Bowater would soon be home, and perhaps Sir Walter had circumvented the Harrises. Suppose not. Well, even at the very worst, at say ten, say even fifteen shillings a week, my thirteen pounds would last me for months and months.... Sayfour.
And as I said "four," a gate clacked-to not many yards distant and a slow footfall sounded. Fortunately for me, the pathI had been following skirted the other side of my haystack. Gathering myself close under the hay, I peeped out. A tall, spare man, in a low, peaked cap and leather leggings, came cautiously swinging along. His face was long, lean, severe. His eyes were fixed in a steady gaze as if he were a human automaton stalking on. And the black barrel of a gun sloped down from under his arm. I drew in closer. His footsteps passed; died away; the evening breeze blew chill. A few moments afterwards a shattering report came echoing on from wood to wood, seeming to knock on my very breastbone. This was no place for me. With one scared glance at the huddling wood, I took to my heels, nor paused until the path through the spinney became so rutted that I was compelled to pick my way.
A cold gloom had closed in on my mind. I cursed clod-hopping shoes and bundle; envied the dead rabbit that had danced its airy dance and was done. As likely as not, I had already lost my way. And I plodded on along the stony paths, pausing only to quench my thirst with the rough juice of the blackberries that straggled at the wayside. I wonder if the "Knight of Furious Fancies" was as volatile!
But yet another shock was awaiting me. The footpath dipped, there came a hedge and another stile, and I scuffled down the bank into the very lane which I had left more than an hour ago. I knew that white house on the hill; had seen it with Adam under the moon. It stood not much more than a mile from the lodge gates. My short cut had been a detour; and now the sun was down.
I drew back and examined my scribble of map. There was no help for it. Henceforward I must keep to the road. My thick shoes beat up the dust, one of my heels had blistered, my bundle grew heavier with every step. But fear had left me. Some other master cracked his whip at me as I shambled on, as doggedly and devil-may-care as a tramp.
I was stooping in the wayside ditch in one more attempt to ease my foot, when once again I heard hoofs approaching. With head pushed between the dusty tussocks, I stared along the flat, white road. A small and seemingly empty cart was bowling along in the dust. As it drew near, my ears began to sing, my heart stood still. I knew that battered cart, that rough-haired, thick-legged pony.Suddenly I craned up in horror, for it seemed that the face peering low over the splashboard in my direction was that of a death's-head, grinning at me out of its gloom. Then with a cry of joy I was up and out into the road. "Hi, hi!" I screamed up at him.
It was Mr Anon. The pony was reined back on to its haunches; the cart stood still. And my stranger and I were incredulously gazing at one another as if across eternity, as if all the world beside were a dream that asked no awakening.
Half dragged and half lifted into the cart, by what signs I could, for speech was impossible, I bade him turn back. It unmanned me to see the quiet and love in his face. Without a word he wheeled the rearing pony round under the elm-boughs, and for many minutes we swung on together at an ungainly gallop, swaying from this side to that, the astonishment of every wayfarer we met or overtook on our way. At length he turned into a grass-track under a rusting hedge festooned with woodbine and feathery travellers' joy; and we smiled at one another as if in all history there had never been anything quite so strange as this.
"You are ill," he said. "Oh, my dear, what have they done to you?"
I denied it emphatically, wiping my cheeks and forehead with the hem of my skirt—for my handkerchief was stuffed into my shoe. "Look at me!" I smiled up at him, confident and happy. Was my face lying about me? Oh, I knew what a dreadful object I must be, but then, "I've been tramping for hours and hours in the dust; and why!—haven't you come to meet me; to give me alift?"
What foolish speeches makes a happy heart. Indeed Mr Anonhadcome to meet me, but not exactly there and then. He fetched out of his pocket the minute note that had summoned him. Here it is, still faintly scented:—
"Mrs Monnerie sends her compliments, and would Miss M.'s friend very kindly call at Monk's House, Croomham, at three o'clock on Friday afternoon. Mrs Monnerie is anxious about Miss M.'s health."
"Mrs Monnerie sends her compliments, and would Miss M.'s friend very kindly call at Monk's House, Croomham, at three o'clock on Friday afternoon. Mrs Monnerie is anxious about Miss M.'s health."
