And then--well, life plays strange tricks. In a week or two London had
swallowed me up. How many times, I wonder, had I tried in fancy to
picture Mrs Monnerie's town house. How romantic an edifice fancy had
made of it. Impressive in its own fashion, it fell far short of these
ignorant dreams. It was No. 2 of about forty, set side by side, their
pillared porticoes fronting a prodigious square. Its only "garden,"
chiefly the resort of cats, children, nursemaids, an old whiskered
gentleman in a bath chair, and sparrows, was visible to every passer-by
through a spear-headed palisade of railings. Broad paving-stones skirted
its areas, and over each descent of steps hung a bell-pull.
On cloudless days the sun filled this square like a tank with a dry
glare and heat in which even my salamanderish body sometimes gasped like
a fish out of water. When rain fell out of the low, grey skies, and the
scaling plane-trees hissed and the sparrows chirped, my spirits seemed
to sink into my shoes. And fair or foul, London soot and dust were
enemies alike to my eyes, my fingers, and my nose.
Even my beloved cloud-burdened north-west wind was never quite free of
smuts and grit; and when blew the east! But it must be remembered how
ignorant and local I was. In my long carriage journey to Mrs Monnerie's
through those miles and miles of grimed, huddling houses, those shops
and hoardings and steeples, I had realized for the first time that its
capital is not a part of _England_, only a sprawling human growth in it;
and though I soon learned to respect it as _that_, I could never see
without a sigh some skimpy weed struggling for life in its bricked-up
crevices. It was nearly all dead, except for human beings, and that
could not be said of Lyndsey, or even of Beechwood Hill.
Maybe my imagination had already been prejudiced by a coloured drawing
which Mr Wagginhorne had sent me once for a Valentine when I was a
child. It hangs up now in that child's nursery for a memento that I have
been nearly dead. In the midst of it on a hill, in gold and faded
carmine, encircled with great five-pointed blue stars, and with green,
grooved valleys radiating from its castellated towers, is a
city--_Hierusalem_. A city surmounted by a narrow wreathing pennon on
which, inscribed in silver, are the words: "Who heareth the Voice of My
Spirit? And how shall they who deceive themselves resort unto Me?"
Scattered far and near about this central piece, and connected with it
by thin lines like wandering paths radiating from its gates across
mountain, valley, and forest, lie, like round web-like smudges, if seen
at a distance, the other chief cities of the world, Rome, Venice,
Constantinople, Paris, and the rest. London sprawls low in the left-hand
corner. The strongest glass cannot exhaust the skill and ingenuity of
the maker of this drawing (an artist who, Mr Wagginhorne told me, was
mad, poor thing--a man in a frenzy distemper--his very words). For when
you peer close into this London, it takes the shape of a tusked, black,
hairy boar, sprawling with hoofs outspread, fast asleep. And between
them, and even actually diapering the carcass of the creature, is a
perfect labyrinth of life--a high crowned king and queen, honey-hiving
bees, an old man with a beard as if in a swoon, robbers with swords,
travellers with beasts and torches, inns, a cluster of sharp-coloured
butterflies (of the same proportion) fluttering over what looks like a
clot of dung, a winding river, ships, trees, tombs, wasted unburied
bodies, a child issuing from an egg, a phoenix taking flight: and so on.
There is no end to this poor man's devices. The longer you look, the
more strange things you discover. Yet at distance of a pace or two, his
pig appears to fade into nothing but a cloudy-coloured cobweb--one of
the many around his bright-dyed _Hierusalem_.
Now I cannot help wondering if this peculiar picture may not already
have tinged a young mind with a curious horror of London; even though my
aversion may have needed no artificial aid.
Still I must not be ungrateful. These were vague impressions; and as an
actual fact, Mrs Monnerie had transported me into the very midst of the
world of rank and fashion. Her No. 2 was now my home. The spaciousness,
the unnatural solitude, the servants who never so much as glanced at me
until after my back was turned, the hushed _opulency_, the formality! It
was impossible to be just my everyday Miss M. My feet never found
themselves twirling me round before their mistress was aware of it. I
all but gave up gossiping with myself as I went about my little
self-services.
