Wanderslore + 

XVIII + 

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:⁠— + 

“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 knickknacks. 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 pincushion 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 someone 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. + 

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? + 

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 notepaper 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 armchair 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 stargazing. 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 stargazing⁠—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 Aires. 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. + 

XIX + 

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 Aires, 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.” + 

Though a mauvish pink in complexion, Lady Pollacke was so like her own white horse that whinnyingly rather than winningly would perhaps have been the apter word. I have read somewhere that this human resemblance to horses sometimes accompanies unusual intelligence. The poet, William Wordsworth, was like a horse; I have seen his portrait. And I should like to see Dean Swift’s. Whether or not, the unexpected arrival of this visitor betrayed me into some little gaucherie, and for a moment I still sat on, as she had discovered me, literally “floored” by my novel. Then I scrambled with what dignity I could to my feet, and chased after my manners. + 

“And not merely that,” continued my visitor, seating herself on a horsehair easy-chair, “but among my still older friends is Mr. Pellew. So you see⁠—you see,” she repeated, apparently a little dazzled by the light of my window, “that we need no introduction, and that I know all⁠—all the circumstances.” She lowered a plump, white-kidded hand to her lap, as if, providentially, there all the circumstances lay. + 

Unlike Mr. Crimble, Lady Pollacke had not come to make excuses, but to bring me an invitation⁠—nothing less than to take tea with her on the following Thursday afternoon. But first she hoped⁠—she was sure, in fact, and she satisfied herself with a candid gaze round my apartment⁠—that I was comfortable with Mrs. Bowater; “a thoroughly trustworthy and sagacious woman, though, perhaps, a little eccentric in address.” + 

I assured her that I was so comfortable that some of my happiest hours were spent gossiping with my landlady over my supper. + 

“Ah, yes,” she said, “that class of person tells us such very interesting things occasionally, do they not? Yet I am convinced that the crying need in these days is for discrimination. Uplift, by all means, but we mustn’t confuse. What does the old proverb say: Festina lente: there’s still truth in that. Now, had I known your father⁠—but there; we must not rake in old ashes. We are clean, I see; and quiet and secluded.” + 

Her equine glance made a rapid circuit of the photographs and ornaments that diversified the walls, and I simply couldn’t help thinking what a queer little cage they adorned for so large and handsome a bird, the kind of bird, as one might say, that is less weight than magnitude. + 

I was still casting my eye up and down her silk and laces when she abruptly turned upon me with a direct question: “You seldom, I suppose, go out?” + 

Possibly if Lady Pollacke had not at this so composedly turned her full face on me⁠—with its exceedingly handsome nose⁠—her bonnet might have remained only vaguely familiar. Now as I looked at her, it was as if the full moon had risen. She was, without the least doubt in the world, the lady who had bowed to Mr. Crimble from her carriage that fateful afternoon. A little countenance is not, perhaps, so telltale as a large one. (I remember, at any rate, the horrid shock I once experienced when my father set me up on his hand one day to show me my own face, many times magnified, in his dressing-room shaving-glass.) But my eyes must have narrowed a little, for Lady Pollacke’s at once seemed to set a little harder. And she was still awaiting an answer to her question. + 

“ ‘Go out’!” I repeated meditatively, “not very much, Lady Pollacke; at least not in crowded places. The boys, you know.” + 

“Ah, yes, the boys.” It was Mr. Crimble’s little dilemma all over again: Lady Pollacke was evidently wondering whether I knew she knew I knew. + 

“But still,” I continued cheerfully, “it is the looker-on that sees most of the game, isn’t it?” + 

Her eyelids descended, though her face was still lifted up. “Well, so the proverb says,” she agreed, with the utmost cordiality. It was at this moment⁠—as I have said⁠—that she invited me to tea. + 

She would come for me herself, she promised. “Now wouldn’t that be very nice for us both⁠—quite a little adventure?” + 

I was not perfectly certain of the niceness, but might not Mr. Crimble be a fellow-guest; and hadn’t I an urgent and anxious mission with him? I smiled and murmured; and, as if her life had been a series of such little social triumphs, my visitor immediately rose; and, I must confess, in so doing seemed rather a waste of space. + 

“Then that’s settled: Thursday afternoon. We must wrap up,” she called gaily through her descending veil. “This treacherous month! It has come in like a lamb, but”⁠—and she tugged at her gloves, still scrutinizing me fixedly beneath her eyelids, “but it will probably go out like a lion.” As if to illustrate this prediction, she swept away to the door, leaving Mrs. Bowater’s little parlour and myself to gather our scattered wits together as best we could, while her carriage rolled away. + 

Alas, though I love talking and watching and exploring, how could I be, even at that age, a really social creature? Though Lady Pollacke had been politeness itself, the remembrance of her bonnet in less favourable surroundings was still in my mind’s eye. If anything, then, her invitation slightly depressed me. Besides, Thursday never was a favourite day of mine. It is said to have only one lucky hour⁠—the last before dawn. But this is not teatime. Worse still, the coming Thursday seemed to have sucked all the virtue out of the Wednesday in between. I prefer to see the future stretching out boundless and empty in front of me⁠—like the savannas of Robinson Crusoe’s island. Visitors, and I am quite sure he would have agreed with me, are hardly at times to be distinguished from visitations. + 

All this merely means that I was a rather green and backward young woman, and, far worse, unashamed of being so. Here was one of the greatest ladies of Beechwood lavishing attentions upon me, and all I was thinking was how splendid an appearance she would have made a few days before if she had borrowed his whip from her coachman and dispersed my little mob with it, as had Mrs. Stocks with her duster. But noblesse oblige; Mr. Crimble had been compelled to consider my feelings, and no doubt Lady Pollacke had been compelled to consider his. + 

The next day was fine, but I overslept myself and was robbed of my morning walk. For many hours I was alone. Mrs. Bowater had departed on one of her shopping bouts. So, whoever knocked, knocked in vain; and I listened to such efforts in secret and unmannerly amusement. I wonder if ever ghosts come knocking like that on the doors of the mind; and it isn’t that one won’t hear, but can’t. My afternoon was spent in an anxious examination of my wardrobe. Four o’clock punctually arrived, and, almost as punctually, Lady Pollacke. Soon, under Mrs. Bowater’s contemplative gaze, I was mounted up on a pile of cushions, and we were bowling along in most inspiriting fashion through the fresh March air. Strangely enough, when during our progress, eyes were now bent in my direction, Lady Pollacke seemed copiously to enjoy their interest. This was especially the case when she was acquainted with their owners; and bowed her bow in return. + 

“Quite a little reception for you,” she beamed at me, after a particularly respectable carriage had cast its occupants’ scarcely modulated glances in my direction. How strange is human character! To an intelligent onlooker, my other little reception must have been infinitely more inspiring; and yet she had almost wantonly refused to take any part in it. Now, supposing I had been Royalty or a corpse run over in the street.⁠ ⁠… But we were come to our journey’s end. + 

Brunswick House was a fine, square, stone-edged edifice, dominating its own “grounds.” Regiments of crocuses stood with mouths wide open in its rich loam. Its gateposts were surmounted by white balls of stone; and the gravel was of so lively a colour that it must have been new laid. Wherever I looked, my eyes were impressed by the best things in the best order. This was as true of Lady Pollacke’s clothes, as of her features, of her gateposts, and her drawing-room. And the next most important thing in the last was its light. + 

Light simply poured in upon its gilt and brass and pale maroon from two high wide windows staring each other down from between their rich silk damask curtains. It was like entering an enormous bath, and it made me timid. In the midst of a large animal’s skin, beneath a fine white marble chimneypiece, and under an ormolu clock, the parlourmaid was directed to place a cherry-coloured stool for me. Here I seated myself. With a fine, encouraging smile my hostess left me for a few minutes to myself. Maybe because an embroidered fire-screen that stood near reminded me of Miss Fenne, I pulled myself together. “Don’t be a ninny,” I heard myself murmur. My one hope and desire in this luxurious solitude was for the opportunity to deliver my message to Mr. Crimble. This was not only a visit, it was an adventure. I looked about the flashing room; and it rather stared back at me. + 

The first visitor to appear was none but Miss Bullace, whose recitation of “The Lady’s ‘Yes’ ” had so peculiarly inspirited Fanny. She sat square and dark with her broad lap in front of her, and scrutinized me as if no emergency ever daunted her. And Lady Pollacke recounted the complexity of ties that had brought us together. Miss Bullace, alas, knew neither Mr. Ambrose Pellew, nor my godmother, nor even my godmother’s sister, Augusta Fenne. Indeed I seemed to have no claim at all on her recognition until she inquired whether it was not Augusta Fenne’s cousin, Dr. Julius Fenne, who had died suddenly while on a visit to the Bermudas. Apparently it was. We all at once fell into better spirits, which were still more refreshed when Lady Pollacke remarked that Augusta had also “gone off like that,” and that Fennes were a doomed family. + 

But merely to smile and smile is not to partake; so I ventured to suggest that to judge from my last letter from my godmother she, at any rate, was in her usual health; and I added, rather more cheerfully perhaps than the fact warranted, that my family seemed to be doomed too, since, so far as I was aware, I myself was the last of it left alive. + 

At this a sudden gush of shame welled up in me at the thought that through all my troubles I had never once remembered the kindnesses of my step-grandfather; that he, too, might be dead. I was so rapt away by the thought that I caught only the last three words of Miss Bullace’s murmured aside to Lady Pollacke, viz., “not blush unseen.” + 

Lady Pollacke raised her eyebrows and nodded vigorously; and then to my joy Mr. Crimble and a venerable old lady with silver curls clustering out of her bonnet were shown into the room. He looked pale and absent as he bent himself down to take my hand. It was almost as if in secret collusion we had breathed the word Fanny together. Mrs. Crimble was supplied with a teacup, and her front teeth were soon unusually busy with a slice of thin bread and butter. Eating or drinking, her intense old eyes dwelt distantly but assiduously on my small shape; and she at last entered into a long story of how, as a girl, she had been taken to a circus⁠—a circus: and there had seen.⁠ ⁠… But what she had seen Mr. Crimble refused to let her divulge. He jerked forward so hastily that his fragment of toasted scone rolled off his plate into the wild beast’s skin, and while, with some little difficulty, he was retrieving it, he assured us that his mother’s memory was little short of miraculous, and particularly in relation to the past. + 

“I have noticed,” he remarked, in what I thought a rather hollow voice, “that the more advanced in years we⁠—er⁠—happily become, the more closely we return to childhood.” + 

“Senile.⁠ ⁠…” I began timidly, remembering Dr. Phelps’s phrase. + 

But Mr. Crimble hastened on. “Why, mother,” he appealed to her, with an indulgent laugh, “I suppose to you I am still nothing but a small boy about that height?” He stretched out a ringless left hand about twenty-four inches above the rose-patterned carpet. + 

The old lady was not to be so easily smoothed over. “You interrupted me, Harold,” she retorted, with some little show of indignation, “in what I was telling Lady Pollacke. Even a child of that size would have been a perfect monstrosity.” + 

A lightning grimace swept over Miss Bullace’s square features. + 

“Ah, ah, ah!” laughed Mr. Crimble, “I am rebuked, I am in the corner! Another scone, Lady Pollacke?” Mrs. Crimble was a beautiful old lady; but it was with a rather unfriendly and feline eye that she continued to regard me; and I wondered earnestly if Fanny had ever noticed this characteristic. + 

“The fact of the matter is,” said Lady Pollacke, with conviction, “our memories rust for want of exercise. Where, physically speaking, would you be, Mr. Crimble, if you hadn’t the parish to tramp over? Precisely the same with the mind. Every day I make a personal effort to commit some salient fact to memory⁠—such a fact, for a trivial example, as the date of the Norman Conquest. The consequence is, my husband tells me, I am a veritable encyclopaedia. My father took after me. Alexander the Great, I have read somewhere, could address by name⁠—though one may assume not Christian name⁠—every soldier in his army. Thomas Babington Macaulay, a great genius, poor man, knew by heart every book he had ever read. A veritable mine of memory. On the other hand, I once had a parlourmaid, Sarah Jakes, who couldn’t remember even the simplest of her duties, and if it hadn’t been for my constant supervision would have given us port with the soup.” + 

“Perfectly, perfectly true,” assented Miss Bullace. “Now mine is a verbal memory. My mind is a positive magnet for words. Method, of course, is everything. I weld. Let us say that a line of a poem terminates with the word bower, and the next line commences with she, I commit these to memory as one word⁠—Bowershee⁠—and so master the sequence. My old friend, Lady Bovill Porter⁠—we were schoolfellows⁠—recommended this method. It was Edmund Kean’s, I fancy, or some other well-known actor’s. How else indeed, could a great actor realize what he was doing? Word-perfect, you see, he is free.” + 

“Exactly, exactly,” sagely nodded Mr. Crimble, but with a countenance so colourless and sad that it called back to my remembrance the picture of a martyr⁠—of St. Sebastian, I think⁠—that used to hang up in my mother’s room. + 

“And you?”⁠—I discovered Lady Pollacke was rather shrilly inquiring of me. “Is yours a verbal memory like Miss Bullace’s; or are you in my camp?” + 

“Ah, there,” cried Mr. Crimble, tilting back his chair in sudden enthusiasm. “Miss M. positively puts me to shame. And poetry, Miss Bullace; even your wonderful repertory!” + 

“You mean Miss M. recites?” inquired Miss Bullace, leaning forward over her lap. “But how entrancing! It is we, then, who are birds of a feather. And how I should adore to hear a fellow-enthusiast. Now, won’t you, Lady Pollacke, join your entreaties to mine? Just a stanza or two!” + 

A chill crept through my bones. I had accepted Lady Pollacke’s invitation, thinking my mere presence would be entertainment enough, and because I knew it was important to see life, and immensely important to see Mr. Crimble. In actual fact it seemed I had hopped for a moment not out of my cage, but merely, as Fanny had said, into another compartment of it. + 

“But Mr. Crimble and I were only talking,” I managed to utter. + 

“Oh, now, but do! Delicious!” pleaded a trio of voices. + 

Their faces had suddenly become a little strained and unnatural. The threat of further persuasion lifted me almost automatically to my feet. With hunted eyes fixed at last on a small marble bust with stooping head and winged brow that stood on a narrow table under the window, I recited the first thing that sprang to remembrance⁠—an old poem my mother had taught me, “Tom o’ Bedlam.” + 

“The moon’s my constant mistress, + 

And the lovely owl my marrow; + 

The flaming drake, + 

And the night-crow, make + 

Me music to my sorrow. + 

I know more than Apollo; + 

For oft when he lies sleeping, + 

I behold the stars + 

At mortal wars, + 

And the rounded welkin weeping. + 

The moon embraces her shepherd, + 

And the Queen of Love her warrior; + 

While the first does horn + 

The stars of the morn, + 

And the next the heavenly farrier.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Throughout these first three stanzas all went well. So rapt was my audience that I seemed to be breaking the silence of the seas beyond their furthest Hebrides. But at the first line of the fourth⁠—at “With a heart”⁠—my glance unfortunately wandered off from the unheeding face of the image and swam through the air, to be caught, as it were, like fly by spider, by Miss Bullace’s dark, fixed gaze, that lay on me from under her flat hat. + 

“ ‘With a heart,’ ” I began; and failed. Some ghost within had risen in rebellion, sealed my tongue. It seemed to my irrational heart that I had⁠—how shall I say it?⁠—betrayed my “stars,” betrayed Fanny, that she and they and I could never be of the same far, quiet company again. So the “furious fancies” were never shared. The blood ran out of my cheek; I stuck fast; and shook my head. + 

At which quite a little tempest of applause spent itself against the walls of Lady Pollacke’s drawing-room, an applause reinforced by that of a little round old gentleman, who, unnoticed, had entered the room by a farther door, and was now advancing to greet his guest. He was promptly presented to me on the beast-skin, and with the gentlest courtesy begged me to continue. + 

“ ‘With a heart,’ now; ‘with a heart⁠ ⁠…’ ” he prompted me, “a most important organ, though less in use nowadays than when I was a boy.” + 

But it was in vain. Even if he had asked me only to whisper the rest of the poem into his long, pink ear, for his sake alone, I could not have done so. Moreover, Mr. Crimble was still nodding his head at his mother in confirmation of his applause; and Miss Bullace was assuring me that mine was a poem entirely unknown to her, that, “with a few little excisions,” it should be instantly enshrined in her repertory⁠—“though perhaps a little bizarre!” and that if I made trial of Lady Bovill Porter’s Bowershee method, my memory would never again play me false. + 

“The enunciation⁠—am I not right, Sir Walter?⁠—as distinct from the elocution⁠—was flawless. And really, quite remarkable vocal power!” + 

Amidst these smiles and delights, and what with the brassy heat of the fire and the scent of the skin, I thought I should presently faint, and caught, as if at a straw, at the bust in the window. + 

