That figure, as nearly like the silver slip of the new moon as ever I have seen, seemed to float in my direction. I held my breath and looked up into the light, dwelling eyes. "It is this," I whispered, drawing my two hands down the bosom of her crimson dressing-jacket. "It is only, Thank you, I wanted to say."
In a flash her lips broke into a low clear laughter. "Why, _that"s_ nothing. Really and truly I hate that kind of work; but mother often wrote of you; there was nothing better to do; and the smallness of the thing amused me."
I nodded humbly. "Yes, yes," I muttered, "Midget is as Midget wears. I know that. And--and here, Miss Bowater, is a little Christmas present from me."
Voraciously I watched her smooth face as she untied the thread. "A little ivory box!" she exclaimed, pushing back the lid, "and a Buddhist temple, how very pretty. Thank you."
"Yes, Miss Bowater, and, do you see, in the corner there? a moon. "She enchants" you."
"So it is," she laughed, closing the box. "I was supposing," she went on solemnly, "that I had been put in the corner in positively everlasting disgrace."
"Please don"t say that," I entreated. "We _may_ be friends, mayn"t we? I am better now."
Her eyes wandered over my bed, my wardrobe, and all my possessions. "But yes," she said, "of course"; and laughed again.
"And you believe me?"
"Believe you?"
"That it was the stars? I thought Mrs Bowater might be anxious if she knew. It was quite, quite safe, really; and I"m _going_ to tell her."
"Oh, dear," she replied in a cold, small voice, "so you are still worrying about that. I--I envied you." With a glance over her shoulder, she leaned closer. "Next time you go," she breathed out to me, "we"ll go together."
My heart gave a furious leap; my lips closed tight. "I could tell you the names of some of the stars now," I said, in a last wrestle with conscience.
"No, no," said f.a.n.n.y Bowater, "it isn"t the stars I"m after. The first fine night we"ll go to the woods. You shall wait for me till everything is quiet. It will be good practise in _practical_ astronomy." She watched my face, and began silently laughing as if she were reading my thoughts. "That"s a bargain, then. What is life, Miss M., but experience? And what is experience, but knowing thyself? And what"s knowing thyself but the very apex of wisdom? Anyhow it"s a good deal more interesting than the Prince of Denmark."
"Yes", I agreed. "And there"s still all but a full moon."
"Aha!" said she. "But _what_ a world with only one! Jupiter has scores, hasn"t he? Just think of _his_ Love Lanes!" She rose to her feet with a sigh of boredom, and smoothed out her skirts with her long, narrow hands. I stared at her beauty in amazement.
"I hate these parties here," she said. "They are not worth while."
"You look lov--you look all right."
"H"m; but what"s that when there"s no one to see."
"But you see yourself. You _live_ in it."
The reflected face in the gla.s.s, which, craning forward, I could just distinguish, knitted its placid brows. "Why, if that were enough, we should all be hermits. I rather think, you know, that G.o.d made man almost solely in the hope of his two-legged appreciation. But perhaps you disapprove of incense?"
"Why should I, Miss Bowater? My Aunt Kitilda was a Catholic: and so was my mother"s family right back."
"_That"s_ right," said Miss Bowater. She kissed her hand to looking-gla.s.s and four-poster, flung me a last fervid smile, and was gone. And the little box I had given her lay on the table, beside my bed.
I was aroused much later by the sound of voices drawing nearer.
Instinctively I sat up, my senses fastened on the sound like a vampire.
The voices seemed to be in argument, then the footsteps ceased and clear on the night air came the words:--
"But you made me promise _not_ to write. Oh, f.a.n.n.y, and you have broken your own!"
"Then you must confess," was the cautious reply, "that I am consistent.
As for the promises, you are quite, quite welcome to the pieces."
"You mean that?" was the m.u.f.fled retort.
"That," cried the other softly, "depends entirely on what you mean by "mean." Please look happy! You"d soon grow old and uglier if there was only that sc.r.a.p of moon to light your face."
