One of the many perplexing problems that now hemmed me in was brushed
away by Fortune that afternoon. Between gloomy bursts of reflection on
Fanny's, Mr Crimble's, Mrs Bowater's, and my own account, I had been
reading Miss Austen; and at about four o'clock was sharing Chapter
XXIII. with poor Elinor:--
"The youthful infatuation of nineteen would naturally blind her to
everything but her beauty and good nature, but the four succeeding
years--years which, if rationally spent, give such improvements to
the understanding--must have opened her eyes to her defects of
Education, which the same period of time, spent on her side in
inferior society and more frivolous pursuits...."
I say I was reading this passage, and had come to the words--"and more
frivolous pursuits," when an unusually imperative _rat-tat-tat_ fell
upon the outer door, and I emerged from my book to discover that an
impressive white-horsed barouche was drawn up in the street beyond my
window. The horse tossed its head and chawed its frothy bit; and the
coachman sat up beside his whip in the sparkling frosty afternoon air.
My heart gave a thump, and I was still seeking vaguely to connect this
event with myself or with Mr Bowater in Buenos Ayres, when the door
opened and a lady entered whose plumed and purple bonnet was as much too
small for her head as she herself was too large for the room. Yet in
sheer dimensions this was not a very large lady. It was her "presence"
that augmented her.
She seemed, too, to be perfectly accustomed to these special
proportions, and with a rather haughty, "Thank you," to Mrs Bowater,
winningly announced that she was Lady Pollacke, "a friend, a mutual
friend, as I understand, of dear Mr Crimble's."
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 tell-tale 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 tea-time. 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 chimney-piece, and under an ormolu clock, the parlour-maid 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 tea-cup, 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
parlour-maid, 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 any one 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
coat-tails, 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 for ever.
"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; good-bye," said he, "and the blessing, my dear young lady, of a
fellow fanatic."
He turned about and ascended the staircase. Except for the parlour-maid
who was awaiting me in the porch, Mr Crimble and I were alone.