Chapter VI: Part 6

If, in February, you put a newly gathered sprig of budding thorn into the fire; instantaneously, in the influence of the heat, it will break into bright-green tiny leaf. That is what Emily Bronte did for me. Not so for Fanny. In her "vapid listlessness" she often pretended to yawn over _Wuthering Heights_, and would shock me with mocking criticism, or cry "Ah!" at the poignant passages. But I believe it was pure concealment. She was really playing a part in the story. I have, at any rate, never seen her face so transfigured as when once she suddenly looked up in the firelight and caught my eye fixed on her over the book.

It was at the passage where Cathy--in her grand plaid silk frock, white trousers, and burnished shoes--returns to the dreadful Grange; and, "dismally beclouded," Heathcliff stares out at her from his hiding-place. "'He might,'" I read on, "'well skulk behind the settle, at beholding such a bright, graceful damsel enter the house. "Is Heathcliff not here?" she demanded, pulling off her gloves, and displaying fingers wonderfully whitened with doing nothing and staying indoors.'"

It was at this point that our eyes, as I say, Fanny's and mine, met. But she, bright, graceful damsel, was not thinking of me.

"Do you like that kind of character, Fanny?" I inquired.

My candle's flames gleamed lean and tiny in her eyes. "Whose?" she asked.

"Why, Heathcliff's."

She turned slowly away. "You take things so seriously, Midgetina. It's merely a story. He only wanted taming. You'll see by-and-by." But at that moment my ear caught the sound of footsteps, and when Mrs Bowater opened the door to contemplate idle Fanny, the book was under my bed.

As the day drew near for Fanny's return to her "duties," her mood brightened. She displayed before me in all their stages, the new clothes which Mrs Bowater lavished on her--to a degree that, amateur though I was in domestic economy, filled me with astonishment. I had to feign delight in these fineries--"Ah!" whispered I to each, "when she wears _you_ she will be far, far away." I envied the very buttons, and indeed pestered her with entreaties. I implored her to think of me at certain hours; to say good-night to herself for me; to write day by day in the first of the evening; to share the moon: "If we both look at her at the same moment," I argued, "it will be next to looking at one another. You _cannot_ be utterly gone: and if you see even a flower, or hear the wind.... Oh, I hope and hope you will be happy."

She promised everything with smiling ease, and would have sealed the compact in blood if I had thought to cut my thumb for it. Thursday in Holy Week--_then_ she would be home again. I stared at the blessed day across the centuries as a condemned man stares in fancy at the scaffold awaiting him; but on mine hung all my hopes. Long evenings I never saw her at all; and voices in the kitchen, when she came in late, suggested that my landlady had also missed her. But Fanny never lost her self-control even when she lost her temper; and I dared not tax her with neglecting me. Her cold looks almost suffocated me. I besought her to spend one last hour of the eve of her departure alone with me and with the stars in the woods. She promised. At eleven she came home, and went straight up into her bedroom. I heard her footsteps. She was packing. Then silence.

I waited on until sick at heart I flung myself on my knees beside my bed and prayed that God would comfort her. Heathcliff had acquired a feeble pupil. The next afternoon she was gone.

Chapter Sixteen

For many days my mind was an empty husk, yet in a constant torment of longing, daydream, despair, and self-reproaches. Everything I looked at had but one meaning--that she was not there. I did not dare to admit into my heart a hope of the future, since it would be treason to the absent. There was an ecstatic mournfulness even in the sight of the January sun, the greening fields, the first scarcely perceptible signals of a new year. And when one morning I awoke early and heard, still half in dream, a thrush in all but darkness singing of spring, it seemed it was a voice pealing in the empty courts of paradise. What ridiculous care I took to conceal my misery from Mrs Bowater. Hardly a morning passed but that I carried out in a bag the food I couldn't eat the day before, to hide it away or bury it. But such journeys were brief.

I have read somewhere that love is a disease. Or is it that Life piles up the fuel, a chance stranger darts a spark, and the whole world goes up in smoke? Was I happier in that fever than I am in this literary calm? Why did love for things without jealousy or envy fill me with delight, pour happiness into me, and love for Fanny parch me up, suck every other interest from my mind, and all but blind my eyes? Is that true? I cannot be sure: for to remember her ravages is as difficult as to re-assemble the dismal phantoms that flock into a delirious brain. And still to be honest--there's another chance: Was she to blame? Would my mind have been at peace even in its solitary woe if she had dealt truly with me? Would any one believe it?--it never occurred to me to remind myself that it might be a question merely of size. Simply because I loved, I deemed myself lovable. Yet in my heart of hearts that afternoon I had been twitting Mr Crimble for saying his prayers!

But even the heart is Phoenix-like. The outer world began to break into my desolation, not least successfully when after a week or two of absence there came a post card from Fanny to her mother with a mere "love to M." scrawled in its top right-hand corner. It was as if a wine-glass of cold water had been poured down my back. It was followed by yet another little "shock." One evening, when she had carefully set down my bowl of rusk and milk, Mrs Bowater took up her stand opposite to me, black as an image in wood. "You haven't been after your stars, miss, of late. It's moping you are. I suffered myself from the same greensick fantasticalities, when _I_ was a girl. Not that a good result's any the better for a poor cause; but it was courting danger with your frail frame; it was indeed."

I smile in remembrance of the picture presented by that conscience-stricken face of mine upturned to that stark monitor--a monitor no less stark at this very moment though we are both many years older.

