She put on her spectacles with trembling fingers, and pushed her husband's letter across to me. The handwriting was bold and thick, yet I fancied it looked a little weak in the loops:—
"Dear Emily,—The leg's giving me the devil in this hole of a place. It looks as if I shouldn't get through with it. I should be greatly obliged if you would come out to me. They'll give you all the necessary information at the shipping office. Ask for Pullen. My love to Fanny. What's she looking like now? I should like to see her before I go; but better say nothing about it. You've got about a month or three weeks, I should think; if that."I remain, your affec. husband,"Joseph Bowater."
"Dear Emily,—The leg's giving me the devil in this hole of a place. It looks as if I shouldn't get through with it. I should be greatly obliged if you would come out to me. They'll give you all the necessary information at the shipping office. Ask for Pullen. My love to Fanny. What's she looking like now? I should like to see her before I go; but better say nothing about it. You've got about a month or three weeks, I should think; if that.
"I remain, your affec. husband,"Joseph Bowater."
"Easy enough inappearance," was Mrs Bowater's comment, as she folded up this stained and flimsy letter again, and stuffed it into her purse, "but it's past even Mr Bowater to control what can be read between the lines."
She looked at me dumbly; the skin seemed to hang more loosely on her face. In vain I tried to think of a comforting speech. The tune of "Eternal Father," one of the hymns we used to sing on windy winter Sunday evenings together, had begun droning in my head. The thought, too, was worrying me, though I did not put it into words, that Mr Bowater, far rather than in Buenos Ayres, would have preferred to find his last resting-place in Nero Deep or the Virgin's Trough—those enormous pits of blue in the oceans which I myself had so often gloated on in his Atlas. We were old friends now, he and I. He was Fanny's father. The very ferocity of his look had become a secret understanding between us. And now—at this very moment perhaps—he was dying. The jaunty "devil" in his letter, I am afraid, affected me far more than Mrs Bowater's troubled face or even her courage.
Without a moment's hesitation she had made up her mind toface the Atlantic's thousands of miles of wind and water to join the husband she had told me had long been "worse than" dead. The very tone in which she uttered the word "steamer," was even more lugubrious than the enormous, mocking hoot of a vessel that had once alarmed me out of the sea one still evening at Lyme Regis. It was a horrifying prospect, yet she just quietly said, "steamer," and looked at me over her spectacles.
While she was away, the little house on Beechwood Hill, "bought, thank God, with my own money," was to be shut up, but it was mine if I cared to return to it, and would ask a neighbour of hers, Mrs Chantry, for the key. It would be Fanny's if anything "happened" to herself. So dismal was all this that Mrs Bowater seemed already lost to me, andItwice an orphan. We talked on together in low, cautious voices. After a single sharp, cold glance at my visitor, Fleming had left us to ourselves over an enormous silver teapot. I grew so nervous at last, watching Mrs Bowater's slow glances of disapproval at her surroundings; her hot, tired face; and listening to her long drawn sighs, that again and again I lost the thread of what she was saying, and could answer Yes, or No, only by instinct.
What with an antiquated time-table, a mislaid railway ticket, and an impudent 'bus-conductor, her journey had been a trying experience. I discovered, too, that Mrs Bowater disliked the West End. She had first knocked at No. 4 by mistake. Its butler had known nothing whatever at all about any Miss M., and Mrs Bowater had been too considerate to specify my dimensions. She had then shared a few hot moments in the porch of No. 2 with a more fashionable visitor—to neither's satisfaction. A manservant had admitted her to Mrs Monnerie's marble halls and "barefaced" statuary, and had apparently thought the large parcel she carried in her arms should have been delivered in the area.
She bore no resentment, though I myself felt a little uneasy. Life was like that, she seemed to imply, and she had been no party to it. There was no doubt a better world where things would be different—it was extraordinary what a number of conflicting sentiments she could convey in a pause or a shut of her mouth. Black and erect, she sat glooming over that alien teapot, sipping Mrs Monnerie's colourless China tea, firmlydeclining to grimace at its insipidity, until she had told me all there was to tell.
At last, having gathered herself together, she exhorted me to write to that young Mr Anon. "I see a fidelity one might almost say dog-like, miss, on that face, apart, as I have reasons for supposing, from a sufficiency in his pocket. Though, the Lord knows, you are young yet and seemingly in no need of a home."
Parcel, reticule, umbrella—she bent over me with closed eyes, and muttered shamefacedly that she had remembered me in her Will, "and may God bless you, miss, I'm sure."
I clutched the gloved hand in a sudden helpless paroxysm of grief and foreboding. "Oh, Mrs Bowater, you forgive——" I choked, and still no words would come.
She was gone, past recall; and all the love and gratitude and remorse I had longed to express flooded up in me. Yet, stuck up there in my chair, my chief apprehension had been that Fleming might come in again, and cast yet another veiled, sneering glance at my visitor.
Peering between the gilded balusters, I watched my old friend droop away stiffly down the mild, lustrous staircase, bow to the man who opened the door for her, and emerge into the sunny emptiness.
Maybe the thought had drifted across her mind that I had indeed been dipped in the dye-pot. But now—these many years afterwards—there is no more risk of misunderstanding. It is eight o'clock; the light is fading. Chizzel Hill glows green. I hear her feebling step on the stairs. She will peer at me over spectacles that now always straddle her nose. I must put my pen and papers away; and I, too, have made my Will.
Mrs Bowater's departure from England—and it seemed as if its very map in my mind had become dismally empty—was not my only anxiety. My solicitors had hitherto been prompt; their remittances almost monotonously identical in amount. But my quarterly allowance on Midsummer Day, had been followed by a letter a week or two after her good-bye. It seemed to be in excellent English, and yet it was all but unintelligible to me. Every re-reading of it—the paper had apparently been dipped in water and dried—increased its obscurity and my alarm. I knew nothing about money matters, and the encyclopædia I consulted only made me more dejected and confused. I remembered with remorse my poor father's last troubles. To answer the Harrises was impossible, and further study of their letter soon became unnecessary, for I had learned it by heart.
The one thing certain was that Fanny's wolf had begun scratching at my door: that my income was in imminent danger. I had long since squandered the greater part of what remained out of my savings (after Fanny had helped herself) on presents and fal-lals; merely, I am afraid, to show Mrs Monnerie that I, too, could be extravagant. How much I owed her I could not even conjecture, and had not dared to inquire. To ask her counsel was equally impossible. She was almost as remote from me in this respect as Mrs Bowater, now in the centre of the Atlantic. As for Fanny, I had returned her postal orders and had heard no more.
For days and days gloom hung over me like a thundercloud. Wherever I went I was followed by the spectres of the Harrises. Then, for a time, as do all things, foreboding and anxiety gradually faded off. I plunged back into the cream-bowl with the deliberate intention of drowning trouble.
Meanwhile, I had not forgotten Fanny's "sinecure." One mackerel-skied afternoon, Mrs Monnerie and I and Susan werereturning across the Park from an "At Home"—"to meet Miss M." A small child of the house had richly entertained the company by howling with terror at sight of me, until he had been removed by his nurse. I bear him no grudge; he made a peg on which to hang Fanny's proposal.
"And what can Miss Bowater do? What are her qualifications?" Mrs Monnerie inquired pleasantly.
