Less for her own sake than for mine, Mrs Monnerie and I scoured London for amusement, even though she was irritated a little by my preference for the kind which may be called instructive. The truth is, that in all this smooth idleness and luxury a hunger for knowledge had seized on me; as if (cat to grass) my mind were in search of an antidote.
Mrs Monnerie had little difficulty in securing "private views." She must have known everybody that is anybody—as I once read of a Countess in a book. And I suppose there is not a very large number of this kind of person. Whenever our social engagements permitted, we visited the show places, galleries, and museums. Unlike the rest of London, I gazed at Amenhotep's Mummy in the late dusk of a summer evening; and we had much to say to one another; though but one whiff of the huge round library gave me a violent headache. When the streets had to be faced, Fleming came with us in the carriage, and I was disguised to look as much like a child as possible—a process that made me feel at least twenty years older. The Tower of London, the Zoo, Westminster Abbey, St Paul's—each in turn fell an early prey to my hunger for learning and experience. As for the Thames; the very sight of it seemed to wash my small knowledge of English history clear as crystal.
Mrs Monnerie yawned her way on—though my comments on these marvels of human enterprise occasionally amused her. I made amends, too, by accompanying her to less well-advertised show-places, and patiently sat with her while she fondled unset and antique gems in a jeweller's, or inspected the china, miniatures, and embroideries in private collections. If the mere look of the books in the British Museum gave me a headache, it is curious that the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's Wax Works did not. And yet I don't know; life itself had initiated me into this freemasonry. I surveyed the guillotine without a shudder, and eyed Mr Hare and Charles Peace with far less discomposure than General Tom Thumb, or even Robert Burns in the respectable gallery above. My one misfortune was that I could look at no murderer without instantly recomposing the imaginary scene of his crime within my mind. And as after a while Mrs Monnerie decided to rest on a chair set for her by the polite attendant under the scaffold, and we had the Chamber nearly to ourselves, I wandered on alone, and perhaps supped rather too full of horrors for one evening.
Mrs Monnerie would often question me. "Well, what do you think of that, Mammetinka?" or, "Now, then, my inexhaustible little Miss Aristotle, discourse on that."
And like a bullfinch I piped up in response to the best of my ability. My answers, I fear, were usually evasive. For I had begun to see that she was making experiments on my mind and senses, as well as on my manners and body. She was a "fancier." And one day I ogled up at her with the pert remark that she now possessed a pocket barometer which would do its very utmost to remain at 31°, if that was possible without being "Very Dry."
She received this little joke with extraordinary good humour. "When I come down in the world, my dear," she said, "and these horrid anarchists are doing their best to send us all sky-high first, we'll visit the Courts of Europe together, like Count Boruwlaski. Do you think you could bring yourself to support your old friend in her declining years in a declining age?"
I smiled and touched her glove. "Where thou goest, I will go," I replied; and then could have bitten off my tongue in remorse. "Pah," gasped a secret voice, "so that's going the same way too, is it?"
Yet heaven knows I was not a Puritan—and never shall be. I just adored things bright and beautiful. Music, too, in moderation, was my delight; and Susan Monnerie with her small, sweet voice would sometimes sing to me in one room while—in an almost unbearable homesickness—I listened in another. Concerts in general, however, left every muscle of my body as stiff with rheumatism as it was after my visit to Mr Moss's farm-house. The unexpected blare of a brass band simply froze my spine; and a really fine performance on the piano was sheer torture. Once, indeed, when Mrs Monnerie's carriage was one of a mellay clustered together while the Queen drove by, in the appalling clamour of the Lancers' trombones and kettledrums, I fell prostrate in a kind of fit. So it was my silly nerves that cheated me of my one and only chance to huzza a Crowned Head not, if I may say so without disrespect, so very many sizes larger than my own.
Alas, Mrs Monnerie was an enthusiast for all the pleasures of the senses. I verily believe that it was only my vanity which prevented me from becoming as inordinately fat as Sir William Forbes-Smith's white meat threatened to make me.
Brightest novelty of all was my first visit to a theatre—the London night, the glare and clamour of the streets, the packed white rows of faces, the sea-like noise of talk, the glitter, shimmer, dazzle—it filled my veins with quicksilver; my heart seemed to be throbbing in my breast as fast as Mrs Monnerie's watch. Fortunately she had remembered to take our seats on the farther side from the brass and drums of the orchestra. I restrained my shivers; the lights went out; and in the congregated gloom softly stole up the curtain on the ballet.