"Yes, yes," she continued, and even the dun, fading photograph over her head might have paled at her accents. "I'm soliciting no divulgements; she wouldn't have gone alone, and if she did, would have heard of it from me. But you must please remember, miss, I am her mother. And you will remember, miss, also," she added, with upper lip drawn even tighter, "that your care is my care, and always will be while you are under my roof--and after, please God."

She soundlessly closed the door behind her, as if in so doing she were shutting up the whole matter in her mind for ever, as indeed she was, for she never referred to it again. Thunderbolts fall quietly at times. I sat stupefied. But as I examine that distant conscience, I am aware, first, of a faint flitting of the problem through my mind as to why a freedom which Mrs Bowater would have denied to Fanny should have held no dangers for me, and next, I realize that of all the emotions in conflict within me, humiliation stood head and shoulders above the rest. Indeed I flushed all over, at the thought that never for one moment--then or since--had I paused to consider how, on that fateful midnight, Fanny could have left the house-door _bolted_ behind her. My utter stupidity: and Fanny's! All these weeks my landlady had known, and said nothing. The green gooseberries of my childhood were a far less effective tonic. But I lost no love for Mrs Bowater in this prodigious increase of respect.

A far pleasanter interruption of my sick longings for the absent one occurred the next morning. At a loss what to be reading (for Fanny had abstracted my _Wuthering Heights_ and taken it away with her), once more shudderingly pushing aside my breakfast, I turned over the dusty, faded pile of Bowater books. And in one of them I discovered a chapter on knots. Our minds are cleverer than we think them, and not only cats have an instinct for physicking themselves. I took out a piece of silk twine from my drawer and--with Fanny's phantom sulking a while in neglect--set myself to the mastery of "the ship boy's" science. I had learned for ever to distinguish between the granny and the reef (such is fate, this knot was also called the true lover's!), and was setting about the fisherman's bend, when there came a knock on the door--and then a head.

It was Pollie. Until I saw her round, red, country cheek, and stiff Sunday hat, thus unexpectedly appear, I had almost forgotten how much I loved and had missed her. No doubt my landlady had been the _dea ex machina_ that had produced her on this fine sunshine morning. Anyhow she was from heaven. Besides butter, a posy of winter jasmine, a crochet bedspread, and a varnished arbour chair made especially for me during the winter evenings by her father, Mr Muggeridge, she brought startling news. There suddenly fell a pause in our excited talk. She drew out her handkerchief and a slow crimson mounted up over neck, cheek, ears, and brow. I couldn't look quite away from this delicious sight, so my eyes wandered up in admiration of the artificial cornflowers and daisies in her hat.

Whereupon she softly blew her nose and, with a gliding glance at the shut door, she breathed out her secret. She was engaged to be married. A trying, romantic vapour seemed instantly to gather about us, in whose hush I was curiously aware not only of Pollie thus suffused, sitting with her hands loosely folded in her lap, but of myself also, perched opposite to her with eyes in which curiosity, incredulity, and even a remote consternation played upon her homely features. Time melted away, and there once more sat the old Pollie--a gawk of a girl in a pinafore, munching up green apples and re-plaiting her dull brown hair.

Then, of course, I was bashfully challenged to name the happy man. I guessed and guessed to Pollie's ever-increasing gusto, and at last I dared my first unuttered choice: "Well, then, it _must_ be Adam Waggett!"

"Adam Waggett! Oh, miss, him! a nose like a winebottle."

It was undeniable. I apologized, and Pollie surrendered her future into my hands. "It's Bob Halibut, miss," she whispered hoarsely.

And instantaneously Bob Halibut's red head loomed louringly out at me. But I know little about husbands; and premonitions only impress us when they come true. Time was to prove that Pollie and her mother had made a prudent choice. Am I not now Mr Halibut's god-sister, so to speak?

The wedding, said Pollie, was to be in the summer. "And oh, miss"--would I come?

The scheming that followed! The sensitive draping of difficulties on either side, the old homesick longing on mine--to flee away now, at once, from this scene of my afflicted adoration. I almost hated Fanny for giving me so much pain. Mrs Bowater was summoned to our council; my promise was given; and it was she who suggested that its being "a nice bright afternoon," Pollie should take me for a walk.

But whither? It seemed a sheer waste of Pollie to take her to the woods. Thoughts of St Peter's, the nocturnal splendour in the cab, a hunger for novelty, the itch to spend money, and maybe a tinge of dare-devilry--without a moment's hesitation I chose the shops and the "town." Once more in my black, with two thicknesses of veil canopying my head, as if I were a joint of meat in the Dog Days, I settled myself on Pollie's arm, and--in the full publicity of three o'clock in the afternoon--off we went.

We chattered; we laughed; we sniggled together like schoolgirls in amusement at the passers-by, in the strange, busy High Street. I devoured the entrancing wares in the shop windows--milliner, hairdresser and perfumer, confectioner; even the pyramids of jam jars and sugar-cones in the grocer's, and the soaps, syrups, and sponges of Mr Simpkins--Beechwood's pharmaceutical chemist. Out of the sovereign which I had brought with me from my treasure-chest Pollie made purchases on my behalf. For Mrs Bowater, a muslin tie for the neck; for herself--after heated controversy--a pair of kid gloves and a bottle of frangipani; and for me a novel.