“How lovely!” I cried, with pointing finger.⁠ ⁠… + 

At that, silence fell, but only for a moment. Lady Pollacke managed to follow the unexpected allusion, and led me off for a closer inspection. In the hushed course of our progress thither I caught out of the distance two quavering words uttered as if in expostulation, “apparent intelligence.” It was Mrs. Crimble addressing Sir Walter Pollacke. + 

“Classical, you know,” Lady Pollacke was sonorously informing me, as we stood together before the marble head. “Charming pose, don’t you think? Though, as we see, only a fragment⁠—one of Sir Walter’s little hobbies.” + 

I looked up at the serene, winged, sightless face, and a whisper sounded on and on in my mind in its mute presence, “I know more than Apollo; I know more than Apollo.” How strange that this mere deaf-and-dumbness should seem more real, more human even, than anything or anyone else in Lady Pollacke’s elegant drawing-room. But self-possession was creeping back. “Who,” I asked, “is he? And who sculped him?” + 

“Scalped him?” cried Lady Pollacke, poring down on me in dismay. + 

“Cut him out?” + 

“Ah, my dear young lady,” said a quiet voice, “that I cannot tell you. It is the head of Hypnos, Sleep, you know, the son of Night and brother of Death. One wing, as you see, has been broken away in preparation for this more active age, and yet⁠ ⁠… only a replica, of course”; the voice trembled into richness, “but an exceedingly pleasant example. It gives me rare pleasure, rare pleasure,” he stood softly rocking, hands under coattails, eyes drinking me in, “to⁠—to have your companionship.” + 

What pleasure his words gave me, I could not⁠—can never⁠—express. Then and there I was his slave forever. + 

“Walter,” murmured Lady Pollacke, as if fondly, smiling down on the rotund old gentleman, “you are a positive peacock over your little toys; is he not, Mr. Crimble? Did you ever hear of a woman wasting her affections on the inanimate? Even a doll, I am told, is an infant in disguise.” + 

But Mr. Crimble had approached us not to discuss infants or woman, but to tell Lady Pollacke that her carriage was awaiting me. + 

“Then pity ’tis, ’tis true,” cried she, as if in Miss Bullace’s words. “But please, Miss M., it must be the briefest of adieus. There are so many of my friends who would enjoy your company⁠—and those delightful recitations. Walter, will you see that everything’s quite⁠—er⁠—convenient?” + 

I am sure Lady Pollacke’s was a flawless savoir faire, yet, when I held out my hand in farewell, her cheek crimsoned, it seemed, from some other cause than stooping. The crucial moment had arrived. If one private word was to be mine with Mr. Crimble, it must be now or never. To my relief both gentlemen accompanied me out of the room, addressing their steps to mine. Urgency gave me initiative. I came to a standstill on the tesselated marble of the hall, and this time proffered my hand to Sir Walter. He stooped himself double over it; and I tried in vain to dismiss from remembrance a favourite reference of Pollie’s to the guinea-pig held up by its tail. + 

I wonder now what Sir W. would have said of me in his autobiography: “And there stood a flaxen spelican in the midst of the hearthrug; blushing, poor tiny thing, over her little piece like some little bread-and-butter miss fresh from school.” Something to that effect? I wonder still more who taught him so lovable a skill in handling that spelican? + 

“There; goodbye,” said he, “and the blessing, my dear young lady, of a fellow fanatic.” + 

He turned about and ascended the staircase. Except for the parlourmaid who was awaiting me in the porch, Mr. Crimble and I were alone. + 

XX + 

“Mr. Crimble,” I whispered, “I have a message.” + 

A tense excitement seized him. His face turned a dusky yellow. How curious it is to see others as they must sometimes see ourselves. Should I have gasped like that, if Mr. Crimble had been Fanny’s Mercury? + 

“A letter from Miss Bowater,” I whispered, “and I am to say,” the cadaverous face was close above me, its sombre melting eyes almost bulging behind their glasses, “I am to say that she is giving yours ‘her earnest attention, let alone her prayers.’ ” + 

I remember once, when Adam Waggett as a noisy little boy was playing in the garden at home, the string of his toy bow suddenly snapped: Mr. Crimble drew back as straight and as swiftly as that. His eyes rained unanswerable questions. But the parlourmaid had turned to meet me, and the next moment she and I were side by side in Lady Pollacke’s springy carriage en route for my lodgings. I had given my message, but never for an instant had I anticipated it would have so overwhelming an effect. + 

There must have been something inebriating in Lady Pollacke’s tea. My mind was still simmering with excitement. And yet, during the whole of that journey, I spent not a moment on Mr. Crimble’s or Fanny’s affairs, or even on Brunswick House, but on the dreadful problem whether or not I ought to tip the parlourmaid, and if so, with how much. Where had I picked this enigma up? Possibly from some chance reference of my father’s. It made me absent and harassed. I saw not a face or a flower; and even when the parlourmaid was actually waiting at my request in Mrs. Bowater’s passage, I stood over my money-chest, still incapable of coming to a decision. + 

Instinct prevailed. Just as I could not bring myself to complete “Tom o’ Bedlam” with Miss Bullace looking out of her eyes at me, so I could not bring myself to offer money to Lady Pollacke’s nice prim parlourmaid. Instead I hastily scrabbled up in tissue paper a large flat brooch⁠—a bloodstone set in pinchbeck⁠—a thing of no intrinsic value, alas, but precious to me because it had been the gift of an old servant of my mother’s. I hastened out and lifting it over my head, pushed it into her hand. + 

Dear me, how ashamed of this impulsive action I felt when I had regained my solitude. Should I not now be the jest of the Pollacke kitchen and drawing-room alike?⁠—for even in my anxiety to attain Mr. Crimble’s private ear, I had half-consciously noticed what a cascade of talk had gushed forth when Mr. Crimble had closed the door of the latter behind him. + 

That evening I shared with Mrs. Bowater my experiences at Brunswick House. So absorbed was I in my own affairs that I deliberately evaded any reference to hers. Yet her pallid face, seemingly an inch longer and many shades more austere these last two days, touched my heart. + 

“You won’t think,” I pleaded at last, “that I don’t infinitely prefer being here, with you? Isn’t it, Mrs. Bowater, that you and I haven’t quite so many things to pretend about? It is easy thinking of others when there are only one or two of them. But whole drawing-roomsful! While here; well, there is only just you and me.” + 

“Why, miss,” she replied, “as for pretending, the world’s full of shadows, though substantial enough when it comes to close quarters. If we were all to look at things just bare in a manner of speaking, it would have to be the Garden of Eden over again. It can’t be done. And it’s just that that what’s called the gentry know so well. We must make the best use of the mess we can.” + 

I was tired. The thin, sweet air of spring, wafted in at my window after the precocious heat of the day, breathed a faint, reviving fragrance. A curious excitement was in me. Yet her words, or perhaps the tone of her voice, coloured my fancy with vague forebodings. I pushed aside my supper, slipped off my fine visiting clothes, and put on my dressing-gown. With lights extinguished, I drew the blind, and strove for a while to puzzle out life’s riddle for myself. Not for the first or the last time did wandering wits cheat me of the goal, for presently in the quiet out of my thoughts, stole into my imagination the vision of that dreaming head my eyes had sheltered on. + 

“Hypnos,” I sighed the word; and⁠—another face, Fanny’s, seemed to melt into and mingle with the visionary features. Why, why, was my desperate thought, why needed she allow the world to come to such close quarters? Why, with so many plausible reasons given in her letter for keeping poor Mr. Crimble waiting, had she withheld the one that counted for most? And what was it? I knew in my heart that that could not be “making the best use of the mess.” Surely, if one just told only the truth, there wasn’t anything else to tell. It had taken me some time to learn this lesson. + 

A low, rumbling voice shook up from the kitchen. Mrs. Bowater was talking to herself. Dejection drew over me again at the thought of the deceit I was in, and I looked at my love for Fanny as I suppose Abraham at the altar of stones looked at his son Isaac. Then suddenly a thought far more matter-of-fact chilled through my mind. I saw again Mr. Crimble huddling down towards me in that echoing hall, heard my voice delivering Fanny’s message, and realized that half of what I had said had been written in mockery. It had been intended for my eye only⁠—“Let alone my prayers.” In the solitude of the darkness the words had a sound far more sinister than even Fanny can have intended. + 

Mr. Crimble, however, had accepted them apparently in good faith⁠—to judge at least from the letter which reached me the following morning:⁠— + 

“Dear Miss M.⁠—Thank you. I write with a mind so overburdened that words fail me. But I realize that Miss Bowater has no truer friend than yourself, and shall be frank. After that terrible morning you might well have refused to help me. I cannot believe that you will⁠—for her sake. This long concealment, believe me, is not of my own seeking. It cannot, it must not, continue, a moment beyond the necessity. For weeks, nay, months, I have been tortured with doubts and misgivings. Her pride, her impenetrable heedlessness; oh, indeed, I realize the difficulties of her situation. I dare not speak till she gives consent. Yet silence puts me in a false position, and tongues, as perhaps even you may be aware, begin to wag. Nor is this my first attempt, and⁠—to be more frank than I feel is discreet⁠—there is my mother (quite apart from hers) now, alas, aged and more dependent on my affection and care than ever. To make a change now⁠—the talk, the absence of Christian charity, my own temperament and calling! I pray for counsel to guide my stumbling bark on this sea of darkest tempest. + 

“Can F. decide that her affections are such as could justify her in committing her future to me? Am I justified in asking her? You, too, must have many anxieties⁠—anxieties perhaps unguessed at by those of coarser fibre. And though I cannot venture to ask your confidences, I do ask for your feminine intuition⁠—even though this may seem an intrusion after my sad discomfiture the other day. And yet, I assure you, it was not corporeal fear⁠—are not we priests the police of the City Beautiful? Might I not have succeeded merely in making us both ridiculous? But that is past, and the dead past must bury its dead: there is no gentler sexton. + 

“Need I say that this letter is not the fruit of any mere impulse. The thought, the very image of her never leaves my consciousness night or day; and I get no rest. I am almost afraid at the power she has of imprinting herself on the mind. I implore you to be discreet, without needless deception. I will wait patiently. My last desire is to hasten an answer⁠—unless, dear Miss M., one in the affirmative. And would it be possible⁠—indeed the chief purpose of this letter was to make this small request⁠—would it be possible to give me one hour⁠—no tea⁠—this afternoon? There was a phrase in your whispered message⁠—probably because of the peculiar acoustic properties of Brunswick House⁠—that was but half-caught. We must not risk the faintest shadow of misunderstanding. + 

“Believe me, yours most gratefully, though ‘perplexed in the extreme,’ + 

My old habit of hunting in the crannies of what I read had ample opportunity here. Two things stood out in my mind: a kind of astonishment at Mr. Crimble’s “stumbling bark” which he was asking me to help to steer, and inexpressible relief that Fanny’s letter was buried beyond hope of recovery before he could call that afternoon. The more I pitied and understood his state of mind, the more helpless and anxious I felt. Then, in my foolish fashion, I began again picturing in fancy the ceremony that would bring Mr. Crimble and my landlady into so close a relationship. Why did he fear the wagging of tongues so much? I didn’t. Would Miss Bullace be a bridesmaid? Would I? I searched in my drawer and read over the “Form of Solemnization of Matrimony.” I came to “the dreadful day of judgment,” and to “serve” and “obey,” and shivered. I was not sure that I cared for the way human beings had managed these things. But at least, bridesmaids said nothing, and if I⁠⸺⁠ + 

While I was thus engaged Mrs. Bowater entered the room. I smuggled my prayerbook aside and gave her Fanny’s letter. She was always a woman of few words. She folded it reflectively; took off her spectacles, replaced them in their leather case, and that in her pocket. + 

“ ‘Soap, handkerchiefs, stockings,’ ” she mused, “though why in the world she didn’t say ‘silk’ is merely Fanny’s way. And I am sure, miss,” she added, “she must have had one peculiar moment when the thought occurred to her of the bolt.” + 

“But, Mrs. Bowater,” I cried in snakelike accents, “you said you were ‘soliciting no divulgements.’ ” + 

Mrs. Bowater’s mouth opened in silent laughter. “Between you⁠—” she began, and broke off. “Gracious goodness, but here’s that young man, Mr. Crimble, calling again.” + 

Mr. Crimble drank tea with me, though he ate nothing. And now, his darkest tempest being long since stilled, I completely absolve myself for amending the message which Lady Pollacke’s tesselated hall had mercifully left obscure. He sat there, almost like a goldfish⁠—though black in effect beyond description⁠—gaping for the crumb that never comes. “She bade me,” I muttered my falsehood, “she bade me say secretly that she has had your letter, that she is giving it her earnest attention, her earnest attention, alone, and in her prayers.” + 

The dark liquid pupils appeared for one sheer instant to rotate, then he turned away, and, as if quite helplessly, stifled an unsheltered yawn. + 

“ ‘Alone,’ ” he cried desperately. “I see myself, I see myself in her young imagination!” + 

I think he guessed that my words were false, that his ear had not been as treacherous as all that. Whether or not, no human utterance have I ever heard so humble, tragic, final. It knelled in my ear like the surrender of all hope. And yet it brought me, personally, some enlightenment. It was with Mr. Crimble’s eyes that I now scanned not only his phantom presence in Fanny’s imagination, but my own, standing beside him⁠—a “knickknack” figure of fun, pygmied beneath the flappets of his clerical coat, like a sun-beetle by a rook. The spectacle strengthened me without much affecting Fanny. She was no longer the absolute sultana of my being. I could think now, as well as adore. + 

How strange it is that when our minds are needled to a sharp focus mere “things” swarm so close. There was not a single ornament or book or fading photograph in Mrs. Bowater’s parlour that in this queer privacy did not mutely seem to cry, “Yes, here am I. This is how things go.” + 

I leant forward and looked at him. “We mustn’t care what she sees, what she thinks, if only we can go on loving her.” + 

“ ‘Can, can’?” echoed Mr. Crimble, “I have prayed on my knees not to.” + 

This was a sharp ray on my thoughts of love. “But why?” I said. “Even when I was a child, I knew by my mother’s face that I must go on, and should go on, loving her, Mr. Crimble, whether she loved me or not. One can’t make a bad mistake in giving, can one? And yet⁠—well, you must remember that I cannot but have been a⁠—a disappointment; that as long as I live I can’t expect any great affection, any disproportionate one, I mean.” + 

“But, but,” he stumbled on, “a daughter’s affection⁠—it’s different. I mustn’t brood on my trouble. It unhinges me. Why, the clock stops. But nevertheless may God bless you for that.” + 

“But surely,” I persisted, smiling as cheerfully as I could, “Nil desperandum, Mr. Crimble. And you know what they say about fish in the sea.” + 

His eye rolled round on me as if a serpent had spoken. “I am sorry, I am sorry,” he repeated rapidly, in the same low, unemphatic undertone as if to himself. “I must just wait. You have never seen a sheep⁠—a bullock, shall we call him?⁠—being driven to the slaughterhouse. On, on⁠—from despair to despair. That’s my position.” His face was emptied of expression, his eyes fixed. + 

These words, his air, his look, this awful private thing⁠—I can’t say⁠—it shocked and frightened me beyond words. But I answered him steadily none the less. “Listen, Mr. Crimble,” I said, “look at me, here, what I am. I have had my desperate moments too⁠—more alone in the world than you can ever be! And I swear before God that I will never, never be not myself.” I wonder what the listener thought of this little challenge, not perhaps what Mr. Crimble did. + 

“Well,” he replied, with sudden calm, “that’s the courage of the martyrs, and not all of them perhaps have been Christians, if history is to be credited. Yes, and in sober truth, I assure you, you, that I would go to the stake for⁠—for Miss Bowater.” + 

He rose, and in that instant of dignity I foresaw what was never to be⁠—lawn sleeves encasing those loose, black arms. He had somehow wafted me back to my Confirmation. + 

“And the letter? I have no wish to intrude. But her actual words. I mayn’t see that?” + 

“You will please forgive me,” I entreated helplessly, “it is buried; because, you see, Fanny⁠—you see, Mrs. Bowater⁠—” + 

“Ah,” he said. “It is this deception which dismays, scandalizes me most. But you will keep me informed?” + 

He seized his soft round hat, and it was on this cold word we parted. I stood by the window, with hand stretched out to summon him back. But no word of comfort or hope came to my aid, and I watched him out of sight. + 

XXI + 

That night I wrote to Fanny, copying out my letter from the scrawling draft from which I am copying it now:⁠— + 