"Oh, f.a.n.n.y. Will you never be serious?"--the misery in the words seemed to creep about in my own mind for shelter. They were answered by a sparkling gush of laughter, followed by a crisp, emphatic knock at the door. f.a.n.n.y had returned from her party, and the eavesdropper buried her face in her pillow. So she enjoyed hurting people. And yet....
Chapter Twelve
The next afternoon Mrs Bowater was out when Dr Phelps made his call. It was f.a.n.n.y who ushered him into the room. He felt my pulse again, held up the phial of medicine to the light, left unconsulted my tongue, and p.r.o.nounced that "we are doing very nicely." As indeed I was. While this professional inquiry was in progress f.a.n.n.y stood silently watching us, then exclaimed that it was half-past four, and that I must have my tea.
She was standing behind Dr Phelps, and for a few seconds I watched with extreme interest but slow understanding a series of mute little movements of brows and lips which she was directing at me while he was jotting down a note in a leather pocket-book. At length I found myself repeating--as if at her dictation--a polite little invitation to him to take tea with me. The startled blue eyes lifted themselves above the pocket-book, the square, fair head was bowing a polite refusal, when, "But, of course, Dr Phelps," f.a.n.n.y broke in like one inspired, "how very thoughtless of me!"
"Thank you, thank you, Miss Bowater, but----" cried Dr Phelps, with a smooth uplifted hand, and almost statuesque in his pose. His refusal was too late. Miss Bowater had hastened from the room.
His panic pa.s.sed. He reseated himself, and remarking that it was a very cold afternoon, predicted that if the frost continued, skating might be expected. Conversation of this kind is apt so soon to faint away like a breeze in hot weather, that I kept wondering what to say next. Besides, whenever Dr Phelps seemed impelled to look at me, he far more quickly looked away, and the sound of his voice suggested that he was uncertain if he was not all but talking to himself. To put him more at his ease I inquired boldly if he had many other midgets among his patients.
The long lashes swept his cheeks; he pondered a while on my landlady"s window curtains. "As a matter of fact perhaps _not_," he replied at last, as if giving me the result of a mathematical calculation.
"I suppose, Dr Phelps," I then inquired, "there _might_ be more, at any time, might there not?" Our glances this time met. He blinked.
"My father and mother, I mean," I explained in some confusion, "were just of the com--of the ordinary size. And what I was wondering is, whether you yourself would be sorry--in quite a general way, of course--if you found your practice going down like that."
"Going down?"
"I mean the _patients_ coming smaller. I never had the opportunity of asking our own doctor, Dr Grose. At Lyndsey, you know. Besides, I was a child then. Now, first of all, it is true, isn"t it, that giants are usually rather dull-witted people? So n.o.body would deliberately choose _that_ kind of change. If, then, quality does vary with quant.i.ty, mightn"t there be an improvement in the other direction? You will think I am being extremely ego--egotistical. But one must take Jack"s side, mustn"t one?--even if one"s Jill?"
"Jack?"
"The Giant Killer."
He looked at me curiously, and his finger and thumb once more strayed up towards the waistcoat pocket in which he kept his thermometer. But instead of taking it out, he coughed.
"There is a norm----" he began in a voice not quite his own.
"Ah," I cried, interrupting him, and throwing up my hands, "there is indeed. But why, I ask myself, so vast a number of examples of it!"
It was as if a voice within were prompting me. Perhaps the excitement of f.a.n.n.y"s homecoming was partly to blame. "I sit at my window here and watch the pa.s.sers-by. Norms, in mere size, Dr Phelps, every one of them, if you allow for the few little defects in the--the moulding, you know.
And just think what London must be like. Why, _n.o.body_ can be noticeable, there."
"But surely," Dr Phelps smiled indulgently, though his eyelashes seemed to be in the way, "surely variety is possible, without--er--excess.
Indeed there must be variety in order to arrive at our norm, mustn"t there?"