This last necessitated a visit to Mrs Stocks's Circulating Library. My hopes had been set on _Jane Eyre_. Mrs Stocks regretted that the demand for this novel had always exceeded her supply: "What may be called the sensational style of fiction" (or was it friction?) "never lays much on our hands." She produced, instead, and very tactfully, a comparatively diminutive copy of Miss Austen's _Sense and Sensibility_. It was a little shop-soiled; "But books keep, miss"; and she let me have it at a reduced price. Her great shears severed the string. Pollie and I once more set clanging the sonorous bell at the door, and emerged into the sunlight. "Oh, Pollie," I whispered, "if only you could stay with me for ever!"

This taste of "life" had so elated me that after fevered and silent debate I at last laughed out, and explained to Pollie that I wished to be "put down." Her breathless arguments against this foolhardy experiment only increased my obstinacy. She was compelled to obey. Bidding her keep some little distance behind me, I settled my veil, clasped tight my Miss Austen in my arms and set my face in the direction from which we had come. One after another the wide paving-stones stretched out in front of me. It was an extraordinary experience. I was openly alone now, not with the skulking, deceitful shades and appearances of night, or the quiet flowers and trees in the enormous vacancy of nature; but in the midst of a town of men in their height--and walking along there: by myself. It was as if I had suddenly realized what astonishingly active and domineering and multitudinous creatures we humans are. I can't explain. The High Street, to use a good old phrase, "got up into my head." My mind was in such a whirl of excitement that full consciousness of what followed eludes me.

The sun poured wintry bright into the house-walled gulf of a street that in my isolation seemed immeasurably vast and empty. I think my senses distorted the scene. There was the terrific glitter of glass, the clatter of traffic. A puff of wind whirled dust and grit and particles of straw into the air. The shapes of advancing pedestrians towered close above me, then, stiff with sudden attention, passed me by. My legs grew a little numb and my brain confused. The strident whistling of a butcher's boy, with an empty, blood-stained tray over his shoulder, suddenly ceased. Saucer-eyed, he stood stock still, gulped and gaped. I kept on my course. A yelp of astonishment rent the air. Whereupon, as it seemed, from divers angles, similar boys seemed to leap out of the ground and came whooping and revolving across the street in my direction. And now the blood so hummed in my head that it was rather my nerves than my ears which informed me of a steadily increasing murmur and trampling behind me.

With extraordinary vividness I recall the vision of a gigantic barouche gliding along towards me in the shine and the dust; and seated up in it a high, pompous lady who at one moment with rigid urbanity inclined her head apparently in my direction, and at the next, her face displeased as if at an offensive odour, had sunk back into her cushions, oblivious not only of Beechwood but of the whole habitable globe. Simultaneously, I was aware, even as I hastened on, first that the acquaintance whose salute she had acknowledged was Mr Crimble, and next, that with incredible rapidity he had wheeled himself about and had instantaneously transfixed his entire attention on some object in the window of a hatter's.

Until this moment, as I say, a confused but blackening elation had filled my mind. But at sight of Mr Crimble's rook-like stooping shoulders I began to be afraid. My shoe stumbled against a jutting paving-stone. I almost fell. Whereupon the mute concourse at my heels--spreading tail of me, the Comet--burst into a prolonged squealing roar of delight. The next moment Pollie was at my side, stooping to my rescue. It was too late. One glance over my shoulder--and terror and hatred of the whole human race engulfed me like a sea. I struck savagely at Pollie's cotton-gloved hand. Shivering, with clenched, sticky teeth, I began to run.

Why this panic? Who would have harmed me? And yet on the thronging faces which I had flyingly caught sight of through my veil there lay an expression that was not solely curiosity--a kind of hunger, a dog-like gleam. I remember one thin-legged, ferrety, red-haired lad in particular. Well, no matter. The comedy was brief, and it was Mrs Stocks who lowered the curtain. Attracted by all this racket and hubbub in the street, she was protruding her round head out of her precincts. Like fox to its hole, I scrambled over her wooden doorstep, whisked round her person, and fled for sanctuary into her shop. She hustled poor Pollie in after me, wheeled round on my pursuers, slammed the door in their faces, slipped its bolt, and drew down its dark blue blind.

In the sudden quiet and torpor of this musty gloom I turned my hunted eyes and stared at the dark strip of holland that hid me from my pursuers. So too did Mrs Stocks. The round creature stood like a stone out of reach of the surf. Then she snorted.

"Them!" said she, with a flick of her duster. "A parcel of idle herrand boys. _I_ know them: and no more decency than if you was Royalty, my dear, or a pickpocket, or a corpse run over in the street. You rest a bit, pore young thing, and compose yourself. They'll soon grow tired of themselves."

She retired into the back part of her shop beyond the muslined door and returned with a tumbler of water. I shook my head. My sight pulsed with my heartbeats. As if congealed into a drop of poison, I stared and stared at the blind.

"Open the door," I said. "I'd like to go out again."

"Oh, miss! oh, miss!" cried Pollie.

But Mrs Stocks was of a more practical turn. After surveying my enemies from an upper window she had sent a neighbour's little girl for a cab. By the time this vehicle arrived, with a half-hearted "Boo!" of disappointment, the concourse in the street had all but melted away, and Mrs Stocks's check duster scattered the rest. The cab-door slammed, the wheels ground on the kerbstone, my debut was over. I had been but a nine minutes' wonder.

