I turned towards the shape by the fire, and without her perceiving it, wafted kiss and prayer in her direction. Cold, careless f.a.n.n.y--further than Ura.n.u.s. We were alone, for at first stroke of St Peter"s Mrs Bowater had left the room and had opened the front door. She was smiling; but _was_ she smiling, or was that vague bewitchingness in her face merely an unmeaning guile of which she was unaware? It might have been a mermaid sitting there in the firelight.
The bells broke in on our stillness; and fortunately, since there was no dark man in the house to bring us luck, Henry, already disgusted with the snow and blacker in hue than any whiskered human I have ever seen, seized his opportunity, and was the first living creature to cross our threshold from one year into another.
This auspicious event renewed our spirits which, in waiting, had begun to flag. From far away came a jangling murmur of shouting and instruments and bells, which showed that the rest of the parish was sharing our solemn vigil; and then, with me on my table between them, a hand of each clasping mine, Mrs Bowater, f.a.n.n.y, and I, after sipping each other"s health, raised the strains of "Auld Lang Syne." There must have been Scottish blood in Mrs Bowater; she certainly made up for some little variation from the tune by a heartfelt p.r.o.nunciation of the words. Hardly had we completed this rite than the grandfather"s clock in the narrow pa.s.sage staidly protested its own rendering of eternity; and we all--even Mrs Bowater--burst out laughing.
"Good-night, Midgetina; an immense happy New Year to you," whispered a voice to me about half an hour afterwards. I jumped out of bed, and peeped through my curtains. On some little errand f.a.n.n.y had come down from her bedroom, and with a Paisley shawl over her shoulders stood with head and candle thrust in at the door. I gazed at her fairness. "Oh, f.a.n.n.y!" I cried. "Oh, f.a.n.n.y!"
New Year"s Day brought a change of weather. A slight mist rose over the fields, it began to thaw. A kind of listlessness now came over f.a.n.n.y, which I tried in vain to dispel. Yet she seemed to seek my company; often to remain silent, and occasionally to ask me curious questions as if testing one answer against another. And one discovery I made in my efforts to keep her near me: that she liked being read to. Most of the volumes in Mrs Bowater"s small library were of a nautical character, and though one of them, on the winds and tides and seas and coasts of the world, was to console me later in f.a.n.n.y"s absence, the majority defied even my obstinacy. f.a.n.n.y hated stories of the sea, seemed to detest Crusoe; and smiled her slow, mysterious smile while she examined my own small literary treasures. By a flighty stroke of fortune, tacked up by an unskilled hand in the stained brown binding of a volume on Disorders of the Nerves, we discovered among her father"s books a copy of _Wuthering Heights_, by Emily Bronte.
The very first sentence of this strange, dwelling book, was a spell: "1801.--I have just returned from a visit to my landlord--the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with."... And when, a few lines farther on, I read: "He little imagined how my heart warmed towards him when I beheld his black eyes withdraw so suspiciously under their brows"--the apparition of who but Mr Crumble blinked at me out of the print, and the enchantment was complete. It was not only gaunt enormous Yorkshire with its fells and wastes of snow that seized on my imagination, not only that vast kitchen with its flagstones, green chairs, and firearms, but the mere music and aroma of the words, "I beheld his black eyes"; "a range of gaunt thorns"; "a wilderness of crumbling griffins"; "a huge, liver-coloured b.i.t.c.h pointer"--they rang in my mind, echoed on in my dreams.
And though in the wet and windy afternoons and evenings which f.a.n.n.y and I thus shared, she, much more than poor Mr Crimble, resembled Heathcliff in being "rather morose," and in frequently expressing "an aversion to showing displays of feeling," she was more attracted by my discovery than she condescended to confess. _Jane Eyre_, she said, was a better story, "though Jane herself was a fool." What cared I? To me this book was like the kindling of a light in a strange house; and that house my mind. I gazed, watched, marvelled, and recognized, as I kneeled before its pages. But though my heart was torn, and my feelings were a little deranged by the scenes of violence, and my fancy was haunted by that stalking wolfish spectre, I took no part. I surveyed all with just that sense of aloofness and absorption with which as children Cathy and Heathcliff, barefoot in the darkness of the garden, had looked in that Sunday evening on the Lintons" crimson taper-lit drawing-room.
