The house draped itself in quiet. Until ten had struck, and footsteps
had ascended to the rooms overhead, I kept close in my bedchamber. Then
I hastily put on my outdoor clothes, shivering not with cold, but with
expectation, and sat down by the fire, prepared for the least sound that
would prove that Fanny had not forgotten our assignation. But I waited
in vain. The cold gathered. The vaporous light of the waning moon
brightened in the room. The cinders fainted to a darker glow. I heard
the kitchen clock with its cracked, cantankerous stroke beat out eleven.
Its solemn mate outside, who had seemingly lost his voice, ticked on.
Hope died out in me, leaving an almost physical nausea, a profound
hatred of myself and even of being alive. "Well," a cold voice said in
my ear, "that's how we are treated; that comes of those eyes we cannot
forget. Cheated, cheated again, my friend."
In those young days disappointment set my heart aching with a bitterness
less easy to bear than it is now. No doubt I was steeped in
sentimentality and folly. It was the vehemence of this new feeling that
almost terrified me. But my mind was my world; it is my only excuse. I
could not get out of _that_ by merely turning a tiny key in a Brahma
lock. Nor could I betake myself to bed. How sleep in such an inward
storm of reproaches, humiliation, and despised love?
I drew down my veil, wrapped my shawl closer round my shoulders,
descended my staircase, and presently stood in the porch in
confrontation of the night. Low on the horizon, at evens with me across
space, and burning with a limpid fire, hung my chosen--Sirius. The
sudden sight of him pouring his brilliance into my eyes brought a
revulsion of feeling. He was "cutting me dead." I brazened him down. I
trod with exquisite caution down the steps, daring but one fleeting
glance, as I turned, at Fanny's window. It was blinded, empty. Toiling
on heavily up the hill, I sourly comforted myself with the vow that she
should realize how little I cared, that her room had been sweeter than
her company. Never more would I put trust in "any child of man."
Gradually, however, the quiet night received me into its peace (just as,
poor soul, did the Moor Desdemona), and its influence stole into my
darkened mind. The smooth, columnar boughs of the beeches lifted
themselves archingly into the sky. Soon I was climbing over the
moss-bound roots of my customary observatory. But this night the stars
were left for a while unsignalled and unadmired. The crisped,
frost-lined leaves scattered between the snake-like roots sparkled
faintly. Years seemed to have passed away, dwindled in Time's
hour-glass, since my previous visit. That Miss M. had ghosted herself
away for ever. In my reverie the vision of Fanny re-arose into my
imagination--that secret still fountain--of herself. Asleep now.... I
could no more free myself from her sorcery than I could disclaim the two
hands that lay in my lap. She was indeed more closely mine than
they--and nearer in actuality than I had imagined.
A faint stir in the woods suddenly caught my attention. The sound
neared. I pressed my hand to my breast, torn now between two incentives,
two desires--to fly, to stay. And on the path by which I had come,
appeared, some yards distant, in the faint trickling light, the dark
figure of my dreams.
She was dressed in a black cloak, its peaked old-fashioned hood drawn
over her head. The moonbeams struck its folds as she moved. Her face was
bowed down a little, her hand from within clutching her cloak together.
And I realized instinctively and with joy that the silence and solitude
of the woods alarmed her. It was I who was calm and self-contained. She
paused and looked around her--stood listening with lips divided that yet
could not persuade themselves to call me by name. For my part, I softly
gathered myself closer together and continued to gloat. And suddenly out
of the far-away of the woods a nightbird loosed its cry: "A-hoo....
Ahoo-oo-oo-hooh!"
There is a hunter in us all. I laughed inwardly as I watched. A few
months more and I was to watch a lion-tamer ... but let me keep to one
thing at a time. I needled myself in, and, almost hooting the sound
through my mouth, as if in echo of the bird, I heard myself call
stealthily across the air, "Fanny!--Fanny Bowater!"
The cloaked figure recoiled, with lifted head, like the picture of a
fawn I have seen, and gazed in my direction. Seeing nothing of me amidst
the leaves and shadows, she was about to flee, when I called again:--
"It is I, Fanny. Here: here!"
Instantly she woke to herself, came near, and looked down on me. No
movement welcomed her. "I was tired of waiting," I yawned. "There is
nothing to be frightened about."
