He raised himself in his chair, his spectacles still fixed on me; as if some foul insect had erected its blunt head at him.
“Then you are against her too,” he uttered, under his breath. “I might have known it, I might have known it. I am a lost man.”
It was pitiful. “Lost fiddlesticks!” I snapped back at him, with bared teeth. “I wouldn’t—I’ve never harmed a fly. Who, I should like to know, came to my help when … ?” But I choked down the words. Silence fell between us. The idiot clock chimed five. He turned his face away to conceal the aversion that had suddenly overwhelmed him at sight of me.
“I see,” he said, in a hollow, low voice, with his old wooden, artificial dignity. “There’s nothing more to say. I can only thank you, and be gone. I had not realized. You misjudge her. You haven’t the—How could it be expected? But there! thinking’s impossible.”
How often had I seen my poor father in his last heavy days draw his hand across his eyes like that? Already my fickle mind was struggling to find words with which to retract, to explain away that venomous outbreak. But I let him go. The stooping, hatted figure hastened past my window; and I was never to see him again.
XXVIII
Yet, in spite of misgivings, no very dark foreboding companioned me that evening. With infinite labour I concocted two letters:—
“Dear Mr. Crimble—I regret my words this afternoon. Bitterly. Indeed I do. But still truth is important, isn’t it? One we know hasn’t been too kind to either of us. I still say that. And if it seems inconsiderate, please remember Shakespeare’s lines about the beetle (which I came across in a Birthday Book the other day)—a creature I detest. Besides, we can return good for evil—I can’t help this sounding like hypocrisy—even though it is an extremely tiring exchange. I feel small enough just now, but would do anything in the world that would help in the way we both want. I hope that you will believe this and that you will forgive my miserable tongue. Believe me, ever yours sincerely—M. M.”
My second letter was addressed to Fanny’s school, “℅ Miss Stebbings”:—
“Dear Fanny—He came again today and looks like a corpse. I can do no more. You must know how utterly miserable you are making him; that I can’t, and won’t, go on being so doublefaced. I don’t call that being the good Samaritan. Throw the stone one way or the other, however many birds it may kill. That’s the bravest thing to do. A horrid boy I knew as a child once aimed at a jay and killed—a wren. Well, there’s only one wren that I know of—your M.
“P.S.—I hope this doesn’t sound an angry letter. I thought only the other day how difficult it must be being as fascinating as you are. And, of course, we are what we are, aren’t we, and cannot, I suppose, help acting like that? You can’t think how he looked, and talked. Besides, I am sure you will enjoy your holiday much more when you have made up your mind. Oh, Fanny, I can’t say what’s in mine. Every day there’s something else to dread. And all that I do seems only to make things worse. Do write: and, though, of course, it isn’t my affair, do have a ‘sagacious’ holiday, too.”
Mrs. Bowater almost squinted at my two small envelopes when she licked the stamps for me. “We can only hope,” was her one remark, “that when the secrets of all hearts are opened, they’ll excuse some of the letters we reach ourselves to write.” But I did not ask her to explain.
Lyme Regis was but a few days distant when, not for the first time since our meeting at Mrs. Bowater’s gatepost, I set off to meet Mr. Anon—this time to share with him my wonderful news. When showers drifted across the sun-shafted sky we took refuge under the shelter of the garden-house. As soon as the hot beams set the raindrops smouldering, so that every bush was hung with coloured lights, we returned to my smoking stone. And we watched a rainbow arch and fade in the windy blue.
He was gloomy at first; grudged me, I think, every moment that was to be mine at Lyme Regis. So I tempted him into talking about the books he had read; and about his childhood—far from as happy as mine. It hurt me to hear him speak of his mother. Then I asked him small questions about that wonderful country he had told me of, which, whether it had any real existence or not, filled me with delight as he painted it in his imagination. He was doing his best to keep his word to me, and I to keep our talk from becoming personal.
If I would trust myself to him, friend to friend—he suddenly broke out in a thick, low voice, when I least expected it—the whole world was open to us; and he knew the way.
“What way?” said I. “And how about poor Mrs. Bowater? How strange you are. Where do you live? May I know?”
There was an old farmhouse, he told me, on the other side of the park, and near it a few cottages—at the far end of Loose Lane. He lodged in one of these. Against my wiser inclinations he persuaded me to set off thither at once and see the farm for myself.
On the further side of
