Miss Monnerie's visits were less punctual though more frequent than
Percy Maudlen's. "And where is the toadlet?" I heard him drawl one
afternoon as I was being carried downstairs by the light-footed Fleming,
on the padded tray which Mrs Monnerie had had made for the purpose.
"The toadlet, my dear Percy, is about to take a little gentle exercise
with me in the garden, and you shall accompany us. If you were the kind
of fairy-tale hero I used to read of in my nursery, you would discover
the charm, and live happy ever after. But I see nothing of the heroic in
you, and little of the hereafter. Miss M. is a feast of mercies."
"H'm. Providence packs his mercies into precious small quarters at
times," he yawned.
"Which suggests an uncivil speculation," replied his aunt, "on the size
of your hat."
"But candidly, Aunt Alice," he retorted, "is your little _attachee_
quite all there--I mean, all of her that there is? Personally I wouldn't
touch her, if I could help it, with a pair of tongs.... A nasty trick!"
Then, "Hah!" cried Mrs Monnerie in a large, pleasant voice, "here is
Miss M. Percy has been exposing a wounded heart, precious one. He is
hurt because you look at him as if there were positively nothing more of
him than what is there to see."
"Not at all, Aunt Alice," Percy drawled, with a jerk of his cane. "It
was for precisely the opposite reason. Who knows you ain't a witch, Miss
M.? Distilled? Heavens, Aunt Alice! you are not bringing Cherry _too_?"
Yes, Cherry was coming too, with his globular eye and sneering nose. And
so poor Percy, with a cold little smile on his fine pale features, had
to accommodate himself to Mrs Monnerie's leisurely pace, and she to
mine, while Cherry disdainfully shuffled in our rear. We were a singular
quartette, though there were only two or three small children in the
palisaded garden to enjoy the spectacle; and they, after a few polite
and muffled giggles, returned to their dolls.
It was a stifling afternoon. As I trod the yellow gravel the quivering
atmosphere all but blinded me with its reflected glare. The only sounds
to be heard were the clang of a milkman's hand-cart, and the pirouettes
of a distant piano.
"And what," Mrs Monnerie suddenly inquired, looking down on me, with
mauve-tinted cheek, from under her beribanded, long-handled parasol,
"what is Miss M. thinking about?"
As a matter of fact I was walking at that moment in imagination with Mrs
Bowater at Lyme Regis, but I seized the opportunity of hastening round
from between aunt and nephew so that I could screen myself from the sun
in Mrs Monnerie's ample shadow, and inquired why London gardeners were
so much attached to geraniums, lobelias, calceolarias, and ice-plants?
Mightn't one just as well _paint_ the border, Mrs Monnerie, red, yellow,
and blue? Then it would last--rain, snow, anything.
"Now I'll wager, Percy, you hadn't noticed _that_," said Mrs Monnerie in
triumph.
"I make it a practice," he replied, "never to notice the obvious. It is
merely a kind of least common denominator, as I believe you call 'em,
and," he wafted away a yawn with his glove, "I take no interest in
vulgar fractions."
I took a little look at him out of the corner of my eye, and wished that
as a child I had paid more heed to my arithmetic lessons. "Look, Mrs
Monnerie," I cried piteously, "poor Cherry's tongue is dangling right
out of his head. He looks _so_ hot and tired."
She swept me a radiant, if contorted, gleam. "Percy, would you take pity
on poor dear Cherry? Twice round, I think, will be as much as I can
comfortably manage."
So Percy had to take poor dear Cherry into his arms, just like a baby;
and the quartette to all appearance became a trio.
But my existence at No. 2 was not always so monotonous as that. Mrs
Monnerie, in spite of her age, her ebony cane, and a tendency to
breathlessness, was extremely active and alert. If life is a fountain,
she preferred to be one of the larger bubbles as near as possible to its
summit. She almost succeeded in making me a minute replica of herself.
