"It is not your fault," Edward exclaimed, "that we are all going to Australia. If my father had not shown himself so bitter against me, if my mother had not lost all affection for me, we should still be in Long Orchard Farm. I beg you, my dearest, not to distress yourself with regrets. Besides, look at her." He pointed to the sleeping infant. "Whatdo we matter now? We have givenherto the world. There never was such a baby girl. Just think, my Elizabeth, what you endured, what even I endured? And now look at her. Remember how fortune was on her side. I was never a religious man, but since that night in January I have been made conscious of a divine power that directs the universe. In the miracle of that small but perfect being born to you and me I have understood the great miracle of creation."
Elizabeth regarded her husband with admiration and awe.
"You have such noble thoughts," she flattered him. "But I cannot think like you. I can only remember the meadows where I played as a child and the clematis over the door and the cocks crowing on fine mornings in the summer-time. And now I'm leaving all that. And grandfather is leaving it. And you, my Edward, are being taken far over the sea to another country, and all because I selfishly loved you and selfishly let you love me."
The notes of a melody more sad than any which had yet been played drifted below from the deck. Elizabeth's tears fell fast like raindrops upon the petals of a rose. Nor could Edward's most tender words console her grief, nor could they mitigate her apprehensiveness nor lighten the gloom in which for her the future was enveloped. It was not until her grandfather came tapping at their cabin door, in which a moment later he stood framed with hisruddy and jocund countenance, that she smiled.
"I've enjoyed myself rarely," he announced. "There's been singing up there as would put the heart in any man. There was never better fiddling in Barton Flowers, not when I was a nipper. I'm bothered if I han't enjoyed myself. Sleep like a top, the saying is. Bothered if I shan't sleep like a humming-top to-night."
He wished them well and stumped off to his berth.
"You see how happy the old man is!" Edward exclaimed.
And Elizabeth, now that the music had ceased to play upon her emotion, forgot her fears. In the morning when they went on deck London was sailing past them on either side of the ship, and a sharp wind from the northwest made the voyagers long for warm and sunny lands.
Among the emigrants was a middle-aged couple called Fawcus, both of whom showed themselves most friendly to the Flowers, and both of whom much admired the good behavior of the baby girl. Mr. Fawcus was a large, smooth-faced man of fifty, definitely parsonic in the general impression he gave with his suit of black broadcloth, a primness of manner that was noticeable in so large a man, and an inclination to discourse in rotund sentences. His wife was in every way a contrast to her husband, being small, restless, and quick-eyed, a woman obviously belonging to an inferior class, but who in spiteof her Cockney accent and vulgarity was obviously the leader and looked after her husband as sharply as a capable and well-trained nurse.
"I hope Mr. Micawber will still be alive when we reach Australia," said Edward. "Nobody else could keep pace with our friend."
"You haven't spoken of Mr. Micawber before, dear," said Elizabeth reproachfully. "I didn't know you had any friends in Australia."
"Mr. Micawber is a character in one of Mr. Charles Dickens' novels," he explained.
"Mr. Dickens who wrote theChristmas Carol?" Elizabeth asked.
"The same."
"He must be a very nice gentleman," was her murmured comment.
Edward laughed.
Mr. Fawcus according to himself had been reduced to emigration by the devotion of his energy, his talents, and his money to the great cause of popular education.
"My survey of history," he told Edward, "taught me that all the greatest human beings have been teachers. I determined, however humbly, to follow in their footsteps."
According to Mrs. Fawcus her husband's mistake had been first in wasting money on derelict schools, and secondly in destroying whatever chance such schools had of recovery by preaching in the open air of the locality on Sundays.
"People couldn't a-bear to send their children to Mr. Fawcus's school when they saw him preaching in the market-place like any heathen missionary. It gave them the idea he was funny, and so the scholars'ud leave until there wasn't one left, and then Mr. Fawcus had to move to another town and start over again with another school. Besides, I was always a hindrance to him."
"You were never a hindrance, my love."
"Oh, yes, I was, Mr. Fawcus, and well you know it. The truth is parents don't want a homely woman like me for a teacher. They look for something quite different in a school-mistress, something tall and starchy."
"And what are you going to do in Australia?" Edward asked.
"In Australia, my dear sir," Mr. Fawcus boomed, "in Australia I am going to educate the aborigines, who I understand from the reports of travelers are considered the most degraded race of human beings on this earth. Should that prove truer than the majority of travelers' tales there must be room for education. After my experience with the children of...."
"Hush!" his wife interjected. "Hush, Mr. Fawcus!"
"After my experience with the last school I founded in England the aborigines of Australia will be easy to manage. Their women, I believe, are known as ginns. A most unbecoming designation.I shall try to persuade them to abolish that name. The sea is rising, I observe with regret. We are liable to pass a rough night, I fear. And I am usually right. In fact, my intimates often nickname me Mr. Forecast. My own name, by the way, is remarkable, don't you think? I have been tempted to speculate upon its origin, and I have sometimes fancied that it might be found among thesenatus populusque Romanus. I was informed the other day, however, by a gentleman of curious etymological knowledge that it is probably a local variant of Fawkes. You of course remember Guy of that ilk? Yes, the sky is looking very dirty indeed."
A steely dusk of northwest weather lay chill upon theWizard Queenwhen she was tossing in the Downs, and by night the wind was blowing with hurricane fury from the Kentish coast. The music and motion of the storm kept all on board awake, and when about three o'clock there was a crash followed by a dreadful sound of grinding timbers, the faces of the terrified passengers immediately appeared from every cabin.
Edward bade his wife wrap up the baby while he found out what had happened, and with only an overcoat over his nightshirt he forced his way on deck. From the darkness on the port side a shape seemed to carve itself to the fleeting likeness of another vessel, but it vanished so quickly that Edward fancied the vision to be a chimera of the night.
"All hands to lower the boats," a voice criedfrom forward in the murk of the night. Figures in dripping oilskins, like monsters risen from the sea, pushed Edward aside to get at their business; but he managed to make his way back aft to where from the orange mist above the saloon-companion a stream of disheveled passengers belched forth like smoke waving in the blast. As he fought his way down to find Elizabeth and the old man, he heard another shout for'ard.
"The port lifeboat was smashed in the collision."
The saloon was empty when Edward reached it, and he was on the point of turning back to begin a distracted search on deck when Elizabeth came out of her cabin carrying the baby, her hair all about her shoulders, her aspect serene. She looked fragile, ethereal indeed, but amid all that confusion of human terror into which she must shortly be plunged she moved forward with the resolution of an angel. Behind her came the old man wrapped in a plaid shawl above his nightshirt, his face ruddy as ever, but his old legs appearing thin as twigs beneath, so that it seemed as if he must be blown away into the night when he should face the storm.
The crew was lowering the jolly-boat full of passengers when they reached the deck. Notwithstanding the peril, for the ship would not float another ten minutes it was being shouted, two of the sailors were arguing angrily about the rig of the craft that struck theWizard Queen. One declared with an oath that it was a schooner; the otheraffirmed with equal vigor that it had been a barquantine. A ship's officer hurrying by fell to cursing them for rascals that they should stand there arguing when the starboard lifeboat must be launched.
"Women and children first," the captain thundered.
A fiercer squall drummed overhead, and the emigrants that still remained in the ship huddled together in fear of that dreadful brew of waters upon which they were soon to float away. Somebody urged Elizabeth toward the lifeboat; but she drew back.