Parochial creature that I was--I missed Mrs Bowater's "homeliness." To
have things out of proportion to my body was an old story. To that,
needless to say, I was perfectly accustomed. But here things were at
first out of all proportion to my taste and habits, a very different
thing. It is, in fact, extremely difficult in retrospect to get side by
side again with those new experiences--with a self that was at one
moment intoxicated and engrossed, and the next humiliated and
desperately ill at ease, at the novelty of her surroundings.
I had a maid, too, Fleming, with a pointed face and greenish eyes, who,
unlike Mrs Bowater, did not snort, but sniffed at things. Whether I
retired for the night or rose in the morning, it was always to the
accompaniment of a half-audible sniff. And I was never perfectly certain
whether that sniff was one of the mind, or of the body, or of both. I
found it hard to learn to do _little_ enough for myself. Fleming
despised me--at least so I felt--even for emptying my wash-basin, or
folding my nightgown. Worse, I was never sure of being alone: she stole
about so softly on her duties. And then the "company."
Not that the last black days at Beechwood were not even blacker for the
change. At first I tried to think them quietly over, to ravel out my
mistakes, and to get straight with my past. But I couldn't in all that
splendour. I had to spend much more time in bewaring of _faux pas_, and
in growing accustomed to being a kind of tame, petted animal--tame even
to itself, I mean. So Mrs Bowater's went floating off into the past like
a dingy little house on the edge of a muddy river. Amid that old horror
and anxiety, even my dear Pollie's wedding day had slipped by unheeded.
How often my thoughts went back to her now. If only _she_ could have
been my Fleming.
I tried to make amends for my forgetfulness--even to the extent of
pocketing my pride, and commissioning Fleming to purchase for me (out of
the little stock of money left me by Fanny) a cradle, as a wedding
present for Pollie, and a chest of tools for her husband. Oddly enough,
she did not sniff at this request. Her green eyes almost sparkled. At
the very word, wedding, she seemed to revive into a new woman. And
Pollie completely forgave me:--
"DEAR MISS M.,--We was mother and all very sorry and grieved you
couldn't come though it passed off very satisfactory. As for
forgetting please don't mention the word, Lyndsey have never been
the same since the old house was empty. It all passed off very
satisfactory though with such torrents of rain there was a great
pool in the churchyard which made everybody in high spirits. And
William and I can't thank you enough for those beautiful gifts you
have sent us. Will have been a carpenter since he was a boy but
there's things there miss he says he never heard on in his born
days but will be extreamly useful when he comes to know what for.
And Mother says it was just like your good kind heart to think of
what you sent me. You can't think how handsome it looks in the
new-papered room and I'm sure I hope if I may say so it may be
quite as useful as Will's tools, and its being pretty late to marry
it isn't as if I was a slip of a girl. And of course I have mother.
Though if any does come you may be sure it will be a Sunday treat
being too fine for ordinary.
"Please God miss I hope you are keeping well and happy in your new
suroundings and that dream will come true. It was a dreadful moment
that day by the shops but I'm thankful all came well. If you ever
writes to Mrs. B. I trust you will mention me to her kindly not
being much of a letter writer. If you could have heard the things
she said of you your ears would burn miss you were such a treasure
and to judge from her appearance she must have seen her troubles.
And being a married woman helps to see into things though thank God
I'm well and happy and William hopes to keep me so.
"Well I must close now trusting that you are in the best of health.
Your old Pollie.
"Miss Fenne have been very poorly of late so I've heard though not
yet took to her bed--more peculiar than ever about Church and such
like. Adam Waggett being W's oldest friend though not my choice was
to have been Best Man but he's in service in London and couldn't
come."