Oh, Fanny, Fanny! Precisely how far she had taken Mrs Monnerie's name in vain in this letter I have never inquired. And now, I suppose, Mrs Percy Maudlen would not trouble to tell me. ButI can vow that in spite of the grime on my face the happiest smile shone through as I stuffed it into my bodice. So this was all that her harrowing "husband" had come to—a summoning of friend to friend. If every little malicious plot ended like this, what a paradise the world would be. All tiredness passed away, though perhaps it continued to effervesce in my head a little. It seemed that I had been climbing on and on; and now suddenly the mist had vanished, and mountain and snow lay spread out around me in eternal peace and solitude. If Susan Monnerie's was my first stranger's kiss, Mr Anon's were my quietest tears.
His crazy cart seemed more magical than all the carpets of Arabia. I poured out my story—though not quite to its dregs. "This very afternoon," I told him, "I was writing to you—in my mind. And you see, you have come." The shaggy pony tugged at the coarse grass. I could hear the trickling sands in the great hour glass, and chattered on in vain hope to hold them back.
"You are not listening, only watching," I blamed him.
His lips moved; he glanced away. Yet I had already foreseen the conflict awaiting me. And all his arguments and entreaties that I should throw over the showman, and drive straight on with him into the gathering evening towards Wanderslore, were in vain.
"Look," he said, as if for straw to break the camel's back, and drew out by its ribbon my Bowater latchkey.
"No," said I, "not even that. I sleep out to-night." And surely, surely I kept repeating, he must understand. How could I possibly be at rest with a broken promise? What cared I now for what was past and gone? Think what a joy, what sheer fun it would be to face Mrs Monnerie for the last time, and she unaware of it! Nothing, nothing could amuse her more when she hears of it. He should come and see; hear the crowd yell. He mustn't be so solemn about things. "Do try and see the humour of it," I besought him.
But the money—that little incentive—I kept to myself.
He stared heavily into the silvery copse that bordered the track. Motionless in their bright, withering leaves, its trees hung down their tasselled branches beneath the darkening sky. Then, much against his will, he turned his pony towards the high road. The wheel gridded on a stone, he raised his whip.
"Hst!" I whispered, clutching at the arm that held the rein.Crouching low, we watched the great Monnerie carriage, with its stiff-necked, blinkered, stepping greys and gleaming lamps sweep by.
"There," I laughed up at him, lifting myself, one hand upon his knee, "there but for the Grace of God goes Miss M."
The queer creature frowned into my smiling face and flicked the pony with his whip. "And here," he muttered moodily, "who knows but by the Grace of God go I?"
Anxiety gone now, and responsibility but a light thing, my tongue rattled on quite as noisily as the cart. Kent's rich cornfields were around us, their stubble a pale washed-out gold in the last light of evening. Here and there on the hills a row or two of ungarnered stooks stood solemnly carved out against the sky. Most of the hop-gardens, too, had been dismantled, though a few we passed, with their slow-twirling dusky vistas and labyrinths, were still wreathed with bines. Their scent drifted headily on the stillness. And as with eyes peeping over the edge of the cart I watched these beloved, homelike hills and fields and orchards glide by, I shrilled joyfully at my companion every thought and fancy that came into my head, many of them, no doubt, recent deposits from the library at No. 2.
I told him, I remember, how tired I was of the pernicketiness of my life; and amused him with a description of my Tank. "You would hardly believe it, but I have never once heard the least faint whisper of water in it, and if I had been a nice, simple savage, I dare say I should have prayed to it. Instead of which, when one night I saw a star over the housetop I merely shrugged my shoulders. My mind was so rancid I hated it. I was so shut in; that's what it was."
He stroked the little, thick-coated horse with the lash of his whip, and smiled round at me.
On I went. Shouldn't life be a High Road, didn't he think; surely not a hot, silly zigzag of short cuts leading back to the place you started from, and you too old or stupid, perhaps, to begin again? Didn't he hunger, too, to see thegreatthings of the world, the ruins of Babylon, the Wall of China, the Himalayas, and the Pyramids—at night—black; and sand?
"My ghost!" said I, had he ever thought of the enormoussolitudes of the Sahara, or those remote places where gigantic images stare blindly through the centuries at the stars—their builders just a pinch of dust? Some day, I promised him out of the abandonment of my heart, we would sail away, he and I, to his Pygmy Land. Surf and snow and singing sand-dunes, and fruits on the trees and birds in the air: we would live—"Oh, happy as all this!" (and I swept my hands across hill and dale), "ever, ever afterwards. As they do, Mr Anon, in those absurd, incredible fairy-tales, you know."
He smiled again, cast a look into the distance, touched my hand.
Perhaps he was wishing the while that that piercing, pining voice of mine would keep silence, so that my presence might not disturb his own brooding thoughts. I could only guess at pleasing him. Yet I felt, still feel, that he was glad of my company and never for a moment sorry we had met.