If, in February, you put a newly gathered sprig of budding thorn into the fire; instantaneously, in the influence of the heat, it will break into bright-green tiny leaf. That is what Emily Bronte did for me. Not so for f.a.n.n.y. In her "vapid listlessness" she often pretended to yawn over _Wuthering Heights_, and would shock me with mocking criticism, or cry "Ah!" at the poignant pa.s.sages. But I believe it was pure concealment. She was really playing a part in the story. I have, at any rate, never seen her face so transfigured as when once she suddenly looked up in the firelight and caught my eye fixed on her over the book.
It was at the pa.s.sage where Cathy--in her grand plaid silk frock, white trousers, and burnished shoes--returns to the dreadful Grange; and, "dismally beclouded," Heathcliff stares out at her from his hiding-place. ""He might,"" I read on, ""well skulk behind the settle, at beholding such a bright, graceful damsel enter the house. "Is Heathcliff not here?" she demanded, pulling off her gloves, and displaying fingers wonderfully whitened with doing nothing and staying indoors.""
It was at this point that our eyes, as I say, f.a.n.n.y"s and mine, met.
But she, bright, graceful damsel, was not thinking of me.
"Do you like that kind of character, f.a.n.n.y?" I inquired.
My candle"s flames gleamed lean and tiny in her eyes. "Whose?" she asked.
"Why, Heathcliff"s."
She turned slowly away. "You take things so seriously, Midgetina. It"s merely a story. He only wanted taming. You"ll see by-and-by." But at that moment my ear caught the sound of footsteps, and when Mrs Bowater opened the door to contemplate idle f.a.n.n.y, the book was under my bed.
As the day drew near for f.a.n.n.y"s return to her "duties," her mood brightened. She displayed before me in all their stages, the new clothes which Mrs Bowater lavished on her--to a degree that, amateur though I was in domestic economy, filled me with astonishment. I had to feign delight in these fineries--"Ah!" whispered I to each, "when she wears _you_ she will be far, far away." I envied the very b.u.t.tons, and indeed pestered her with entreaties. I implored her to think of me at certain hours; to say good-night to herself for me; to write day by day in the first of the evening; to share the moon: "If we both look at her at the same moment," I argued, "it will be next to looking at one another. You _cannot_ be utterly gone: and if you see even a flower, or hear the wind.... Oh, I hope and hope you will be happy."
She promised everything with smiling ease, and would have sealed the compact in blood if I had thought to cut my thumb for it. Thursday in Holy Week--_then_ she would be home again. I stared at the blessed day across the centuries as a condemned man stares in fancy at the scaffold awaiting him; but on mine hung all my hopes. Long evenings I never saw her at all; and voices in the kitchen, when she came in late, suggested that my landlady had also missed her. But f.a.n.n.y never lost her self-control even when she lost her temper; and I dared not tax her with neglecting me. Her cold looks almost suffocated me. I besought her to spend one last hour of the eve of her departure alone with me and with the stars in the woods. She promised. At eleven she came home, and went straight up into her bedroom. I heard her footsteps. She was packing.
Then silence.
I waited on until sick at heart I flung myself on my knees beside my bed and prayed that G.o.d would comfort her. Heathcliff had acquired a feeble pupil. The next afternoon she was gone.
Chapter Sixteen
For many days my mind was an empty husk, yet in a constant torment of longing, daydream, despair, and self-reproaches. Everything I looked at had but one meaning--that she was not there. I did not dare to admit into my heart a hope of the future, since it would be treason to the absent. There was an ecstatic mournfulness even in the sight of the January sun, the greening fields, the first scarcely perceptible signals of a new year. And when one morning I awoke early and heard, still half in dream, a thrush in all but darkness singing of spring, it seemed it was a voice pealing in the empty courts of paradise. What ridiculous care I took to conceal my misery from Mrs Bowater. Hardly a morning pa.s.sed but that I carried out in a bag the food I couldn"t eat the day before, to hide it away or bury it. But such journeys were brief.