But if I pined for Pollie's company, how can I express what the absence
of Mrs Bowater meant to me? Even when I had grown used to my new
quarters, I would sometimes wake myself calling her name in a dream. She
had been almost unendurably kind to me that last May morning in
Wanderslore, when she had come to fetch me from yet another long
adieu--to Mr Anon. After he had gone, she and I had sat on for a while
in that fresh spring beauty, a sober and miserable pair. Miserable on my
side for miserable reasons. Then, if ever, had been the moment wherein
to clear my breast and be in spirit as well as heart at one with her.
Yet part for honesty and part for shame, I had remained silent. I could
only comfort myself with remembering that we should soon meet again, and
that the future might be kinder. Well, sometimes the future is kinder,
but it is never the same thing as the past.
"They may perhaps talk about that unfortunate ... about that poor young
Mr Crimble, miss," was one of my landlady's last remarks, as she sat
staring rigidly at the great, empty house. "We all take good care to
spread about each other's horrors; and what else is a newspaper for? If
so; well, I shouldn't ask it, I suppose. But I've been thinking maybe my
Fanny wasn't _everything_ to blame. We've had it out together, she and
I, though only by letter. She was frightened of me as much as anything,
though goodness knows I tried to bring her up a God-fearing child. She
had no one, as she thought, to go to--and him a weak creature for all
his obstinacy and, as you might say, penned in by his mother and his
cloth. They say the Cartholics don't marry, and there's nothing much to
be wondered at in that. Poor young fellow, he won't bear much thinking
on, even when he's gone out of mind. I'm fearing now that what's come
about may make her wilder and harder. Help her all you can, if only in
your thoughts, miss: she sets more store by you than you might guess."
"Indeed, indeed, I will," I said.
"You see, miss," Mrs Bowater monotoned on, "I'm nothing much better than
an aunt for Fanny, with no children of my own for guidance; and him
there helpless with his broken leg in Buenos Ayres." The long, bonneted
face moved round towards me. "Do you feel _any_ smouldering affections
for the young gentleman that's just gone?"
This was an unexpected twist to our talk, but, in some little confusion,
I met it as candidly as I could.
"I am fonder of Fanny--and, of course, of you, Mrs Bowater; oh, far,
far. But--I don't quite know how to express it--I am, as you might say,
in my own _mind_ with him. I think he knows a little what I am, in
myself I mean. And besides, oh, well, it isn't a miserable thing to feel
that just one's company makes _anybody_ happy."
Mrs Bowater considered this reply for some little time.
"He didn't _look_ any too happy just now, to judge from his back view,"
she remarked oracularly. "And when I was.... But there, miss, I'm
thinking only of your comfort, and I'm not quite as comfortable as might
be over that there Mrs Monnerie. Generous she may be, though not
noticing it much perhaps from a purse with no bottom to it, judging from
what I've seen. God bless you, one way or the other. And perhaps you'll
sometimes remember the bits of Sundays we've shared up there--you and
the old Dragon."
A smile and a tear battled for the dark eye that looked down on me.
Indeed, seldom after came a Sunday evening with its clanking bells and
empty, London hush, but it brought back to me with a pang my hymns and
talks with "the old Dragon." Not that any one I ever saw at Mrs
Monnerie's appeared to work so hard as to _need_ a day of rest. There
was merely a peculiar empty sensation on Sundays of there being nothing
"to do."
A flight of stone steps and a pillared porch led up to her great
ornamental door. Beyond was a hall compared with which the marbles of
Brunswick House were mere mosaic. An alabaster fountain, its jet
springing lightly from a gilded torch held by a crouching faun, cooled,
and discreetly murmured a ceaseless Hush! in the air. On either hand, a
wide, shallow staircase ascended to an enormous gilded drawing-room,
with its chairs and pictures; and to the library. The dining-room stood
opposite the portico. When Mrs Monnerie and I were alone, we usually
shared a smaller room with her parrot, Chakka; her little Chinese dog,
Cherry--whose whimper had a most uncomfortable resemblance to the wild
and homesick cry of my seagulls at Lyme Regis--and her collections of
the world's smaller rarities. It is only, I suppose, one more proof of
how volatile a creature I used to be that I took an intense interest in
the contents of these cabinets for a few days, and then found them
nothing but a vexation. No doubt this was because of an uneasy suspicion
that Mrs Monnerie had also collected _me_.