We shared the same manicurist, milliner, modiste, and coiffeur. And
since it was not always practicable for Mahometta to be carried off to
these delectable mountains, they were persuaded to attend upon her, and
that as punctually as the fawn-faced man, Mr Godde, who came to wind the
clocks.
Whole mornings were spent in conclave in Mrs Monnerie's boudoir--Susan
sometimes of our company. Julius Caesar, so my little Roman history told
me, had hesitated over the crossing of one Rubicon. Mrs Monnerie and I
confabulated over the fording of a dozen of its tributaries a day. A
specialist--a singularly bald man in a long black coat--was called in.
He eyed me this way, he eyed me that--with far more deference than I
imagine Mr Pellew can have paid me at my christening. He assured Mrs
Monnerie of his confirmed belief that the mode of the moment was not of
the smallest consequence so far as I was concerned. "The hard, small
hat," he smiled; "the tight-fitting sleeve!" And yet, to judge by the
clothes he did recommend, I must have been beginning to look a pretty
dowd at Mrs Bowater's.
"But even if Madam prefers to dress in a style of her own choice," he
explained, "the difference, if she will understand, must still be _in_
the fashion."
But he himself--though Mrs Monnerie, I discovered after he was gone, had
not even noticed that he was bald--he himself interested me far more
than his excellent advice; and not least when he drew some papers out of
a pocket-book, and happened to let fall on the carpet the photograph of
a fat little boy with an immense mop of curls. So men--quite elderly,
practical men, can blush, I thought to myself; for Dr Phelps had rather
flushed than blushed; and my father used only to get red.
Since nothing, perhaps, could make me more exceptional in appearance
than I had been made by Providence, I fell in with all Mrs Monnerie's
fancies, and wore what she pleased--pushing out of mind as well as I
could all thought of bills. I did more than that. I really began to
enjoy dressing myself up as if I were my own doll, and when alone I
would sit sometimes in a luxurious trance, like a lily in a pot. Yet I
did not entirely abandon my old little Bowater habit of indoor exercise.
When I was alone in my room I would sometimes skip. And on one of
Fleming's afternoons "out" I even furbished up what I could remember of
my four kinds of Kentish hopscotch, with a slab of jade for dump. But in
the very midst of such recreations I would surprise myself lost in a
kind of vacancy. Apart from its humans and its furniture, No. 2 was an
empty house.
I do not mean that Mrs Monnerie was concerned only with externals. Sir
William Forbes-Smith advised that a little white meat should enrich my
usual diet of milk and fruit, and that I should have sea-salt baths. The
latter were more enjoyable than the former, though both, no doubt,
helped to bring back the strength sapped out of me by the West End.
My cheekbones gradually rounded their angles; a livelier colour came to
lip and skin, and I began to be as self-conscious as a genuine beauty.
One twilight, I remember, I had slipped across from out of my bath for a
pinch of the "crystals" which Mrs Monnerie had presented me with that
afternoon; for my nose, also, was accustoming itself to an artificial
life. An immense cheval looking-glass stood there, and at one and the
same instant I saw not only my own slim, naked, hastening figure
reflected in its placid deeps, but, behind me, that of Fleming,
shadowily engrossed. With a shock I came to a standstill, helplessly
meeting her peculiar stare. Only seven yards or so of dusky air divided
us. Caught back by this unexpected encounter, for one immeasurable
moment I stood thus, as if she and I were mere shapes in a picture, and
reality but a thought.
Then suddenly she recovered herself, and with a murmur of apology was
gone. Huddled up in my towel, I sat motionless, shrunken for a while
almost to nothing in the dense sense of shame that had swept over me.
Then suddenly I flung myself on my knees, and prayed--though what about
and to whom I cannot say. After which I went back and bathed myself
again.
The extravagances of Youth! No doubt, the worst pang was that though
vaguely I knew that my most secret solitude had been for a while
destroyed, that long intercepted glance of half-derisive admiration had
filled me with something sweeter than distress. If only I knew what
common-sized people really feel like in similar circumstances.
