I am sure Lady Pollacke’s was a flawless savoir faire, yet, when I held out my hand in farewell, her cheek crimsoned, it seemed, from some other cause than stooping. The crucial moment had arrived. If one private word was to be mine with Mr. Crimble, it must be now or never. To my relief both gentlemen accompanied me out of the room, addressing their steps to mine. Urgency gave me initiative. I came to a standstill on the tesselated marble of the hall, and this time proffered my hand to Sir Walter. He stooped himself double over it; and I tried in vain to dismiss from remembrance a favourite reference of Pollie’s to the guinea-pig held up by its tail.
I wonder now what Sir W. would have said of me in his autobiography: “And there stood a flaxen spelican in the midst of the hearthrug; blushing, poor tiny thing, over her little piece like some little bread-and-butter miss fresh from school.” Something to that effect? I wonder still more who taught him so lovable a skill in handling that spelican?
“There; goodbye,” said he, “and the blessing, my dear young lady, of a fellow fanatic.”
He turned about and ascended the staircase. Except for the parlourmaid who was awaiting me in the porch, Mr. Crimble and I were alone.
XX
“Mr. Crimble,” I whispered, “I have a message.”
A tense excitement seized him. His face turned a dusky yellow. How curious it is to see others as they must sometimes see ourselves. Should I have gasped like that, if Mr. Crimble had been Fanny’s Mercury?
“A letter from Miss Bowater,” I whispered, “and I am to say,” the cadaverous face was close above me, its sombre melting eyes almost bulging behind their glasses, “I am to say that she is giving yours ‘her earnest attention, let alone her prayers.’ ”
I remember once, when Adam Waggett as a noisy little boy was playing in the garden at home, the string of his toy bow suddenly snapped: Mr. Crimble drew back as straight and as swiftly as that. His eyes rained unanswerable questions. But the parlourmaid had turned to meet me, and the next moment she and I were side by side in Lady Pollacke’s springy carriage en route for my lodgings. I had given my message, but never for an instant had I anticipated it would have so overwhelming an effect.
There must have been something inebriating in Lady Pollacke’s tea. My mind was still simmering with excitement. And yet, during the whole of that journey, I spent not a moment on Mr. Crimble’s or Fanny’s affairs, or even on Brunswick House, but on the dreadful problem whether or not I ought to tip the parlourmaid, and if so, with how much. Where had I picked this enigma up? Possibly from some chance reference of my father’s. It made me absent and harassed. I saw not a face or a flower; and even when the parlourmaid was actually waiting at my request in Mrs. Bowater’s passage, I stood over my money-chest, still incapable of coming to a decision.
Instinct prevailed. Just as I could not bring myself to complete “Tom o’ Bedlam” with Miss Bullace looking out of her eyes at me, so I could not bring myself to offer money to Lady Pollacke’s nice prim parlourmaid. Instead I hastily scrabbled up in tissue paper a large flat brooch—a bloodstone set in pinchbeck—a thing of no intrinsic value, alas, but precious to me because it had been the gift of an old servant of my mother’s. I hastened out and lifting it over my head, pushed it into her hand.
Dear me, how ashamed of this impulsive action I felt when I had regained my solitude. Should I not now be the jest of the Pollacke kitchen and drawing-room alike?—for even in my anxiety to attain Mr. Crimble’s private ear, I had half-consciously noticed what a cascade of talk had gushed forth when Mr. Crimble had closed the door of the latter behind him.
That evening I shared with Mrs. Bowater my experiences at Brunswick House. So absorbed was I in my own affairs that I deliberately evaded any reference to hers. Yet her pallid face, seemingly an inch longer and many shades more austere these last two days, touched my heart.
“You won’t think,” I pleaded at last, “that I don’t infinitely prefer being here, with you? Isn’t it, Mrs. Bowater, that you and I haven’t quite so many things to pretend about? It is easy thinking of others when there are only one or two of them. But whole drawing-roomsful! While here; well, there is only just you and me.”
“Why, miss,” she replied, “as for pretending, the world’s full of shadows, though substantial enough when it comes to close quarters. If we were all to look at things just bare in a manner of speaking, it would have to be the Garden of Eden over again. It can’t be done. And it’s just that that what’s called the gentry know so well. We must make the best use of the mess we can.”
I was tired. The thin, sweet air of spring, wafted in at my window after the precocious heat of the day, breathed a faint, reviving fragrance. A curious excitement was in me. Yet her words, or perhaps the tone of her voice, coloured my fancy with vague forebodings. I pushed aside my supper, slipped off my fine visiting clothes, and put on my dressing-gown. With lights extinguished, I drew the blind, and strove for a while to puzzle out life’s riddle for myself. Not for the first or the last time did wandering wits cheat me of the goal, for presently in the quiet out of my thoughts, stole into my imagination the vision of that dreaming head my eyes had sheltered on.
“Hypnos,” I sighed the word; and—another face, Fanny’s, seemed to melt
