“And what can Miss Bowater do? What are her qualifications?” Mrs. Monnerie inquired pleasantly.
“She is—dark and—pale,” I replied, staring a little giddily out of the carriage at the sheep munching their way over the London grass.
“Dark and pale?” mused Mrs. Monnerie. “Well, that goes nearer the bone, perhaps, than medals and certificates and that sort of thing. Still, a rather Jane Eyreish kind of governess, eh, Susan?”
Unfortunately I was acquainted with only one of the Miss Brontës, and that not Charlotte.
“Miss Bowater is immensely clever, Mrs. Monnerie,” I hurried on, “and extremely popular with—with the other mistresses, and that sort of thing. She’s not a bit what you might guess from what you might suppose.”
“Which means, I gather,” commented Mrs. Monnerie affably, “that Miss Bowater is the typical landlady’s daughter. A perfect angel in—or out of—the house, eh, Miss Innocent?”
“No,” said I, “I don’t think Miss Bowater is an angel. She is so interesting, so herselfish, you know. She simply couldn’t be happy at Miss Stebbings’s—the school where she’s teaching now. It’s not salary, Mrs. Monnerie, she is thinking of—just two nice children and their mother, that’s all.”
This vindication of Fanny left me uncomfortably hot; I continued to gaze fixedly into the green distances of the park.
Yet all was well. Mrs. Monnerie appeared to be satisfied with my testimonial. “You shall give me her address, little Binbin; and we’ll have a look at the young lady,” she decided.
Yet I was none too happy at my success. Those familiar old friends of mine—motives—began worrying me. Would the change be really good for Fanny? Would it—and I had better confess that this troubled me the most—would it be really good for me? I wanted to help her; I wanted also to show her off. And what a joy it would be if she should change into the Fanny of my dreams. On the other hand, supposing she didn’t. On the whole, I rather dreaded the thought of her appearance at No. 2.
Susan followed me into my room. “Who is this Miss Bowater?” she inquired, “besides, I mean, being your landlady’s daughter, and that kind of thing?”
But my further little confidences failed to satisfy her.
“But why is she so not an angel, then? Clever and lovely—it’s a rather unusual combination, you know. And yet”—she reflectively smiled at me, all candour and gentleness—“well not unique.”
I ran away as fast as ever I could with so endearing a compliment—and tossed it back again over my shoulder: “You don’t mean, Susan, that you are not clever?”
“I do, my dear; indeed I do. I am so stupid that unless things are as plain and open as the nose on my face, I feel like suffocating. I’m dreadfully out of the fashion—a horrible discredit to my sex. As for Miss Bowater, I was merely being odious, that was all. To be quite honest and hateful—I didn’t like the sound of her. And Aunt Alice is so easily carried away by any new scent. If a thing’s a novelty, or just good to look at, or what they call a work of art—why, the hunt’s up. There wouldn’t have been any use for the Serpent in her Eden. Mere things, of course, don’t matter much: except that they rather lumber up one’s rooms; and I prefer not to live in a museum. It’s when it comes to persons. Still, it isn’t as if Miss Bowater was coming here.”
I remained silent, thinking this speech over. Had it, I speculated, “come to” being a “person” in my own case?
“Did you meet any other interesting people there?” Miss Monnerie went on, as if casually, turning off and on the while the little cluster of coloured electric globes that was on my table. “I mean besides Miss Bowater and that poor, dreadful—you know?”
“No,” I said bluntly, “not many.”
“You don’t mind my asking these questions? And just in exchange, you solemn thing, I’ll tell you a secret. It will be like shutting it up in the delightfullest, delicatest little rosebud of a box!” In that instant’s pause, it was as if a dream had passed swiftly, entrancingly, across the grave, smiling face.
“Look!” she said, stooping low, and laying her slim left hand, palm downwards, across my table. I did look; and the first thing I noticed was how like herself that hand was, and how much less vigorous and formidable than Fanny’s. And then I caught her meaning.
“Oh, Susan,” I cried in a woeful voice, gazing at the smouldering stones ringing that long slim third finger, “wherever I turn, I hear that.”
“Hear what?”
“Why, of love, I mean.”
“But why, why?” the narrow brows lifted in faint distress, “I am going to be ever so happy.”
“Ah, yes, I know, I know. But why can’t you be happy alone?”
She looked at me, and a faint red dusked the delicate cheek. “Not so happy. Not me, I mean.”
“You do love him, then?” the words jerked out.
“Why, you strange thing, how curiously you speak to me. Of course I love him. I am going to marry him.”
“But how do you know?” I persisted. “Does it mean more to you—well—than the secret of everything? I mean, what comes when one is almost nothing? Does it make you more yourself? or just break you in two? or melt you away?—oh, like a mist that is gone, and to every petal and blade of grass its drop of burning water?”
A shade of dismay, almost of fear—the look a timid animal gives when startled—stole into her eyes. “You ask such odd questions! How can I answer them? I know this—I would rather die than not. Is that what you mean?”
“Oh,” my voice fainted away—disappointment, darkness, ennui; “only that!”
“But what do