"Let somebody go instead of me. I'll wait for my husband," she said.
But it happened that she was the last woman left and that there was still room for Edward and old James, so that presently all three climbed into the lifeboat.
"Lower away!"
The lifeboat rocked for a moment in the davits; and then just as she reached the sea, being full in the weather, she was driven with great force against the ship's side and stove in. She seemed to be brimming over, but nevertheless the crew managed to shove her off, although by this time she was so deep in the water that the wretched passengers sitting on the thwarts were submerged from the waist downwards. It was only the cork in her compartments that kept her barely afloat. There were many faces still looking down from the steamer, and all onboard probably went down with her, or if the cutter was launched she must have been swamped immediately, for a minute or two later theWizard Queenrose forward in the air and sank stern first. Now one by one, as the icy waves broke over them, the women and men in the lifeboat dropped from exhaustion into the sea. Old James Taylor was among the first to go, falling backward without a cry, without a word of reproach, as silently as one of his own red apples might fall at home in the first October gale.
"Did the Captain say where we was?" asked the man at the tiller.
"Abreast of Beachy Head," one shouted in reply, and as he spoke a wave swept him and a woman and a child into the darkness.
"O God! he's dead. He's lying dead in my arms!" cried a miserable father who was holding in his arms a little boy of five or six.
"Drop the body overboard," the man at the tiller shouted. "Every pound tells. Lighten the boat," he roared angrily. "Lighten the boat!"
The wretched father, clasping his dead child more closely, turned away in indignation at the brutal order; but as he turned a wave swept him and the body overboard, and the boat was lightened a little more.
All this time Elizabeth said nothing; but she clung to her place with one hand and with the other held the baby to her breast beneath her cloak. All thistime Edward said nothing; but he had somehow managed to wedge his legs round a support, so that whenever Elizabeth trembled in her seat he could put out two arms to save her from peril. Two women died of exhaustion from the wash of the sea and the freezing wind, and their bodies were at once flung overboard. On the other side of Elizabeth, Mrs. Fawcus, who alone of the women appeared to be completely dressed, was trying to get off her cloak to throw it round the mother, and simultaneously making an effort to listen to the plans of Mr. Fawcus for the future, should the lifeboat ever reach a harbor.
"I have given up my plan of educating the aborigines of Australia," he bellowed above the gale, making a megaphone with his hands.
"Yes, dear, I'm sure I agree with you. Drat this hook! It's so bent I can't get it out of the eye. And don't put up your hands and shout at me, Mr. Fawcus. You'll be swept over if you do."
"What has occurred once," Mr. Fawcus bellowed, "may easily occur again. I shall inquire for a suitable post in London. I always did execrate the sea, as you know, my dear."
Mrs. Fawcus nodded.
"And I was right," he shouted. "I usually am." But his wife could not applaud his wisdom, for at that moment Elizabeth, reeling, cried:
"Take my baby. Edward! My darling, mydarling, I ought not to have married you. It's all my fault."
As Mrs. Fawcus took the baby, Elizabeth fell, and Edward, throwing himself backward in a last effort to save his wife, fell with her into the sea.
At dawn a small steamer sighted the wreck of the lifeboat and launched a boat to rescue the four who had survived that night. One was the man at the tiller; the other three were Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus with Mary Flower.
Chapter Two
THE GIRL
Chapter Two: The Girl
Mary Flower passed the first ten years of her life in the basement of a publisher's office in Paternoster Row, where every floor as high as the roof was loaded with the stock of years, so that the earliest defined fear of her childhood was lest the old house should collapse one night and bury herself and her uncle and aunt beneath a mountain of books. This was the result of reading the story of an earthquake in Jamaica; and the habit thus engendered of brooding upon seismic catastrophes led Mary soon afterward to prefigure the vaster ruin of St. Paul's Cathedral, the bulk of which obscured so much of the sky from her childish vision.
"You've no right to fill her head with such notions, Uncle William," said Mrs. Fawcus sharply. "Why, there was no more than a tiny little crack in the ceiling over her bed, and I'm sure the child regular worried the life out of me about that blessed crack."
"That's where you're wrong, Aunt Lucy," replied Mr. Fawcus. "When a child's interest is aroused in any natural phenomenon it is the duty of the parent or of the guardianwho standsin loco parentisto cultivate that interest by every means in his power. It is one of the rudimentary principles of education. Fate directed her to the narrative of an earthquake in the West Indies, rousing in her breast an ambition to know more about terrestrial convulsions, to learn about such facts as their comparative frequency and their geographical distribution. What has our little Mary learned? She has learned that nothing more than slight shocks may be expected in the heart of London and that ..."
"Oh, how you do carry on, Uncle William! The poor child's learned nothing of the kind. She goes to bed shaking in her shoes every night."
However, Mary soon forgot all about earthquakes, because a dancing bear broke loose in St. Paul's Churchyard and created such a panic that for several weeks she saw bears at the back of every cupboard, and Mrs. Fawcus had to hide her favorite copy ofRed Riding Hoodon account of the tremors set up by the vivid illustrations. It must not be supposed that she was a very nervous child or that her existence was unusually spoilt by the incidental alarms of childhood. On the contrary, the world beheld in the basement of that tall Georgian warehouse was a placid and cozy world, her place in which she owed to the couple whom she knew as Uncle William and Aunt Lucy.
When Mr. Fawcus walked down the gangway of the steamer that rescued him from the wreck of that lifeboat and felt the terra-firma, as he called it,of Dover Quay beneath his feet, he knelt down just outside the Lord Warden Hotel and vowed that he would never attempt to leave his native land again.
"I've been teaching all my life," he told Mrs. Fawcus. "But I can still learn a lesson myself."
The problem of the future was a difficult one, and it was not simplified by the responsibility of the baby.
"Though, mark you," said Mr. Fawcus gravely, "I consider that the education of one English girl is of more importance than the education of a thousand Australian aborigines. Unfortunately I have come to the end of my capital, and in order to educate her it will be necessary for me to find some kind of moderately remunerative employment."
"I'm glad to hear you speak so sensible, Mr. Fawcus," said his wife.
"Bly, my dear, bly. Sensi-bly. Don't let a shipwreck destroy in one moment what I have spent years in teaching you: the distinction between an adjective and an adverb."
During their short intercourse with the Flowers Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus, or to be accurate Mrs. Fawcus, had elicited an account of the circumstances which had led up to their emigrating; when it began to look as if Mr. Fawcus was never going to find a suitable job, his wife argued that they ought to communicate with the baby's grandfather.
"If we were going to say anything at all," Mr. Fawcus objected, "we ought to have written the moment we found ourselves safe on shore. Having left it so long, we may appear to the eyes of Sir Richard Flower like kidnappers. She is such a good baby that I hate to give her up, and besides I did want to try my hand at an education completely independent of those obstinate and conservative creatures which we know generically as 'parents.'"
Nevertheless, Mr. Fawcus, in dread of the uncertain future, was at last driven by his wife's entreaties into communication with the grandfather of the baby whose guardianship he had assumed in the presence of death.
