Chapter XVI: Part 16

"Thank you: and I'd rather suffocate than accept your help--now. Listen to myself, indeed! That's just the pious hypocrite all over. Well, declarations of love you know quite enough about for your--for your age. Now you shall hear one of a different kind. I tell you, Midgetina, I hate you: I can't endure the sight or sound or creep or thought of you any longer. Why? Because of your unspeakable masquerade. You play the pygmy; pygmy you are: carried about, cosseted, smirked at, fattened on nightingales' tongues--the last, though, you'll ever eat. But where have you come from? What are you in your past--in your mind? I ask you that: a thing more everywhere, more thief-like, more detestable than a conscience. Look at me, as we sit here now. _I_ am the monstrosity. You see it, you think it, you hate even to touch me. From first moment to last you have secretly despised me--me! I'm not accusing you. You weren't your own maker. As often as not you don't know what you are saying. You are just an automaton. But these last nights I have lain awake and thought of it all. It came on me as if my life had been nothing but a filthy, aimless nightmare; and chiefly because of you. I've worked, I've thought, I've contrived and forced my way. Oh, that house, the wranglings, the sermons. Did I make myself what I am, ask to be born? No, it's all a devilish plot. And I say this, that while things are as they are, and this life is life, and this world _my_ world, I refuse to be watched and taunted and goaded and defamed."

Her face stooped closer, fascinating, chilling me like a cold cloud with its bright, hunted, malevolent stare. She stretched out a hand and wrung my shoulder. "Listen, I say. Come out of that trance! I loathe you, you holy imp. You haunt me!"

My eyes shut. I sat shivering, empty of self, listening, as if lost in a fog in a place desperately strange to me; and only a distant sea breaking and chafing on its stones far below. Then once more I became conscious of the steady and resolute droning of the bees; felt the breathing of actuality on my hair, on my cheek. My eyes opened on a garden sucked dry of colour and reality, and sought her out. She had left me, was standing a few paces distant now, looking back, as if dazed, her lips pale, her eyes dark-ringed.

"Perhaps you didn't quite hear all that, Midgetina. You led me on. You force things out of me till I am sick. But some day, when you are as desperate as I have been, it will come back to you. Then you'll know what it is to be human. But there can't be any misunderstanding left now, can there?"

I shook my head. "No, Fanny. I shall know you hate me."

"And I am free?"

What could she mean? I nodded.

She turned, pushed up her parasol. "What a talk! But better done with."

"Yes, Fanny," said I obediently. "Much better done with."

She gave me an odd glance out of the corner of her eye. "The queer thing is," she went on, "what I wanted to say was something quite, quite different. To give you a friendly word of warning, entirely on your own account.... You have a rival, Midgetina."

The words glided away into silence. The doves crooned on the housetop. The sky was empty above the distant hills. I did not stir, and am thankful I had the cowardice to ask no questions.

"Her name is Angelique. She lives in a Castle in Spain"; sighed the calm, silky voice, with the odd break or rasp in it I knew so well. "Oh, I agree a circus-rider is nothing better than a mongrel, a pariah, worse probably. Yet this one has her little advantages. As Midgets go, she beats you by at least four inches, and rides, sings, dances, tells fortunes. Quite a little Woman of the World. The only really troublesome thing about it is that she makes you jiltable, my dear. They are so very seductive, these flounced up, painted things. _No_ principle! And, oh, my dear; all this just as dear Mrs Monnerie has set her heart on finding her Queen Bee a nice little adequate drone for a husband!"

It was her last taunt. It was over. I had heard the worst. The arrow I had been waiting for had sprung true to its mark. Its barb was sticking there in my side. And yet, as I mutely looked up at her, I knew there was a word between us which neither could utter. The empty air had swallowed up the sound of our voices. Its enormous looking-glass remained placid and indifferent. It was as if all that we had said, or, for that matter, suffered, was of no account, simply because we were not alone. For the first instant in the intimacy of my love and hatred, Fanny seemed to be just any young woman standing there, spiteful, meaningless. The virtue had gone out of her. She made up her mouth, glanced uneasily over her shoulder and turned away.

We were never again to be alone together, except in remembrance.

I sat on in the garden till the last thin ray of sunlight was gone. Then, in dread that my enemy might be looking down from the windows of the house, I slipped and shuffled from bush to bush in the dusk, and so at last made my way into the house, and climbed the dark polished staircase. As, stealthily, I passed a bedroom door ajar, my look pierced through the crevice. It was a long, stretching, shallow room, and at the end of it, in the crystal quiet, stood Fanny, her arms laid on the chimney-piece, her shoulder blades sticking out of her muslin gown, her face hidden in her hands.

Why did I not venture in to speak to her? I had never seen a figure so desolate and forsaken. Could things ever be so far gone as to say No to that? I hesitated; turned away: she would think I had come only to beg for mercy.

For hours I sat dully brooding. What a trap I was in. In my rummagings in the Monnerie library I had once chanced on a few yellow cardboard-covered novels tucked away in a cupboard, and had paddled in one or two of them. Now I realized that my life also was nothing but "a Shocker." So people actually suffered and endured the horrible things written about in cheap, common books.

