But Fanny seemed to be shocked at my levity. She peered anxiously into the clear night-glooms around us.
“And what!” I said, still striving to regain command over myself. “What happened then? Oh, Fanny, not a policeman?”
But her memory of what had followed was confused, or perhaps she had no wish to be too exact. All that I could win from her for certain was that after an angry and bitter talk between herself and Mr. Anon, he had simply slammed my door behind him and dared her to do her worst.
“That was pretty brave of him,” I remarked.
“Oh,” said Fanny amiably, “I am not blaming your friend, Midgetina. He seemed to be perfectly competent.”
Yet even now I remained unsatisfied. If Fanny had come secretly to Beechwood, as she had suggested, and had spent the night with a friend, solely to hear the last tidings of Mr. Crimble, what was this other trouble, so desperate that she had lost both her wits and her temper at finding Mr. Anon there? Supposing the house had been empty? My curiosity overcame me, and the none too ingenuous question slipped from my tongue: “Did you want some of the money for mourning, then, Fanny?”
Her dark, pale face, above the black, enveloping cloak, met my look with astonishment.
“Mourning!” she cried, “why, that would be the very—No, not mourning, Midgetina. I owe a little to a friend—and not money only,” she added with peculiar intensity. “Of course, if you have any doubts about lending it—”
“Give, not lend,” said I.
“Yes, but how are we to get at it? I can’t lug that thing about, and you say he has the key. Shall we smash it open?”
The question came so hurriedly that I had no time to consider what, besides money—and of course friendship—could be owed to a friend, and especially to a friend that made her clench her teeth on the word.
“Yes, smash it open,” I nodded. “It’s only a box.”
“But such a pretty little box!”
With knees drawn up, and shivering now after my outburst of merriment, I watched her labours. My beloved chest might keep out moth and rust, it was no match for Fanny. She wound up a large stone in her silk scarf. A few heavy and muffled blows, the lock surrendered, and the starlight dripped in like milk from heaven upon my hoard.
“Why, Midgetina,” whispered Fanny, delicately counting the notes over between her long, white fingers, “you are richer than I supposed—a female Croesus. Wasn’t it a great risk? I mean,” she continued, receiving no answer, “no wonder he was so cautious. And how much may I take?”
It seemed as if an empty space, not of yards but of miles, had suddenly separated us. “All you want,” said I.
“But I didn’t—I didn’t taunt you, now, did I?” she smiled at me, with head inclined to her slim shoulder, as if in mimicry of my ivory Hypnos.
“There was nothing to taunt me about. Mayn’t I have a friend?”
“Why,” she retorted lightly, mechanically recounting the bits of paper, “friend indeed! What about all those Pollackes and Monneries mother’s so full of? You will soon be flitting to quite another sphere. It’s the old friends that then will be left mourning. You won’t sit moon-gazing then, my dear.”
“No, Fanny,” I said stubbornly, “I’ve had enough of that, just for the present.”
“Sst!” she whispered swiftly, raising her head and clasping the notes to her breast beneath her cloak, “what was that?”
We listened. I heard nothing—nothing but sigh of newborn leaf, or falling of dead twig cast off from the parent tree. It was early yet for the nightingale.
“Only the wind,” said she.
“Only the wind,” I echoed scornfully, “or perhaps a weasel.”
She hurriedly divided my savings and thrust my share into my lap. I pushed it in under my arm.
“Good heavens, Midgetina!” she cried, aghast. “You are almost naked. How on earth was I to know?”
I clutched close my dressing-gown and stumbled to my feet, trying in vain to restrain my silly teeth from chattering. “Never mind about me, Fanny,” I muttered. “They don’t waste inquests on changelings.”
“My God!” was her vindictive comment, “how she harps on the word. As if I had nothing else to worry about.” With a contemptuous foot she pushed my empty box under cover of a low-growing yew. Seemingly Wanderslore was fated to entomb one by one all my discarded possessions.
Turning, she stifled a yawn with a sound very like a groan. “Then it’s au revoir, Midgetina. Give me five minutes’ start. … You know I am grateful?”
“Yes, Fanny,” I said obediently, smiling up into her face.
“Won’t you kiss me?” she said. “Tout comprendre, you know, c’est tout pardonner.”
“Why, Fanny,” I replied; “no, thank you. I prefer plain English.”
But scarcely a minute had separated us when I sprang up and pursued her a few paces into the shadows, into which she had disappeared. To forgive all—how piteously easy now that she was gone. She had tried to conceal it, brazen it out, but unutterable wretchedness had lurked in every fold of her cloak, in the accents of her voice, in every fatigued gesture. Her very eyes had shone the more lustrously in the starlight for the dark shadows around them. But understand her—I could not even guess what horrible secret trouble she had been concealing from me. And beyond that, too—a hideous, selfish dread—my guilty mind was haunted by the fear of what she might do in her extremity.
“Fanny, Fanny,” I called falsely into the silence. “Oh, come back! I love you; indeed
