Instead of its being a month as had been arranged, it was over six weeks
before I was deposited again with my elegant dressing-case--a mere
flying visitor--on Mrs Bowater's doorstep. A waft of cooked air floated
out into the June sunshine through the letter-box. Then, in the open
door, just as of old, flushed and hot in her black clothes, there stood
my old friend, indescribably the same, indescribably different. She
knelt down on her own doormat, and we exchanged loving greetings. Once
more I trod beneath the wreathing, guardian horns, circumnavigated the
age-stained eight-day clock, and so into my parlour.
Nothing was changed. There stood the shepherdess ogling the shepherd;
there hung Mr Bowater; there dangled the chandelier; there angled the
same half-dozen flies. Not a leg, caster, or antimacassar was out of
place. Yet how steadfastly I had to keep my back turned on my landlady
lest she should witness my discomfiture. Faded, dingy, crowded,
shrunken--it seemed unbelievable, as I glanced around me, that here I
could have lived and breathed so many months, and been so ridiculously
miserable, so tragically happy. All that bygone happiness and
wretchedness seemed, for the moment, mere waste and folly. And not only
that--"common." I climbed Mr Bates's clumsy staircase, put down my
dressing-case, and slowly removing my gloves, faced dimly the curtained
window. Beyond it lay the distant hills, misty in the morning sunbeams,
the familiar meadows all but chin-high with buttercups.
"Oh, Mrs Bowater," I turned at last, "here I am. You and the quiet
sky--I wish I had never gone away. What is the use of being one's self,
if one is always changing?"
"There comes a time, miss, when we don't change; only the outer walls
crumble away morsel by morsel, so to speak. But that's not for you yet.
Still, that's the reason. Me and the old sticks are just what we were,
at least to the eye; and you--well, there!--the house has been like a
cage with the bird gone."
She stood looking at me with one long finger stretching bonily out on
the black and crimson tablecloth, a shining sea of loving kindness in
her eyes. "I can see they have taken good care of you and all, preened
the pretty feathers. Why, you are a bit plumper in figure, miss; only
the voice a little different, perhaps." The last words were uttered
almost beneath her breath.
"My voice, Mrs Bowater; oh, they cannot have altered _that_."
"Indeed they have, miss; neater-twisted, as you might say; but not
scarcely to be noticed by any but a very old friend. Maybe you are a
little tired with your long drive and those two solemnities on the box.
I remember the same thing--the change of voice--when Fanny came back
from her first term at Miss Stebbings'."
"How is she?" I inquired in even tones. "She has never written to me.
Not a word."
But, strange to say, as Mrs Bowater explained, and not without a symptom
of triumph, that's just what Fanny _had_ done. Her letter was awaiting
me on the mantelpiece, tucked in behind a plush-framed photograph.
"Now, let me see," she went on, "there's hot water in your basin,
miss--I heard the carriage on the hill; a pair of slippers to ease your
feet, in case in the hurry of packing they'd been forgot; and your
strawberries and cream are out there icing themselves on the tray. So we
shan't be no time, though disturbing news has come from Mr Bowater, his
leg not mending as it might have been foreseen--but that can wait."
An unfamiliar Miss M. brushed her hair in front of me in the familiar
looking-glass. It was not that her Monnerie raiment was particularly
flattering, or she, indeed, pleasanter to look at--rather the contrary:
and I gazed long and earnestly into the glass. But art has furtive and
bewitching fingers. While in my home-made clothes I had looked just
myself, in these I looked like one or other of my guardian angels, or
perhaps, as an unprejudiced Fleming would have expressed it--the perfect
lady. How gradual must have been the change in me to have passed thus
unnoticed. But I didn't want to think. I felt dulled and dispirited.
Even Mrs Bowater had not been so entranced to see me as I had
anticipated. It was tiresome to be disappointed. I rummaged in a bottom
drawer, got out an old gown, made a grimace at myself in my mind, and
sat down to Fanny's letter. But then again, what are externals? Who was
this cool-tempered Miss M. who was now scanning the once heartrending
handwriting?
"DEAR MIDGETINA,--When this will reach you, I don't know. But
somehow I cannot, or rather I can, imagine you the cynosure of the
complete peerage, and prefer that my poor little letter should not
uprear its modest head in the midst of all that Granjer. You may
not agree--but if a few weeks of a High Life that may possibly
continue into infinity has made _no_ difference to you, then Fanny
is not among the prophets.
"We have not met since--we parted. But did you ever know a "dead
past" bury itself with such ingratiating rapidity? Have you in your
sublime passion for Nature ever watched a Sexton Beetle? But, mind
you, I have helped. The further all that slips away, the less I can
see I was to blame for it. What's in your blood needs little help
from outside. Cynical it may sound; but imagine the situation if I
_had_ married him! What could existence have been but a
Nightmare-Life-in-Death? (_Vide_ S. T. Coleridge). Now the Dream
continues--for us both.
"Oh, yes, I can see your little face needling up at this. But you
must remember, dear Midgetina, that you will never, never be able
to see things in a truly human perspective. Few people, of course,
try to. You do. But though your view may be delicate as gossamer
and clear as a glass marble, it can't be full-size. Boil a thing
down, it isn't the _same_. What remains has the virtues of an
essence, but not the volume of its origin. This sounds horribly
_school-booky_; but I am quite convinced you are too concentrated.
And I being what I am, only the full volume can be my salvation.
Enough. The text is as good as the sermon--far better, in fact.