One by one I faced Fanny's charges in my mind. None was true, yet none was wholly false. And none was of any consequence beside the fact that she execrated the very self in me of which I could not be conscious. And what would she do? What did all those covert threats and insinuations mean? A "husband"--why had that such a dreadful power to wound me? I heard my teeth begin to chatter again. There was no defence, no refuge anywhere. If I could get no quiet, I should go mad. I looked up from my stool. It was dark. It was a scene made for me. I could watch the miserable little occupant of its stage roving to and fro like one of my showman's cowed, mangy beasts.

The thought of the day still ahead of me, through which I must somehow press on, keep alive, half stupefied me with dread. We can shut our eyes and our mouths and our hearts; why cannot we stop thinking? The awful passive order of life: its mechanicalness. All that I could see was the blank white face of its clock--but no more of the wheels than of the Winder. No haste, no intervention, no stretching-out beyond one's finger tips. So the world wore away; life decayed; the dunghill smoked. Mrs Monnerie there; stepping into her brougham, ebony cane in hand, Marvell at her elbow; Mrs Bowater languishing on board ship, limp head in stiff frilling; Sir Walter dumb; the showman cursing his wretched men; the bills being posted, the implacable future mutely yawning, the past unutterable. Everything in its orbit. Was there no help, no refuge?

The door opened and the skimpy little country girl who waited on me in Fleming's absence, brought in my supper. She bobbed me a scared curtsey, and withdrew. Then she, too, had been poisoned against me. I flung myself down on the floor, crushing my hands against my ears. Yet, through all this dazed helplessness, in one resolve I never faltered. I would keep my word to the showman, and this night that was now in my room should be the last I would spend alive in Monk's House. Fanny must do her worst. Thoughts of her, of my unhappy love and of her cruelty, could bring no good. Yet I thought of her no less. Her very presence in the house lurked in the air, in the silence, like an apparition's.

Still stretched on the floor, I woke to find the September constellations faintly silvering the pale blue crystal of the Northern Lights; and the earth sighing as if for refuge from the rising moon. My fears and troubles had fallen to rest beneath my dreams, and I prepared myself for the morrow's flight.

Chapter Forty-Nine

When next Fanny and I met, it was in the cool grey-green summery drawing-room at Monk's House, and Mrs Monnerie and Susan shared tea with us. One covert glance at Mrs Monnerie's face had reassured me. That strange mask was as vigilant and secretive, but as serene, as when it had first smiled on me in the mauves and gildings of Brunswick House. She had set her world right again and was at peace with mankind. As complacently as ever she stretched me out her finger. She had not even taken the trouble to forgive me for my little "scene"; had let it perish of its own insignificance. Oh, I thought, if I could be as life-size as that! I did not learn till many days afterwards, however, that she had had news of me from France. _Good_ news, which Sir W., trusting in my patience and commonsense, had kept back from me until he could deliver it in person and we could enjoy it together.

Only one topic of conversation was ours that afternoon--that "amazing Prodigy of Nature," the Spanish Princess; Mrs Monnerie's one regret that she herself had not discovered a star of such ineffably minute magnitude. Yet her teasing and sarcasm were so nimble and good-humoured; she insinuated so pleasantly her little drolleries and innuendoes; that even if Miss M. had had true cause for envy and malice, she could have taken no offence. Far from it.

I looked out of the long open windows at the dipping, flittering wagtails on the lawn; shrugged my shoulders; made little mouths at her with every appearance of wounded vanity. Did she really think, I inquired earnestly, that that shameless creature was as lovely as the showman's bills made her out to be? Mightn't it all be a cheat, a trick? Didn't they always exaggerate--just to make money? The more jovially she enjoyed my discomfiture, nodding her head, swaying in her chair, the more I enjoyed my duplicity. The real danger was that I should be a little too clever, over-act my part, and arouse her suspicions.

"Ah, you little know, you little know," I muttered to myself, sharply conscious the while of the still, threatening presence of Fanny. But she meant to let me go--that was enough. It was to be good riddance to bad rubbish. There was nothing to fear from her--yet. Her eyes lightly dwelling on me over her Chelsea teacup, she sat drinking us in. Well, she should never taunt me with not having played up to her conception of me.

"Well, well," Mrs Monnerie concluded, "all it means, my dear, is that you are not quite such a rarity as we supposed. Who is? There's nothing unique in this old world; though character, even bad character, never fails to make its mark. Ask Mr Pellew."

"But, surely, Mrs Monnerie," said I, "it isn't character to sell yourself at twopence a look."

"Mere scruples, Poppet," she retorted. "Think of it. If only you could have pocketed that pretty little fastidiousness of yours, the newspapers would now be ringing with your fame. And the fortune! You are too pernickety. Aren't we all of us on show? And aren't nine out of ten of us striving to be more on show than we are entitled to be? If man's first disobedience and the rest of it doesn't mean that, then what, I ask you, Mademoiselle _Bas Bleu_, was the sour old Puritan so concerned about? Assist me, Susan, if I stumble."

"I wish I could, Aunt Alice," said Susan sweetly, cutting the cake. "You must ask Miss Bowater."

"_Please_, Miss Monnerie," drawled Fanny.

"Whether or not," said Mrs Monnerie crisply, "I beseech you, children, don't quarrel about it. There is our beloved Sovereign on her throne; and there the last innocent little victim in its cradle; and there's the old sun waggishly illuminating the whole creaking stage. Blind beggar and dog, Toby, artists, authors, parsons, statesmen--heart and everything else, or everything else but heart, on sleeve--and all on show--every one of them--at _something_ a look. No, my dear, there's only one private life, the next: and, according to some accounts, that will be more public than ever. And so twirls the Merry-go-Round."

