"Yes, Fanny," said I obediently. "Much better done with."
She gave me an odd glance out of the corner of her eye. "The queer thing
is," she went on, "what I wanted to say was something quite, quite
different. To give you a friendly word of warning, entirely on your own
account.... You have a rival, Midgetina."
The words glided away into silence. The doves crooned on the housetop.
The sky was empty above the distant hills. I did not stir, and am
thankful I had the cowardice to ask no questions.
"Her name is Angelique. She lives in a Castle in Spain"; sighed the
calm, silky voice, with the odd break or rasp in it I knew so well. "Oh,
I agree a circus-rider is nothing better than a mongrel, a pariah, worse
probably. Yet this one has her little advantages. As Midgets go, she
beats you by at least four inches, and rides, sings, dances, tells
fortunes. Quite a little Woman of the World. The only really troublesome
thing about it is that she makes you jiltable, my dear. They are so very
seductive, these flounced up, painted things. _No_ principle! And, oh,
my dear; all this just as dear Mrs Monnerie has set her heart on finding
her Queen Bee a nice little adequate drone for a husband!"
It was her last taunt. It was over. I had heard the worst. The arrow I
had been waiting for had sprung true to its mark. Its barb was sticking
there in my side. And yet, as I mutely looked up at her, I knew there
was a word between us which neither could utter. The empty air had
swallowed up the sound of our voices. Its enormous looking-glass
remained placid and indifferent. It was as if all that we had said, or,
for that matter, suffered, was of no account, simply because we were not
alone. For the first instant in the intimacy of my love and hatred,
Fanny seemed to be just any young woman standing there, spiteful,
meaningless. The virtue had gone out of her. She made up her mouth,
glanced uneasily over her shoulder and turned away.
We were never again to be alone together, except in remembrance.
I sat on in the garden till the last thin ray of sunlight was gone.
Then, in dread that my enemy might be looking down from the windows of
the house, I slipped and shuffled from bush to bush in the dusk, and so
at last made my way into the house, and climbed the dark polished
staircase. As, stealthily, I passed a bedroom door ajar, my look pierced
through the crevice. It was a long, stretching, shallow room, and at the
end of it, in the crystal quiet, stood Fanny, her arms laid on the
chimney-piece, her shoulder blades sticking out of her muslin gown, her
face hidden in her hands.
Why did I not venture in to speak to her? I had never seen a figure so
desolate and forsaken. Could things ever be so far gone as to say No to
that? I hesitated; turned away: she would think I had come only to beg
for mercy.
For hours I sat dully brooding. What a trap I was in. In my rummagings
in the Monnerie library I had once chanced on a few yellow
cardboard-covered novels tucked away in a cupboard, and had paddled in
one or two of them. Now I realized that my life also was nothing but "a
Shocker." So people actually suffered and endured the horrible things
written about in cheap, common books.
One by one I faced Fanny's charges in my mind. None was true, yet none
was wholly false. And none was of any consequence beside the fact that
she execrated the very self in me of which I could not be conscious. And
what would she do? What did all those covert threats and insinuations
mean? A "husband"--why had that such a dreadful power to wound me? I
heard my teeth begin to chatter again. There was no defence, no refuge
anywhere. If I could get no quiet, I should go mad. I looked up from my
stool. It was dark. It was a scene made for me. I could watch the
miserable little occupant of its stage roving to and fro like one of my
showman's cowed, mangy beasts.
The thought of the day still ahead of me, through which I must somehow
press on, keep alive, half stupefied me with dread. We can shut our eyes
and our mouths and our hearts; why cannot we stop thinking? The awful
passive order of life: its mechanicalness. All that I could see was the
blank white face of its clock--but no more of the wheels than of the
Winder. No haste, no intervention, no stretching-out beyond one's finger
tips. So the world wore away; life decayed; the dunghill smoked. Mrs
Monnerie there; stepping into her brougham, ebony cane in hand, Marvell
at her elbow; Mrs Bowater languishing on board ship, limp head in stiff
frilling; Sir Walter dumb; the showman cursing his wretched men; the
bills being posted, the implacable future mutely yawning, the past
unutterable. Everything in its orbit. Was there no help, no refuge?
The door opened and the skimpy little country girl who waited on me in
Fleming's absence, brought in my supper. She bobbed me a scared curtsey,
and withdrew. Then she, too, had been poisoned against me. I flung
myself down on the floor, crushing my hands against my ears. Yet,
through all this dazed helplessness, in one resolve I never faltered. I
would keep my word to the showman, and this night that was now in my
room should be the last I would spend alive in Monk's House. Fanny must
do her worst. Thoughts of her, of my unhappy love and of her cruelty,
could bring no good. Yet I thought of her no less. Her very presence in
the house lurked in the air, in the silence, like an apparition's.
Still stretched on the floor, I woke to find the September
constellations faintly silvering the pale blue crystal of the Northern
Lights; and the earth sighing as if for refuge from the rising moon. My
fears and troubles had fallen to rest beneath my dreams, and I prepared
myself for the morrow's flight.