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 tea-cups 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."