101 Floral Street,Near Covent Garden,March 3rd, 1860.Honored Sir,You have no doubt read with a father's grief, in which I beg leave most respectfully to share, the melancholy news of the loss of the emigrant ship, Wizard Queen, by collision off Beachy Head at 3 a.m. on the morning of the 18th ult., and by this time you have no doubt abandoned all hope of hearing that your son, Mr. Edward Flower, was saved. I do not write to raise false hopes in your breast. Alas! I had the melancholy satisfaction of seeing him in the lifeboat to which we both clung (rather than in which we both sat) swept overboard in a vain attempt to save his wife from a similar fate. It may, however, be some mitigation of your sorrow to learnthat he left behind him in the care of myself and wife a baby girl, who is at present sharing our humble room at the above address. We should deeply feel parting with the engaging infant; but we respectfully recognize the superior claims of her grandparents. I have the honor to await your instructions with regard to her disposal. Will you send a suitable nurse to convey the infant to your Seat? Or shall my good wife take upon herself the responsibility of personally delivering the infant at Barton Hall?I must apologize for the delay in notifying you of your granddaughter's fortunate survival; but I have recently been much occupied in trying to recover for myself the small niche in England which I so rashly abandoned in my ambition to put the glories of education within reach of the aborigines of Australia. In expectation of shortly hearing from you, I have the honor, Sir, to subscribe myselfYour most obedient humble servant,William Axworthy Fawcus.P. S.—I should add that I was formerly a schoolmaster, having been the proud possessor of several private schools in turn. Now for various reasons I find myself unable to devote myself any longer to the education of the young idea, and I have this morning entered into a contract with Messrs. Holland and Brown, the publishers of Paternoster Row, to invigilate their stock.W.A. F.
101 Floral Street,Near Covent Garden,March 3rd, 1860.Honored Sir,
You have no doubt read with a father's grief, in which I beg leave most respectfully to share, the melancholy news of the loss of the emigrant ship, Wizard Queen, by collision off Beachy Head at 3 a.m. on the morning of the 18th ult., and by this time you have no doubt abandoned all hope of hearing that your son, Mr. Edward Flower, was saved. I do not write to raise false hopes in your breast. Alas! I had the melancholy satisfaction of seeing him in the lifeboat to which we both clung (rather than in which we both sat) swept overboard in a vain attempt to save his wife from a similar fate. It may, however, be some mitigation of your sorrow to learnthat he left behind him in the care of myself and wife a baby girl, who is at present sharing our humble room at the above address. We should deeply feel parting with the engaging infant; but we respectfully recognize the superior claims of her grandparents. I have the honor to await your instructions with regard to her disposal. Will you send a suitable nurse to convey the infant to your Seat? Or shall my good wife take upon herself the responsibility of personally delivering the infant at Barton Hall?
I must apologize for the delay in notifying you of your granddaughter's fortunate survival; but I have recently been much occupied in trying to recover for myself the small niche in England which I so rashly abandoned in my ambition to put the glories of education within reach of the aborigines of Australia. In expectation of shortly hearing from you, I have the honor, Sir, to subscribe myself
Your most obedient humble servant,William Axworthy Fawcus.
P. S.—I should add that I was formerly a schoolmaster, having been the proud possessor of several private schools in turn. Now for various reasons I find myself unable to devote myself any longer to the education of the young idea, and I have this morning entered into a contract with Messrs. Holland and Brown, the publishers of Paternoster Row, to invigilate their stock.
W.A. F.
To this the baronet replied as follows:
Barton Hall,Barton Flowers, Hants,March 8, '60.Sir,I have no interest in my son's daughter. At the same time, I am not anxious to be under an obligation to strangers for her maintenance. If you insist on giving up your care of the baby, I must find some other worthy couple to look after her. If, on the other hand, you are willing to accept that responsibility and will let me hear that you are prepared to do so, I will instruct my lawyers, Messrs. Hepper and Philcox, to remit you the sum of £100 a year in quarterly instalments payable in advance until she reaches the age of ten years, when I shall communicate fresh proposals.Yours truly,Richard Flower.
Barton Hall,Barton Flowers, Hants,March 8, '60.Sir,
I have no interest in my son's daughter. At the same time, I am not anxious to be under an obligation to strangers for her maintenance. If you insist on giving up your care of the baby, I must find some other worthy couple to look after her. If, on the other hand, you are willing to accept that responsibility and will let me hear that you are prepared to do so, I will instruct my lawyers, Messrs. Hepper and Philcox, to remit you the sum of £100 a year in quarterly instalments payable in advance until she reaches the age of ten years, when I shall communicate fresh proposals.
Yours truly,Richard Flower.
Thus it befell that Mary continued to live with Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus, calling them Uncle William and Aunt Lucy, and indirectly being the cause of Mrs. Fawcus's getting nearer to an intimate mode of addressing her husband than she had ever reached before. The contract into which Mr. Fawcus had entered with Messrs. Holland and Brown might have been less grandly described as an engagement to be caretaker of their premises, for which he was paid the sum of eighteen shillings a week and allottedthe basement of kitchen, scullery, two rooms, a cellar, and a backyard.
"The task is in some respects a menial task," he told his wife. "But it is redeemed by the fact that I am a warden of books. Had I been invited to guard bales of dry goods, I should have declined the offer. I am ready in the cause of literature and learning to sacrifice what remains to me of scholastic dignity by exposing myself in thetoga virilisof service, in other words, a green baize apron, punctually at 6.30 a.m. to the public eye, and if the public eye chooses to regard my daily renovation of the brass, myquotidian lustrationof the steps, as menial, I merely say with what's hisnomen'per aspera ad astra.'"
"Well, all I beg is, Mr. Fawcus"—he had not become Uncle William yet—"all I beg is," said his wife, "you won't go preaching about St. Paul's Churchyard of a Sunday morning."
"In, my love, not about. On, my dear, not of. Your allusion was to the locality and date, not the subject of my discourse."
"Don't be so pernickety, Mr. Fawcus. You know quite well what I meant to say."
"The Queen's English, my dear, should share with the Queen's Person the privilege of inviolability. But set your mind at rest. Preserve themens sana in corpore sano. Now that we have been intrusted with the nonage of that cherub," he pointed to Mary asleep in her cot, "I do not intend to jeopardize the material comforts of this basement.Tu Marcelluseris!In other words, I intend to devote all my persuasive energy to Mary."
Mr. Fawcus kept his word. To be sure, he might say to his wife:
"Holland and Brown are going too far. They are impinging upon my pride. I felt very much inclined last night to utter a sternnoli me tangere. But I thought of Mary, and I refrained. Yes, I thought of our Mary and I agreed to give the disposal of the day's waste-paper, thedisjecta membraof their correspondence, my personal supervision."
Mr. Fawcus might complain of the advantage his employers took of his reduced circumstances; but he never did fail to remember what was owed to Mary. She was indeed the pivot of that basement in Paternoster Row, a little household goddess to whom the two old people accorded divine honors and through whom, brought close together by their common worship, they grew closer and closer to each other as the years went by. She was not a spoilt child, or at least she was not spoilt by anything except such humble treats and toys as her guardians could afford. Mrs. Fawcus was not a woman to give way out of laziness or weakness or fond affection to the exactions of childhood. She treated Mary in the same fashion as she had always treated her husband, that is to say, she loved and admired her as a superior being to herself, but she never allowed her to suppose that her behavior could not be criticized and corrected.
