For many days my mind was an empty husk, yet in a constant torment of
longing, daydream, despair, and self-reproaches. Everything I looked at
had but one meaning--that she was not there. I did not dare to admit
into my heart a hope of the future, since it would be treason to the
absent. There was an ecstatic mournfulness even in the sight of the
January sun, the greening fields, the first scarcely perceptible signals
of a new year. And when one morning I awoke early and heard, still half
in dream, a thrush in all but darkness singing of spring, it seemed it
was a voice pealing in the empty courts of paradise. What ridiculous
care I took to conceal my misery from Mrs Bowater. Hardly a morning
passed but that I carried out in a bag the food I couldn't eat the day
before, to hide it away or bury it. But such journeys were brief.
I have read somewhere that love is a disease. Or is it that Life piles
up the fuel, a chance stranger darts a spark, and the whole world goes
up in smoke? Was I happier in that fever than I am in this literary
calm? Why did love for things without jealousy or envy fill me with
delight, pour happiness into me, and love for Fanny parch me up, suck
every other interest from my mind, and all but blind my eyes? Is that
true? I cannot be sure: for to remember her ravages is as difficult as
to re-assemble the dismal phantoms that flock into a delirious brain.
And still to be honest--there's another chance: Was she to blame? Would
my mind have been at peace even in its solitary woe if she had dealt
truly with me? Would any one believe it?--it never occurred to me to
remind myself that it might be a question merely of size. Simply because
I loved, I deemed myself lovable. Yet in my heart of hearts that
afternoon I had been twitting Mr Crimble for saying his prayers!
But even the heart is Phoenix-like. The outer world began to break into
my desolation, not least successfully when after a week or two of
absence there came a post card from Fanny to her mother with a mere
"love to M." scrawled in its top right-hand corner. It was as if a
wine-glass of cold water had been poured down my back. It was followed
by yet another little "shock." One evening, when she had carefully set
down my bowl of rusk and milk, Mrs Bowater took up her stand opposite to
me, black as an image in wood. "You haven't been after your stars, miss,
of late. It's moping you are. I suffered myself from the same greensick
fantasticalities, when _I_ was a girl. Not that a good result's any the
better for a poor cause; but it was courting danger with your frail
frame; it was indeed."
I smile in remembrance of the picture presented by that
conscience-stricken face of mine upturned to that stark monitor--a
monitor no less stark at this very moment though we are both many years
older.
"Yes, yes," she continued, and even the dun, fading photograph over her
head might have paled at her accents. "I'm soliciting no divulgements;
she wouldn't have gone alone, and if she did, would have heard of it
from me. But you must please remember, miss, I am her mother. And you
will remember, miss, also," she added, with upper lip drawn even
tighter, "that your care is my care, and always will be while you are
under my roof--and after, please God."
She soundlessly closed the door behind her, as if in so doing she were
shutting up the whole matter in her mind for ever, as indeed she was,
for she never referred to it again. Thunderbolts fall quietly at times.
I sat stupefied. But as I examine that distant conscience, I am aware,
first, of a faint flitting of the problem through my mind as to why a
freedom which Mrs Bowater would have denied to Fanny should have held no
dangers for me, and next, I realize that of all the emotions in conflict
within me, humiliation stood head and shoulders above the rest. Indeed I
flushed all over, at the thought that never for one moment--then or
since--had I paused to consider how, on that fateful midnight, Fanny
could have left the house-door _bolted_ behind her. My utter stupidity:
and Fanny's! All these weeks my landlady had known, and said nothing.
The green gooseberries of my childhood were a far less effective tonic.
But I lost no love for Mrs Bowater in this prodigious increase of
respect.
A far pleasanter interruption of my sick longings for the absent one
occurred the next morning. At a loss what to be reading (for Fanny had
abstracted my _Wuthering Heights_ and taken it away with her), once more
shudderingly pushing aside my breakfast, I turned over the dusty, faded
pile of Bowater books. And in one of them I discovered a chapter on
knots. Our minds are cleverer than we think them, and not only cats have
an instinct for physicking themselves. I took out a piece of silk twine
from my drawer and--with Fanny's phantom sulking a while in neglect--set
myself to the mastery of "the ship boy's" science. I had learned for
ever to distinguish between the granny and the reef (such is fate, this
knot was also called the true lover's!), and was setting about the
fisherman's bend, when there came a knock on the door--and then a head.
