Chapter Fifty

I had been dismissed. But Mrs Monnerie's anger had a curious potency.

For a moment I could scarcely see out of my eyes, and the floor swayed under me as I scrambled down from my chair. It took me at least a minute, even with the help of a stool, to open the door.

Like a naughty child I had been put in the corner and then sent to bed.

Good. There could be no going back now. I could count on f.a.n.n.y--the one thing she asked was to be free of me. As for Mrs Monnerie, her flushed and sullen countenance convinced me that my respite would be undisturbed. There was only impulsive Susan to think of. And as if in answer, there came a faint tap, and the door softly opened to admit her gentle head and shoulders.

"Ah, my dear," she whispered across at me. "I'm _so_ sorry; and so helpless. Don't take it too hardly. I have been having my turn, too."

I twisted round, wet face and hands, as I stood stooping over my washbowl on its stool, scrutinized her speechlessly, and shook a dizzy head. The door shut. Dearest Susan: as I think of her I seem to see one of those tiny, tiny "building rotifers" collecting out of reality its exquisite house. Grace, courage, loving-kindness. If I had been the merest Miss Hop-o'-my-Thumb, I should still have been the coa.r.s.est little monster by comparison.

Scarce three safe hours remained to me; I must be off at once. To go looking for Adam was out of the question. Even if I could find him, I dared not risk him. Would it be possible for me to cover my six miles or more across undiscovered country in a hundred and eighty minutes? In my Bowater days, perhaps; but there had been months of idle, fatted, indoor No. 2 in between. A last forlorn dishonest project, banished already more than once from my mind, again thrust itself up--to creep off to the nearest Post Office and with one of my crown pieces for a telegram, cast myself on the generosity of Mr Anon. No, no: I couldn't cheat myself like that.

I was ready. I pinned to the carpet a message for Adam, in case he should dare to be faithful to me--just four scribbled uncompromising words: "The Bird is flown." With eyes fixed on a starry knot of wood at the threshold, I stood for a while, with head bent, listening at my door. I might have been pausing between two worlds. The house was quiet.

No voice cried "Stay." I bowed solemnly to the gentle, silent room behind me, and, with a prayer between my teeth, bundle in hand, stepped out into the future.

Unchallenged, un.o.bserved, I slipped along the blue-carpeted corridor, down the wide stairs and out of the porch. After dodging from tree to tree, from shrub to shrub, along the meandering drive, I turned off, and, skirting the lodge through a seeding forest of weeds and gra.s.ses, squeezed through the railings and was in the lane. From my map of Kent I had traced out a rough little sketch of the route I must follow. With the sun on my left hand I set off almost due north. How still the world was. In that silk-blue sky with its placid, mountainous clouds there was no heed of human doings.

The shoes I had chosen were good sound Bowaters, and as I trudged on my spirits rose high. I breathed in deep draughts of the sweet September air. Thomasina of Bedlam had been "summoned to tourney." "The wide world's end.... No journey!" In sober fact, it was a sorry little wretch of a young female, scarcely more than a girl, that went panting along in the dust and stones, scrambling into cover of ditch and hedge at every sound or sight of life. I look at her now, and smile. Poor thing; it needed at any rate a pinch of "courage."

Cottages came into sight. At an open door I heard the clatter of crockery, and a woman scolding a child. Two gates beyond, motionless as a block of wood, an old, old man stood leaning out of his garden of dahlias and tarnishing golden-rod. In an instant in the dumb dust I was under his nose. His clay pipe shattered on the stone. Like a wagtail I flitted and scampered all in a breath. That little danger was safely over; but it was not ruminating old gentlemen who caused me apprehension. Youthful Adam Waggetts were my dread.

At the foot of the slope there came a stile, and a footpath winding off NW. but still curving in my direction. I hesitated. Any risk seemed better than the hedged-in publicity of this dusty lane. Ducking under the stile, I climbed the hill and presently found myself clambering across an immense hummocky field, part stubble, part fresh plough. Then a meadow and cows. Then once more downhill, a drowsy farm-yard, with its stacks and calves and chickens, to the left, and at bottom of the slope a filthy quagmire where an immense sow wallowed, giving suck to her squalling piglets. Her glinting, amorous eyes took me in. Stone on to stone, I skipped across a brook, dowsing one leg to the thigh in its bubbling water. It was balm in Gilead, for I was in a perfect fume of heat, and my lungs were panting like bellows.

I sat down for a breathing s.p.a.ce on the sunset side of a haystack. In the shade of the hazels, on the verge of the green descending field, rabbits were feeding and playing. And I began to think. Supposing I did reach the new pitch in time: the wreck I should be. Then Mrs Monnerie--and f.a.n.n.y: my thoughts skimmed hastily on. What then? As soon as my showman had paid me I must creep away by myself out of sight _at once_; that was certain. I must tell him that Adam was waiting for me.