Mary herself at ten years old was a beautiful child, so beautiful that the degraded clothes of the period were incapable of concealing her beauty. From her mother she had inherited that auburn hair with all its texture of silk and all its abundance, but instead of brown eyes hers were deep blue, pellucid and round as speedwells. Sir Richard had such eyes once; and the painter who came to Barton Hall in the summer of 1810, without being afraid of the comparison, had painted him with a posy of cornflowers, his eyes following the flight of blue butterflies. Old James Taylor had such eyes to the end; but he was never painted in tight pantaloons and a frilled collar. If a little girl has auburn hair, and big deep blue eyes, and a complexion like a malmaison, she has no need to bother about her features. Actually Mary showed promise of fine features emerging one day from her dimples, and her hands were as fine and delicate as her grandmother's.
From being without the companionship of other children, Mary had acquired what were called old-fashioned ways, which meant that she would always join in the conversation of her uncle and aunt, pay much attention to the deportment of her dolls, and spend a great deal of time reading fairy tales by the kitchen fire. The basement of a city warehouse may seem a dreary place for a little girl to spend most of her time; but Mary found it as full of romance as one of her own picture books, and apart from such fleeting alarms as the threat of earthquakes orthe dread of sudden and violent robbery, echoes of which occasionally reached her when Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus discussed events that near bedtime little girls ought not to overhear, Mary found her home safe and cosy. The small yard at the back was not so much overshadowed by the tall houses round as to keep the sun from shining down upon it in summer; here Mary had several green boxes in which she grew pansies and creeping jenny, mignonette and red and white double daisies. Here too in a wicker cage outside the kitchen door lived Mary's thrush, who sang his country song while Mary sat gazing up at the golden cross on the dome of St. Paul's and wondering if the thrush would like to be sitting there and if it would be kinder to set him free. It was a very small yard; yet it seemed illimitable to Mary, and every brick in the wall was to her as large and interesting as a field.
But if the yard seemed vast, how much vaster appeared the upper portions of the house! Sometimes when work was over Mr. Fawcus would let Mary accompany him on his tour of inspection round the deserted premises. She was allowed to climb up ladders and read the names of books stacked away on the highest shelves, dusty books with titles that sounded most uninteresting, although the recitation of them evidently gave great pleasure to Uncle William. And then one day in an attic she discovered hundreds of picture books, nearly all fairy stories. When she announced her discovery, Uncle Williamshook his head and muttered, "Old stock! Old stock!"
"But, Uncle William, they're not old. They're quite new. Really they are—quite bright and not a bit torn. I foundThe Three Bearsand a story about a mother pig who frightened away a wolf when he came to gobble up her little pigs. And how do you think she did it? You'll never guess, Uncle William. Why, she rolled down the hill in a churn. What is a churn, Uncle William?"
This was exactly the kind of question dear to the heart of Mr. Fawcus, and before Mary went to bed that night she had been given an exhaustive discourse on dairy-farming, so that if she had listened as attentively as her aunt kept bidding her listen, she would have learned the difference between curds and whey, and all about rennet, and all about Stilton cheeses and Devonshire cream, and why butter won't come sometimes ... but alas! Mary did not listen, because her mind was far away upstairs in that attic.
It happened that the very next day she was sent on a message to one of the offices and that the gentleman to whom she gave the message, a dried-up gentleman with bright shining spectacles, asked her if she would like a penny to buy some lollipops.
"No, thank you, sir," said Mary, curtseying. "I'd like to go upstairs and look at those picture books at the top of the house."
Whereupon the dried-up gentleman mysteriouslymuttered, "Old stock! Old stock!" just like Uncle William yesterday.
"Why, you may go there whenever you like, my little maid," he told her.
"Fancy that!" exclaimed Mrs. Fawcus when she was informed of this by Mary. "Well, did you ever? I'm sure I never did. I never did know such an old-fashioned child in my life, Uncle William. Never! Fancy her asking such a thing of Mr. Bristowe."
"It's old stock," said Mr. Fawcus.
And Mary when she had been given leave by her uncle and aunt to avail herself of Mr. Bristowe's kind offer whispered "old stock" when she opened the door of that dusty attic, for she felt that it was an enchanted phrase like Open Sesame. The attic window looked down into the backyard of the basement, and Mary could not resist opening the window, for although she felt sure that she ought not to lean out of a window, inasmuch as she lived in a basement she had never actually been forbidden to lean out of windows. Yes, there were her flowers, such tiny specks of color, down below, and there was the dustbin looking more than ever like a knight in armor, and there was her thrush's cage. Hark! he was singing. She could hear his song above the thunder of the London streets. The attic window had a window-seat where Mary spent long lovely mornings in April reading those dusty picture books one after another, face to face with the clouds while thegolden cross upon the dome of St. Paul's glittered in the sun. On the sill were the remains of a battered window-box still half full of earth. In this Mary sowed nasturtium seeds which grew miraculously, so that soon when Mary was in the yard she could look up and see the orange and yellow flowers waving in the wind against the dingy bricks of the warehouse.
"Rapunzel, Rapunzel," she called. "Let down your golden hair."
"What are you talking about?" Mrs. Fawcus exclaimed.
"I'm being the witch," Mary told her.
"Which what?"
"The witch. The witch who climbed up to the tower by Rapunzel's golden hair."
"Did anybody ever hear anything like it?"
And when Mrs. Fawcus came out into the yard at Mary's invitation and looking up saw the nasturtiums, she was more exclamatory than ever.
"Well, it give me quite a turn," she vowed to Uncle William. "The like of that child was never known."
Nearly all the clerks in the office came up to look at Mary's nasturtiums; and Mr. Bristowe was so much delighted that he gave her a small red watering-can.
"It's a wonder the sparrows don't peck them to pieces," said Mr. Fawcus, when Mary's triumph was being discussed in the basement.
"If they did, they'd burn their tongues," said Mary.
"Well, now, did you ever hear a more old-fashioned remark?"
"Passer deliciæ meæ puellæ," boomed Mr. Fawcus.
Until Mary discovered that new world in the roof, her chief pleasure apart from the backyard had been a cellar in front of the basement which was lighted from a square of opaque glass set in the pavement of the street. She was willing to spend hours here, sitting on an old footstool, surrounded by her dolls and pretending to be a sea-nymph. A wet day, and it was chiefly on wet days that Mary frequented this cellar, heightened the illusion of being under the sea, because the skylight, if such an aperture may be called a skylight, when blurred with rain was more than usually aqueous, and the shadows of people passing overhead were more than usually like fish. Mrs. Fawcus, when she first heard of Mary's pastime, was moved to utter dark interpretations of it.
"Depend upon it, Uncle William, that child's life is going to be mixed up with deep water. Mark my words, she'll cross the sea many a time before she goes down to the grave."
"Do not vaticinate, my dear," her husband commanded. "Absit omen!"
"I don't know what you're talking about, but when any one thinks of that night ten years ago and when any one sees that dear innocent sitting outthere and staring up at the fishes, as she calls them, well, any one may be forgiven for doing what any one's told by their husband they mustn't do."
"Ten years ago," Mr. Fawcus repeated. "So it is. I wish you'd keep your thoughts to yourself sometimes, Aunt Lucy. Ten years ago!"
She shuddered, for he was thinking of those fresh proposals to be made in ten years.
"Here's the money from the lawyers," said Mrs. Fawcus one morning in March, handing her husband the familiar envelope which had arrived regularly every quarter-day.
Mr. Fawcus, on whose countenance a decade of looking after the stock of Messrs. Holland and Brown had not left a mark, became suddenly old and flabby when he read through that letter. In that moment even his Latinity deserted him. The dreadful fact could not be evaded like so many other facts in his life by ponderous rhetoric and polysyllabic euphemisms.
