She disapproved of the vast, blank "barn of a place," with its blackshot windows and cold chimneys. The waste and ruination of the garden displeased her so much that I grew a little ashamed of my barbarism.
"It"s all going to wrack and ruin," she exclaimed, snorting at my stone summer-house no less emphatically than she had snorted at Mrs Monnerie.
"Not a walkable walk, nor the trace of a border; and was there ever such a miggle-maggle of weeds! A fine house in its prime, miss, but now, money melting away like b.u.t.ter in the sun."
"But," said I, standing before her in the lovely light amid the dwelling dewdrops, "really and truly, Mrs Bowater, it is only going back to its own again. What you call a miggle-maggle is what these things were made to be. They are growing up now by themselves; and if you could look as close as I can, you"d see they breathe only what each can spare. They are just racing along to live as wildly as they possibly can. It"s the tameness," I expostulated, flinging back my hood, "that would be shocking to _me_."
Mrs Bowater looked down at me, listening to this high-piped recitative with an unusual inquisitiveness.
"Well, that"s as it may be," she retorted, "but what _I"m_ asking is, Where"s the young fellow? He don"t seem to be as punctual as they were when I was a girl."
My own eyes had long been busy, but as yet in vain.
"I did not come particularly to see him," was my airy reply. "Besides, we said no time--_any_ fine day. Shall we sit down?"
With a secretive smile Mrs Bowater spread a square of waterproof sheeting over a flat stone that had fallen out of the coping of the house, unfolded a newspaper over the gra.s.s, and we began our breakfast.
Neither of us betrayed much appet.i.te for it; she, I fancy, having already fortified herself out of her brown teapot before leaving the house, and I because of the odour of india-rubber and newspaper--an odour presently intensified by the moisture and the sun. Paying no heed to my fastidious nibblings, she munched on reflectively, while I grew more and more ill at ease, first because the "young fellow" was almost visibly sinking in my old friend"s esteem, and next because her cloth-booted foot lay within a few inches of the stone beneath which was hidden f.a.n.n.y"s letter.
"It"ll do you good, the sea," she remarked presently, after sweeping yet one more comprehensive glance around her, "and we can only hope Mrs Monnerie will be as good as her word. A spot like this--trespa.s.sing or not--is good for neither man nor beast. And when you are young the more human company you get, with proper supervising, the better."
"Were _you_ happy as a girl, Mrs Bowater?" I inquired after a pause.
Our voices went up and up into the still, mild air. "Happy enough--for my own good," she said, neatly s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up her remaining biscuits in their paper bag. "In my days children were brought up. Taught to make themselves useful. I would as soon have lifted a hand against my mother as answer her back."
"You mean she--she whipped you?"
"If need be," my landlady replied complacently, folding her thread-gloved hands on her lap and contemplating the shiny toecaps of her boots. "She had large hands, my mother; and plenty of temper kept well under control. What"s more, if life isn"t a continual punishment for the stoopidities and wickedness of others, not to mention ourselves, then it must be even a darker story than was ever told me."
"And was, Mrs Bowater, Mr Bowater your--your first----" I looked steadily at a flower at my foot in case she might be affected at so intimate a question, and not wish me to see her face.
"If Mr Bowater was not the first," was her easy response, "he may well live to boast of being the last. Which is neither here nor there, for we may be sure he"s enjoying attentive nursing. Broken bones are soon mended. It"s when things are disjointed from the root that the wrench comes."
The storm-felled bole lay there beside us, as if for picture to her parable. I began to think rather more earnestly than I had intended to that morning. In my present state of conscience, it was never an easy matter to decide whether Mrs Bowater"s comments on life referred openly to things in general or covertly to me in particular. How fortunate that the scent of f.a.n.n.y"s notepaper was not potent enough to escape from its tomb. And whether or not, speech seemed less dangerous than silence.
"It seems to me, Mrs Bowater," I began rather hastily, "at least to judge from my own father and mother, that a man _depends_ very much on a woman. Men don"t seem to grow up in the same way, though I suppose they are practical enough as men."
"If it were one female," was the reply, "there"d be less to be found fault with. That poor young creature over there took her life for no better reason, even though the reason was turned inside out as you may say."
I met the frightful, louring stare of the house. "What was her name?" I whispered--but into nothing, for, bolt upright as she was, Mrs Bowater had shut her eyes, as if in preparation for a nap.
A thread-like tangle of song netted the air. We were, indeed, trespa.s.sers. I darted my glance this way and that, in and out of the pale green whispering shadows in this wild haunt. Then, realizing by some faint stir in my mind that the stiff, still, shut-away figure beside me was only feigning to be asleep, I opened the rain-warped covers of my _Sense and Sensibility_, and began plotting how to be rid of her for a while, so that my solitude might summon my stranger, and I might recover f.a.n.n.y"s letter.
