Mrs Monnerie had rifled her collections for my use—pygmy Venetian glass, a silver-gilt breakfast and tea service, pygmy porcelain. There were absurd littlemechanicalknick-knacks—piping birds, a maddening little operatic clock of which I at last managed to break the mainspring, a musical chair, and so on. My bath was of jade; my table a long one of ebony inlaid with ivory, with puffing cherub faces at each corner representing the four winds. My own few possessions, I must confess, looked not only worn but provincial by comparison. But I never surprised myself actually talking to any of Mrs Monnerie's exquisite novelties as to my other dumb, old, wooden friends. She delighted in them far more than I.
I suppose, really to enjoy such pomp and luxury, one should be positively born in the purple; and then, I suppose, one must be careful that the dye does not go to the bone. Whether or not, I have long since come to the conclusion that I am vulgar by nature—like my mother tongue. And at times, in spite of my relief at being free of the blackness that had craped in my last days at Beechwood, I often found myself hungering for my Bowater parlour—even for its smell. Another thing I learned gradually at No. 2 was that I had been desperately old-fashioned; and that is, to some extent, to belong to the dead.
Mrs Monnerie's chief desire, no doubt, was to give her new knick-knack a suitable setting. But it may also have reminded her childlessness—for she, too, like Mrs Bowater, was "nothing much better than an aunt"—of her childhood. Of course I affected as much pleasure in it as I could, and was really grateful. But she greatly disliked being thanked for anything, and would blandly shut her eyes at the least manifestation of gratitude. "Humour me, humour me, humour me," she once petulantly nodded at me; "there are at least a hundred prayers in the Prayer Book, my pet, to one thanksgiving, and that's humannature all over." It was what my frame must havecostthat scandalized me. When, one day, after rhapsodizing (not without a shudder) over a cape and hat, which she had given me, composed solely of the shimmering emerald feathers of the humming-bird, I rather tactlessly reminded her of my £110 a year, and of my determination to live within it, her eyelids pinched me a glance as if I had explained in public that I had been bitten by a flea.
Yet as time went on, a peculiar affection sprang up in me for this crowded and lonely old woman. It has survived sore trials. She was by turns generous and mean, honeyed and cantankerous, impulsive and scheming. Like Mrs Bowater, she disapproved of the world in general, and yet with how different a result. A restless, darting mind lay hidden behind the great mask of her countenance, with its heavy-lidded eyes and tower of hair. She loved to sit indolently peering, musing, and gossiping, twiddling the while perhaps some little antique toy in her capacious lap. I can boast, at any rate, that I was a spellbound listener, and devoured her peculiar wandering, satirical talk as if it had been manna from heaven.
It was the old, old story. Talking to me was the next most private thing to talking to herself; and I think she enjoyed for a while the company of so queer a confessor. Once, I remember, she confided to me the whole story of a girlish love affair, at least forty years old. I could hardly believe my eyes as I watched her; she looked so freshened and demure and spirited. It was as if she were her own twenties just dressed up. But she had a dry and acrid tongue, and spared nothing and nobody. To her and to Mrs Bowater I owe nearly all my stock of worldly wisdom. And now I shall never have time, I suppose, to sort it out.
Mr Monnerie, as Fleming confided in me one day—and the aristocracy was this extremely reticent and contemptuous creature's favourite topic of conversation—Mr Monnerie had been a banker, and had made a late and dazzling marriage; for Mrs Monnerie's blood was as blue as Caddis Bay on a cloudless morning. I asked Fleming if she had ever seen "Lord B.," and what kind of man he was. She never had; but remarked obscurely that he must have lived mainly on porridge, he had sown so many wild oats.
This information reminded me of an old rhyme I had once learned as a child, and used to shout about the house:—
"Come all you young men, with your wicked ways;Sow your wild, wild oats in your youthful days;That we may live happy when we grow old—Happy, and happy, when we grow old:The day is far spent, the night's coming on;So give us your arm, and we'll joggle along—joggleand joggle and joggle along."
"Come all you young men, with your wicked ways;Sow your wild, wild oats in your youthful days;That we may live happy when we grow old—Happy, and happy, when we grow old:The day is far spent, the night's coming on;So give us your arm, and we'll joggle along—joggleand joggle and joggle along."
"Come all you young men, with your wicked ways;
Sow your wild, wild oats in your youthful days;
That we may live happy when we grow old—
Happy, and happy, when we grow old:
The day is far spent, the night's coming on;
So give us your arm, and we'll joggle along—joggle
and joggle and joggle along."
Fleming herself, I learned, had come from Ash, and was therefore, I suppose, of an Anglo-Saxon family, though she was far from stupid and rather elegant in shape. Because, I suppose, I did not like her, I was rather aggrieved she had been born in Kent. Mr and Mrs Monnerie, she told me, had had no children. The fair young man, Percy Maudlen, with the tired smile and beautiful shoes, who came to tea or luncheon at No. 2 at least once a week, was Mrs Monnerie's only nephew by blood; and the still fairer Susan Monnerie, who used to float into my room ever and anon like a Zephyr, was the only one Mrs Monnerie cared to see of her three nieces by marriage. And yet the other two, when they were invited to luncheon, were far more docile and considerate in the opinions and sentiments they expressed.Thatseemed so curious to me: there was no doubt that Mrs Monnerie belonged to the aristocracy, and yet there always appeared to be quarrels going on in the family—apart, of course, from births, deaths, and marriages, which seemed of little consequence. She enjoyed relatives in every county in England and Scotland; while I had not one, now, so far as I knew, not even in Kent.
Marvell, the butler—he had formerly been Mr Monnerie's valet—was another familiar object of my speculations. His rather solemn, clean-shaven countenance and steady grey eyes suggested a severe critic of mankind. Yet he seemed bent only on giving pleasure and smoothing things over, and stooped my dish of sliced cherries or apricots over my shoulder with a gesture that was in itself the cream of flattery. It astonished me to hear that he had a grown-up son in India; and though I never met Mrs Marvell, I felt a prodigious respect for her.
I would look up and see him standing so smooth and benevolentbehind Mrs Monnerie's chair that he reminded me of my bishop, and I doubt if ever she crisply uttered his delightful name but it recalled the pleasant chime of a poem which my mother had taught me:The Nymph Complaining of the Death of her Fawn. I should have liked to have a long talk with Mr Marvell—any time of the day when he wasn't a butler, I mean—but the opportunity never came.
One day, when he had left us to ourselves, I ventured to quote a stanza of this poem to Mrs Monnerie:—
"With sweetest milk and sugar firstI it at my own fingers nursed;And as it grew, so every dayIt waxed more white and sweet than they—It had so sweet a breath! and oftI blushed to see its foot more softAnd white—shall I say?—than my hand,Nay, any lady's in the land...."
"With sweetest milk and sugar firstI it at my own fingers nursed;And as it grew, so every dayIt waxed more white and sweet than they—It had so sweet a breath! and oftI blushed to see its foot more softAnd white—shall I say?—than my hand,Nay, any lady's in the land...."
"With sweetest milk and sugar first
I it at my own fingers nursed;
And as it grew, so every day
It waxed more white and sweet than they—
It had so sweet a breath! and oft
I blushed to see its foot more soft
And white—shall I say?—than my hand,
Nay, any lady's in the land...."
"Charming, charming, Poppet," she cooed, much amused, pushing in a nut for Chakka. "Many shades whiter thanyourwrinkled old claw, you old wretch.Anothersagacious old bird, my dear, though past blushing, I fear, at any lady's hand."
Nothing would content her but that I must recite mybon motagain when her nephew Percy dandled in to tea that afternoon. He sneered down on me with his pale eyes, and with finger and thumb exposed yet another inch of his silk sock, but made no comment.
"Manners, my dear Percy, maketh man," said his aunt. "Congratulate Miss M."