Her voice relapsed, as it were, into herself again, and she drew in her lips. She looked about her as if in faint surprise; and in returning to its usual expression, it seemed to me that her countenance had paused an instant in an exceedingly melancholy condition. Perhaps she had caught the glint of sympathy in my eye.

"But isn't that all choice, Mrs Monnerie?" I leaned forward to ask. "And aren't some people what one might call conspicuous, simply because they are really and truly, as it were, superior to other people? I don't mean better--just superior."

"I _think_, Mrs Monnerie," murmured Fanny deprecatingly, "she's referring to that '_ad infinitum_' jingle--about the fleas, you know. Or was it Dr Watts, Midgetina?"

"Never mind about Dr Watts," said Mrs Monnerie flatly. "The point from which we have strayed, my dear, is that even if you were not born great, you were born exquisite; and now here's this Angelique rigmarole----" Her face creased up into its old good-humoured facetiousness: "Was it three inches, Miss Bowater?"

"Four, Mrs Monnerie," lipped Fanny suavely.

"Four! pooh! Still, that's what they say; half a head or more, my dear, more exquisite! Perfect nonsense, of course. It's physically impossible. These Radical newspapers! And the absinthe, too." Her small black-brown eyes roamed round a little emptily. Absinthe! was that a Fanny story? "But there, my child," she added easily, "you shall see for yourself. We dine with the Padgwick-Steggals; and then go on together. So that's settled. It will be my first travelling circus since I was a child. Most amusing: if the lion doesn't get out, and there's none of those horrible accidents on the trapeze one goes in hope to see. By the way, Miss Bowater, your letter was posted?"

"Oh, yes, Mrs Monnerie--this afternoon; but, as you know, I was a little doubtful about the address." She hastened to pass me a plate of button-sized ratafias; and Mrs Monnerie slowly turned a smiling but not quite ingenuous face aside.

"What a curious experience the circus will be for you, Midgetina," Fanny was murmuring softly, glancing back over her shoulder towards the tea-table. "Personally, I believe the Signorina Angelique and the rest of it is only one of those horrible twisted up prodigies with all the bones out of place. Mightn't it, Mrs Monnerie, be a sort of shock, you know, for Miss M.? She's still a little pale and peaky."

"She shall come, I say, and see for herself," replied Mrs Monnerie petulantly.

There was a pause. Mrs Monnerie gazed vacantly at the tiers of hot-house flowers that decorated the window-recess. Susan sate with a little forked frown between her brows. She never seemed to derive the least enjoyment from this amiable, harmless midget-baiting. Not at any rate one hundredth part as much as I did. Fanny set Plum begging for yet another ratafia. And then, after a long, deep breath, my skin all "gooseflesh," I looked straight across at my old friend.

"I don't think, Mrs Monnerie," I said, "if you don't mind--I don't think I really _wish_ to go."

As if Joshua had spoken, the world stood still.

Mrs Monnerie slowly turned her head. "Another headache?"

"No, I'm perfectly well, thank you. But, whatever I may have said, I don't approve of that poor creature showing herself for--for money. She is selling herself. It _must_ be because there's no other way out."

Finger and thumb outstretched above the cringing little dog, Fanny was steadily watching me. With a jerk of my whole body I turned on her. "You agreed with me, Fanny, didn't you, in the garden yesterday afternoon?"

Placidly drooped her lids: "Trust, Plum, trust!"

"What!" croaked Mrs Monnerie, "you, Miss Bowater! Guilty of that silly punctilio! She was merely humouring you, child. It will be a most valuable experience. You shall be perfectly protected. Pride, eh? Or is it jealousy? Now what would you say if I promise to try and ransom the poor creature?--buy her out? pension her off? Would _that_ be a nice charitable little thing to do? She might make you quite a pleasant companion."

"Ah, Mrs Monnerie, please let _me_ buy her out. Let me be the intermediary!" I found myself, hands clasped in lap, yearningly stooping towards her, just like a passionate young lady in a novel.

She replied ominously, knitting her thick, dark eyebrows. "And how's that to be done, pray, if you sulk here at home?"

"I think, Aunt Alice, it's an excellent plan," cried Susan, "much, much more considerate. She could write. Think of all those horrible people! The poor thing may have been kidnapped, forced to do her silly tricks like one of those wretched, little barbered-up French poodles. Anyhow, I don't suppose she's there--or anywhere else, for that matter--for _fun_!"

Even Susan's sympathy had its sting.

"Thank you, Susan," was Mrs Monnerie's acid retort. "_Your_ delicate soul can always be counted on. But advice, my child, is much the more valuable when asked for."

"Of course I mustn't interfere, Mrs Monnerie," interposed Fanny sweetly; "but wouldn't it perhaps be as well for you to see the poor thing first? She mayn't be quite--quite a proper kind of person, may she? At least that's what the newspapers seem to suggest. Not, of course, that Miss M. wouldn't soon teach her better manners."

Mrs Monnerie's head wagged gently in time to her shoe. "H'm. There's something in that, Miss Worldly-Wise. Reports don't seem to flatter her. But still, I like my own way best. Poppet must _come and see_. After all, she should be the better judge."

