In a rich falsetto she repeated Mr. Crimble’s “few words” of sympathetic apology for her absence: “ ‘I must ask your indulgence, ladies and gentlemen, for a lamentable hiatus in our programme.’ ” She gave us Miss Willett’s and Mr. Bangor’s spirited rendering of “Oh, that we two”; and of the recitation which rather easily, it appeared, Mrs. Bullace had been prevailed upon to give as an encore after her “Abt Vogler”: “The Lady’s ‘Yes,’ ” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. And what a glance of light and fire she cast me when she came to stanza six of the poem:—
“Lead her from the festive boards,
Point her to the starry skies! …”
And she imitated Lady Pollacke’s niece’s—Miss Oran’s—cello obligato to “The Lost Chord,” with a plangency that stirred even the soul of Henry as he lay curled up in my landlady’s lap. The black head split like a pomegranate as he yawned his disgust.
At this Mrs. Bowater turned her bony face on me, her hands on her knees, and with a lift of her eyes disclosed the fact that she was amused, and that she hoped her amusement would remain a confidence between us. She got up and put the cat out: and on her return had regained her solemnity.
“I suppose,” she said stiffly, staring into the sparkling fire that was our only illumination, “I suppose, poor creatures, they did their best: and it isn’t so many years ago, Fanny, since you were as put-about to be allowed to sing at one of the church concerts as a bird is to hop out of its cage.”
“Yes,” said Fanny, “but in this world birds merely hop out of one cage into another; though I suppose the larger are the more comfortable.” This retort set Mrs. Bowater’s countenance in an impassive mask—so impassive that every fitfully-lit photograph in the room seemed to have imitated her stare. “And, mother,” added Fanny seductively, “who taught me to sing?”
“The Lord knows,” cried Mrs. Bowater, with conviction, “I never did.”
“Yes,” muttered Fanny in a low voice, for my information, “but does He care?” I hastily asked Mrs. Bowater if she was glad of tomorrow’s New Year. As if in reply the kitchen clock, always ten minutes fast, began to chime twelve, half-choking at every stroke. And once more the soul of poor Mr. Hubbins sorrowfully took shape in a gaze at me out of vacancy.
“To them going downhill, miss,” my landlady was replying to my question, “it is not the milestones are the pleasantest company—nor that the journey’s then of much account until it is over. By which I don’t mean to suggest there need be gloom. But to you and Fanny here—well, I expect the little that’s the present for you is mostly wasted on the future.” With that, she rose, and poured out the syrupy brown wine from the green bottle, reserving a remarkably little glass which she had rummaged out of her years’ hoardings for me.
Fanny herself, with musing head—her mockings over—was sitting drawn-up on a stool by the fire. I doubt if she was thinking. Whether or not, to my enchanted eyes some phantom within her seemed content merely to be her beauty. And in rest, there was a grace in her body—the smooth shoulder, the poised head that, because, perhaps, it was so transitory, seemed to resemble the never-changing—that mimicry of the unknown which may be seen in a flower, in a green hill, even in an animal. It is as though, I do think, what we love most in this life must of necessity share two worlds.
Faintly out of the frosty air was wafted the knelling of midnight. I rose, stepped back from the firelight, drew the curtain, and stole a look into space. Away on the right flashed Sirius, and to east of him came gliding flat-headed Hydra with Alphard, the Red Bird, in his coil. So, for a moment in our history, I and the terrestrial globe were alone together. It seemed indeed that an intenser silence drew over reality as the earth faced yet one more fleeting revolution round her invisible lord and master. But no moon was risen yet.
I turned towards the shape by the fire, and without her perceiving it, wafted kiss and prayer in her direction. Cold, careless Fanny—further than Uranus. We were alone, for at first stroke of St. Peter’s Mrs. Bowater had left the room and had opened the front door. She was smiling; but was she smiling, or was that vague bewitchingness in her face merely an unmeaning guile of which she was unaware? It might have been a mermaid sitting there in the firelight.
The bells broke in on our stillness; and fortunately, since there was no dark man in the house to bring us luck, Henry, already disgusted with the snow and blacker in hue than any whiskered human I have ever seen, seized his opportunity, and was the first living creature to cross our threshold from one year into another.
This auspicious event renewed our spirits which, in waiting, had begun to flag. From far away came a jangling murmur of shouting and instruments and bells, which showed that the rest of the parish was sharing our solemn vigil; and then, with me on my table between them, a hand of each clasping mine, Mrs. Bowater, Fanny, and I, after sipping each other’s health, raised the strains of “Auld Lang Syne.” There must have been Scottish blood in Mrs. Bowater; she certainly made up for some little variation from the tune by a heartfelt pronunciation of the words. Hardly had we completed this rite than the grandfather’s clock in the narrow passage staidly protested its own rendering of eternity; and we all—even Mrs. Bowater—burst out laughing.
“Good night, Midgetina; an immense happy New Year