I have read somewhere that love is a disease. Or is it that Life piles up the fuel, a chance stranger darts a spark, and the whole world goes up in smoke? Was I happier in that fever than I am in this literary calm? Why did love for things without jealousy or envy fill me with delight, pour happiness into me, and love for f.a.n.n.y parch me up, suck every other interest from my mind, and all but blind my eyes? Is that true? I cannot be sure: for to remember her ravages is as difficult as to re-a.s.semble the dismal phantoms that flock into a delirious brain.
And still to be honest--there"s another chance: Was she to blame? Would my mind have been at peace even in its solitary woe if she had dealt truly with me? Would any one believe it?--it never occurred to me to remind myself that it might be a question merely of size. Simply because I loved, I deemed myself lovable. Yet in my heart of hearts that afternoon I had been twitting Mr Crimble for saying his prayers!
But even the heart is Phoenix-like. The outer world began to break into my desolation, not least successfully when after a week or two of absence there came a post card from f.a.n.n.y to her mother with a mere "love to M." scrawled in its top right-hand corner. It was as if a wine-gla.s.s of cold water had been poured down my back. It was followed by yet another little "shock." One evening, when she had carefully set down my bowl of rusk and milk, Mrs Bowater took up her stand opposite to me, black as an image in wood. "You haven"t been after your stars, miss, of late. It"s moping you are. I suffered myself from the same greensick fantasticalities, when _I_ was a girl. Not that a good result"s any the better for a poor cause; but it was courting danger with your frail frame; it was indeed."
I smile in remembrance of the picture presented by that conscience-stricken face of mine upturned to that stark monitor--a monitor no less stark at this very moment though we are both many years older.
"Yes, yes," she continued, and even the dun, fading photograph over her head might have paled at her accents. "I"m soliciting no divulgements; she wouldn"t have gone alone, and if she did, would have heard of it from me. But you must please remember, miss, I am her mother. And you will remember, miss, also," she added, with upper lip drawn even tighter, "that your care is my care, and always will be while you are under my roof--and after, please G.o.d."
She soundlessly closed the door behind her, as if in so doing she were shutting up the whole matter in her mind for ever, as indeed she was, for she never referred to it again. Thunderbolts fall quietly at times.
I sat stupefied. But as I examine that distant conscience, I am aware, first, of a faint flitting of the problem through my mind as to why a freedom which Mrs Bowater would have denied to f.a.n.n.y should have held no dangers for me, and next, I realize that of all the emotions in conflict within me, humiliation stood head and shoulders above the rest. Indeed I flushed all over, at the thought that never for one moment--then or since--had I paused to consider how, on that fateful midnight, f.a.n.n.y could have left the house-door _bolted_ behind her. My utter stupidity: and f.a.n.n.y"s! All these weeks my landlady had known, and said nothing.
The green gooseberries of my childhood were a far less effective tonic.
But I lost no love for Mrs Bowater in this prodigious increase of respect.
A far pleasanter interruption of my sick longings for the absent one occurred the next morning. At a loss what to be reading (for f.a.n.n.y had abstracted my _Wuthering Heights_ and taken it away with her), once more shudderingly pushing aside my breakfast, I turned over the dusty, faded pile of Bowater books. And in one of them I discovered a chapter on knots. Our minds are cleverer than we think them, and not only cats have an instinct for physicking themselves. I took out a piece of silk twine from my drawer and--with f.a.n.n.y"s phantom sulking a while in neglect--set myself to the mastery of "the ship boy"s" science. I had learned for ever to distinguish between the granny and the reef (such is fate, this knot was also called the true lover"s!), and was setting about the fisherman"s bend, when there came a knock on the door--and then a head.