Chapter Seventeen

We jogged on sluggishly up the hill, and at last, in our velvety quiet, as if at a preconcerted signal, Pollie and I turned and looked at one another, and broke into a long, mirthless peal of laughter--a laughter that on her side presently threatened to end in tears. I left her to recover herself, fixing my festering attention on her engagement ring--two hearts in silver encircled by six sky-blue turquoises. And in the silly, helpless fashion of one against the world, I plotted revenge.

The cab stopped. There stood the little brick house, wholly unaffected by the tragic hours which had passed since we had so gaily set out from it. I eyed it with malice and disgust as I reascended my Bateses and preceded Pollie into the passage. Once safely within, I shrugged my shoulders and explained to Mrs Bowater the phenomenon of the cab with such success that I verily believe she was for the moment convinced that her lodger was one of those persons who prosper in the attentions of the mob--Royalty, that is, rather than pickpockets or corpses run over in the street.

With my new muslin tie adorning her neck, Mrs Bowater took tea with us that afternoon, but even Pollie's imaginative version of our adventures made no reference to the lady in the carriage, nor did she share my intense conjecture on what Mr Crimble can have found of such engrossing interest in the hatter's. _Was_ it that the lady had feigned not to have seen me entirely for my sake; and that Mr Crimble had feigned not to have seen me entirely for _his_? I was still poring over this problem in bed that night when there came a tap at my door. It was Pollie. She had made her way downstairs to assure herself that I was safe and comfortable. "And oh, miss," she whispered, as she bade me a final good-night, "you never see such a lovely little bedroom as Mrs Bowater have put me into--fit for a princess, and yet just quite plain! Bob's been thinking about furniture too."

So I was left alone again with forgotten Fanny, and that night I dreamed of her. Nothing to be seen but black boiling waves flinging their yeasty, curdling crests into the clouds, and every crest the face of my ferrety "herrand-boy." And afloat in the midst of the welter beneath, a beloved shape whiter than the foam, with shut eyes, under the gigantic stoop of the water. Who hangs these tragic veils in the sleeping mind? Who was this I that looked out on them? I awoke, shuddering, breathed a blessing--disjointed, nameless; turned over, and soon was once more asleep.

My day's experiences in the High Street had added at least twenty-four hours to my life. So much a woman of the world was I becoming that when, after Pollie's departure, a knock announced Mr Crimble, I greeted him with a countenance guileless and self-possessed. With spectacles fixed on me, he stood nervously twitching a small bunch of snowdrops which he assured me were the first of the New Year. I thanked him, remarked that our Lyndsey snowdrops were shorter in the stalk than these, and had he noticed the pale green hieroglyphs on the petals?

"In the white, dead nettle you have to look underneath for them: tiny black oblongs; you can't think how secret it looks!"

But Mr Crimble had not come to botanize. After answering my inquiry after the health of Mrs Hubbins, he suddenly sat down and announced that the object of his visit was to cast himself on my generosity. The proposal made me uncomfortable, but my timid attempt to return to Mrs Hubbins was unavailing.

"I speak," he said, "of yesterday's atrocity. There is no other word for it, and inasmuch as it occurred within two hundred yards of my own church, indeed of my mother's house, I cannot disclaim all responsibility for it."

Nor could I. But I wished very heartily that he had not come to talk about _his_ share. "Oh," said I, as airily as I could, "you mean, Mr Crimble, my little experience in the High Street. That was nothing. My attention was so much taken up with other things that I did not get even so much as a glimpse of St Peter's. So you see----"

"You are kindness itself," he interrupted, with a rapid insertion of his forefinger between his neck and his clerical collar, "but the fact is," and he cast a glance at me as if with the whites of his eyes, "the fact is, I was myself a scandalized witness of the occurrence. Believe me, it cannot have hurt your sensitive feelings more than--than it hurt mine."

"But honestly, Mr Crimble," I replied, glancing rather helplessly round the room, "it didn't hurt my feelings at all. You don't feel much, you know, when you are angry. It was just as I should have foreseen. It is important to know where we are, isn't it; and where other people are? And boys will be boys, as Mrs Bowater says, and particularly, I suppose, errand boys. What else could I expect? It has just taught me a very useful lesson--even though I didn't much enjoy learning it. If I am ever to get used to the world (and that _is_ a kind of duty, Mr Crimble, isn't it?), the world must get used to me. Perhaps if we all knew each other's insides--our thoughts and feelings, I mean--everybody would be as peculiar there--inside, you know--as I am, outside. I'm afraid this is not making myself very clear."

And only a few weeks ago I had been bombarding Dr Phelps with precisely the opposite argument. That, I suppose, is what is meant by being "deceitful on the weights."

Mr Crimble opened his mouth, but I continued rapidly, "You see, I must be candid about such things to myself and try not to--to be silly. And you were merely going to be very kind, weren't you? I am a midget, and it's no good denying it. The people that hooted me were not. That's all; and if there hadn't been so many of them, perhaps I might have been just as much amused, if not even shocked at them, as they at me. We _think_ our own size, that's all, and I'm perfectly certain," I nodded at him emphatically, "I'm perfectly certain if poor Mr Hubbins were here now, he'd--he'd bear me out."

Bear me out--the words lingered on in my mind so distinctly, and conveyed so peculiar a picture of Mr Hubbins's spirit and myself, that I missed the beginning of my visitor's reply.

"But I assure you," he was saying, "it is not merely that." The glint of perspiration was on his forehead. "In the Almighty's sight all men are equal. Appearances are nothing. And some of us perhaps are far more precious by very reason of--of passing afflictions, and----"

"My godmother," I interposed, "said exactly that in a letter to me a few months ago. Not that I accept the _word_, Mr Crimble, the 'afflictions,' I mean. And as for appearances, why they are _everything_, aren't they?" I gave him as cordial an imitation of a smile as I could.

