Memoirs of a Midget Part 40

At a quarter to twelve one morning, soon after this, I was sitting with Mrs Monnerie on a stool beneath Chakka's cage, and Susan was just about to leave us--was actually smoothing on the thumb of her glove; when Marvell announced that a Miss Bowater had called. I turned cold all over and held my breath.

"Ah," whispered Mrs Monnerie, "your future Mrs Rochester, my pet."

Every thought scuttled out of my head; my needle jerked and p.r.i.c.ked my thumb. I gazed at the door. Never had I seen anything so untransparent.

Then it opened; and--there was f.a.n.n.y. She was in dark gray--a gown I had never seen before. A tight little hat was set demurely on her hair. In that first moment, she had not noticed me, and I could steal a long, steady look at the still, light, vigilant eyes, drinking in at one steady draught their new surroundings. Her features wore the thinnest, unfamiliar mask, like a flower seen in an artificial light. What wonder I had loved her. My hands went numb, and a sudden fatigue came over me.

Then her quiet, travelling glance descended and hovered in secret colloquy with mine. She dropped me a little smiling, formal nod, moistened her lips, and composed herself for Mrs Monnerie. And it was then I became conscious that Susan had quietly slipped out of the room.

It was a peculiar experience to listen to the catechism that followed.

From the absorption of her att.i.tude, the large, sidelong head, the motionless hands, it was clear that Mrs Monnerie found a good deal to interest her in the dark, attentive figure that stood before her. If f.a.n.n.y had been Joan of Arc, she could not have had a more single-minded reception. Yet I was enjoying a duel: a duel not of wits, but of intuitions, between the sagacious, sardonic, watchful old lady, soaked in knowledge of humanity but, as far as I could discover, with extraordinarily small respect for it, and--f.a.n.n.y. And it seemed to me that f.a.n.n.y easily held her own; just by being herself, without revealing herself. Face, figure, voice; that was all. I could not take my eyes away. If only, I thought, my own ghost would keep as quiet and hidden as that in the presence of others.

Perhaps I exaggerate. Love, living or dying, even if it is not blind, cannot, I suppose, focus objects very precisely. It sees only itself or disillusionment. Whether or not, the duel was interrupted. In the full light of the window, f.a.n.n.y turned softly at the opening of the door.

Marvell was announcing another caller. At his name my heart leapt up like William Wordsworth's at the rainbow. It was Sir Walter Pollacke.

"This is _your_ visitor, Poppet," Mrs Monnerie waggishly a.s.sured me, "you shall have half an hour's _tete-a-tete_."

Chapter Thirty-Nine

So it was with a deep sigh--half of regret at being called away, and all of joy at the thought of seeing my old friend again--that I followed Marvell's coat-tails over the threshold. With a silly, animal-like affection I brushed purposely against f.a.n.n.y's skirts as I pa.s.sed her by; and even smirked in a kind of secret triumph at Percy Maudlen, who happened to be idling on the staircase as I hastened from room to room.

The door of the library closed gently behind me, as if with a breath of peace. I paused--looked across. Sir Walter was standing at the further end of its high, daylit, solemn s.p.a.ciousness. He was deep in contemplation of a white marble bust that graced the lofty chimney-piece--so rapt, indeed, that until I had walked up into the full stream of sunshine from a nearer window and had announced my approach with a cough, he did not notice my entrance. Then he flicked round with an exclamation of welcome.

"My dear, dear young lady," he cried, beaming down on me from between his peaked collar-tips, over his little black bow, the gold rim of his large eye-gla.s.ses pressed to his lip, "a far--far more refreshing sight!

Would you believe it, it was the pleasing little hobby of that oiled and curled monstrosity up there--Heliogabalus--to smother his guests in roses--literally, smother them? Now," and he looked at me quizzically as if through a microscope, "the one question is how have _you_ survived what I imagine must have been a similar ordeal? Not quite at the last gasp, I hope? _Comparatively_ happy? It's all we can hope for, my dear, in this world."

I nodded, hungrily viewing him, meeting as best I could the bright blue eyes, and realizing all in a moment the dark inward of my mind.

Those other eyes began thinking as well as looking. "Well, well, that's right. And now we must have a little quiet talk before his Eminence reappears. So our old friend Mrs Bowater has gone husband-hunting?

Gallant soul: she came to see me."

Squatted up on a crimson leather stool, I must have looked the picture of astonishment.

"Yes," he a.s.sured me, "there are divinities that shape our ends; and Mrs Bowater is one of them. If anything can hasten her husband's recovery---- But never mind that. She has left me in charge. And here I am. The question is, can we have too many trustees, guardians? Perhaps not. Look at the Koh-i-Noor, now."

I much preferred to continue to look at Sir Walter, even though, from the moment I had entered the room, at least five or six voices had begun arguing in my mind. And here, as if positively in answer to them, was his very word--_trustee_. I pounced on it like a wasp on a plum. It was a piece of temerity that saved me from--well, as I sit thinking things over in quiet and leisure in my old Stonecote, the house of my childhood, I don't know what it hasn't saved me from.

"Too many trustees, Sir Walter?" I breathed. "I suppose, not--if they are _honest_."

"But bless me, my dear young lady," his face seemed to be shining like the sun's in mist; "whose heresies are these? Have they given you a French maid?"