Never before had Mrs Monnerie so closely resembled a puffed-out tawny owl.

I looked at her fixedly: shook my head. "No: no judge," I spluttered. "I'm sorry, Mrs Monnerie, but I _won't_ go."

There was no misdoubting her anger now. The brows forked. The loose-skinned hands twitched. She lifted herself in her chair, "_Won't_," she said. "You vex me, child. And pray don't wriggle at me in that hysterical fashion. You are beside yourself; trembling like a mouse. You have been mooning alone too much, I can see. Run away and nurse that silly head, and at the same time thank heaven that you have more time and less need of the luxury than some one else we know of. It may be a low life, but it needs courage. I'll say _that_ for her."

She swept her hands to her knees over her silken lap, and turned upon Susan.

Wanderslore

Chapter Fifty

I had been dismissed. But Mrs Monnerie's anger had a curious potency. For a moment I could scarcely see out of my eyes, and the floor swayed under me as I scrambled down from my chair. It took me at least a minute, even with the help of a stool, to open the door.

Like a naughty child I had been put in the corner and then sent to bed. Good. There could be no going back now. I could count on Fanny--the one thing she asked was to be free of me. As for Mrs Monnerie, her flushed and sullen countenance convinced me that my respite would be undisturbed. There was only impulsive Susan to think of. And as if in answer, there came a faint tap, and the door softly opened to admit her gentle head and shoulders.

"Ah, my dear," she whispered across at me. "I'm _so_ sorry; and so helpless. Don't take it too hardly. I have been having my turn, too."

I twisted round, wet face and hands, as I stood stooping over my washbowl on its stool, scrutinized her speechlessly, and shook a dizzy head. The door shut. Dearest Susan: as I think of her I seem to see one of those tiny, tiny "building rotifers" collecting out of reality its exquisite house. Grace, courage, loving-kindness. If I had been the merest Miss Hop-o'-my-Thumb, I should still have been the coarsest little monster by comparison.

Scarce three safe hours remained to me; I must be off at once. To go looking for Adam was out of the question. Even if I could find him, I dared not risk him. Would it be possible for me to cover my six miles or more across undiscovered country in a hundred and eighty minutes? In my Bowater days, perhaps; but there had been months of idle, fatted, indoor No. 2 in between. A last forlorn dishonest project, banished already more than once from my mind, again thrust itself up--to creep off to the nearest Post Office and with one of my crown pieces for a telegram, cast myself on the generosity of Mr Anon. No, no: I couldn't cheat myself like that.

I was ready. I pinned to the carpet a message for Adam, in case he should dare to be faithful to me--just four scribbled uncompromising words: "The Bird is flown." With eyes fixed on a starry knot of wood at the threshold, I stood for a while, with head bent, listening at my door. I might have been pausing between two worlds. The house was quiet. No voice cried "Stay." I bowed solemnly to the gentle, silent room behind me, and, with a prayer between my teeth, bundle in hand, stepped out into the future.

Unchallenged, unobserved, I slipped along the blue-carpeted corridor, down the wide stairs and out of the porch. After dodging from tree to tree, from shrub to shrub, along the meandering drive, I turned off, and, skirting the lodge through a seeding forest of weeds and grasses, squeezed through the railings and was in the lane. From my map of Kent I had traced out a rough little sketch of the route I must follow. With the sun on my left hand I set off almost due north. How still the world was. In that silk-blue sky with its placid, mountainous clouds there was no heed of human doings.

The shoes I had chosen were good sound Bowaters, and as I trudged on my spirits rose high. I breathed in deep draughts of the sweet September air. Thomasina of Bedlam had been "summoned to tourney." "The wide world's end.... No journey!" In sober fact, it was a sorry little wretch of a young female, scarcely more than a girl, that went panting along in the dust and stones, scrambling into cover of ditch and hedge at every sound or sight of life. I look at her now, and smile. Poor thing; it needed at any rate a pinch of "courage."

Cottages came into sight. At an open door I heard the clatter of crockery, and a woman scolding a child. Two gates beyond, motionless as a block of wood, an old, old man stood leaning out of his garden of dahlias and tarnishing golden-rod. In an instant in the dumb dust I was under his nose. His clay pipe shattered on the stone. Like a wagtail I flitted and scampered all in a breath. That little danger was safely over; but it was not ruminating old gentlemen who caused me apprehension. Youthful Adam Waggetts were my dread.

At the foot of the slope there came a stile, and a footpath winding off NW. but still curving in my direction. I hesitated. Any risk seemed better than the hedged-in publicity of this dusty lane. Ducking under the stile, I climbed the hill and presently found myself clambering across an immense hummocky field, part stubble, part fresh plough. Then a meadow and cows. Then once more downhill, a drowsy farm-yard, with its stacks and calves and chickens, to the left, and at bottom of the slope a filthy quagmire where an immense sow wallowed, giving suck to her squalling piglets. Her glinting, amorous eyes took me in. Stone on to stone, I skipped across a brook, dowsing one leg to the thigh in its bubbling water. It was balm in Gilead, for I was in a perfect fume of heat, and my lungs were panting like bellows.

