I had been dismissed. But Mrs Monnerie's anger had a curious potency.
For a moment I could scarcely see out of my eyes, and the floor swayed
under me as I scrambled down from my chair. It took me at least a
minute, even with the help of a stool, to open the door.
Like a naughty child I had been put in the corner and then sent to bed.
Good. There could be no going back now. I could count on Fanny--the one
thing she asked was to be free of me. As for Mrs Monnerie, her flushed
and sullen countenance convinced me that my respite would be
undisturbed. There was only impulsive Susan to think of. And as if in
answer, there came a faint tap, and the door softly opened to admit her
gentle head and shoulders.
"Ah, my dear," she whispered across at me. "I'm _so_ sorry; and so
helpless. Don't take it too hardly. I have been having my turn, too."
I twisted round, wet face and hands, as I stood stooping over my
washbowl on its stool, scrutinized her speechlessly, and shook a dizzy
head. The door shut. Dearest Susan: as I think of her I seem to see one
of those tiny, tiny "building rotifers" collecting out of reality its
exquisite house. Grace, courage, loving-kindness. If I had been the
merest Miss Hop-o'-my-Thumb, I should still have been the coarsest
little monster by comparison.
Scarce three safe hours remained to me; I must be off at once. To go
looking for Adam was out of the question. Even if I could find him, I
dared not risk him. Would it be possible for me to cover my six miles or
more across undiscovered country in a hundred and eighty minutes? In my
Bowater days, perhaps; but there had been months of idle, fatted, indoor
No. 2 in between. A last forlorn dishonest project, banished already
more than once from my mind, again thrust itself up--to creep off to the
nearest Post Office and with one of my crown pieces for a telegram,
cast myself on the generosity of Mr Anon. No, no: I couldn't cheat
myself like that.
I was ready. I pinned to the carpet a message for Adam, in case he
should dare to be faithful to me--just four scribbled uncompromising
words: "The Bird is flown." With eyes fixed on a starry knot of wood at
the threshold, I stood for a while, with head bent, listening at my
door. I might have been pausing between two worlds. The house was quiet.
No voice cried "Stay." I bowed solemnly to the gentle, silent room
behind me, and, with a prayer between my teeth, bundle in hand, stepped
out into the future.
Unchallenged, unobserved, I slipped along the blue-carpeted corridor,
down the wide stairs and out of the porch. After dodging from tree to
tree, from shrub to shrub, along the meandering drive, I turned off,
and, skirting the lodge through a seeding forest of weeds and grasses,
squeezed through the railings and was in the lane. From my map of Kent I
had traced out a rough little sketch of the route I must follow. With
the sun on my left hand I set off almost due north. How still the world
was. In that silk-blue sky with its placid, mountainous clouds there was
no heed of human doings.
The shoes I had chosen were good sound Bowaters, and as I trudged on my
spirits rose high. I breathed in deep draughts of the sweet September
air. Thomasina of Bedlam had been "summoned to tourney." "The wide
world's end.... No journey!" In sober fact, it was a sorry little wretch
of a young female, scarcely more than a girl, that went panting along in
the dust and stones, scrambling into cover of ditch and hedge at every
sound or sight of life. I look at her now, and smile. Poor thing; it
needed at any rate a pinch of "courage."
Cottages came into sight. At an open door I heard the clatter of
crockery, and a woman scolding a child. Two gates beyond, motionless as
a block of wood, an old, old man stood leaning out of his garden of
dahlias and tarnishing golden-rod. In an instant in the dumb dust I was
under his nose. His clay pipe shattered on the stone. Like a wagtail I
flitted and scampered all in a breath. That little danger was safely
over; but it was not ruminating old gentlemen who caused me
apprehension. Youthful Adam Waggetts were my dread.
At the foot of the slope there came a stile, and a footpath winding off
NW. but still curving in my direction. I hesitated. Any risk seemed
better than the hedged-in publicity of this dusty lane. Ducking under
the stile, I climbed the hill and presently found myself clambering
across an immense hummocky field, part stubble, part fresh plough. Then
a meadow and cows. Then once more downhill, a drowsy farm-yard, with its
stacks and calves and chickens, to the left, and at bottom of the slope
a filthy quagmire where an immense sow wallowed, giving suck to her
squalling piglets. Her glinting, amorous eyes took me in. Stone on to
stone, I skipped across a brook, dowsing one leg to the thigh in its
bubbling water. It was balm in Gilead, for I was in a perfect fume of
heat, and my lungs were panting like bellows.
I sat down for a breathing space on the sunset side of a haystack. In
the shade of the hazels, on the verge of the green descending field,
rabbits were feeding and playing. And I began to think. Supposing I did
reach the new pitch in time: the wreck I should be. Then Mrs
Monnerie--and Fanny: my thoughts skimmed hastily on. What then? As soon
as my showman had paid me I must creep away by myself out of sight _at
once_; that was certain. I must tell him that Adam was waiting for me.