Then once more I knew. Raising my eyes, I looked straight across at him, scowling there beneath his stunted thorn in a drift of flowers like fool"s parsley. He was making signs, too, with his hands. I watched him pensively, in secret amus.e.m.e.nt. Then swifter than Daphne into her laurel, instantaneously _he_ vanished, and _I_ became aware that its black eyes were staring out from the long face of the motionless figure beside me, as might an owl"s into an aviary.
"Did you hear a bird, Mrs Bowater?" I inquired innocently.
"When I was a girl," said the mouth, "sparrowhawks were a common sight, but I never heard one sing."
"But isn"t a sparrowhawk quite a large bird?"
"We must judge," said Mrs Bowater, "not by the size, but the kind.
Elseways, miss, your old friend might have been found sleeping, as they say, at her box." She pretended to yawn, gathered her legs under her, and rose up and up. "I"ll be taking a little walk round. And you shall tell your young acquaintance that I mean him no harm, but that I mean you the reverse; and if show himself he won"t, well, here I sit till the Day of Judgment."
An angry speech curled the tip of my tongue. But the simple-faced flowers were slowly making obeisance to Mrs Bowater"s black, dragging skirts, and when she was nearly out of sight I sallied out to confront my stranger.
His face was black with rage and contempt. "_That_ contaminating scarecrow; who"s she?" was his greeting. "The days I have waited!"
The resentment that had simmered up in me on his behalf now boiled over against him. I looked at him in silence.
"That contaminating scarecrow, as you are pleased to call her, is the best friend I have in the world. I need no other."
"And I," he said harshly, "have no friend in _this_ world, and need you."
"Then," said I, "you have lost your opportunity. Do you suppose I am a child--to be insulted and domineered over only because I am alone?
Possibly," and my lips so trembled that I could hardly frame the words, "it is _your_ face I shall see when I think of those windows."
I was speaking wiselier than I knew. He turned sharply, and by a play of light it seemed that at one of them there stood looking down on us out of the distance a shape that so had watched for ever, leering darkly out of the void. And there awoke in me the sense of this stranger"s extremity of solitude, of his unhappy disguise, of his animal-like patience.
"Why," I said, "Mrs Bowater! You might far rather be _thanking_ her for--for----"
"Curses on her," he choked, turning away. "There was everything to tell you."
"What everything?"
"Call her back now," he muttered furiously.
"That," I said smoothly, "is easily done. But, forgive me, I don"t know your name."
His eyes wandered over the turf beneath me, mounted slowly up, my foot to my head, and looked into mine. In their intense regard I seemed to be but a bubble floating away into the air. I shivered, and turned my back on him, without waiting for an answer. He followed me as quietly as a sheep.
Mrs Bowater had already come sauntering back to our breakfast table, and with gaze impa.s.sively fixed on the horizon, pretended not to be aware of our approach.
I smiled back at my companion as we drew near. "This, Mrs Bowater," said I, "is Mr Anon. Would you please present him to Miss Thomasina of Bedlam?"
For a moment or two they stood facing one another, just as I have seen two insects stand--motionless, regardful, exchanging each other"s presences. Then, after one lightning snap at him from her eye, she rose to my bait like a fish. "A pleasant morning, sir," she remarked affably, though in her Bible voice. "My young lady and I were enjoying the spring air."
Back to memory comes the darkness of a theatre, and Mrs Monnerie breathing and sighing beside me, and there on the limelit green of the stage lolls a.s.s-headed Bottom the Weaver cracking jokes with the Fairies.
My Oberon addressed Mrs Bowater as urbanely as St George must have addressed the Dragon--or any other customary monster.
He seemed to pa.s.s muster, none the less, for she rose, patted her sheet, pushed forward her bonnet on to her rounded temples, and bade him a composed good-morning. She would be awaiting me, she announced, in an hour"s time under my beech tree.
"I think, perhaps, _two_, Mrs Bowater," I said firmly.
She gave me a look--all our long slow evening firelit talks together seemed to be swimming in its smile; and withdrew.
The air eddied into quiet again. The stretched-out blue of the sky was as bland and solitary as if a seraph sat dreaming on its Eastern outskirts. Mr Anon and I seated ourselves three or four feet apart, and I watched the sidelong face, so delicately carved against the green; yet sunken in so sullen a stare.
Standing up on his feet against the background of Mrs Bowater"s ink-black flounces, with his rather humped shoulders and straight hair, he had looked an eccentric, and, even to my view, a stunted figure. Now the whole scene around us seemed to be sorting itself into a different proportion before my eyes. He it was who was become the unit of s.p.a.ce, the yard-stick of the universe. The flowers, their roots glintily netted with spider-webs, nodded serenely over his long hands. A peac.o.c.k b.u.t.terfly with folded colours sipped of the sunshine on a tuft nearly at evens with his cheek. The very birds sang to his size, and every rift between the woodlands awaited the cuckoo. Only his clothes were grotesque, but less so than in my parlour Mr Crimble"s skirts, or even Lady Pollacke"s treacherous bonnet.