Many of her fellow creatures, I fancy, have in their day wearied of
waiting for Fanny Bowater, but few have had the courage or sagacity to
tell her so. She had not recovered her equanimity fully enough to
refrain from excuses.
"Surely you did not expect me while mother was moving? I am not
accustomed, Miss M., to midnight wanderings."
"I gave up expecting you, and was glad to be alone."
The barb fell short. She looked stilly around her. The solemn beeches
were like mute giants overarching with their starry, sky-hung boughs
the dark, slim figure. What consciousness had they, I wonder, of those
odd humans at their roots?
"Alone! Here!" she returned. "But no wonder. It's what you are all
about."
A peculiar elation sprang up in me at this none too intelligible remark.
"I wonder, though," she added, "you are not frozen like--like a pebble,
sitting there."
"But I am," I said, laughing softly. "It doesn't matter in me, because
I'm so easy to thaw. You ought to know that. Oh, Miss Bowater, think if
this were summer time and the dew and the first burning heat! Are you
wrapped up? And shall we sit here, just--just for one dance of the
Sisters: thou lost dove, Merope?"
For there on high--and I had murmured the last words all but inaudibly
to myself--there played the spangling Pleiads, clear above her head in
the twig-swept sky.
"What sisters?" she inquired, merely humouring me, perhaps.
"The Six, Fanny, look! You cannot see their Seventh--yet she is all that
_that_ is about." South to north I swept my hand across the powdery
firmament. "And I myself trudge along down Watling Street; that's the
Milky Way. I don't think, Fanny, I shall ever, ever be weaned. Please,
may I call you that?"
She frowned up a moment into the emptiness, hesitated, then--just like a
white peacock I had once seen when a child from my godmother's ancient
carriage as we rolled by an old low house with terraces smooth as velvet
beneath its cedars--she disposed her black draperies upon the ground at
a little distance, disclosing, in so doing, beneath their folds the
moon-blanched flounces of her party gown. I gazed spellbound. I looked
at the white and black, and thought of what there was within their
folds, and of the heart within that, and of the spirit of man. Such was
my foolish fashion, following idly like a butterfly the scents of the
air, flitting on from thought to thought, and so missing the full
richness of the one blossom on which I might have hovered.
"Tell me some more," broke suddenly the curious voice into the midst of
this reverie.
"Well, there," I cried, "is fickle Algol; the Demon. And over there
where the Crab crawls, is the little Beehive between the Roses."
"Praesepe," drawled Fanny.
"Yes," said I, unabashed, "the Beehive. And crane back your neck,
Fanny--there's little Jack-by-the-Middle-Horse; and far down, oh, far
down, Berenice's Hair, which would have been Fanny Bowater's Hair, if
you had been she."
Even as I looked, a remote film of mist blotted out the infinitesimal
cluster. "And see, beyond the Chair," I went on, laughing, and yet
exalted with my theme, "that dim in the Girdle is the Great
Nebula--s-sh! And on, on, that chirruping Invisible, _that_, Fanny, is
the Midget. Perhaps you cannot even dream of her: but she watches."
"Never even heard of her," said Fanny good-humouredly, withdrawing the
angle of her chin from the Ecliptic.
"Say not so, Horatia," I mocked, "there are more things...."
"Oh, yes, I know all about that. And these cold, monotonous old things
really please you? Personally, I'd give the whole meaningless scramble
of them for another moon."
"But your old glutton has gobbled up half of them already."
"Then my old glutton can gobble up what's left. Who taught you about
them? And why," she scanned me closely, "why did you pick out the
faintest; do you see them the best?"
"I picked out the faintest because they were meant especially for me so
that I could give them to you. My father taught me a little about them;
and _your_ father the rest."
"_My_ father," echoed Fanny, her face suddenly intent.
"His book. Do you miss him? Mine is dead."
"Oh, yes, I miss him," was the serene retort, "and so, I fancy, does
mother."
"Oh, Fanny, I am sorry. She told me--something like that."
"You need not be. I suppose God chooses one's parents quite
deliberately. Praise Him from Whom all blessings flow!" She smoothed out
her black cloak over her ankles, raised her face again into the
dwindling moonlight, and gently smiled at me. "I am glad I came,
Midgetina, though it's suicidally cold. '_Pardi! on sent Dieu bien a son
aise ici._' We are going to be great friends, aren't we?" Her eyes swept
over me. "Would you like that?"