"We've got to give her up," he groaned.
His wife snatched the letter from him.
"Where's Mary?" she asked, quickly looking round before she said anything Mary ought not to hear.
"She's gone up to her attic to sow the seeds I bought her yesterday. She wanted to try sweet sultans this year. She's up in the attic sowing sweet sultans."
Mr. Fawcus buried his face in his hands and bentlow in unutterable despair, while his wife read the lawyer's letter.
151 Lamb's Conduit Street, W.C.,March 24, 1870.Dear Sir,We are instructed by our Client, Lady Flower of Barton Hall, Barton Flowers, to say that she has decided to receive into her house her granddaughter, Miss Mary Flower. We beg to enclose in addition to the usual quarterly allowance of £25 a check for £50, in order that Miss Mary Flower may be suitably equipped for the journey to Paris, where Lady Flower is now living and where she wishes her granddaughter to join her. If you will give us a call at your earliest convenience, we shall be happy to provide you with any advice you may require in respect of the journey. Lady Flower desires us to thank you for the care you have taken of Miss Mary Flower and begs that if you have not already explained to her the peculiar circumstances in which you took charge of her you will do so now.In case you may not be acquainted with the facts, we may add that a year after Mr. Edward Flower lost his life in the wreck of the Wizard Queen, his elder brother, Mr. John Flower, was killed in the hunting-field. By the death of Sir Richard Flower, which occurred last November, Lady Flower inherited the whole of his property and she is no doubtanxious to provide suitably for the youngest and only surviving member of the family.Yours faithfully,Hepper and Philcox.
151 Lamb's Conduit Street, W.C.,March 24, 1870.
Dear Sir,
We are instructed by our Client, Lady Flower of Barton Hall, Barton Flowers, to say that she has decided to receive into her house her granddaughter, Miss Mary Flower. We beg to enclose in addition to the usual quarterly allowance of £25 a check for £50, in order that Miss Mary Flower may be suitably equipped for the journey to Paris, where Lady Flower is now living and where she wishes her granddaughter to join her. If you will give us a call at your earliest convenience, we shall be happy to provide you with any advice you may require in respect of the journey. Lady Flower desires us to thank you for the care you have taken of Miss Mary Flower and begs that if you have not already explained to her the peculiar circumstances in which you took charge of her you will do so now.
In case you may not be acquainted with the facts, we may add that a year after Mr. Edward Flower lost his life in the wreck of the Wizard Queen, his elder brother, Mr. John Flower, was killed in the hunting-field. By the death of Sir Richard Flower, which occurred last November, Lady Flower inherited the whole of his property and she is no doubtanxious to provide suitably for the youngest and only surviving member of the family.
Yours faithfully,Hepper and Philcox.
Mrs. Fawcus went across to where her husband was still sitting with bowed head.
"William!" she murmured. It was the first time in thirty-five years of married life that she had dared to call him simply that.
"William!" she repeated more confidently, for the outward semblance of things had not been changed by her daring address. "You must writethema letter."
"It would be useless, my dear," he muttered without raising his head. "Useless, utterly and completely useless. A labor of Sisyphus, my love."
Nevertheless, Mr. Fawcus was persuaded to try, and he composed the following letter to Messrs. Hepper and Philcox:
c/o Messrs. Holland and Brown,Publishers,95 Paternoster Row,London, E.C.,March 25, 1870.Dear Sirs,Your communication of the 24th inst. with kind enclosures was duly received. For the moment I am too much disturbed by the situation thus createdto express worthily my repugnance to the notion of losing Miss Mary Flower. I should esteem it a favor if you would, so far as the emotions of a suppositious father can be suitably conveyed through the medium of legal phraseology, convey to Her Ladyship that my good wife and myself are most anxious not to part with the child whom we literally snatched from the angry deep. With all respect I venture to observe that until this moment none of her relatives has shown the slightest concern for the child's welfare beyond the quarterly allowance of £25 sterling. Mrs. Fawcus and myself on the other hand have never felt anything but the profoundest affection for her, and I can assure you that we would have left ourselves with nothing more than the bare necessities of life rather than that she should have wanted for the least thing.In the hope of shortly receiving from you a favorable reply to my request,I am, Gentlemen,Your obedient servant,William Axworthy Fawcus.
c/o Messrs. Holland and Brown,Publishers,95 Paternoster Row,London, E.C.,March 25, 1870.Dear Sirs,
Your communication of the 24th inst. with kind enclosures was duly received. For the moment I am too much disturbed by the situation thus createdto express worthily my repugnance to the notion of losing Miss Mary Flower. I should esteem it a favor if you would, so far as the emotions of a suppositious father can be suitably conveyed through the medium of legal phraseology, convey to Her Ladyship that my good wife and myself are most anxious not to part with the child whom we literally snatched from the angry deep. With all respect I venture to observe that until this moment none of her relatives has shown the slightest concern for the child's welfare beyond the quarterly allowance of £25 sterling. Mrs. Fawcus and myself on the other hand have never felt anything but the profoundest affection for her, and I can assure you that we would have left ourselves with nothing more than the bare necessities of life rather than that she should have wanted for the least thing.
In the hope of shortly receiving from you a favorable reply to my request,
I am, Gentlemen,Your obedient servant,William Axworthy Fawcus.
It was settled not to say anything to Mary until the lawyers wrote again:
151 Lamb's Conduit Street, W.C.April 3, 1870.Dear Sir,We have to say in answer to your letter of the 25th ult. that we have communicated the substanceof your request to Lady Flower, and that she is unable to agree to your suggestion that Miss Mary Flower should remain in your care. We take this opportunity to point out that when in March, 1860, the late Sir Richard Flower invited you to look after his granddaughter he made it clear that such an arrangement was for ten years, at the end of which time he gave you to understand the future of the child would once more come up for discussion.Hoping that we shall hear from you in the course of a day or two, appointing a time to call upon us,We are,Yours faithfully,Hepper and Philcox.
151 Lamb's Conduit Street, W.C.April 3, 1870.Dear Sir,
We have to say in answer to your letter of the 25th ult. that we have communicated the substanceof your request to Lady Flower, and that she is unable to agree to your suggestion that Miss Mary Flower should remain in your care. We take this opportunity to point out that when in March, 1860, the late Sir Richard Flower invited you to look after his granddaughter he made it clear that such an arrangement was for ten years, at the end of which time he gave you to understand the future of the child would once more come up for discussion.
Hoping that we shall hear from you in the course of a day or two, appointing a time to call upon us,
We are,Yours faithfully,Hepper and Philcox.
"Who's to tell Mary?" Mrs. Fawcus asked with fear in her voice.
"Well, I had thought of your telling her," Mr. Fawcus admitted. "But perhaps the most equitable way would be for us both to tell her."
The worst of it was that, when they did brace themselves to tell her and were prepared at whatever cost to themselves to alleviate in every possible way her grief, Mary herself jumped for joy at the notion of visiting her grandmother in France.
"She doesn't mean to be cruel," said Mrs. Fawcus, patting her husband's arm reassuringly.
"No, no, certainly not," he agreed. "It's just the heedlessness of youth."
Mrs. Fawcus sighed.
"We were young once ourselves, Mr. Fawcus." The imminent departure of Mary made "Uncle William" sound ridiculous now, and Mrs. Fawcus went back to her time-honored mode of address.