"She is—dark and—pale," I replied, staring a little giddily out of the carriage at the sheep munching their way over the London grass.
"Dark and pale?" mused Mrs Monnerie. "Well, that goes nearer the bone, perhaps, than medals and certificates and that sort of thing. Still, a rather Jane Eyreish kind of governess, eh, Susan?"
Unfortunately I was acquainted with only one of the Miss Brontës, and that not Charlotte.
"Miss Bowater is immenselyclever, Mrs Monnerie," I hurried on, "and extremely popular with—with the other mistresses, and that sort of thing. She's not a bit what you might guess from what you might suppose."
"Which means, I gather," commented Mrs Monnerie affably, "that Miss Bowater is the typical landlady's daughter. A perfect angel in—or out of—the house, eh, Miss Innocent?"
"No," said I, "I don't think Miss Bowater is an angel. She is so interesting, soherselfish, you know. She simply couldn't be happy at Miss Stebbings's—the school where she's teaching now. It's not salary, Mrs Monnerie, she is thinking of—just two nice children and their mother, that's all."
This vindication of Fanny left me uncomfortably hot; I continued to gaze fixedly into the green distances of the park.
Yet all was well. Mrs Monnerie appeared to be satisfied with my testimonial. "You shall give me her address, little Binbin; and we'll have a look at the young lady," she decided.
Yet I was none too happy at my success. Those familiar old friends of mine—motives—began worrying me. Would the change be really good for Fanny? Would it—and I had better confess that this troubled me the most—would it be really good for me? I wanted to help her; I wanted also to show her off. And what a joy it would be if she should change into theFanny of my dreams. On the other hand, supposing she didn't On the whole, I rather dreaded the thought of her appearance at No. 2.
Susan followed me into my room. "Whoisthis Miss Bowater?" she inquired, "besides, I mean, being your landlady's daughter, and that kind of thing?"
But my further little confidences failed to satisfy her.
"But why is she sonotan angel, then? Clever and lovely—it's a rather unusual combination, you know. And yet"—she reflectively smiled at me, all candour and gentleness—"well not unique."
I ran away as fast as ever I could with so endearing a compliment—and tossed it back again over my shoulder: "You don't mean, Susan, thatyouare not clever?"
"I do, my dear; indeed I do. I am so stupid that unless things are as plain and open as the nose on my face, I feel like suffocating. I'm dreadfully out of the fashion—a horrible discredit to my sex. As for Miss Bowater, I was merely being odious, that was all. To be quite honest and hateful—I didn't like the sound of her. And Aunt Alice is so easily carried away by any new scent. If a thing's a novelty, or just good to look at, or what they call a work of art—why, the hunt's up. There wouldn't have been any use for the Serpent inherEden. Mere things, of course, don't matter much: except that they rather lumber up one's rooms; and I prefer not to live in a museum. It's when it comes to persons. Still, it isn't as if Miss Bowater was coming here."
I remained silent, thinking this speech over. Had it, I speculated, "come to" being a "person" in my own case?
"Did you meet any other interesting people there?" Miss Monnerie went on, as if casually, turning off and on the while the little cluster of coloured electric globes that was on my table. "I mean besides Miss Bowater and that poor, dreadful—you know?"
"No," I said bluntly, "not many."
"You don't mind my asking these questions? And just in exchange, you solemn thing, I'll tellyoua secret. It will be like shutting it up in the delightfullest, delicatest littlerosebud of a box!" In that instant's pause, it was as if a dream had passed swiftly, entrancingly, across the grave, smiling face.
"Look!" she said, stooping low, and laying her slim left hand, palm downwards, across my table. I did look; and the first thing I noticed was how like herself that hand was, and how much less vigorous and formidable than Fanny's. And then I caught her meaning.
"Oh, Susan," I cried in a woeful voice, gazing at the smouldering stones ringing that long slim third finger, "wherever I turn, I hear that."
"Hear what?"
"Why, of love, I mean."
"But why, why?" the narrow brows lifted in faint distress, "I am going to be ever so happy."
"Ah, yes, I know, I know. But why can't you be happy alone?"
She looked at me, and a faint red dusked the delicate cheek. "Notsohappy. Notme, I mean."
"You do love him, then?" the words jerked out.
"Why, you strange thing, how curiously you speak to me. Of course I love him. I am going to marry him."
"But how do you know?" I persisted. "Does it mean more to you—well—than the secret of everything? I mean, what comes when one is almost nothing? Does it make you more yourself? or just break you in two? or melt you away?—oh, like a mist that is gone, and to every petal and blade of grass its drop of burning water?"
A shade of dismay, almost of fear—the look a timid animal gives when startled—stole into her eyes. "You ask such odd questions! How can I answer them? I know this—I would rather die thannot. Is that what you mean?"
"Oh," my voice fainted away—disappointment, darkness, ennui; "only that!"
"But what do you mean? What are you saying? Have you been told all this? It disturbs me; your face is like——"
"Yes! what is it like?" I cried in distress, myself sinking back into myself, as if hiding in a lair.
"I can't say," she faltered. "I didn't know...."
We talked on. But though I tried to blur over and withdraw what I had said, she remained dissatisfied. A thin edgeof formality had for the moment pushed in between us.
That night I addressed a belated letter to Wanderslore, reproaching Mr Anon for not writing to me, telling him of Mrs Bowater's voyage, and begging him to assure the garden-house and the fading summer flowers that they had not been deserted in my dreams.
At a quarter to twelve one morning, soon after this, I was sitting with Mrs Monnerie on a stool beneath Chakka's cage, and Susan was just about to leave us—was actually smoothing on the thumb of her glove; when Marvell announced that a Miss Bowater had called. I turned cold all over and held my breath.
"Ah," whispered Mrs Monnerie, "your future Mrs Rochester, my pet."
Every thought scuttled out of my head; my needle jerked and pricked my thumb. I gazed at the door. Never had I seen anything so untransparent. Then it opened; and—there was Fanny. She was in dark gray—a gown I had never seen before. A tight little hat was set demurely on her hair. In that first moment, she had not noticed me, and I could steal a long, steady look at the still, light, vigilant eyes, drinking in at one steady draught their new surroundings. Her features wore the thinnest, unfamiliar mask, like a flower seen in an artificial light. What wonder I had loved her. My hands went numb, and a sudden fatigue came over me.
Then her quiet, travelling glance descended and hovered in secret colloquy with mine. She dropped me a little smiling, formal nod, moistened her lips, and composed herself for Mrs Monnerie. And it was then I became conscious that Susan had quietly slipped out of the room.
It was a peculiar experience to listen to the catechism that followed. From the absorption of her attitude, the large, sidelong head, the motionless hands, it was clear that Mrs Monnerie found a good deal to interest her in the dark, attentive figure that stood before her. If Fanny had been Joan of Arc, she could not have had a more single-minded reception. Yet I was enjoying a duel: a duel not of wits, but of intuitions, between the sagacious, sardonic, watchful old lady, soaked in knowledge of humanity but, as far as I could discover, with extraordinarily smallrespect for it, and—Fanny. And it seemed to me that Fanny easily held her own; just by being herself, without revealing herself. Face, figure, voice; that was all. I could not take my eyes away. If only, I thought, my own ghost would keep as quiet and hidden as that in the presence of others.