"No, no, no; yes, yes, yes," said Mr Crimble rapidly. "But it was not of that, not of that in a sense that I was speaking. What I came to say this afternoon is this. I grant it; I freely confess it; I played the coward; morally rather than physically, perhaps, but still the coward. The--the hideous barbarity of the proceeding." He had forgotten me. His eyes were fixed on the scene in his memory. He was once more at the hatter's window. There fell a painful pause.

I rose and sat down again. "But quite, quite honestly," I interposed faintly, "they did me no harm. They were only inquisitive. What could you have done? Why, really and truly," I laughed feebly, "they might have had to pay, you know. It was getting--getting me cheap!"

His head was thrown back, so that he looked _under_ his spectacles at me, as he cried hollowly: "They might have stoned you."

"Not with those pavements."

"But I was there. I turned aside. You _saw_ me?"

What persuaded me to be guilty of such a ridiculous quibble, I cannot think. Anything, perhaps, to ease his agitation: "But honestly, honestly, Mr Crimble," I murmured out at him, "I didn't _see_ you see me."

"Oh, ah! a woman's way!" he adjured me desperately, turning his head from one side to the other. "But you must have known that I knew you knew I had seen you, you _must_ confess _that_. And, well ... as I say, I can only appeal to your generosity."

"But what can I _do_? I'm not hurt. If it had been the other way round--_you_ scuttling along, I mean; I really do believe _I_ might have looked into the hatter's. Besides, when we were safe in the cab.... I mean, I'm glad! It was experience: oh, and past. I loved it and the streets, and the shops, and all those grinning, gnashing faces, and even you.... It was wildly _exciting_, Mr Crimble, can't you _see_? And now"--I ended triumphantly--"and now I have another novel!"

At this, suddenly overcome, I jumped up from my chair and ran off into my bedroom as if in search of the book. The curtains composed themselves behind me. In this inner quietness, this momentary release, I stood there, erect beside the bed--without a thought in my head. And I began slowly, silently--to laugh. Handkerchief to my lips, I laughed and laughed--not exactly like Pollie in the cab, but because apparently some infinitely minute being within me had risen up at remembrance of the strange human creature beyond the curtains who had suddenly before my very eyes seemed to have expanded and swollen out to double his size. Oh, what extraordinary things life was doing to me. How can I express myself? For that pip of a moment I was just an exquisite icicle of solitude--as if I had never been born. Yet there, under my very nose, was my bed, my glass, my hair-brushes and bottles--"Here we all are, Miss M."--and on the other side of the curtains.... And how contemptuous I had been of Pollie's little lapse into the hysterical! I brushed my handkerchief over my eyes, tranquillized my features, and sallied out once more into the world.

"Ah, here it is," I exclaimed ingenuously, and lifting my _Sense and Sensibility_ from where it lay on the floor beside my table, I placed it almost ceremoniously in Mr Crimble's hands. A visible mist of disconcertion gathered over his face. He looked at the book, he opened it, his eye strayed down the title-page.

"Yes, yes," he murmured, "Jane Austen--a pocket edition. Macaulay, I remember...." He closed-to the covers again, drew finger and thumb slowly down the margin, and then leaned forward. "But you were asking me a question. What could I have _done_? Frankly I don't quite know. But I might have protected you, driven the rabble off, taken you---- The Good Shepherd. But there, in short," and the sun of relief peered through the glooms of conscience, "I did nothing. That was my failure. And absurd though it may seem, I could not rest until, as a matter of fact, I had unbosomed myself, confessed, knowing you would understand." His tongue came to a standstill. "And when," he continued in a small, constrained voice, and with a searching, almost appealing glance, "when Miss _Bowater_ returns, you will, I hope, allow me to make amends, to prove---- She would never--for--forgive...."

The fog that had been his became mine. In an extravagance of attention to every syllable of his speech as it died away uncompleted in the little listening room I mutely surveyed him. Then I began to understand, to realize where my poor little "generosity" was to come in.

"Ah," I replied at last, forlornly, our eyes in close communion, "she won't be back for months and months. And anyhow, she wouldn't, I am sure, much _mind_, Mr Crimble."

"Easter," he whispered. "Well, you will write, I suppose," and his eye wandered off as if in search of the inkpot, "and no doubt you will share our--your secret." There was no vestige of interrogation in his voice, and yet it was clear that what he was suggesting I should do was only and exactly what he had come that afternoon to ask me not to do. Why, surely, I thought, examining him none too complimentarily, I am afraid, he was merely playing for a kind of stalemate. What funny, blind alleys love leads us into.

"No," I said solemnly. "I shall say nothing. But that, I suppose, is because I am not so brave as you are. Really and truly, I think she would only be amused. Everything amuses her."

It seemed that we had suddenly reassumed our natural dimensions, for at that he looked at me _tinily_ again, and with the suggestion, to which I was long accustomed, that he would rather not be observed while so looking.

On the whole, ours had been a gloomy talk. Nevertheless, _there_, not on my generosity, but I hope on my understanding, he reposed himself, and so reposes to this day. When the door had closed behind him, I felt far more friendly towards Mr Crimble than I had felt before. Even apart from the Almighty, he had made us as nearly as he could--equals. I tossed a pleasant little bow to his snowdrops, and, catching sight of Mr Bowater's fixed stare on me, hastily included _him_ within its range.

