"Fretting out the why's and wherefore's," came the response, m.u.f.fled by a handkerchief pressed close to her mouth.

"And--_this_ 'why'?" I whispered, stooping low.

"That's between him and his Maker," said the voice. "The poor young man had set his heart on we know where. As we make our bed so we must lie on it, miss. It's for n.o.body to judge: though it may be a lesson."

"Oh, Mrs Bowater, then you knew I knew."

"No, no. Not _your_ lesson, miss. I didn't mean that. It's not for you to fret yourself, though I must say---- I have always made it a habit, though without prying, please G.o.d, to be aware of more than interference could set right. f.a.n.n.y and I have talked the affair over till we couldn't look in each other's faces for fear of what we might say. But she's _Mr_ Bowater's child, through and through, and my firm hand was not firm enough, maybe. You did what you could. It's not in human conscience to ask more than the natural frame can bear."

Did what I could.... I cowered, staring at my knuckles, and it seemed that a little concourse of strangers, heads close together, were talking in my mind. My eyes were dry; I think the spectre of a smile had dragged up my lips. Mrs Bowater raised herself in her bed, and peered over at me.

"It's the letters," she whispered at me. "If he hasn't destroyed them, they'll be read to the whole parish."

I crouched lower. "You'll be thankful to be rid of me. I shall be thankful to be rid of myself, Mrs Bowater."

She thrust a long, skinny arm clean out of the bed. "Come away, there; come away," she cried.

"Oh," I said, "take me away, take me away. I can't bear it, Mrs Bowater.

I don't _want_ to be alive."

"There, miss, rest now, and think no more." She smoothed my hair, clucked a little low, whistling tune, as if for lullaby. "Why, there now," she muttered sardonically, "you might almost suppose I had been a mother myself!"

There was silence between us for a while, then, quietly raising herself, she looked down at me on the pillow, and, finding me to be still awake, a long smile spread over her face: "Why, we don't seem neither of us to be much good at daytime sleeping."

Chapter Thirty-One

A morning or two afterwards we set out on our homeward journey--the sea curdling softly into foam on its stones, a solitary ship in the distance on its dim, blue horizon. We were a dejected pair of travellers, keeping each a solemn face turned aside at the window, thinking our thoughts, and avoiding, as far as we could, any interchange of looks that might betray them one to the other. For the first time in our friendship Mrs Bowater was a little short and impatient with me over difficulties and inconveniences which I could not avoid, owing to my size.

Her key in the lock of the door, she looked down on me in the porch, a thin smile between nose and cheek. "No place like home there mayn't be, miss," she began, "but----" The dark pa.s.sage was certainly uninviting; the clock had stopped. "I think I'll be calling round for Henry," she added abruptly.

I entered the stagnant room, ran up my stairs, my heart with me--and paused. Not merely my own ghost was there to meet me; but a past that seemed to mutter, Never again, never again, from every object on shelf and wall. Yet a faint, sweet, unfamiliar odour lay on the chilly air. I drew aside the curtain and looked in. Fading on the coverlet of my bed lay a few limp violets, ivory white and faintly rosy.

I was alone in the house, concealed now even from Mr Bowater's frigid stare. Yet at sight of these flowers a slight vertigo came over me, and I had to sit on my bed for a moment to recover myself.

Then I knelt down, my heart knocking against my side, and dragged from out its hiding-place the box in which I kept my money. Gritty with the undisturbed dust of our absence, it was locked. I drew back, my hand on my mouth. What could be the meaning of this? My stranger had come and gone. Had he been so stupidly punctilious that, having taken out the twenty pounds, he had relocked an almost empty box?

Or had he, at the last moment...? This riddle distressed me so much that instantly I was seized with a violent headache. But nothing could be done for the present. I laid by the violets in a drawer, pushed back the box, and, making as good a pretence at eating my supper as I could, prepared for the night.

One by one the clocks in hall and kitchen struck out the hours, and, the wind being in the East, borne on it came the chimes of St Peter's.

Automatically I counted the strokes, turning this way and that, as if my life depended on this foolish arithmetic, yet ready, like Job, to curse the day I was born. What had my existence been but a blind futility, my thought for others but a mask of egotism and selfishness? Yet, in all this turmoil of mind, I must have slept, for suddenly I found myself stiff, drawn-up, and wideawake--listening to a cautious, reiterated tapping against my window-pane. A tallow night-light burned beside me in a saucer of water. For the first time in my life--at least since childhood--I had been afraid to face the dark. Why, I know not; but I at once leapt out of bed and blew out that light. The night was moonless, but high and starry. I peered through the curtains, and a shrouded figure became visible in the garden--f.a.n.n.y's.

Curtain withdrawn, we looked each at each through the cold, dividing gla.s.s in the gloom--her eyes, in the night-spread pallor of her skin, as if congealed. The dark lips, with an exaggerated attempt at articulation, murmured words, but I could catch no meaning. The face looked almost idiotic in these contortions. I shuddered, shook my head violently. She drew back.

Terrified that she would be gone--in my dressing-gown and slippers I groped my way across the room and was soon, with my door open, in the night air. She had heard me, and with a beckon of her finger, turned as if to lead me on.

"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 bra.s.s-bound 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 collar-bone till I thought it must snap. Thus laden, I staggered cautiously down the staircase, pushed slowly across the room, and, so, out into the pa.s.sage and towards the rounded and dusky oblong of the open door.

On the threshold f.a.n.n.y 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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, f.a.n.n.y seated herself upon a jutting root, and I stood panting before her.

"Well?" she said, with a light, desolate laugh.

"Oh, f.a.n.n.y, 'well'!" I cried.

"Can't you trust me?"

"Trust you?"

"Oh, oh, mocking-bird!--with all these riches?"

I cast a glance up into the leafy branches, and seated myself opposite to her.

"f.a.n.n.y, f.a.n.n.y. 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,' f.a.n.n.y!" 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, f.a.n.n.y? 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, f.a.n.n.y!"

"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 a.s.sure 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 dog-fight 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."