Parcel, reticule, umbrella--she bent over me with closed eyes, and muttered shamefacedly that she had remembered me in her Will, "and may G.o.d bless you, miss, I'm sure."

I clutched the gloved hand in a sudden helpless paroxysm of grief and foreboding. "Oh, Mrs Bowater, you forgive----" I choked, and still no words would come.

She was gone, past recall; and all the love and grat.i.tude and remorse I had longed to express flooded up in me. Yet, stuck up there in my chair, my chief apprehension had been that Fleming might come in again, and cast yet another veiled, sneering glance at my visitor.

Peering between the gilded bal.u.s.ters, I watched my old friend droop away stiffly down the mild, l.u.s.trous staircase, bow to the man who opened the door for her, and emerge into the sunny emptiness.

Maybe the thought had drifted across her mind that I had indeed been dipped in the dye-pot. But now--these many years afterwards--there is no more risk of misunderstanding. It is eight o'clock; the light is fading.

Chizzel Hill glows green. I hear her feebling step on the stairs. She will peer at me over spectacles that now always straddle her nose. I must put my pen and papers away; and I, too, have made my Will.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Mrs Bowater's departure from England--and it seemed as if its very map in my mind had become dismally empty--was not my only anxiety. My solicitors had hitherto been prompt; their remittances almost monotonously identical in amount. But my quarterly allowance on Midsummer Day, had been followed by a letter a week or two after her good-bye. It seemed to be in excellent English, and yet it was all but unintelligible to me. Every re-reading of it--the paper had apparently been dipped in water and dried--increased its obscurity and my alarm. I knew nothing about money matters, and the encyclopaedia I consulted only made me more dejected and confused. I remembered with remorse my poor father's last troubles. To answer the Harrises was impossible, and further study of their letter soon became unnecessary, for I had learned it by heart.

The one thing certain was that f.a.n.n.y's wolf had begun scratching at my door: that my income was in imminent danger. I had long since squandered the greater part of what remained out of my savings (after f.a.n.n.y had helped herself) on presents and fal-lals; merely, I am afraid, to show Mrs Monnerie that I, too, could be extravagant. How much I owed her I could not even conjecture, and had not dared to inquire. To ask her counsel was equally impossible. She was almost as remote from me in this respect as Mrs Bowater, now in the centre of the Atlantic. As for f.a.n.n.y, I had returned her postal orders and had heard no more.

For days and days gloom hung over me like a thundercloud. Wherever I went I was followed by the spectres of the Harrises. Then, for a time, as do all things, foreboding and anxiety gradually faded off. I plunged back into the cream-bowl with the deliberate intention of drowning trouble.

Meanwhile, I had not forgotten f.a.n.n.y's "sinecure." One mackerel-skied afternoon, Mrs Monnerie and I and Susan were returning across the Park from an "At Home"--"to meet Miss M." A small child of the house had richly entertained the company by howling with terror at sight of me, until he had been removed by his nurse. I bear him no grudge; he made a peg on which to hang f.a.n.n.y's proposal.

"And what can Miss Bowater do? What are her qualifications?" Mrs Monnerie inquired pleasantly.

"She is--dark and--pale," I replied, staring a little giddily out of the carriage at the sheep munching their way over the London gra.s.s.

"Dark and pale?" mused Mrs Monnerie. "Well, that goes nearer the bone, perhaps, than medals and certificates and that sort of thing. Still, a rather Jane Eyreish kind of governess, eh, Susan?"

Unfortunately I was acquainted with only one of the Miss Brontes, and that not Charlotte.

"Miss Bowater is immensely _clever_, Mrs Monnerie," I hurried on, "and extremely popular with--with the other mistresses, and that sort of thing. She's not a bit what you might guess from what you might suppose."

"Which means, I gather," commented Mrs Monnerie affably, "that Miss Bowater is the typical landlady's daughter. A perfect angel in--or out of--the house, eh, Miss Innocent?"

"No," said I, "I don't think Miss Bowater is an angel. She is so interesting, so _herselfish_, you know. She simply couldn't be happy at Miss Stebbings's--the school where she's teaching now. It's not salary, Mrs Monnerie, she is thinking of--just two nice children and their mother, that's all."

This vindication of f.a.n.n.y left me uncomfortably hot; I continued to gaze fixedly into the green distances of the park.