And then? Well, after a few hours' rest in some shed or under a haystack, somehow or other I should have to find out the way, and press on to Wanderslore. There'd be a full moon. That would be a comfort. I knew the night. Once safely there, with money in my pocket, I could with a perfectly free conscience ask Mr Anon to find me a lodging, perhaps not very far from his own. A laughable situation. But we would be the best of friends; now that all that--that nonsense was over. A deep sigh, drawn, as it were, from the depths of my bowels, rose up and subsided.

What a strange thing that one must fall in love, couldn't jump into it.

And then? Well, Mrs Bowater would soon be home, and perhaps Sir Walter had circ.u.mvented the Harrises. Suppose not. Well, even at the very worst, at say ten, say even fifteen shillings a week, my thirteen pounds would last me for months and months.... Say _four_.

And as I said "four," a gate clacked-to not many yards distant and a slow footfall sounded. Fortunately for me, the path I had been following skirted the other side of my haystack. Gathering myself close under the hay, I peeped out. A tall, spare man, in a low, peaked cap and leather leggings, came cautiously swinging along. His face was long, lean, severe. His eyes were fixed in a steady gaze as if he were a human automaton stalking on. And the black barrel of a gun sloped down from under his arm. I drew in closer. His footsteps pa.s.sed; died away; the evening breeze blew chill. A few moments afterwards a shattering report came echoing on from wood to wood, seeming to knock on my very breastbone. This was no place for me. With one scared glance at the huddling wood, I took to my heels, nor paused until the path through the spinney became so rutted that I was compelled to pick my way.

A cold gloom had closed in on my mind. I cursed clod-hopping shoes and bundle; envied the dead rabbit that had danced its airy dance and was done. As likely as not, I had already lost my way. And I plodded on along the stony paths, pausing only to quench my thirst with the rough juice of the blackberries that straggled at the wayside. I wonder if the "Knight of Furious Fancies" was as volatile!

But yet another shock was awaiting me. The footpath dipped, there came a hedge and another stile, and I scuffled down the bank into the very lane which I had left more than an hour ago. I knew that white house on the hill; had seen it with Adam under the moon. It stood not much more than a mile from the lodge gates. My short cut had been a detour; and now the sun was down.

I drew back and examined my scribble of map. There was no help for it.

Henceforward I must keep to the road. My thick shoes beat up the dust, one of my heels had blistered, my bundle grew heavier with every step.

But fear had left me. Some other master cracked his whip at me as I shambled on, as doggedly and devil-may-care as a tramp.

I was stooping in the wayside ditch in one more attempt to ease my foot, when once again I heard hoofs approaching. With head pushed between the dusty tussocks, I stared along the flat, white road. A small and seemingly empty cart was bowling along in the dust. As it drew near, my ears began to sing, my heart stood still. I knew that battered cart, that rough-haired, thick-legged pony. Suddenly I craned up in horror, for it seemed that the face peering low over the splashboard in my direction was that of a death's-head, grinning at me out of its gloom.

Then with a cry of joy I was up and out into the road. "Hi, hi!" I screamed up at him.

It was Mr Anon. The pony was reined back on to its haunches; the cart stood still. And my stranger and I were incredulously gazing at one another as if across eternity, as if all the world beside were a dream that asked no awakening.

Half dragged and half lifted into the cart, by what signs I could, for speech was impossible, I bade him turn back. It unmanned me to see the quiet and love in his face. Without a word he wheeled the rearing pony round under the elm-boughs, and for many minutes we swung on together at an ungainly gallop, swaying from this side to that, the astonishment of every wayfarer we met or overtook on our way. At length he turned into a gra.s.s-track under a rusting hedge festooned with woodbine and feathery travellers' joy; and we smiled at one another as if in all history there had never been anything quite so strange as this.

"You are ill," he said. "Oh, my dear, what have they done to you?"

I denied it emphatically, wiping my cheeks and forehead with the hem of my skirt--for my handkerchief was stuffed into my shoe. "Look at me!" I smiled up at him, confident and happy. Was my face lying about me? Oh, I knew what a dreadful object I must be, but then, "I've been tramping for hours and hours in the dust; and why!--haven't you come to meet me; to give me a _lift_?"

What foolish speeches makes a happy heart. Indeed Mr Anon _had_ come to meet me, but not exactly there and then. He fetched out of his pocket the minute note that had summoned him. Here it is, still faintly scented:--

"Mrs Monnerie sends her compliments, and would Miss M.'s friend very kindly call at Monk's House, Croomham, at three o'clock on Friday afternoon. Mrs Monnerie is anxious about Miss M.'s health."