Perhaps I exaggerate. Love, living or dying, even if it is not blind, cannot, I suppose, focus objects very precisely. It sees only itself or disillusionment. Whether or not, the duel was interrupted. In the full light of the window, Fanny turned softly at the opening of the door. Marvell was announcing another caller. At his name my heart leapt up like William Wordsworth's at the rainbow. It was Sir Walter Pollacke.
"This isyourvisitor, Poppet," Mrs Monnerie waggishly assured me, "you shall have half an hour'stête-à-tête."
So it was with a deep sigh—half of regret at being called away, and all of joy at the thought of seeing my old friend again—that I followed Marvell's coat-tails over the threshold. With a silly, animal-like affection I brushed purposely against Fanny's skirts as I passed her by; and even smirked in a kind of secret triumph at Percy Maudlen, who happened to be idling on the staircase as I hastened from room to room.
The door of the library closed gently behind me, as if with a breath of peace. I paused—looked across. Sir Walter was standing at the further end of its high, daylit, solemn spaciousness. He was deep in contemplation of a white marble bust that graced the lofty chimney-piece—so rapt, indeed, that until I had walked up into the full stream of sunshine from a nearer window and had announced my approach with a cough, he did not notice my entrance. Then he flicked round with an exclamation of welcome.
"My dear, dear young lady," he cried, beaming down on me from between his peaked collar-tips, over his little black bow, the gold rim of his large eye-glasses pressed to his lip, "a far—far more refreshing sight! Would you believe it, it was the pleasing little hobby of that oiled and curled monstrosity up there—Heliogabalus—to smother his guests in roses—literally, smother them? Now," and he looked at me quizzically as if through a microscope, "the one question is how haveyousurvived what I imagine must have been a similar ordeal? Not quite at the last gasp, I hope?Comparativelyhappy? It's all we can hope for, my dear, in this world."
I nodded, hungrily viewing him, meeting as best I could the bright blue eyes, and realizing all in a moment the dark inward of my mind.
Those other eyes began thinking as well as looking. "Well,well, that's right. And now we must have a little quiet talk before his Eminence reappears. So our old friend Mrs Bowater has gone husband-hunting? Gallant soul: she came to see me."
Squatted up on a crimson leather stool, I must have looked the picture of astonishment.
"Yes," he assured me, "there are divinities that shape our ends; and Mrs Bowater is one of them. If anything can hasten her husband's recovery—— But never mind that. She has left me in charge. And here I am. The question is, can we have too many trustees, guardians? Perhaps not. Look at the Koh-i-Noor, now."
I much preferred to continue to look at Sir Walter, even though, from the moment I had entered the room, at least five or six voices had begun arguing in my mind. And here, as if positively in answer to them, was his very word—trustee. I pounced on it like a wasp on a plum. It was a piece of temerity that saved me from—well, as I sit thinking things over in quiet and leisure in my old Stonecote, the house of my childhood, I don't know what it hasn't saved me from.
"Too many trustees, Sir Walter?" I breathed. "I suppose, not—if they arehonest."
"But bless me, my dear young lady," his face seemed to be shining like the sun's in mist; "whose heresies are these? Have they given you a French maid?"
"Fleming; oh, no," I replied, laughing out, "she's a Woman of Kent, allbut. What I was really thinking is, that I would, if I may—and please forgive me—very much like to show you a letter. I simply can't make head or tail of it. But it's dreadfully—suggestive."
"My dear, I came in certain hope of being shown nothing less vital than your heart," he retorted gallantly.
So off I went—with my visitor all encouraging smiles as he opened the door for me—to fetch my lawyer's bombshell.
Glasses on tip of his small, hawklike nose, Sir Walter's glittering eyes seemed to master this obscure document at one swoop.
"H'm," he said cautiously, and once more communed with the bust of Heliogabalus. "Now what did you think of it all? Was itworthsix and eightpence, do you think?"
"I couldn't think. It frightened me. 'The Shares,' you know. Whose Shares? Of what? I'm terribly, terribly ignorant."
"Ah," he echoed, "the Shares—as the blackbird said to the Cherry Tree. And there was nobody, you thought, to discuss the letter with? You didn't answer it?"
"Nobody," said I, with a shake of my head, and smoothing my silk skirts over my knees.
"Why, of course not," he sparkled. "You see how admirably things work out. Miss Fenne, Mr Pellew, Mrs Bowater, my wife, Tom o' Bedlam, Hypnos, Mrs Monnerie, Mr Bowater, Mrs Bowater, the Harrises,Me. 'Pon my word, you'd think it was a plot. Now, supposing I keep this letter—could you trust it with me for a while?—and supposing I see these gentlemen, and make a few inquiries; and that in the meantime—we—we bottle the Cherries? But first, I must have a little more information. Your father, my dear. Let's just unbosom ourselves of all this horrible old money-grubbing, and see exactly how we stand."
I needed no second invitation, and poured out helter-skelter all (how very little, in my girlish folly) that I knew about my father's affairs, and of how I had been "left."
"And Miss Fenne, now?" he peered out, as if at my godmother herself. "Why didn't she send word to France? Where is this providential step-grandfather, Monsieur Pierre de Ronvel, all this time? Not dead too?"
Shamefully I had to confess that I did not know; had not even inquired. "It is my miserable ingratitude. I just blow hot and cold; that is my nature."
"Well, well, it may be so." He smiled at me, as if out of the distance, with the serenest kindliness. "But you and I are going to share the temperate zone—a cool, steady, Trade Wind."
"If only," I smiled, taking him up on this familiar ground, "if only I could keep clear of the Tropics—and that Sargasso Sea!"
At this little sally he gleamed at me as goldenly as the spade guinea that dangled on his waistcoat. Then he rose and surveyed one by one a row of silent, sumptuous tomes in their glazed retreat: "The Sargasso Sea; h'm, h'm, h'm; and one might suppose," he cast a comprehensive glance at the taciturn shelvesaround and above us, "one might suppose the tuppenny box would afford some of these a more sociable haven."
But this was Greek to me. "Mrs Monnerie is generous?" he went on, "indulgent? Groundsel, seed, sugar,anda Fleming. Yet perhaps the door might be pushed just an inch or two farther open, eh? What I'm meaning, my dear, is, will you perhaps wait in patience a little? And if anything should go amiss, will you make me a promise to send just a wisp of a word and a penny stamp to an old friend who will be doing his best? The first lawyer, you know, was a waif that was adopted by a tortoise and a fox. NowI'm going to be a mole—with its fur on the bias, as Miss Rossetti happened to notice—and burrow. So you see, all will come well!"
I must have been sitting very straight and awkward on my stool, and not heeding what my face was telling.
"Is there anything else distressing you, my dear?" he asked anxiously, almost timidly.
"Only myself," I muttered. "There doesn't seem to be any end to it all. I grope on and on, and—the kindness only makes it worse.Canthere be a riddle, Sir Walter, that hasn't any answer? I remember reading in a book that was given me that Man 'comes into the world like morning mushrooms.' Don't you think that's true; even, I mean, of—everybody?"
But his views on this subject were not to be shared with me for many a long day. Our half-hour was over; and there stood Mrs Monnerie, mushroom-shaped, it is true, but suggesting nothing of the evanescent, as she looked in on us from the mahogany doorway.