"Now I am going to be still more callous. My own little private
worries have come right--been made to. I'm tit for tat, that is,
and wiser for it beyond words. Some day, when Society has taught
you all its lessons, I will explain further. Anyhow, first I send
you back L3 of what I owe you. And thank you. Next I want you to
find out from Mrs Mummery (as mother calls her--or did), if among
her distinguished acquaintance she knows any one with one or two,
or at most three, small and adorable children who need an excellent
governess. Things have made it undesirable for me to stay on here
much longer. It shall be I who give notice, or, shall we say,
terminate the engagement.
"Be an angel, then. First, wake up. Candidly, to think me better
than I am is more grossly unfair than if I thought you taller than
you are. Next, sweet cynosure, find me a sinecure. Don't trouble
about salary. (You _wouldn't_, you positive acorn of quixoticism,
not if I owed you half a million.) But remember: _Wanted by the end
of August at latest, a Lady, wealthy, amiable, with two Cherubic
Doves in family, boys preferred_. The simple, naked fact being that
after this last bout of life's fitful fever, I pine for a nap.
"Of course mother can see this letter if she wishes to, and you
don't mind. But personally I should prefer to have the bird
actually fluttering in my hand before she contemplates it in the
bush.
"I said _pine_ just now. Do you ever find a word suddenly so
crammed with meaning that at any moment it threatens to explode?
Well, Midgetina, them's my sentiments. Penitent I shall never be,
until I take the veil. But I have once or twice lately awoke in a
kind of glassy darkness--beyond all moonshine--alone. Then, if I
hadn't been born just thick-ribbed, unmeltable ice--well....
Vulgar, vulgar Fanny!
"Fare thee well, Midgetina. 'One cried, "God bless us," and "Amen,"
the other.' Prostituted though he may have been for scholastic
purposes, W. S. knew something of Life.
"Yours,--F."
What was the alluring and horrifying charm for me of Fanny's letters?
This one set my mind, as always, wandering off into a maze. There was a
sour taste in it, and yet--it was all really and truly Fanny. I could
see her unhappy eyes glittering through the mask. She saw
_herself_--perhaps more plainly than one should. "Vulgar Fanny." As for
its effect on me; it was as if I had fallen into a bed of nettles, and
she herself, picking me up, had scoffed, "Poor little Midgekin," and
supplied the dock. Her cynicism was its own antidote, I suppose. The
selfishness, the vanity, and impenetrable hardness--even love had never
been so blind as to ignore all that, and now what love remained for her
had the sharpest of sharp eyes.
And yet, though my little Bowater parlour looked cheap and dingy after
the splendours of No. 2, Fanny somehow survived every odious comparison.
She was very _intelligent_, I whispered to myself. Mrs Monnerie would
certainly approve of that. And I prickled at the thought. And I--I was
too "concentrated." In spite of my plumping "figure," I could never,
never be full-size. If only Fanny had meant that as a compliment, or
even as a kind of explanation to go on with. No, she had meant it for
the truth. And it must be far easier for a leopard to change his spots
than his inside. The accusation set all the machinery of my mind emptily
whirring.
My glance fell on my Paris frock, left in a shimmering slovenly ring on
the floor. It wandered off to Fanny's postal order, spread over my lap
like an expensive antimacassar. She had worked for that money; while I
had never been anything more useful than "an angel." In fancy I saw her
blooming in a house as sumptuous as Mrs Monnerie's. Bloom indeed! I
hated the thought, yet realized, too, that it was safer--even if for the
time being not so profitable--to be life-size. And, as if out of the
listening air, a cold dart pierced me through. Suppose my Messrs Harris
and Harris and Harris might not be such honest trustees as Miss Fenne
had vouched for. Suppose they decamped with my L110 per annum!--I caught
a horrifying glimpse of the wolf that was always sniffing at Fanny's
door.
Mrs Bowater brought in my luncheon, and--as I insisted--her own, too.
The ice from Mr Tidy, the fishmonger's, had given a slightly marine
flavour to the cream, and I had to keep my face averted as much as
possible from the scorched red chop sprawling and oozing on her plate.
How could she bring herself to eat it? We are such stuff as dreams are
made on, said Hamlet. So then was Mrs Bowater. What a mystery then was
this mutton fat! But chop or no chop, it was a happy meal.
Having waved my extremely "Fannyish" letter at her, I rapidly dammed
that current of her thoughts by explaining that I had changed my clothes
not (as a gleam from her eye had seemed to suspect) because I was afraid
of spoiling my London finery, but in order to be really at home. For the
first time I surprised her muttering a grace over the bone on her plate.
Then she removed the tray, accepted a strawberry, folded her hands in
her lap, and we began to talk. She asked a hundred and one questions
concerning my health and happiness, but never once mentioned Mrs
Monnerie; and at last, after a small pause, filled by us both with the
same thought, she remarked that "that young Mr Anon was nothing if not
persistent."
Since I had gone, not a week had passed, she told me, but he had come
rapping at the door after dusk to inquire after me. "Though why he
should scowl like a pitchpot to hear that you are enjoying the lap of
luxury----" The angular shoulders achieved a shrug at least as Parisian
as my discarded gown.
"Why doesn't he write to me, then? Twice in ten weeks!"
"Well it's _six_, miss, I've counted, though _seemingly_ sixty. But that
being the question, he is there to answer it, at any time this evening,
or at six to-morrow morning, if London ways haven't cured you of
early-rising."
So we went off together, Mrs Bowater and I, in the cool of the evening
about half an hour after sunset--she, alas, a little ruffled because I
had refused to change back again into my Monnerie finery. "But Mrs
Bowater, imagine such a thing in a real wild garden!" I protested, but
without mollifying her, and without further explaining--how could I do
that?--that the gown which Miss Sentimentality (or Miss Coquette) was
actually wearing was that in which she had first met Mr Anon.