"Many years ago, my love," he said, shaking his head. "And I'm afraid that you've had much to put up with since then. I have wasted my opportunities sadly. I ought to have been in a superb position by now."
"I'm sure I don't wish for anything better than what we've got," Mrs. Fawcus declared, trying to sound cheerful. "I'm sure as basements go, one couldn't wish for a nicer basement. It's so lovely and light for one thing."
"If I were to die, my dear, I'm convinced that Holland and Brown would offer you the refusal of my post."
"Oh, don't talk like that, Mr. Fawcus. Die? What ever next, to be sure?"
"Tempora, mutantur nos et mutamur in illis.It won't be the same without our Mary."
"You're going to make me cry if you keep on keeping on so." Mrs. Fawcus uttered a few warning sniffles.
At that moment she, who by her reception of the news had added the last bitterness to the separation, came dancing back from her dolls to whom as a great secret she had been telling about her departure.
"Do you think my granny will be like a fairy god-mother?" Mary asked. "Because if she is I shall ask her to wave her magic wand and bring my dear Uncle William and my dear Aunt Lucy to France."
"Will you, Mary, will you? But I'm too old and fat to be waved by fairy godmothers," said Mr. Fawcus sadly.
Mary began to understand at last that her going away was a grief to her kind guardians, and as she had often done before, when it seemed advisable to propitiate Uncle William, or when Uncle William came downstairs very angry over some new task that Holland and Brown had laid upon him, she asked him a question.
"How big is France, Uncle William?" And folding her hands across her clean pinafore she composed herself to listen more attentively to a long account of France than she had ever listened to any of Uncle William's exegetical discourses before.
But Uncle William did not answer, and Mary, horrified at his silence, began to cry.
"For goodness' sake, child, don't wipe your eyes on your clean pinafore," Mrs. Fawcus sharply adjured her. It was like Mrs. Fawcus to have put Mary into a clean pinafore just to learn that she was to be taken from them.
A shaft of sunlight, the first of the year to reach the basement, came glancing through the geraniums in the window and lit up the cosy kitchen; but it was a cruel shaft, for it lit up also the weary lines and the baggy eyes of Mr. Fawcus: it lit up the crows-feet and the wrinkles of his wife; and most cruelly of all it lit up Mary's auburn hair, reminding the old couple that, though the sun might shine all the summer through, here it would never shine again upon that auburn hair.
The next fortnight went by for Mary in such a whirl of exciting new experiences as no child of ten could be expected not to enjoy, and she was hardly to be blamed if she did appear hard-hearted in her behavior on the verge of parting with her guardians. She could hardly be blamed for not realizing how unlikely it was that she would ever see either of them again, and in justice to the old couple it must be said that neither of them tried to gratify their emotion at Mary's expense. Once the first shock had passed, they did their best to prepare her for a worthy entrance upon the new scene, at whatever cost to themselves. A number of dresses were bought, each one more outrageous than the last, and each one seeming as much more beautiful to Mary.
"I feel like Cinderella going to the ball," she told Mrs. Fawcus.
"Ah, my dear, you'll find that life isn't quite such a fairy story as you think it is now," replied Mrs. Fawcus.
And this was as near as she got to a hint of cynicism in her advice to the little girl.
For the visit to the lawyers Mr. Fawcus arrayed himself in a black suit he had not worn for eleven years, in fact, not since the annual prize-giving atthe last school he owned. It had been packed in the bottom of a large trunk to go to Australia, where it was intended to be worn at the ceremonious welcomes that Mr. Fawcus hoped to receive in his new country. By good fortune this trunk had missed being put on board theWizard Queen, and both Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus had been able to live for ten years on the clothes it had contained.
Mr. Hepper and Mr. Philcox were even more desiccated than Mr. Bristowe of Holland and Brown's. Both their waistcoats were dusty with snuff, so dusty that if Mr. Philcox had not happened to prick his finger while he was talking to Mary and displayed on the tip of it an infinitesimal but withal definitely recognizable drop of blood Mary might have thought that they were stuffed with sawdust like her own dolls.
"And what arrangements have you made for conveying Miss Flower to her grandmother?" asked Mr. Hepper.
"Mrs. Fawcus will conduct her to Paris," said Mr. Fawcus. "I should have taken her myself if I had not recorded a solemn vow on Dover Quay ten years ago never to cross the sea again."
"Ah, that would be after you were wrecked, no doubt," said Mr. Philcox. "Yes—um—ah! I've never been wrecked myself, Mr. Fawcus."
"It is an experience which happily falls to the lot of few," said Mr. Fawcus.
"Yes—um—ah! Then I may take it as definitethat this young lady will leave by the Dover packet on Wednesday next. How is the glass, Mr. Hepper?"
"The glass is steady, Mr. Philcox."
"The glass augurs well for the voyage across, Mr. Fawcus. You hear what Mr. Hepper says."
"Is there anything more you wish to tell me?" Mr. Fawcus inquired, bowing to each of the partners in turn.
Mr. Hepper looked at Mr. Philcox, who shook his head.
"Nothing more, thank you, Mr. Fawcus," they declared in unison.
Mr. Fawcus was about to take his leave, when Mr. Philcox held up his hand.
"But wait a minute. Dear me, we have forgotten something. Yes—um—ah! Lady Flower instructed us that if on inquiries we should find that you had suitably performed your duty towards her granddaughter we should offer you this handsome token of appreciation."
Mr. Philcox flourished an envelope.
"I am happy to say, Mr. Fawcus, that our inquiries have proved perfectly satisfactory, and so perhaps you will take a little peep inside and also, I think, Mr. Hepper, it might be more in order if Mr. Fawcus were to sign this little receipt."
"Please thank her ladyship from me," said Mr. Fawcus grandly, putting the envelope down on the lawyer's table. "But the only token of her appreciation that I or Mrs. Fawcus should esteem would be an occasional communication from her lawyers if she does not care to write herself letting us know that—er—this young lady is well and happy. I wish you a very good morning, gentlemen." Mr. Fawcus made a bow, and left the office with Mary.
A few days later Mr. Fawcus, from the gliding shore, was waving farewell to the little girl.
"Don't forget to water my sweet sultans, Uncle William," Mary cried above the turmoil of the paddles.
"The less you say about water to poor Uncle William," Mrs. Fawcus commented almost sharply, "the better. It must have been just here that he carried you ashore in his arms ten years ago."
The steamer backed and brought poor Uncle William within earshot again.
"I was telling Mary that just about here you carried her ashore," Mrs. Fawcus called to her husband.
"Sunt lacrimæ rerum," he chanted, and, when this time the paddles churned up the water in earnest, Mr. Fawcus buried his face in a bandana handkerchief and waved a limp glove from the receding shore, a limp glove that pathetically expressed the condition of mind and body to which its owner was by now reduced.
The journey was too full of excitement for Mary to be long saddened by the vision of Mr. Fawcus on the quay. Most children remember their first Channel crossing; but this great event in Mary's case wasmade doubly noteworthy from its being the only adventure of any importance she had ever known, so placid had been her life in that Paternoster Row basement.
"Ah, you wouldn't be dancing about quite so gaily, Miss, if you could remember the first time you was on the sea," said Mrs. Fawcus. "Still, I'm bound to say you behaved very well then, all considering. Though why you didn't die of that perishing wind I'm sure I don't know, and that's a fact."
"Shall we be wrecked to-day, Aunt Lucy?"
