Thus then I came of age, though not on St Rosa's day. However dramatic
and memorable, I grant it was not a courteous method of acknowledging
Lord Chiltern's courtesy. In the good old days the drunken dwarf would
have been jovially tossed from hand to hand. From mind to mind was my
much milder penalty. And yet this poor little _contretemps_ was of a
sort that required "hushing up"; so it kept tongues wagging for many a
day. It was little comfort that Percy shared my disgrace, and even
Susan, for "giving way."
She it was who had lifted my body from the table and carried it up into
darkness and quiet. In the half light of my bedroom I remember I opened
my eyes for a moment--eyes which refused to stay still in their sockets,
but were yet capable of noticing that the left hand which clasped mine
had lost its ring. I tried to point it out to her. She was crying.
Philippina sober was awakened the next morning by the fingers of Mrs
Monnerie herself. She must have withdrawn the kindly sheet from my face,
and, with nightmare still babbling on my lips, I looked up into the
familiar features, a little grey and anxious, but creased up into every
appearance of goodwill.
"Not so excessively unwisely, then," she rallied me, "and only the least
little thought too well. We have been quite anxious about Bebe, haven't
we, Fleming?"
"Quite, madam. A little indigestion, that's all."
"Yes, yes; a little indigestion, that's all," Mrs Monnerie agreed: "and
I am sure Poppet doesn't want those tiresome doctors with their horrid
physic."
I sat up, blinking from one to the other. "I think it was the green
stuff," I muttered, tongue and throat as dry as paper. I could scarcely
see out of my eyes for the racking stabs of pain beneath my skull.
"Yes, yes," was the soothing response. "But you mustn't agitate
yourself, silly child. Don't open your eyes like that. The heat of the
room, the excitement, some little obstinate dainty. Now, one of those
darling little pills, and a cooling draught, perhaps. Thank you,
Fleming."
The door closed, we were left alone. Mrs Monnerie's scrutiny drifted
away. Their shutters all but closed down on the black-brown pupils. My
head pined for its pillows, my shoulders for some vestige of defence,
but pined in vain. For the first time I felt afraid of Mrs Monnerie. She
was thinking so densely and heavily.
Yet, as if out of a cloud of pure absentmindedness, dropped softly her
next remark. "Does pretty Pusskin remember what she _said_ to Miss
Bowater?... No?... Well, then, if she can't, it's quite certain nobody
else can--or wishes to. I inquired merely because the poor thing, who
has been really nobly devoting herself to her duties, seems so hurt.
Well, it shall be a little lesson--to us all. Though one swallow does
not make a summer, my child, one hornet can make things extremely
unpleasant. Not that I----" A vast shrug of the shoulders completed the
sentence. "A little talk and tact will soon set _that_ right; and I am
perfectly satisfied, perfectly satisfied with things as they are. So
that's settled. Some day you must tell me a little more about your
family history. Meanwhile, rest and quiet. No more excitement, no more
company, and no more"--she bent low over me with wagging head--"no more
_green stuff_. And then"--her eyes rested on me with a peculiar zest
rather than with any actual animosity--"then we must see what can be
done for you."
There came a tap--and Percy showed in the doorway.
"I thought, Aunt Alice, I thought----" he began, but at sight of the
morose, heavy countenance lifted up to him, he shut his mouth.
"Thank you," said Mrs Monnerie, "thank you, Sir Galahad; you did nothing
of the kind."
Whereupon her nephew wheeled himself out of the room so swiftly that I
could not detect what kind of exotics he was carrying in a little posy
in his hand.
So the invalid, now a burden on the mind of her caretaker many times her
own weight, was exiled for ever from No. 2. Poor Fleming, sniffier and
more disgusted than ever, was deputed to carry me off to the smaller of
Mrs Monnerie's country retreats, a long, low-roofed, shallow-staired
house lying in the green under the downs at Croomham. There I was to
vegetate for a time and repent of my sins.
Percy's fiery syrup took longer to withdraw its sweet influences than
might have been foreseen. Indeed, whenever I think of him, its effects
are faintly renewed, though not, I trust, to the detriment of my style!
None too strong physically, the Miss M. that sat up at her latticed
window at Monk's House during those few last interminable August days,
was very busy with her thoughts. As she looked down for hours together
on the gnarled, thick-leafed old mulberry-tree in the corner of the lawn
that swept up to the very stones of the house, and on the walled,
sun-drugged garden beyond, she was for ever debating that old, old
problem; what could be done _by_ herself _with_ herself?
