CHAPTER VIII
A Painful Misunderstanding
And now, on early evenings and Saturday afternoons when the weather was fine, Miss Quincey was to be found in Primrose Hill Park. Not that anybody ever came to look for Miss Quincey. Nevertheless, whether she was walking up and down the paths or sitting on a bench, Miss Quincey had a certain expectant air, as if at any moment Dr. Cautley might come tearing round the corner with his coat-tails flying, or as if she might look up and find him sitting beside her and talking to her. But he did not come. There are some histories that never repeat themselves.
And he had never called since that day—Miss Quincey remembered it well; it was Saturday the thirteenth of March. April and May went by; she had not seen him now for more than two months; and she began to think there must be a reason for it.
At last she saw him; she saw him twice running. Once in the park where they had sat together, and once in the forked road that leads past that part of St. Sidwell's where Miss Cursiter and Miss Vivian lived in state. Each time he was walking very fast as usual, and he looked at her, but he never raised his hat; she spoke, but he passed her without a word. And yet he had recognised her; there could be no possible doubt of it.
Depend upon it there was a reason for that. Miss Quincey was one of those innocent people who believe that every variety of human behaviour must have a reason (as if only two months ago she had not been favoured with the spectacle of an absolutely unreasonable young man). To be sure it was not easy to find one for conduct so strange and unprecedented, and in any case Miss Quincey's knowledge of masculine motives was but small. Taken by itself it might have passed without any reason, as an oversight, a momentary lapse; but coupled with his complete abandonment of Camden Street North it looked ominous indeed. Not that her faith in Bastian Cautley wavered for an instant. Because Bastian Cautley was what he was, he could never be guilty of spontaneous discourtesy; on the other hand, she had seen that he could be fierce enough on provocation; therefore, she argued, he had some obscure ground of offence against her.
Miss Quincey passed a sleepless night reasoning about the reason, a palpitating never-ending night, without a doze or a dream in it or so much as the winking of an eyelid. She reasoned about it for a week between the classes, and in her spare time (when she had any) in the evening (thus running into debt to Sordello again). At the end of the week Miss Quincey's mind seemed to have become remarkably lucid; every thought in it ground to excessive subtlety in the mill of her logic. She saw it all clearly. There had been some misunderstanding, some terrible mistake. She had forfeited his friendship through a blunder nameless but irrevocable. Once or twice she wondered if Mrs. Moon could be at the bottom of it—or Martha. Had her aunt carried out her dreadful threat of giving him a hint to send in his account? And had the hint implied that for the future all accounts with him were closed? Had he called on Mrs. Moon and been received with crushing hostility? Or had Martha permitted herself to say that she, Miss Quincey, was out when perhaps he knew for a positive fact that she was in? But she soon dismissed these conjectures as inadequate and fell back on her original hypothesis.
And all the time the Old Lady's eyes, and her voice too, were sharper than ever; from the corner where she dreamed she watched Miss Quincey incessantly between the dreams. At times the Old Lady was shaken with terrible and mysterious mirth. Bastian Cautley began to figure fantastically in her conversation. Her ideas travelled by slow trains of association that started from nowhere but always arrived at Bastian Cautley as a terminus. If Juliana had a headache Mrs. Moon supposed that she wanted that young man to be dancing attendance on her again; if Juliana sighed she declared that Dr. Cautley was a faithless swain who had forsaken Juliana; if Martha brought in the tea-tray she wondered when Dr. Cautley was coming back for another slice of Juliana's wedding-cake. Mrs. Moon referred to a certain abominable piece of confectionery now crumbling away on a shelf in the sideboard, where, with a breach in its side and its sugar turret in ruins, it seemed to nod at Miss Quincey with all sorts of satirical suggestions. And when Louisa sent her accounts of Teenie who lisped in German, Alexander who wrote Latin letters to his father, and Mildred who refused to read the New Testament in anything but Greek, and Miss Quincey remarked that if she had children she wouldn't bring them up so, the Old Lady laughed—"Tchee—Tchee! We all know about old maids' children." Miss Quincey said nothing to that; but she hardened her heart against Louisa's children, and against Louisa's husband and Louisa. She couldn't think how Louisa could have married such a dreadful little man as Andrew Mackinnon, with his unmistakable accent and problematical linen. The gentle creature who had never said a harsh word to anybody in her life became mysteriously cross and captious. She hardened her heart even to little Laura Lazarus.
And one morning when she came upon the Mad Hatter in her corner of the class-room, and found her adding two familiar columns of figures together and adding them all wrong, Miss Quincey was very cross and very captious indeed. The Mad Hatter explained at more length than ever that the figures twisted themselves about; they wouldn't stay still a minute so that she could hold them; they were always going on and on, turning over and over, and growing, growing, till there were millions, billions, trillions of them; oh, they were wonderful things those figures; you could go on watching them for ever if you were sharp enough; you could even—here Laura lowered her voice in awe of her own conception, for Laura was a mystic, a seer, a metaphysician, what you will—you could even think with them, if you knew how; in short you could do anything with them but turn them into sums. And as all this was very confusing to the intellect Miss Quincey became crosser than ever. And while Miss Quincey quivered all over with irritability, the Mad Hatter paid no heed whatever to her instructions, but thrust forward a small yellow face that was all nose and eyes, and gazed at Miss Quincey like one possessed by a spirit of divination.
"Have you got a headache, Miss Quincey?" she inquired on hearing herself addressed for the third time as "Stupid child!"