Out of a cab from a livery stable Mrs Bowater and I alighted at our
London terminus next morning, to find positively awaiting us beside the
wooden platform a first-class railway carriage--a palatial apartment.
Swept and garnished, padded and varnished--a miracle of wealth! At this
very moment I seem to be looking up in awe at the orange-rimmed (I think
it was orange) label stuck on the glass whose inscription I afterwards
spelled out backwards from within: "Mrs Bywater and Party." As soon as
we and our luggage were safely settled, an extremely polite and fatherly
guard locked the door on us. At this Mrs Bowater was a little troubled
by the thought of how we should fare in the event of an accident. But he
reassured her.
"Never fear, ma'am: accidents are strictly forbidden on this line.
Besides _which_," he added, with a solemn, turtle-like stare, "if I turn
the key on the young lady, none of them young a-ogling Don Jooans can
force their way in. Strict orders, ma'am."
To make assurance doubly sure, Mrs Bowater pulled down the blinds at
every stopping-place. We admired the scenery. We read the warning
against pickpockets, and I translated it out of the French. After
examining the enormous hotels depicted in the advertisements, we agreed
there was nothing like home comforts. Mrs Bowater continued to lose and
find in turn our tickets, her purse, her spectacle-case, her cambric
pocket-handkerchief, not to mention a mysterious little screw of paper,
containing lozenges I think. She scrutinized our luxury with grim
determination. And we giggled like two school-girls as we peeped
together through the crevices of the blinded windows at the rich, furry
passengers who ever and again hurried along, casting angry glances at
our shrouded windows.
It being so early in the year--but how mild and sweet a day--there were
few occupants of the coach at Axminster. As I had once made a
(frequently broken) vow to do at once what scared me, I asked to be
perched up on the box beside the lean, brick-faced driver. Thus giddily
exalted above his three cantering roan horses, we bowled merrily along.
With his whip he pointed out to me every "object of interest" as it went
floating by--church and inn, farm and mansion.
"Them's peewits," he would bawl. "And that's the selfsame cottage where
lived the little old 'ooman what lived in a shoe." He stooped over me,
reins in fist, with his seamed red face and fiery little eye, as if I
were a small child home for the holidays. Evening sunlight on the
hill-tops and shadowy in the valleys. And presently the three stepping
horses--vapour jetting from their nostrils, their sides panting like
bellows--dragged the coach up a hill steeper than ever. "And that
there," said the driver, as we surmounted the crest--and as if for
emphasis he gave a prodigious tug at an iron bar beside him, "that
there's the Sea."
The Sea. Flat, bow-shaped, hazed, remote, and of a blue stilling my eyes
as with a dream--I verily believe the saltest tears I ever shed in my
life smarted on my lids as the spirit in me fled away, to be alone with
that far loveliness. A desire almost beyond endurance devoured me.
"Yes," cried hidden self to self, "I can never, never love him; but he
shall take me away--away--away. Oh, how I have wasted my days, sick for
home."
But small opportunity was given me for these sentimental reflections.
Nearly at the foot of even another hill, and one so precipitous that
during its rattling descent I had to cling like a spider to the driver's
strap, we came to a standstill; and in face of a gaping knot of
strangers I was lifted down--with a "There! Miss Nantuckety," from the
driver--from my perch to the pavement.
The lodgings Mrs Monnerie had taken for us proved to be the sea rooms in
a small, white, bow-windowed house on the front, commanding the
fishing-boats, the harbour, and the stone Cobb. I tasted my lips,
snuffed softly with my nose, stole a look over the Bay, and glanced at
Mrs Bowater. Was she, too, half-demented with this peculiar and
ravishing experience? I began to shiver; but not with cold, with
delight. Face creased up in a smile (the wind had stiffened the skin),
cheeks tingling, and ravenously hungry, I watched the ceremonious
civilities that were passing between landlady and landlady: Mrs Bowater
angular and spare; Mrs Petrie round, dumpy, smooth, and a little bald.
My friend Mrs Monnerie was evidently a lady whose lightest word was
Sesame. Every delicacy and luxury that Lyme out of its natural resources
can have squandered on King George III. was ours without the asking.
Mrs Bowater, it is true, at our sea-fish breakfast next morning,
referred in the first place to the smell of drains; next to fleas; and
last to greasy cooking. But who should have the privilege of calling the
Kettle black unless the Pot? Moreover, we were "first-class" visitors,
and _had_ to complain of something. I say "we"; but since, in the first
place, all the human houses that I have ever entered have been less
sweet to the nose than mere country out-of-doors; since next (as I
discovered when I was a child) there must be some ichor or acid in my
body unpleasing to man's parasites; and since, last, I cannot bear
cooked animals; these little inconveniences, even if they had not
existed solely in Mrs Bowater's fancy, would not have troubled me.