The doves crooned; the cawing rooks flapped black into the blue above
the neighbouring woods; the earth drowsed on. It was a scene of peace
and decay. But I seemed to have lost the charm that could have made it
mine. I was an Ishmael. And worse--I was still a prisoner. No criminal
at death's door can have brooded more laboriously on his chances of
escape. No wonder the voices of childhood had whispered, Away!
There came a long night of rain. I lay listening to the whisper and
clucking of its waters. Far away the lapwings called: Ee-ooeet!
Ee-ooeet! What follies I had been guilty of. How wilily circumstance had
connived at them. Yet I was no true penitent. My heart was empty, so
parched up that neither love nor remorse had any place in it. Revenge
seemed far sweeter. Driven into this corner, I sent a desperate word to
Sir W. It remained unanswered, and this friend followed the rest into
the wilderness of my ingratitude.
But that brought me no relief. For of all the sins I have ever
committed, envy and hatred seem to me the most unpleasant to practise. I
was to learn also that "he who sows hatred shall gather rue," and "bed
with thistles." With eyes at last as anxious as Jezebel's, I resumed my
watch at the window. But even if Percy had ridden from London solely to
order Fleming to throw me down, she would not have "demeaned" herself to
set hands on me. She might be bold, but she, too, was fastidious.
Then Fleming herself one afternoon softly and suddenly vanished
away--on her summer's holiday. Poor thing; so acute was the chronic
indigestion caused by _her_ obstinate little dainty that she did not
even bid me good-bye.
She left me in charge of the housekeeper, Mrs French, a stout, flushed,
horse-faced woman, who now and then came in and bawled good-humouredly
at me as if I were deaf, but otherwise ignored me altogether. I now
spent most of my time in the garden, listlessly wandering out of sight
of the windows (and gardeners), along its lank-flowered, rose-petalled
walks, hating its beauty. Or I would sit where I could hear the
waterdrops in a well. The very thought of company was detestable. I sat
there half-dead, without book or needle, with scarcely a thought in my
head. In my library days at No. 2 I had become a perfect slave to
pleasures of the intellect. But now dyspepsia had set in there too.
My nights were pestered with dreams and my days with their vanishing
spectres; and I had no Pollie to tell me what they forecast. I suppose
one must be more miserable and hunted in mind even than I was, _never_
to be a little sentimental when alone. I would lean over the cold mouth
of the well, just able to discern in the cold mirror of water, far
beneath, the face I was almost astonished to find reflected there.
"Shall I come too?" I would morbidly whisper, and dart away.
Still, just as with a weed in winter, life was beginning to renew the
sap within me; and Monk's House was not only drowsy with age but gentle
with whispers. Once at least in every twenty-four hours I would make a
pilgrimage to its wrought-iron gates beside the square white lodge, to
gloat out between the metal floriations at the dusty country lane
beyond--with its swallows and wagtails and dragon-flies beneath the
heat-parched tranquil elms. A slim, stilted greyhound on one such visit
stalked out from the lodge. Quite unaware of his company, I turned about
suddenly and stared clean down his arched throat--white teeth and
lolling tongue. It was as if I had glanced into the jaws of destiny. He
turned his head, whiningly yawned, and stalked back into the shade.
A day or two afterwards I made the acquaintance of the lodge-keeper's
daughter, a child named Rose, about five years of age, with a mop of
copper-coloured curls bound up with a pale blue bow. At first glimpse
of me she had hopped back as if on springs into the house. A moment
after, her white-aproned mother appeared in the porch, and with a
pleasant nod at me bade the child smile at the pretty little lady.
Finger in mouth, Rose wriggled and stared. In a few days she grew
accustomed to my small figure. And though I would sometimes discover her
saucer-blue eyes fixed on me with a peculiar intensity, we almost came
to be friends. She was not a very bright little girl; yet I found myself
wooing her with all the arts I knew--in a scarcely conscious attempt, I
suppose, to creep back by this small lane into the world's and my own
esteem.
I made her wristlets of little flowers, hacked her out cockle boats from
the acorns, told her half-forgotten stories, and once had to trespass
into the kitchen at the back of the lodge to tell her mother that she
was fallen asleep. Was it mere fancy that read in the scared face she
twisted round on the pretty little lady from over her saucepan, "Avaunt,
Evil Eye!"? I had become abominably self-conscious.