“I should think,” I retorted, “Mr. Crimble would say anything pleasant to any young woman.”
“I have no doubt he would,” she agreed. “The other cheek also, you know. But the real question is what the young woman would say in reply. You are too sensitive, Miss M.”
“Perhaps I am.” Oh that I could escape from this horrible net between us. “I know this, anyhow—that I lay awake till midnight because you had made a kind of promise to come in. Then I—I ‘counted the pieces.’ ”
Her face whitened beneath the clear skin. “Oh, so we list—” she began, turning on me, then checked herself. “I tell you this,” she said, her hand trembling, “I’m sick of it all. Those—those fools! Ph! I thought that you, being as you are—snippeting along out of the night—might understand. There’s such a thing as friendship on false pretences, Miss M.”
Was she, too, addressing, as she supposed, a confidant hardly more external to herself than that inward being whom we engage in such endless talk and argument? Her violence shocked me; still more her “fools.” For the word was still next-door neighbour in my mind to the dreadful “Raca.”
“ ‘Understand,’ ” I said, “I do, if you would only let me. You just hide in your—in your own outside. You think because I am as I am that I’m only of that much account. It’s you are the—foolish. Oh, don’t let us quarrel. You just came. I never knew. Every hour, every minute. …” Inarticulate my tongue might be, but my face told its tale. She must have heard many similar confessions, yet an almost childish incredulity lightened in hers.
“Keep there,” she said; “keep there! I won’t be a moment.”
She hastened out of the room with the tea things, poising an instant like a bird on a branch as she pushed open the door with her foot. The slave left behind her listened to her footsteps dying away in a mingling of shame, sorrow, and of a happiness beyond words. I know now that it is not when we are near people that we reach themselves, not, I mean, in their looks and words, but only by following their thoughts to where the spirit within plays and has its being. Perhaps if I had realized this earlier, I shouldn’t have fallen so easy a prey to Fanny Bowater. I waited—but that particular exchange of confidences was never to be completed. A key sounded in the latch. Fanny had but time to show herself with stooping, almost serpent-like head, in the doorway. “Tonight!” she whispered. “And not a word, not a word!”
XIII
Was there suspicion in the face of Mrs. Bowater that evening? Our usual familiar talk dwindled to a few words this suppertime. The old conflict was raging in my mind—hatred of my deceit, horror at betraying an accomplice, and longing for the solemn quiet and solitude of the dark. I crushed my doubtings down and cast a dismal, hostile look at the long face, so yellow of skin and sombre in expression. When would she be gone and leave me in peace? The packed little parlour hung stagnant in the candlelight. It seemed impossible that Mrs. Bowater could not hear the thoughts in my mind. Apparently not. She tidied up my few belongings, which, contrary to my usual neat habits, I had left scattered over the table. She bade me good night; but paused in the doorway to look back at me. But what intimacy she had meant to share with me was put aside. “Good night, miss,” she repeated; “and I’m sure, God bless you.” It was the dark, quiet look that whelmed over me. I gazed mutely, without response, and the silence was broken by a clear voice like that of a cautious mockingbird out of a wood.
It called softly on two honeyed notes, “Mo—ther!”
The house draped itself in quiet. Until ten had struck, and footsteps had ascended to the rooms overhead, I kept close in my bedchamber. Then I hastily put on my outdoor clothes, shivering not with cold, but with expectation, and sat down by the fire, prepared for the least sound that would prove that Fanny had not forgotten our assignation. But I waited in vain. The cold gathered. The vaporous light of the waning moon brightened in the room. The cinders fainted to a darker glow. I heard the kitchen clock with its cracked, cantankerous stroke beat out eleven. Its solemn mate outside, who had seemingly lost his voice, ticked on.
Hope died out in me, leaving an almost physical nausea, a profound hatred of myself and even of being alive. “Well,” a cold voice said in my ear, “that’s how we are treated; that comes of those eyes we cannot forget. Cheated, cheated again, my friend.”
In those young days disappointment set my heart aching with a bitterness less easy to bear than it is now. No doubt I was steeped in sentimentality and folly. It was the vehemence of this new feeling that almost terrified me. But my mind was my world; it is my only excuse. I could not get out of that by merely turning a tiny key in a Brahma lock. Nor could I betake myself to bed. How sleep in such an inward storm of reproaches, humiliation, and despised love?
I drew down my veil, wrapped my shawl closer round my shoulders, descended my staircase, and presently stood in the porch in confrontation of the night. Low on the horizon, at evens with me across space, and burning with a limpid fire, hung my chosen—Sirius. The sudden sight of him pouring his brilliance into my eyes brought a revulsion of feeling. He was “cutting me dead.” I brazened him down. I trod with exquisite caution
