“No, no,” I signalled, “I have no key.” With a gesture, she drew close, stooped, and we talked there together, muttering in the porch.
“Midgetina,” she whispered, smiling bleakly, “it’s this wretched money. I must explain. I’m at my wit’s end—in awful trouble—without it.”
Huddled close, I wasted no time in asking questions. She must come in. But this she flatly refused to do. Yet money, money was her one cry: and that she must have before she saw her mother again. Not daring to tell her that I was in doubt whether or not my savings were still in my possession, I pushed her hand away as she knelt before me on the uppermost step. “I must fetch it,” I said.
By good fortune my money-box was not the weightiest of my grandfather’s French trunks—not the brassbound friend-in-need of my younger days, and it contained little but paper. I hoisted it on to my bed, and, as I had lately seen the porters do at the railway station, contrived to push under it and raise it on to my shoulder. Its edge drove in on my collarbone till I thought it must snap. Thus laden, I staggered cautiously down the staircase, pushed slowly across the room, and, so, out into the passage and towards the rounded and dusky oblong of the open door.
On the threshold Fanny met me, gasping under this burden, and at sight of me some blessed spirit within her seemed to give her pause. “No, no,” she muttered, and drew back as if suddenly ashamed of her errand. On I came, however, and prudence prevailed. With a sound that might have been sigh or sob she snatched the load from me and gathered it in, as best she could, under her cloak.
“Oh, Midgetina!” she whispered meaninglessly. “Now we must talk.” And having wedged back the catch of my door, we moved quickly and cautiously in the direction of Wanderslore.
We climbed on up the quiet hill. The cool, fragrant, night seemed to be luring us on and on, to swallow us up. Yet, there shone the customary stars; there, indeed, to my amazement, as if the heavenly clock of the universe had set back its hands on my behalf, straddled the constellation of Orion.
Come to our beech-tree, now a vast indistinguishable tent of whispering, silky leaves, Fanny seated herself upon a jutting root, and I stood panting before her.
“Well?” she said, with a light, desolate laugh.
“Oh, Fanny, ‘well’!” I cried.
“Can’t you trust me?”
“Trust you?”
“Oh, oh, mockingbird!—with all these riches?”
I cast a glance up into the leafy branches, and seated myself opposite to her.
“Fanny, Fanny. Have you heard?”
“ ‘Heard,’ she says!” It was her turn to play the parrot. “What am I here for, but to hear more? But never mind; that’s all over. Has mother—”
“ ‘All over,’ Fanny!” I interrupted her. “All over? But, the letters?”
“What letters?” She stared at me, and added, looking away, “Oh, mine?” She gave out the word with a long, inexhaustible sigh. “That was all right. He did not hide, he burned. … Neither to nor from; not even to his mother. Every paper destroyed. I envy her feelings! He just gave up, went out, Exit. I envy that, too.”
“Not even to you, Fanny? Not a word even to you?”
The figure before me crouched a little closer together. “They said,” was her evasive reply, “that there is melancholia in the family.”
I think the word frightened me even more than its meaning. “Melancholia,” I repeated the melodious syllables. “Oh, Fanny!”
“Listen, Midgetina,” her voice broke out coldly. “I can guess easily enough what’s saving up for me when I come home—which won’t be yet a while, I can assure you. I can guess, too, what your friends, Lady Pollacke and Co., are saying about me. Let them rave. That can’t be helped. I shall bear it, and try to grin. Maybe there would be worse still, if worse were known. But your worse I won’t have, not even from you. I was not his keeper. I did not play him false. I deny it. Could I prevent him—caring for me? Was he man enough to come openly? Did he say to his mother, ‘Take her or leave her, I mean to have her’—as I would have done? No, he blew hot and cold. He temporized; he—he was a coward. Oh, this everlasting dogfight between body and mind! Ages before you ever crept upon the scene he pestered and pestered me—until I have almost retched at the sound of church bells. What was it, I ask you, but sheer dread of what the man might go and do that kept me shilly-shallying? And what’s more, Miss Wren, who told me to throw the stone? Pff, it sickens me, this paltering world. I can’t and won’t see things but with my reason. My reason, I tell you. What else is a schoolma’am for? Did he want me for my sake? Who begged and begged that his beautiful love should be kept secret? There was once a philosopher called Plato, my dear. He poisoned Man’s soul.”
Flesh and spirit, Fanny must have been very tired. Her voice fluttered on like a ragged flag.
“But listen, listen!” I entreated her. “I haven’t blamed you for that, Fanny. I swear it. I mean, you can’t help not loving. I know that. But perhaps if only we had—It’s a dreadful thing to think of him sitting there alone—the vestry—and then looking up ‘with a smile.’ Oh, Fanny, with a smile! I dare hardly go into his mind—and the verger looking in. I think of him all day.”
“And I all night,” came the reply, barked out in the gloom. “Wasn’t the man a Christian, then?”
“Fanny,” I covered my eyes. “Don’t say that. We shall both of us just suffocate in the bog if you won’t even let yourself listen to what you are saying.”
“Well,” she said doggedly, “be sure you shall suffocate last, Miss Midge. There’s ample perch-room for you on Fanny’s shoulder.” I felt, rather