It was Pollie. Until I saw her round, red, country cheek, and stiff
Sunday hat, thus unexpectedly appear, I had almost forgotten how much I
loved and had missed her. No doubt my landlady had been the _dea ex
machina_ that had produced her on this fine sunshine morning. Anyhow she
was from heaven. Besides butter, a posy of winter jasmine, a crochet
bedspread, and a varnished arbour chair made especially for me during
the winter evenings by her father, Mr Muggeridge, she brought startling
news. There suddenly fell a pause in our excited talk. She drew out her
handkerchief and a slow crimson mounted up over neck, cheek, ears, and
brow. I couldn't look quite away from this delicious sight, so my eyes
wandered up in admiration of the artificial cornflowers and daisies in
her hat.
Whereupon she softly blew her nose and, with a gliding glance at the
shut door, she breathed out her secret. She was engaged to be married. A
trying, romantic vapour seemed instantly to gather about us, in whose
hush I was curiously aware not only of Pollie thus suffused, sitting
with her hands loosely folded in her lap, but of myself also, perched
opposite to her with eyes in which curiosity, incredulity, and even a
remote consternation played upon her homely features. Time melted away,
and there once more sat the old Pollie--a gawk of a girl in a pinafore,
munching up green apples and re-plaiting her dull brown hair.
Then, of course, I was bashfully challenged to name the happy man. I
guessed and guessed to Pollie's ever-increasing gusto, and at last I
dared my first unuttered choice: "Well, then, it _must_ be Adam
Waggett!"
"Adam Waggett! Oh, miss, him! a nose like a winebottle."
It was undeniable. I apologized, and Pollie surrendered her future into
my hands. "It's Bob Halibut, miss," she whispered hoarsely.
And instantaneously Bob Halibut's red head loomed louringly out at me.
But I know little about husbands; and premonitions only impress us when
they come true. Time was to prove that Pollie and her mother had made a
prudent choice. Am I not now Mr Halibut's god-sister, so to speak?
The wedding, said Pollie, was to be in the summer. "And oh, miss"--would
I come?
The scheming that followed! The sensitive draping of difficulties on
either side, the old homesick longing on mine--to flee away now, at
once, from this scene of my afflicted adoration. I almost hated Fanny
for giving me so much pain. Mrs Bowater was summoned to our council; my
promise was given; and it was she who suggested that its being "a nice
bright afternoon," Pollie should take me for a walk.
But whither? It seemed a sheer waste of Pollie to take her to the woods.
Thoughts of St Peter's, the nocturnal splendour in the cab, a hunger for
novelty, the itch to spend money, and maybe a tinge of
dare-devilry--without a moment's hesitation I chose the shops and the
"town." Once more in my black, with two thicknesses of veil canopying my
head, as if I were a joint of meat in the Dog Days, I settled myself on
Pollie's arm, and--in the full publicity of three o'clock in the
afternoon--off we went.
We chattered; we laughed; we sniggled together like schoolgirls in
amusement at the passers-by, in the strange, busy High Street. I
devoured the entrancing wares in the shop windows--milliner, hairdresser
and perfumer, confectioner; even the pyramids of jam jars and
sugar-cones in the grocer's, and the soaps, syrups, and sponges of Mr
Simpkins--Beechwood's pharmaceutical chemist. Out of the sovereign which
I had brought with me from my treasure-chest Pollie made purchases on my
behalf. For Mrs Bowater, a muslin tie for the neck; for herself--after
heated controversy--a pair of kid gloves and a bottle of frangipani; and
for me a novel.
This last necessitated a visit to Mrs Stocks's Circulating Library. My
hopes had been set on _Jane Eyre_. Mrs Stocks regretted that the demand
for this novel had always exceeded her supply: "What may be called the
sensational style of fiction" (or was it friction?) "never lays much on
our hands." She produced, instead, and very tactfully, a comparatively
diminutive copy of Miss Austen's _Sense and Sensibility_. It was a
little shop-soiled; "But books keep, miss"; and she let me have it at a
reduced price. Her great shears severed the string. Pollie and I once
more set clanging the sonorous bell at the door, and emerged into the
sunlight. "Oh, Pollie," I whispered, "if only you could stay with me for
ever!"
This taste of "life" had so elated me that after fevered and silent
debate I at last laughed out, and explained to Pollie that I wished to
be "put down." Her breathless arguments against this foolhardy
experiment only increased my obstinacy. She was compelled to obey.