If Percy Maudlen had had no manners at all, I think I should at that moment have seen the pink tip of his tongue; for if ever any human being detested my small person it was he. For very good reasons, probably, though I never troubled to inquire into them, I disliked him, too, beyond expression. He was, of course, a superior young man with a great many similar ancestors looking out of his face, yet he resembled a weasel. But Susan Monnerie—the very moment I saw her I loved her; just as one loves a field of buttercups or a bush of may. For some little time she seemed to regard me as I supposea linnet regards a young cuckoo that has been hatched out in her nest (though, of course, a squab cuckoo is of much the same size as its fostermother). But she gradually grew accustomed to me, and even realized at last that I was something a little more—and also perhaps less—human than either Chakka or Cherry or a Dresden china shepherdess.
I would look at her just for pleasure's sake. Her hair was of the colour of undyed silk, with darker strands in it; her skin pale; and she had an odd little stutter in her light young voice when she was excited. I would often compare her with Fanny. What curious differences there were between them. She was graceful, but as if she had been taught to be. Unlike Fanny, she was not so fascinatingly just a beautiful body—with that sometimes awful Someone looking out of its windows. There was a lovely delicacy in her, as if, absurd though it may sound, every bit of her had been selected, actually picked out, from the finest materials. Perhaps it was her food and drink that had helped to make her so; for I don't think Miss Stebbings's diet was more than wholesome, or that following the sea in early life makes a man rich enough to afford many dainties for his children. Anyhow, there was nothing man-made in Fanny; and if there are women-shaped mermaids I know what looks will be seen in their faces.
However that may be, a keen, roving spirit dwelt in Susan's clear, blue eyes. I never discovered in her any malice or vanity, and this, I think, frequently irritated Mrs Monnerie. Susan, too, used to ask me perfectly sane and ordinary questions; and I cannot describe what a flattery it was. I had always supposed that men and women wereintendedto talk openly to one another in this world; but it was an uncommonly rare luxury for me at Mrs Monnerie's. I could talk freely enough to Susan, and told her a good deal about my early days, though I kept my life at Beechwood Hill more or less to myself.
And that reminds me that Mrs Bowater proved to have been a good prophet. It was one day at luncheon. Mrs Monnerie happened to cast a glance at theMorning Postnewspaper which lay open on a chair near by, showing in tall type at the top of the column, "Sudden Death of Sir Jasper Goodge." Sir Jasper Goodge, whose family history, it seemed, was an open book to her, remindedher whimsically of another tragedy. She put back her head and, surveying me blandly as I sat up beside her, inquired if I had known at all intimately that unfortunate young man, Mr Crimble.
"I remember him bobbing and sidling at me that delightful afternoon when—what do you think of it, Susan?—Poppet and I discovered in each other an unfashionable taste for the truth! A bazaar in aid of the Pollacke Blanket Fund, or something of the kind."
The recollection seemed to have amused her so much that for the moment I held my breath and ignored her question.
"But why was Mr Crimble unfortunate?" inquired Susan, attempting to make Cherry beg for a bread-crumb. I glanced in consternation at Marvell, who at the moment was bringing the coffee things into the room. But he appeared to be uninterested in Mr Crimble.
"Mr Crimble was unfortunate, my dear," said Mrs Monnerie complacently, "because he cut his throat."
"Ach! how horrible. How can you say such things! Get down, you little silly! Please, Aunt Alice, there must be something pleasanter to talk about than that? Everybody knows about the hideous old Sir Jasper Goodge; so it doesn't much matter what one says of him. But...." In spite of her command the little dog still gloated on her fingers.
"There may be things pleasanter, my dear Susan," returned Mrs Monnerie complacently, "but there are few so illuminating. In Greek tragedy, I used to be told, all such horrors have the effect of what is called a purgation. Did Mr Crimbleseemthat kind of young man, my dear? And why was he so impetuous?"
"I think, Mrs Monnerie," said I, "he was in trouble."
"H'm," said she. "He had a very sallow look, I remember. So he discussed his troubles? But not withyou, my fairy?"
"Surely, Aunt Alice," exclaimed Susan hotly, "it isn't quite fair or nice to bring back such ghastly memories. Why," she touched my hand with the tips of her light fingers, "she is quite cold already."
"Poppet's hands are always cold," replied her aunt imperturbably. "And I suspect that she and I know more about this wicked world than has brought shadows to your young brow. We'll return to Mr Crimble, my dear, when Susan is butterflying elsewhere. She is so shockingly easily shocked."
But it was Susan herself who returned to the subject. She came into my room where I sat reading—a collection of the tiniest little books in the most sumptuous gilt morocco had been yet another of Mrs Monnerie's kindnesses—and she stood for a moment musing out through my silk window blinds at the vast zinc tank on the roof.
"Was that true?" she said at last. "Did you really know some one who killed himself? Who was he? What was he like?"
"He was a young man—in his twenty-ninth year," I replied automatically, "dark, short, with gold spectacles, a clergyman. He was the curate at St Peter's—Beechwood, you know." I was speaking in a low voice, as if I might be overheard.
It was extraordinary how swiftly Mr Crimble had faded into a vanishing shadow. From the very instant of his death the world had begun to adjust itself to his absence. And now nothing but a memory—a black, sad memory.
But Susan's voice interrupted these faint musings. "A clergyman!" she was repeating. "But why—why did he—do that?"
"They said, melancholia. I suppose it was just impossible—orseemedimpossible—for him to go on living."
"But what made him melancholy? How awful. And how can Aunt Alice have said it like that?"
"But surely," argued I, in my old contradictory fashion, and spying about for a path of evasion, "it's better to call things by their proper names. What is the body, after all? Not that I mean one has any right to—tonotdie in one's own bed."
"And do you really think like that?—the body of no importance? You? Why, Miss M., Aunt Alice calls you her 'pocket Venus,' and she means it, too, in her own sly way."
"It's very kind of her," said I, breathing more freely. "Some one I know always calls me Midgetina, or Miss Midge, anything of that sort. I don't mean, Miss Monnerie, that it doesn'tmatterwhat we are called. Why, if that were so, there wouldn't be any Society at all, would there? We should all be—well—anonymous." Deep inside I felt myself smile. "Not that that makes much difference to good poetry."
Susan sighed. "How zigzaggedly you talk. What has poetry to do with Mr Crimble?—that was his name, wasn't it?"
"Well, it hasn't very much," I confessed. "He hadn't the time for it."
Susan seated herself on a cushion on the floor—and with how sharp a stab reminded me of Fanny and the old, care-free days ofWuthering Heights.
Surely—in spite of Fanny—life had definitely taken a tinge of Miss Brontë's imagination since then. But it was only the languor of Susan's movements, and that because she seemed a little tired, rather than merely indolent. And if from Fanny's eyes had now stooped a serpent and now a blinded angel; from these clear blue ones looked only a human being like myself. Even as I write that "like myself," I ponder. But let it stay.
"So you really did know him?" Susan persisted. "And it doesn't seem a nightmare even to think of him? And who, I say, made it impossible for him to go on living?" So intense was her absorption in these questions that when they ceased her hands tightened round her knees, and her small mouth remained ajar.
"You said 'what' just now," I prevaricated, looking up at her.
At this her blue eyes opened so wide I broke into a little laugh.
"No, no, no, Miss Monnerie," I hastened to explain, "notme. It isn't my story, though I was in it—and to blame. But please, if you would be so kind, don't mention it again to Mrs Monnerie, and don't think about it any more."
"Not think about it!Youmust. Besides, thoughts sometimes think themselves. I always supposed that things like that only happened to quite—to different people, you know. Washe?"
"Different?" I couldn't follow her. "He was the curate of St Peter's—a friend of the Pollackes."
"Oh, yes, the Pollackes," said she; and having glanced at me again, said no more.
The smallest confidence, I find, is a short cut to friendship. And after this little conversation there was no ice to break between Susan Monnerie and myself, and she often championed me in my little difficulties—even if only by her silence.