"Friends," indeed! and as if she had offered me a lump of sugar.
I gravely nodded. "But I must come to you. You can't come to me. No one
has; except, perhaps, my mother--a little."
"Oh, yes," she replied cautiously, piercing her eyes at me, "that _is_ a
riddle. You must tell me about your childhood. Not that I love children,
or my own childhood either. I had enough of that to last me a lifetime.
I shan't pass it on; though I promise you, Midgetina, if I ever _do_
have a baby, I will anoint its little backbone with the grease of moles,
bats, and dormice, and make it like you. Was your mother----" she began
again, after a pause of reflection. "Are _you_ sorry, I mean, you
aren't--you aren't----?"
Her look supplied the missing words. "Sorry that I am a midget, Fanny?
People think I must be. But why? It is all I am, all I ever was. I am
myself, inside; like everybody else; and yet, you know, not quite like
everybody else. I sometimes think"--I laughed at the memory--"I was
asking Dr Phelps about that. Besides, would _you_ be--alone?"
"Not when I was alone, perhaps. Still, it must be rather odd, Miss
Needle-in-a-Haystack. As for being alone"--once again our owl, if owl it
was, much nearer now, screeched its screech in the wintry woods--"I hate
it!"
"But surely," expostulated the wiseacre in me, "that's what we cannot
help being. We even die alone, Fanny."
"Oh, but I'm going to help it. I'm not dead yet. Do you ever think of
the future?"
For an instant its great black hole yawned close, but I shook my head.
"Well, that," replied she, "is what Fanny Bowater is doing all the time.
There's nothing," she added satirically, "so important, so imperative
for teachers as learning. And you must learn your lesson, my dear,
before you are heard it--if you want to escape a slapping. Every little
donkey knows that."
"I suppose the truth is," said I, as if seized with a bright idea,
"there are two kinds of ambitions, of wants, I mean. We are all like
those Chinese boxes; and some of us want to live in the biggest, the
outsidest we can possibly manage; and some in the inmost one of all. The
one," I added a little drearily, "no one can share."
"Quite, quite true," said Fanny, mimicking my sententiousness, "the
teeniest, tiniest, ickiest one, which no mortal ingenuity has ever been
able to open--and so discover the nothing inside. I know your Chinese
Boxes!"
"Poor Fanny," I cried, rising up and kneeling beside the ice-cold hand
that lay on the frosty leaves. "All that I have shall help you."
Infatuated thing; I stooped low as I knelt, and stroked softly with my
own the outstretched fingers on which she was leaning.
I might have been a pet animal for all the heed she paid to my caress.
"Fanny," I whispered tragically, "will you please sing to me--if you are
not frozenly cold? You remember--the Moon Song: I have never forgotten
it; and only three notes, yet it sometimes wakes me at night. It's
queer, isn't it, being you and me?"
She laughed, tilting her chin; and her voice began at once to sing, as
if at the scarcely opened door of her throat, and a tune so plain it
seemed but the words speaking:--
"Twas a Cuckoo, cried 'cuck-oo'
In the youth of the year;
And the timid things nesting,
Crouched, ruffled in fear;
And the Cuckoo cried, 'cuck-oo,'
For the honest to hear.
One--two notes: a bell sound
In the blue and the green;
'Cuck-oo: cuck-oo: cuck-oo!'
And a silence between.
Ay, mistress, have a care, lest
Harsh love, he hie by,
And for kindness a monster
To nourish you try--
In your bosom to lie:
'Cuck-oo,' and a 'cuck-oo,'
And 'cuck-oo!'"
The sounds fell like beads into the quiet--as if a small child had come
up out of her heart and gone down again; and she callous and unmoved. I
cannot say why the clear, muted notes saddened and thrilled me so. Was
_she_ the monster?
I had drawn back, and stayed eyeing her pale face, the high cheek, the
delicate straight nose, the darkened lips, the slim black eyebrows, the
light, clear, unfathomable eyes reflecting the solitude and the thin
brilliance of the wood. Yet the secret of herself remained her own. She
tried in vain not to be disturbed at my scrutiny.
