She remained in the neighbourhood. Cut by her friends and cast off by her family, she calmly settled in the flat at the corner of Oratory Gardens and went about just as if she had been anybody else instead of the disgraced Miss Verinder. The arrangement of the flat pleased her; she liked the narrow steep staircase with its private street-door beside the auctioneer’s office; when she closed that door behind her she felt safe, and when she passed through the door at the top of the stairs she felt that she was in an impenetrable stronghold. She furnished the flat charmingly, with antique things that as yet were not valued by everyone. Mrs. Bell said she had made it “too pretty and comfy for words.” Louisa Hodson, discovered without much trouble, came to the flat as factotum, and added to Miss Verinder’s sensation of being finally established in a shelter and retreat that was quite unassailable. No one on earth could interfere with her here. Even when the street door stood wide and an invader mounted the stairs, there was Louisa at the top of them to bar further progress and send him down again. In these days visitors were of the kind that wish to sell tea or dispose of tickets for a benevolent concert; but neither then nor at a later period could anyone get past Louisa when her mistress desired brief or lengthy seclusion; no one—not even Mrs. Bell of Queen’s Gate.
At once Miss Verinder began to occupy herself in the pursuit of knowledge, as though attempting a sort of higher or secondary education. She read scientific treatises and learned to draw maps. She studied such impossible things as logic, rhetoric, and English composition. She joined a literary society, attended lectures and classes; wrote essays on subjects chosen by a severe young professor, and humbly carried them back to him for sharp censure or faint praise. She was in many ways busy.
Almost at once too there fell upon her that air of self-reliance which, whether proudly deprecating or gently defiant, is observable in all women who are for any length of time compelled to manage without assistance both their outward and their inward lives. All people knowing her story must see in her appearance as well as her manner a confirmation of their own way of interpreting it. Even her cheerful resignation was suspicious; they looked for the sadness in her face when she thought herself unnoticed. To such critics she was in every detail precisely what might be expected in one who has forfeited all chances of respectful attention, who is left to herself because she deserves to be left to herself. To those who knew nothing about her she was merely old-maidish. Her hair grew again, long and thick, but the brightness of youth had irrevocably gone from her. Her complexion slowly faded, the tints of the frail blush rose giving place to the waxen permanence of the lily. At twenty-eight she looked at least thirty-five.
And the long years began to glide away. Colourless, without salient features, swift in their cold monotony, the years were like ghosts of years flitting across a half-lit room into the endless dark passages that leads to the eternal. Mrs. Bell had said that she must live down the past, but it seemed that her real task was to live down the future.
At least thus it all appeared to external observers. Events of one sort or another were truly happening in the flat all the while. For instance—as observed by Mrs. Bell—after a time a parrot arrived, to be petted and fed and cared for. Then Louisa, the maid-housekeeper, asked permission to keep a cat. Louisa did not intend to marry; she had established herself in the flat as firmly as her mistress; she and Miss Verinder understood each other—they played with the cat in its kitten stage, they made much of the solemn and probably very aged parrot. Seemingly they were just two old maids together.
During this period the illustrious name that had been whispered in Kensington drawing-rooms sounded at intervals loud and clear on the public tongue. As hitherto in the career of Dyke, he was alternately lost to view for long stretches of time and lit up by a blaze of publicity for brief spaces. Throughout the year 1897 those deserts of Australia hid him completely. Then early in 1898 he was very much before the world again. His book Sunshine and Sand gave the history of his most recent vicissitudes and successes, and appearing at a moment when the ultimate confederation of the Australian Colonies was being widely discussed, the book, as critics said, was not only more entrancing than any novel, it took its place as an indispensable volume of reference for all students of imperial history. Also at some time early in this year 1898 he was in London, being interviewed by newspapers and delivering a lecture before the Royal Geographical Society. Then the dark curtain promptly descended upon him once more. He had been sent to examine the interior of British New Guinea and to explore any unvisited islands to the east of it; and the newspapers had not much to say about him for two or three years, except that he was alive in spite of the insatiable craving of the cannibals with whom he now consorted. Then came the publication of Among the Papuans in two bulky volumes, which the press welcomed with compliments similar to those showered upon his previous work. Critics said that since there could be little doubt that the Crown would cede its interests in New Guinea to the Commonwealth of Australia as soon as that federation should be finally constituted, these two illuminating and compendious volumes of Mr. Dyke’s appeared at a most opportune hour. Then soon one heard that Mr. Dyke was in the United States lecturing, and trying to collect money for another Antarctic voyage, which should start, as he hoped, in 1902, or at latest in 1903. The lecture tour closed stormily in a pitched battle with American critics who had thrown doubt on his records of the Patagonian pigmies and the Andine temples. The noise of this contest echoed loudly even on our side of the Atlantic.
Thus Miss Verinder was not allowed any true chance to forget the man who had been so much to her. For her, one must suppose, even the occasional mention of his name, a mere newspaper reference to him, should prove stirring to the memory, if not absolutely upsetting to her peace of mind. And above all, those books of his—always running into a new edition or being advertised by the publisher as about to appear in a cheaper form! The earlier ones, too, got themselves reissued—First Antarctic Cruise (1888); The Second Cruise (1890); “At all booksellers, uniform with A Walk in the Andes”; and so forth! Perhaps she was reading one or other of these works and suffering in consequence, when she lay indisposed behind her shut doors, or suddenly and abruptly disappeared from the flat altogether on one of her strange lonely excursions. Louisa, growing older and sterner every year, merely reported that Miss Verinder was unwell and could see no one; or that Miss Verinder had left London and it was quite uncertain when she would return.
Moreover, had Miss Verinder been in any danger of forgetting the man himself and his more intimate characteristics, she received at least one sharp reminder.
On a certain winter afternoon his father came to call upon her, by appointment.
“I was so glad to get your note giving me permission,” said the elder Mr. Dyke. “It is very kind of you.”