Miss Monnerie's visits were less punctual though more frequent than Percy Maudlen's. "And where is the toadlet?" I heard him drawl one afternoon as I was being carried downstairs by the light-footed Fleming, on the padded tray which Mrs Monnerie had had made for the purpose.
"The toadlet, my dear Percy, is about to take a little gentle exercise with me in the garden, and you shall accompany us. If you were the kind of fairy-tale hero I used to read of in my nursery, you would discover the charm, and live happy ever after. But I see nothing of the heroic in you, and little of the hereafter. Miss M. is a feast of mercies."
"H'm. Providence packs his mercies into precious small quarters at times," he yawned.
"Which suggests an uncivil speculation," replied his aunt, "on the size of your hat."
"But candidly, Aunt Alice," he retorted, "is your littleattachéequite all there—I mean, all of her that there is? Personally I wouldn't touch her, if I could help it, with a pair of tongs.... A nasty trick!"
Then, "Hah!" cried Mrs Monnerie in a large, pleasant voice, "here is Miss M. Percy has been exposing a wounded heart, precious one. He is hurt because you look at him as if there were positively nothing more of him than what is there to see."
"Not at all, Aunt Alice," Percy drawled, with a jerk of his cane. "It was for precisely the opposite reason. Who knows you ain't a witch, Miss M.? Distilled? Heavens, Aunt Alice! you are not bringing Cherrytoo?"
Yes, Cherry was coming too, with his globular eye and sneering nose. And so poor Percy, with a cold little smile on his fine pale features, had to accommodate himself to Mrs Monnerie's leisurely pace, and she to mine, while Cherry disdainfully shuffled in our rear. We were a singular quartette, though there wereonly two or three small children in the palisaded garden to enjoy the spectacle; and they, after a few polite and muffled giggles, returned to their dolls.
It was a stifling afternoon. As I trod the yellow gravel the quivering atmosphere all but blinded me with its reflected glare. The only sounds to be heard were the clang of a milkman's hand-cart, and the pirouettes of a distant piano.
"And what," Mrs Monnerie suddenly inquired, looking down on me, with mauve-tinted cheek, from under her beribanded, long-handled parasol, "what is Miss M. thinking about?"
As a matter of fact I was walking at that moment in imagination with Mrs Bowater at Lyme Regis, but I seized the opportunity of hastening round from between aunt and nephew so that I could screen myself from the sun in Mrs Monnerie's ample shadow, and inquired why London gardeners were so much attached to geraniums, lobelias, calceolarias, and ice-plants? Mightn't one just as wellpaintthe border, Mrs Monnerie, red, yellow, and blue? Then it would last—rain, snow, anything.
"Now I'll wager, Percy, you hadn't noticedthat," said Mrs Monnerie in triumph.
"I make it a practice," he replied, "never to notice the obvious. It is merely a kind of least common denominator, as I believe you call 'em, and," he wafted away a yawn with his glove, "I take no interest in vulgar fractions."
I took a little look at him out of the corner of my eye, and wished that as a child I had paid more heed to my arithmetic lessons. "Look, Mrs Monnerie," I cried piteously, "poor Cherry's tongue is dangling right out of his head. He lookssohot and tired."
She swept me a radiant, if contorted, gleam. "Percy, would you take pity on poor dear Cherry? Twice round, I think, will be as much as I can comfortably manage."
So Percy had to take poor dear Cherry into his arms, just like a baby; and the quartette to all appearance became a trio.
But my existence at No. 2 was not always so monotonous as that. Mrs Monnerie, in spite of her age, her ebony cane, and a tendency to breathlessness, was extremely active and alert. If life is a fountain, she preferred to be one of the larger bubbles as near as possible to its summit. She almost succeeded in making me a minute replica of herself. We shared the samemanicurist, milliner, modiste, and coiffeur. And since it was not always practicable for Mahometta to be carried off to these delectable mountains, they were persuaded to attend upon her, and that as punctually as the fawn-faced man, Mr Godde, who came to wind the clocks.
Whole mornings were spent in conclave in Mrs Monnerie's boudoir—Susan sometimes of our company. Julius Cæsar, so my little Roman history told me, had hesitated over the crossing of one Rubicon. Mrs Monnerie and I confabulated over the fording of a dozen of its tributaries a day. A specialist—a singularly bald man in a long black coat—was called in. He eyed me this way, he eyed me that—with far more deference than I imagine Mr Pellew can have paid me at my christening. He assured Mrs Monnerie of his confirmed belief that the mode of the moment was not of the smallest consequence so far as I was concerned. "The hard, small hat," he smiled; "the tight-fitting sleeve!" And yet, to judge by the clothes he did recommend, I must have been beginning to look a pretty dowd at Mrs Bowater's.
"But even if Madam prefers to dress in a style of her own choice," he explained, "the difference, if she will understand, must still beinthe fashion."
But he himself—though Mrs Monnerie, I discovered after he was gone, had not even noticed that he was bald—he himself interested me far more than his excellent advice; and not least when he drew some papers out of a pocket-book, and happened to let fall on the carpet the photograph of a fat little boy with an immense mop of curls. So men—quite elderly, practical men, can blush, I thought to myself; for Dr Phelps had rather flushed than blushed; and my father used only to get red.
Since nothing, perhaps, could make me more exceptional in appearance than I had been made by Providence, I fell in with all Mrs Monnerie's fancies, and wore what she pleased—pushing out of mind as well as I could all thought of bills. I did more than that. I really began to enjoy dressing myself up as if I were my own doll, and when alone I would sit sometimes in a luxurious trance, like a lily in a pot. Yet I did not entirely abandon my old little Bowater habit of indoor exercise. When I was alone in my room I would sometimes skip. And on one of Fleming's afternoons "out" I evenfurbished up what I could remember of my four kinds of Kentish hopscotch, with a slab of jade for dump. But in the very midst of such recreations I would surprise myself lost in a kind of vacancy. Apart from its humans and its furniture, No. 2 was an empty house.
I do not mean that Mrs Monnerie was concerned only with externals. Sir William Forbes-Smith advised that a little white meat should enrich my usual diet of milk and fruit, and that I should have sea-salt baths. The latter were more enjoyable than the former, though both, no doubt, helped to bring back the strength sapped out of me by the West End.
My cheekbones gradually rounded their angles; a livelier colour came to lip and skin, and I began to be as self-conscious as a genuine beauty. One twilight, I remember, I had slipped across from out of my bath for a pinch of the "crystals" which Mrs Monnerie had presented me with that afternoon; for my nose, also, was accustoming itself to an artificial life. An immense cheval looking-glass stood there, and at one and the same instant I saw not only my own slim, naked, hastening figure reflected in its placid deeps, but, behind me, that of Fleming, shadowily engrossed. With a shock I came to a standstill, helplessly meeting her peculiar stare. Only seven yards or so of dusky air divided us. Caught back by this unexpected encounter, for one immeasurable moment I stood thus, as if she and I were mere shapes in a picture, and reality but a thought.
Then suddenly she recovered herself, and with a murmur of apology was gone. Huddled up in my towel, I sat motionless, shrunken for a while almost to nothing in the dense sense of shame that had swept over me. Then suddenly I flung myself on my knees, and prayed—though what about and to whom I cannot say. After which I went back and bathed myself again.
The extravagances of Youth! No doubt, the worst pang was that though vaguely I knew that my most secret solitude had been for a while destroyed, that long intercepted glance of half-derisive admiration had filled me with something sweeter than distress. If only I knew what common-sized people really feel like in similar circumstances. Biographies tell me little; and can one trust what is said in novels? The onlypracticalresult of this encounter was that I emptied all Mrs Monnerie's priceless crystals forthwith into my bath, and vowed never,never again to desert plain water. So, for one evening, my room smelt like a garden in Damascus.