I sat down for a breathing space on the sunset side of a haystack. In the shade of the hazels, on the verge of the green descending field, rabbits were feeding and playing. And I began to think. Supposing I did reach the new pitch in time: the wreck I should be. Then Mrs Monnerie--and Fanny: my thoughts skimmed hastily on. What then? As soon as my showman had paid me I must creep away by myself out of sight _at once_; that was certain. I must tell him that Adam was waiting for me. And then? Well, after a few hours' rest in some shed or under a haystack, somehow or other I should have to find out the way, and press on to Wanderslore. There'd be a full moon. That would be a comfort. I knew the night. Once safely there, with money in my pocket, I could with a perfectly free conscience ask Mr Anon to find me a lodging, perhaps not very far from his own. A laughable situation. But we would be the best of friends; now that all that--that nonsense was over. A deep sigh, drawn, as it were, from the depths of my bowels, rose up and subsided. What a strange thing that one must fall in love, couldn't jump into it. And then? Well, Mrs Bowater would soon be home, and perhaps Sir Walter had circumvented the Harrises. Suppose not. Well, even at the very worst, at say ten, say even fifteen shillings a week, my thirteen pounds would last me for months and months.... Say _four_.

And as I said "four," a gate clacked-to not many yards distant and a slow footfall sounded. Fortunately for me, the path I had been following skirted the other side of my haystack. Gathering myself close under the hay, I peeped out. A tall, spare man, in a low, peaked cap and leather leggings, came cautiously swinging along. His face was long, lean, severe. His eyes were fixed in a steady gaze as if he were a human automaton stalking on. And the black barrel of a gun sloped down from under his arm. I drew in closer. His footsteps passed; died away; the evening breeze blew chill. A few moments afterwards a shattering report came echoing on from wood to wood, seeming to knock on my very breastbone. This was no place for me. With one scared glance at the huddling wood, I took to my heels, nor paused until the path through the spinney became so rutted that I was compelled to pick my way.

A cold gloom had closed in on my mind. I cursed clod-hopping shoes and bundle; envied the dead rabbit that had danced its airy dance and was done. As likely as not, I had already lost my way. And I plodded on along the stony paths, pausing only to quench my thirst with the rough juice of the blackberries that straggled at the wayside. I wonder if the "Knight of Furious Fancies" was as volatile!

But yet another shock was awaiting me. The footpath dipped, there came a hedge and another stile, and I scuffled down the bank into the very lane which I had left more than an hour ago. I knew that white house on the hill; had seen it with Adam under the moon. It stood not much more than a mile from the lodge gates. My short cut had been a detour; and now the sun was down.

I drew back and examined my scribble of map. There was no help for it. Henceforward I must keep to the road. My thick shoes beat up the dust, one of my heels had blistered, my bundle grew heavier with every step. But fear had left me. Some other master cracked his whip at me as I shambled on, as doggedly and devil-may-care as a tramp.

I was stooping in the wayside ditch in one more attempt to ease my foot, when once again I heard hoofs approaching. With head pushed between the dusty tussocks, I stared along the flat, white road. A small and seemingly empty cart was bowling along in the dust. As it drew near, my ears began to sing, my heart stood still. I knew that battered cart, that rough-haired, thick-legged pony. Suddenly I craned up in horror, for it seemed that the face peering low over the splashboard in my direction was that of a death's-head, grinning at me out of its gloom. Then with a cry of joy I was up and out into the road. "Hi, hi!" I screamed up at him.

It was Mr Anon. The pony was reined back on to its haunches; the cart stood still. And my stranger and I were incredulously gazing at one another as if across eternity, as if all the world beside were a dream that asked no awakening.

Half dragged and half lifted into the cart, by what signs I could, for speech was impossible, I bade him turn back. It unmanned me to see the quiet and love in his face. Without a word he wheeled the rearing pony round under the elm-boughs, and for many minutes we swung on together at an ungainly gallop, swaying from this side to that, the astonishment of every wayfarer we met or overtook on our way. At length he turned into a grass-track under a rusting hedge festooned with woodbine and feathery travellers' joy; and we smiled at one another as if in all history there had never been anything quite so strange as this.

"You are ill," he said. "Oh, my dear, what have they done to you?"

I denied it emphatically, wiping my cheeks and forehead with the hem of my skirt--for my handkerchief was stuffed into my shoe. "Look at me!" I smiled up at him, confident and happy. Was my face lying about me? Oh, I knew what a dreadful object I must be, but then, "I've been tramping for hours and hours in the dust; and why!--haven't you come to meet me; to give me a _lift_?"

What foolish speeches makes a happy heart. Indeed Mr Anon _had_ come to meet me, but not exactly there and then. He fetched out of his pocket the minute note that had summoned him. Here it is, still faintly scented:--

"Mrs Monnerie sends her compliments, and would Miss M.'s friend
very kindly call at Monk's House, Croomham, at three o'clock on
Friday afternoon. Mrs Monnerie is anxious about Miss M.'s health."

Oh, Fanny, Fanny! Precisely how far she had taken Mrs Monnerie's name in vain in this letter I have never inquired. And now, I suppose, Mrs Percy Maudlen would not trouble to tell me. But I can vow that in spite of the grime on my face the happiest smile shone through as I stuffed it into my bodice. So this was all that her harrowing "husband" had come to--a summoning of friend to friend. If every little malicious plot ended like this, what a paradise the world would be. All tiredness passed away, though perhaps it continued to effervesce in my head a little. It seemed that I had been climbing on and on; and now suddenly the mist had vanished, and mountain and snow lay spread out around me in eternal peace and solitude. If Susan Monnerie's was my first stranger's kiss, Mr Anon's were my quietest tears.

