“It’s no use, Midgetina,” she sang across at me from her window. “Whether it’s because the chemical reactions of your pat little brain are more intense than ordinary people’s, or because you and I are en rapport, I can’t say. But there’s one thing we must agree upon at once: never, never again to mention his name—at least in this house. The Crimble chapter is closed.”
Closed indeed. But so sharp were her tones I hadn’t the courage to warn her that even Susan had read most of it. Fanny came near, and, stooping as Susan had stooped, began fidgeting with the button of my electric chandelier. The little lamps shone wanly in our faces in the cloud-darkened room.
“You see, my dear,” she said playfully, “you think me all mockery and heartlessness. And no doubt you are right. But I want ease and security: just like that—as if I were writing an essay—‘ease and security.’ I don’t care a dash about affection—at least without the aforesaid e and s. I intend to please Mrs. Monnerie, and she is going to be grateful to me. Don’t think I am being ‘candid.’ I should have no objection to saying just the same thing to Mrs. Monnerie herself: she’d enjoy it. Wait, you precious inchy image—wait until you need a sup of fatted calf’s-foot jelly, not because you are sick of husks, but because you are deadly poor. Then you will understand. These sumptuosities! Wait till they haven’t a ha’penny in their pockets, real or moral, for their next meal. They only look at things—if that; they can’t know what they are. Even to be decently charitable one must have been a beggar—and cursed the philanthropists. Oh, I know: and Fanny’s race is for Success.”
“But surely, Fanny, a thing is its looks, if only you look long enough. And I should just like to hear you talking if you were in my place. Besides, what is the use of success—in the end, I mean? You should see some of the actresses and singers and authors and that kind of thing Mrs. Monnerie knows? You wouldn’t have realized the actresses were even beautiful unless you had been told so. Why, you couldn’t even say the World is a success, except in the country. What is truly the use of it, then?” I had grown so eager in my argument that I had got up from my chair.
“The use, you poor thing?” laughed Fanny; “why, only as a kind of face-cream to one’s natural pride.”
The day was lightening now; but at that the whole darkness of my own situation drew close about me. Success, indeed. What was I? Nothing but a halfpennyless, tame pet in No. 2. What salve could restore to me my natural pride?
XL
In happier circumstances, the next morning’s post might have reassured me. Two letters straddled my breakfast tray, for I always had this meal in my own room. One of them was from Wanderslore—a long, crooked, roundabout letter, that seemed to taunt, upbraid, and entreat me, turn and turn about. It ended with a proposal of marriage.
In most of the novels I have read, the heroine simply basks in such a proposal, even though scarcely her fingertips are warmed by its rays. For my part, this letter, far from making me happy or even complacent, produced nothing but a feeling of fretfulness and shame. Thrusting it back into its envelope, I listened a while as if an eavesdropper might have overheard my silent reading of it—as if I must hide. Then, with eyes fixed on my small coffeepot, I sank into a low, empty reverie.
The world had not been so tender to my feelings as to refrain from introducing me to General Tom Thumb and Miss Mercy Lavinia Bump Warren.
“A pair of them! how quaint! how romantic! how touching!” I saw myself—gossamer veil, dwarfed orange-blossom, and gypsophila bouquet, all complete. Perhaps Mr. Pellew—perhaps even Miss Fenne’s bishop, would officiate. Possibly Percy would be persuaded to “give me away.” And what a gay little sniggling note in the Morning Post.
I came out of these sardonic thoughts with cold hands and a sneer on my lips, and the thought that I had seen quite as conspicuously paired human mates even though their size was beyond reproach. Thank goodness, when I read my letter again, slightly better feelings prevailed. After all, the merest cinder of love would have made my darkness light. I shouldn’t have cared for a thousand “touching’s” then. I was still myself, a lightheaded, lighthearted, young woman, for all my troubles and follies. If I had loved him, the rest of the world—much truer and sweeter within than it looks from without—would have vanished like a puff of smoke. But not even love’s ashes were in my heart, except, perhaps, those in which Fanny had scrawled her name.
I beat about, bruising wings and breast, hating life, hating the friend who had suddenly slammed-to another door in my gilded cage. “You can never, never go back to Wanderslore now,” muttered my romantic heart. Friends we could have remained—only the closer for adversity. Now all that was over; and two human beings who might have been a refuge and reconciliation to one another, amused—as well as amusing—observers of the world at large, had been by this one piece of foolish excess divided forever. I simply couldn’t bear to look ridiculous in my own eyes.
My other letter was from Sir W. P. He had seen the Harrises. Those foxy tortoises had advanced a ridiculous £1 19s. 7d. of my September allowance—the price of a pair of Monnerie bedroom slippers! It was enclosed—and Sir Walter begged me not to worry. Might he be my bank? Would I be so kind as to break it as soon as ever I wished? Meanwhile he would be making further inquires into my affairs.
Perhaps because Sir W. P. was a business man, he was less persuasive