Biographies tell me little; and can one trust what is said in novels?
The only _practical_ result of this encounter was that I emptied all Mrs
Monnerie's priceless crystals forthwith into my bath, and vowed never,
never again to desert plain water. So, for one evening, my room smelt
like a garden in Damascus.
As for Fleming, she never, of course, referred to this incident, but our
small talk was even smaller than before. If, indeed, to Percy, "toadlet"
was the aptest tag for me; for Fleming, I fancy, "stuck-up" sufficed.
Instinct told her that she was only by courtesy a _lady's_-maid.
Less for her own sake than for mine, Mrs Monnerie and I scoured London
for amusement, even though she was irritated a little by my preference
for the kind which may be called instructive. The truth is, that in all
this smooth idleness and luxury a hunger for knowledge had seized on me;
as if (cat to grass) my mind were in search of an antidote.
Mrs Monnerie had little difficulty in securing "private views." She must
have known everybody that is anybody--as I once read of a Countess in a
book. And I suppose there is not a very large number of this kind of
person. Whenever our social engagements permitted, we visited the show
places, galleries, and museums. Unlike the rest of London, I gazed at
Amenhotep's Mummy in the late dusk of a summer evening; and we had much
to say to one another; though but one whiff of the huge round library
gave me a violent headache. When the streets had to be faced, Fleming
came with us in the carriage, and I was disguised to look as much like a
child as possible--a process that made me feel at least twenty years
older. The Tower of London, the Zoo, Westminster Abbey, St Paul's--each
in turn fell an early prey to my hunger for learning and experience. As
for the Thames; the very sight of it seemed to wash my small knowledge
of English history clear as crystal.
Mrs Monnerie yawned her way on--though my comments on these marvels of
human enterprise occasionally amused her. I made amends, too, by
accompanying her to less well-advertised show-places, and patiently sat
with her while she fondled unset and antique gems in a jeweller's, or
inspected the china, miniatures, and embroideries in private
collections. If the mere look of the books in the British Museum gave me
a headache, it is curious that the Chamber of Horrors at Madame
Tussaud's Wax Works did not. And yet I don't know; life itself had
initiated me into this freemasonry. I surveyed the guillotine without a
shudder, and eyed Mr Hare and Charles Peace with far less discomposure
than General Tom Thumb, or even Robert Burns in the respectable gallery
above. My one misfortune was that I could look at no murderer without
instantly recomposing the imaginary scene of his crime within my mind.
And as after a while Mrs Monnerie decided to rest on a chair set for her
by the polite attendant under the scaffold, and we had the Chamber
nearly to ourselves, I wandered on alone, and perhaps supped rather too
full of horrors for one evening.
Mrs Monnerie would often question me. "Well, what do you think of that,
Mammetinka?" or, "Now, then, my inexhaustible little Miss Aristotle,
discourse on that."
And like a bullfinch I piped up in response to the best of my ability.
My answers, I fear, were usually evasive. For I had begun to see that
she was making experiments on my mind and senses, as well as on my
manners and body. She was a "fancier." And one day I ogled up at her
with the pert remark that she now possessed a pocket barometer which
would do its very utmost to remain at 31 deg., if that was possible without
being "Very Dry."
She received this little joke with extraordinary good humour. "When I
come down in the world, my dear," she said, "and these horrid anarchists
are doing their best to send us all sky-high first, we'll visit the
Courts of Europe together, like Count Boruwlaski. Do you think you could
bring yourself to support your old friend in her declining years in a
declining age?"
I smiled and touched her glove. "Where thou goest, I will go," I
replied; and then could have bitten off my tongue in remorse. "Pah,"
gasped a secret voice, "so that's going the same way too, is it?"