His crazy cart seemed more magical than all the carpets of Arabia. I poured out my story--though not quite to its dregs. "This very afternoon," I told him, "I was writing to you--in my mind. And you see, you have come." The shaggy pony tugged at the coarse grass. I could hear the trickling sands in the great hour glass, and chattered on in vain hope to hold them back.

"You are not listening, only watching," I blamed him.

His lips moved; he glanced away. Yet I had already foreseen the conflict awaiting me. And all his arguments and entreaties that I should throw over the showman, and drive straight on with him into the gathering evening towards Wanderslore, were in vain.

"Look," he said, as if for straw to break the camel's back, and drew out by its ribbon my Bowater latchkey.

"No," said I, "not even that. I sleep out to-night." And surely, surely I kept repeating, he must understand. How could I possibly be at rest with a broken promise? What cared I now for what was past and gone? Think what a joy, what sheer fun it would be to face Mrs Monnerie for the last time, and she unaware of it! Nothing, nothing could amuse her more when she hears of it. He should come and see; hear the crowd yell. He mustn't be so solemn about things. "Do try and see the humour of it," I besought him.

But the money--that little incentive--I kept to myself.

He stared heavily into the silvery copse that bordered the track. Motionless in their bright, withering leaves, its trees hung down their tasselled branches beneath the darkening sky. Then, much against his will, he turned his pony towards the high road. The wheel gridded on a stone, he raised his whip.

"Hst!" I whispered, clutching at the arm that held the rein. Crouching low, we watched the great Monnerie carriage, with its stiff-necked, blinkered, stepping greys and gleaming lamps sweep by.

"There," I laughed up at him, lifting myself, one hand upon his knee, "there but for the Grace of God goes Miss M."

The queer creature frowned into my smiling face and flicked the pony with his whip. "And here," he muttered moodily, "who knows but by the Grace of God go I?"

Anxiety gone now, and responsibility but a light thing, my tongue rattled on quite as noisily as the cart. Kent's rich cornfields were around us, their stubble a pale washed-out gold in the last light of evening. Here and there on the hills a row or two of ungarnered stooks stood solemnly carved out against the sky. Most of the hop-gardens, too, had been dismantled, though a few we passed, with their slow-twirling dusky vistas and labyrinths, were still wreathed with bines. Their scent drifted headily on the stillness. And as with eyes peeping over the edge of the cart I watched these beloved, homelike hills and fields and orchards glide by, I shrilled joyfully at my companion every thought and fancy that came into my head, many of them, no doubt, recent deposits from the library at No. 2.

I told him, I remember, how tired I was of the pernicketiness of my life; and amused him with a description of my Tank. "You would hardly believe it, but I have never once heard the least faint whisper of water in it, and if I had been a nice, simple savage, I dare say I should have prayed to it. Instead of which, when one night I saw a star over the housetop I merely shrugged my shoulders. My mind was so rancid I hated it. I was so shut in; that's what it was."

He stroked the little, thick-coated horse with the lash of his whip, and smiled round at me.

On I went. Shouldn't life be a High Road, didn't he think; surely not a hot, silly zigzag of short cuts leading back to the place you started from, and you too old or stupid, perhaps, to begin again? Didn't he hunger, too, to see the _great_ things of the world, the ruins of Babylon, the Wall of China, the Himalayas, and the Pyramids--at night--black; and sand?

"My ghost!" said I, had he ever thought of the enormous solitudes of the Sahara, or those remote places where gigantic images stare blindly through the centuries at the stars--their builders just a pinch of dust? Some day, I promised him out of the abandonment of my heart, we would sail away, he and I, to his Pygmy Land. Surf and snow and singing sand-dunes, and fruits on the trees and birds in the air: we would live--"Oh, happy as all this!" (and I swept my hands across hill and dale), "ever, ever afterwards. As they do, Mr Anon, in those absurd, incredible fairy-tales, you know."

He smiled again, cast a look into the distance, touched my hand.

Perhaps he was wishing the while that that piercing, pining voice of mine would keep silence, so that my presence might not disturb his own brooding thoughts. I could only guess at pleasing him. Yet I felt, still feel, that he was glad of my company and never for a moment sorry we had met.

Chapter Fifty-One

But our brief hour was drawing to an end. We were now passing little groups of country people and children in the quiet evening. We ourselves talked no more. The old pony plodded up yet another hill; we went clattering down its deep descent; and there, in the green bowl of a meadow sloping down from its woody fringes above, lay scattered the bellying booths, the gaudy wagons and cages of the circus. All but hidden in the trees above them, a crooked, tarnished weather-cock glinted in the sunset afterglow. Lights twinkled against the dying daylight. The bright-painted merry-go-round with its staring, motionless, galloping horses was bathed in the shine of its flares, a thin plume of steam softly ascending from its brass-rimmed funnel.

A knot of country boys, gabbling at one another like starlings, shrilled a cheer as we came rattling over a stone bridge beneath which a stream shallowly washed its bank of osiers. I laughed at them, waved my hand. At this they yelled, danced in the road, threw dust into the air. Not, perhaps, a very friendly return; but how happy I was, all anxiety and responsibility gone now.

