An unfamiliar Miss M. brushed her hair in front of me in the familiar looking-glass. It was not that her Monnerie raiment was particularly flattering, or she, indeed, pleasanter to look at—rather the contrary: and I gazed long and earnestly into the glass. But art has furtive and bewitching fingers. While in my home-made clothes I had looked just myself, in these I looked like one or other of my guardian angels, or perhaps, as an unprejudiced Fleming would have expressed it—the perfect lady. How gradual must have been the change in me to have passed thus unnoticed. But I didn't want to think. I felt dulled and dispirited. Even Mrs Bowater had not been so entranced to see me as I had anticipated. It was tiresome to be disappointed. I rummaged in a bottom drawer, got out an old gown, made a grimace at myself in my mind, and sat down to Fanny's letter. But then again, what are externals? Who was this cool-tempered Miss M. who was now scanning the once heartrending handwriting?
"Dear Midgetina,—When this will reach you, I don't know. But somehow I cannot, or rather I can, imagine you the cynosure of the complete peerage, and prefer that my poor little letter should not uprear its modest head in the midst of all that Granjer. You may not agree—but if a few weeks of a High Life that may possibly continue into infinity has made no difference to you, then Fanny is not among the prophets.
"We have not met since—we parted. But did you ever know a "dead past" bury itself with such ingratiating rapidity? Have you in your sublime passion for Nature ever watched a Sexton Beetle? But, mind you, I have helped. The further all that slips away, the less I can see I was to blame for it. What's in your blood needs little help from outside. Cynical it may sound; but imagine the situation if I had married him! What could existence have been but a Nightmare-Life-in-Death? (Vide S. T. Coleridge). Now the Dream continues—for us both.
"Oh, yes, I can see your little face needling up at this. But you must remember, dear Midgetina, that you will never, never be able to see things in a truly human perspective. Few people, of course, try to. You do. But though your view may be delicate as gossamer and clear as a glass marble, it can't be full-size. Boil a thing down, it isn't the same. What remains has the virtues of an essence, but not the volume of its origin. This sounds horribly school-booky; but I am quite convinced you are too concentrated. And I being what I am, only the full volume can be my salvation. Enough. The text is as good as the sermon—far better, in fact.
"Now I am going to be still more callous. My own little private worries have come right—been made to. I'm tit for tat, that is, and wiser for it beyond words. Some day, when Society has taught you all its lessons, I will explain further. Anyhow, first I send you back £3 of what I owe you. And thank you. Next I want you to find out from Mrs Mummery (as mother calls her—or did), if among her distinguished acquaintance she knows any one with one or two, or at most three, small and adorable children who need an excellent governess. Things have made it undesirable for me to stay on here much longer. It shall be I who give notice, or, shall we say, terminate the engagement.
"Be an angel, then. First, wake up. Candidly, to think me better than I am is more grossly unfair than if I thought you taller than you are. Next, sweet cynosure, find me a sinecure. Don't trouble about salary. (You wouldn't, you positive acorn of quixoticism, not if I owed you half a million.) But remember: Wanted by the end of August at latest, a Lady, wealthy, amiable, with two Cherubic Doves in family, boys preferred. The simple, naked fact being that after this last bout of life's fitful fever, I pine for a nap.
"Of course mother can see this letter if she wishes to, and you don't mind. But personally I should prefer to have the bird actually fluttering in my hand before she contemplates it in the bush.
"I said pine just now. Do you ever find a word suddenly so crammed with meaning that at any moment it threatens to explode? Well, Midgetina, them's my sentiments. Penitent I shall never be, until I take the veil. But I have once or twice lately awoke in a kind of glassy darkness—beyond all moonshine—alone. Then, if I hadn't been born just thick-ribbed, unmeltable ice—well.... Vulgar, vulgar Fanny!
"Fare thee well, Midgetina. 'One cried, "God bless us," and "Amen," the other.' Prostituted though he may have been for scholastic purposes, W. S. knew something of Life.
"Yours,—F."
What was the alluring and horrifying charm for me of Fanny's letters? This one set my mind, as always, wandering off into a maze. There was a sour taste in it, and yet—it was all really and truly Fanny. I could see her unhappy eyes glittering through the mask. She saw herself—perhaps more plainly than one should. "Vulgar Fanny." As for its effect on me; it was as if I had fallen into a bed of nettles, and she herself, picking me up, had scoffed, "Poor little Midgekin," and supplied the dock. Her cynicism was its own antidote, I suppose. The selfishness, the vanity, and impenetrable hardness—even love had never been so blind as to ignore all that, and now what love remained for her had the sharpest of sharp eyes.
And yet, though my little Bowater parlour looked cheap and dingy after the splendours of No. 2, Fanny somehow survived every odious comparison. She was very intelligent, I whispered to myself. Mrs Monnerie would certainly approve of that. And I prickled at the thought. And I—I was too "concentrated." In spite of my plumping "figure," I could never, never be full-size. If only Fanny had meant that as a compliment, or even as a kind of explanation to go on with. No, she had meant it for the truth. And it must be far easier for a leopard to change his spots than his inside. The accusation set all the machinery of my mind emptily whirring.
My glance fell on my Paris frock, left in a shimmering slovenly ring on the floor. It wandered off to Fanny's postal order, spread over my lap like an expensive antimacassar. She had worked for that money; while I had never been anything more useful than "an angel." In fancy I saw her blooming in a house as sumptuous as Mrs Monnerie's. Bloom indeed! I hated the thought, yet realized, too, that it was safer—even if for the time being not so profitable—to be life-size. And, as if out of the listening air, a cold dart pierced me through. Suppose my Messrs Harris and Harris and Harris might not be such honest trustees as Miss Fenne had vouched for. Suppose they decamped with my £110 per annum!—I caught a horrifying glimpse of the wolf that was always sniffing at Fanny's door.
Mrs Bowater brought in my luncheon, and—as I insisted—her own, too. The ice from Mr Tidy, the fishmonger's, had given a slightly marine flavour to the cream, and I had to keep my face averted as much as possible from the scorched red chop sprawling and oozing on her plate. How could she bring herself to eat it? We are such stuff as dreams are made on, said Hamlet. So then was Mrs Bowater. What a mystery then was this mutton fat! But chop or no chop, it was a happy meal.
Having waved my extremely "Fannyish" letter at her, I rapidly dammed that current of her thoughts by explaining that I had changed my clothes not (as a gleam from her eye had seemed to suspect) because I was afraid of spoiling my London finery, but in order to be really at home. For the first time I surprised her muttering a grace over the bone on her plate. Then she removed the tray, accepted a strawberry, folded her hands in her lap, and we began to talk. She asked a hundred and one questions concerning my health and happiness, but never once mentioned Mrs Monnerie; and at last, after a small pause, filled by us both with the same thought, she remarked that "that young Mr Anon was nothing if not persistent."
Since I had gone, not a week had passed, she told me, but he had come rapping at the door after dusk to inquire after me. "Though why he should scowl like a pitchpot to hear that you are enjoying the lap of luxury——" The angular shoulders achieved a shrug at least as Parisian as my discarded gown.
"Why doesn't he write to me, then? Twice in ten weeks!"