“Yes! what is it like?” I cried in distress, myself sinking back into myself, as if hiding in a lair.
“I can’t say,” she faltered. “I didn’t know. …”
We talked on. But though I tried to blur over and withdraw what I had said, she remained dissatisfied. A thin edge of formality had for the moment pushed in between us.
That night I addressed a belated letter to Wanderslore, reproaching Mr. Anon for not writing to me, telling him of Mrs. Bowater’s voyage, and begging him to assure the garden-house and the fading summer flowers that they had not been deserted in my dreams.
At a quarter to twelve one morning, soon after this, I was sitting with Mrs. Monnerie on a stool beneath Chakka’s cage, and Susan was just about to leave us—was actually smoothing on the thumb of her glove; when Marvell announced that a Miss Bowater had called. I turned cold all over and held my breath.
“Ah,” whispered Mrs. Monnerie, “your future Mrs. Rochester, my pet.”
Every thought scuttled out of my head; my needle jerked and pricked my thumb. I gazed at the door. Never had I seen anything so untransparent. Then it opened; and—there was Fanny. She was in dark gray—a gown I had never seen before. A tight little hat was set demurely on her hair. In that first moment, she had not noticed me, and I could steal a long, steady look at the still, light, vigilant eyes, drinking in at one steady draught their new surroundings. Her features wore the thinnest, unfamiliar mask, like a flower seen in an artificial light. What wonder I had loved her. My hands went numb, and a sudden fatigue came over me.
Then her quiet, travelling glance descended and hovered in secret colloquy with mine. She dropped me a little smiling, formal nod, moistened her lips, and composed herself for Mrs. Monnerie. And it was then I became conscious that Susan had quietly slipped out of the room.
It was a peculiar experience to listen to the catechism that followed. From the absorption of her attitude, the large, sidelong head, the motionless hands, it was clear that Mrs. Monnerie found a good deal to interest her in the dark, attentive figure that stood before her. If Fanny had been Joan of Arc, she could not have had a more single-minded reception. Yet I was enjoying a duel: a duel not of wits, but of intuitions, between the sagacious, sardonic, watchful old lady, soaked in knowledge of humanity but, as far as I could discover, with extraordinarily small respect for it, and—Fanny. And it seemed to me that Fanny easily held her own; just by being herself, without revealing herself. Face, figure, voice; that was all. I could not take my eyes away. If only, I thought, my own ghost would keep as quiet and hidden as that in the presence of others.
Perhaps I exaggerate. Love, living or dying, even if it is not blind, cannot, I suppose, focus objects very precisely. It sees only itself or disillusionment. Whether or not, the duel was interrupted. In the full light of the window, Fanny turned softly at the opening of the door. Marvell was announcing another caller. At his name my heart leapt up like William Wordsworth’s at the rainbow. It was Sir Walter Pollacke.
“This is your visitor, Poppet,” Mrs. Monnerie waggishly assured me, “you shall have half an hour’s tête-à-tête.”
XXXIX
So it was with a deep sigh—half of regret at being called away, and all of joy at the thought of seeing my old friend again—that I followed Marvell’s coattails over the threshold. With a silly, animal-like affection I brushed purposely against Fanny’s skirts as I passed her by; and even smirked in a kind of secret triumph at Percy Maudlen, who happened to be idling on the staircase as I hastened from room to room.
The door of the library closed gently behind me, as if with a breath of peace. I paused—looked across. Sir Walter was standing at the further end of its high, daylit, solemn spaciousness. He was deep in contemplation of a white marble bust that graced the lofty chimneypiece—so rapt, indeed, that until I had walked up into the full stream of sunshine from a nearer window and had announced my approach with a cough, he did not notice my entrance. Then he flicked round with an exclamation of welcome.
“My dear, dear young lady,” he cried, beaming down on me from between his peaked collar-tips, over his little black bow, the gold rim of his large eyeglasses pressed to his lip, “a far—far more refreshing sight! Would you believe it, it was the pleasing little hobby of that oiled and curled monstrosity up there—Heliogabalus—to smother his guests in roses—literally, smother them? Now,” and he looked at me quizzically as if through a microscope, “the one question is how have you survived what I imagine must have been a similar ordeal? Not quite at the last gasp, I hope? Comparatively happy? It’s all we can hope for, my dear, in this world.”
I nodded, hungrily viewing him, meeting as best I could the bright blue eyes, and realizing all in a moment the dark inward of my mind.
Those other eyes began thinking as well as looking. “Well, well, that’s right. And now we must have a little quiet talk before his Eminence reappears. So our old friend Mrs. Bowater has gone husband-hunting? Gallant soul: she came to see me.”
Squatted up on a crimson leather stool, I must have looked the picture of astonishment.
“Yes,” he assured me, “there are divinities that shape our ends; and Mrs. Bowater is one of them. If anything can hasten her husband’s recovery—But never mind that. She has left me in charge. And here I am. The question is, can we have too many trustees, guardians? Perhaps not. Look at the Koh-i-Noor, now.”
I much preferred to continue
