A few minutes afterwards, Marvell himself discreetly entered the room; merely, as it would appear, to adjust the angles of a copy of the Spectator that lay on the table.
“It’s very close this morning,” I remarked, with as much dignity as I could muster.
“It is indeed, miss,” said Marvell, stooping sedately to examine my bell-push. He rose and brushed his fingers.
“They say, miss, the electricity gets into the wires, when thunder’s in the air. A wonderful invention, but not, as I am told, entirely independent of changes in the weather. I hope, miss, you haven’t been disturbed. …”
When Susan, even paler and quieter than usual, presently looked into the library, she found its occupant still on the floor and brooding over the browns and greys, the roses and ochres, of a complete congregation of Sphingidae. She stooped over me, sprawling in so ungainly a fashion across my book.
“Moths, this morning? What a very learned person you will become.” Her voice was a little flat, yet tender; but I was still in the sulks, and made no answer.
“I suppose,” she began again, as if listlessly, and straying over to the window, “I suppose it is very pleasant for you, seeing so much of your friend, Miss Bowater?”
Caution whispered a warning, and I tried to wriggle out of an answer by remarking that Fanny’s mother was the kindest woman in the whole world.
“Where is she now?”
“In Buenos Aires.”
“Really? How curious family traits are. The very moment I saw Miss Bowater I was quite certain that she was intended for an adventurous life; and didn’t you say that her father was an officer in the merchant service? What is he like?”
“Mr. Bowater? He died—out there, only a week or two ago.”
“How very, very sad,” breathed Susan. “And for Miss Bowater. I never even guessed from her manner that she was in trouble of that kind. And that, I suppose, shows a sort of courage. You were perfectly right; she is lovely and clever. The face a little hard, don’t you think, but very clever. She seems to be prepared for what Aunt Alice is going to say long before she says it. And I, you know, sometimes don’t notice even the sting till—till the buzzing is over.” She paused. “And you were able to make a real friend of her?”
Susan had not the patience to wait until I could sort out an answer to this question. “I don’t want to be intrusive,” she went on hurriedly, “to—to ask horrid questions; but is it true, you dear thing, that you may some day be leaving us?”
“Leaving you?” I echoed, my thoughts crouching together like chicks under a hen.
The reply came softly and reluctantly in that great cistern of air.
“Why, I understood—to be married.”
I leant heavily on my hands, seeing not the plumes and colours of the Sphinxes that swam up at me from the page, but, as if in a mist between them and me, the softly smiling face of Fanny. At last I managed to overcome the slight physical sickness that had swept over me. “Susan”; I said, “if a friend betrayed the very soul out of your body, what would you do? where would you go?”
“Betray! I, my dear?” and she broke into a confused explanation.
It was a remark of Percy’s she had been referring to, a silly, trivial remark, not, she was sure, intended maliciously. Why, everyone teased everyone. Didn’t she know it? And especially about the things that were most personal, “and, well, sacred.” It was nothing. Just that; and she should not have repeated it.
“Tell me exactly, please,” said I.
“Well, Aunt Alice was talking of marriage; and Miss Bowater smiled. And Aunt Alice—you know her mocking way—asked how, at her age—Miss Bowater’s—she had learned to look at the same time both charming and cynical. ‘Don’t forget, my dear,’ they were her very words, ‘that the cynicism wears the longer.’ But Miss Bowater laughed, and changed the subject by asking if she could do anything for your headache. It was the afternoon, you remember, when you were lying down. That was all.”
“And Mr. Maudlen?”
The fair cheek reddened. “Oh, Percy made a joke—about you. Just one of his usual horrid jokes. My dear”—she came and knelt down beside me and laid her gentle hand on my shoulder; “don’t look so—so awful. It’s only how things go.”
I drew the hand down. It smelled as fresh and sweet as jessamine.
“Don’t bother about me, Susan,” I said coldly. “Just leave me to my moths. I could show you scorpions and hornets ten times more dangerous than a mere Death’s Head. You don’t suppose I care? Why, as you say, even God has His little joke with some of us. I’m quite used to it.”
“Don’t, don’t,” she implored me. “You are overtired, you poor little thing. You go on reading and reading. Why, your teeth are chattering.”
A faint brazen reverberation from out of the distance increased in intensity and died away. It was Adam performing on the gong. Susan had tried to be kind to me, to treat me as if I were a normal fellow-being. I pressed the cool fingers to my lips.
“There, Susan,” I said, with cheerful mockery, “except for my father and mother, I do believe you are the first life-size or any-size person I have ever kissed. A midget’s gratitude!”
Ever so slightly the fingers constricted beneath my touch. No doubt there was a sensation of the spidery in my embrace.
XLI
But a devil of defiance had entered into me. With a face as snakily sweet as I could make it, I made my daintiest bow to Mrs. Monnerie’s guests—to Lord Chiltern, a tall, stiffish man, who blinked at our introduction almost as solemnly and distastefully as had Mrs. Bowater’s Henry, and to Lady Diana Templeton. A glance at this lady reminded me spitefully of an old suspicion of mine that Mrs. Monnerie usually invited her duller friends to luncheon and the clever to dinner. Not that she