The days melted away. We would sally out early, while yet many of Lyme's
kitchen chimneys were smokeless, and would return with the shadows of
evening. How Mrs Bowater managed to sustain so large a frame for so many
hours together on a few hard biscuits and a bottle of cold tea, I cannot
discover. Her mood, like our weather that April, was almost always "set
fair," and her temper never above a comfortable sixty degrees. We hired
a goat-chaise, and with my flaxen hair down my back under a sunbonnet, I
drove Reuben up and down the Esplanade--both of us passable
ten-year-olds to a careless observer. My cheeks and hands were scorched
by the sun; Mrs Bowater added more and more lilac and white to her
outdoor attire; and Mrs Petrie lent her a striped, and once handsome
parasol with a stork's head for handle, which had been left behind by a
visitor--otherwise unendeared.
On warm mornings we would choose some secluded spot on the beach, or on
the fragrant, green-turfed cliffs, or in the Uplyme meadows. Though I
could never persuade Mrs Bowater to join me, I sometimes dabbled in the
sun in some ice-cold, shallow, seaweedy pool between the rocks. Then,
while she read the newspaper, or crocheted, I also, over book or
needle, indulged in endless reverie. For hours together, with eyes
fixed on the glass-green, tumbling water, I would listen to its
enormous, far, phantom bells and voices, happier than words can tell.
And I would lie at full length, basking in the heat, for it was a hot
May, almost wishing that the huge furnace of the sun would melt me away
into a little bit of glass: and what colour would that have been, I
wonder? If a small heart can fall in love with the whole world, that
heart was mine. But the very intensity of this greed and delight--and
the tiniest shell or pebble on the beach seemed to be all but exploding
with it--was a severe test of my strength.
One late twilight, I remember, as we idled homeward, the planet Venus
floating like a luminous water-drop in the primrose of the western sky,
we passed by a low white-walled house beneath trees. And from an open
window came into the quiet the music of a fiddle. What secret decoy was
in that air I cannot say. I stopped dead, looking about me as if for
refuge, and drinking in the while the gliding, lamenting sounds.
Curiously perturbed, I caught at Mrs Bowater's skirt. Sky and darkening
headland seemed to be spinning around me--melting out into a dream. "Oh,
Mrs Bowater," I whispered, as if I were drowning, "it is strange for us
to be here."
She dropped herself on the grass beside me, brushing with her dress the
scent of wild thyme into the dewy air, and caught my hands in hers. Her
long face close to mine, she gently shook me; "Now, now; now, now!" she
called. "Come back, my pretty one. See! It's me, me, Mrs Bowater.... The
love she's been to me!"
I smiled, groped with my hand, opened my eyes in the dimness to answer
her. But a black cloud came over them; and the next thing I recall is
waking to find myself being carried along in her arms, cold and half
lifeless; and she actually breaking ever and again into a shambling run,
as she searched my face in what seemed, even to my scarcely conscious
brain, an extravagant anxiety.
Four days afterwards--and I completely restored--we found on the
breakfast table of our quiet sea-room an unusually bountiful post: a
broad, impressive-looking letter and a newspaper for Mrs Bowater, and a
parcel, from Fanny, for me. Time and distance had divided me from the
past more than I had supposed. The very sight of her handwriting gave
me a qualm. "Fanny! Oh, my Heavens," cried a voice in me, "what's wrong
now?"
But removing the brown paper I found only a book, and it being near to
my size as books go, I opened it with profound relief. My joy was
premature. The book Fanny had sent me was by Bishop Jeremy Taylor, _Holy
Living and Dying: with Prayers containing the Whole Duty of a
Christian_. I read over and over this title with a creeping misgiving
and dismay, and almost in the same instant, detected, lightly fastened
between its fly-leaves, and above its inscription--"To Midgetina: In
Memoriam"--an inch or two of paper, pencilled over in Fanny's minutest
characters.
A slow, furtive glance discovered Mrs Bowater far too deeply absorbed to
have noticed my small movements. She was sitting bolt upright, her
forehead drawn crooked in an unusual frown. An open letter lay beside
her plate. She was staring into, rather than at, her newspaper. With
infinite stealth I slipped Fanny's scrap of paper under the tablecloth,
folded it small, and pushed it into my skirt pocket. "A present from
Fanny," I cried in a clear voice at last.
But Mrs Bowater, with drooping, pallid face, and gaze now fixed deep on
a glass-case containing three stuffed, aquatic birds, had not heard me.
I waited, watching her. She folded the newspaper and removed her
spectacles. "On our return," she began inconsequently, "the honourable
Mrs Monnerie has invited you to stay in her London house--not for a week
or two; for good. That's all as it should be, I suppose, seeing that
pay's pay and mine is no other call on you."