Yet heaven knows I was not a Puritan--and never shall be. I just adored
things bright and beautiful. Music, too, in moderation, was my delight;
and Susan Monnerie with her small, sweet voice would sometimes sing to
me in one room while--in an almost unbearable homesickness--I listened
in another. Concerts in general, however, left every muscle of my body
as stiff with rheumatism as it was after my visit to Mr Moss's
farm-house. The unexpected blare of a brass band simply froze my spine;
and a really fine performance on the piano was sheer torture. Once,
indeed, when Mrs Monnerie's carriage was one of a mellay clustered
together while the Queen drove by, in the appalling clamour of the
Lancers' trombones and kettledrums, I fell prostrate in a kind of fit.
So it was my silly nerves that cheated me of my one and only chance to
huzza a Crowned Head not, if I may say so without disrespect, so very
many sizes larger than my own.
Alas, Mrs Monnerie was an enthusiast for all the pleasures of the
senses. I verily believe that it was only my vanity which prevented me
from becoming as inordinately fat as Sir William Forbes-Smith's white
meat threatened to make me.
Brightest novelty of all was my first visit to a theatre--the London
night, the glare and clamour of the streets, the packed white rows of
faces, the sea-like noise of talk, the glitter, shimmer, dazzle--it
filled my veins with quicksilver; my heart seemed to be throbbing in my
breast as fast as Mrs Monnerie's watch. Fortunately she had remembered
to take our seats on the farther side from the brass and drums of the
orchestra. I restrained my shivers; the lights went out; and in the
congregated gloom softly stole up the curtain on the ballet.
Perched up there in the velvet obscurity of our box, I surveyed a
woodland scene, ruins, distant mountains, a rocky stream on which an
enormous moon shone, and actually moved in the theatrical heavens. And
when an exquisite figure floated, pale, gauzy, and a-tiptoe, into those
artificial solitudes, drenched with filmy light; with a far cry of
"Fanny!" my heart suddenly stood still; and all the old stubborn
infatuation flooded heavily back upon me once more.
Susan sat ghostlike, serenely smiling. Percy's narrow jaws were working
on their hinges like those of a rabbit I had seen through my
grandfather's spyglass nibbling a root of dandelion. Mrs Monnerie
reclined in her chair, hands on lap, with pursed-up mouth and weary
eyes. There was nobody to confide in, then. But when from either side of
the brightening stage flocked in winged creatures with lackadaisical
arms and waxlike smilings, whose paint and powder caught back my mind
rather than my feelings, my first light-of-foot was hovering beneath us
close to the flaring footlights; and she was now no more Fanny than the
circle of illuminated parchment over her head was the enchanting moon.
What a complicated world it was with all these _layers_! The experience
filled me with a hundred disquieting desires, and yet again, chiefest
of them was that which made sensitive the stumps where, if I turned into
a bird, my wings would grow, and which bade me "escape."
"She's getting devilish old and creaky on her pins," yawned Percy, when
the curtain had descended, and I had sighingly shrunk back into my own
tasselled nook from the noise and emptiness of actuality.
"No," said Mrs Monnerie, "it is you, Percy, who are getting old. You
were born blase. You'll be positively yawning your head off at the Last
Trump."
"Dear Aunt Alice," said Percy, squinting through his opera-glasses,
"nothing of the kind. I shall be helping you to find the mislaid
knucklebones. Besides, it's better to be born----"
But the rest of his sentence--and I listened to him only because I hated
him--passed unheeded, for all my attention had been drawn to Susan. The
hand beside me had suddenly clutched at her silk skirt, and a flush, gay
as the Queen's Union Jacks in Bond Street, had mounted into her clear,
pale cheek, as with averted chin she sat looking down upon some one in
the stalls. At sight of her blushing, a richer fondness for her
lightened my mind. I followed her eye to its goal, and gazed enthralled,
now up, now down, stringing all kinds of little beads of thoughts
together; until, perhaps conscious that she was being watched, she
turned and caught me. Flamed up her cheeks yet hotter; and now mine too;
for my spirits had suddenly sunk into my shoes at the remembrance of
Wanderslore and my "ghostly, gloating little dwarfish creature." Then
once more darkness stole over the vast, quieting house, and the curtain
re-ascended upon Romance.