As for Fleming, she never, of course, referred to this incident, but our small talk was even smaller than before. If, indeed, to Percy, "toadlet" was the aptest tag for me; for Fleming, I fancy, "stuck-up" sufficed. Instinct told her that she was only by courtesy alady's-maid.
Less for her own sake than for mine, Mrs Monnerie and I scoured London for amusement, even though she was irritated a little by my preference for the kind which may be called instructive. The truth is, that in all this smooth idleness and luxury a hunger for knowledge had seized on me; as if (cat to grass) my mind were in search of an antidote.
Mrs Monnerie had little difficulty in securing "private views." She must have known everybody that is anybody—as I once read of a Countess in a book. And I suppose there is not a very large number of this kind of person. Whenever our social engagements permitted, we visited the show places, galleries, and museums. Unlike the rest of London, I gazed at Amenhotep's Mummy in the late dusk of a summer evening; and we had much to say to one another; though but one whiff of the huge round library gave me a violent headache. When the streets had to be faced, Fleming came with us in the carriage, and I was disguised to look as much like a child as possible—a process that made me feel at least twenty years older. The Tower of London, the Zoo, Westminster Abbey, St Paul's—each in turn fell an early prey to my hunger for learning and experience. As for the Thames; the very sight of it seemed to wash my small knowledge of English history clear as crystal.
Mrs Monnerie yawned her way on—though my comments on these marvels of human enterprise occasionally amused her. I made amends, too, by accompanying her to less well-advertised show-places, and patiently sat with her while she fondled unset and antique gems in a jeweller's, or inspected the china, miniatures, and embroideries in private collections. If the mere look of the books in the British Museum gave me a headache, it is curious that the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's Wax Works did not. And yet I don't know; life itself had initiated me into this freemasonry. I surveyed the guillotinewithout a shudder, and eyed Mr Hare and Charles Peace with far less discomposure than General Tom Thumb, or even Robert Burns in the respectable gallery above. My one misfortune was that I could look at no murderer without instantly recomposing the imaginary scene of his crime within my mind. And as after a while Mrs Monnerie decided to rest on a chair set for her by the polite attendant under the scaffold, and we had the Chamber nearly to ourselves, I wandered on alone, and perhaps supped rather too full of horrors for one evening.
Mrs Monnerie would often question me. "Well, what do you think of that, Mammetinka?" or, "Now, then, my inexhaustible little Miss Aristotle, discourse on that."
And like a bullfinch I piped up in response to the best of my ability. My answers, I fear, were usually evasive. For I had begun to see that she was making experiments on my mind and senses, as well as on my manners and body. She was a "fancier." And one day I ogled up at her with the pert remark that she now possessed a pocket barometer which would do its very utmost to remain at 31°, if that was possible without being "Very Dry."
She received this little joke with extraordinary good humour. "When I come down in the world, my dear," she said, "and these horrid anarchists are doing their best to send us all sky-high first, we'll visit the Courts of Europe together, like Count Boruwlaski. Do you think you could bring yourself to support your old friend in her declining years in a declining age?"
I smiled and touched her glove. "Where thou goest, I will go," I replied; and then could have bitten off my tongue in remorse. "Pah," gasped a secret voice, "so that's going the same way too, is it?"
Yet heaven knows I was not a Puritan—and never shall be. I just adored things bright and beautiful. Music, too, in moderation, was my delight; and Susan Monnerie with her small, sweet voice would sometimes sing to me in one room while—in an almost unbearable homesickness—I listened in another. Concerts in general, however, left every muscle of my body as stiff with rheumatism as it was after my visit to Mr Moss's farm-house. The unexpected blare of a brass band simply froze my spine; and a really fine performance on the piano was sheer torture. Once, indeed, when Mrs Monnerie's carriage was oneof a mellay clustered together while the Queen drove by, in the appalling clamour of the Lancers' trombones and kettledrums, I fell prostrate in a kind of fit. So it was my silly nerves that cheated me of my one and only chance to huzza a Crowned Head not, if I may say so without disrespect, so very many sizes larger than my own.
Alas, Mrs Monnerie was an enthusiast for all the pleasures of the senses. I verily believe that it was only my vanity which prevented me from becoming as inordinately fat as Sir William Forbes-Smith's white meat threatened to make me.
Brightest novelty of all was my first visit to a theatre—the London night, the glare and clamour of the streets, the packed white rows of faces, the sea-like noise of talk, the glitter, shimmer, dazzle—it filled my veins with quicksilver; my heart seemed to be throbbing in my breast as fast as Mrs Monnerie's watch. Fortunately she had remembered to take our seats on the farther side from the brass and drums of the orchestra. I restrained my shivers; the lights went out; and in the congregated gloom softly stole up the curtain on the ballet.
Perched up there in the velvet obscurity of our box, I surveyed a woodland scene, ruins, distant mountains, a rocky stream on which an enormous moon shone, and actually moved in the theatrical heavens. And when an exquisite figure floated, pale, gauzy, and a-tiptoe, into those artificial solitudes, drenched with filmy light; with a far cry of "Fanny!" my heart suddenly stood still; and all the old stubborn infatuation flooded heavily back upon me once more.
Susan sat ghostlike, serenely smiling. Percy's narrow jaws were working on their hinges like those of a rabbit I had seen through my grandfather's spyglass nibbling a root of dandelion. Mrs Monnerie reclined in her chair, hands on lap, with pursed-up mouth and weary eyes. There was nobody to confide in, then. But when from either side of the brightening stage flocked in winged creatures with lackadaisical arms and waxlike smilings, whose paint and powder caught back my mind rather than my feelings, my first light-of-foot was hovering beneath us close to the flaring footlights; and she was now no more Fanny than the circle of illuminated parchment over her head was the enchanting moon. What a complicated world it was with all theselayers! The experience filled me with a hundred disquietingdesires, and yet again, chiefest of them was that which made sensitive the stumps where, if I turned into a bird, my wings would grow, and which bade me "escape."
"She's getting devilish old and creaky on her pins," yawned Percy, when the curtain had descended, and I had sighingly shrunk back into my own tasselled nook from the noise and emptiness of actuality.
"No," said Mrs Monnerie, "it is you, Percy, who are getting old. You were born blasé. You'll be positively yawning your head off at the Last Trump."
"Dear Aunt Alice," said Percy, squinting through his opera-glasses, "nothing of the kind. I shall be helping you to find the mislaid knucklebones. Besides, it's better to be born——"
But the rest of his sentence—and I listened to him only because I hated him—passed unheeded, for all my attention had been drawn to Susan. The hand beside me had suddenly clutched at her silk skirt, and a flush, gay as the Queen's Union Jacks in Bond Street, had mounted into her clear, pale cheek, as with averted chin she sat looking down upon some one in the stalls. At sight of her blushing, a richer fondness for her lightened my mind. I followed her eye to its goal, and gazed enthralled, now up, now down, stringing all kinds of little beads of thoughts together; until, perhaps conscious that she was being watched, she turned and caught me. Flamed up her cheeks yet hotter; and now mine too; for my spirits had suddenly sunk into my shoes at the remembrance of Wanderslore and my "ghostly, gloating little dwarfish creature." Then once more darkness stole over the vast, quieting house, and the curtain re-ascended upon Romance.
Instead of its being a month as had been arranged, it was over six weeks before I was deposited again with my elegant dressing-case—a mere flying visitor—on Mrs Bowater's doorstep. A waft of cooked air floated out into the June sunshine through the letter-box. Then, in the open door, just as of old, flushed and hot in her black clothes, there stood my old friend, indescribably the same, indescribably different. She knelt down on her own doormat, and we exchanged loving greetings. Once more I trod beneath the wreathing, guardian horns, circumnavigated the age-stained eight-day clock, and so into my parlour.
