Mrs. Bowater’s mouth opened in silent laughter. “Between you—” she began, and broke off. “Gracious goodness, but here’s that young man, Mr. Crimble, calling again.”
Mr. Crimble drank tea with me, though he ate nothing. And now, his darkest tempest being long since stilled, I completely absolve myself for amending the message which Lady Pollacke’s tesselated hall had mercifully left obscure. He sat there, almost like a goldfish—though black in effect beyond description—gaping for the crumb that never comes. “She bade me,” I muttered my falsehood, “she bade me say secretly that she has had your letter, that she is giving it her earnest attention, her earnest attention, alone, and in her prayers.”
The dark liquid pupils appeared for one sheer instant to rotate, then he turned away, and, as if quite helplessly, stifled an unsheltered yawn.
“ ‘Alone,’ ” he cried desperately. “I see myself, I see myself in her young imagination!”
I think he guessed that my words were false, that his ear had not been as treacherous as all that. Whether or not, no human utterance have I ever heard so humble, tragic, final. It knelled in my ear like the surrender of all hope. And yet it brought me, personally, some enlightenment. It was with Mr. Crimble’s eyes that I now scanned not only his phantom presence in Fanny’s imagination, but my own, standing beside him—a “knickknack” figure of fun, pygmied beneath the flappets of his clerical coat, like a sun-beetle by a rook. The spectacle strengthened me without much affecting Fanny. She was no longer the absolute sultana of my being. I could think now, as well as adore.
How strange it is that when our minds are needled to a sharp focus mere “things” swarm so close. There was not a single ornament or book or fading photograph in Mrs. Bowater’s parlour that in this queer privacy did not mutely seem to cry, “Yes, here am I. This is how things go.”
I leant forward and looked at him. “We mustn’t care what she sees, what she thinks, if only we can go on loving her.”
“ ‘Can, can’?” echoed Mr. Crimble, “I have prayed on my knees not to.”
This was a sharp ray on my thoughts of love. “But why?” I said. “Even when I was a child, I knew by my mother’s face that I must go on, and should go on, loving her, Mr. Crimble, whether she loved me or not. One can’t make a bad mistake in giving, can one? And yet—well, you must remember that I cannot but have been a—a disappointment; that as long as I live I can’t expect any great affection, any disproportionate one, I mean.”
“But, but,” he stumbled on, “a daughter’s affection—it’s different. I mustn’t brood on my trouble. It unhinges me. Why, the clock stops. But nevertheless may God bless you for that.”
“But surely,” I persisted, smiling as cheerfully as I could, “Nil desperandum, Mr. Crimble. And you know what they say about fish in the sea.”
His eye rolled round on me as if a serpent had spoken. “I am sorry, I am sorry,” he repeated rapidly, in the same low, unemphatic undertone as if to himself. “I must just wait. You have never seen a sheep—a bullock, shall we call him?—being driven to the slaughterhouse. On, on—from despair to despair. That’s my position.” His face was emptied of expression, his eyes fixed.
These words, his air, his look, this awful private thing—I can’t say—it shocked and frightened me beyond words. But I answered him steadily none the less. “Listen, Mr. Crimble,” I said, “look at me, here, what I am. I have had my desperate moments too—more alone in the world than you can ever be! And I swear before God that I will never, never be not myself.” I wonder what the listener thought of this little challenge, not perhaps what Mr. Crimble did.
“Well,” he replied, with sudden calm, “that’s the courage of the martyrs, and not all of them perhaps have been Christians, if history is to be credited. Yes, and in sober truth, I assure you, you, that I would go to the stake for—for Miss Bowater.”
He rose, and in that instant of dignity I foresaw what was never to be—lawn sleeves encasing those loose, black arms. He had somehow wafted me back to my Confirmation.
“And the letter? I have no wish to intrude. But her actual words. I mayn’t see that?”
“You will please forgive me,” I entreated helplessly, “it is buried; because, you see, Fanny—you see, Mrs. Bowater—”
“Ah,” he said. “It is this deception which dismays, scandalizes me most. But you will keep me informed?”
He seized his soft round hat, and it was on this cold word we parted. I stood by the window, with hand stretched out to summon him back. But no word of comfort or hope came to my aid, and I watched him out of sight.
XXI
That night I wrote to Fanny, copying out my letter from the scrawling draft from which I am copying it now:—
“Dear Fanny—I have given Mr. Crimble your message; first, exactly in your own words, though he did not quite hear them, and then, leaving out a little. You may be angry at what I am going to say—but I am quite sure you ought to answer him at once. Fanny, he’s dreadfully fond of you. I never even dreamed people were like that—in such torture for what can’t be, unless you mean you do care, but are too proud to tell him so. If he knows you have no heart for him, he may soon be better. This sounds hateful. But I am not such a pin in a pincushion as not to know that even the greatest sorrows and disappointments wear out. Why, isn’t that beech-tree we sat under a kind of cannibal of its own dead leaves?
“Your private letter is quite safe; though I prefer not to burn it—indeed, cannot burn it. You know how I have