It was Pollie. Until I saw her round, red, country cheek, and stiff Sunday hat, thus unexpectedly appear, I had almost forgotten how much I loved and had missed her. No doubt my landlady had been the _dea ex machina_ that had produced her on this fine sunshine morning. Anyhow she was from heaven. Besides b.u.t.ter, a posy of winter jasmine, a crochet bedspread, and a varnished arbour chair made especially for me during the winter evenings by her father, Mr Muggeridge, she brought startling news. There suddenly fell a pause in our excited talk. She drew out her handkerchief and a slow crimson mounted up over neck, cheek, ears, and brow. I couldn"t look quite away from this delicious sight, so my eyes wandered up in admiration of the artificial cornflowers and daisies in her hat.
Whereupon she softly blew her nose and, with a gliding glance at the shut door, she breathed out her secret. She was engaged to be married. A trying, romantic vapour seemed instantly to gather about us, in whose hush I was curiously aware not only of Pollie thus suffused, sitting with her hands loosely folded in her lap, but of myself also, perched opposite to her with eyes in which curiosity, incredulity, and even a remote consternation played upon her homely features. Time melted away, and there once more sat the old Pollie--a gawk of a girl in a pinafore, munching up green apples and re-plaiting her dull brown hair.
Then, of course, I was bashfully challenged to name the happy man. I guessed and guessed to Pollie"s ever-increasing gusto, and at last I dared my first unuttered choice: "Well, then, it _must_ be Adam Waggett!"
"Adam Waggett! Oh, miss, him! a nose like a winebottle."
It was undeniable. I apologized, and Pollie surrendered her future into my hands. "It"s Bob Halibut, miss," she whispered hoa.r.s.ely.
And instantaneously Bob Halibut"s red head loomed louringly out at me.
But I know little about husbands; and premonitions only impress us when they come true. Time was to prove that Pollie and her mother had made a prudent choice. Am I not now Mr Halibut"s G.o.d-sister, so to speak?
The wedding, said Pollie, was to be in the summer. "And oh, miss"--would I come?
The scheming that followed! The sensitive draping of difficulties on either side, the old homesick longing on mine--to flee away now, at once, from this scene of my afflicted adoration. I almost hated f.a.n.n.y for giving me so much pain. Mrs Bowater was summoned to our council; my promise was given; and it was she who suggested that its being "a nice bright afternoon," Pollie should take me for a walk.
But whither? It seemed a sheer waste of Pollie to take her to the woods.
Thoughts of St Peter"s, the nocturnal splendour in the cab, a hunger for novelty, the itch to spend money, and maybe a tinge of dare-devilry--without a moment"s hesitation I chose the shops and the "town." Once more in my black, with two thicknesses of veil canopying my head, as if I were a joint of meat in the Dog Days, I settled myself on Pollie"s arm, and--in the full publicity of three o"clock in the afternoon--off we went.
We chattered; we laughed; we sniggled together like schoolgirls in amus.e.m.e.nt at the pa.s.sers-by, in the strange, busy High Street. I devoured the entrancing wares in the shop windows--milliner, hairdresser and perfumer, confectioner; even the pyramids of jam jars and sugar-cones in the grocer"s, and the soaps, syrups, and sponges of Mr Simpkins--Beechwood"s pharmaceutical chemist. Out of the sovereign which I had brought with me from my treasure-chest Pollie made purchases on my behalf. For Mrs Bowater, a muslin tie for the neck; for herself--after heated controversy--a pair of kid gloves and a bottle of frangipani; and for me a novel.
This last necessitated a visit to Mrs Stocks"s Circulating Library. My hopes had been set on _Jane Eyre_. Mrs Stocks regretted that the demand for this novel had always exceeded her supply: "What may be called the sensational style of fiction" (or was it friction?) "never lays much on our hands." She produced, instead, and very tactfully, a comparatively diminutive copy of Miss Austen"s _Sense and Sensibility_. It was a little shop-soiled; "But books keep, miss"; and she let me have it at a reduced price. Her great shears severed the string. Pollie and I once more set clanging the sonorous bell at the door, and emerged into the sunlight. "Oh, Pollie," I whispered, "if only you could stay with me for ever!"