Mr Crimble, Mrs Bowater informed me the following Sunday evening, lived with an aged mother, and in spite of his sociability and his "fun," was a lonely young man. He hadn't, my landlady thought, yet seen enough of the world to be of much service to those who had. "They," and I think she meant clergymen in general, as well as Mr Crimble in particular, "live a shut-in, complimentary life, and people treat them according. Though, of course, there's those who have seen a bit of trouble and cheeseparing themselves, and the Church is the Church when all's said and done."

And all in a moment I caught my first real glimpse of the Church--no more just a number of St Peterses than I was so many "organs," or Beechwood was so many errand boys, or, for that matter, England so many counties. It was an idea; my attention wandered.

"But he was very anxious about the concert," I ventured to protest.

"I've no doubt," said Mrs Bowater shortly.

"But then," I remarked with a sigh, "Fanny seems to make friends wherever she goes."

"It isn't the making," replied her mother, "but the keeping."

The heavy weeks dragged slowly by, and a one-sided correspondence is like posting letters into a dream. My progress with Miss Austen was slow, because she made me think and argue with her. Apart from her, I devoured every fragment of print I could lay hands on. For when fiction palled I turned to facts, mastered the _sheepshank_, the _running bowline_, and the _figure-of-eight_; and wrestled on with my sea-craft. It was a hard task, and I thought it fair progress if in _that_ I covered half a knot a day.

Besides which, Mrs Bowater sometimes played with me at solitaire, draughts, or cards. In these she was a martinet, and would appropriate a fat pack at _Beggar-my-neighbour_ with infinite gusto. How silent stood the little room, with just the click of the cards, the simmering of the kettle on the hob, and Mrs Bowater's occasional gruff "Four to pay." We might have been on a desert island. I must confess this particular game soon grew a little wearisome; but I played on, thinking to please my partner, and that she had chosen it for her own sake. Until one evening, with a stifled sigh, she murmured the word, Cribbage! I was shuffling my own small pack at the moment, and paused, my eyes on their backs, in a rather wry amusement. But Fate has pretty frequently so turned the tables on me; and after that, "One for his nob," sepulchrally broke the night-silence of Beechwood far more often than "Four to pay."

Not all my letters to Fanny went into the post. My landlady looked a little askance at them, and many of the unposted ones were scrawled, if possible in moonlight, after she had gone to bed. To judge from my recollection of other letters written in my young days, I may be thankful that Fanny was one of those practical people who do not hoard the valueless. I can still recall the poignancy of my postscripts. On the one hand: "I beseech you to write to me, Fanny, I live to hear. Last night was full moon again. I saw you--you only in her glass." On the other: "Henry has been fighting. There is a chip out of his ear. Nine centuries nearer now! And how is 'Monsieur Crapaud'?"

Wanderslore

Chapter Eighteen

At last there came a post which brought me, not a sermon from Miss Fenne, nor gossip from Pollie, but a message from the Islands of the Blest. All that evening and night it lay unopened under my pillow. I was saving it up. And never have I passed hours so studious yet so barren of result. It was the end of February. A sudden burst of light and sunshine had fallen on the world. There were green shining grass and new-fallen lambs in the meadows, and the almond tree beyond my window was in full, leafless bloom. As for the larks, they were singing of Fanny. The next morning early, about seven o'clock, her letter folded up in its small envelope in the bosom of my cloak, I was out of the house and making my way to the woods. It was the clear air of daybreak and only the large stars shook faint and silvery in the brightening sky.

Frost powdered the ground and edged the grasses. But now tufts of primroses were in blow among the withered mist of leaves. I came to my "observatory" just as the first beams of sunrise smote on its upper boughs. Yet even now I deferred the longed-for moment and hastened on between the trees, beech and brooding yew, by what seemed a faint foot-track, and at last came out on a kind of rising on the edge of the woods. From this green eminence for the first time I looked straight across its desolate garden to Wanderslore.

It was a long, dark, many-windowed house. It gloomed sullenly back at me beneath the last of night. From the alarm calls of the blackbirds it seemed that even so harmless a trespasser as I was a rare spectacle. A tangle of brier and bramble bushed frostily over its grey stone terraces. Nearer at hand in the hollow stood an angled house, also of stone--and as small compared with Wanderslore as a little child compared with its mother. It had been shattered at one corner by a falling tree, whose bole still lay among the undergrowth. The faint track I was following led on, and apparently past it. Breathless and triumphant, I presently found myself seated on a low mossy stone beside it, monarch of all I surveyed. With a profound sigh I opened my letter:--

"BURN THIS LETTER, AND SHOW THE OTHER TO M.

"DEAR MIDGETINA,--Don't suppose, because I have not written, that
Fanny is a monster, though, in fact, she is. I have often thought
of you--with your stars and knick-knacks. And of course your
letters have come. My thanks. I can't really answer them now
because I am trying at the same time to scribble this note and to
correct 'composition' papers under the very eyes of Miss
Stebbings--the abhorred daughter of Argus and the eldest Gorgon.
Dear me, I almost envy you, Midgetina. It _must_ be fun to be like
a tiny, round-headed pin in a pin-cushion and just mock at the
Workbox. But all things in moderation.

"When the full moon came last I remembered our _vow_. She was so
dazzling, poor old wreck. And I wondered, as I blinked up at her,
if you would not some day vanish away altogether--unless you make a
fortune by being looked at. I wish I could. Only would they pay
enough? That is the question.

