Indeed the “high tea” Mrs. Bowater presided over that afternoon, sitting above her cups and saucers just like a clergyman, is one of the gayest memories of my life. And yet—she had left the room for a moment to fetch something from the kitchen, and as, in a self-conscious hush, Mr. Anon and I sat alone together, I caught a glimpse of her on her return pausing in the doorway, her capped head almost touching the lintel—and looking in on us with a quizzical, benign, foolish expression on her face, like that of a grownup peeping into a child’s dolls’ house. So swirling a gust of hatred and disillusionment swept over me at sight of her, that for some little while I dared not raise my eyes and look at Mr. Anon. All affection and gratitude fled away. Miss M. was once more an Ishmael!
Lyme Regis
XXIX
Out of a cab from a livery stable Mrs. Bowater and I alighted at our London terminus next morning, to find positively awaiting us beside the wooden platform a first-class railway carriage—a palatial apartment. Swept and garnished, padded and varnished—a miracle of wealth! At this very moment I seem to be looking up in awe at the orange-rimmed (I think it was orange) label stuck on the glass whose inscription I afterwards spelled out backwards from within: “Mrs. Bywater and Party.” As soon as we and our luggage were safely settled, an extremely polite and fatherly guard locked the door on us. At this Mrs. Bowater was a little troubled by the thought of how we should fare in the event of an accident. But he reassured her.
“Never fear, ma’am: accidents are strictly forbidden on this line. Besides which,” he added, with a solemn, turtle-like stare, “if I turn the key on the young lady, none of them young a-ogling Don Jooans can force their way in. Strict orders, ma’am.”
To make assurance doubly sure, Mrs. Bowater pulled down the blinds at every stopping-place. We admired the scenery. We read the warning against pickpockets, and I translated it out of the French. After examining the enormous hotels depicted in the advertisements, we agreed there was nothing like home comforts. Mrs. Bowater continued to lose and find in turn our tickets, her purse, her spectacle-case, her cambric pocket-handkerchief, not to mention a mysterious little screw of paper, containing lozenges I think. She scrutinized our luxury with grim determination. And we giggled like two schoolgirls as we peeped together through the crevices of the blinded windows at the rich, furry passengers who ever and again hurried along, casting angry glances at our shrouded windows.
It being so early in the year—but how mild and sweet a day—there were few occupants of the coach at Axminster. As I had once made a (frequently broken) vow to do at once what scared me, I asked to be perched up on the box beside the lean, brick-faced driver. Thus giddily exalted above his three cantering roan horses, we bowled merrily along. With his whip he pointed out to me every “object of interest” as it went floating by—church and inn, farm and mansion.
“Them’s peewits,” he would bawl. “And that’s the selfsame cottage where lived the little old ’ooman what lived in a shoe.” He stooped over me, reins in fist, with his seamed red face and fiery little eye, as if I were a small child home for the holidays. Evening sunlight on the hilltops and shadowy in the valleys. And presently the three stepping horses—vapour jetting from their nostrils, their sides panting like bellows—dragged the coach up a hill steeper than ever. “And that there,” said the driver, as we surmounted the crest—and as if for emphasis he gave a prodigious tug at an iron bar beside him, “that there’s the Sea.”
The Sea. Flat, bow-shaped, hazed, remote, and of a blue stilling my eyes as with a dream—I verily believe the saltest tears I ever shed in my life smarted on my lids as the spirit in me fled away, to be alone with that far loveliness. A desire almost beyond endurance devoured me. “Yes,” cried hidden self to self, “I can never, never love him; but he shall take me away—away—away. Oh, how I have wasted my days, sick for home.”
But small opportunity was given me for these sentimental reflections. Nearly at the foot of even another hill, and one so precipitous that during its rattling descent I had to cling like a spider to the driver’s strap, we came to a standstill; and in face of a gaping knot of strangers I was lifted down—with a “There! Miss Nantuckety,” from the driver—from my perch to the pavement.
The lodgings Mrs. Monnerie had taken for us proved to be the sea rooms in a small, white, bow-windowed house on the front, commanding the fishing-boats, the harbour, and the stone Cobb. I tasted my lips, snuffed softly with my nose, stole a look over the Bay, and glanced at Mrs. Bowater. Was she, too, half-demented with this peculiar and ravishing experience? I began to shiver; but not with cold, with delight. Face creased up in a smile (the wind had stiffened the skin), cheeks tingling, and ravenously hungry, I watched the ceremonious civilities that were passing between landlady and landlady: Mrs. Bowater angular and spare; Mrs. Petrie round, dumpy, smooth, and a little bald. My friend Mrs. Monnerie was evidently a lady whose lightest word was Sesame. Every delicacy and luxury that Lyme out of its natural resources can have squandered on King George III was ours without the asking.
Mrs. Bowater, it is true, at our sea-fish breakfast next morning, referred in the first place to the smell of drains; next to fleas; and last