Oh, f.a.n.n.y, f.a.n.n.y! Precisely how far she had taken Mrs Monnerie's name in vain in this letter I have never inquired. And now, I suppose, Mrs Percy Maudlen would not trouble to tell me. But I can vow that in spite of the grime on my face the happiest smile shone through as I stuffed it into my bodice. So this was all that her harrowing "husband" had come to--a summoning of friend to friend. If every little malicious plot ended like this, what a paradise the world would be. All tiredness pa.s.sed away, though perhaps it continued to effervesce in my head a little. It seemed that I had been climbing on and on; and now suddenly the mist had vanished, and mountain and snow lay spread out around me in eternal peace and solitude. If Susan Monnerie's was my first stranger's kiss, Mr Anon's were my quietest tears.

His crazy cart seemed more magical than all the carpets of Arabia. I poured out my story--though not quite to its dregs. "This very afternoon," I told him, "I was writing to you--in my mind. And you see, you have come." The s.h.a.ggy pony tugged at the coa.r.s.e gra.s.s. I could hear the trickling sands in the great hour gla.s.s, and chattered on in vain hope to hold them back.

"You are not listening, only watching," I blamed him.

His lips moved; he glanced away. Yet I had already foreseen the conflict awaiting me. And all his arguments and entreaties that I should throw over the showman, and drive straight on with him into the gathering evening towards Wanderslore, were in vain.

"Look," he said, as if for straw to break the camel's back, and drew out by its ribbon my Bowater latchkey.

"No," said I, "not even that. I sleep out to-night." And surely, surely I kept repeating, he must understand. How could I possibly be at rest with a broken promise? What cared I now for what was past and gone?

Think what a joy, what sheer fun it would be to face Mrs Monnerie for the last time, and she unaware of it! Nothing, nothing could amuse her more when she hears of it. He should come and see; hear the crowd yell.

He mustn't be so solemn about things. "Do try and see the humour of it,"

I besought him.

But the money--that little incentive--I kept to myself.

He stared heavily into the silvery copse that bordered the track.

Motionless in their bright, withering leaves, its trees hung down their ta.s.selled branches beneath the darkening sky. Then, much against his will, he turned his pony towards the high road. The wheel gridded on a stone, he raised his whip.

"Hst!" I whispered, clutching at the arm that held the rein. Crouching low, we watched the great Monnerie carriage, with its stiff-necked, blinkered, stepping greys and gleaming lamps sweep by.

"There," I laughed up at him, lifting myself, one hand upon his knee, "there but for the Grace of G.o.d goes Miss M."

The queer creature frowned into my smiling face and flicked the pony with his whip. "And here," he muttered moodily, "who knows but by the Grace of G.o.d go I?"

Anxiety gone now, and responsibility but a light thing, my tongue rattled on quite as noisily as the cart. Kent's rich cornfields were around us, their stubble a pale washed-out gold in the last light of evening. Here and there on the hills a row or two of ungarnered stooks stood solemnly carved out against the sky. Most of the hop-gardens, too, had been dismantled, though a few we pa.s.sed, with their slow-twirling dusky vistas and labyrinths, were still wreathed with bines. Their scent drifted headily on the stillness. And as with eyes peeping over the edge of the cart I watched these beloved, homelike hills and fields and orchards glide by, I shrilled joyfully at my companion every thought and fancy that came into my head, many of them, no doubt, recent deposits from the library at No. 2.

I told him, I remember, how tired I was of the pernicketiness of my life; and amused him with a description of my Tank. "You would hardly believe it, but I have never once heard the least faint whisper of water in it, and if I had been a nice, simple savage, I dare say I should have prayed to it. Instead of which, when one night I saw a star over the housetop I merely shrugged my shoulders. My mind was so rancid I hated it. I was so shut in; that's what it was."

He stroked the little, thick-coated horse with the lash of his whip, and smiled round at me.

On I went. Shouldn't life be a High Road, didn't he think; surely not a hot, silly zigzag of short cuts leading back to the place you started from, and you too old or stupid, perhaps, to begin again? Didn't he hunger, too, to see the _great_ things of the world, the ruins of Babylon, the Wall of China, the Himalayas, and the Pyramids--at night--black; and sand?

"My ghost!" said I, had he ever thought of the enormous solitudes of the Sahara, or those remote places where gigantic images stare blindly through the centuries at the stars--their builders just a pinch of dust?

Some day, I promised him out of the abandonment of my heart, we would sail away, he and I, to his Pygmy Land. Surf and snow and singing sand-dunes, and fruits on the trees and birds in the air: we would live--"Oh, happy as all this!" (and I swept my hands across hill and dale), "ever, ever afterwards. As they do, Mr Anon, in those absurd, incredible fairy-tales, you know."

He smiled again, cast a look into the distance, touched my hand.

Perhaps he was wishing the while that that piercing, pining voice of mine would keep silence, so that my presence might not disturb his own brooding thoughts. I could only guess at pleasing him. Yet I felt, still feel, that he was glad of my company and never for a moment sorry we had met.