“What day are you coming home? I look at it, as if it were a lighthouse—even though it is out of sight. Shall we go on with Wuthering Heights when you do come? I saw the ‘dazzling’ moon—but there, Fanny, what I want most to beg of you is to write to Mr. Crimble—all that you feel, even if not all that you think. No, perhaps I mean the reverse. He must have been wondering about you long before I began to. And there it was, all sunken in; no one could have guessed his longing by looking at him. I am afraid it must affect his health.
“And now goodbye. I have made a vow to myself not to think into things too much. Your affectionate friend (as much of her as there is)—
Fanny was prompt in reply:—
“Dear Midgetina—It’s a strange fact, but while, to judge from your letter, you seem to be growing smaller, I (in spite of Miss Stebbings’s water porridge) am growing fatter. Now, which is the tragedy? I may come home on the 30th. If so, kill the fatted calf; I will supply the birthday-cake. How foolish of you to keep letters. I never do, lest I should remember the answers. Anyhow, I shall not write again. But if, by any chance, Mr. Crimble should make another call, will you explain that my chief motive in not singing at the concert was because I should have been a second mezzo-soprano. One of two in one concert must be superfluous. Perhaps I did not explain this clearly; nor did I say how charming I thought my double was.
“I am tired—of overwork. I have finished Wuthering Heights. It is a mad, untrue book. The world is not like Emily Brontë’s conception of it. It is neither dream nor nightmare, Midgetina, but wide, wide awake. And I am convinced that the poets are only cherubs with sugar-sticks to their little rosebud mouths. I abominate whitewash. As for ‘putting people out of their misery,’ and cannibal beech-trees: no, fretful midge! If you could see me sitting here looking down on rows and rows of vacant and hostile faces—though one or two are infatuated enough—you would realize that such a practice would lead me into miscellaneous infanticide.
“Personally, I never did think into things too painfully; though as regards ‘telling,’ the reverse is certainly the wiser course. So you will forgive so short, and perhaps none too sweet, a letter from your affec.—F.”
Enclosed with this was a narrow slip of paper:—
“I shall not write to you know who. Think, if you like, but don’t feel like a microscope. He is only in love. And however punctilious your own practice may be, pray, Miss M., do not preach—at any rate to your affecte. but unregenerate friend.—F.”
I believe I drafted and destroyed three answers to this letter. It broke down my defences far more easily than had the errand boys. It shamed me for a prig, a false friend, a sentimentalist. And the “fretful midge” rankled like salt in a wounded heart. Yet Fanny was faithless even to her postscript. A sheaf of narcissuses hooded in blue tissue paper was left at the house a day or two afterwards. It was accompanied by Mr. Crimble’s card in a little envelope tied in with the stalks:—
“I am given a ray of hope.”
Mrs. Bowater had laid this offering on my table with a peculiar grimace, whether scornful or humorous, it was impossible to detect. “From Mr. Crimble, miss. Why, one might think he had two irons in the fire!”
I sat gazing at this thank-offering long after she had gone—the waxy wings, the crimson-rimmed corona, the pale-green cluster of pistil and stamen. The heavy perfume stole over my senses, bringing only weariness and self-distaste to my mind. Fly that I was, caught in a web—once more I began a letter to Fanny, imploring her to write to her mother, to tell her everything. But that letter, too, was torn up into tiny pieces and burnt in the fire.
Next morning, heavily laden with my parasol, a biscuit or two in my bag, my Sense and Sensibility and a rug in my arms, I set off very early for Wanderslore, having arranged with Mrs. Bowater over night that she should meet me under my beech at a quarter to one.
Under the flat, bud-pointed branches, I pressed on between clusters of primrose, celandine, and wild wood anemone, breathing in the earthy freshness of grass and moss. And presently I came out between the stones and jutting roots in sight of the vacant windows. I stood for a moment confronting their black regard, then descended the knoll and was soon making myself comfortable beside the garden house. But first I managed to clamber up on a fragment of the fallen masonry and peep in at its low windows. A few dead, last-year’s flies lay dry on their backs; dusty, derelict spiderwebs; a litter of straw, and a few potsherds—the place was empty. But it was mine, and the very remembrance of which it whispered to me—the picture of my poor father’s bedroom that night of the storm—only increased my sense of possession.
What was wrong with me just then, what I had sallied out in hope to be delivered from, was the unhappy conviction that my life was worthless, and I of no use in the world. I had taught myself to make knots in strings, but actual experience seemed to have proved that most human fumblings resulted only in “grannies” and not in the true lover’s variety. They
