While she was away, the little house on Beechwood Hill, “bought, thank God, with my own money,” was to be shut up, but it was mine if I cared to return to it, and would ask a neighbour of hers, Mrs. Chantry, for the key. It would be Fanny’s if anything “happened” to herself. So dismal was all this that Mrs. Bowater seemed already lost to me, and I twice an orphan. We talked on together in low, cautious voices. After a single sharp, cold glance at my visitor, Fleming had left us to ourselves over an enormous silver teapot. I grew so nervous at last, watching Mrs. Bowater’s slow glances of disapproval at her surroundings; her hot, tired face; and listening to her long drawn sighs, that again and again I lost the thread of what she was saying, and could answer Yes, or No, only by instinct.
What with an antiquated timetable, a mislaid railway ticket, and an impudent bus-conductor, her journey had been a trying experience. I discovered, too, that Mrs. Bowater disliked the West End. She had first knocked at No. 4 by mistake. Its butler had known nothing whatever at all about any Miss M., and Mrs. Bowater had been too considerate to specify my dimensions. She had then shared a few hot moments in the porch of No. 2 with a more fashionable visitor—to neither’s satisfaction. A manservant had admitted her to Mrs. Monnerie’s marble halls and “barefaced” statuary, and had apparently thought the large parcel she carried in her arms should have been delivered in the area.
She bore no resentment, though I myself felt a little uneasy. Life was like that, she seemed to imply, and she had been no party to it. There was no doubt a better world where things would be different—it was extraordinary what a number of conflicting sentiments she could convey in a pause or a shut of her mouth. Black and erect, she sat glooming over that alien teapot, sipping Mrs. Monnerie’s colourless China tea, firmly declining to grimace at its insipidity, until she had told me all there was to tell.
At last, having gathered herself together, she exhorted me to write to that young Mr. Anon. “I see a fidelity one might almost say doglike, miss, on that face, apart, as I have reasons for supposing, from a sufficiency in his pocket. Though, the Lord knows, you are young yet and seemingly in no need of a home.”
Parcel, reticule, umbrella—she bent over me with closed eyes, and muttered shamefacedly that she had remembered me in her will, “and may God bless you, miss, I’m sure.”
I clutched the gloved hand in a sudden helpless paroxysm of grief and foreboding. “Oh, Mrs. Bowater, you forgive—” I choked, and still no words would come.
She was gone, past recall; and all the love and gratitude and remorse I had longed to express flooded up in me. Yet, stuck up there in my chair, my chief apprehension had been that Fleming might come in again, and cast yet another veiled, sneering glance at my visitor.
Peering between the gilded balusters, I watched my old friend droop away stiffly down the mild, lustrous staircase, bow to the man who opened the door for her, and emerge into the sunny emptiness.
Maybe the thought had drifted across her mind that I had indeed been dipped in the dye-pot. But now—these many years afterwards—there is no more risk of misunderstanding. It is eight o’clock; the light is fading. Chizzel Hill glows green. I hear her feebling step on the stairs. She will peer at me over spectacles that now always straddle her nose. I must put my pen and papers away; and I, too, have made my will.
XXXVIII
Mrs. Bowater’s departure from England—and it seemed as if its very map in my mind had become dismally empty—was not my only anxiety. My solicitors had hitherto been prompt; their remittances almost monotonously identical in amount. But my quarterly allowance on Midsummer Day, had been followed by a letter a week or two after her goodbye. It seemed to be in excellent English, and yet it was all but unintelligible to me. Every rereading of it—the paper had apparently been dipped in water and dried—increased its obscurity and my alarm. I knew nothing about money matters, and the encyclopaedia I consulted only made me more dejected and confused. I remembered with remorse my poor father’s last troubles. To answer the Harrises was impossible, and further study of their letter soon became unnecessary, for I had learned it by heart.
The one thing certain was that Fanny’s wolf had begun scratching at my door: that my income was in imminent danger. I had long since squandered the greater part of what remained out of my savings (after Fanny had helped herself) on presents and fallals; merely, I am afraid, to show Mrs. Monnerie that I, too, could be extravagant. How much I owed her I could not even conjecture, and had not dared to inquire. To ask her counsel was equally impossible. She was almost as remote from me in this respect as Mrs. Bowater, now in the centre of the Atlantic. As for Fanny, I had returned her postal orders and had heard no more.
For days and days gloom hung over me like a thundercloud. Wherever I went I was followed by the spectres of the Harrises. Then, for a time, as do all things, foreboding and anxiety gradually faded off. I plunged back into the cream-bowl with the deliberate intention of drowning trouble.
Meanwhile, I had not forgotten Fanny’s “sinecure.” One mackerel-skied afternoon, Mrs. Monnerie and I and Susan were