"Well," she inquired at last, with motionless glance fixed on the
distance. "Do you think you could honestly give me a testimonial, Miss
Midget?"
It is strange. The Sphinx had spoken, yet without much enlightenment.
"Now look at me," I commanded. "If I went away, you couldn't follow.
When you go away, you cannot escape from me. I can go back and--and _be_
where I was." My own meaning was half-concealed from me; but a startled
something that had not been there before peeped out of those eyes so
close to mine.
"If," she said, "I could care like that too, yet wanted nothing, then I
should be free too."
"What do you mean?" said I, lifting my hand from the unanswering
fingers.
"I mean," she exclaimed, leaping to her feet, "that I'm sick to death of
the stars and am going home to bed. Hateful, listening old woods!"
I turned sharp round, as if in apprehension that some secret hearer
might have caught her remark. But Fanny stretched out her arms, and,
laughing a foolish tune, in affected abandonment began softly to dance
in the crisp leaves, quite lost to me again. So twirling, she set off
down the path by which she had come trespassing. A physical exhaustion
came over me. I watched her no more, but stumbled along, with unheeding
eyes, in her wake. What had I not given, I thought bitterly, and this my
reward. Thus solitary, I had gone only a little distance, and had
reached the outskirts of the woods, when a far from indifferent Fanny
came hastening back to intercept me.
And no wonder. She had remembered to attire herself becomingly for her
moonlight tryst, but had forgotten the door key. We stood looking at one
another aghast, as, from eternity, I suppose, have all
fellow-conspirators in danger of discovery. It was I who first awoke to
action. There was but one thing to be done, and, warning Fanny that I
had never before attempted to unlatch the big front door of her mother's
house, I set off resolutely down the hill.
"You walk so slowly!" she said suddenly, turning back on me. "I will
carry you."
Again we paused. I looked up at her with an inextricable medley of
emotions struggling together in my mind, and shook my head.
"But why, why?" she repeated impatiently. "We could get there in half
the time."
"If you could _fly_, Fanny, I'd walk," I replied stubbornly.
"You mean----" and her cold anger distorted her face. "Oh, pride! What
childish nonsense! And you said we were to be friends. Do you suppose I
care whether...?" But the question remained unfinished.
"I _am_ your friend," said I, "and that is why I will not, I _will_ not
give way to you." It was hardly friendship that gleamed out of the wide
eyes then. But mine the victory--a victory in which only a tithe of the
spoils, unrecognized by the vanquished, had fallen to the victor.
Without another word she turned on her heel, and for the rest of our
dejected journey she might have been mistaken for a cross nurse trailing
on pace for pace beside a rebellious child. My dignity was less ruffled
than hers, however, and for a brief while I had earned my freedom.
Arrived at the house, dumbly hostile in the luminous night, Fanny
concealed herself as best she could behind the gate-post and kept watch
on the windows. Far away in the stillness we heard a footfall echoing on
the hill. "There is some one coming," she whispered, "you must hurry."
She might, I think, have serpented her way in by my own little door.
Where the _head_ leads, the heart may follow. But she did not suggest
it. Nor did I.
I tugged and pushed as best I could, but the umbrella with which from a
chair I at last managed to draw the upper bolt of the door was extremely
cumbersome. The latch for a while resisted my efforts. And the knowledge
that Fanny was fretting and fuming behind the gatepost hardly increased
my skill. The house was sunken in quiet; Mrs Bowater apparently was
sleeping without her usual accompaniment; only Henry shared my labours,
and he sat moodily at the foot of the stairs, refusing to draw near
until at the same moment Fanny entered, and he leapt out.
Once safely within, and the door closed and bolted again, Fanny stood
for a few moments listening. Then with a sigh and a curious gesture she
bent herself and kissed the black veil that concealed my fair hair.
"I am sorry, Midgetina," she whispered into its folds, "I was impatient.
Mother wouldn't have liked the astronomy, you know. That was all. And I
am truly sorry for--for----"
"My dear," I replied in firm, elderly tones, whose echo is in my ear to
this very day; "My dear, it was my mind you hurt, not my feelings." With
that piece of sententiousness I scrambled blindly through my Bates's
doorway, shut the door behind me, and more disturbed at heart than I can
tell, soon sank into the thronging slumber of the guilty and the
obsessed.