"What I am writing about now is not the moon, but--don't be
amused!--a Man. Not Monsieur Crapaud, who is more absurd than ever;
but some one you know, Mr Crimble. He has sent me the most alarming
letter and wants me to marry him. It is not for the first time of
asking, but still a solemn occasion. Mother once said that he was
like a coquette--all attention and no intention. Sad to say, it is
the other way round. M., you see, always judges by what she fears.
_I_ by what this Heart tells me.

"Now I daren't write back to him direct (_a_) because I wish just
now to say neither Yes nor No; (_b_) because a little delay will
benefit his family pride; (_c_) because it is safer not to--he's
very careless and I might soon want to change my mind; (_d_)
because that's how my fancy takes me; and (_e_) because I love you
exceedingly and know you will help me.

"When no answer comes to his letter, he will probably dare another
pilgrimage to Beechwood Hill, if only to make sure that I am not in
my grave. So I want you to tell him _secretly_ that _I have
received his letter and that I am giving it my earnest
attention_--let alone my prayers. Tell me exactly how he takes this
answer; then I will write to you again. I am sure, Midgetina, in
some previous life you must have lived in the tiny rooms in the
Palace at Mantua--you are a born _intrigante_.

"_In my bedroom, 11 p.m._--A scheme is in my mind, but it is not
yet in bloom, and you may infer from all this that I don't _care_.
Often I wish this were so. I sat in front of my eight inches of
grained looking-glass last night till it seemed some god(dess)
_must_ intervene. But no. My head was dark and empty. I could hear
Mr Oliphant cajoling with his violin in the distance--as if music
had charms. Oh, dear, they give you life, and leave you to ask,
Why. You seem to be perfectly contented in your queer little prim
way with merely asking. But Fanny Bowater wants an answer, or she
will make one up. Meanwhile, search for a scrap of magic mushroom,
little sister, and come nearer! Some day I will tell you even more
about myself! Meanwhile, believe me, petitissimost M., your
affec.--F.

"PS.--_Burn this._

"PPS.--What I mean is, that he must be _made_ to realize that I
will not and cannot give him an answer before I come home--unless
he hears meanwhile.

"Burn this: the _other_ letter is for show purposes."

Fanny's "other" was more brief:--

"DEAR MIDGETINA,--It is delightful to have your letters, and I am
ashamed of myself for not answering them before. But I will do so
the very moment there is a free hour. Would you please ask mother
with my love to send me some handkerchiefs, some stockings, and
some soap? My first are worn with weeping, my second with sitting
still, and my third is mottled--and similarly affects the
complexion. But Easter draws near, and I am sure I must long to be
home. Did you tell mother by any chance of your midnight astronomy
lesson? It has been most useful when all other baits and threats
have failed to teach the young idea how to shoot. Truly a poet's
way of putting it. Is Mr Crimble still visiting his charming
parishioner?

"I remain,

"Yours affec'ly,

"FANNY BOWATER."

Slowly, self-conscious word by word, lingering here and there, I read these letters through--then through again. Then I lifted my eyes and stared for a while over my left shoulder at empty Wanderslore. A medley of emotions strove for mastery, and as if to reassure herself the "tiny, round-headed pin" kissed the signature, whispering languishingly to herself in the great garden: "I love you exceedingly. Oh, Fanny, I love you exceedingly," and hid her eyes in her hands. The note-paper was very faintly scented. My imagination wandered off I know not where; and returned, elated and dejected. Which the more I know not. Then I folded up the secret letter into as small a compass as I could, dragged back a loose, flat stone, hid it away in the dry crevice beneath, and replaced the stone. The other I put into my silk bag.

I emerged from these labours to see in my mind Mrs Bowater steadfastly regarding me, and behind her the shadowy shape of Mr Crimble, with I know not what of entreaty in his magnified dark eyes. I smiled a little ruefully to myself to think that my life was become like a pool of deep water in which I was slowly sinking down and down. As if, in sober fact, there were stones in my pocket, or leaden soles to my shoes. It was more like reading a story about myself, than _being_ myself, and what was to be the end of it all? I thought of Fanny married to Mr Crimble, as my mother was married to my father. How dark and uncomfortable a creature he looked beside Fanny's grace and fairness. And would Mrs Crimble sit in an arm-chair and watch Fanny as Fanny had watched me? And should I be asked to tea? I was surprised into a shudder. Yet I don't think there would have been any _wild_ jealousy in my heart--even if Fanny should say, Yes. I could love her better, perhaps, if she would give me a little time. And what was really keeping her back? Why did every word she said or wrote only hide what she truly meant?

So, far from mocking at the Workbox, I was only helplessly examining its tangled skeins. Nor was I criticizing Fanny. To help her--that was my one burning desire, to give all I had, take nothing. In a vague, and possibly priggish, fashion, I knew, too, that I wanted to help her against herself. Her letter (and perhaps the long waiting for it) had smoothed out my old excitements. In the midst of these musings memory suddenly alighted on the question in the letter which was to be shown to Mrs Bowater: about the star-gazing. There was no need for that now. But the point was, had not Fanny extorted a promise from me _not_ to tell her mother of our midnight adventure? It seemed as though without a shred of warning the fair face had drawn close in my consciousness and was looking at me low and fixedly, like a snake in a picture. Why, it was like cheating at cards! Fascinated and repelled, I sank again into reverie.