“Dear Fanny⁠—I have given Mr. Crimble your message; first, exactly in your own words, though he did not quite hear them, and then, leaving out a little. You may be angry at what I am going to say⁠—but I am quite sure you ought to answer him at once. Fanny, he’s dreadfully fond of you. I never even dreamed people were like that⁠—in such torture for what can’t be, unless you mean you do care, but are too proud to tell him so. If he knows you have no heart for him, he may soon be better. This sounds hateful. But I am not such a pin in a pincushion as not to know that even the greatest sorrows and disappointments wear out. Why, isn’t that beech-tree we sat under a kind of cannibal of its own dead leaves? + 

“Your private letter is quite safe; though I prefer not to burn it⁠—indeed, cannot burn it. You know how I have longed for it. But please, if possible, don’t send me two in future. It doesn’t seem fair; and your mother knew already about our stargazing. You see, how else could the door have been bolted!! But it’s best to have been found out⁠—next, I mean, to telling oneself. + 

“What day are you coming home? I look at it, as if it were a lighthouse⁠—even though it is out of sight. Shall we go on with Wuthering Heights when you do come? I saw the ‘dazzling’ moon⁠—but there, Fanny, what I want most to beg of you is to write to Mr. Crimble⁠—all that you feel, even if not all that you think. No, perhaps I mean the reverse. He must have been wondering about you long before I began to. And there it was, all sunken in; no one could have guessed his longing by looking at him. I am afraid it must affect his health. + 

“And now goodbye. I have made a vow to myself not to think into things too much. Your affectionate friend (as much of her as there is)⁠— + 

Fanny was prompt in reply:⁠— + 

“Dear Midgetina⁠—It’s a strange fact, but while, to judge from your letter, you seem to be growing smaller, I (in spite of Miss Stebbings’s water porridge) am growing fatter. Now, which is the tragedy? I may come home on the 30th. If so, kill the fatted calf; I will supply the birthday-cake. How foolish of you to keep letters. I never do, lest I should remember the answers. Anyhow, I shall not write again. But if, by any chance, Mr. Crimble should make another call, will you explain that my chief motive in not singing at the concert was because I should have been a second mezzo-soprano. One of two in one concert must be superfluous. Perhaps I did not explain this clearly; nor did I say how charming I thought my double was. + 

“I am tired⁠—of overwork. I have finished Wuthering Heights. It is a mad, untrue book. The world is not like Emily Brontë’s conception of it. It is neither dream nor nightmare, Midgetina, but wide, wide awake. And I am convinced that the poets are only cherubs with sugar-sticks to their little rosebud mouths. I abominate whitewash. As for ‘putting people out of their misery,’ and cannibal beech-trees: no, fretful midge! If you could see me sitting here looking down on rows and rows of vacant and hostile faces⁠—though one or two are infatuated enough⁠—you would realize that such a practice would lead me into miscellaneous infanticide. + 

“Personally, I never did think into things too painfully; though as regards ‘telling,’ the reverse is certainly the wiser course. So you will forgive so short, and perhaps none too sweet, a letter from your affec.⁠—F.” + 

Enclosed with this was a narrow slip of paper:⁠— + 

“I shall not write to you know who. Think, if you like, but don’t feel like a microscope. He is only in love. And however punctilious your own practice may be, pray, Miss M., do not preach⁠—at any rate to your affecte. but unregenerate friend.⁠—F.” + 

I believe I drafted and destroyed three answers to this letter. It broke down my defences far more easily than had the errand boys. It shamed me for a prig, a false friend, a sentimentalist. And the “fretful midge” rankled like salt in a wounded heart. Yet Fanny was faithless even to her postscript. A sheaf of narcissuses hooded in blue tissue paper was left at the house a day or two afterwards. It was accompanied by Mr. Crimble’s card in a little envelope tied in with the stalks:⁠— + 

“I am given a ray of hope.” + 

Mrs. Bowater had laid this offering on my table with a peculiar grimace, whether scornful or humorous, it was impossible to detect. “From Mr. Crimble, miss. Why, one might think he had two irons in the fire!” + 

I sat gazing at this thank-offering long after she had gone⁠—the waxy wings, the crimson-rimmed corona, the pale-green cluster of pistil and stamen. The heavy perfume stole over my senses, bringing only weariness and self-distaste to my mind. Fly that I was, caught in a web⁠—once more I began a letter to Fanny, imploring her to write to her mother, to tell her everything. But that letter, too, was torn up into tiny pieces and burnt in the fire. + 

Next morning, heavily laden with my parasol, a biscuit or two in my bag, my Sense and Sensibility and a rug in my arms, I set off very early for Wanderslore, having arranged with Mrs. Bowater over night that she should meet me under my beech at a quarter to one. + 

Under the flat, bud-pointed branches, I pressed on between clusters of primrose, celandine, and wild wood anemone, breathing in the earthy freshness of grass and moss. And presently I came out between the stones and jutting roots in sight of the vacant windows. I stood for a moment confronting their black regard, then descended the knoll and was soon making myself comfortable beside the garden house. But first I managed to clamber up on a fragment of the fallen masonry and peep in at its low windows. A few dead, last-year’s flies lay dry on their backs; dusty, derelict spiderwebs; a litter of straw, and a few potsherds⁠—the place was empty. But it was mine, and the very remembrance of which it whispered to me⁠—the picture of my poor father’s bedroom that night of the storm⁠—only increased my sense of possession. + 

What was wrong with me just then, what I had sallied out in hope to be delivered from, was the unhappy conviction that my life was worthless, and I of no use in the world. I had taught myself to make knots in strings, but actual experience seemed to have proved that most human fumblings resulted only in “grannies” and not in the true lover’s variety. They secured nothing, only tangled and jammed. I was young then, and yet as heavily burdened with other people’s responsibilities as was poor Christian with the bundle of his sins. But my bundle, too, in that lovely, desolate loneliness at last fell off my shoulders. + 

Could I not still be loyal in heart and mind to Fanny, even though now I knew how little she cared whether I was loyal or not? I even climbed up behind Mr. Crimble’s thick spectacles and looked down again at myself from that point of vantage. Whether or not I was his affair, I could try to make him mine⁠—perhaps even persuade Fanny to love him. + 

Oh, dear; was not every singing bird in that wilderness, every unfolding flower and sunlit March leaf welcoming the spirit within me to their quiet habitation? As if in response to this naive thought, welled up in my memory the two last stanzas of my “Tom o’ Bedlam,” which, either for pride or shame, had stuck in my throat on the skin mat in Lady Pollacke’s sky-lit drawing-room:⁠⸺⁠ + 

“With a heart of furious fancies, + 

Whereof I am commander: + 

With a burning spear, + 

And a horse of air, + 

To the wilderness I wander. + 

With a knight of ghosts and shadows, + 

I summoned am to tourney: + 

Ten leagues beyond + 

The wide world’s end; + 

Methinks it is no journey.” + 

Parasol for spear, the youngest Miss Shanks’s pony for horse of air, there was I (even though common-sized boots might reckon it a mere mile or so), ten leagues at least beyond⁠—Mrs. Bowater’s. Nor, like her husband, had I broken my leg; nor had Fanny broken my heart. All would come right again. Why, what a waste of Fanny it would be to make her Mrs. Crimble. My bishop, according to Miss Fenne, had had quite a homely helpmate, “little short of a frump, Caroline, as I remember her thirty years ago.” Perhaps if I left off my fine colours and bought a nice brown stuff dress and a bonnet, might not Mr. Crimble change his mind⁠ ⁠… ? I have noticed that as soon as I begin to laugh at myself, the whole world seems to smile in return. + 

Absurd, contrary, volatile creature that I was⁠—a kind of thankfulness spread over my mind. I turned on to my knees where I sat and repeated the prayers which in my haste to be off I had neglected before coming out. And thus kneeling, I opened my eyes on the garden again, bathed delicately in the eastern sunshine. There was my old friend, Mr. Clodd’s Nature, pranking herself under the nimble fingers of spring; and in her sight as well as in the sight of my godmother’s God, and Mr. Crimble’s Almighty, and, possibly, of Dr. Phelps’s Norm, were not, in deed and in truth, all men equal? How mysterious and how entrancing! If “sight,” then eyes: but whose? where? I gazed round me dazzledly, and if wings had been mine, would have darted through the thin, blue-green veil and been out into the morning. + 

Poor she-knight! romantical Miss Midge! she had no desire to hunt Big Game, or turn steeplejack; her fancies were not dangerously “furious”; but, as she knelt there, environed about by that untended garden, and not so ridiculously pygmy either, even in the ladder of the world’s proportion⁠—saw-edged blade of grass, gold-cupped moss, starry stonecrop, green musky moschatel, close-packed pebble, wax-winged fly⁠—well, I know not how to complete the sentence except by remarking that I am exceedingly glad I began to write my Life. + 

I realized too that it is less flattering to compare oneself with the very little things of the world than with the great. Given time, I might scale an Alp; I could only kill an ant. Besides, I am beginning to think that one of the pleasantest ways of living is in one’s memory. How much less afflicting at times would my present have been if I had had the foresight to remind myself how beguiling it would appear as the past. Even my old sharpest sorrows have now hushed themselves to sleep, and those for whom I have sorrowed are as quiet. + 

Having come to a pause in my reflections, I opened my Sense and Sensibility at Chapter XXXV. Yet attend to Miss Austen I could not. She is one of those compact and cautious writers that will not feed a wandering mind; and at last, after three times rereading the same paragraph, an uneasy conviction began to steal over me. There was no doubt now in my mind. I was being watched. Softly, stealthily, I raised my eyes from my book and with not the least motion of head or body, glanced around me. Whereupon, as if it had been playing sentinel out of the thicket near at hand, a blackbird suddenly jangled its challenge, and with warning cries fled away on its wings towards the house. + 

XXII + 

Then instantly I discovered the cause of the bird’s alarm. At first I fancied that this strange figure was at some little distance. Then I realized that his stature had misled me, and that he could not be more than twenty or thirty yards away. Standing there, with fixed, white face and black hair, under a flowering blackthorn, he remained as motionless and as intent as I. He was not more than a few inches, apparently, superior in height to myself. + 

“So,” I seemed to whisper, as gaze met gaze, “there!” hardly certain the while if he was real or an illusion. Indeed, if, even then before my eyes, he had faded out into the tangle of thorn, twig, and thin-spun blossom above and around him, it would not have greatly astonished, though it would have deeply disappointed me. With a peculiar, trembling curiosity, I held him with my gaze. If he would not disclose himself, then must I. + 

Slowly and deliberately my cold hand crept out and grasped my parasol. Without for a moment removing my eyes from this interloper’s face, I pushed its ribbed silk tent taut into the air. Click! went the tiny spring; and at that he stirred. + 

“Who are you: watching me?” I cried in a low, steady voice across the space that divided us. His head stooped a little. I fancied⁠—and feared⁠—that he was about to withdraw. But after a pause he drew himself up and came nearer, casting, as he approached, his crooked shadow away from the sun on the close-cropped turf beside him. + 

To this day I sometimes strive in vain to see, quite clearly in my mind, that face, as it appeared at that first meeting. A different memory of it obtrudes itself; yet how many, many times have I searched his features for news of himself, and looked passingly⁠—and once with final intensity⁠—into those living eyes. But I recollect that his clothes looked slightly out of keeping and grotesque amid the green things of early spring. It seemed he had wasted in them. So, too, the cheek had wasted over its bone, and seemed parched; the thin lips, the ears slightly pointed. And then broke out his low, hollow voice. Scarcely rising or falling, the mere sound of it seemed to be as full of meaning as the words. + 

He looked at me, and at all I possessed, as if piece by piece⁠—as if he had been a long time searching for them all. Yet he now seemed to avoid my eyes, though they were serenely awaiting his. Indeed from this moment almost to the last, I was never at a loss or distressed in his company. He never called me out of myself beyond an easy and happy return, though he was to creep into my imagination as easily as a single bee creeps into the thousand-celled darkness of its hive. + 

Whenever I parted from him, his remembrance was like that of one of those strange figures which thrust themselves as if out of the sleep-world into the mind’s wakefulness; vividly, darkly, impress themselves upon consciousness, and then are gone. So I sometimes wonder if I ever really knew him, if he was ever perfectly real to me; like Fanny, for instance. Yet he made no pretence to be mysterious, and we were soon talking together almost as naturally as if we were playmates of childhood who had met again after a long separation. + 

He confessed that, quite unknown to me, he had watched me come and go in the cold mornings of winter, when frost had soon driven me home again out of the bare, frozen woods. He had even been present, I think, when Fanny and I had shared⁠—or divided⁠—the stars between us. A faint distaste at any rate showed itself on his face when he admitted that he had seen me not alone. I was unaccustomed to that kind of interest, and hardly knew whether to be pleased or angry. + 

“But you know I come here to be alone,” I said as courteously as possible. + 

“Yes,” he answered, with face turned away. “That’s how I saw you.” + 

Without my being aware of it, too, he played a kind of chess with me, seizing each answer in turn for hook on which to hang another question. What had I to conceal? Of my short history, though not of myself, I told him freely; yet asked him few questions in return. Nor at that time did I even consider how strange a chance had brought two such human beings as he and I to this place of meeting. Yet, after all, whales are but little creatures by comparison with the ocean in which they roam, and glowworm will keep tryst with glowworm in forests black as night. + 

Through all he said was woven a thread of secrecy. So low and monotonous was his voice (not lifting itself much, but only increasing in resonance when any thought angered or darkened his mind); so few were his gestures that he might have been talking in his sleep. Not once that long morning did he laugh, not even when I mischievously proffered him my parasol (as he sat a few paces away) to screen him from the March sun! Solemnly he shared Mrs. Bowater’s biscuits with me, scattering the crumbs to a robin that hopped up between us, as if he had been invited to our breakfast. + 

His head hung so low between his heavy shoulders that it reminded me of a flower stooping for want of water. Not that there was anything limp or fragile or gentle in his looks. He was, far rather, clumsy and ugly in appearance, yet with a grace in his look like that of an old, haggled thorn-tree when the wind moves its branches. And anyhow, he was come to be my friend⁠—out of the unknown. And when I looked around at the serene wild loveliness of the garden, it seemed to be no less happy a place because it was no longer quite a solitude. + 

“You read,” he said, glancing reflectively, but none too complimentarily, at my book. + 

“It isn’t wise to think too much.” I replied solemnly, shutting Miss Austen up. “Besides, as I haven’t the opportunity of seeing many people in the flesh, you know, the next best thing is to meet them in books⁠—specially in this kind of book. If only I were Jane Austen; my gracious, I would enjoy myself! Her people are just the same as people are now⁠—inside. I doubt if leopards really want to change their spots. But of course”⁠—I added, since he did not seem inclined to express any opinion⁠—“I read other kinds of books as well. That’s the best of being a dunce⁠—there’s so much to learn! Just lately I have been learning to tie knots.” + 

I laughed, and discovered that I was blushing. + 

He raised his eyes slowly to my face, then looked so long and earnestly at my hands, that I was forced to hide them away under my bag. Long before I had noticed that his own hands were rather large and powerful for his size. Fanny’s face I had loved to watch for its fairness and beauty⁠—it would have been as lovely if she had not been within. To watch Mrs. Bowater’s was like spelling out bits of a peculiar language. I often found out what she was feeling or thinking by imitating her expression, and then translating it, after she was gone. This young man’s kept me engrossed because of the self that brooded in it⁠—its dark melancholy, too; and because even then, perhaps, I may have remotely and vaguely realized that flesh and spirit could not be long of one company. He himself was, as it were, a foreigner to me, and I felt I must make the best and most of him before he went off again. + 

Perhaps memory reads into this experience more than in those green salad days I actually found there. But of this at least I am certain⁠—that the morning sped on unheeded in his company, and I was even unconscious of how cold I was until he suddenly glanced anxiously into my face and told me so. So now we wandered off together towards the great house⁠—which hitherto I had left unapproached. We climbed the green-stained scaling steps from terrace to terrace, tufted with wallflower and snapdragon amongst the weeds, cushioned with bright moss, fretted with lichen. Standing there, side by side with him, looking up⁠—our two figures alone, on the wide flowerless weed-grown terrace⁠—hale, sour weeds some of them, shoulder-high⁠—I scrutinized the dark, shut windows. + 

What was the secret that had kept it so long vacant, I inquired. Mrs. Bowater had never given me any coherent answer to this question. My words dropped into the silence, like a pebble into a vast, black pool of water. + 

“There was a tale about,” he replied indifferently, and yet, as I fancied, not so indifferently as he intended, “that many years ago a woman”⁠—he pronounced the word almost as if it had reference to a different species from ourselves⁠—“that a woman had hanged herself in one of its upper rooms.” + 

“Hanged herself!” It was the kind of fable Mrs. Ballard used to share with Adam Waggett’s mother over their tea and shrimps. Frowning in horror and curiosity, I scanned his face. Was this the water I could dip for in his well? Alas, how familiar I was to become with the bucket. + 

He made a movement with his hands; at which I saw the poor creature up there in the darkness, suspended lifeless, poor, poor human, with head awry. + 