And then? Well, after a few hours' rest in some shed or under a
haystack, somehow or other I should have to find out the way, and press
on to Wanderslore. There'd be a full moon. That would be a comfort. I
knew the night. Once safely there, with money in my pocket, I could with
a perfectly free conscience ask Mr Anon to find me a lodging, perhaps
not very far from his own. A laughable situation. But we would be the
best of friends; now that all that--that nonsense was over. A deep sigh,
drawn, as it were, from the depths of my bowels, rose up and subsided.
What a strange thing that one must fall in love, couldn't jump into it.
And then? Well, Mrs Bowater would soon be home, and perhaps Sir Walter
had circumvented the Harrises. Suppose not. Well, even at the very
worst, at say ten, say even fifteen shillings a week, my thirteen pounds
would last me for months and months.... Say _four_.
And as I said "four," a gate clacked-to not many yards distant and a
slow footfall sounded. Fortunately for me, the path I had been
following skirted the other side of my haystack. Gathering myself close
under the hay, I peeped out. A tall, spare man, in a low, peaked cap and
leather leggings, came cautiously swinging along. His face was long,
lean, severe. His eyes were fixed in a steady gaze as if he were a human
automaton stalking on. And the black barrel of a gun sloped down from
under his arm. I drew in closer. His footsteps passed; died away; the
evening breeze blew chill. A few moments afterwards a shattering report
came echoing on from wood to wood, seeming to knock on my very
breastbone. This was no place for me. With one scared glance at the
huddling wood, I took to my heels, nor paused until the path through the
spinney became so rutted that I was compelled to pick my way.
A cold gloom had closed in on my mind. I cursed clod-hopping shoes and
bundle; envied the dead rabbit that had danced its airy dance and was
done. As likely as not, I had already lost my way. And I plodded on
along the stony paths, pausing only to quench my thirst with the rough
juice of the blackberries that straggled at the wayside. I wonder if the
"Knight of Furious Fancies" was as volatile!
But yet another shock was awaiting me. The footpath dipped, there came a
hedge and another stile, and I scuffled down the bank into the very lane
which I had left more than an hour ago. I knew that white house on the
hill; had seen it with Adam under the moon. It stood not much more than
a mile from the lodge gates. My short cut had been a detour; and now the
sun was down.
I drew back and examined my scribble of map. There was no help for it.
Henceforward I must keep to the road. My thick shoes beat up the dust,
one of my heels had blistered, my bundle grew heavier with every step.
But fear had left me. Some other master cracked his whip at me as I
shambled on, as doggedly and devil-may-care as a tramp.
I was stooping in the wayside ditch in one more attempt to ease my foot,
when once again I heard hoofs approaching. With head pushed between the
dusty tussocks, I stared along the flat, white road. A small and
seemingly empty cart was bowling along in the dust. As it drew near, my
ears began to sing, my heart stood still. I knew that battered cart,
that rough-haired, thick-legged pony. Suddenly I craned up in horror,
for it seemed that the face peering low over the splashboard in my
direction was that of a death's-head, grinning at me out of its gloom.
Then with a cry of joy I was up and out into the road. "Hi, hi!" I
screamed up at him.
It was Mr Anon. The pony was reined back on to its haunches; the cart
stood still. And my stranger and I were incredulously gazing at one
another as if across eternity, as if all the world beside were a dream
that asked no awakening.
Half dragged and half lifted into the cart, by what signs I could, for
speech was impossible, I bade him turn back. It unmanned me to see the
quiet and love in his face. Without a word he wheeled the rearing pony
round under the elm-boughs, and for many minutes we swung on together at
an ungainly gallop, swaying from this side to that, the astonishment of
every wayfarer we met or overtook on our way. At length he turned into a
grass-track under a rusting hedge festooned with woodbine and feathery
travellers' joy; and we smiled at one another as if in all history there
had never been anything quite so strange as this.
"You are ill," he said. "Oh, my dear, what have they done to you?"
I denied it emphatically, wiping my cheeks and forehead with the hem of
my skirt--for my handkerchief was stuffed into my shoe. "Look at me!" I
smiled up at him, confident and happy. Was my face lying about me? Oh, I
knew what a dreadful object I must be, but then, "I've been tramping for
hours and hours in the dust; and why!--haven't you come to meet me; to
give me a _lift_?"
What foolish speeches makes a happy heart. Indeed Mr Anon _had_ come to
meet me, but not exactly there and then. He fetched out of his pocket
the minute note that had summoned him. Here it is, still faintly
scented:--
"Mrs Monnerie sends her compliments, and would Miss M.'s friend
very kindly call at Monk's House, Croomham, at three o'clock on
Friday afternoon. Mrs Monnerie is anxious about Miss M.'s health."