She could be extremely tactful in her private designs, yet she "showed
me off" in a fashion that might have turned a far less giddy head than
her _protegee's_, and perhaps cannot have been in the best of taste.
So sure had she been of me that, when I arrived, a room on the first
floor of No. 2 had already been prepared for my reception. A wonderful
piece of fantasticalness--like a miniature fairy palace, but without a
vestige of any _real_ make-believe in it. It was panelled and screened
with carvings in wood, inlaid with silver and mother-of-pearl--dwarfs
and apes and misshapen gods and goddesses leering and gaping out at one
from amidst leafy branches, flowers, and fruits, and birds, and
butterflies. The faintest sniff of that Indian wood--whatever it
was--recalls to this day that nightmare scenery. Its hangings were of a
silk so rich that they might have stood on edge on the floor. These
screens and tapestries guarded a privacy that rarely, alas, contained a
Miss M. worth being in private _with_.
The one piece of chagrin exhibited by Mrs Monnerie in those early days
of our acquaintance was at my insistence on bringing at least a few of
my familiar sticks of furniture and chattels with me from Mrs Bowater's.
Their plain Sheraton design, she thought, was barbarously out of keeping
with the rest. It was; but I had my way.
Not the least precious of these old possessions, though dismal for its
memories, was the broken money chest which Fanny had pushed in under the
yew in the garden at Wanderslore. Tacked up in canvas, its hinges and
lock repaired, it had been sent on to me a week or two after my
farewells to Beechwood, by Mr Anon. Inside it I found the nightgown I
had buried in the rabbit's hole, Fanny's letter from under its stone, my
_Sense and Sensibility_, and last, pinned on to a scrap of kingfisher
coloured silk, a pair of ear-rings made out of two old gold coins. Apart
from a few withered flowers, they are the only thing I possess that came
from Wanderslore. Long afterwards, I showed these ear-rings to Sir W. P.
He told me they were quarter Rose Nobles of Edward III.'s reign, and
only a quarter of a quarter of an ounce in weight. They weigh pretty
heavy for me now, however.
My arrangement with Mrs Monnerie had been that, however long I might
stay with her, I should still be in the nature of a visitor; that No. 2,
in fact, should be my town house, and Mrs Bowater's my country. But I
was soon to realize that she intended Mrs Bowater to have a very small
share in me. She pretended to be jealous of me, to love me for my own
sweet sake; and even while I knew it was mere pretence, it left its
flattery on my mind; and for the first time in my life I feigned to be
even smaller than I was; would mince my speeches, affect to be clever,
even ogle the old lady, until it might be supposed we were a pair of
queerly-assorted characters in a charade.
Nevertheless, I had had the obstinacy to insist that I should be at
liberty to stay with Mrs Bowater whenever I wished to do so; and I was
free to invite any friend to visit me I chose. "And especially, my dear,
any one an eighth as exquisite," Mrs Monnerie had kindly put it. It may
seem a little strange that all these obligations should have been on her
side. But Mrs Monnerie's whims were far more vigorous than most people's
principles. The dews of her loving kindness descended on me in a shower,
and it was some little time before I began to feel a chill.
Not the least remarkable feature of No. 2 was its back view. The window
of my room came down almost to the floor. It "commanded" an immense zinc
cistern--George, by name--a Virginia Creeper groping along a brick wall,
similar cisterns smalling into the distance, other brick walls and
scores of back windows. Once, after contemplating this odd landscape for
some little time, it occurred to me to speculate what the back view from
the House of Life was like; but I failed to conceive the smallest notion
of it. I rarely drew my curtains, and, oddly enough, when I did so, was
usually in a vacant or dismal mood. My lights were electric. One simply
twisted a tiny ivory button. At first their clear and coloured globes,
set like tiny tulips in a candelabra, charmed my fancy. But, such is
custom, I soon wearied of them, and pined for the slim, _living_ flame
of candles--even for my coarse old night-light swimming in its grease in
a chipped blue and white saucer.