"How d'ye do, Sir Walter," she greeted him. "If it hadn't been for an exceedingly interesting young creature disguised, I understand, as a Miss Bowater, I should have had the happiness of seeing you earlier. And how is our Peri looking, do you think?"
"How is our Peri looking?" he repeated musingly, poising himself, and eyeing me, on his flat, gleaming boots; "why, Mrs Monnerie, as I suppose a Perishouldbe looking—into Paradise."
"Then, my Peri," said Mrs Monnerie blandly, "ask Sir Walter to be a complete angel, and stay to luncheon."
Mrs Monnerie, I remember, was in an unusually vivacious humour at that meal; and devoured immense quantities of salmon mayonnaise. One might have supposed that Fanny's influence had added a slim crescent of silvery light to her habitual earthshine. None the less, when our guest was gone, she seemed to subside into a shallow dejection; and I into a much deeper. We sate on together in an uneasy silence, she pushing out her lips, restlessly prodding Cherry with her foot, and occasionally uttering some inarticulate sound that was certainly not intended as conversation.
I think Mrs Monnerie was in secret a more remarkable woman than she affected to be. However thronged a room might be, you could never be unaware that she was in it. And in the gentle syllabub of polite conversation her silence was like that of an ancient rock with the whispering of the wavelets on the sands at its base. I remember once seeing a comic picture of an old lady with a large feather in her bonnet placidly sitting on a camp-stool beneath a pollard willow on one side of a stream, while a furious, frothing bull stood snorting and rampaging on the other. I think the old lady in the picture was meant to be Britannia; but, whoever or whatever the bull might represent, Mrs Monnerie reminded me of her. She sat more heavily, more passively, in her chair than any one I have ever seen.
Of course—quite apart from intelligence—there must be many, manylayersin society, and I cannot say at all how far Mrs Monnerie was from the topmost. But I am sure she was able to look down on a good many of them; while I was born always to be "looking up." I was looking up at Mrs Monnerie now from my stool. Widespread in her chair, she had closed her eyes, and to judge from her face, she was dreaming. It looked more faded than usual. The puckers gave it a prunish look. Queer, contorting expressions were floating across her features. Her soul seemed gently to rock in them, like an empty boat at night on a dark river. In the pride of my youth—and a little uneasy over my confidences with Sir Walter—I examined my patroness with a slight stirring of dismay.
"Oh, no, no! never to grow old, not me," a voice was saying in me. Yet, after all, I reminded myself, I was looking only atMrs Monnerie's outer case. But then, after all,wasit only that? "The Resurrection of the body." One may see day at a little hole; says an old proverb—I hope a Kentish proverb. And from Mrs Monnerie, my thoughts drifted away to Fanny. She would grow old too. Should we know one another then? Should we understand, and remember what it was to be young? We had had our secrets.
I came out of these reflections to find Mrs Monnerie's sleepy eyes fixed full upon me; and herself marvellously cheered up by her nap. She had thought very well of Miss Bowater, she told me. So well that she not only very soon found her a charming engagement as a morning governess to the two little girls of a rich fashionable widow—just Fanny's "sinecure"—but invited her to stay at No. 2 as a "companion" to herself, until a more permanent post offered itself.
"You and I want more company," she assured me; "otherwise the flint will use up all the tinder, or vice versa, my dear. A pretty creature and no fool. She sings a little, too, she tells me. So we shall have music wherever she goes."
That afternoon both flint and tinder—whichever of us was which—were kept very busy. Mrs Monnerie fell into one of her long monologues, broken only by Chakka's griding on his bars, and Cherry's whimpering in his dreams. It was another kind of "white meat" for me: and though, no doubt, I was incapable of digestingallMrs Monnerie's views on life, society, and the world at large, I realized that if in the course of time it might be my fate to wither and wizen away, I should still have my own company and plenty of internal entertainment. I actually saw myself a little bent-up, old, midget woman creeping down some stone steps out of a porch, with a fanlight, under a street lamp. It curdled my blood, that picture. And yet, I thought, what must be, must be. I willendureto be a little, bent-up, old, midget woman, creeping down stone steps out of a porch with a fanlight. And I even nodded up at the street lamp.
In response to a high-spirited scrawl from Fanny, I sent her all that was left of my savings to purchase "those horrible little etceteras that just feather down the scales, Midgetina. It would be saintlike of you, and you won't miss itthere." It was adesperate wrench to me to see the last of my money disappear. I knew no more than the Man in the Moon where the next was to come from.
I counted the days to Fanny's coming; and dressed myself for the occasion in the most expensive gold and blue afternoon gown I possessed. It must have been with a queer, mixed motive in my head. I sat waiting for her, while beyond the gloom-hung window raged a London thunderstorm, with dense torrents of rain. My little silver clock struck three, and she entered my room like a black swan, tossing from her small, velveted head, as she did so, a few beads of rain. From top to toe in deadest black. She must have noticed my glance of wonderment.
"When you want to make a favourable impression on your social superiors, Midgetina, the meeker you look the better," she said.
But this was not the only reason for her black. Only a day or two before, she told me, a letter had come from her mother.... "My father is dead." The words dropped out as if they were quite accustomed to one another's company. But those which followed—"blood-poisoning," "mortification," hung up in my mind—in that interminable gallery—a hideous picture. I could only sit and stare at the motionless figure outlined against the sepulchral window.
"It is awful, awful, Fanny!" I managed to whisper at last. "It never stops. One after another they all go. Think how he must have longed to be home. And now to be buried—out there—nothing but strangers."
A vacancy came over my mind in which I seemed to see the dead Mr Bowater of my photograph rising like Lazarus in his grave-cloths out of his foreign tomb, and looking incredulously around him.
"And your mother, Fanny! Out there, too—those miles and miles of sea away!"
Fanny made no movement, though I fancied that her eyes wandered uneasily towards the door. "I quite agree, Midgetina; it's awful!" she said. "But really and truly, it's worse for me. I think I am like my father in some ways. Mother never really understood him. You can'ttalka man different; and for that matter holding your tongue at him is not much good either.You must just lie in wait for him with—well, with your charms, I suppose."
The word sounded like a sneer. "Still, I don't mean to say that it was all pure filial bliss for me when hewasat home, until, at least, I grew up. Then he and I quarrelled too; but that's pleasure itself by comparison with listening to other people at it. He did his best to spoil me, I suppose. He wanted to make a lady of me." She turned and smiled out of the window; her under-lip quivering and casting a faint shadow on the smooth skin beneath. "So here I am; though I fear you can't make ladies ofquitethe correct consistency out of dressmaker's clothes and a smatter of Latin. The salt will out. But there," she flung a little gesture with her glove, "as I say, here I am."
And as if for welcome, a gleam of lightning danced at the window, illumining us there, and a crackling peal of thunder rolled hollowly off over the roof-tops of the square. We listened until the sound had emptied itself into quiet; and only the rain in the gutters gurgled and babbled.
"Do you know," she went on, with a far-away challenging thrill in her low, mournful voice, "I don't think I have a solitary relation left in the world now—except mother. 'They are all gone into a world of light'—though I've now and then suspected that a few of the disreputable ones have been buried alive. There's nothing very dreadful in that. Life consists, of course, in shedding various kinds of skin—and tanning the remainder."