"For the love of mercy, don't talk of such things," Mrs. Fawcus begged. "If you feel sick, chew a bit of lemon peel and let it come. Don't be afraid. Them as manages this boat have seen thousands of people sick. They don't consider it any more than blowing the nose, as you might say."
But Mary was not sick, and when Mrs. Fawcus came back to Paternoster Row she told her husband of this convincing indication of a mysterious bond between Mary and the sea.
"If I have a window-box in Paris," said Mary, when the chalk cliffs of England were become ghosts in the mist, "I shall plant sweet williams, because Uncle William is sweet, isn't he, Aunt Lucy?"
"Bless your heart, my little treasure," Mrs. Fawcus exclaimed as she clasped Mary to her heart. "It'll be meat and drink to poor Uncle William to hear that."
When the various difficulties of customs and porters and trains and cabs had been surmounted, and Mary holding tightly to the hand of Mrs. Fawcus was standing on the steps of her grandmother's house in the Avenue de Wagram, she felt a sudden desire to turn round and go back to the basement in Paternoster Row. So far it had all been a delightful adventure, but now she was tired of the adventure and was thinking about her thrush which always sang so sweetly in the month of April.
"Oh dear, I wish itwasreally a dream and that I was going to wake up now," she whispered to Mrs. Fawcus; but just then the door opened, and in a moment Mary was inside her grandmother's house.
She was vaguely aware, when she was stumping upstairs behind the footman, of tiger-skins and dark paneled walls and soft carpets; but before she had time to look round, two great doors had been flung open, and while Mrs. Fawcus drew back she had to walk over an immense slippery floor to where in a kind of inner room her grandmother was reading a yellow book by the fire. She heard from far away in that vast outer room the sharp whisper of Aunt Lucy: "Run along quick and give your grandmother a nice kiss." However, Mary did not dare to run, but stepped very carefully over the head first of a polar bear and then of a black bear until she stood before her grandmother's chair.
"I've come to see you, Grandmamma," she announced.
Lady Flower rose from her chair and looked critically at the little girl for a moment before she bent over and kissed her cheek.
"And is this good woman Mrs. Fawcus?" she asked.
"That's Aunt Lucy," said Mary.
Lady Flower frowned slightly.
"I expect you'll like a cup of tea after your journey, Mrs. Fawcus," she said, pulling a big purple bell-rope that hung before the fireplace.
"Oh, no, thank you, my lady. Nothing at all, thank you. I think I ought to be getting back to Mr. Fawcus as soon as possible."
"Is your husband waiting outside?" Lady Flower inquired.
"Oh, no, thank you, my lady. He sent many apologies for not coming too, but he's never been to sea since he was wrecked."
The footman came in at this moment, and Lady Flower told him to take Mrs. Fawcus downstairs for a cup of tea.
"Oh, no, thank you, my lady. Too kind of you, I'm sure, but I'd really rather be going, now that I've seen Mary safely here. I've arranged to go back to Calais and wait there the night. Mr. Fawcus thought he'd be less anxious that way than if I was to stay in Paris all by myself. We shall miss Mary most terribly, my lady. If I might just kiss her good-by and be off? I'm sure it's a pity Mr.Fawcus couldn't have come. He's much superior to me in every way."
"Well, if you insist on going back at once," said Lady Flower, who was beginning to think that after all she had nothing to say to Mrs. Fawcus, and who would have cut out her tongue rather than ask the one question she wanted to ask about the death of her son.
"Yes, indeed I think I will, my lady, and thank you kindly, I'm sure, for the offer of tea."
Mrs. Fawcus darted forward, kissed Mary passionately several times, and seemed to slide out of the room across the parquet and out of her life forever.
When Lady Flower was alone with her granddaughter she was more at ease. She was little changed by ten years; she was still the same delicately ivorine creature as when she banished this child's father from her heart with words of contempt for this child's mother. Not that she ever really did banish Edward; the death of her elder son with all his valor and renown did not touch her half so deeply as the loss of Edward. If it had not been for Sir Richard's determination to ignore Edward's offspring she might long ago have sent for Mary. Her husband's bitterness against Edward, drowned dead though he was by that time, was intensified when John was killed in the hunting-field. He declared fiercely to his wife that he was glad Edward had not left a son, for that he would ratherthe name and title of the Flowers should perish utterly than that the fruit of his son's disgraceful alliance with one of his own tenants should carry on both.
Mary was astonished to find how young her grandmother was. She had expected a very old lady—almost she had pictured her with a spinning-wheel and wearing a steeple-crowned hat—who would be bent double and talk in a high, cracked voice. Instead of that she found some one who looked much younger than Aunt Lucy.
"You'll have to go to school, you know," her grandmother was saying. "You'll have a great deal to learn. Let me look at your hands, child. Dear me, I believe you're going to have hands like mine. But your nails are a little grubby."
"That's because I've been gardening all last week."
"Gardening? Where did you garden in London?"
"In the attic. Mr. Bristowe let me garden there."
"No wonder your nails are grubby. And who is Mr. Bristowe?"
"He was the manager of Holland and Brown, where Uncle William was caretaker."
Lady Flower shuddered.
"Listen, Mary. I would rather you gave up calling Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus uncle and aunt. They are not any relation to you, and now that you are getting older you must learn to speak of them as Mr. Fawcus and Mrs. Fawcus."
"But I always called them Uncle William and Aunt Lucy."
Lady Flower tapped her foot impatiently.
"I know that, and that is why I want you to break yourself of the habit of calling them uncle and aunt. They are good and worthy people, but you are going to lead quite a different kind of life nowadays, and it wouldn't do...."
Lady Flower hesitated. Worldly woman though she was, she hesitated almost shamefacedly to tell this child gazing up at her with astonished eyes that Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus were common. She decided to let her granddaughter learn gradually to be ashamed of the lowly couple who had watched over her from infancy to girlhood.
"You have my hands, and you have your father's eyes," said Lady Flower, changing the subject.
"And my mother's hair, Aunt Lucy said."
"Yes, and now I think you'd better go and take off your things. We'll go shopping to-morrow, and when you're equipped I'll take you myself to the school where you're going to learn...." Once again Lady Flower broke off. She had been on the point of saying: "To forget all about your life in London." Perhaps if she had known that Mary had lived in a basement she would not have been able to refrain, for life in a basement would have seemed to Lady Flower unimaginably squalid.
"Go shopping again?" echoed Mary in amazement. "Why, all these last days I've been shopping with Aunt Lucy."
"Yes, I did not want you to arrive in rags."
Mary found that there were many other things her grandmother did not want before she had been long in her new home. Accustomed to have her ordinary behavior regarded with admiration and approval by Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus, she could not understand that to her grandmother her manners appeared uncouth, her habit of speech common. She was continually being reproved for the way she held her knife and fork, or for using a spoon naturally, that is by putting the narrow end into her mouth first.
"But if I drink my soup sideways I make a noise," she expostulated. "And Aunt Lucy—I mean Mrs. Fawcus told me not to make a noise."
"I do not make a noise, do I?" Grandmamma asked with raised eyebrows.
Mary longed to tell her that she did make a noise sometimes and that, when she was drinking, in the silence of the large dining-room it sounded like pigeons cooing far away.
"And don't keep pulling up your stockings like that," Grandmamma would say.
"But one of them keeps coming down."
"In that case go to Adèle and ask her to tighten your garter."
"But it's too tight already," Mary objected."When I undress you can see all crinkles where it was round my leg."
