"It's no use, Midgetina," she sang across at me from her window. "Whether it's because the chemical reactions of your pat little brain are more intense than ordinary people's, or because you and I are en rapport, I can't say. But there's one thing we must agree upon at once: never, never again to mention his name—at least in this house. The Crimble chapter is closed."
Closed indeed. But so sharp were her tones I hadn't the courage to warn her that even Susan had read most of it. Fanny came near, and, stooping as Susan had stooped, began fidgeting with the button of my electric chandelier. The little lamps shone wanly in our faces in the cloud-darkened room.
"You see, my dear," she said playfully, "you think me all mockery and heartlessness. And no doubt you are right. But I want ease and security: just like that—as if I were writing an essay—'ease and security.' I don't care a dash about affection—at least without the aforesaid E. and S. I intend to please Mrs Monnerie, and she is going to be grateful to me. Don't think I am being 'candid.' I should have no objection to saying just the same thing to Mrs Monnerie herself: she'd enjoy it. Wait, you precious inchy image—wait until you need a sup of fatted calf's-foot jelly, not because you are sick of husks, but because you are deadly poor. Then you will understand. These sumptuosities! Wait till they haven't a ha'penny in their pockets, real or moral, for their next meal. They only look at things—if that; they can't know what they are. Even to be decently charitable one must have been a beggar—and cursed the philanthropists. Oh, I know: and Fanny's race is for Success."
"But surely, Fanny, a thing is its looks, if only you look long enough. And I should just like to hear you talking if you were in my place. Besides, what is the use of success—in the end, I mean? You should see some of the actresses and singers and authors and that kind of thing Mrs Monnerie knows? You wouldn't have realized the actresses were even beautiful unless you had been told so. Why, you couldn't even say the World is a success, except in the country. What is truly the use of it, then?" I had grown so eager in my argument that I had got up from my chair.
"The use, you poor thing?" laughed Fanny; "why, only as a kind of face-cream to one's natural pride."
The day was lightening now; but at that the whole darkness of my own situation drew close about me. Success, indeed. What was I? Nothing but a halfpennyless, tame pet in No. 2. What salve could restore to me my natural pride?
Chapter Forty
In happier circumstances, the next morning's post might have reassured me. Two letters straddled my breakfast tray, for I always had this meal in my own room. One of them was from Wanderslore—a long, crooked, roundabout letter, that seemed to taunt, upbraid, and entreat me, turn and turn about. It ended with a proposal of marriage.