This taste of "life" had so elated me that after fevered and silent debate I at last laughed out, and explained to Pollie that I wished to be "put down." Her breathless arguments against this foolhardy experiment only increased my obstinacy. She was compelled to obey.
Bidding her keep some little distance behind me, I settled my veil, clasped tight my Miss Austen in my arms and set my face in the direction from which we had come. One after another the wide paving-stones stretched out in front of me. It was an extraordinary experience. I was openly alone now, not with the skulking, deceitful shades and appearances of night, or the quiet flowers and trees in the enormous vacancy of nature; but in the midst of a town of men in their height--and walking along there: by myself. It was as if I had suddenly realized what astonishingly active and domineering and mult.i.tudinous creatures we humans are. I can"t explain. The High Street, to use a good old phrase, "got up into my head." My mind was in such a whirl of excitement that full consciousness of what followed eludes me.
The sun poured wintry bright into the house-walled gulf of a street that in my isolation seemed immeasurably vast and empty. I think my senses distorted the scene. There was the terrific glitter of gla.s.s, the clatter of traffic. A puff of wind whirled dust and grit and particles of straw into the air. The shapes of advancing pedestrians towered close above me, then, stiff with sudden attention, pa.s.sed me by. My legs grew a little numb and my brain confused. The strident whistling of a butcher"s boy, with an empty, blood-stained tray over his shoulder, suddenly ceased. Saucer-eyed, he stood stock still, gulped and gaped. I kept on my course. A yelp of astonishment rent the air. Whereupon, as it seemed, from divers angles, similar boys seemed to leap out of the ground and came whooping and revolving across the street in my direction. And now the blood so hummed in my head that it was rather my nerves than my ears which informed me of a steadily increasing murmur and trampling behind me.
With extraordinary vividness I recall the vision of a gigantic barouche gliding along towards me in the shine and the dust; and seated up in it a high, pompous lady who at one moment with rigid urbanity inclined her head apparently in my direction, and at the next, her face displeased as if at an offensive odour, had sunk back into her cushions, oblivious not only of Beechwood but of the whole habitable globe. Simultaneously, I was aware, even as I hastened on, first that the acquaintance whose salute she had acknowledged was Mr Crimble, and next, that with incredible rapidity he had wheeled himself about and had instantaneously transfixed his entire attention on some object in the window of a hatter"s.
Until this moment, as I say, a confused but blackening elation had filled my mind. But at sight of Mr Crimble"s rook-like stooping shoulders I began to be afraid. My shoe stumbled against a jutting paving-stone. I almost fell. Whereupon the mute concourse at my heels--spreading tail of me, the Comet--burst into a prolonged squealing roar of delight. The next moment Pollie was at my side, stooping to my rescue. It was too late. One glance over my shoulder--and terror and hatred of the whole human race engulfed me like a sea. I struck savagely at Pollie"s cotton-gloved hand. Shivering, with clenched, sticky teeth, I began to run.
Why this panic? Who would have harmed me? And yet on the thronging faces which I had flyingly caught sight of through my veil there lay an expression that was not solely curiosity--a kind of hunger, a dog-like gleam. I remember one thin-legged, ferrety, red-haired lad in particular. Well, no matter. The comedy was brief, and it was Mrs Stocks who lowered the curtain. Attracted by all this racket and hubbub in the street, she was protruding her round head out of her precincts. Like fox to its hole, I scrambled over her wooden doorstep, whisked round her person, and fled for sanctuary into her shop. She hustled poor Pollie in after me, wheeled round on my pursuers, slammed the door in their faces, slipped its bolt, and drew down its dark blue blind.
In the sudden quiet and torpor of this musty gloom I turned my hunted eyes and stared at the dark strip of holland that hid me from my pursuers. So too did Mrs Stocks. The round creature stood like a stone out of reach of the surf. Then she snorted.