Bidding her keep some little distance behind me, I settled my veil,
clasped tight my Miss Austen in my arms and set my face in the direction
from which we had come. One after another the wide paving-stones
stretched out in front of me. It was an extraordinary experience. I was
openly alone now, not with the skulking, deceitful shades and
appearances of night, or the quiet flowers and trees in the enormous
vacancy of nature; but in the midst of a town of men in their
height--and walking along there: by myself. It was as if I had suddenly
realized what astonishingly active and domineering and multitudinous
creatures we humans are. I can't explain. The High Street, to use a good
old phrase, "got up into my head." My mind was in such a whirl of
excitement that full consciousness of what followed eludes me.
The sun poured wintry bright into the house-walled gulf of a street that
in my isolation seemed immeasurably vast and empty. I think my senses
distorted the scene. There was the terrific glitter of glass, the
clatter of traffic. A puff of wind whirled dust and grit and particles
of straw into the air. The shapes of advancing pedestrians towered close
above me, then, stiff with sudden attention, passed me by. My legs grew
a little numb and my brain confused. The strident whistling of a
butcher's boy, with an empty, blood-stained tray over his shoulder,
suddenly ceased. Saucer-eyed, he stood stock still, gulped and gaped. I
kept on my course. A yelp of astonishment rent the air. Whereupon, as it
seemed, from divers angles, similar boys seemed to leap out of the
ground and came whooping and revolving across the street in my
direction. And now the blood so hummed in my head that it was rather my
nerves than my ears which informed me of a steadily increasing murmur
and trampling behind me.
With extraordinary vividness I recall the vision of a gigantic barouche
gliding along towards me in the shine and the dust; and seated up in it
a high, pompous lady who at one moment with rigid urbanity inclined her
head apparently in my direction, and at the next, her face displeased as
if at an offensive odour, had sunk back into her cushions, oblivious not
only of Beechwood but of the whole habitable globe. Simultaneously, I
was aware, even as I hastened on, first that the acquaintance whose
salute she had acknowledged was Mr Crimble, and next, that with
incredible rapidity he had wheeled himself about and had instantaneously
transfixed his entire attention on some object in the window of a
hatter's.
Until this moment, as I say, a confused but blackening elation had
filled my mind. But at sight of Mr Crimble's rook-like stooping
shoulders I began to be afraid. My shoe stumbled against a jutting
paving-stone. I almost fell. Whereupon the mute concourse at my
heels--spreading tail of me, the Comet--burst into a prolonged squealing
roar of delight. The next moment Pollie was at my side, stooping to my
rescue. It was too late. One glance over my shoulder--and terror and
hatred of the whole human race engulfed me like a sea. I struck savagely
at Pollie's cotton-gloved hand. Shivering, with clenched, sticky teeth,
I began to run.
Why this panic? Who would have harmed me? And yet on the thronging faces
which I had flyingly caught sight of through my veil there lay an
expression that was not solely curiosity--a kind of hunger, a dog-like
gleam. I remember one thin-legged, ferrety, red-haired lad in
particular. Well, no matter. The comedy was brief, and it was Mrs Stocks
who lowered the curtain. Attracted by all this racket and hubbub in the
street, she was protruding her round head out of her precincts. Like fox
to its hole, I scrambled over her wooden doorstep, whisked round her
person, and fled for sanctuary into her shop. She hustled poor Pollie in
after me, wheeled round on my pursuers, slammed the door in their faces,
slipped its bolt, and drew down its dark blue blind.
In the sudden quiet and torpor of this musty gloom I turned my hunted
eyes and stared at the dark strip of holland that hid me from my
pursuers. So too did Mrs Stocks. The round creature stood like a stone
out of reach of the surf. Then she snorted.
"Them!" said she, with a flick of her duster. "A parcel of idle herrand
boys. _I_ know them: and no more decency than if you was Royalty, my
dear, or a pickpocket, or a corpse run over in the street. You rest a
bit, pore young thing, and compose yourself. They'll soon grow tired of
themselves."
She retired into the back part of her shop beyond the muslined door and
returned with a tumbler of water. I shook my head. My sight pulsed with
my heartbeats. As if congealed into a drop of poison, I stared and
stared at the blind.
"Open the door," I said. "I'd like to go out again."
"Oh, miss! oh, miss!" cried Pollie.
But Mrs Stocks was of a more practical turn. After surveying my enemies
from an upper window she had sent a neighbour's little girl for a cab.
By the time this vehicle arrived, with a half-hearted "Boo!" of
disappointment, the concourse in the street had all but melted away, and
Mrs Stocks's check duster scattered the rest. The cab-door slammed, the
wheels ground on the kerbstone, my debut was over. I had been but a nine
minutes' wonder.