"And don't argue with people older than yourself," Grandmamma would conclude.
At first Mary had rather enjoyed the ceremoniousness with which she was treated by Lady Flower's servants, enjoyed being called Mademoiselle and having doors flung open for her and never having to get up in the middle of dinner and fetch clean plates. She felt like one of her own fairy heroines who had sprung from goose-girl to princess in a night. But all too soon grandeur began to be wearisome, and when she saw the maids disappearing into what Lady Flower called "the lower regions" she felt that she would like to disappear too.
A warm and cosy smell sometimes penetrated "the upper regions" from the open door at the head of the staircase leading down to the kitchens, and this emphasized the frigidity above. At first Mary liked her new frocks and sashes and ribbons, but she never liked having her hair brushed and combed by Adèle. And soon she grew to dislike her new frocks, because they became associated with endless afternoons in thesalon, when numbers of ladies chattered French, ladies who either smelled very strongly of scent or of being ladies and who had not that pleasant soapy aroma of Aunt Lucy. At first Mary enjoyed walking in the Parc Monceau with Grandmamma or driving with her to the Bois de Boulogne; but soon these walks and drives became tiresome,for she was continually being told to hold herself up or not to turn round and stare or to talk without shouting. In the basement at Paternoster Row she had never missed the company of other children; but here in the Parc Monceau, which was full of children, Mary began to long for playmates. She took to lingering behind Grandmamma on these walks, and when she was reproved for doing so she always made the same excuse that she had waited behind a moment to see what that little boy or that little girl was doing. Lady Flower had enough sympathy and imagination to realize that Mary was beginning to feel the need of companions, so she arranged to have a children's party for her granddaughter. But Mary did not enjoy this party at all. The little girls invited were so very well behaved. Nobody romped or did any of the jolly things children did in books. They treated Mary with grave courtesy, calling her Mademoiselle, and except that the guests were in short frocks and wore their hair down there was no difference between this party and one of Grandmamma's crowded afternoons in thesalon.
"I really must make up my mind to take you to Châteaublanc," Grandmamma proclaimed after Mary had been in Paris for nearly two months. "Did you tell me that Mr. Fawcus taught you to read and write?"
"Yes, and he said I learned very quickly."
"So I should think," Grandmamma commenteddryly. "I'm afraid you'll have a hard time at school."
Mary began to dread this school which was always being talked about, and every time with some unpleasant addition to its already long list of disagreeable potentialities.
"I didn't intend to go to Aix until late in the summer," said Grandmamma. "And I had thought of keeping you with me until then, but perhaps it's unwise to postpone your education any longer. So I'll take you there next week. I've written to Mademoiselle Lucinge and suggested that you should stay right on through the summer holidays, so that by Christmas, when you'll be nearly eleven years old, won't you, I shall expect to see quite a different Mary."
Perhaps Mary looked sad at the notion of the change that was to be wrought in her by so many consecutive months of Mademoiselle Lucinge'sPension. At any rate, Lady Flower became momentarily affectionate, as she put her arm round Mary and said:
"It's not your fault, you poor little thing, and you mustn't think I'm unkind. But I do want you to be able to get a great deal out of life, and there's nothing that is so terribly able to prevent that as not knowing exactly how to behave."
Mary stared at her grandmother, utterly incapable of understanding what she was talking about.
The old lady—for when Lady Flower unbent shesuddenly became an old lady—took Mary upon her knee.
"You funny little thing," she said, "you and I are so very much alone in the world."
Then a moment later she disengaged herself from Mary's warm, responsive embrace and became her ivorine self.
"When you go to school, I want you to give up writing to Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus. There will have to come a moment when you quite break off communication with them, and it had better be sooner than later. They have both behaved very well, which shows that they understand how completely the relationship between you and them has changed. Now give me a kiss and run off to Adèle. It is time you were in bed."
Mary went sadly upstairs and dreamed of a castle full of dungeons and of being chased by a crocodile, the castle being thepension de jeunes fillesand the crocodile being Mademoiselle Lucinge herself.
A week after this Lady Flower succeeded in making up her mind to brave the long railway journey down through the heart of France and leave her granddaughter at Châteaublanc.
"Perhaps after all I could go to Aix earlier this year," she sighed with the air of proclaiming a martyrdom.
It was a fine June morning when they set out from the Gare de Lyon; but Mary became sad and apprehensive as one green mile after another was leftbehind under the changeless blue sky, for though she had ceased to pine for the life of the basement in Paternoster Row, she always felt while she was still in Paris that she knew the way back and that if ever she should be faced with something unbearably disagreeable, she should be able to escape. Now she was being carried farther away every moment like that bluebottle who was buzzing on the warm glass of the carriage windows. She began to make up a story about that bluebottle while Grandmamma dozed among her cushions on the opposite seat—a story of how this father bluebottle would arrive at Châteaublanc and try to find the mother bluebottle and all the little bluebottles. Of course if he knew the way back he would be better off than herself, because he would be able to fly. But he wouldn't know the way back, and he would go buzzing about Châteaublanc trying to find his home until one day he would be killed, and the mother bluebottle and all the little bluebottles in Paris would never know what had become of him. Mary was so much moved by the woeful story that she felt a tear spring to her eyes and a lump in her throat. If only she had thought of it sooner, she might have let the bluebottle out. Perhaps even now he would not have traveled too far to know his way back. Mary raised the blind and tried to help the bluebottle out of the open window with her handkerchief; but he did not seem able to understand that she was trying to help him and went buzzing all over the compartment until at last he buzzed across Grandmamma's nose and woke her up.
"What are you doing, Mary?"
Mary did not like to explain just what she was really doing. So she looked abashed and said that she was doing nothing.
"Well, don't," said Grandmamma, dozing off again.
Mary tried to think how one did not do nothing; which raised an old problem of how one thought about nothing, and she tried once more to think about nothing.
"But if I think about nothing," she thought, "I'm thinking about thinking about nothing. And if I think about thinking about nothing I'm thinking about something."
She once asked Uncle William if he could think about nothing and if not why not. Whereupon Uncle William had told her that Parmenides had been puzzled by the same problem two thousand years ago and more.
"Who was Pa Many D's?" Mary had asked, for that was the way she pictured the name.
Uncle William had informed her that Parmenides was a philosopher who founded the Eleatic school.
"Well, when I'm old I'll marry a philosopher," Mary had announced, for it sounded a pleasant word to say and a pleasant thing to be, and Uncle William had founded schools. Mary thought about Pa Many D's now in the hot dusty railway carriage, andtried to remember what school he founded. But she could only think of "asthmatic" and "rheumatic," neither of which sounded right.
Mary printed S-K-O-O-L on the window with a wet finger, shuddered, and looking round perceived that the bluebottle had escaped.
At that moment the train puffed into Dijon station, where Grandmamma waking up decided it was time to have lunch. Mary enjoyed that while it lasted. But after lunch Grandmamma went more fast asleep than ever; the carriage grew hotter and hotter; the country grew greener and greener, and the sky more blue.
"Pouff!" Mary sighed. "Pouff-ff-ff!"
The train reached Macon, when Mary was in the middle of speculating how many times she had said pouff since Dijon.
"I must have said a thrillion pouffs," she decided, and wished that Grandmamma would wake up and be conversational, so that she might display her acquaintance with that numeral. Or perhaps she had better reserve it for Mademoiselle Lucinge. How could she bring it in? Mary began to compose the interview with her mistress.