Fanny, then,wasunaware that Mrs Bowater was not her real mother. And I think she never guessed it.
"Nor have I," I said, "not one." As I looked at it there, it seemed a fact more curious than tragic. Besides, in the brooding darkness of that room it was Fanny and I who were strange, external beings, not the memoried phantoms of my mother and father. We had still to go on, to live things out. "So you see, Fanny," I continued, after a pause, "I do know what it means—a little; and we must try more than ever to be really one another's friend, mustn't we? I mean, if you think I can be."
"Why, I owe you pounds and pounds," cried Fanny gaily, pushing back her handkerchief into her bodice. "Here we are—not quite in the same box, perhaps; still strangers and pilgrims.Of course we must help one another.... Just think of this house! The servants! The folly of it, and all for Madame Monnerie—though I wouldn't mind being in her shoes, even for one season. Socialism, my dear, is all a question of shoes. And this is Poppetkin's little boudoir? A pygmy palace, my dear, and if only the lightning would last a little longer I might get a real glimpse of that elfin little exquisite over there in her beautiful blue brocade. But then; it will be roses all the way with you, Miss M. You are independent, and valued for yourself alone."
"How different people are, Fanny. You always think first of the use of a thing, and I, stupidly, just of it—itself."
"Do we?" she said indifferently, and rose from her chair. "Anyhow I'm here to be of use. And who," she remarked, with a little yawn, as she came to a pause again beside the streaming window. "Who was that prim, colourless girl with the pale blue eyes? Engaged to be married."
"But Fanny, she had her gloves on that morning, I remember it as clearly as—as I always remember everything where you are: how could you possibly tell that Susan Monnerie was engaged?"
It was quite a simple problem, Fanny tranquilly assured me: "The ring bulged under the suède."
Her scornfulness piqued me a little. "Anyhow," I retorted, "Susan's eyes are notpaleblue. They are almost cornflower—chicory colour; like the root of a candle-flame."
"Please, Midgetina," Fanny begged me, "don't let me canker your new adoration. Perhaps you preened your pretty feathers in them when they were fixed on the demigod. 'Susan'! I thought all the Susans perished in the 'sixties, or had fled down the area. And who ishe?" But she did not follow up her question. All things come to him who waits, she had rambled on inconsequently, if he waits long enough; and no doubt God would temper the wind to the shorn orphan even if she did look a perfect frump in mourning.
"You know you could never look a frump," I replied indignantly, "even if you hadn't a rag on."
Fanny shrugged her dainty shoulders. "Alas!" she said.
But her "orphan" had brought me back with a guilty shockto what, no doubt, was an extremely fantastic panorama of Buenos Ayres; and that swiftly back again to Mr Crimble. For an instant or two I looked away. Perhaps it was my caution that betrayed me.
"It's no use, Midgetina," she sang across at me from her window. "Whether it's because the chemical reactions of your pat little brain are more intense than ordinary people's, or because you and I areen rapport, I can't say. But there's one thing we must agree upon at once: never, never again to mention his name—at least inthishouse. The Crimble chapter is closed."
Closed indeed. But so sharp were her tones I hadn't the courage to warn her that even Susan had read most of it. Fanny came near, and, stooping as Susan had stooped, began fidgeting with the button of my electric chandelier. The little lamps shone wanly in our faces in the cloud-darkened room.
"You see, my dear," she said playfully, "you think me all mockery and heartlessness. And no doubt you are right. But I want ease and security: just like that—as if I were writing an essay—'ease and security.' I don't care a dash about affection—at least without the aforesaid E. and S. I intend to please Mrs Monnerie, and she is going to be grateful to me. Don't think I am being 'candid.' I should have no objection to saying just the same thing to Mrs Monnerie herself: she'd enjoy it. Wait, you precious inchy image—wait until you need a sup of fatted calf's-foot jelly, not because you are sick of husks, but because you are deadly poor. Then you will understand. These sumptuosities! Wait till they haven't a ha'penny in their pockets, real or moral, for their next meal. They only look at things—if that; they can't know what they are. Even to be decently charitable one must have been a beggar—and cursed the philanthropists. Oh, I know: and Fanny's race is for Success."
"But surely, Fanny, a thing is its looks, if only you look long enough. And I should just like to hear you talking if you were in my place. Besides, what is the use of success—in the end, I mean? You should see some of the actresses and singers and authors and that kind of thing Mrs Monnerie knows? You wouldn't have realized the actresses were even beautiful unless you had been told so. Why, you couldn't even say theWorldis a success, except in the country. What is truly the use of it, then?"I had grown so eager in my argument that I had got up from my chair.
"The use, you poor thing?" laughed Fanny; "why, only as a kind of face-cream to one's natural pride."
The day was lightening now; but at that the whole darkness of my own situation drew close about me. Success, indeed. What was I? Nothing but a halfpennyless, tame pet in No. 2. What salve could restore to memynatural pride?
In happier circumstances, the next morning's post might have reassured me. Two letters straddled my breakfast tray, for I always had this meal in my own room. One of them was from Wanderslore—a long, crooked, roundabout letter, that seemed to taunt, upbraid, and entreat me, turn and turn about. It ended with a proposal of marriage.
In most of the novels I have read, the heroine simply basks in such a proposal, even though scarcely her finger-tips are warmed by its rays. For my part, this letter, far from making me happy or even complacent, produced nothing but a feeling of fretfulness and shame. Thrusting it back into its envelope, I listened a while as if an eavesdropper might have overheard my silent reading of it—as if I must hide. Then, with eyes fixed on my small coffeepot, I sank into a low, empty reverie.
The world had not been so tender to my feelings as to refrain from introducing me to General Tom Thumb and Miss Mercy Lavinia Bump Warren.
"A pair of them! how quaint! how romantic! howtouching!" I saw myself—gossamer veil, dwarfed orange-blossom, and gypsophila bouquet, all complete. Perhaps Mr. Pellew—perhaps even Miss Fenne's bishop, would officiate. Possibly Percy would be persuaded to "give me away." And what a gay little sniggling note in theMorning Post.
I came out of these sardonic thoughts with cold hands and a sneer on my lips, and the thought that I had seen quite as conspicuously paired human mates even though their size was beyond reproach. Thank goodness, when I read my letter again, slightly better feelings prevailed. After all, the merest cinder of love would have made my darkness light. I shouldn't have cared for a thousand "touching's" then. I was still myself, a light-headed, light-hearted, young woman, for all my troubles and follies. If I had loved him, the rest of the world—much truer and sweeterwithin than it looks from without—would have vanished like a puff of smoke. But not even love's ashes were in my heart, except, perhaps, those in which Fanny had scrawled her name.
I beat about, bruising wings and breast, hating life, hating the friend who had suddenly slammed-to another door in my gilded cage. "You can never, never go back to Wanderslore now," muttered my romantic heart. Friends we could have remained—only the closer for adversity. Now all that was over; and two human beings who might have been a refuge and reconciliation to one another, amused—as well as amusing—observers of the world at large, had been by this one piece of foolish excess divided for ever. I simply couldn't bear to look ridiculous in my own eyes.