“Why?” I asked him, pondering childishly over this picture. + 

“It was mere gossip,” he replied, “and true or not, such as ‘they’ make up to explain their own silly superstitions. Just thinking long enough and hard enough would soon invite an evil spirit into any old empty house. Human beings are no better than sheep, though they don’t always see the dogs and shepherds that drive them.” + 

“And does it,” I faltered, glancing covertly up the walls, and conscious of a novel vein of interest in this strangely inexhaustible world, “does the evil spirit ever look out of the windows?” + 

He turned his face to me, smiling; and inquired if I had ever heard the phrase, “the eyelids of the dawn.” “There’s night, too,” he said. + 

“But whose spirit? Whose?” I persisted. “When I am here alone in the garden, why, it is just peace. How could that be, if an evil spirit haunted here?” + 

“Yes,” he said, “but a selfish, solitary peace. Dead birds don’t sing. Don’t come when you can’t get back; or the clouds are down.” + 

“You are trying to frighten me,” I said, in a louder voice. “And I have been too much alone for that. Of course things must look after themselves. Don’t we? And you said an evil spirit. What is the good of dreaming when you are wide awake?” + 

“Then,” said he, almost coldly, “do you deny that Man is an evil spirit? He distorts and destroys.” + 

But with that the words of my mother came back to me out of a faraway morning: “He made us of His Power and Love.” Yet I could not answer him, could only wait, as if expectant that by mere silence I should be able to share the thoughts he was thinking. And, all the while, my eyes were brooding in some dark chamber of my mind on Fanny, and not, as they well might have, on the dark bark of Mr. Crimble tossing in jeopardy beneath its fleeting ray of hope. + 

Truly this stranger was making life very interesting, even if he was only prodding over its dead moles. And truly I was an incorrigibly romantic young lady; for when, with a glance at my grandfather’s watch, I discovered that it was long past noon, and told him I must be gone; without a single moment’s hesitation, I promised to come again to meet him on the very first fine morning that showed. So strong within me was the desire to do so, that a profound dismay chilled my mind when, on turning about at the end of the terrace⁠—for he had shown no inclination to accompany me⁠—I found that he was already out of sight. I formally waved my hand towards where he had vanished in case he should be watching; sighed, and went on. + 

It was colder under the high, sunless trees. I gathered my cloak closer around me, and at that discovered not only that Miss Austen had been left behind, but that Fanny’s letter still lay in undisturbed concealment beneath its stone. It was too late to return for them now, and a vague misgiving that had sprung up in me amid the tree-trunks was quieted by the assurance that for these⁠—rather than for any other reason⁠—I must return to Wanderslore as soon as I could. So, in remarkably gay spirits, I hastened light-heeled on my way in the direction of civilized society, of nefarious Man, and of my never-to-be-blessed-too-much Mrs. Bowater. + 

XXIII + 

My landlady was already awaiting me at the place appointed, and we walked off together towards the house. It had been a prudent arrangement, for we met and passed at least half a dozen strangers before we arrived there, and one and all by the unfeigned astonishment with which they turned to watch our two figures out of sight (for I stooped once or twice, as if to tie my shoelace, in order to see), clearly proved themselves to belong to that type of humanity to which my new acquaintance had referred frigidly as they. Vanity of vanities, when one old loitering gentleman did not so much as lift an eyelid at me⁠—he was so absorbed in own thoughts⁠—I felt a pang of annoyance. + 

As soon as I was safely installed in my own room again, I confided in Mrs. Bowater a full account of my morning’s adventure. Not so much because I wished to keep free of any further deceit, as because I simply couldn’t contain myself, and must talk of my Stranger. She heard me to the end without question, but with an unusual rigidity of features. She compressed her lips even tighter before beginning her catechism. + 

“What was the young man’s name,” she inquired; “and where did he live?” + 

My hope had been that she herself would be able to supply these little particulars. With a blank face, I shook my head: “We just talked of things in general.” + 

“I see,” she said, and glanced at me, as if over her spectacles. Her next question was even less manageable. “Was the young fellow a gentleman?” + 

Alas! she had fastened on a flaw in my education. This was a problem absolutely new to me. I thought of my father, of Mr. Waggett, Dr. Grose, Dr. Phelps, the old farmer in the railway train, of Sir Walter Pollacke, my bishop, Heathcliff, Mr. Bowater, Mr. Clodd, even Henry⁠—or rather all these male phantoms went whisking across the back of my mind, calling up every other two-legged creature of the same gender within sight or hearing. Meanwhile, Mrs. Bowater stood like Patience on her Brussels carpet, or rather like Thomas de Torquemada, watching these intellectual contortions. + 

“Well, really, do you know, Mrs. Bowater,” I was forced to acknowledge at last, with a sigh and a smile, “I simply can’t say. I didn’t think of it. That seems rather on his side, doesn’t it? But to be quite, quite candid, perhaps not a gentleman; not exactly, I mean.” + 

“Which is no more than I supposed,” was her comment, “and if not⁠—and any kind of not, miss⁠—what was he, then? And if not, why, you can never go there again!” + 

“Indeed, but I must,” I said, as if to myself. + 

“With your small knowledge of the world,” she retorted unmovedly, “you must, if you please, be guided by those with more. Who isn’t a gentleman couldn’t be desirable company if chanced on like a stranger in a young lady’s lonely rambles. And how tall did you say? And what’s more,” she continued, not pausing for an answer, and gathering momentum on her way, “if he is a gentleman, I’d better come along with you, miss, and see for myself.” + 

A rebellious and horrified glance followed her retreating figure out of the room. So this was the reward for being open and aboveboard. What a ridiculous figure I should cut, tippeting along behind my landlady. What would my stranger think of me? What would she think of him? Was he a “gentleman”? To decide whether or not the Spirit of Man is an evil spirit had been an easy problem by comparison. Gentle man⁠—why, of course, self muttered in shame to self convicted of yet another mean little snobbery. He had been almost absurdly gentle⁠—had treated me as if I were an angel rather than a young woman. + 

But the nettlerash produced by Mrs. Bowater’s bigotry was not to be so easily allayed as all that. It had invited yet another kind of them in. An old, green, rotting board hung over the wicket gate that led up the stony path into Wanderslore⁠—“Trespassers will be prosecuted.” Why couldn’t one put boards up in the Wanderslore of one’s mind? My landlady had never inquired if Lady Pollacke was a gentlewoman. How mechanical things were in their unexpectedness. That morning I had gone out to free myself from the Crimble tangle, merely to return with a few more knots in the skein. + 

A dead calm descended on me. I was adrift in the Sargasso Sea⁠—in the Doldrums, and had dropped my sextant overboard. Even a long stare at the master-mariner on the wall gave me no help. Yet I must confess that these foolish reflections made me happy. I would share them with Fanny⁠—perhaps with the “gentleman” himself, some day. I leaned over the side of my small vessel, more deeply interested in the voyage than I had been since Pollie had carried me out of my girlhood into the Waggetts’ wagonette. And as I sat there, simmering over these novelties, a voice, clear as a cockcrow, exclaimed in my mind, “If father hadn’t died, I’d have had nothing of all this.” My hands clenched damp in my lap at this monstrosity. But I kept my wits and managed to face it. “If father hadn’t died,” I answered myself, “you don’t know what would have happened. And if you think that, because I am happy now, anything could make me not wish him back, it’s a lie.” But I remained a little less comfortable in mind. + 

The evening post brought me a letter and a registered parcel. I turned them over and over, examining the unfamiliar handwriting, the bright red seals; but all in vain. In spite of my hard-won knotlore, I was still kneeling over the package and wrestling with string and wax, when Mrs. Bowater, folding her letter away in its envelope, announced baldly: “She’s not coming home, it seems, at all these holidays, having been invited by some school friend into the country⁠—Merriden, or some such place. Not that you might expect Fanny to write plain, when she doesn’t mean plain.” + 

“Oh, Mrs. Bowater! Not at all?” + 

Cold fogs of disappointment swept in, blotting out my fool’s paradise. That inward light without which life is dark indeed died in eclipse. The one thought and desire which I now realized I had been feeding on from hour to hour, had been snatched away. To think that they had been nothing but waste. “Oh, Fanny,” I whispered bitterly to myself, “oh, Fanny!” But the face I lifted to her mother showed only defiance. + 

“Well,” I muttered, “who cares? Let’s hope she will enjoy herself better than mooning about in this dingy old place.” + 

Mrs. Bowater merely continued to look quietly over the envelope at me. + 

“Oh, but you know, Mrs. Bowater,” I quaked miserably, “it’s not dingy to me. Surely a promise is a promise, whoever you make it to!” + 

With that I stooped my face over the stuffy-smelling brown paper, and attacked the last knot with my teeth. With eyes still a little asquint with resentment I smoothed away the wrappings from the shape within. Then every thought evaporated in a sigh. For there, of a delicate veined fairness against the white paper, lay a minute copy in ivory of none but lovely Hypnos. Half-blindly I stared at it⁠—lost in a serenity beyond all hope of my poor, foolish life⁠—then lifted it with both hands away from my face: “A present⁠—to me! Look!” I cried, “look!” + 

Mrs. Bowater settled her face over the image as if it had been some tropical and noxious insect I was offering for her inspection. But I thrust it into her hand and opened my letter:⁠— + 

“My Dear Young Lady⁠—I am no poet, and therefore cannot hope to share with you the music of ‘the flaming drake,’ but we did share my Hypnos. Only a replica, as I told you, but none the less one of the most beautiful things I possess. Will you, then, give me the pleasure of accepting the contents of the little package I am having posted with this⁠—as a small token of the delight your enthusiasm gave. Yours most sincerely⁠— + 

But I did acknowledge it, not with that guardedness of the feelings which Miss Austen seemed to recommend, but from the very depths of my heart. Next morning came Lady Pollacke’s invitation:⁠— + 

“Dear Miss M.⁠—I hasten to renew my invitation of last Thursday. Will you give us the pleasure of your company at tea on Friday afternoon? Mrs. Monnerie⁠—the younger daughter, as you will remember, of Lord B.⁠—has expressed an exceedingly warm wish to make your acquaintance, and Mr. Pellew, who is giving us a course of sermons at St. Peter’s during Holy Week, will also be with us. May we, perhaps, share yet another of those delightful recitations? + 

I searched my memory for memorial of Lord B.; alas, in vain. This lapse made the thought of meeting his younger daughter a little alarming. Yet I must confess to having been pleasantly flattered by these attentions. Even the black draught administered by Fanny, who had not even thought it worth her while to send me a word of excuse or explanation, lost much of its bitterness. I asked Mrs. Bowater if she supposed I might make Sir Walter a little present in return for his. Would it be a proper thing to do, would it be ladylike? + 

“What’s meant kindly,” she assured me, after a moment’s reflection, “even if taken amiss, which, to judge from his letter, it won’t be, is nothing to be thought of but only felt.” + 

This advice decided me, and early on my Friday morning I trimmed and freshened up as well as I could one of my grandfather’s dwarf cedar-trees which, in the old days, had stood on my window balcony. Its branches were now a little dishevelled, but it was still a fresh and pretty thing in its grey-green pot. + 

XXIV + 

With this dwarf tree in my arms, when came the auspicious afternoon, I followed Lady Pollacke’s parlourmaid⁠—her neat little bonnet tied with a bow under her ear⁠—down my Bateses, and was lifted by Mrs. Bowater into the carriage. How demure a greeting we exchanged when, the maid and I having seated ourselves together under its hood, my glance fell upon the bloodstone brooch pinned conspicuously for the occasion near the topmost button of her trim, outdoor jacket. It gave me so much confidence that even the sudden clatter of conversation that gushed out over me in the doorway of Lady Pollacke’s drawing-room failed to be disconcerting. The long, flowery room was thronged with company, and everybody was talking to everybody else. On my entry, as if a seraph had spoken, the busy tongues sank instantly to a hush. I stood stilettoed by a score of eyes. But Sir Walter had been keeping good watch for me, and I at once delivered my great pot into his pink, outstretched hands. + 

“My dear, dear young lady,” he cried, stooping plumply over me, “the pleasure you give me! A little masterpiece: and real old Nankin. Alas, my poor Hypnos!” + 

“But it is me, me,” I cried. “If I could only tell you!” + 

A murmur of admiration rippled across the room, in which I distinctly heard a quavering, nasal voice exclaim, “Touching, touching!” + 

The words⁠—as if a pleasant sheep had bleated⁠—came, I fancied, from a rather less fashionable lady with a lorgnette, who was sitting almost alone on the outskirts of the room, and who I afterwards discovered was only a widowed sister of Lady Pollacke’s. But I could spare her but one startled glance, for, at the same moment, I was being presented to the younger daughter of Lord B. Mrs. Monnerie sat amply reclining in an immense gilded chair⁠—a lady with a large and surprising countenance. Lady Pollacke’s “younger” had misled my fancy. Far from being the slim, fair, sylphlike thing of my expectations, Mrs. Monnerie cannot have been many years the junior of my godmother, Miss Fenne. + 

Her skin had fallen into the queerest folds and puckers. Her black swimming eye under a thick eyebrow gazed down her fine, drooping nose at me with a dwelling expression at once indulgent, engrossed, and amused. With a gracious sweep of her hand she drew aside her voluminous silk skirts so that I could at once install myself by her side in a small, cane-seated chair that had once, I should fancy, accommodated a baby Pollacke, and had been brought down from the nursery for this occasion. + 

Thus, then, I found myself⁠—the exquisitely self-conscious centre of attention⁠—striving to nibble a biscuit, nurse my child-size handleless teacup, and respond to her advances at one and the same time. + 

Lady Pollacke hung like a cloud at sunset over us both, her cheek flushed with the effort to be amused at every sentence which Mrs. Monnerie uttered and to share it as far as possible with the rest of her guests. + 

“A little pale, eh?” mused Mrs. Monnerie, brooding at me with her great eye. “She wants sea-air; sea-air⁠—just to tinge that rose-leaf porcelain. I must arrange it.” + 

I assured her that I was in the best of health. + 

“Not at all,” she replied. “All young people boast of their health. When I was your age every thought of illness was as black as a visitation of the devil. That’s the door where we must lay all such evils, isn’t it, Mr. Pellew?” + 

A lean, tall, birdlike figure, the hair on his head still showing traces of auburn, disengaged itself from a knot of charmed spectators. + 

“Ah,” he said. “But I doubt, now,” he continued, with a little deprecating wave of his teacup at me, “if Miss M. can remember me. When we first met we were precisely one week old, precisely one week old.” + 

Why, like Dr. Phelps, Mr. Pellew referred to me as we I had not time to consider, for he was already confiding to Mrs. Monnerie that he had never baptized an infant who more strenuously objected to holy water than had I. I looked at his long, fair eyelashes and the smile-line on his cheek as he bent with a sort of jocular urbanity over her chair, but could not recall his younger face, though during my christening I must, of course, have gazed at him even more absorbedly. + 

“ ‘Remember’ you⁠—I’ll be bound she did,” cried Mrs. Monnerie with enthusiasm, “or was it the bachelor thumb? The mercy is you didn’t drop her into the font. Can you swim, my dear?” + 

“I couldn’t at a week,” I replied as archly as possible. “But I can swim; my father taught me.” + 

“But how wonderful!” broke our listeners into chorus. + 

“There we are, then,” asserted Mrs. Monnerie; “sea-bathing! And are we a swimmer, Mr. Pellew?” + 

Mr. Pellew seemed not to have caught her question. He was assuring me that Miss Fenne had kept him well informed⁠—well informed of all my doings. He trusted I was comfortable with the excellent Mrs. Bowater, and hoped that some day I should be able to pay a visit to his rectory in Devonshire. “Mrs. Pellew, he knew.⁠ ⁠…” What he knew about Mrs. Pellew, however, was never divulged, for Mrs. Monnerie swallowed him up:⁠— + 

“Devonshire, my dear Mr. Pellew! no, indeed. Penthouse lanes, red-hot fields, staring cows. Imagine it! She would be dried up like a leaf. What she wants is a mild but bracing sea-air. It shall be arranged. And who is this Mrs. Bowater?” + 

At this precise moment, among the strange faces far above me, I descried that of Mr. Crimble, modestly peering out of the background. He coughed, and in a voice I should scarcely have recognized as his, informed Mrs. Monnerie that my landlady was “a most res⁠—an admirable woman.” He paused, coughed again, swept my soul with his glance⁠—“I assure you, Mrs. Monnerie, in view of⁠—of all the circumstances, one couldn’t be in better hands. Indeed the house is on the crest of the hill, well out of the town, yet not a quarter of an hour’s walk from my mother’s.” + 

“Hah!” remarked Mrs. Monnerie, with an inflection that I am sure need not have brought a warmth to my cheek, or a duskier pallor to Mr. Crimble’s. + 

