"Listen, Fanny," I said, pronouncing the words as best I could with a tongue that seemed to be sticking to the roof of my mouth; "I am tired of the garden. What do you really want to say to me? I don't much care for your—your fun."
"And I just beginning to enjoy it! There's contrariness!—To say? Well, now, a good deal, my dear. I thought of writing. But it's better—safer to talk. The first thing is this. While you have been malingering down here I have had to face the whole Monnerie orchestra. It hasn't been playing quite in tune; and you know why. That lovesick Susan, now, and her nice young man. But since you seem to be quite yourself again—more of yourself than ever, in fact: listen." I gazed, almost hypnotized, through the sunshine into her shady face.
"What I am going to suggest," she went on smoothly, "concerns only you and me. If you and I are to go on living in the same house—which heaven forbid—I give you fair warning that we shall have nothing more to do with one another than is absolutely inevitable. I am not so forgiving as I ought to be, Midgetina, and insults rankle. Treachery, still more." The low voice trembled.
"Oh, yes, you may roll your innocent little eyes and look as harmless as a Chinese god, but answer me this: Am I a hypocrite? Am I? And while you are thinking it over, hadn't you better tumble that absurd little pumpkin off your knee? It's staining your charming frock."
"I never said you were a hypocrite," I choked.
"No?" The light gleamed on the whites of her eyes as they roved to and fro. "Then I say, you are. Fair to face, false to back. Who first trapped me out star-gazing in the small hours, then played informer? Who wheedled her way on with her mincing humbug—poof! naïveté!—and set my own mother against me? Who told some one—you know who—that I was not to be trusted, and far better cast-off? Who stuffed that lackadaisical idiot of a Sukie Monnerie with all those old horrors? Who warned that miserable little piece of deformity that I might come—borrowing? Who hoped to betray me by sending an envelope through the post packed with mousey bits of paper? Who made me a guy, a laughing-stock and poisoned—— Oh, it's a long score, Miss M. When I think of it all, what I've endured—well, honestly when a wasp crawls out of my jam, I remind myself that it's stinged."
The light smouldering eyes held me fast. "You mean, I suppose, Fanny, that you'd just kill it," I mumbled, looking up into her distorted face. "I don't think I should much mind even that. But it's no use. It would take hours to answer your questions. You have only put them your own way. They may sound true. But in your heart you know they are false. Why should you bother to hurt me? You know—you know how idiotically I loved you."
"Loved me, false, kill," echoed Fanny scornfully, with a leer which transformed her beauty into a mere vulgar grimace. "Is there any end to the deceits of the little gaby? Do you really suppose that to be loved is a new experience for me; that I'm not smeared with it wherever I go; that I care a snap of my fingers whether I'm loved or not; that I couldn't win through without that? Is that what you suppose? Well, then, here's one more secret. Open your ears. I am going to marry Percy Maudlen. Yes, that weed of a creature. You may remember my little prophecy when he brought his Aunt Alice's manikin some lollipops. Well, the grace of God is too leisurely, and since you and I are both, I suppose, of the same sex, I tell you I care no more for him than that——" She flung the nectarine stone at the beehive. "And I defy you, defy you to utter a word. I am glad I was born what I am. All your pretty little triumphs, first to last, what are they?—accidents and insults. Isn't half the world kicking down the faces of those beneath them on the ladder? I have had to fight for a place. And I tell you this: I am going to teach these supercilious money-smelling ladies a lesson. I am going to climb till I can sneer down on them. And Mrs Monnerie is going to help me. She doesn't care a jot for God or man. But she enjoys intelligence, and loves a fighter. Is that candour? Is it now?"
"I detest Percy Maudlen," I replied faintly. "And as for sneering, that only makes another wall. Oh, Fanny, do listen to yourself, to what you are. I swear I'm not the sneak you think me. I'd help you, if I could, to my last breath. Indeed, I would. Yes, and soon I can."
"Thank you: and I'd rather suffocate than accept your help—now. Listen to myself, indeed! That's just the pious hypocrite all over. Well, declarations of love you know quite enough about for your—for your age. Now you shall hear one of a different kind. I tell you, Midgetina, I hate you: I can't endure the sight or sound or creep or thought of you any longer. Why? Because of your unspeakable masquerade. You play the pygmy; pygmy you are: carried about, cosseted, smirked at, fattened on nightingales' tongues—the last, though, you'll ever eat. But where have you come from? What are you in your past—in your mind? I ask you that: a thing more everywhere, more thief-like, more detestable than a conscience. Look at me, as we sit here now. I am the monstrosity. You see it, you think it, you hate even to touch me. From first moment to last you have secretly despised me—me! I'm not accusing you. You weren't your own maker. As often as not you don't know what you are saying. You are just an automaton. But these last nights I have lain awake and thought of it all. It came on me as if my life had been nothing but a filthy, aimless nightmare; and chiefly because of you. I've worked, I've thought, I've contrived and forced my way. Oh, that house, the wranglings, the sermons. Did I make myself what I am, ask to be born? No, it's all a devilish plot. And I say this, that while things are as they are, and this life is life, and this world my world, I refuse to be watched and taunted and goaded and defamed."