The faint, rank smell of the wild beasts mingling with the evening air, was instilling its intoxication in my brain. I longed for darkness, the din and glare; longed for my tent and the gaping faces, for the smoky wind to fan my cheek as I bobbed cantering round the ring. It must have been a ridiculously childish face that ever and again scrutinized my companion's. Nothing for me in _that_ looking-glass! How slow a face his was; he was refusing to look at me. It dismayed and fretted me to find him so sombre and dour.

His glance shifted to and fro under a frown that expressed a restless anxiety. His silence seemed to reproach me. Oh, well, when the day was over, and Mademoiselle's finery packed up in its bundle again, and the paint washed off, and the last echo of applause from the crowded benches had died away, and my pay was safe in my pocket, then he would know that the stake I had played for had been my freedom, my very self. Then surely his heart would lighten, and he would praise me, and we could go in peace. Would he not realize, too, that even my small body had its value, and was admired in a dismal world that cared not a jot for the spirit that inhabited it?

The showman stood by the tent, a gaudy silk scarf knotted round his neck. My lean-breasted gipsy woman spangled there beside him, with her black hair looped round her narrow bony head, and her loose, dusty, puckered boots showing beneath her skirts. There was a clear lustre in the lamp-starred air; and the spectacle of man and woman, of resting wheel and cropping horse, meadow and hill, poured a livelong blessing into my heart. Even the cowed, enfeebled lion with the mange of age and captivity in his skin, seemed to drowse content, and the satin-skinned leopards--almost within pat of paw of the flaxen-haired girl in the white stockings who leaned idly against the wheel--paced their den as if in pride. It was the same old story: my heart could not contain it all. Yet to whom tell its secrets?

A roomier tent had been prepared for me. We were ushered into it by the showman with a mock obeisance that swelled the veins on his forehead almost to bursting. The gipsy's birdlike eyes pierced and darted from one to the other of us, her skinny hand concealing her mouth. I felt as light as a feather, and thankful that my mud-caked shoes and petticoats were hardly discernible as none too elegantly I scrambled down from the cart.

The showman watched me with that sly, covetous grin about his mouth that I knew so well, though the stare with which he had greeted Mr Anon had been more insolent than friendly. I had cut the time rather close, he told me, but better late than never! As for that long-nosed rat with the cage, he hadn't been much smitten with the looks of him; and he was not the man to ask questions of a lady, not he. Here I was, and he hoped I had come for good. A rough life but a merry. Up with the lark until down under the daisies; and every man jack of them ready to kiss the ground I walked on. And the Fat Woman--just pining good money away she was, with longing to mother the little stranger!

I nodded my head at him with a smile as worldly-wise as I could make it. "It's the last taste that counts, Mr Showman," I said politely. "Every one has been exceedingly kind to me; and my love, please, to the Fat Woman. This is my friend, Mr Anon. He has come to take care of me. We shall go back--go on together."

The showman broke into a laugh, but his face hardened again, as, grinding one jaw slowly on the other, he turned to Mr Anon. Maybe "the young gentleman" was anxious to enjoy a taste of the life on his own account, he asked me. Could he ride? A bit of steeplechasing? There was plenty of horseflesh--a double turn: Beauty and the Beast, now? Or perhaps another Spotted Boy? Love or money; just name the figure. Treat him fair and square, and he wouldn't refuse a genuine offer; though, naturally, every inch made a difference, and a foot twelve times as much. And looks were looks.

There was little enough to enjoy in the sound of all this. Apparently the mere sight of Mr Anon had soured the showman. Many of his words were Greek to me, and to judge from the woman's yelps of laughter their meaning was none of the daintiest. I shrugged my shoulders, smiled, spread out my hands, and with a word or two fenced him off, pretending to be flattered. He looked at the woman as if to say, There's manners for you! She made a sudden, ferocious grimace. We were a singular four in the tent.

But it would be false to profess that I hadn't a sneaking admiration for the man; and I kept glancing uneasily at the "young gentleman" who was so blackly ignoring his advances. To say the least of it, it was a little unintelligent of Mr Anon not to take things as they came, if only for my sake.

"But you must please try and help me a little," I pleaded, when the showman and the gipsy had left us to ourselves for a moment. "It's only his fun. He's really not a bad sort of man underneath. You can't say there's a Spirit of Evil in that great hulking creature, now can you? I am not the least bit afraid of him."

He glanced at me without turning his head. Involuntarily I sighed. Things never were so easy as one supposed or hoped they would be.

Already my fingers were busy at the knots of my bundle, and for a while, simply because what Mr Anon was saying was so monstrous and incredible, I continued to fumble at them without attempting to answer him. He was forbidding me to keep my word; forbidding me to show myself; just ordering me to come away. No, no; he must be crazy; I had never understood him. There must be some old worm in his mind. He was telling me in so many words that to lie a prey to the mob's curiosity had been a disgrace--soiling me for ever.

The cruel stupidity of it! With head bent low and burning cheek I heard his harsh voice knell on and on--not persuading or conciliating, or pleading with me--I could have forgiven him that easily enough; but flatly commanding me to listen and obey.

"For mercy's sake," I broke in hurriedly at last, "that's enough of that. If just sitting here and talking to one's fellow-creatures has smeared me over, as you say it has, why, I must wait till Jordan to be clean. You should have seen that great wallowing sow this evening. _She_ wasn't ashamed of herself. Can't you understand that I simply had to get free? You'd see it was for your sake, too, perhaps, if you had had the patience to listen. But there; never mind. I understand. You can't endure my company any longer. That's what it means. Well, then, if that is so, there's no help for it. You must just go. And I must be alone again."