Nothing was changed. There stood the shepherdess ogling the shepherd; there hung Mr Bowater; there dangled the chandelier; there angled the same half-dozen flies. Not a leg, caster, or antimacassar was out of place. Yet how steadfastly I had to keep my back turned on my landlady lest she should witness my discomfiture. Faded, dingy, crowded, shrunken—it seemed unbelievable, as I glanced around me, that here I could have lived and breathed so many months, and been so ridiculously miserable, so tragically happy. All that bygone happiness and wretchedness seemed, for the moment, mere waste and folly. And not only that—"common." I climbed Mr Bates's clumsy staircase, put down my dressing-case, and slowly removing my gloves, faced dimly the curtained window. Beyond it lay the distant hills, misty in the morning sunbeams, the familiar meadows all but chin-high with buttercups.
"Oh, Mrs Bowater," I turned at last, "here I am. You and the quiet sky—I wish I had never gone away. What is the use of being one's self, if one is always changing?"
"There comes a time, miss, when we don't change; only the outer walls crumble away morsel by morsel, so to speak. But that's not for you yet. Still, that's the reason. Me and the old sticks are just what we were, at least to the eye; and you—well, there!—the house has been like a cage with the bird gone."
She stood looking at me with one long finger stretching bonily out on the black and crimson tablecloth, a shining sea of loving kindness in her eyes. "I can see they have taken good care of you and all, preened the pretty feathers. Why, you are a bit plumper in figure, miss; only the voice a little different, perhaps." The last words were uttered almost beneath her breath.
"My voice, Mrs Bowater; oh, they cannot have alteredthat."
"Indeed they have, miss; neater-twisted, as you might say; but not scarcely to be noticed by any but a very old friend. Maybe you are a little tired with your long drive and those two solemnities on the box. I remember the same thing—the change of voice—when Fanny came back from her first term at Miss Stebbings'."
"How is she?" I inquired in even tones. "She has never written to me. Not a word."
But, strange to say, as Mrs Bowater explained, and not without a symptom of triumph, that's just what Fannyhaddone. Her letter was awaiting me on the mantelpiece, tucked in behind a plush-framed photograph.
"Now, let me see," she went on, "there's hot water in your basin, miss—I heard the carriage on the hill; a pair of slippers to ease your feet, in case in the hurry of packing they'd been forgot; and your strawberries and cream are out there icing themselves on the tray. So we shan't be no time, though disturbing news has come from Mr Bowater, his leg not mending as it might have been foreseen—but that can wait."
An unfamiliar Miss M. brushed her hair in front of me in the familiar looking-glass. It was not that her Monnerie raiment was particularly flattering, or she, indeed, pleasanter to look at—rather the contrary: and I gazed long and earnestly into the glass. But art has furtive and bewitching fingers. While in my home-made clothes I had looked just myself, in these I looked like one or other of my guardian angels, or perhaps, as an unprejudiced Fleming would have expressed it—the perfect lady. How gradual must have been the change in me to have passed thus unnoticed. But I didn't want to think. I felt dulled and dispirited. Even Mrs Bowater had not been so entranced to see me as I had anticipated. It was tiresome to be disappointed. I rummaged in a bottom drawer, got out an old gown, made a grimace at myself in my mind, and sat down to Fanny's letter.But then again, what are externals? Who was this cool-tempered Miss M. who was now scanning the once heartrending handwriting?
"Dear Midgetina,—When this will reach you, I don't know. But somehow I cannot, or rather I can, imagine you the cynosure of the complete peerage, and prefer that my poor little letter should not uprear its modest head in the midst of all that Granjer. You may not agree—but if a few weeks of a High Life that may possibly continue into infinity has madenodifference to you, then Fanny is not among the prophets."We have not met since—we parted. But did you ever know a "dead past" bury itself with such ingratiating rapidity? Have you in your sublime passion for Nature ever watched a Sexton Beetle? But, mind you, I have helped. The further all that slips away, the less I can see I was to blame for it. What's in your blood needs little help from outside. Cynical it may sound; but imagine the situation if Ihadmarried him! What could existence have been but a Nightmare-Life-in-Death? (VideS. T. Coleridge). Now the Dream continues—for us both."Oh, yes, I can see your little face needling up at this. But you must remember, dear Midgetina, that you will never, never be able to see things in a truly human perspective. Few people, of course, try to. You do. But though your view may be delicate as gossamer and clear as a glass marble, it can't be full-size. Boil a thing down, it isn't thesame. What remains has the virtues of an essence, but not the volume of its origin. This sounds horriblyschool-booky; but I am quite convinced you are too concentrated. And I being what I am, only the full volume can be my salvation. Enough. The text is as good as the sermon—far better, in fact."Now I am going to be still more callous. My own little private worries have come right—been made to. I'm tit for tat, that is, and wiser for it beyond words. Some day, when Society has taught you all its lessons, I will explain further. Anyhow, first I send you back £3 of what I owe you. And thank you. Next I want you to find out from Mrs Mummery (as mother calls her—or did), if among her distinguished acquaintance she knows any one with one or two, or at most three, small and adorable children who need an excellent governess. Things have made it undesirable for me to stay on here much longer. It shall be I who give notice, or, shall we say, terminate the engagement."Be an angel, then. First, wake up. Candidly, to think me better than I am is more grossly unfair than if I thought you taller thanyou are. Next, sweet cynosure, find me a sinecure. Don't trouble about salary. (Youwouldn't, you positive acorn of quixoticism, not if I owed you half a million.) But remember:Wanted by the end of August at latest, a Lady, wealthy, amiable, with two Cherubic Doves in family, boys preferred. The simple, naked fact being that after this last bout of life's fitful fever, I pine for a nap."Of course mother can see this letter if she wishes to, and you don't mind. But personally I should prefer to have the bird actually fluttering in my hand before she contemplates it in the bush."I saidpinejust now. Do you ever find a word suddenly so crammed with meaning that at any moment it threatens to explode? Well, Midgetina, them's my sentiments. Penitent I shall never be, until I take the veil. But I have once or twice lately awoke in a kind of glassy darkness—beyond all moonshine—alone. Then, if I hadn't been born just thick-ribbed, unmeltable ice—well.... Vulgar, vulgar Fanny!"Fare thee well, Midgetina. 'One cried, "God bless us," and "Amen," the other.' Prostituted though he may have been for scholastic purposes, W. S. knew something of Life."Yours,—F."
"Dear Midgetina,—When this will reach you, I don't know. But somehow I cannot, or rather I can, imagine you the cynosure of the complete peerage, and prefer that my poor little letter should not uprear its modest head in the midst of all that Granjer. You may not agree—but if a few weeks of a High Life that may possibly continue into infinity has madenodifference to you, then Fanny is not among the prophets.
"We have not met since—we parted. But did you ever know a "dead past" bury itself with such ingratiating rapidity? Have you in your sublime passion for Nature ever watched a Sexton Beetle? But, mind you, I have helped. The further all that slips away, the less I can see I was to blame for it. What's in your blood needs little help from outside. Cynical it may sound; but imagine the situation if Ihadmarried him! What could existence have been but a Nightmare-Life-in-Death? (VideS. T. Coleridge). Now the Dream continues—for us both.
"Oh, yes, I can see your little face needling up at this. But you must remember, dear Midgetina, that you will never, never be able to see things in a truly human perspective. Few people, of course, try to. You do. But though your view may be delicate as gossamer and clear as a glass marble, it can't be full-size. Boil a thing down, it isn't thesame. What remains has the virtues of an essence, but not the volume of its origin. This sounds horriblyschool-booky; but I am quite convinced you are too concentrated. And I being what I am, only the full volume can be my salvation. Enough. The text is as good as the sermon—far better, in fact.
