A cold gloom had closed in on my mind. I cursed clod-hopping shoes and bundle; envied the dead rabbit that had danced its airy dance and was done. As likely as not, I had already lost my way. And I plodded on along the stony paths, pausing only to quench my thirst with the rough juice of the blackberries that straggled at the wayside. I wonder if the “Knight of Furious Fancies” was as volatile!
But yet another shock was awaiting me. The footpath dipped, there came a hedge and another stile, and I scuffled down the bank into the very lane which I had left more than an hour ago. I knew that white house on the hill; had seen it with Adam under the moon. It stood not much more than a mile from the lodge gates. My shortcut had been a detour; and now the sun was down.
I drew back and examined my scribble of map. There was no help for it. Henceforward I must keep to the road. My thick shoes beat up the dust, one of my heels had blistered, my bundle grew heavier with every step. But fear had left me. Some other master cracked his whip at me as I shambled on, as doggedly and devil-may-care as a tramp.
I was stooping in the wayside ditch in one more attempt to ease my foot, when once again I heard hoofs approaching. With head pushed between the dusty tussocks, I stared along the flat, white road. A small and seemingly empty cart was bowling along in the dust. As it drew near, my ears began to sing, my heart stood still. I knew that battered cart, that rough-haired, thick-legged pony. Suddenly I craned up in horror, for it seemed that the face peering low over the splashboard in my direction was that of a death’s-head, grinning at me out of its gloom. Then with a cry of joy I was up and out into the road. “Hi, hi!” I screamed up at him.
It was Mr. Anon. The pony was reined back on to its haunches; the cart stood still. And my stranger and I were incredulously gazing at one another as if across eternity, as if all the world beside were a dream that asked no awakening.
Half dragged and half lifted into the cart, by what signs I could, for speech was impossible, I bade him turn back. It unmanned me to see the quiet and love in his face. Without a word he wheeled the rearing pony round under the elm-boughs, and for many minutes we swung on together at an ungainly gallop, swaying from this side to that, the astonishment of every wayfarer we met or overtook on our way. At length he turned into a grass-track under a rusting hedge festooned with woodbine and feathery travellers’ joy; and we smiled at one another as if in all history there had never been anything quite so strange as this.
“You are ill,” he said. “Oh, my dear, what have they done to you?”
I denied it emphatically, wiping my cheeks and forehead with the hem of my skirt—for my handkerchief was stuffed into my shoe. “Look at me!” I smiled up at him, confident and happy. Was my face lying about me? Oh, I knew what a dreadful object I must be, but then, “I’ve been tramping for hours and hours in the dust; and why!—haven’t you come to meet me; to give me a lift?”
What foolish speeches makes a happy heart. Indeed Mr. Anon had come to meet me, but not exactly there and then. He fetched out of his pocket the minute note that had summoned him. Here it is, still faintly scented:—
“Mrs. Monnerie sends her compliments, and would Miss M.’s friend very kindly call at Monk’s House, Croomham, at three o’clock on Friday afternoon. Mrs. Monnerie is anxious about Miss M.’s health.”
Oh, Fanny, Fanny! Precisely how far she had taken Mrs. Monnerie’s name in vain in this letter I have never inquired. And now, I suppose, Mrs. Percy Maudlen would not trouble to tell me. But I can vow that in spite of the grime on my face the happiest smile shone through as I stuffed it into my bodice. So this was all that her harrowing “husband” had come to—a summoning of friend to friend. If every little malicious plot ended like this, what a paradise the world would be. All tiredness passed away, though perhaps it continued to effervesce in my head a little. It seemed that I had been climbing on and on; and now suddenly the mist had vanished, and mountain and snow lay spread out around me in eternal peace and solitude. If Susan Monnerie’s was my first stranger’s kiss, Mr. Anon’s were my quietest tears.
His crazy cart seemed more magical than all the carpets of Arabia. I poured out my story—though not quite to its dregs. “This very afternoon,” I told him, “I was writing to you—in my mind. And you see, you have come.” The shaggy pony tugged at the coarse grass. I