Oh, Fanny, Fanny! Precisely how far she had taken Mrs Monnerie's name in
vain in this letter I have never inquired. And now, I suppose, Mrs Percy
Maudlen would not trouble to tell me. But I can vow that in spite of
the grime on my face the happiest smile shone through as I stuffed it
into my bodice. So this was all that her harrowing "husband" had come
to--a summoning of friend to friend. If every little malicious plot
ended like this, what a paradise the world would be. All tiredness
passed away, though perhaps it continued to effervesce in my head a
little. It seemed that I had been climbing on and on; and now suddenly
the mist had vanished, and mountain and snow lay spread out around me in
eternal peace and solitude. If Susan Monnerie's was my first stranger's
kiss, Mr Anon's were my quietest tears.
His crazy cart seemed more magical than all the carpets of Arabia. I
poured out my story--though not quite to its dregs. "This very
afternoon," I told him, "I was writing to you--in my mind. And you see,
you have come." The shaggy pony tugged at the coarse grass. I could hear
the trickling sands in the great hour glass, and chattered on in vain
hope to hold them back.
"You are not listening, only watching," I blamed him.
His lips moved; he glanced away. Yet I had already foreseen the conflict
awaiting me. And all his arguments and entreaties that I should throw
over the showman, and drive straight on with him into the gathering
evening towards Wanderslore, were in vain.
"Look," he said, as if for straw to break the camel's back, and drew out
by its ribbon my Bowater latchkey.
"No," said I, "not even that. I sleep out to-night." And surely, surely
I kept repeating, he must understand. How could I possibly be at rest
with a broken promise? What cared I now for what was past and gone?
Think what a joy, what sheer fun it would be to face Mrs Monnerie for
the last time, and she unaware of it! Nothing, nothing could amuse her
more when she hears of it. He should come and see; hear the crowd yell.
He mustn't be so solemn about things. "Do try and see the humour of it,"
I besought him.
But the money--that little incentive--I kept to myself.
He stared heavily into the silvery copse that bordered the track.
Motionless in their bright, withering leaves, its trees hung down their
tasselled branches beneath the darkening sky. Then, much against his
will, he turned his pony towards the high road. The wheel gridded on a
stone, he raised his whip.
"Hst!" I whispered, clutching at the arm that held the rein. Crouching
low, we watched the great Monnerie carriage, with its stiff-necked,
blinkered, stepping greys and gleaming lamps sweep by.
"There," I laughed up at him, lifting myself, one hand upon his knee,
"there but for the Grace of God goes Miss M."
The queer creature frowned into my smiling face and flicked the pony
with his whip. "And here," he muttered moodily, "who knows but by the
Grace of God go I?"
Anxiety gone now, and responsibility but a light thing, my tongue
rattled on quite as noisily as the cart. Kent's rich cornfields were
around us, their stubble a pale washed-out gold in the last light of
evening. Here and there on the hills a row or two of ungarnered stooks
stood solemnly carved out against the sky. Most of the hop-gardens, too,
had been dismantled, though a few we passed, with their slow-twirling
dusky vistas and labyrinths, were still wreathed with bines. Their scent
drifted headily on the stillness. And as with eyes peeping over the edge
of the cart I watched these beloved, homelike hills and fields and
orchards glide by, I shrilled joyfully at my companion every thought and
fancy that came into my head, many of them, no doubt, recent deposits
from the library at No. 2.
I told him, I remember, how tired I was of the pernicketiness of my
life; and amused him with a description of my Tank. "You would hardly
believe it, but I have never once heard the least faint whisper of water
in it, and if I had been a nice, simple savage, I dare say I should have
prayed to it. Instead of which, when one night I saw a star over the
housetop I merely shrugged my shoulders. My mind was so rancid I hated
it. I was so shut in; that's what it was."
He stroked the little, thick-coated horse with the lash of his whip, and
smiled round at me.
On I went. Shouldn't life be a High Road, didn't he think; surely not a
hot, silly zigzag of short cuts leading back to the place you started
from, and you too old or stupid, perhaps, to begin again? Didn't he
hunger, too, to see the _great_ things of the world, the ruins of
Babylon, the Wall of China, the Himalayas, and the Pyramids--at
night--black; and sand?
"My ghost!" said I, had he ever thought of the enormous solitudes of
the Sahara, or those remote places where gigantic images stare blindly
through the centuries at the stars--their builders just a pinch of dust?
Some day, I promised him out of the abandonment of my heart, we would
sail away, he and I, to his Pygmy Land. Surf and snow and singing
sand-dunes, and fruits on the trees and birds in the air: we would
live--"Oh, happy as all this!" (and I swept my hands across hill and
dale), "ever, ever afterwards. As they do, Mr Anon, in those absurd,
incredible fairy-tales, you know."
He smiled again, cast a look into the distance, touched my hand.
Perhaps he was wishing the while that that piercing, pining voice of
mine would keep silence, so that my presence might not disturb his own
brooding thoughts. I could only guess at pleasing him. Yet I felt, still
feel, that he was glad of my company and never for a moment sorry we had
met.