“You have perhaps heard the tragic story of Wanderslore,” persisted Mr. Crimble; “Miss M.’s⁠—er⁠—lodgings are immediately adjacent to the park.” + 

“Hah!” repeated Mrs. Monnerie, even more emphatically. “Mrs. Bowater, eh? Well, I must see for myself. And I’m told, Miss M.,” she swept down at me, “that you have a beautiful gift for recitation.” She looked round, patted her lap imperiously, and cried, “Come, now, who’s to break the ice?” + 

In fact, no doubt, Mrs. Monnerie was not so arbitrary a mistress of Lady Pollacke’s little ceremony as this account of it may suggest. But that is how she impressed me at the time. She the sun, and I the least⁠—but I hope not the least grateful⁠—of her obsequious planets. Lady Pollacke at any rate set immediately to breaking the ice. She prevailed upon a Miss Templemaine to sing. And we all sat mute. + 

I liked Miss Templemaine’s appearance⁠—brown hair, straight nose, dark eyelashes, pretty fringe beneath her peak-brimmed hat. But I was a little distressed by her song, which, so far as I could gather, was about two persons with more or less broken hearts who were compelled to part and said, “Ah” for a long time. Only physically distressed, however, for though I seemed to be shaken in its strains like a linnet in the wind, its adieux were protracted enough to enable me to examine the rest of the company at my leisure. Their eyes, I found, were far more politely engaged the while in gazing composedly down at the carpet or up at the ceiling. And when I did happen to intercept a gliding glance in my direction, it was almost as if with a tiny explosion that it collided with mine and broke away. + 

Mrs. Monnerie’s eyelids, on the other hand, with a faintly fluttering motion, remained closed from the first bar to the last⁠—a method of appreciation I experimented with for a moment but quickly abandoned; while at the first clash of the keys, Sir Walter had dexterously contrived to slide himself out of the room by the door at which he had unexpectedly entered it on my first visit. Such was the social situation when, after murmurs of gratitude and applause, Miss Templemaine took up her gloves and rose from the piano, and Mrs. Monnerie reopened herself to the outer world with the ejaculation, “That’s right. Now, my dear!” + 

The summons was to me. My moment had come, but I was prepared for it. In my last ordeal I had broken down because I had chosen a poem that was a kind of secret thing in my mind. So, after receiving Lady Pollacke’s letter, I had hunted about for a recitation as short, but less personal: one, I mean, whose sentiments I didn’t mind. And since Mrs. Bullace had chosen two of Mrs. Browning’s pieces for her triumph on New Year’s Eve, I argued that she knew the parish taste, and that I could do no better. Of course, too, composure over what I was going to do was far more important than the composition. + 

“Prepared for it,” I said just now, but I meant it only in the sense that one prepares for a cold bath. There was still the plunge. I clasped my hands, stood up. Ceiling and floor gently rocked a little. There seemed to be faces⁠—faces everywhere, and every eye in them was fixed on me. Thus completely encompassed, I could find no refuge from them, for unfortunately my Hypnos was completely obliterated from view by the lady with the lorgnette. So I fixed my attention, instead, on the window, where showed a blank break of clear, fair, blue sky between the rain-clouds of afternoon. A nervous cough from Lady Pollacke plunged me over, and I announced my title: “The Weakest Thing,” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning:⁠— + 

“Which is the weakest thing of all + 

Mine heart can ponder? + 

The sun, a little cloud can pall + 

With darkness yonder! + 

The cloud, a little wind can move + 

Where’er it listeth; + 

The wind, a little leaf above, + 

Though sere, resisteth! + 

What time that yellow leaf was green, + 

My days were gladder: + 

Now on its branch each summer-sheen + 

May find me sadder! + 

Ah, me! a leaf with sighs can wring + 

My lips asunder⁠— + 

Then is my heart the weakest thing + 

Itself can ponder. + 

Yet, Heart, when sun and cloud are pined + 

And drop together; + 

And at a blast which is not wind, + 

The forests wither, + 

Thou, from the darkening, deathly curse + 

To glory breakest⁠— + 

The Strongest of the Universe + 

Guarding the weakest.” + 

The applause, in which Miss Templemaine generously joined, was this time quite unconcealed, and Lady Pollacke’s sister’s last “Touching” had hardly died away when Mrs. Monnerie added her approbation. + 

“Charming, perfectly charming,” she murmured, eyeing me like a turtledove. “But tell me, my dear, why that particular poem? It seemed to have even less sense than usual.” + 

“No‑o; ye‑es,” breathed Lady Pollacke, and many heads nodded in discreet accord. + 

“Doesn’t⁠—er⁠—perhaps, Mrs. Browning dwell rather assiduously on the tragic side of life?” Mr. Crimble ventured to inquire. + 

Lady Pollacke jerked her head, either in the affirmative or in the negative, and looked inquiringly at Mrs. Monnerie, who merely drooped her eyes a little closer towards me and smiled, almost as if she and I were in a little plot together. + 

“What do you say, Miss M.?” + 

“Well, Mrs. Monnerie,” I replied a little nervously, for all eyes were turned on me, “I don’t think I know myself what exactly the poem means⁠—the who’s and what’s⁠—and what the blast was which was not wind. But I thought it was a poem which everyone would understand as much as possible of.” + 

To judge from the way she quivered in her chair, though quite inaudibly, Mrs. Monnerie was extremely amused at this criticism. + 

“And that is why you chose it?” + 

“Well, yes,” said I, “you see, when one is listening to poetry, not reading it to oneself, I mean, one hasn’t time to pry about for all its bits of meaning, but only just to get the general⁠—general⁠—” + 

“Aroma?” suggested Mrs. Monnerie. + 

“Yes⁠—aroma.” + 

“And the moral?” + 

The silence that hung over this little exchange was growing more and more dense. Luckless Miss M.! She only plunged herself deeper into it by her reply that, “Oh, there’s nothing very much in the moral, Mrs. Monnerie. That’s quite ordinary. At least I read about that in prose, why, before I was seven!” + 

“Touch⁠—” began that further voice, but was silenced by a testy lift of Mrs. Monnerie’s eyelid. “Indeed!” she said, “and couldn’t you, wouldn’t you, now, give me the prose version? That’s more my mark.” + 

“It was in a little nursery lesson-book of mine, called The Observing Eye; letters about snails and coral insects and spiders and things⁠—” I paused. “A book, rather, you know, for Sundays. But my⁠—my family and I⁠—” + 

“Oh, but do,” cried Lady Pollacke in a voice I should hardly have recognized, “I adore snails.” + 

Once more I was cornered. So I steeled myself anew, and stumbled through the brief passage in the squat, blue book. It tells how⁠— + 

“The history of each one of the animals we have now considered, teaches us that our kind God watches over the wants and the pleasures of the meanest of His creatures. We see that He gives to them, not only the sagacity and the instruments which they need for catching their food, but that He also provides them with some means of defending themselves. We learn by their history that the gracious Eye watches under the mighty waters, as well as over the earth, and that no creature can stop doing His will without His eye seeing it.” + 

XXV + 

Once more I sat down, but this time in the midst of what seemed to me a rather unpleasant silence, as if the room had grown colder: a silence which was broken only by the distant whistlings of a thrush. At one and the same moment both Mr. Pellew and Mr. Crimble returned to teacups which I should have supposed must have, by this time, been empty, and Lady Pollacke’s widowed sister folded up her lorgnette. + 

“My dear Miss M.,” said Mrs. Monnerie dryly, with an almost wicked ray of amusement in her deep-set eyes, “wherever the top of Beechwood Hill may be, and whatever supplies of food may be caught on its crest, there is no doubt that you have been provided with the means of defending yourself. But tell me now, what do you think, perhaps, Mr. Pellew’s little ‘instruments’ are? Or, better still⁠—mine? Am I a mollusc with a hard shell, or a scorpion with a sting?” + 

Lady Pollacke rose to her feet and stood looking down on me like a hen, though not exactly a motherly one. But this was a serious question over which I must not be flustered, so I took my time. I folded my hands, and fixed a long, long look on Mrs. Monnerie. Even after all these years, I confess it moves me to recall it. + 

“Of course, really and truly,” I said at last, as deferentially as I could, “I haven’t known you long enough to say. But I should think, Mrs. Monnerie, you always knew the truth.” + 

I was glad I had not been too impetuous. My reply evidently pleased her. She chuckled all over. + 

“Ah,” she said reposefully, “the truth. And that is why, I suppose, like Sleeping Beauty, I am so thickly hedged in with the thorns and briers of affection. Well, well, there’s one little truth we’ll share alone, you and I.” She raised herself in her chair and stooped her great face close to my ear: “We must know more of one another, my dear,” she whispered. “I have taken a great fancy to you. We must meet again.” She hoisted herself up. Sir Walter Pollacke had hastened in and stood smiling, with arm hooked, and genial, beaming countenance in front of her. Mr. Crimble had already vanished. Mr. Pellew was talking earnestly with Lady Pollacke. Conversation broke out, like a storm-shower, on every side. For a while I was extraordinarily alone. + 

Into this derelict moment a fair-cheeked, breathless lady descended, and surreptitiously thrusting a crimson padded birthday book and a miniature pencil into my lap, entreated my autograph⁠—“Just your signature, you know⁠—for my small daughter. How she would have loved to be here!” + 

This lady cannot have been many years older than I, and one of those instantaneous, fleeting affections sprang up in me as I looked up at her for the first and only time, and seemed to see that small daughter smiling at me out of her face. + 

Alas, such is vanity. I turned over the leaves to August 30th and found printed there, for motto, a passage from Shakespeare:⁠— + 

“He that has had a little tiny wit⁠— + 

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain⁠— + 

Must make content with his fortunes fit, + 

For the rain it raineth every day.” + 

The 29th was little less depressing, from Samuel Taylor Coleridge:⁠— + 

“He prayeth best who loveth best + 

All creatures great and small.” + 

This would never do. I bent double over the volume, turned back hastily three or four leaves, and scrawled in my name under August 25th on a leaf that bore the quotation:⁠— + 

“Fie on’t; ah, fie! ’tis an unweeded garden, + 

That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature + 

Possess it merely. That it should come to this!” + 

and beneath the quotation, the signature of Josephine Mildred Spratte. + 

“Thank you, thank you, she will be overjoyed,” blushed the fair-haired lady. A sudden hunger for solitude seized upon me. I rose hastily, conscious for the first time of a headache, caused, no doubt, by the expensive and fumey perfumes in the air. Threading my way between the trains and flounces and trouser-legs around me, at last my adieux were over. I was in the porch⁠—in the carriage. The breezes of heaven were on my cheek. My blessed parlourmaid was once more installed beside me. Yet even now the Pollacke faces were still flocking in my mind. The outside world was very sluggishly welling in. Looking up so long had stiffened my neck. I fixed my eyes on the crested back buttons of Lady Pollacke’s stiff-looking coachman, and committed myself to my thoughts. + 

It was to a Miss M., with one of her own handkerchiefs laid over her brows, and sprinkled with vinegar and lavender water, that Mrs. Bowater brought in supper that evening. We had one of our broken talks together, none the less. But she persisted in desultory accounts of Fanny’s ailments in her infancy; and I had to drag in Brunswick House by myself. At which she poked the fire and was mum. It was unamiable of her. I longed to share my little difficulties and triumphs. Surely she was showing rather too much of that discrimination which Lady Pollacke had recommended. + 

She snorted at Mr. Pellew, she snorted at my friendly parlourmaid and even at Mrs. Monnerie. Even when I repeated for her ear alone my nursery passage from The Observing Eye, her only comment was that to judge from some fine folk she knew of, there was no doubt at all that God watched closely over the pleasures of the meanest of His creatures, but as for their doing His will, she hadn’t much noticed it. + 

To my sigh of regret that Fanny had not been at home to accompany me, she retorted with yet another onslaught on the fire, and the apophthegm, that the world would be a far better place if people kept themselves to themselves. + 

“But Mrs. Bowater,” I argued fretfully, “if I did that, I should just⁠—distil, as you might say, quite away. Besides, Fanny would have been far, far the⁠—the gracefullest person there. Mrs. Monnerie would have taken a fancy to her, now, if you like.” + 

Mrs. Bowater drew in her lips and rubbed her nose. “God forbid,” she said. + 

But it was her indifference to the impression that I myself had made on Mrs. Monnerie that nettled me the most. “Why, then, who is Lord B.?” I inquired impatiently at last, pushing back the bandage that had fallen over my eyes. + 

“From what I’ve heard of Lord B.,” said Mrs. Bowater shortly, “he was a gentleman of whom the less heard of’s the better.” + 

“But surely,” I protested, “that isn’t Mrs. Monnerie’s fault any more than Fanny’s being so lovely⁠—I mean, than I being a midget was my father’s fault? Anyhow,” I hurried on, “Mrs. Monnerie says I look pale, and must go to the sea.” + 

Mrs. Bowater was still kneeling by the fire, just as Fanny used to kneel. And, like Fanny, when one most expected an answer, she remained silent; though, unlike Fanny, it seemed to be not because she was dreaming of something else. How shall I express it?⁠—there fell a kind of loneliness between us. The severe face made no sign. + 

“Would you⁠—would you miss me?” some silly self within piped out pathetically. + 

“Why, for the matter of that,” was her sardonic reply, “there’s not very much of you to miss.” + 

I rose from my bed, flung down the bandage, and ran down my little staircase. “Oh, Mrs. Bowater,” I said, burying my face in her camphory skirts, “be kind to me; be kind to me! I’ve nobody but you.” + 

The magnanimous creature stroked my vinegar-sodden hair with the tips of her horny fingers. “Why there, miss. I meant no harm. Isn’t all the gentry and nobility just gaping to snatch you up? You won’t want your old Mrs. Bowater very long. What’s more, you mustn’t get carried away by yourself. You never know where that journey ends. If sea it is, sea it must be. Though, Lord preserve us, the word’s no favourite of mine.” + 

“But suppose, suppose, Mrs. Bowater,” I cried, starting up and smiling enrapturedly into her face, “suppose we could go together!” + 

“That,” said she, with a look of astonishing benignity, “would be just what I was being led to suppose was the heighth of the impossible.” + 

At which, of course, we at once began discussing ways and means. But, delicious though this prospect seemed, I determined that nothing should persuade me to go unless all hope of Fanny’s coming home proved vain. Naturally, from Fanny memory darted to Wanderslore. I laughed up at my landlady, holding her finger, and suggested demurely that we should go off together on the morrow to see if my stranger were true to his word. + 

“We have kept him a very long time, and if, as you seem to think, Mrs. Monnerie isn’t such a wonderful lady, you may decide that after all he is a gentleman.” + 

She enjoyed my little joke, was pleased that I had been won over, but refused to accept my reasoning, though the topic itself was after her heart. + 

“The point is, miss, not whether your last conquest is a wonderful lady, or a grand lady, or even a perfect lady for the matter of that, but, well, a lady. It’s that’s the kind in my experience that comes nearest to being as uncommon a sort as any sort of a good woman.” + 

This was a wholly unexpected vista for me, and I peered down its smooth, green, aristocratic sward with some little awe. + 

“As for the young fellow who made himself so free in his manners,” she went on placidly, so that I had to scamper back to pick her up again, “I have no doubt seeing will be believing.” + 

“But what is the story of Wanderslore?” I pressed her none too honestly. + 

The story⁠—and this time Mrs. Bowater poured it out quite freely⁠—was precisely what I had been told already, but with the addition that the young woman who had hanged herself in one of its attics had done so for jealousy. + 

“Jealousy! But of whom?” I inquired. + 

“Her husband’s, not her own: driven wild by his.” + 

“You really mean,” I persisted, “that she couldn’t endure to live any longer because her husband loved her so much that he couldn’t bear anybody else to love her too?” + 

“In some such measure,” replied Mrs. Bowater, “though I don’t say he didn’t help the other way round. But she was a wild, scattering creature. It was just her way. The less she cared, the more they flocked. She couldn’t collect herself, and say, ‘Here I am; who are you?’ so to speak. Ah, miss, it’s a sickly and dangerous thing to be too much admired.” + 

“But you said ‘scattering’: was she mad a little?” + 

“No. Peculiar, perhaps, with her sidelong, startled look. A lovelier I’ve never seen.” + 

“You’ve seen her!” + 

“Thirty years ago, perhaps. Alive and dead.” + 

“Oh, Mrs. Bowater, poor thing, poor thing.” + 

“That you may well say, for lovely in the latter finding she was not.” + 

My eyes were fixed on the fire, but the picture conjured up was dark even amidst the red-hot coals. “And he? did he die too? At least his jealousy was broken away.” + 

“And I’m not so sure of that,” said Mrs. Bowater. “It’s like the men to go on wanting, even when it comes to scrabbling at a grave. And there’s a trashy sort of creature, though well-set-up enough from the outside, that a spark will put in a blaze. I’ve no doubt he was that kind.” + 