"Now I am going to be still more callous. My own little private worries have come right—been made to. I'm tit for tat, that is, and wiser for it beyond words. Some day, when Society has taught you all its lessons, I will explain further. Anyhow, first I send you back £3 of what I owe you. And thank you. Next I want you to find out from Mrs Mummery (as mother calls her—or did), if among her distinguished acquaintance she knows any one with one or two, or at most three, small and adorable children who need an excellent governess. Things have made it undesirable for me to stay on here much longer. It shall be I who give notice, or, shall we say, terminate the engagement.
"Be an angel, then. First, wake up. Candidly, to think me better than I am is more grossly unfair than if I thought you taller thanyou are. Next, sweet cynosure, find me a sinecure. Don't trouble about salary. (Youwouldn't, you positive acorn of quixoticism, not if I owed you half a million.) But remember:Wanted by the end of August at latest, a Lady, wealthy, amiable, with two Cherubic Doves in family, boys preferred. The simple, naked fact being that after this last bout of life's fitful fever, I pine for a nap.
"Of course mother can see this letter if she wishes to, and you don't mind. But personally I should prefer to have the bird actually fluttering in my hand before she contemplates it in the bush.
"I saidpinejust now. Do you ever find a word suddenly so crammed with meaning that at any moment it threatens to explode? Well, Midgetina, them's my sentiments. Penitent I shall never be, until I take the veil. But I have once or twice lately awoke in a kind of glassy darkness—beyond all moonshine—alone. Then, if I hadn't been born just thick-ribbed, unmeltable ice—well.... Vulgar, vulgar Fanny!
"Fare thee well, Midgetina. 'One cried, "God bless us," and "Amen," the other.' Prostituted though he may have been for scholastic purposes, W. S. knew something of Life.
"Yours,—F."
What was the alluring and horrifying charm for me of Fanny's letters? This one set my mind, as always, wandering off into a maze. There was a sour taste in it, and yet—it was all really and truly Fanny. I could see her unhappy eyes glittering through the mask. She sawherself—perhaps more plainly than one should. "Vulgar Fanny." As for its effect on me; it was as if I had fallen into a bed of nettles, and she herself, picking me up, had scoffed, "Poor little Midgekin," and supplied the dock. Her cynicism was its own antidote, I suppose. The selfishness, the vanity, and impenetrable hardness—even love had never been so blind as to ignore all that, and now what love remained for her had the sharpest of sharp eyes.
And yet, though my little Bowater parlour looked cheap and dingy after the splendours of No. 2, Fanny somehow survived every odious comparison. She was veryintelligent, I whispered to myself. Mrs Monnerie would certainly approve of that. And I prickled at the thought. And I—I was too "concentrated." In spite of my plumping "figure," I could never, never be full-size. If only Fanny had meant that as a compliment, or even as a kind of explanation to go on with. No, she had meant it for the truth. And it must be far easier for a leopard to changehis spots than his inside. The accusation set all the machinery of my mind emptily whirring.
My glance fell on my Paris frock, left in a shimmering slovenly ring on the floor. It wandered off to Fanny's postal order, spread over my lap like an expensive antimacassar. She had worked for that money; while I had never been anything more useful than "an angel." In fancy I saw her blooming in a house as sumptuous as Mrs Monnerie's. Bloom indeed! I hated the thought, yet realized, too, that it was safer—even if for the time being not so profitable—to be life-size. And, as if out of the listening air, a cold dart pierced me through. Suppose my Messrs Harris and Harris and Harris might not be such honest trustees as Miss Fenne had vouched for. Suppose they decamped with my £110 per annum!—I caught a horrifying glimpse of the wolf that was always sniffing at Fanny's door.
Mrs Bowater brought in my luncheon, and—as I insisted—her own, too. The ice from Mr Tidy, the fishmonger's, had given a slightly marine flavour to the cream, and I had to keep my face averted as much as possible from the scorched red chop sprawling and oozing on her plate. How could she bring herself to eat it? We are such stuff as dreams are made on, said Hamlet. So then was Mrs Bowater. What a mystery then was this mutton fat! But chop or no chop, it was a happy meal.
Having waved my extremely "Fannyish" letter at her, I rapidly dammed that current of her thoughts by explaining that I had changed my clothes not (as a gleam from her eye had seemed to suspect) because I was afraid of spoiling my London finery, but in order to be really at home. For the first time I surprised her muttering a grace over the bone on her plate. Then she removed the tray, accepted a strawberry, folded her hands in her lap, and we began to talk. She asked a hundred and one questions concerning my health and happiness, but never once mentioned Mrs Monnerie; and at last, after a small pause, filled by us both with the same thought, she remarked that "that young Mr Anon was nothing if not persistent."
Since I had gone, not a week had passed, she told me, but he had come rapping at the door after dusk to inquire after me. "Though why he should scowl like a pitchpot to hear that you are enjoying the lap of luxury——" The angular shoulders achieved a shrug at least as Parisian as my discarded gown.
"Why doesn't he write to me, then? Twice in ten weeks!"
"Well it'ssix, miss, I've counted, thoughseeminglysixty. But that being the question, he is there to answer it, at any time this evening, or at six to-morrow morning, if London ways haven't cured you of early-rising."
So we went off together, Mrs Bowater and I, in the cool of the evening about half an hour after sunset—she, alas, a little ruffled because I had refused to change back again into my Monnerie finery. "But Mrs Bowater, imagine such a thing in a real wild garden!" I protested, but without mollifying her, and without further explaining—how could I do that?—that the gown which Miss Sentimentality (or Miss Coquette) was actually wearing was that in which she had first met Mr Anon.
I trod close in Mrs Bowater's track as she convoyed me through a sea of greenery breaking here and there to my waist and even above my hat. Summer had been busy in Wanderslore. Honeysuckle and acid-sweet brier were in bloom; sleeping bindweed and pimpernel. The air was liquidly sweet with uncountable odours. And the fading skies dyed bright the frowning front of the house, about which the new-come swifts shrieked in their play over my wilderness. Mr Anon looked peculiar, standing alone there.
Having bidden him a gracious good-evening, Mrs Bowater after a long, ruminating glance at us, decided that she would "take a stroll through the grounds." We watched her black figure trail slowly away up the overgrown terraces towards the house. Then he turned. His clear, dwelling eyes, with that darker line encircling the grey-black iris, fixed themselves on me, his mouth tight-shut.
"Well," he said at last, almost wearily. "It has been a long waiting."
I was unprepared for this sighing. "It has indeed," I replied. "But it is exceedingly pleasant to see Beechwood Hill again. I wrote; but you did not answer my letter, at least not the last."
My voice dropped away; every one of the fine little speeches I had thought to make, forgotten.
"And now you are here."
"Yes," I said quickly, a little timid of any silence between us, "and that's pleasant too. You can have no notion what a stiff, glaring garden it is up there—geraniums and gravel, you know, and windows, windows, windows. They are wonderfully kind to me—but I don't much love it."
"Then why stay?" he smiled. "Still, you are, at least, safely out ofherclutches."
"Clutches!" I hated the way we were talking. "Thank you very much. You forget you are speaking of one of my friends. Besides, I can take care of myself." He made no answer.
"You are so gloomy," I continued. "So—oh, I don't know—about everything. It's because you are always cooped up in one place, I suppose. One must take the world—a little—as it is, you know. Why don't you go away; travel;seethings? Oh, if I were a man."
His eyes watched my lips. Everything seemed to have turned sour. To have waited and dreamed; to have actually changed my clothes and come scuttling out in a silly longing excitement—for this. Why, I felt more lonely and helpless under Wanderslore's evening sky than ever I had been in my cedar-wood privacy in No. 2.
"I mean it, I mean it," I broke out suddenly. "You domineer over me. You pamper me up with silly stories—'trailing clouds of glory,' I suppose. They are not true. It's every one for himself in this world, I can tell you; and in future, please understand, I intend to be my own mistress. Simply because in a little private difficulty I asked you to help me——"
He turned irresolutely. "They have dipped you pretty deep in the dye-pot."
"And what, may I ask, do you mean by that?"