My other letter was from Sir W. P. He had seen the Harrises. Those foxy tortoises had advanced a ridiculous £1 19s. 7d. of my September allowance—the price of a pair of Monnerie bedroom slippers! It was enclosed—and Sir Walter begged me not to worry. Might he be my bank? Would I be so kind as to break it as soon as ever I wished? Meanwhile he would be making further inquires into my affairs.
Perhaps because Sir W. P. was a business man, he was less persuasive with his pen than with his tongue. I thought he was merely humouring me, fell into a violent rage, and tore up not only his letter, but—noodle that I was—the Harris Order too—into the tiniest pieces, and heaped them up, like a soufflé, on my tray. Mr Anon's I locked up in my old money-box, with the nightgown and the Miss Austen. Both letters wore like acid into my mind. From that day on—except for a few half-stifled or excited hours—they were never out of remembrance.
Even the most valuable and expensive pet may become a vexation if it is continually showing ill-temper and fractiousness. Mrs Monnerie merely puckered her lips or shrugged her shoulders at my outbursts of vanity and insolence. But drops of water will wear away a stone. From being Court Favourite I gradually sank to being Court Fool. In sheer ennui and desperation I waggled my bells and brandished my bladder. A cat may look at a Queen, but it should, I am sure, make faces only at her Ladies-in-waiting.
Fanny inherited yet another sinecure; and it was not envy on my side that helped her to shine in it, though I had my fits of jealousy. She was determined to please; and when Fanny made up her mind, circumstances seemed just to fawn at her feet. Life became a continuous game of chess, the moves of which at times kept me awake and brooding in a far from wholesome fashion in my bed. Pawn of pawns, and one at the point of being sacrificed, I could only squint at the board. Indeed, I deliberately shut my eyes to my own insignificance, strutted about, sulked, sharpened my tongue like a serpent, and became a perfect pest to myself when alone. Yet I knew in my heart that those whom I hoped to wound merely laughed at me behind my back, that I was once more proving to the world that the smaller one is the greater is one's vanity.
In the midst of this nightmare, by a curious coincidence rose like a Jack-in-the-box from out of my past the queerest of phantoms—and proved himself real.
I was sullenly stewing in my thoughts in the library one morning over a book which to this day I never weary of reading; Gilbert White'sNatural History of Selborne. It was the nearest I could get to the country. The whim took me to try and become a little better acquainted with "William Markwick, Esq., F.L.S.," who had himself seen thesphinx stellataruminserting its proboscis into the nectary of a flower while "keeping constantly on the wing." There seemed to be something in common, just then, between myself and theSphinx.
I pressed my wainscot bell. After an unusual delay in a drastically regulated household, the door behind me gently opened. I began simpering directions over my shoulder in the Percy way with servants—and presently realized that all was not quite as it should be. I turned to look, and saw thrust in at the doorway an apparently bodiless, protuberant head, with black, buttony eyes on either side a long, long nose. Then the remainder of this figure squeezed reluctantly in. It was Adam Waggett.
Guy Fawkes himself, caught lantern in hand among his powder barrels, must have looked like Adam Waggett at this moment. For a while I could only return his stare from the midst of a vortex of memories. When at last I found my tongue andinquired peremptorily how he came there, and what he was doing in the house, he broke into a long, gurgling, strangulated guffaw of laughter. I was already in a sour temper—in spite of the sweetness of Selborne. As a boy he had been my acute aversion; and here he was a grown man and as doltish and ludicrous as when he had roared at me in the moonlight from outside the kitchen window at Stonecote. His stupidity and disrespect made me almost inarticulate with rage.
Maybe the foolish creature, feeling as strange as a cat in a new house, was only expressing his joy and affection at sight of a familiar face. But I had no time to consider motives. In a fever of apprehension that his noise might be overheard, my one thought now was to bring him to his senses. I shook my fists at him! and stamped my foot on the Turkey carpet—as if in snow. He watched me in a stupefaction of admiration, but at length his face solemnified, and he realized that my angry gestures were not intended for his amusement.
His mouth stood open, he shook his head, and, unless my eyes deceived me, set back his immense ears.
"Beg pardon, miss, I'm sure," he stuttered, "it was the sc-hock, and you inside the book there, and the old times like; and even though they was telling me that there was such a—such a young lady in the house.... But I won't utter a word, miss, not me. Only," he stared round at the closed door and lowered his voice to an even huskier whisper, "except to tell you that Pollie's doing very nicely, and whenever I sees her—well, miss, that thunderstorm and the old cow!"
At this his features gathered together for another outburst, which I succeeded in stifling only by warning him that so long as he remained at Mrs Monnerie's he must completely forget the old cow and the thunderstorm, and never address me in company, or even glance in my direction if we happened to be together in the same room.
"Mrs Monnerie would be extremely angry, Adam, to hear you laughing in the library; and I am anxious that you should be a credit to Lyndsey in your new situation."
"But you rang, miss—at least the library did," he replied, now thoroughly contrite, "and Mr Marvell said, 'You go along, there, Waggett, second door right, first staircase,' so I come."
"Yes," I said, "but it was a mistake. A mistake, you understand. Now go away; and remember!"
A few minutes afterwards, Marvell himself discreetly entered the room; merely, as it would appear, to adjust the angles of a copy of theSpectatorthat lay on the table.
"It's very close this morning," I remarked, with as much dignity as I could muster.
"It is indeed, miss," said Marvell, stooping sedately to examine my bell-push. He rose and brushed his fingers.
"They say, miss, the electricity gets into the wires, when thunder's in the air. A wonderful invention, but not, as I am told, entirely independent of changes in the weather. I hope, miss, you haven't been disturbed...."
When Susan, even paler and quieter than usual, presently looked into the library, she found its occupant still on the floor and brooding over the browns and greys, the roses and ochres, of a complete congregation ofSphingidæ. She stooped over me, sprawling in so ungainly a fashion across my book.
"Moths, this morning? What a very learned person you will become." Her voice was a little flat, yet tender; but I was still in the sulks, and made no answer.
"I suppose," she began again, as if listlessly, and straying over to the window, "I suppose it is very pleasant for you, seeing so much of your friend, Miss Bowater?"
Caution whispered a warning, and I tried to wriggle out of an answer by remarking that Fanny's mother was the kindest woman in the whole world.
"Where is she now?"
"In Buenos Ayres."
"Really? How curious family traits are. The very moment I saw Miss Bowater I was quite certain that she was intended for an adventurous life; and didn't you say that her father was an officer in the merchant service? What is he like?"
"Mr Bowater? He died—out there, only a week or two ago."
"How very, very sad," breathed Susan. "And for Miss Bowater. I never even guessed from her manner that she was in trouble of that kind. And that, I suppose, shows a sort of courage. You were perfectly right; she is lovely and clever.The face a little hard, don't you think, butveryclever. She seems to be prepared for what Aunt Alice is going to say long before she says it. And I, you know, sometimes don't notice even the sting till—till the buzzing is over." She paused. "And you were able to make a real friend of her?"
Susan had not the patience to wait until I could sort out an answer to this question. "I don't want to be intrusive," she went on hurriedly, "to—to ask horrid questions; but is it true, you dear thing, that you may some day be leaving us?"
"Leaving you?" I echoed, my thoughts crouching together like chicks under a hen.
