“I don’t pretend to be musical, not like you, Crimble. But I don’t mind a pleasant voice—in moderation; and I assure you, Miss Bowater, I am an excellent listener—given a fair chance, you know.”
“But then,” said Fanny, “so am I. I believe now really—and one can judge from one’s speaking voice, can’t one, Mr. Crimble?—I believe you sing yourself.”
“Sing, Miss Bowater,” interjected Mr. Crimble, tipping back his chair. “ ‘The wedding guest here beat his chest, for he heard the loud bassoon.’ Now, conjuring tricks, eh, Phelps? With a stethoscope and a clinical thermometer; and I’ll hold the hat and make the omelette. It would bring down the house.”
“It was his breast he beat; not his chest,” I broke in.
The six eyes slid round, as if at a voice out of the clouds. There was a pause.
“Why, exactly,” cried Mr. Crimble, slapping his leg.
“But I wish Dr. Phelps would sing,” said Fanny in a small voice, passing him the sugar.
“He must, he shall,” said Mr. Crimble, in extreme jubilation. “So that’s settled. Thank you, Miss Bowater,” his eyes seemed to melt in his head at his success, “the programme is complete.”
He drew a slip of paper from his inside pocket and brandished a silver pencil-case. “Mrs. Browning, ‘The Better Land’—better and better every year. ‘Caller Herrin’ ’ to follow—though what kind of herrings caller herrings are I’ve never been able to discover.” He beamed on me. “Miss Finch—she is sending me the names of her songs this evening. Miss Willett and Mr. Bangor—‘O that we two,’ and a queer pair they’d look; and ‘My luv is like.’ Hardy annuals. Mrs. Bullace—recitations, ‘Abt Vogler,’ and no doubt a Lord Tennyson. Flute, Mr. Piper; cello, Miss Oran, a niece of Lady Pollacke’s; and for comic relief, Tom Sturgess, of course; though I hope he will be a little more—er—eclectic this year. And you and I,” again he turned his boyish brow on me, “will sit with Mrs. Bowater in the front row of the gallery—a claque, Phelps, eh?”
He seemed to be in the topmost height of good spirits. Well, thought I, if social badinage and bonhomie were as pleasant and easy as this, why hadn’t my mother—?
“But why in the gallery?” drawled Fanny suddenly from the hearthrug, with the little steel poker ready poised; “Miss M. dances.”
The clear voice rasped on the word. A peculiar silence followed the lingering accents. The two gentlemen’s faces smoothed themselves out, and both, I knew, though I gave them no heed, sat gazing, not at their hostess. But Fanny herself was looking at me now, her light eyes quite still in the flame of the candles, which, with their reflections in Mrs. Bowater’s pier glass were not two, but four. It was into those eyes I gazed, yet not into, only at.
All day my thoughts had remained on her, like bubbles in wine. All day hope of the coming night and of our expedition to the woods had been, as it were, a palace in which my girlish fancy had wandered, and now, though only a few minutes ago I had been cheeping my small extemporary philosophy into the ear of Dr. Phelps, the fires of self-contempt and hatred burned up in me hotter than ever.
I forgot even the dainty dressing-jacket on my back. “Miss Bowater is pleased to be satirical,” I said, my hand clenched in my lap.
“Now was I?” cried Fanny, appealing to Dr. Phelps, “be just to me.” Dr. Phelps opened his mouth, swallowed, and shut it again.
“I really think not, you know,” said Mr. Crimble persuasively, coming to her rescue. “Indeed it would be extremely kind and—er—entertaining; though dancing—er—and—unless, perhaps, so many strangers. … We can count in any case on your being present, can we not, Miss M.?” He leaned over seductively, finger and thumb twitching at the plain gold cross suspended from his watch-chain on his black waistcoat.
“Oh, yes,” I replied, “you can count on me for the claque.”
The room had sunk into a stillness. Constraint was in the air. “Then that’s settled. On New Year’s Eve we—we all meet again. Unless, Miss Bowater, there is any hope of seeing you meanwhile—just to arrange the titles and so on of your songs on the programme.”
“No,” smiled Fanny, “I see no hope whatever. You forget, Mr. Crimble, there are dishes to wash. And hadn’t you better see Miss Finch first?”
Mr. Crimble cast a strange look at her face. He was close to her, and it was almost as if he had whispered, “Fanny.” But there was no time for further discussion. Dr. Phelps, gloved and buttoned, was already at the door.
Fanny returned into the room when our guests had taken their departure. I heard their male voices in vivacious talk as they marched off in the cold dark air beneath my window.
“I thought they were never going,” said Fanny lightly, twisting up into her hair an escaped ringlet. “I think, do you know, we had better say nothing to mother about the tea—at least not yet a while. They are dull creatures: it’s pottering about so dull and sleepy a place, I suppose. What could have inspired you to invite Dr. Phelps to tea? Really, really, Miss M., you are rather astonishing. Aren’t you, now?”
What right had she to speak to me like this, as if we had met again after another life? She paused in her swift collection of the remnants of our feast. “Sulking?” she inquired sweetly.
With an effort I kept my self-possession. “You meant what you said, then? You really think I would sink to that?”
“ ‘Sink!’ To what? Oh, the dancing, you mean. How funny you should still be fretting about that. Still, you look quite entertaining when