I thought of my own sparks, but questioned on: “Then there’s nothing else but⁠—but her ghost there now?” + 

“Lor, ghosts, miss, it’s an hour, I see, when bed’s the proper place for you and me. I look to be scared by that kind of gentry when they come true.” + 

“You don’t believe, then, in Destroyers, Mrs. Bowater?” + 

“Miss, it’s those queer books you are reading,” was the evasive reply. “Destroyers! Why, wasn’t it cruel enough to drive that poor featherbrained creature into a noose!” + 

Candle and I and drowsing cinders kept company until St. Peter’s bell had told only the sleepless that midnight was over the world. It seemed to my young mind that there was not a day, scarcely an hour, I lived, but that Life was unfolding itself in ever new and ravishing disguises. I had not begun to be in the least tired or afraid of it. Smallest of bubbles I might be, tossing on the great waters, but I reflected the universe. What need of courage when no danger was apparent? Surely one need not mind being different if that difference added to one’s share in the wonderful Banquet. Even Wanderslore’s story was only of what happened when the tangle was so harshly knotted that no mortal fingers could unravel it. And though my own private existence now had Mrs. Monnerie⁠—and all that she might do and mean and be⁠—to cope with, as well as my stranger who was yet another queer story and as yet mine alone, these complications were enticing. One must just keep control of them; that was all. At which I thought a little unsteadily of Fanny’s “pin,” and remembered that that pin was helping to keep her and Mr. Crimble from being torn apart. + 

He had seemed so peering a guest at Brunswick House. Mrs. Monnerie hadn’t so much as glanced at him when he had commented on Mrs. Browning’s poems. There seemed to be a shadow over whatever he did. It was as though there could be a sadness in the very coursing of one’s blood. How thankful I felt that mine hadn’t been a really flattering reply to Mrs. Monnerie’s question. She was extremely arrogant, even for a younger daughter of a lord. On the other hand, though, of course, the sheer novelty of me had had something to do with it, she had certainly singled me out afterwards to know what I thought, and in thoughts there is no particular size, only effusiveness⁠—no, piercingness. I smiled to myself at the word, pitied my godmother for living so sequestered a life, and wondered how and why it was that my father and mother had so obstinately shut me away from the world. If only Fanny was coming home⁠—what a difference she would find in her fretful Midge! And with that, I discovered that my feet were cold and that my headache had ached itself away. + 

XXVI + 

There had been no need to reserve the small hours for these ruminations. The next few days were wet and windy; every glance at the streaming panes cast my mind into a sort of vacancy. The wind trumpeted smoke into the room; I could fix my mind on nothing. Then the weather faired. There came “a red sky at night,” and Spica flashing secrets to me across the darkness; and that suppertime I referred as casually as possible to Mr. Anon. + 

“I suppose one must keep one’s promises, Mrs. Bowater, even to a stranger. Would half-past six be too early to keep mine, do you think? Would it look too⁠—forward? Of course he may have forgotten all about me by this time.” + 

Mrs. Bowater eyed me like an owl as I bent my cheeks over my bowl of bread and milk, and proceeded to preach me yet another little sermon on the ways of the world. Nevertheless, the next morning saw us setting out together in the crisp, sparkling air to my tryst, with the tacit understanding that she accompanied me rather in the cause of propriety than romance. + 

Owing, I fancy, to a bunion, she was so leisurely a walker that it was I who must set my pace to hers. But the day promised to be warm, and we could take our ease. As we wandered on among the early flowers and bright, green grass, and under the beeches, a mildness lightened into her face. Over her long features lay a vacant yet happy smile, of which she seemed to be unaware. This set me off thinking in the old, old fashion; comparing my lot with that of ordinary human beings. How fortunate I was. If only she could have seen the lowlier plants as I could⁠—scarcely looking down on any, and of the same stature as some among the taller of them, so that the air around me was dyed and illumined with their clear colours, and burdened with their breath. + 

The least and humblest of them⁠—not merely crisp-edged lichen, speckle-seed whitlow-grass and hyssop in the wall⁠—are so close to earth, the wonder, indeed, is that common-sized people ever see them at all. They must, at any rate, I thought, commit themselves to their stomachs, or go down on their knees to see them properly. So, on we went, Mrs. Bowater and I, she pursuing her private musings, and I mine. + 

I smiled to myself at remembrance of Dr. Phelps and his blushes. After all, if humanity should “dwindle into a delicate littleness,” it would make a good deal more difference than he had supposed. What a destruction would ensue, among all the lesser creatures of the earth, the squirrels, moles, voles, hedgehogs, and the birds, not to mention the bees and hornets. They would be the enemies then⁠—the traps and poisons and the nets! No more billowy cornfields a good yard high, no more fine nine-foot hedges flinging their blossoms into the air. And all the long-legged, “doubled,” bloated garden flowers, gone clean out of favour. It would be a little world, would it be a happier? The dwarfed Mrs. Bowaters, Dr. Phelpses, Miss Bullaces, Lady Pollackes. + 

But there was little chance of such an eventuality⁠—at least in my lifetime. It was far likelier that the Miss M.’s of the world would continue to be a byplay. Yet, as I glanced up at my companion, and called to mind other such “Lapland Giants” of mine, I can truthfully avouch that I did not much envy their extra inches. So much more thin-skinned surface to be kept warm and unscratched. The cumbersome bones, the curious distance from foot and fingertip to brain, too; and those quarts and quarts of blood. I shuddered. It was little short of a miracle that they escaped continual injury; and what an extended body in which to die. + 

On the other hand, what real loss was mine⁠—with so much to my advantage? These great spreading beech-trees were no less shady and companionable to me than to them. Nor, thought I, could moon or sun or star or ocean or mountain be any the less silvery, hot, lustrous, and remote, forlorn in beauty, or vast in strangeness, one way or the other, than they are to ordinary people. Could there be any doubt at all, too, that men had always coveted to make much finer and more delicate things than their clumsiness allowed? + 

What fantastic creatures they were!⁠—with their vast mansions, pyramids, palaces, scores of sizes too large either for carcass or mind. Their Satan a monster on whose wrist the vulture of the Andes could perch like an aphis on my thumb; yet their Death but skeleton-high, and their Saviour of such a stature that well-nigh without stooping He could have laid His fingers on my head. + 

Time’s sands had been trickling fast while I thought these small thoughts that bright spring daybreak. So, though we had loitered on our way, it seemed we had reached our destination on the wings of the morning. Alas, Mrs. Bowater’s smile can have been only skin-deep; for, when, lifting my eyes from the ground I stopped all of a sudden, spread out my hands, and cried in triumph, “There! Mrs. Bowater”; she hardly shared my rapture. + 

She disapproved of the vast, blank “barn of a place,” with its blackshot windows and cold chimneys. The waste and ruination of the garden displeased her so much that I grew a little ashamed of my barbarism. + 

“It’s all going to wrack and ruin,” she exclaimed, snorting at my stone summerhouse no less emphatically than she had snorted at Mrs. Monnerie. “Not a walkable walk, nor the trace of a border; and was there ever such a miggle-maggle of weeds! A fine house in its prime, miss, but now, money melting away like butter in the sun.” + 

“But,” said I, standing before her in the lovely light amid the dwelling dewdrops, “really and truly, Mrs. Bowater, it is only going back to its own again. What you call a miggle-maggle is what these things were made to be. They are growing up now by themselves; and if you could look as close as I can, you’d see they breathe only what each can spare. They are just racing along to live as wildly as they possibly can. It’s the tameness,” I expostulated, flinging back my hood, “that would be shocking to me.” + 

Mrs. Bowater looked down at me, listening to this high-piped recitative with an unusual inquisitiveness. + 

“Well, that’s as it may be,” she retorted, “but what I’m asking is, Where’s the young fellow? He don’t seem to be as punctual as they were when I was a girl.” + 

My own eyes had long been busy, but as yet in vain. + 

“I did not come particularly to see him,” was my airy reply. “Besides, we said no time⁠—any fine day. Shall we sit down?” + 

With a secretive smile Mrs. Bowater spread a square of waterproof sheeting over a flat stone that had fallen out of the coping of the house, unfolded a newspaper over the grass, and we began our breakfast. Neither of us betrayed much appetite for it; she, I fancy, having already fortified herself out of her brown teapot before leaving the house, and I because of the odour of india-rubber and newspaper⁠—an odour presently intensified by the moisture and the sun. Paying no heed to my fastidious nibblings, she munched on reflectively, while I grew more and more ill at ease, first because the “young fellow” was almost visibly sinking in my old friend’s esteem, and next because her cloth-booted foot lay within a few inches of the stone beneath which was hidden Fanny’s letter. + 

“It’ll do you good, the sea,” she remarked presently, after sweeping yet one more comprehensive glance around her, “and we can only hope Mrs. Monnerie will be as good as her word. A spot like this⁠—trespassing or not⁠—is good for neither man nor beast. And when you are young the more human company you get, with proper supervising, the better.” + 

“Were you happy as a girl, Mrs. Bowater?” I inquired after a pause. + 

Our voices went up and up into the still, mild air. “Happy enough⁠—for my own good,” she said, neatly screwing up her remaining biscuits in their paper bag. “In my days children were brought up. Taught to make themselves useful. I would as soon have lifted a hand against my mother as answer her back.” + 

“You mean she⁠—she whipped you?” + 

“If need be,” my landlady replied complacently, folding her thread-gloved hands on her lap and contemplating the shiny toecaps of her boots. “She had large hands, my mother; and plenty of temper kept well under control. What’s more, if life isn’t a continual punishment for the stoopidities and wickedness of others, not to mention ourselves, then it must be even a darker story than was ever told me.” + 

“And was, Mrs. Bowater, Mr. Bowater your⁠—your first⁠—” I looked steadily at a flower at my foot in case she might be affected at so intimate a question, and not wish me to see her face. + 

“If Mr. Bowater was not the first,” was her easy response, “he may well live to boast of being the last. Which is neither here nor there, for we may be sure he’s enjoying attentive nursing. Broken bones are soon mended. It’s when things are disjointed from the root that the wrench comes.” + 

The storm-felled bole lay there beside us, as if for picture to her parable. I began to think rather more earnestly than I had intended to that morning. In my present state of conscience, it was never an easy matter to decide whether Mrs. Bowater’s comments on life referred openly to things in general or covertly to me in particular. How fortunate that the scent of Fanny’s notepaper was not potent enough to escape from its tomb. And whether or not, speech seemed less dangerous than silence. + 

“It seems to me, Mrs. Bowater,” I began rather hastily, “at least to judge from my own father and mother, that a man depends very much on a woman. Men don’t seem to grow up in the same way, though I suppose they are practical enough as men.” + 

“If it were one female,” was the reply, “there’d be less to be found fault with. That poor young creature over there took her life for no better reason, even though the reason was turned inside out as you may say.” + 

I met the frightful, louring stare of the house. “What was her name?” I whispered⁠—but into nothing, for, bolt upright as she was, Mrs. Bowater had shut her eyes, as if in preparation for a nap. + 

A threadlike tangle of song netted the air. We were, indeed, trespassers. I darted my glance this way and that, in and out of the pale green whispering shadows in this wild haunt. Then, realizing by some faint stir in my mind that the stiff, still, shut-away figure beside me was only feigning to be asleep, I opened the rain-warped covers of my Sense and Sensibility, and began plotting how to be rid of her for a while, so that my solitude might summon my stranger, and I might recover Fanny’s letter. + 

Then once more I knew. Raising my eyes, I looked straight across at him, scowling there beneath his stunted thorn in a drift of flowers like fool’s parsley. He was making signs, too, with his hands. I watched him pensively, in secret amusement. Then swifter than Daphne into her laurel, instantaneously he vanished, and I became aware that its black eyes were staring out from the long face of the motionless figure beside me, as might an owl’s into an aviary. + 

“Did you hear a bird, Mrs. Bowater?” I inquired innocently. + 

“When I was a girl,” said the mouth, “sparrowhawks were a common sight, but I never heard one sing.” + 

“But isn’t a sparrowhawk quite a large bird?” + 

“We must judge,” said Mrs. Bowater, “not by the size, but the kind. Elseways, miss, your old friend might have been found sleeping, as they say, at her box.” She pretended to yawn, gathered her legs under her, and rose up and up. “I’ll be taking a little walk round. And you shall tell your young acquaintance that I mean him no harm, but that I mean you the reverse; and if show himself he won’t, well, here I sit till the Day of Judgment.” + 

An angry speech curled the tip of my tongue. But the simple-faced flowers were slowly making obeisance to Mrs. Bowater’s black, dragging skirts, and when she was nearly out of sight I sallied out to confront my stranger. + 

His face was black with rage and contempt. “That contaminating scarecrow; who’s she?” was his greeting. “The days I have waited!” + 

The resentment that had simmered up in me on his behalf now boiled over against him. I looked at him in silence. + 

“That contaminating scarecrow, as you are pleased to call her, is the best friend I have in the world. I need no other.” + 

“And I,” he said harshly, “have no friend in this world, and need you.” + 

“Then,” said I, “you have lost your opportunity. Do you suppose I am a child⁠—to be insulted and domineered over only because I am alone? Possibly,” and my lips so trembled that I could hardly frame the words, “it is your face I shall see when I think of those windows.” + 

I was speaking wiselier than I knew. He turned sharply, and by a play of light it seemed that at one of them there stood looking down on us out of the distance a shape that so had watched forever, leering darkly out of the void. And there awoke in me the sense of this stranger’s extremity of solitude, of his unhappy disguise, of his animal-like patience. + 

“Why,” I said, “Mrs. Bowater! You might far rather be thanking her for⁠—for⁠—” + 

“Curses on her,” he choked, turning away. “There was everything to tell you.” + 

“What everything?” + 

“Call her back now,” he muttered furiously. + 

“That,” I said smoothly, “is easily done. But, forgive me, I don’t know your name.” + 

His eyes wandered over the turf beneath me, mounted slowly up, my foot to my head, and looked into mine. In their intense regard I seemed to be but a bubble floating away into the air. I shivered, and turned my back on him, without waiting for an answer. He followed me as quietly as a sheep. + 

Mrs. Bowater had already come sauntering back to our breakfast table, and with gaze impassively fixed on the horizon, pretended not to be aware of our approach. + 

I smiled back at my companion as we drew near. “This, Mrs. Bowater,” said I, “is Mr. Anon. Would you please present him to Miss Thomasina of Bedlam?” + 

For a moment or two they stood facing one another, just as I have seen two insects stand⁠—motionless, regardful, exchanging each other’s presences. Then, after one lightning snap at him from her eye, she rose to my bait like a fish. “A pleasant morning, sir,” she remarked affably, though in her Bible voice. “My young lady and I were enjoying the spring air.” + 

Back to memory comes the darkness of a theatre, and Mrs. Monnerie breathing and sighing beside me, and there on the limelit green of the stage lolls ass-headed Bottom the Weaver cracking jokes with the Fairies. + 

My Oberon addressed Mrs. Bowater as urbanely as St. George must have addressed the Dragon⁠—or any other customary monster. + 

He seemed to pass muster, none the less, for she rose, patted her sheet, pushed forward her bonnet on to her rounded temples, and bade him a composed good morning. She would be awaiting me, she announced, in an hour’s time under my beech tree. + 

“I think, perhaps, two, Mrs. Bowater,” I said firmly. + 

She gave me a look⁠—all our long slow evening firelit talks together seemed to be swimming in its smile; and withdrew. + 

The air eddied into quiet again. The stretched-out blue of the sky was as bland and solitary as if a seraph sat dreaming on its Eastern outskirts. Mr. Anon and I seated ourselves three or four feet apart, and I watched the sidelong face, so delicately carved against the green; yet sunken in so sullen a stare. + 

Standing up on his feet against the background of Mrs. Bowater’s ink-black flounces, with his rather humped shoulders and straight hair, he had looked an eccentric, and, even to my view, a stunted figure. Now the whole scene around us seemed to be sorting itself into a different proportion before my eyes. He it was who was become the unit of space, the yardstick of the universe. The flowers, their roots glintily netted with spiderwebs, nodded serenely over his long hands. A peacock butterfly with folded colours sipped of the sunshine on a tuft nearly at evens with his cheek. The very birds sang to his size, and every rift between the woodlands awaited the cuckoo. Only his clothes were grotesque, but less so than in my parlour Mr. Crimble’s skirts, or even Lady Pollacke’s treacherous bonnet. + 

I folded my white silk gloves into a ball. A wren began tweeting in a bush near by. “I am going away soon,” I said, “to the sea.” + 

The wren glided away out of sight amongst its thorns. I knew by his sudden stillness that this had been unwelcome news. “That will be very pleasant for me, won’t it?” I said. + 