The reply came softly and reluctantly in that great cistern of air.
"Why, I understood—to be married."
I leant heavily on my hands, seeing not the plumes and colours of the Sphinxes that swam up at me from the page, but, as if in a mist between them and me, the softly smiling face of Fanny. At last I managed to overcome the slight physical sickness that had swept over me. "Susan"; I said, "if a friend betrayed the very soul out of your body, what would you do? where would you go?"
"Betray! I, my dear?" and she broke into a confused explanation.
It was a remark of Percy's she had been referring to, a silly, trivial remark, not, she was sure, intended maliciously. Why, every one teased every one. Didn't she know it? And especially about the things that were most personal, "and, well, sacred." It was nothing. Just that; and she should not have repeated it.
"Tell me exactly, please," said I.
"Well, Aunt Alice was talking of marriage; and Miss Bowater smiled. And Aunt Alice—you know her mocking way—asked how, at her age—Miss Bowater's—she had learned to look at the same time both charming and cynical. 'Don't forget, my dear,' they were her very words, 'that the cynicism wears the longer.' But Miss Bowater laughed, and changed the subject by asking if she could do anything for your headache. It was the afternoon, you remember, when you were lying down. That was all."
"And Mr Maudlen?"
The fair cheek reddened. "Oh, Percy made a joke—about you. Just one of his usual horrid jokes. My dear"—she came and knelt down beside me and laid her gentle hand on my shoulder; "don't look so—so awful. It's only how things go."
I drew the hand down. It smelled as fresh and sweet as jessamine.
"Don't bother about me, Susan," I said coldly. "Just leave me to my moths. I could show you scorpions and hornets ten times more dangerous than a mere Death's Head. You don't suppose I care? Why, as you say, even God has His little joke with some of us. I'm quite used to it."
"Don't, don't," she implored me. "You are over-tired, you poor little thing. You go on reading and reading. Why, your teeth are chattering."
A faint brazen reverberation from out of the distance increased in intensity and died away. It was Adam performing on the gong. Susan had tried to be kind to me, to treat me as if I were a normal fellow-being. I pressed the cool fingers to my lips.
"There, Susan," I said, with cheerful mockery, "except for my father and mother, I do believe you are the first life-size or any-size person I have ever kissed. A midget's gratitude!"
Ever so slightly the fingers constricted beneath my touch. No doubt there was a sensation of the spidery in my embrace.
But a devil of defiance had entered into me. With a face as snakily sweet as I could make it, I made my daintiest bow to Mrs Monnerie's guests—to Lord Chiltern, a tall, stiffish man, who blinked at our introduction almost as solemnly and distastefully as had Mrs Bowater's Henry, and to Lady Diana Templeton. A glance at this lady reminded me spitefully of an old suspicion of mine that Mrs Monnerie usually invited her duller friends to luncheon and the clever to dinner. Not that she failed to enjoy the dull ones, but it was in a different way.
A long, gilded Queen Anne mirror hung opposite my high chair, so that whenever I glanced across I caught sight not only of myself with cheeks like carnations above my puffed blue gown, but also of Adam Waggett. Ever and again his red hand was thrust over my shoulder—the hand that had held the wren. And I was so sick at heart—on yet another wren's behalf—that I could hardly repress a shudder. Poor Adam; whenever I think of him it is of a good, yet weak and silly man. He has found his Eden, so I have heard, in New Zealand now, and I hope he has forgiven my little share in his life.
Throughout that dull luncheon my tongue went mincing on and on—in sheer desperation lest any one should detect the state of mind I was in. With pale eyes Percy sniggered over his soup. Susan was silent and self-conscious. Captain Valentine frowned and nibbled his small moustache. Lady Diana Templeton smiled like a mauve-pink snapdragon, and Mrs Monnerie led me on. It was my last little success. Luncheon over, I was helped down from my chair, and allowed "to run away."
What was it Lord Chiltern was saying? I paused on the threshold: "An exquisite little performance. But isn't it a little selfish to hide her light under your admirable bushel, Mrs Monnerie? The stage, now?"
"The stage!" exclaimed Mrs Monnerie in consternation. "Thechild's as proud as Lucifer. She would faint at the very suggestion. You have heard her deliciously sharp little tongue, but her tantrums! Still, she's a friendly and docile little creature, and I am very well satisfied with her."
"And not merely that"; paced on the rather official voice. "I was noticing that something in the eyes. Almost disconcertingly absent yet penetrating. She thinks. She comes and goes in them. I noticed the same peculiarity in poor Willie Arbuthnot's. And this little creature is scarcely more than a child."
"I think it isperfectlysad, Lord Chiltern," broke in a reedy, vibrating voice. "In some circumstances it would betragic. It's a mercy she does not realize ...habit, you know...."
Listeners seldom hear such good things of themselves. Why, then, was it so furious an eavesdropper that hastened away with a face and gesture worthy of a Sarah Siddons!
No: my box remained locked. Yet, thought I, as I examined its contents, any dexterous finger could have opened that tiny lock—with a hairpin. And how else could my secret have been discovered? Fleming or Fanny—or both of them: it maddened me to think of them in collusion. I would take no more risks. I tore Mr Anon's letter into fragments, and these again into bits yet smaller, until they were almost like chaff. These I collected together and put into an envelope, which I addressed in sprawling capitals to Miss Fanny Bowater, at No. 2.
Then for a sombre half-hour I communed intensely at the window with my Tank. It was hot and taciturn company—not a breath of air stirred my silk window-blind—yet it managed to convey a few home truths, and even to increase the light a little in which I could look at the "bushel." Therewere"mercies," I suppose. Out of the distance rolled the vague reverberation of the enormous city. I watched the sparrows, and they me. When the time came for my afternoon walk, I put on my hat, with eyes fixed on my letter, and, finally—left it behind me.
Was it for discretion's sake, or in shame? I cannot say, but I remember that during my slow descent to the empty hall I kept my eyes fixed with peculiar malignity on the milk-white figure of a Venus (not life-size, thank Heaven), who had been surprised apparently in the very act of entering the water for a bathe. Why I singled her out for contempt I cannot say; for she certainly lookeda good deal more natural and modest than many of the fine ladies who heedlessly passed her by. It was merely my old problem of the Social Layers over again. And my mind was in such a state of humiliation and discomfort that I hadn't the energy even to smile at a marble goddess.
Fanny was awaiting me on my return. A strand of hair was looped demurely and old-fashionedly round each small ear; her clear, unpowdered skin had the faint sheen of a rose. She stood, still and shimmering, in the height of pleasant spirits, yet, I thought, watchful and furtive through it all. She had come, she said, to congratulate me on my "latest conquest."
Mrs Monnerie, she told me, had been pleased with my entertainment of the late First Commissioner of—was it Good Works? But I must beware. "Once a coquette, Midgetina, soonquiteheartless," she twitted me.
To which I called sourly, as I stood drying my hands, that pretty compliments must be judged by where they come from.
"Come from, indeed," laughed Fanny. "He's a positive Peer of the Realm, and baths, my dear, every morning in the Fount of Honours. You wouldn't be so flippant if ... hallo! what's this? A letter—addressed to Me! Where on earth did this come from?"