Yet all was well. Mrs Monnerie appeared to be satisfied with my testimonial. "You shall give me her address, little Binbin; and we'll have a look at the young lady," she decided.

Yet I was none too happy at my success. Those familiar old friends of mine--motives--began worrying me. Would the change be really good for f.a.n.n.y? Would it--and I had better confess that this troubled me the most--would it be really good for me? I wanted to help her; I wanted also to show her off. And what a joy it would be if she should change into the f.a.n.n.y of my dreams. On the other hand, supposing she didn't On the whole, I rather dreaded the thought of her appearance at No. 2.

Susan followed me into my room. "Who _is_ this Miss Bowater?" she inquired, "besides, I mean, being your landlady's daughter, and that kind of thing?"

But my further little confidences failed to satisfy her.

"But why is she so _not_ an angel, then? Clever and lovely--it's a rather unusual combination, you know. And yet"--she reflectively smiled at me, all candour and gentleness--"well not unique."

I ran away as fast as ever I could with so endearing a compliment--and tossed it back again over my shoulder: "You don't mean, Susan, that _you_ are not clever?"

"I do, my dear; indeed I do. I am so stupid that unless things are as plain and open as the nose on my face, I feel like suffocating. I'm dreadfully out of the fashion--a horrible discredit to my s.e.x. As for Miss Bowater, I was merely being odious, that was all. To be quite honest and hateful--I didn't like the sound of her. And Aunt Alice is so easily carried away by any new scent. If a thing's a novelty, or just good to look at, or what they call a work of art--why, the hunt's up.

There wouldn't have been any use for the Serpent in _her_ Eden. Mere things, of course, don't matter much: except that they rather lumber up one's rooms; and I prefer not to live in a museum. It's when it comes to persons. Still, it isn't as if Miss Bowater was coming here."

I remained silent, thinking this speech over. Had it, I speculated, "come to" being a "person" in my own case?

"Did you meet any other interesting people there?" Miss Monnerie went on, as if casually, turning off and on the while the little cl.u.s.ter of coloured electric globes that was on my table. "I mean besides Miss Bowater and that poor, dreadful--you know?"

"No," I said bluntly, "not many."

"You don't mind my asking these questions? And just in exchange, you solemn thing, I'll tell _you_ a secret. It will be like shutting it up in the delightfullest, delicatest little rosebud of a box!" In that instant's pause, it was as if a dream had pa.s.sed swiftly, entrancingly, across the grave, smiling face.

"Look!" she said, stooping low, and laying her slim left hand, palm downwards, across my table. I did look; and the first thing I noticed was how like herself that hand was, and how much less vigorous and formidable than f.a.n.n.y's. And then I caught her meaning.

"Oh, Susan," I cried in a woeful voice, gazing at the smouldering stones ringing that long slim third finger, "wherever I turn, I hear that."

"Hear what?"

"Why, of love, I mean."

"But why, why?" the narrow brows lifted in faint distress, "I am going to be ever so happy."

"Ah, yes, I know, I know. But why can't you be happy alone?"

She looked at me, and a faint red dusked the delicate cheek. "Not _so_ happy. Not _me_, I mean."

"You do love him, then?" the words jerked out.

"Why, you strange thing, how curiously you speak to me. Of course I love him. I am going to marry him."

"But how do you know?" I persisted. "Does it mean more to you--well--than the secret of everything? I mean, what comes when one is almost nothing? Does it make you more yourself? or just break you in two? or melt you away?--oh, like a mist that is gone, and to every petal and blade of gra.s.s its drop of burning water?"

A shade of dismay, almost of fear--the look a timid animal gives when startled--stole into her eyes. "You ask such odd questions! How can I answer them? I know this--I would rather die than _not_. Is that what you mean?"

"Oh," my voice fainted away--disappointment, darkness, ennui; "only that!"

"But what do you mean? What are you saying? Have you been told all this?

It disturbs me; your face is like----"

"Yes! what is it like?" I cried in distress, myself sinking back into myself, as if hiding in a lair.

"I can't say," she faltered. "I didn't know...."

We talked on. But though I tried to blur over and withdraw what I had said, she remained dissatisfied. A thin edge of formality had for the moment pushed in between us.

That night I addressed a belated letter to Wanderslore, reproaching Mr Anon for not writing to me, telling him of Mrs Bowater's voyage, and begging him to a.s.sure the garden-house and the fading summer flowers that they had not been deserted in my dreams.