"I mean," and he faced me, "that I am precisely what your friend, Miss Bowater, called me. What more is there to say?"
"And pray, am I responsible for everything my friends say? And to have dragged upthatwretched fiasco after we had talked it out to the very dregs! Oh, how I have been longing and longing to come home. And this is what you make of it."
He turned his face towards the west, and its vast light irradiated his sharp-boned features, the sloping forehead beneath the straight, black hair. Fume as I might, resentment fainted away in me.
"You don't seem to understand," I went on; "it's the waste—the waste of it all. Why do you make it so that I can't talk naturally to you, as friends talk? If I am alone in the world, so are you. Surely we can tell the truth to one another. I am utterly wretched."
"There is only one truth that matters: you do not love me. Why should you? But that's the barrier. And the charm ofit is that not only the Gods, but the miserable Humans, if only they knew it, would enjoy the sport."
"Love! I detest the very sound of the word. What has it ever meant to me, I should like to know, in this—this cage?"
"Scarcely a streak of gilding on the bars," he sneered miserably. "Still we are sharing the same language now."
The same language. Self-pitying tears pricked into my eyes; I turned my head away. And in the silence, stealthily, out of a dark woody hollow nearer the house, as if at an incantation, broke a low, sinister, protracted rattle, like the croaking of a toad. I knew that sound; it came straight out of Lyndsey—called me back.
"S-sh!" I whispered, caught up with delight. "A nightjar! Listen. Let's go and look."
I held out my hand. His sent a shiver down my spine. It was clammy cold, as if he had just come out of the sea. Thrusting our way between the denser clumps of weeds, we pushed on cautiously until we actually stood under the creature's enormous oak. So elusive and deceitful was the throbbing croon of sound that it was impossible to detect on which naked branch in the black leafiness the bird sat churring. The wafted fragrances, the placid dusky air, and far, far above, the delicate, shallowing deepening of the faint-starred blue—how I longed to sip but one drop of drowsy mandragora and forget this fretting, inconstant self.
We stood, listening; and an old story I had read somewhere floated back into memory. "Once, did you ever hear it?" I whispered close to him, "there was a ghost came to a house near Cirencester. I read of it in a book. And when it was asked, 'Are you a good spirit or a bad?' it made no answer, but vanished, the book said—I remember the very words—'with a curious perfume and most melodious twang.' With a curious perfume," I repeated, "and most melodious twang. There now, would you likemeto go like that? Oh, if I were a moth, I would flit in there and ask that old Death-thing to catch me. Even ifIcannot love you, you are part of all this. You feed my very self. Mayn't that be enough?"
His grip tightened round my fingers; the entrancing, toneless dulcimer thrummed on.
I leaned nearer, as if to raise the shadowed lids above thebrooding eyes. "What can I give you—only to be your peace? I do assure you it is yours. But I haven't the secret of knowing what half the world means. Look at me. Is it notalla mystery? Oh, I know it, even though they jeer and laugh at me. I beseech you be merciful, and keep me what I am."
So I pleaded and argued, scarcely heeding the words I said. Yet I realize now that it was only my mind that wrestled with him there. It was what came after that took the heart out of me. There came a clap of wings, and the bird swooped out of its secrecy into the air above us, a moment showed his white-splashed, cinder-coloured feathers in the dusk, seemed to tumble as if broken-winged upon the air, squawked, and was gone. The interruption only hastened me on.
"Still, still listen," I implored: "if Time would but cease a while and let me breathe."
"There, there," he muttered. "I was unkind. A filthy jealousy."
"But think! There may never come another hour like this. Know, know now, that you have made me happy. I can never be so alone again. I share my secretest thoughts—my imagination, with you; isn't that a kind of love? I assure you that it is. Once I heard my mother talking, and sometimes I have wondered myself, if I am quite like—oh, you know what they say: a freak of Nature. Tell me; if by some enchantment I were really and indeed come from those snow mountains of yours, and that sea, would you recognize me? Would you? No, no; it's only a story—why, even all this green and loveliness is only skin deep. If the Old World were just to shrug its shoulders, Mr Anon, we should all, big and little, be clean gone."
My words seemed merely to be like drops of water dripping upon a sponge. "Wake!" I tugged at his hand. "Look!" Kneeling down sidelong, I stooped my cheek up at him from a cool, green mat of grass, amid which a glow-worm burned: "Is this a—aStranger'sface?"
He came no nearer; surveyed me with a long, quiet smile of infinitely sorrowful indulgence. "A Stranger's? How else could it be, if I love you?"
Intoxicated in that earthy fragrance, washed about with the colours of the motionless flowers, it seemed I was merelytalking to some one who could assure me that I was still in life, still myself. A strand of my hair had fallen loose, and smiling, its gold pin between my lips, I looped it back. "Oh, but you see—haven't I told you?—I can't love you. Perhaps; I don't know.... What shall I do? What shall I say? Now suppose," I went on, "I like myselfthatmuch," and I held my thumb and finger just ajar, "then I likeyou, think of you, hope for you, why, that!"—and I swept my hand clean across the empty zenith. "Nowdo you understand?"
"Oh, my dear, my dear," he said, and smiled into my eyes.
I laughed out in triumph at the success of my device. And he laughed too, as if in a conspiracy with me—and with Misery, I could see, sitting like an old hag at the door from which the sound came. And out of the distance the nightjar set again to its churring.
"Then I have made you a little—a little less unhappy?" I asked him, and hid my face in my hands in a desolate peace and solitude.
He knelt beside me, held out his hand as if to touch me, withdrew it again. All presence of him distanced and vanished away in that small darkness. I prayed not to think any more, not to be exiled again into—how can I explain my meaning except by saying—Myself? Would some further world have withdrawn its veils and have let me in then and for ever if that lightless quiet could have continued a little longer? Is it the experience of every human being seemingly to trespass at times so close upon the confines of existence as that?
It was his own harsh voice that broke the spell.
"Wake, wake!" it called in my ear. "The woman is looking for you. We must go."
My hands slipped from my face. A slow, sobbing breath drew itself into my body. And there beneath evening's vacancy of twilight showed the transfigured scene of the garden, and, near me, the anxious, suffering face of this stranger, faintly greened by the light of the worm.
"Wake!" he bade me, rapping softly with his bony finger on my hand. I stared at him out of a dream.
Time and circumstance have strangely divided me from the Miss M. of those days. I look back on her, not with shame, but with a shrug of my shoulders, a sort of incredulous tolerance—almost as if she too were a stranger. Perhaps a few years hence I shall be looking back with an equal detachment on the Miss M. seated here at this moment with her books and her pen in the solitude of her thoughts, vainly endeavouring to fret out and spin together mere memories that nobody will ever have the patience to read. Shall I then be able to tell myself what I want now, give words to the vague desires that still haunt me? Shall I still be waiting on for some unconceived eventuality?
There is, too, another small riddle of a different kind, which I cannot answer. In memory and imagination, as I steadily gaze out of this familiar room recalling the past, I am that very self in that distant garden of Wanderslore. But even as I look, I am not onlywithinmyself there, but also outside of myself. I seem, I mean, actually to be contemplating, as if with my own eyes, those two queer, silent figures returning through the drowsying, moth-haunted flowers and grasses to the black, vigilant woman awaiting them beside the garden house. "Alas, you poor, blind thing," I seem, like a ghost, to warn the one small creature, "have a care; seize your happiness; it is vanishing!"
All that I write, then, is an attempt only to tell, not to explain. I realize that sometimes I was pretending things, yet did not know that I was pretending; that often I acted with no more conscience or consciousness, maybe, than has a carrion crow that picks out the eyes of a lamb, or a flower that draws in its petals at noon. Yet I know—know absolutely, that I was, and am, responsible not only for myself, but for everything. For my whole world. And I cannot explain this either. At times, as if to free myself, I had to stare at what appalled me. I am sure, for instance, that Mrs Monnerie never dreamed that hermention of Mr Crimble sent me off in fancy at the first opportunity to that woeful outhouse in his mother's garden to look in on him there—again. But I did so look at him, and was a little more at peace with him after that. Why, then, cannot I be at peace with one who loved me?
