It was Pollie. Until I saw her round, red, country cheek, and stiff Sunday hat, thus unexpectedly appear, I had almost forgotten how much I loved and had missed her. No doubt my landlady had been the dea ex machina that had produced her on this fine sunshine morning. Anyhow she was from heaven. Besides butter, a posy of winter jasmine, a crochet bedspread, and a varnished arbour chair made especially for me during the winter evenings by her father, Mr. Muggeridge, she brought startling news. There suddenly fell a pause in our excited talk. She drew out her handkerchief and a slow crimson mounted up over neck, cheek, ears, and brow. I couldn’t look quite away from this delicious sight, so my eyes wandered up in admiration of the artificial cornflowers and daisies in her hat.
Whereupon she softly blew her nose and, with a gliding glance at the shut door, she breathed out her secret. She was engaged to be married. A trying, romantic vapour seemed instantly to gather about us, in whose hush I was curiously aware not only of Pollie thus suffused, sitting with her hands loosely folded in her lap, but of myself also, perched opposite to her with eyes in which curiosity, incredulity, and even a remote consternation played upon her homely features. Time melted away, and there once more sat the old Pollie—a gawk of a girl in a pinafore, munching up green apples and re-plaiting her dull brown hair.
Then, of course, I was bashfully challenged to name the happy man. I guessed and guessed to Pollie’s ever-increasing gusto, and at last I dared my first unuttered choice: “Well, then, it must be Adam Waggett!”
“Adam Waggett! Oh, miss, him! a nose like a winebottle.”
It was undeniable. I apologized, and Pollie surrendered her future into my hands. “It’s Bob Halibut, miss,” she whispered hoarsely.
And instantaneously Bob Halibut’s red head loomed louringly out at me. But I know little about husbands; and premonitions only impress us when they come true. Time was to prove that Pollie and her mother had made a prudent choice. Am I not now Mr. Halibut’s god-sister, so to speak?
The wedding, said Pollie, was to be in the summer. “And oh, miss”—would I come?
The scheming that followed! The sensitive draping of difficulties on either side, the old homesick longing on mine—to flee away now, at once, from this scene of my afflicted adoration. I almost hated Fanny for giving me so much pain. Mrs. Bowater was summoned to our council; my promise was given; and it was she who suggested that its being “a nice bright afternoon,” Pollie should take me for a walk.
But whither? It seemed a sheer waste of Pollie to take her to the woods. Thoughts of St. Peter’s, the nocturnal splendour in the cab, a hunger for novelty, the itch to spend money, and maybe a tinge of daredevilry—without a moment’s hesitation I chose the shops and the “town.” Once more in my black, with two thicknesses of veil canopying my head, as if I were a joint of meat in the Dog Days, I settled myself on Pollie’s arm, and—in the full publicity of three o’clock in the afternoon—off we went.
We chattered; we laughed; we sniggled together like schoolgirls in amusement at the passersby, in the strange, busy High Street. I devoured the entrancing wares in the shop windows—milliner, hairdresser and perfumer, confectioner; even the pyramids of jam jars and sugar-cones in the grocer’s, and the soaps, syrups, and sponges of Mr. Simpkins—Beechwood’s pharmaceutical chemist. Out of the sovereign which I had brought with me from my treasure-chest Pollie made purchases on my behalf. For Mrs. Bowater, a muslin tie for the neck; for herself—after heated controversy—a pair of kid gloves and a bottle of frangipani; and for me a novel.
This last necessitated a visit to Mrs. Stocks’s Circulating Library. My hopes had been set on Jane Eyre. Mrs. Stocks regretted that the demand for this novel had always exceeded her supply: “What may be called the sensational style of fiction” (or was it friction?) “never lays much on our hands.” She produced, instead, and very tactfully, a comparatively diminutive copy of Miss Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. It was a little shop-soiled; “But books keep, miss”; and she let me have it at a reduced price. Her great shears severed the string. Pollie and I once more set clanging the sonorous bell at the door, and emerged into the sunlight. “Oh, Pollie,” I whispered, “if only you could stay with me forever!”
This taste of “life” had so elated me that after fevered and silent debate I at last laughed out, and explained to Pollie that I wished to be “put down.” Her breathless arguments against this foolhardy experiment only increased my obstinacy. She was compelled to obey. Bidding her keep some little distance behind me, I settled my veil, clasped tight my Miss Austen in my arms and set my face in the direction from which we had come. One after another the wide paving-stones stretched out in front of me. It was an extraordinary experience. I was openly alone now, not with the skulking, deceitful shades and appearances of night, or the quiet