The automatic voice ceased with a gasp. Her thoughts appeared to be
astray. She pushed her knotted fingers up her cheeks almost to her eyes.
"It's said," she added with long, straight mouth, "that that unfortunate
young man, Mr Crimble--is ill." She gave a glance at me without
appearing to see me, and left the room.
What was amiss? Oh, this world! I sat trembling in empty dread,
listening to her heavy, muffled footfall in the room above. The
newspaper, with a scrawling cross on its margin, lay beside Mrs
Monnerie's large, rough-edged envelope. I could bear the suspense no
longer. On hands and knees I craned soundlessly forward over the white
tablecloth, across the rank dish of coagulating bacon fat, and stole one
or two of the last few lines of grey-black print at the foot of the
column: "The reverend gentleman leaves a widowed mother. He was an only
son, and was in his twenty-ninth year."
"Leaves"; "was"--the dingy letters blurred my sight. Footsteps were
approaching. I huddled back to my carpet stool on the chair. Mrs Petrie
had come to clear away the breakfast things. Stonily I listened while
she cheerfully informed me that the glass was still rising, that she
didn't recollect such weather not for the month for ten years or more.
"You must be what I've heard called an 'alcyon, miss." She nodded her
congratulations at me, and squinnied at the untasted bacon.
"I am going for a breath of air, Mrs Petrie," came Mrs Bowater's voice
through the crack of the door. "Will you kindly be ready for your walk,
miss, in half an hour?"
Left once more to myself, I heard the "alarm" clock on the mantelpiece
ticking as if every beat were being forced out of its works, and might
be its last. An early fly or two--my strange, familiar friends--darted
soundlessly beneath the ceiling. The sea was shimmering like an immense
looking-glass. More pungent than I had ever remembered it, the
refreshing smell of seaweed eddied in at the open window.
With dry mouth and a heart that jerked my body with its beatings, I
unfolded Fanny's scrap of paper:--
"WISE M.,--I have thrown the stone. And now I am fey for my own
poor head. Could you--and--will you absolutely secretly send me any
money you can spare? L15 if possible. I'm in a hole--full fathom
five--but mean to get out of it. I ask _you_, rather than mother,
because I remember you said once you were putting money by out of
that young lady's independence of yours. Notes would be best: if
not, a Post Office Order to this address, _somehow_. I must trust
to luck, and to your wonderful enterprise, if you would be truly a
dear. It's only until my next salary. If you can't--or won't--help
me, damnation is over my head: but I bequeathe you a kiss all honey
and roses none the less, and am, _pro tem._, your desperate F.
"PS.--Be sure not to give M. this address: and in a week or two we
shall all be laughing and weeping together over the Prodigal
Daughter."
Fanny, then, had not heard our morning news. I read her scribble again
and again for the least inkling of it, my thoughts in disorder. That
sprawling cross on the newspaper; this gibbering and dancing as of a
skeleton before my eyes; and "the stone," "the stone." What did it mean?
The word echoed on in my head as if it had been shouted in a vault. I
was deadly frightened and sick, stood up as if to escape, and found only
my own distorted face in Mrs Petrie's flower-and-butterfly-painted
chimney glass.
"You, you!" my eyes cried out on me. And a furious storm--remorse,
grief, horror-broke within. I knew the whole awful truth. Like a Shade
in the bright light, Mr Crimble stood there beyond the table, not
looking at me, its face turned away. Unspeakable misery bowed my
shoulders, chilled my skin.
"But you said 'ill,'" I whispered angrily up at last at Mrs Bowater's
bonneted figure in the doorway. "I have looked where the cross is. He is
dead!"
She closed the door with both hands and seated herself on a chair beside
it.
"I've trapsed that Front, miss--striving to pick up the ends. It doesn't
bear thinking of: that poor, misguided young man. It's hid away...."
"What did he die of, Mrs Bowater?" I demanded.
She caught at the newspaper, folded it close, nodded, shook her head.
"Four nights ago," she said. And still, some one last shred of
devotion--not of fidelity, not of fear, for I longed to pour out my
heart to her--sealed my lips. _Holy Living and Dying: Holy Living and
Dying:_ I read over and over the faded gilt letters on the cover of
Fanny's gift, and she in her mockery, desperate, too. "Damnation"--the
word echoed on in my brain.
But poor Mrs Bowater was awaiting no confession from me. She had
out-trapsed her strength. When next I looked round at her, the bonneted
head lay back against the rose-garlanded wallpaper, the mouth ajar, the
eyelids fluttering. It was my turn now--to implore her to "come back":
and failing to do so, I managed at last to clamber up and tug at the
bell-pull.