“The sea?” he returned coldly, with averted head. “Well, I am bound still further.” + 

The reply fretted me. I wanted bare facts just then. “Why are you so angry? What is your name? And where do you live?” It was my turn to ask questions, and I popped them out as if from a Little by Little. + 

And then, with his queer, croaking, yet captivating voice, he broke into a long, low monologue. He gave me his name⁠—and “Mr. Anon” describes him no worse. He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the house he lived in. But instead of apologizing for his ill-temper, he accused me of deceiving and humiliating him; of being, so I gathered, a toy of my landlady’s, of betraying and soiling myself. + 

Why all this wild stuff only seemed to flatter me, I cannot say. I listened and laughed, pressing flat with both hands the sorry covers of my book, and laughed also low in my heart. + 

“Oh, contempt!” he cried. “I am used to that.” + 

The words curdled on his tongue as he expressed his loathing of poor Mrs. Bowater and her kind⁠—mere Humanity⁠—that ate and drank in musty houses stuck up out of the happy earth like warts on the skin, that battened on meat, stalked its puddled streets and vile, stifling towns, spread its rank odours on the air, increased and multiplied. Monstrous in shape, automatic, blinded by habit, abandoned by instinct, monkey-like, degraded! + 

What an unjust tirade! He barked it all out at me as if the blame were mine; as if I had nibbled the Apple. I turned my face away, smiling, but listening. Did I realize, he asked me, what a divine fortune it was to be so little, and in this to be All. On and on he raved: I breathed air “a dewdrop could chill”; I was as near lovely naught made visible as the passing of a flower; the mere mattering of a dream. And when I died my body would be but a perishing flake of manna, and my bones.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Yes, a wren’s picking,” I rudely interrupted. “And what of my soul, please? Why, you talk like⁠—like a poet. Besides, you tell me nothing new. I was thinking all that and more on my way here with my landlady. What has size to do with it? Why, when I thought of my mother after she was dead, and peered down in the place of my imagination into her grave, I saw her spirit⁠—young, younger than I, and bodiless, and infinitely more beautiful even than she had been in my dreams, floating up out of it, free, sweet, and happy, like a flame⁠—though shadowy. Besides, I don’t see how you can help pitying men and women. They seem to fly to one another for company; and half their comfort is in their numbers.” + 

Never in all my life had I put my thoughts into words like this; and he⁠—a stranger. + 

There fell a silence between us. The natural quietude of the garden was softly settling down and down like infinitesimal grains of sand in a pool of water. It had forgotten that humans were harbouring in its solitude. And still he maintained that his words were not untrue, that he knew mankind better than I, that to fall into their ways and follow their opinions and strivings was to deafen my ears, and seal up my eyes, and lose my very self. “The Self everywhere,” he said. + 

And he told me, whether in time or space I know not, of a country whose people were of my stature and slenderness. This was a land, he said, walled in by enormous, ice-capped mountains couching the furnace of the rising sun, and yet set at the ocean’s edge. Its sand-dunes ring like dulcimers in the heat. Its valleys of swift rivers were of a green so pale and vivid and so flower-encrusted that an English⁠—even a Kentish⁠—spring is but a coarse and rustic prettiness by comparison. Vine and orange and trees of outlandish names gave their fruits there; yet there also willows swept the winds, and palms spiked the blue with their fans, and the cactus flourished with the tamarisk. Geese, of dark green and snow, were on its inland waters, and a bird clocked the hours of the night, and the conformation of its stars would be strange to my eyes. And such was the lowliness and simplicity of this people’s habitations that the most powerful sea-glass, turned upon and searching their secret haunts from a ship becalmed on the ocean, would spy out nothing⁠—nothing there, only world wilderness of snow-dazzling mountaintop and green valley, ravine, and condor, and what might just be Nature’s small ingenuities⁠—mounds and traceries. Yet within all was quiet loveliness, feet light as goldfinches’, silks fine as gossamer, voices as of a watery beading of silence. And their life being all happiness they have no name for their God. And it seems⁠—according to Mr. Anon’s account of it⁠—that such was the ancient history of the world, that Man was so once, but had swollen to his present shape, of which he had lost the true spring and mastery, and had sunk deeper and deeper into a kind of oblivion of the mind, suffocating his past, and now all but insane with pride in his own monstrosities. + 

All this my new friend (and yet not so very new, it seemed)⁠—all this he poured out to me in the garden, though I can only faintly recall his actual words, as if, like Moses, I had smitten the rock. And I listened weariedly, with little hope of understanding him, and with the suspicion that it was nothing but a Tom o’ Bedlam’s dream he was recounting. Yet, as if in disproof of my own incredulity, there sat I; and over the trees yonder stood Mrs. Bowater’s ugly little brick house; and beyond that, the stony, tapering spire of St. Peter’s, the High Street. And I looked at him without any affection in my thoughts, and wished fretfully to be gone. What use to be lulled with fantastic pictures of Paradise when I might have died of fear and hatred on Mrs. Stocks’s doorstep; when everything I said was “touching, touching”? + 

“Well,” I mockingly interposed at last, “the farthing dip’s guttering. And what if it’s all true, and there is such a place, what then? How am I going to get there, pray? Would you like to mummy me and shut me up in a box and carry me there, as they used to in Basman? Years and years ago my father told me of the pygmy men and horses⁠—the same size as yours, I suppose⁠—who lived in caves on the banks of the Nile. But I doubt if I believed in them much, even then. I am not so ignorant as all that.” + 

The life died out of his face, just as, because of a cloud carried up into the sky, the sunlight at that moment fled from Wanderslore. He coughed, leaning on his hands, and looked in a scared, empty, hunted fashion to right and left. “Only that you might stay,” he scarcely whispered. “⁠ ⁠… I love you.” + 

Instinctively I drew away, lips dry, and heart numbly, heavily beating. An influence more secret than the shadow of a cloud had suddenly chilled and darkened the garden and robbed it of its beauty. I shrank into myself, cold and awkward, and did not dare even to glance at my companion. + 

“A fine thing,” was all I found to reply, “for a toy, as you call me. I don’t know what you mean.” + 

Miserable enough that memory is when I think of what came after, for now my only dread was that he might really be out of his wits, and might make my beloved, solitary garden forever hateful to me. I drew close my cape, and lifted my book. + 

“There is a private letter of mine hidden under that stone,” I said coldly. “Will you please be so good as to fetch it out for me? And you are never, never to say that again.” + 

The poor thing looked so desperately ill and forsaken with his humped shoulders⁠—and that fine, fantastic story still ringing in my ears!⁠—that a kind of sadness came over me, and I hid my face in my hands. + 

“The letter is not there,” said his voice. + 

I drew my fingers from my face, and glared at him from between them; then scrambled to my feet. Out swam the sun again, drenching all around us with its light and heat. + 

“Next time I come,” I shrilled at him, “the letter will be there. The thief will have put it back again! Oh, how unhappy you have made me!” + 

XXVII + 

I stumbled off, feeling smaller and smaller as I went, more and more ridiculous and insignificant, as indeed I must have appeared; for distance can hardly lend enchantment to any view of me. Not one single look did I cast behind; but now that my feelings began to quiet down, I began also to think. And a pretty muddle of mind it was. What had enraged and embittered me so? If only I had remained calm. Was it that my pride, my vanity, had in some vague fashion been a punishment of him for Fanny’s unkindness to me? + 

“But he stole, he stole my letter,” I said aloud, stamping my foot on a budding violet; and⁠—there was Mrs. Bowater. Evidently she had been watching my approach, and now smiled benignly. + 

“Why, you are quite out of breath, miss; and your cheeks!⁠ ⁠… I hope you haven’t been having words. A better-spoken young fellow than I had fancied; and I’m sure I ask his pardon for the ‘gentleman.’ ” + 

“Ach,” I swept up at my beech-tree, now cautiously unsheathing its first green buds in the lower branches, “I think he must be light in his head.” + 

“And that often comes,” replied Mrs. Bowater, with undisguised bonhomie, “from being heavy at the heart. Why, miss, he may be a young nobleman in disguise. There’s unlikelier things even than that, to judge from that trash of Fanny’s. While, as for fish in the sea⁠—it’s sometimes wise to be contented with what we can catch.” + 

Who had been talking to me about fish in the sea⁠—quite lately? I thought contemptuously of Pollie and the Dream Book. “I am sorry,” I replied, nose in air, “but I cannot follow the allusion.” + 

The charge of vulgarity was the very last, I think, which Mrs. Bowater would have lifted a finger to refute. My cheeks flamed hotter to know that she was quietly smiling up there. We walked on in silence. + 

That night I could not sleep. I was afraid. Life was blackening my mind like the mould of a graveyard. I could think of nothing but one face, one voice⁠—that scorn and longing, thought and fantasy. What if he did love me a little? I might at least have been kind to him. Had I so many friends that I could afford to be harsh and ungrateful? How dreadfully ill he had looked when I scoffed at him. And now what might not have happened to him? I seemed lost to myself. No wonder Fanny.⁠ ⁠… My body grew cold at a thought; the palms of my hands began to ache. + 

Half-stifled, I leapt out of bed, and without the least notion of what I was doing, hastily dressed myself, and fled out into the night. I must find him, talk to him, plead with him, before it was too late. And in the trickling starlight, pressed against my own gatepost⁠—there he was. + 

“Oh,” I whispered at him in a fever of relief and shame and apprehensiveness, “what are you doing here? You must go away at once, at once. I forgive you. Yes, yes; I forgive you. But⁠—at once. Keep the letter for me till I come again.” His hand was wet with the dew. “Oh, and never say it again. Please, please, if you care for me the least bit in the world, never, never say what you did again.” I poured out the heedless words in the sweet-scented quiet of midnight. “Now⁠—now go”; I entreated. “And indeed, indeed I am your friend.” + 

The dark eyes shone quietly close to mine. He sighed. He lifted my fingers, and put them to my breast again. He whispered unintelligible words between us, and was gone. No more stars for me that night. I slept sound until long after dawn.⁠ ⁠… + 

Softly as thistledown the days floated into eternity; yet they were days of expectation and action. April was her fickle self; not so Mrs. Monnerie. Her letter to Mrs. Bowater must have been a marvel of tact. Apartments had been engaged for us at a little watering-place in Dorsetshire, called Lyme Regis. Mrs. Bowater and I were to spend at least a fortnight there alone together, and after our return Mrs. Monnerie herself was to pay me a visit, and see with her own eyes if her prescription had been successful. After that, perhaps, if I were so inclined, and my landlady agreed with Mr. Pellew that it would be good for me, I might spend a week or two with her in London. What a twist of the kaleidoscope. I had sown never a pinch of seed, yet here was everything laughing and blossoming around me, like the wilderness in Isaiah. + 

Indeed my own looking-glass told me how wan and languishing a Miss M. was pining for change of scene and air. She rejoiced that Fanny was enjoying herself, rejoiced that she was going to enjoy herself too. I searched Mrs. Bowater’s library for views of the sea, but without much reward. So I read over Mr. Bowater’s Captain Maury⁠—on the winds and monsoons and tide-rips and hurricanes, freshened up my Robinson Crusoe, and dreamed of the Angels with the Vials. In the midst of my packing (and I spread it out for sheer amusement’s sake), Mr. Crimble called again. He looked nervous, gloomy, and hollow-eyed. + 

I was fast becoming a mistress in affairs of the sensibilities. Yet, when, kneeling over my open trunk, I heard him in the porch, I mimicked Fanny’s “Dash!” and wished to goodness he had postponed his visit until only echo could have answered his knock. It fretted me to be bothered with him. And now? What would I not give to be able to say I had done my best and utmost to help him when he wanted it? Here is a riddle I can find no answer to, however long I live: How is it that our eyes cannot foresee, our very hearts cannot forefeel, the future? And how should we act if that future were plain before us? Yet, even then, what could I have said to him to comfort him? Really and truly I had no candle with which to see into that dark mind. + 

In actual fact my task was difficult and delicate enough. In spite of her vow not to write again, yet another letter had meanwhile come from Fanny. If Mr. Crimble’s had afforded “a ray of hope,” this had shut it clean away. It was full of temporizings, wheedlings, evasions⁠—and brimming over with Fanny. + 

It suggested, too, that Mrs. Bowater must have misread the name of her holiday place. The half-legible printing of the postmark on the envelope⁠—fortunately I had intercepted the postman⁠—did not even begin with an M. And no address was given within. I was to tell Mr. Crimble that Fanny was overtired and depressed by the term’s work, that she simply couldn’t set her “weary mind” to anything, and as for decisions:⁠— + 

“He seems to think only of himself. You couldn’t believe, Midgetina, what nonsense the man talks. He can’t see that all poor Fanny’s future is at stake, body and soul. Tell him if he wants her to smile, he must sit in patience on a pedestal, and smile too. One simply can’t trust the poor creature with cold, sober facts. His mother, now⁠—why, I could read it in your own polite little description of her at your Grand Reception⁠—she smiles and smiles. So did the Cheshire Cat. + 

“ ‘But oh, dear Fanny, time and your own true self, God helping, would win her over.’ So writes H. C. That’s candid enough, if you look into it; but it isn’t sense. Once hostile, old ladies are not won over. They don’t care much for mind in the young. Anyhow, one look at me was enough for her⁠—and it was followed by a sharp little peer at poor Harold! She guessed. So you see, my dear, even for youthful things, like you and me, time gathers roses a jolly sight faster than we can, and it would have to be the fait accompli, before a word is breathed to her. That is, if I could take a deep breath and say, Yes. + 

“But I can’t. I ask you: Can you see Fanny Bowater a Right Reverendissima? No, nor can I. And not even gaiters or an apron here and now would settle the question offhand. Why I confide all this in you (why, for that matter, it has all been confided in me), I know not. You want nothing, and if you did, you wouldn’t want it long. Now, would you? Perhaps that is the secret. But Fanny wants a good deal. She cannot even guess how much. So, while Miss Stebbings and Beechwood Hill forever and ever would be hell before purgatory, H. C. and St. Peter’s would be merely the same thing, with the fires out. And I am quite sure that, given a chance, heaven is our home. + 

“Oh, Midgetina, I listen to all this; mumbling my heart like a dog a bone. What the devil has it got to do with me, I ask myself? Who set the infernal trap? If only I could stop thinking and mocking and find someone⁠—not ‘to love me’ (between ourselves, there are far too many of them already), but capable of making me love him. They say a woman can’t be driven. I disagree. She can be driven⁠—mad. And apart from that, though twenty men only succeed in giving me hydrophobia, one could persuade me to drink, if only his name was Mr. Right, as mother succinctly puts it. + 

“But first and last, I am having a real, if not a particularly sagacious, holiday, and can take care of myself. And next and last, play, I beseech you, the tiny good Samaritan between me and poor, plodding, blinded H. C.⁠—even if he does eventually have to go on to Jericho. + 

“And I shall ever remain, your most affec.⁠—F.” + 

How all this baffled me. I tried, but dismally failed, to pour a trickle of wine and oil into Mr. Crimble’s wounded heart, for his sake and for mine, not for Fanny’s, for I knew in myself that his “Jericho” was already within view. + 

“I don’t understand her; I don’t understand her,” he kept repeating, crushing his soft hat in his small, square hands. “I cannot reach her; I am not in touch with her.” + 

Out of the fount of my womanly wisdom I reminded him how young she was, how clever, and how much flattered. + 

“You know, then, there are⁠—others?” he gulped, darkly meeting me. + 

“That, surely, is what makes her so precious,” I falsely insinuated. + 

He gazed at me, his eyes like an immense, empty shopwindow. “That thought puts⁠—I can’t,” and he twisted his head on his shoulders as if shadows were around him; “I can’t bear to think of her and⁠—with⁠—others. It unbalances me. But how can you understand?⁠ ⁠… A sealed book. Last night I sat at my window. It was raining. I know not the hour: and Spring!” He clutched at his knees, stooping forward. “I repudiated myself, thrust myself out. Oh, believe me, we are not alone. And there and then I resolved to lay the whole matter before”⁠—his glance groped towards the door⁠—“before, in fact, her mother. She is a woman of sagacity, of proper feeling in her station, though how she came to be the mother of⁠—But that’s neither here nor there. We mustn’t probe. Probably she thinks⁠—but what use to consider it? One word to her⁠—and Fanny would be lost to me forever.” For a moment it seemed his eyes closed on me. “How can I bring myself to speak of it?” a remote voice murmured from beneath them. + 

I looked at the figure seated there in its long black coat; and far away in my mind whistled an ecstatic bird⁠—“The sea! the sea! You are going away⁠—out, out of all this.” + 

