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 above-board. 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,--
"WALTER POLLACKE.
"PS.--Lady Pollacke tells me that we may perhaps again look forward
to your company to tea in a few days, please do not think, then, of
acknowledging this little message by post."
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?
"Believe me,
"Yours sincerely,
"LYDIA PRESTON POLLACKE."
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 _lady_like?
"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.