But no: there was a difference, he stubbornly maintained. What was done, was done. He was not speaking of the past. I knew nothing about the world. It was my very innocence that had kept me safe; "and--well, the courage." My innocence! and the "courage" thrown in! But couldn't I, wouldn't I _see_? he argued. The need was over now; he was with me; there was nothing to be afraid of; he would protect me. "Surely--oh, you know in your heart you couldn't have enjoyed all that!"

"Oh," said I poisonously, "so you don't think that to cheat the blackguard, as you call him, at the last moment--and please don't suppose I have forgotten what you have called other friends of mine--you don't think that to break every promise I have made wouldn't be wallowing worse than---- Oh, thank you for the _wallowing_, I shall remember that."

"But, my dear, my dear," he began, "I never--"

"I say I am _not_ your dear," I broke in furiously. "One moment you dictate to me as if I were a child, and the next---- As if I hadn't been used to that pretence, that wheedling all my life long. As if I had ever been treated like an ordinary human being--coddled up, smuggled about, whispered at! Why, a scullery maid's is Paradise compared with the life _I've_ led. And as for the vile mob and the rest of it, I tell you I've enjoyed every minute of them. I _make_ them clap their great ugly hands: I _make_ them ashamed of themselves; they can't help themselves; they just---- And I've comforted some of them too. What's more, I tell you I love them. They are my own people; and I'd die for them if they would only forget what's between us and--and share it all. You be careful; maybe I shall stay here for good. _They_ don't wince at my company; _they_ don't come creeping and crawling. Why! aren't we all on show? Who set the world spinning? I tell you I hate that--that hypocrisy. What does it amount to, pray, but that you'd like the pretty, simpering doll all to yourself?"

A hooting screech broke the quiet that followed. The merry-go-round had set to its evening's labours. Faster and faster jangled the pipes and chiming:--

"I dreampt that I dwe-elt in mar-ar-ble halls,
With vassals and serfs by my si-i-ide...."

And at the sound, anger and pride died down in me. I lifted my face from the ground.

"I'm sorry," I muttered. "But you don't know what I have gone through these last weeks. And even if I were a hundred times as ashamed of myself as you think I ought to be, I couldn't--I can't go back. I have promised. It's written down. Only once more--this one night, and I swear it shall be the last." My mouth crooked itself into a smile. "You shall pray for me on the hill," I said, "then lead me off to a Nunnery yourself."

And still I could not whisper--Money. The word stuck in my throat.

He seemed not to have heard the miserable things I had been saying. Without a syllable of retaliation, he came a little nearer, and stood over me. We were all but in darkness now, though lights were beating on the canvas of our tent. It was quite, quite simple, he said. The showman was no fool. He couldn't compel me to exhibit myself against my will. A contract was a contract, of course, but what if both parties to it agreed to break it? And supposing the showman refused to agree--what then? There was a far better plan, if only I would listen. As soon as he had been made to realize that nothing on earth could persuade me to show myself again, he would accept any alternative: "I'll take your place," smiled Mr Anon.

Take my place!

So this was the plan he had been brooding over on our journey. No wonder he had been absent-minded. Cold with dread I gazed at him in the obscurity of the tent. A glimpse of Adam's rabbit face as he had stood brazening out his fears of the showman on that first night of adventure had darted through my mind. And this man--dwarfed, shrunken, emaciated.

A terrifying compassion gushed up into my heart, breaking down barriers that I never knew were there. It was the instant in my life, I think, when I came nearest to being a mother.

"S-sh," I implored him. "You don't understand. You can have no notion of what you are saying. I am a woman. They daren't harm me. But you! They--and besides," the craftier argument floated into my mind, "besides, Mrs Monnerie...."

But the sentence remained unfinished. The flap of the tent had lifted. The figure of the showman loomed up in the entry against the lights and the darkening sky. He was in excellent humour. He rattled the money in his pocket and breathed the smell of whisky into the tent, peering into it as if he were uncertain whether it was occupied or not.

"That's right, then," he began huskily, "that's as it should be. Ten minutes, your ladyship! And maybe the young gentleman would give a hand with the drum outside, while you get through with the titivating."

His shape was only vaguely discernible as he stood gently rocking there. It was Mr Anon who answered him. For a little while the showman seemed to be too much astounded to reply. Then he lost control of himself. A torrent of imprecations spouted out of his mouth. He threatened to call in the police, the mob. He shook his brass-ringed whip in our faces. I had never seen a man of his kind really angry before. He looked like a beast, like the Apollyon straddling the path in my _Pilgrim's Progress_. His roaring all but stunned me, swept over me, as if I were nothing--a leaf in the wind. I think I could have listened to him all but in mere curiosity--as to an equinoctial gale when one is safe in bed--if he had not been so near, and the tent so small and gloomy, and if Mr Anon had not been standing in silence within reach of his hands. But his fury spent itself at last. Slowly his head turned on his heavy shoulders. He seemed suddenly to have forgotten his rage and became coaxing and conciliatory. He had a sounding, calf-like voice, and it rose up and down. An eavesdropper outside the tent would have supposed he was on the verge of tears.