"Fleming; oh, no," I replied, laughing out, "she's a Woman of Kent, all _but_. What I was really thinking is, that I would, if I may--and please forgive me--very much like to show you a letter. I simply can't make head or tail of it. But it's dreadfully--suggestive."

"My dear, I came in certain hope of being shown nothing less vital than your heart," he retorted gallantly.

So off I went--with my visitor all encouraging smiles as he opened the door for me--to fetch my lawyer's bombsh.e.l.l.

Gla.s.ses on tip of his small, hawklike nose, Sir Walter's glittering eyes seemed to master this obscure doc.u.ment at one swoop.

"H'm," he said cautiously, and once more communed with the bust of Heliogabalus. "Now what did you think of it all? Was it _worth_ six and eightpence, do you think?"

"I couldn't think. It frightened me. 'The Shares,' you know. Whose Shares? Of what? I'm terribly, terribly ignorant."

"Ah," he echoed, "the Shares--as the blackbird said to the Cherry Tree.

And there was n.o.body, you thought, to discuss the letter with? You didn't answer it?"

"n.o.body," said I, with a shake of my head, and smoothing my silk skirts over my knees.

"Why, of course not," he sparkled. "You see how admirably things work out. Miss Fenne, Mr Pellew, Mrs Bowater, my wife, Tom o' Bedlam, Hypnos, Mrs Monnerie, Mr Bowater, Mrs Bowater, the Harrises, _Me_. 'Pon my word, you'd think it was a plot. Now, supposing I keep this letter--could you trust it with me for a while?--and supposing I see these gentlemen, and make a few inquiries; and that in the meantime--we--we bottle the Cherries? But first, I must have a little more information. Your father, my dear. Let's just unbosom ourselves of all this horrible old money-grubbing, and see exactly how we stand."

I needed no second invitation, and poured out helter-skelter all (how very little, in my girlish folly) that I knew about my father's affairs, and of how I had been "left."

"And Miss Fenne, now?" he peered out, as if at my G.o.dmother herself.

"Why didn't she send word to France? Where is this providential step-grandfather, Monsieur Pierre de Ronvel, all this time? Not dead too?"

Shamefully I had to confess that I did not know; had not even inquired.

"It is my miserable ingrat.i.tude. I just blow hot and cold; that is my nature."

"Well, well, it may be so." He smiled at me, as if out of the distance, with the serenest kindliness. "But you and I are going to share the temperate zone--a cool, steady, Trade Wind."

"If only," I smiled, taking him up on this familiar ground, "if only I could keep clear of the Tropics--and that Sarga.s.so Sea!"

At this little sally he gleamed at me as goldenly as the spade guinea that dangled on his waistcoat. Then he rose and surveyed one by one a row of silent, sumptuous tomes in their glazed retreat: "The Sarga.s.so Sea; h'm, h'm, h'm; and one might suppose," he cast a comprehensive glance at the taciturn shelves around and above us, "one might suppose the tuppenny box would afford some of these a more sociable haven."

But this was Greek to me. "Mrs Monnerie is generous?" he went on, "indulgent? Groundsel, seed, sugar, _and_ a Fleming. Yet perhaps the door might be pushed just an inch or two farther open, eh? What I'm meaning, my dear, is, will you perhaps wait in patience a little? And if anything should go amiss, will you make me a promise to send just a wisp of a word and a penny stamp to an old friend who will be doing his best?

The first lawyer, you know, was a waif that was adopted by a tortoise and a fox. Now _I_'m going to be a mole--with its fur on the bias, as Miss Rossetti happened to notice--and burrow. So you see, all will come well!"

I must have been sitting very straight and awkward on my stool, and not heeding what my face was telling.

"Is there anything else distressing you, my dear?" he asked anxiously, almost timidly.

"Only myself," I muttered. "There doesn't seem to be any end to it all.

I grope on and on, and--the kindness only makes it worse. _Can_ there be a riddle, Sir Walter, that hasn't any answer? I remember reading in a book that was given me that Man 'comes into the world like morning mushrooms.' Don't you think that's true; even, I mean, of--everybody?"

But his views on this subject were not to be shared with me for many a long day. Our half-hour was over; and there stood Mrs Monnerie, mushroom-shaped, it is true, but suggesting nothing of the evanescent, as she looked in on us from the mahogany doorway.

"How d'ye do, Sir Walter," she greeted him. "If it hadn't been for an exceedingly interesting young creature disguised, I understand, as a Miss Bowater, I should have had the happiness of seeing you earlier. And how is our Peri looking, do you think?"

"How is our Peri looking?" he repeated musingly, poising himself, and eyeing me, on his flat, gleaming boots; "why, Mrs Monnerie, as I suppose a Peri _should_ be looking--into Paradise."

"Then, my Peri," said Mrs Monnerie blandly, "ask Sir Walter to be a complete angel, and stay to luncheon."

Mrs Monnerie, I remember, was in an unusually vivacious humour at that meal; and devoured immense quant.i.ties of salmon mayonnaise. One might have supposed that f.a.n.n.y's influence had added a slim crescent of silvery light to her habitual earthshine. None the less, when our guest was gone, she seemed to subside into a shallow dejection; and I into a much deeper. We sate on together in an uneasy silence, she pushing out her lips, restlessly prodding Cherry with her foot, and occasionally uttering some inarticulate sound that was certainly not intended as conversation.