Heels to head, a sudden heat swept over me. "Oh," said I hollowly, "that's nothing, Fanny. Only a little joke. And now you are here—— But surely," I hurried on, "you don't really like that starched-up creature?"
But Fanny was holding up my envelope between both her thumbs and forefingers, and steadily smiling at me, over its margin. "A joke, Midgetina; and one of your very own. How exciting. And how bulgy. May I open it? I wouldn't miss it for the world."
"Please, Fanny, I have changed my mind. Let me have it. I don't feel like jokes now."
"But honestly,Ido. Some jokes have such a deliciously serious side. Besides, as you have just come in, why didn't this go out with you?" To which I replied stubbornly that it was not her letter; that I had thought better of it; and that she had no right to question me if I didn't want to answer.
"I see." Her voice had glided steadily up the scale of suavity. "It's a bit more of the dead past, is it? And you don't like the—the fragrance. But surely, if we are really talking about rights—and, according to my experience, there are none too many of them knocking about in this world—surely I have the right to ask what pulpy mysteries are enclosed in an envelope addressed to me in what appears to be a feigned ca—calligraphy? Look. I am putting the thing on the floor so that we shall be on—well—fairly equal terms. Even your sensitive Sukie could not be more considerate than that, could she? All I want to know is, what's inside that envelope? If you refuse to say, well and good. I shall retire to my maidenly couch and feed on the blackest suppositions."
It was a cul-de-sac; and the only thing to do was to turn back boldly and get out of it.
"Well, Fanny; I have told you that I thought better of sending it. But I am not ashamed. Even if I am wrong, I suppose you are at liberty to have your little jokes too, and so is Percy Maudlen. It's a letter, torn up; that's all."
"A letter—so I guessed. Who from?"
I gazed at her silently.
"Yes?"
"It's hateful of you, Fanny.... From the hunchback."
Her astonishment, surely, could not have been pretence. "And what the devil, you dear, stammering little midgelet, has your miserable little hunchback to do with me? Why send his scrawls tome—and in bits?"
"Because," said I, "I thought you had been making fun of him and me to—the others."
The light hands lifted themselves; the dark head tilted a little back and askew. "Whata roundabout route," she sighed. But her face was false to the smooth, scornful accents. "So you suspected me of spying on you?Isee. And gentle Susan Monnerie was kind enough to smear a little poison on the fangs. Well, Midgetina love, I tell you this. It's safer sometimes to lose your reputation than your temper. But there's a limit——"
"Hush," I whispered, for I had sharper ears than Fanny even when rage had not deafened her own. I pounced on the envelope—but only just in time.
"It's Mr Percy, miss," announced Fleming, "and may he come in?"
"Hallo!" said that young man, lounging greyly into view, "a bad penny, Miss M. I happened to be passing Buszard's just now, and there was the very thing! Miss Bowater says you have a sweet tooth, and they really are rather neat." He had brought me the daintiest little box of French doll bonbons. I glared at it; I glared at him—hardly in the mood for any more of his little jokes—not even one tied up with pale-blue ribbon.
"There's another thing," he went on. "Susan told us that your birthday was coming along—August 25th, isn't it? And I have proposed a Grand Birthday Party, sort of general rag. Miss M. in the Chair. Don't you think it's a ripping idea of mine, Miss Bowater?"
"Mostripping," said Fanny, meeting his long, slow, sneaking glance with a slight and seemingly involuntary lift of her narrow shoulder. A long look I could not share passed between them; I might have been a toy on the floor.
"But you don't look positively in the pink," he turned to me. "Now, does she? Late hours, eh? You look crumpled, doesn't she? Cherry, too: we must have in another Vet." The laugh died on his long lips. His eyes roved stealthily from point to point of the basking afternoon room, then once more sluggishly refastened on Fanny. I sat motionless, watching his every turn and twist, and repeating rapidly to myself, "Go away, my friend; go away, go away." Some nerve in him must have taken the message at last, or he found Fanny's silence uneasy. He squinnied a glinting, curious look at me, and as jauntily as self-consciousness permitted, took his departure.
The door shut. His presence fainted out into a phantasm, and that into nothing at all. And for sole evidence of him basked on my table, beneath a thread of sunlight, his blue-ribboned box.
"Isn't he a ninny?" sighed Fanny. "And yet, my dear: there—but for the grace of God—goes Mr Fanny Bowater."
Her anger had evaporated. There stood my familiar Fanny again, slim as a mast, her light eyes coldly shining, her bearing, even the set of her foot showing already a faint gilding of Mrs Monnerie. She laughed—looking straight across at me, as if with a challenge.
"Yes, my dear, it's quite true. I'm not a bit cross now. Milk and Honey. So you see even a fool may be a lightning conductor. I forgive," she pouted a kiss from the tips of her fingers, "I forget."
And then she was gone too, and I alone. What an easy, consoling thing—not to care. But though Fanny might forgive, she must have found it unamusing to forget. The next evening's post brought me an exquisitely written little fable, signed "F. B.," and entitledAsteroida and the Yellow Dwarf. I couldn't enjoy it very much; though no doubt it must have been exceedingly entertaining when read aloud.
Still Fanny did notcare. While I myself was like those railway lines under the green bank I had seen on my journey to Lyme Regis. A day's neglect, a night's dews, and I was stained thick with rust. A dull and heedless wretchedness took possession of me. The one thought that kept recurring in every instant of solitude, and most sharply in those instants which pounced on me in the midst of strangers, was, how to escape.
I put away the envelope and its contents into my box again. And late that night, when I was secure from interruption, I wrote to Wanderslore. Nibbling a pen is no novelty to me, but never in all my life have I spent so blank and hideous an hour merely in the effort to say No to one simple question so that it should sound almost as pleasant as Yes, and far more unselfish. "Throw the stone," indeed; when my only desire was to heal the wound it might make.
Thank goodness my letter was kinder than I felt. My candelabra burned stilly on. Cold, in the blues, I stood in my dressing-gown and spectacling my eyes with my hands, looked out of the chill glass into the London night. Only one high garret window shone out in the dark face of the houses.... Who, where, was Willie Arbuthnot with the peculiar eyes? Had Lord Chiltern a tank on his roof—his back-yard? What a fool I had been to abandon myself and come here. If they only knew how I despised them. And the whole house asleep. So much I despised them that not until I was dressing the following morning did I stoop into my Indian mirror to see if I could discover what Lord Chiltern had meant.
During the next few weeks Mrs Monnerie—with ample provocation—almost yawned at sight of me. In a bitter instant of rebellion our eyes met. She detected the "ill-wish" in mine, and was so much taken aback by it that I should hardly have recognized the set face that glared at me as hers at all. Well, the fancier hadwearied of her fancy—that was all. If I had been just an ordinary visitor, she would soon have washed her hands of me. But I was notorious, and not so easily exchanged as bronchitic Cherry had been for her new Pekinese, Plum.
Possibly, too, the kind of aversion she now felt against me was a closer bond than even virtuosity or affection. She would sit with a sullen stare under her heavy eyelids watching me grow more and more heated and clumsy over my scrap of embroidery or my game of Patience. Meanwhile Chakka would crack his nut, and with stagnant eye sidle thievishly up and down the bars of his cage; while Plum gobbled up dainties or snored on his crimson cushion. We three.