"No, no, it's cowardly, Fanny," cried aloud a voice in the midst of this inward argument, as startling as if a stranger had addressed me. The morning was intensely still. Sunbeams out of the sky now silvered the clustered chimney shafts of Wanderslore. Where shadow lay, the frost gloomed wondrously blue on the dishevelled terraces; where sun, a thin smoke of vapour was ascending into the air. The plants and bushes around me were knobbed all over with wax-green buds. The enormous trees were faintly coloured in their twigs. A sun-beetle staggered, out among the pebbles at my feet. I glanced at my hands; they were coral pink with the cold. "I love you exceedingly--exceedingly," I repeated, though this time I knew not to whom.

So saying, and, even as I said it, realizing that the _exceedingly_ was not my own, and that I must be intelligent even if I was sentimental, I rose from my stone, and turned to go back. I thus faced the worn, small, stone house again. Instantly I was all attention. A curious feeling came over me, familiar, yet eluding remembrance. It meant that I must be vigilant. Cautiously I edged round to the other side of the angled wall, where lay the fallen tree. Hard, dark buds showed on its yet living fringes. Rather than clamber over its sodden bole, I skirted it until I could walk beneath a lank, upthrust bough. At every few steps I shrank in and glanced around me, then fixed my eyes--as I had learned to do by my stream-side or when star-gazing--on a single object, in order to mark what was passing on the outskirts of my field of vision. Nothing. I was alone in the garden. A robin, with a light flutter of wing, perched to eye me. A string of rooks cawed across the sky. Wanderslore emptily stared. If, indeed, I was being watched, then my watcher was no less circumspect than I. Soon I was skirting the woods again, and had climbed the green knoll by which I had descended into the garden. I wheeled sharply, searching the whole course of my retreat. Nothing.

When I opened my door, Mrs Bowater and Henry seemed to be awaiting me. Was it my fancy that both of them looked censorious? Absently she stood aside to let me pass to my room, then followed me in.

"Such a lovely morning, Mrs Bowater," I called pleasantly down from my bedroom, as I stood taking off my cloak in front of the glass, "and not a soul to be seen--though" (and my voice was better under command with a hairpin between my teeth); "I wouldn't have minded if there had been. Not now."

"Ah," came the reply, "but you must be cautious, miss. Boys will be boys; and," the sound tailed away, "men, men." I heard the door open and close, and paused, with hands still lifted to my hair, prickling cold all over at this strange behaviour. What could I have been found out in now?

Then a voice sounded seemingly out of nowhere. "What I was going to say, miss, is--A letter's come."

With that I drew aside the curtain. The explanation was simple. Having let Henry out of my room, in which he was never at ease, Mrs Bowater was still standing, like a figure in waxwork, in front of her chiffonier, her eyes fixed on the window. They then wheeled on me. "_Mr_ Bowater," she said.

I was conscious of an inexpressible relief and of the profoundest interest. I glanced at the great portrait. "Mr Bowater?" I repeated.

"Yes," she replied. "Buenos Ayres. He's broken a leg; and so's fixed there for the time being."

"Oh, Mrs Bowater," I said, "I _am_ sorry. And how terribly sudden."

"Believe me, my young friend," she replied musingly, "it's never in my experience what's unprepared for that finds us least expecting it. Not that it was actually his _leg_ was in my mind."

What was chiefly in _my_ selfish mind was the happy conviction that I had better not give her Fanny's letter just then.

"I do hope he's not in great pain," was all I found to say.

She continued to muse at me in her queer, sightless fashion, almost as if she were looking for help.

"Oh, dear me, miss," the poor thing cried brokenly, "how should your young mind feel what an old woman feels: just grovelling in the past?"

She was gone; and, feeling very uncomfortable in my humiliation, I sat down and stared--at "the workbox." Why, why indeed, I thought angrily, why should I be responsible? Well, I suppose it's only when the poor fish--sturgeon or stickleback--struggles, that he really knows he's in the net.

Chapter Nineteen

One of the many perplexing problems that now hemmed me in was brushed away by Fortune that afternoon. Between gloomy bursts of reflection on Fanny's, Mr Crimble's, Mrs Bowater's, and my own account, I had been reading Miss Austen; and at about four o'clock was sharing Chapter XXIII. with poor Elinor:--

"The youthful infatuation of nineteen would naturally blind her to
everything but her beauty and good nature, but the four succeeding
years--years which, if rationally spent, give such improvements to
the understanding--must have opened her eyes to her defects of
Education, which the same period of time, spent on her side in
inferior society and more frivolous pursuits...."

I say I was reading this passage, and had come to the words--"and more frivolous pursuits," when an unusually imperative _rat-tat-tat_ fell upon the outer door, and I emerged from my book to discover that an impressive white-horsed barouche was drawn up in the street beyond my window. The horse tossed its head and chawed its frothy bit; and the coachman sat up beside his whip in the sparkling frosty afternoon air. My heart gave a thump, and I was still seeking vaguely to connect this event with myself or with Mr Bowater in Buenos Ayres, when the door opened and a lady entered whose plumed and purple bonnet was as much too small for her head as she herself was too large for the room. Yet in sheer dimensions this was not a very large lady. It was her "presence" that augmented her.

She seemed, too, to be perfectly accustomed to these special proportions, and with a rather haughty, "Thank you," to Mrs Bowater, winningly announced that she was Lady Pollacke, "a friend, a mutual friend, as I understand, of dear Mr Crimble's."