Is but a handful of bright Beauty cast:
It was; and now is past.”
I repeated the words mechanically again and again; and, as if in obedience to her whisper, a much more niggardly handful of none too bright a beauty did breathe a sigh and a prayer—part pity, part melancholy, and all happiness and relief. I kissed my hand to Jenetta; crossed myself and bowed to the altar—dulled gems of light the glass—and emerged into the graveyard. A lamp had been lit. An old man was shuffling along behind me; he had come to lock up the church. For an instant I debated whether or not to scuttle off down the green-bladed cobbles of the Mews and—trust my luck. No: the sight of a Punch and Judy man gobbling some food out of a newspaper at the further corner scared me out of that little enterprise. Dusk was settling; and I edged back as fast as I could to No. 2.
But it did me good—that visit. It was as if I had been looking back and up at my own small skull on a high shelf in some tranquil and dingy old laboratory—a few bottles, a spider’s web, and an occasional glint of moonlight. How very brief the animation for so protracted a peace.
XLII
Susan’s visits to her aunt were now less frequent. Percy’s multiplied. Duty seemed to have become a pleasure to him. Mrs. Monnerie’s gaze would rest on him with a drowsy vigilance which it was almost impossible to distinguish from mere vacancy of mind. He was fortunate in being her only nephew; unfortunate in being himself, and the son of a sister to whom Mrs. Monnerie seemed very little attached. Still, he appeared to be doing his best to cultivate his aunt’s graces, would meander “in attendance” round and round the Square’s square garden, while Fanny’s arm had now almost supplanted Mrs. Monnerie’s ebony cane. When Mrs. Monnerie was too much fatigued for this mild exercise, or otherwise engaged, there was still my health to consider. At least Fanny seemed to think so. But since Percy’s conversation had small attractions for me, it was far rather he who enjoyed the experience; while I sat and stared at nothing under a tree.
At less than nothing—for I was staring, as usual, chiefly at myself. I seemed to have lost the secret of daydreaming. And if the quantity of aversion that looked out of my eyes had matched its quality, those piebald plane-trees and poisonous laburnums would have been scorched as if with fire. I shall never forget those interminable August days, besieged by the roar and glare and soot and splendour and stare of London. All but friendless, absolutely penniless, I had nothing but bits of clothes for bribes to keep Fleming from mutiny. I shrank from making her an open enemy; though I knew, as time went on, that she disrelished me more and more. She would even keep her nose averted from my clothes.
As for Fanny, to judge from her animation when Susan and Captain Valentine broke in upon us, I doubt if anybody less complacent than Percy would not have realized that she was often bored. She would look at him with head on one side, as if she had been painted like that forever and ever in a picture. She could idly hide behind her beauty, and Percy might as well have gone hunting Echo or a rainbow. She could make corrosive remarks in so seducing a voice that the poor creature hardly knew where the smart came from. He would exclaim, “Oh, I say, Miss Bowater!” and gape like a goldfish. Solely, perhaps, to have someone to discuss herself with, Fanny so far forgave and forgot my shortcomings as to pay me an occasional visit, and had yawned how hideously expensive she found it to live with the rich. But the only promise of help I could make was beyond any possibility of performance. I promised, none the less, for my one dread was that she should guess what straits I was in for money.
It is all very well to accuse Percy Maudlen of goldfishiness. What kind of fish was I? During the few months of my life at Mrs. Monnerie’s—until, that is, Fanny’s arrival—she had transported her “Queen Bee,” as she sometimes called me, to every conceivable social function and ceremony, except a deathbed and a funeral. Why had I not played my cards a little more skilfully? Had not Messrs de la Rue designed a pack as if expressly for me, and for my own particular little game of Patience? If perhaps I had shown more sense and less sensibility; and had not been, as I suppose, in spite of all my airs and flauntings, such an inward young woman, what altitudes I might have scaled. Mrs. Monnerie, indeed, had once made me a promise to present me at Court in the coming May. It is true that this was a distinction that had been enjoyed by many of my predecessors in my own particular “line”—but I don’t think my patroness would have dished me up in a pie.
That being so, my proud bosom might at this very moment be heaving beneath a locket adorned with the royal monogram in seed pearls, and inscribed, “To the Least of her Subjects from the Greatest of Queens.” Why, I might have been the most talked-of and photographed débutante of the season. But I must beware of sour grapes. “There was once a Diogenes whom the gods shut up in a tub.”—Poor Mr. Wagginhorne, he had been, after all, comparatively frugal with his azaleas.
In all seriousness I profited far too little by Mrs. Monnerie’s generosities, by my “chances,” while I was with her. I just grew hostile, and so half-blind. Many of her friends, of course, were merely wealthy or fashionable, but others were just natural human beings. As Fanny had discovered, she not only delighted in people that were pleasant to look