Maybe if I could have foreseen how I was to come to Wanderslore again, I should have been a less selfish, showy, and capricious companion to him that June evening. But I was soon lapped back into my life in London; and thought only of Mr Anon, as I am apt to think of God: namely, when I needed his presence and his help. As a matter of fact, I had small time to think. Even the doubts and misgivings that occasionally woke me in the night melted like dreams in the morning. Every morrow blotted out its yesterday—as faded flowers are flung away out of a vase.
In that vortex of visits and visitors, that endless vista of amusements and eating and drinking—some hidden spring of life in me began to fail. What a little self-conscious affected donkey I became, shrilly hee-hawing away; the centre of a simpering throng plying me with flattery. What airs I put on.
If this Life of mine had been a Biography, the author of it would have had the satisfaction of copying out from a pygmy blue morocco diary the names of all the celebrated and distinguished people I met at No. 2. A few of them underlined in red! The amusing thing is that, like my father, I was still a Radical at heart and preferred low life—flea-bane and chickweed—to the fine flowers of culture; which only means, of course, that in this I am a snob inside out. Nevertheless, the attention I had shunned I now began to covet, and, like a famous artist or dancer, would go sulky to bed, if I had been left to blush at being unseen. I forced myself to be more and more fastidious: and tried to admire as little as possible. I would even imitate and affect languid pretentiousnesses and effronteries; and learned to be downright rude to people in a cultivated way. As for small talk, I soon accumulated a repertory of that, and could use the fashionable slang and current "conversations" like a native. All this intensely amused Mrs Monnerie. For, of course, the more like the general run of these high livers I was, the more conspicuous I became.
The truth is, the Lioness's head was in peril of being turned,and, like a blind kitten in a bucket of water, I came very near to being drowned in the social cream-bowl. For what little I gained in public by all this silly vanity I paid a heavy price when alone. I began to be fretful and utterly useless to myself—just lived on from excitement to excitement. And Fleming soon had better reasons for detesting me than merely because I was horribly undersized.
Perhaps I am exaggerating; but the truth is I find it extremely difficult to keep patience with Mrs Monnerie's pamperedprotégée. She was weak and stupid. Yet learning had not lost its charm. My mind persisted in being hungry, however much satiated were my senses and fine feelings. I even infected Susan with my enthusiasm for indigestible knowledge. For since Mrs Monnerie had begun to find my passion for shells, fossils, flints, butterflies, and stuffed animals a little wearisome, it was her niece who now accompanied me to my many Meccas in her stead. By a happy chance we often met on these pilgrimages the dark, straight-nosed young man whom I had looked down upon at my first ballet, and who also apparently was a fanatic.
However deeply engrossed in mementoes of the Dark or Stone Ages he might be, he never failed to see us the moment we entered his echoing gallery. He would lift his eyebrows; his monocle would drop out; and he would come sauntering over to meet us, looking as fresh as apples cold with dew. I liked Captain Valentine. So much so that I sent an almost rapturous description of him to Mr Anon.
He did not seem in the least to mind being seen in my company. We had our little private jokes together. We both enjoyed the company of Susan. He was so crisp and easy and quick-witted, and yet—to my unpractised eye—looked delightfully domesticatable. Even the crustiest old caretaker, at a word and a smile from Captain Valentine, would allow me to seat myself on the glass cases. So I could gloat on their contents at leisure. And certainly of the three of us I was by far the most diligent student.
Long hours, too, of the none too many which will make up my life would melt away like snow in Mrs Monnerie's library. A button specially fixed for me in the wainscot would summon a manservant. Having ranged round the lofty walls, I would point up at what books I wanted. They would be strewn aroundme on the floor—gilded and leathery volumes, some of them almost of my own height, and many times my weight. I would open the lid, turn the great pages, and carefully sprawling on my elbows between them, would pore for hours together on their coloured pictures of birds and flowers, gems and glass, ruins, palaces, mountains—hunting, cock-fighting, fashions, fine ladies, and foreign marvels. And I dipped into novels so like the unpleasanter parts of my own life that they might just as well have been autobiographies.
The secret charm of all this was that I was alone; and while I was reading I ceased to worry. I just drugged my mind with books. I would go rooting and rummaging in Mrs Monnerie's library, like a little pig after truffles. There was hardly a subject I left untasted—old plays, and street ballads; Johnson's enormous dictionary, that extraordinary book on Melancholy with its borage and hellebore and the hatted young man in love;Bel and the Dragon, theNewgate Calendar. I even nibbled at Debrett—and clean through all its "M's." The more I read, the more ignorant I seemed to become; and quite apart from this smattering jumble of knowledge, I pushed my way through memoirs and romances at the very sight of which my poor godmother would have fainted dead off.
They may have been harmful; but I certainly can't say that I regret having read them—which may be part of the harm. You could tell the really bad ones almost at a sniff. They had bad smells, like a beetle cupboard or a scented old man. I read on of witchcraft and devils, yet hated the cloud they cast over me—like some horrible treacle in the mind. But as for the authors who just reasoned about Time and God and Miracles, and so on, I poked about in them willingly enough; but my imagination went off the other way—with my heart in its pocket. Possibly without knowing it. But I do know this: that never to my dying day shall I learn what a common-sized person with a pen or a pencil, cannotmake shocking, or be shocked at. It seemed to me that to some of these authors the whole universe was nothing better than a Squid, and a very much scandalized young woman would attempt to replace their works on the shelves.
When in good faith I occasionally ventured to share (orpossibly to show off) some curious scrap of information with Mrs Monnerie, I thought her eyes would goggle out of her head. It was perhaps my oldmolehabit that prevented me from dividing things up into the mentionable and unmentionable. Possibly I carried this habit to excess; and yet, of course, remained the slave of my own small pruderies. Still, I don't think it was either Mrs Monnerie's or Percy's pruderies that I had to be careful about. To makehimlaugh was one of the most hateful of my experiences at No. 2.
I have read somewhere that the human instincts are "unlike Apollyon, since they always degrade themselves by their disguises. They dress themselves up as Apes and Mandrils; he as a ringed, supple, self-flattering, seductive serpent." Possibly that has something to do with it. Or is it that my instincts are also on a petty scale? I don't know. I hate and fear pain even more than most people, and have fought pretty hard in the cause of self-preservation. On the other hand, I haven't the faintest wish in the world to "perpetuate my species." Not that I might not have been happy in a husband and in my children. I suppose that kind of thing comes on one just as naturally as breathing. Nevertheless, I suspect I was born to be an Old Maid. Calling up Spirits from the vasty deep has always seemed to me to be a far more dreadful mystery than Death. It is not, indeed, the ghosts of the dead and the past which I think should oppress the people I see around me, but those of the children to come. I thank God from the bottom of my heart for the happiness and misery of having been alive, but my small mind reels when I brood on what the gift of it implies.
Well, well, well; of one burden at least I can absolve Mrs Monnerie—that of making me so sententious. Somehow or other, but ever more sluggishly, those few crowded summer months of my twentieth year wore away. It is more of a mercy than a curse, I suppose, that Time never stands still.
Meanwhile two events occurred which, for the time being, sobered and alarmed me. A few days before I had actually planned to pay a second visit to Mrs Bowater's, the almost incredible news reached me that she was sailing for South America. It would hardly have surprised me more to hear that she wassailing for Sirius. She came to bid me good-bye. It wasMrBowater, she told me. She had been too confident of the "good nursing." Far from mending in this world, his leg threatened "to carry him off into the next." At these tidings Shame thrust out a very ugly head at me from her retreat. I had utterly forgotten the anxiety my poor old friend was in.