So, too, was Mr. Crimble, if only I had known it. It was my weak and cowardly acquiescence in Fanny’s deceits that was speeding him on his dreadful journey. None the less, a wretched heartless impatience fretted me at being thus helplessly hemmed in by my fellow creatures. How clumsily they groped on. Why couldn’t they be happy in just living free from the clouds and trammels of each other and of themselves? The selfish helplessness of it all. It was, indeed, as though the strange fires which Fanny had burnt me in⁠—which any sudden thought of her could still fan into a flickering blaze⁠—had utterly died down. Whether or not, I was hardened; a poor little earthenware pot fresh from the furnace. And with what elixir was it brimmed. + 

I rose from my chair, walked away from my visitor, and peered through my muslin curtains at the green and shine and blue. A nursemaid was lagging along with a sleeping infant⁠—its mild face to the sky⁠—in a perambulator. A faint drift of dandelions showed in the stretching meadow. Kent’s blue hems lay calm; my thoughts drew far away. + 

“Mr. Crimble,” I cried in a low voice: “is she worth all our care for her?” + 

“ ‘Our’⁠—‘our’?” he expostulated. + 

“Mine, then. When I gave her, just to be friends, because⁠—because I loved her, a little ivory box, nothing of any value, of course, but which I have loved and treasured since childhood, she left it without a thought. It’s in my wardrobe drawer⁠—shall I show it to you? I say it was nothing in itself; but what I mean is that she just makes use of me, and with far less generosity than⁠—than other people do. Her eyes, her voice, when she moves her hand, turns her head, looks back⁠—oh, I know! But,” and I turned on him in the light, “does it mean anything? Let us just help her all we can, and⁠—keep away.” + 

It was a treachery past all forgiveness: I see that now. If only I had said, “Love on, love on: ask nothing.” But I did not say it. A contempt of all this slow folly was in my brain that afternoon. Why couldn’t the black cowering creature take himself off? What concern of mine was his sick, sheepish look? What particle of a fig did he care for me? Had he lifted a little finger when I myself bitterly needed it? I seemed to be struggling in a net of hatred. + 

He raised himself in his chair, his spectacles still fixed on me; as if some foul insect had erected its blunt head at him. + 

“Then you are against her too,” he uttered, under his breath. “I might have known it, I might have known it. I am a lost man.” + 

It was pitiful. “Lost fiddlesticks!” I snapped back at him, with bared teeth. “I wouldn’t⁠—I’ve never harmed a fly. Who, I should like to know, came to my help when⁠ ⁠… ?” But I choked down the words. Silence fell between us. The idiot clock chimed five. He turned his face away to conceal the aversion that had suddenly overwhelmed him at sight of me. + 

“I see,” he said, in a hollow, low voice, with his old wooden, artificial dignity. “There’s nothing more to say. I can only thank you, and be gone. I had not realized. You misjudge her. You haven’t the⁠—How could it be expected? But there! thinking’s impossible.” + 

How often had I seen my poor father in his last heavy days draw his hand across his eyes like that? Already my fickle mind was struggling to find words with which to retract, to explain away that venomous outbreak. But I let him go. The stooping, hatted figure hastened past my window; and I was never to see him again. + 

XXVIII + 

Yet, in spite of misgivings, no very dark foreboding companioned me that evening. With infinite labour I concocted two letters:⁠— + 

“Dear Mr. Crimble⁠—I regret my words this afternoon. Bitterly. Indeed I do. But still truth is important, isn’t it? One we know hasn’t been too kind to either of us. I still say that. And if it seems inconsiderate, please remember Shakespeare’s lines about the beetle (which I came across in a Birthday Book the other day)⁠—a creature I detest. Besides, we can return good for evil⁠—I can’t help this sounding like hypocrisy⁠—even though it is an extremely tiring exchange. I feel small enough just now, but would do anything in the world that would help in the way we both want. I hope that you will believe this and that you will forgive my miserable tongue. Believe me, ever yours sincerely⁠—M. M.” + 

My second letter was addressed to Fanny’s school, “℅ Miss Stebbings”:⁠— + 

“Dear Fanny⁠—He came again today and looks like a corpse. I can do no more. You must know how utterly miserable you are making him; that I can’t, and won’t, go on being so doublefaced. I don’t call that being the good Samaritan. Throw the stone one way or the other, however many birds it may kill. That’s the bravest thing to do. A horrid boy I knew as a child once aimed at a jay and killed⁠—a wren. Well, there’s only one wren that I know of⁠—your M. + 

“P.S.⁠—I hope this doesn’t sound an angry letter. I thought only the other day how difficult it must be being as fascinating as you are. And, of course, we are what we are, aren’t we, and cannot, I suppose, help acting like that? You can’t think how he looked, and talked. Besides, I am sure you will enjoy your holiday much more when you have made up your mind. Oh, Fanny, I can’t say what’s in mine. Every day there’s something else to dread. And all that I do seems only to make things worse. Do write: and, though, of course, it isn’t my affair, do have a ‘sagacious’ holiday, too.” + 

Mrs. Bowater almost squinted at my two small envelopes when she licked the stamps for me. “We can only hope,” was her one remark, “that when the secrets of all hearts are opened, they’ll excuse some of the letters we reach ourselves to write.” But I did not ask her to explain. + 

Lyme Regis was but a few days distant when, not for the first time since our meeting at Mrs. Bowater’s gatepost, I set off to meet Mr. Anon⁠—this time to share with him my wonderful news. When showers drifted across the sun-shafted sky we took refuge under the shelter of the garden-house. As soon as the hot beams set the raindrops smouldering, so that every bush was hung with coloured lights, we returned to my smoking stone. And we watched a rainbow arch and fade in the windy blue. + 

He was gloomy at first; grudged me, I think, every moment that was to be mine at Lyme Regis. So I tempted him into talking about the books he had read; and about his childhood⁠—far from as happy as mine. It hurt me to hear him speak of his mother. Then I asked him small questions about that wonderful country he had told me of, which, whether it had any real existence or not, filled me with delight as he painted it in his imagination. He was doing his best to keep his word to me, and I to keep our talk from becoming personal. + 

If I would trust myself to him, friend to friend⁠—he suddenly broke out in a thick, low voice, when I least expected it⁠—the whole world was open to us; and he knew the way. + 

“What way?” said I. “And how about poor Mrs. Bowater? How strange you are. Where do you live? May I know?” + 

There was an old farmhouse, he told me, on the other side of the park, and near it a few cottages⁠—at the far end of Loose Lane. He lodged in one of these. Against my wiser inclinations he persuaded me to set off thither at once and see the farm for myself. + 

On the further side of Wanderslore, sprouting their pallid green frondlets like beads at the very tips of their black, were more yews than beeches. We loitered on, along the neglected bridle-path. Cuckoos were now in the woods, and we talked and talked, as if their voices alone were not seductive enough to enchant us onwards. Sometimes I spelled out incantations in the water; and sometimes I looked out happily across the wet, wayside flowers; and sometimes a robin flittered out to observe the intruders. How was it that human company so often made me uneasy and self-conscious, and nature’s always brought peace? + 

“Now, you said,” I began again, “that they have a God, and that they are so simple He hasn’t a name. What did you mean by that? There can’t be one God for the common-sized, and one for⁠—for me; now, can there? My mother never taught me that; and I have thought for myself.” Indeed I had. + 

“ ‘God’!” he cried; “why, what is all this?” + 

All this at that moment was a clearing in the woods, softly shimmering with a misty, transparent green, in whose sunbeams a thousand flies darted and zigzagged like motes of light, and the year’s first butterflies fluttered and languished. + 

“But if I speak,” I said, “listen, now, my voice is just swallowed up. Out of just a something it faints into a nothing⁠—dies. No, no;” (I suppose I was arguing only to draw him out), “all this cares no more for me than⁠—than a looking-glass. Yet it is mine. Can you see Jesus Christ in these woods? Do you believe we are sinners and that He came to save us? I do. But I can see Him only as a little boy, you know, smiling, crystal, intangible: and yet I do not like children much.” + 

He paused and stared at me fixedly. “My size?” he coughed. + 

“Oh, size,” I exclaimed, “how you harp on that!”⁠—as if I never had. “Did you not say yourself that the smaller the body is, the happier the ghost in it? Bodies, indeed!” + 

He plunged on, hands in pockets, frowning, clumsy. And up there in the northwest a huge cloud poured its reflected lights on his strange face. Inwardly⁠—with all my wits in a pleasant scatter⁠—I laughed; and outwardly (all but) danced. Solemnly taking me at my word, and as if he were reading out of one of his dry old books, he began to tell me his views about religion, and about what we are, qualities, consciousness, ideas, and that kind of thing. As if you could be anything at any moment but just that moment’s whole self. At least, so it seemed then: I was happy. But since in his earnestness his voice became almost as false to itself as was Mr. Crimble’s when he had conversed with me about Hell, my eyes stole my ears from him, and only a few scattered sentences reached my mind. + 

Nevertheless I enjoyed hearing him talk, and encouraged him with bits of questions and exclamations. Did he believe, perhaps, in the pagan Gods?⁠—Mars and all that? Was there, even at this very moment, cramped up among the moss and the roots, a crazy, brutal Pan in the woods? And those delicious Nymphs and Naiads! What would he do if one beckoned to him?⁠—or Pan’s pipes began wheedling? + 

“Nymphs!” he grunted, “aren’t you⁠—” + 

“Oh,” I cried, coming to a pause beside a holly-tree so marvellously sparkling with water-drops on every curved spine of it that it took my breath away: “let’s talk no more thoughts. They are only mice gnawing. I can hear them at night.” + 

“You cannot sleep?” he inquired, with so grave a concern that I laughed outright. + 

“Sleep! with that Mr. Crimble on my nerves?” I gave a little nod in my mind to my holly, and we went on. + 

“Crimble?” he repeated. His eyes, greenish at that moment, shot an angry glance at me from under their lids. “Who is he?” + 

“A friend, a friend,” I replied, “and, poor man, as they say, in love. Calm yourself, Mr. Jealousy; not with me. I am three sizes too small. With Miss Bowater. But there,” I went on, in dismay that mere vanity should have let this cat out of its bag, “that’s not my secret. We mustn’t talk of that either. What I really want to tell you is that we haven’t much time. I am going away. Let’s talk of me. Oh, Mr. Anon, shall I ever be born again, and belong to my own world?” + 

It seemed a kind of mournful serenity came over his face. “You say you are going away”; he whispered, pointing with his finger, “and yet you expect me to talk about that.” + 

We were come to the brink of a clear rain-puddle, perhaps three or four feet wide, in the moss-greened, stony path, and “that” was the image of myself which lay on its surface against the far blue of the sky⁠—the under-scarlet of my cape, my face, fair hair, eyes. I trembled a little. His own reflection troubled me more than he did himself. + 

“Come,” I said, laying a hand on his sleeve, “the time’s so short, and indeed I must see your house, you know: you have seen mine. Ah, but you should see Lyndsey and Chizzel Hill, and the stream in my father’s garden. I often hear that at night, Mr. Anon. I would like to have died a child, however long I must live.” + 

But now the cloud had completely swallowed up the sun; a cold gust of wind swept hooting down on us, and I clung to his arm. We pushed on, emerged at last from the rusty gates, its eagles green and scaling, and came to the farm. But not in time. A cloud of hail had swirled down; beating on our heads and shoulders. It all but swept me up into the air. Catching hands, we breasted and edged on up the rough, miry lane towards a thatched barn, open on one side and roofing a red and blue wagon. Under this we scrambled, and tingling all over with the buffetings of the wind and the pelting of hailstones, I sat laughing and secure, watching, over my sodden skirts and shoes, the sweeping, pattering drifts paling the green. + 

Around us in the short straw and dust stalked the farmer’s fowls, cackling, with red-eyed glances askew at our intrusion. Ducks were quacking. Doves flew in with whir of wing. I thought I should boil over with delight. And presently a sheepdog, ears down and tail between its legs, slid round the beam of the barn door. Half in, half out, it stood bristling, eyes fixed, head thrust out. My companion drew himself up and with a large stone in his hand, edged, stooping and stealthily⁠—and very much, I must confess, like the picture of a Fuegian I have seen in a book⁠—between the gaudy wheels of the wagon, and faced the low-growling beast. I watched him, enthralled. For a moment or two he and the sheepdog confronted each other without stirring. Then with one sharp bark, the animal flung back its head, and with whitened eye, turned and disappeared. + 

“Oh, bravissimo!” said I, mocking up at Mr. Anon from under my hood. “He was cowed, poor thing. I would have made friends with him.” + 

We sat on in the sweet, dusty scent of the stormy air. The hail turned to rain. The wind rose higher. I began to be uneasy. So heavily streamed the water out of the clouds that walking back by the way we had come would be utterly impossible for me. What’s to be done now?⁠—I thought to myself. Yet the liquid song of the rain, the gurgling sighs and trumpetings of the wind entranced me; and I turned softly to glance at my stranger. He sat, chin on large-boned hands, his lank hair plastered on his hollow temples by the rain, his eyes glassy in profile. + 

“I am glad of this,” he muttered dreamily, as if in response to my scrutiny. “We are here.” + 

A scatter of green leaf-sheaths from a hawthorn over against the barn was borne in by the wind. + 

“I am glad too,” I answered, “because when you are at peace, so I can be; for that marvellous land you tell me of is very far away. Why, who⁠—?” But he broke in so earnestly that I was compelled to listen, confiding in me some queer wisdom he had dug up out of his books⁠—of how I might approach nearer and nearer to the brink between life and reality, and see all things as they are, in truth, in their very selves. All things visible are only a veil, he said. A veil that withdraws itself when the mind is empty of all thoughts and desires, and the heart at one with itself. That is divine happiness, he said. And he told me, too, out of his far-fetched learning, a secret about myself. + 

It was cold in the barn now. The fowls huddled close. Rain and wind ever and again drowned the low, alluring, faraway voice wandering on as if out of a trance. Dreams, maybe; yet I have learned since that one half of his tale is true; that at need even an afflicted spirit, winged for an instant with serenity, may leave the body and, perhaps, if lost in the enchantments beyond, never turn back. But I swore to keep his words secret between us. I had no will to say otherwise, and assured him of my trust in him. + 

“My very dear,” he said, softly touching my hand, but I could make no answer. + 

He scrambled to his feet and peered down on me. “It is not my peace. All the days you are away.⁠ ⁠…” He gulped forlornly and turned away his head. “But that is what I mean. Just nothing, all this”⁠—he made a gesture with his hands as if giving himself up a captive to authority⁠—“nothing but a sop to a dog.” + 

Then stooping, he drew my cape around me, banked the loose hay at my feet and shoulders, smiled into my face, and bidding me wait in patience a while, but not sleep, was gone. + 

The warmth and odour stole over my senses. I was neither hungry nor thirsty, but drugged with fatigue. With a fixed smile on my face (a smile betokening, as I believe now, little but feminine vanity and satisfaction after feeding on that strange heart), my thoughts went wandering. The sounds of skies and earth drowsed my senses, and I nodded off into a nap. The grinding of wheels awoke me. From a welter of dreams I gazed out through the opening of the barn at a little battered cart and a shaggy pony. And behold, on the chopped straw and hay beside me, lay stretched out, nose on paw, our enemy, the sheepdog. He thumped a friendly tail at me, while he growled at my deliverer. + 

Thoughtful Mr. Anon. He had not only fetched the pony-cart, but had brought me a bottle of hot milk and a few raisins. They warmed and revived me. A little light-witted after my sleep in the hay, I clambered up with his help into the cart and tucked myself in as snugly as I could with my draggled petticoats and muddy shoes. So with myself screened well out of sight of prying eyes, we drove off. + 

All this long while I had not given a thought to Mrs. Bowater. We stood before her at last in her oilcloth passage, like Adam and Eve in the Garden. Her oldest bonnet on her head, she was just about to set off to the police station. And instead of showing her gratitude that her anxieties on my account were over, Mrs. Bowater cast us the blackest of looks. Leaving Mr. Anon to make our peace with her, I ran off to change my clothes. As I emerged from my bedroom, he entered at the door, in an old trailing pilot coat many sizes too large for him, and I found to my astonishment that he and my landlady had become the best of friends. I marvelled. This little achievement of Mr. Anon’s made me like him⁠—all of a burst⁠—ten times as much, I believe, as he would have been contented that I should love him. + 

Indeed the “high tea” Mrs. Bowater presided over that afternoon, sitting above her cups and saucers just like a clergyman, is one of the gayest memories of my life. And yet⁠—she had left the room for a moment to fetch something from the kitchen, and as, in a self-conscious hush, Mr. Anon and I sat alone together, I caught a glimpse of her on her return pausing in the doorway, her capped head almost touching the lintel⁠—and looking in on us with a quizzical, benign, foolish expression on her face, like that of a grownup peeping into a child’s dolls’ house. So swirling a gust of hatred and disillusionment swept over me at sight of her, that for some little while I dared not raise my eyes and look at Mr. Anon. All affection and gratitude fled away. Miss M. was once more an Ishmael! + 