Superseded Part 3

Then something very much worse than that happened; Miss Quincey gave him a copy of the "Address to the Students and Teachers of St. Sidwell's,"

and it made him laugh. She pointed out the bit about the healers and regenerators, and refres.h.i.+ng yourself at the wells of literature. "That is a beautiful pa.s.sage," said Miss Quincey.

He laughed more than ever.

"Oh yes, beautiful, beautiful. They're to do it in their evenings, are they? And when they're faint and weary with their day's work?" And he laughed again quite loud, laughed till Mrs. Moon woke out of a doze and started as if this world had come to an end and another one had begun. He was very sorry, and he begged a thousand pardons; but, really, that pa.s.sage was unspeakably funny. He didn't know that Miss Cursiter had such a rich vein of humour in her. For the life of her Miss Quincey could not see what there was to laugh at, nor why she should be teased about Tennyson and bantered on the subject of Browning; but she enjoyed it all the same. He was so young; he was like a big schoolboy throwing stones into the living wells of literature and watching for the splash; it did her good to look at him. So she looked, smiling her starved smile and s.n.a.t.c.hing a fearful joy from his profane conversation.

There were moments when she asked herself how he came to be there at all; he was so out-of-place somehow. The Moons and Quinceys denounced him as a stranger and intruder; the very chairs and tables had memories, a.s.sociations that rejected him; everything in the room suggested the same mystic antagonism; it was as if Mrs. Moon and all her household G.o.ds were in league against him. Oddly enough this att.i.tude of theirs heightened her sense of intimacy with him, made him hers and no one else's for the time. The pleasure she took in his society had some of the peculiar private ecstasy of sin.

And Mrs. Moon wondered what the young man was going to charge for that little visit; and what the total of his account would be. She said that if Juliana didn't give him a hint, she would be obliged to speak to him herself; and at that Juliana looked frightened and begged that Mrs. Moon would do nothing of the kind. "There will be no charge for friendly visits," said she; and she made a rapid calculation in the top of her head. Nineteen visits at, say, seven-and-six a visit, would come to exactly nine pounds nine and sixpence. And she smiled; possibly she thought it was worth it.

And really those friendly visits had sometimes an ambiguous character; he dragged his profession into them by the head and shoulders. He had left off scribbling prescriptions, but he would tell her what to take in a light and literary way, as if it was just part of their very interesting conversation. Browning was bitter and bracing, he was like iron and quinine, and by the way she had better take a little of both. Then when he met her again he would ask, "Have you been taking any more Browning, Miss Quincey?" and while Miss Quincey owned with a blush that she had, he would look at her and say she wanted a change--a little Tennyson and a lighter tonic; strychnine and a.r.s.enic was the thing.

And Mrs. Moon still wondered. "I never saw anything like the indelicacy of that young man," said she. "You're running up a pretty long bill, I can tell you."

Oh, yes, a long, long bill; for we pay heavily for our pleasures in this sad world, Juliana!

CHAPTER VI

Spring Fas.h.i.+ons

Winter had come and gone, and spring found Miss Quincey back again at St.

Sidwell's, the place of illumination; a place that knew rather less of her than it had known before. After five-and-twenty years of constant attendance she had only to be away three months to be forgotten. The new staff was not greatly concerned with Miss Quincey; it was always busy. As for the girls, they were wholly given over to the new wors.h.i.+p of Rhoda Vivian; impossible to rouse them to the faintest interest in Miss Quincey.

Her place had been kept for her by Rhoda. Rhoda had put out the strong young arm that she was so proud of, and held back for a little while Miss Quincey's fate; and now at all costs she was determined to stand between her and the truth. So Miss Quincey never knew that it was Rhoda who was responsible for the delicate attentions she had received during her illness; Rhoda who had bought and sent off the presents from St.

Sidwell's; Rhoda who had conceived that pretty little idea of flowers "with love"; and Rhoda who had inspired the affectionate messages of the staff. (The Cla.s.sical Mistress had to draw most extravagantly on her popularity in order to work that fraud.) Rhoda had taken her place, and it was not in Rhoda's power to give it back to her. But Miss Quincey never saw it; for a subtler web than that of Rhoda's spinning was woven about her eyes.

Possibly in some impressive and inapparent way her unhappy little favourite Laura Lazarus may have been glad to see her back again, though the two queer creatures exchanged no greeting more intimate than an embarra.s.sed smile. In this rapidly-advancing world the Mad Hatter alone remained where Miss Quincey had left her. She explained at some length how the figures twisted themselves round in her head and would never stay the same for a minute together. Miss Quincey listened patiently to this explanation; she was more indulgent, less persistent than before.

Under that veil of illusion she herself had become communicative. She went up and down between the cla.s.ses and poured out her soul as to an audience all interest, all sympathy. There was a certain monotony about her conversation since the epoch of her illness. It was, "Oh yes, I am quite well now, thank you. Dr. Cautley is so very clever. Dr. Cautley has taken splendid care of me. Dr. Cautley has been so very kind and attentive, I think it would be ungrateful of me if I had not got well.

Dr. Cautley--" Perhaps it was just as well for Miss Quincey that the staff were too busy to attend to her. The most they noticed was that in the matter of obstruction Miss Quincey was not quite so precipitate as she had been. She offended less by violent contact and rebound than by drifting absently into the processions and getting mixed up with them.

Rhoda saw a change in her; Rhoda was never too busy to spare a thought for Miss Quincey. "Yes," she said, "you _are_ better. Your eyes are brighter."

"That," said Miss Quincey, with simple pride "is the a.r.s.enic. Dr. Cautley is giving me a.r.s.enic."

Now a.r.s.enic (like happiness) has some curious properties. It looks most innocently like sugar, which it is not. A little of it goes a long way and undoubtedly acts as a tonic; a little more may undermine the stoutest const.i.tution, and a little too much of it is a deadly poison and kills you. As yet Miss Quincey had only taken it in microscopic doses.

Something had changed her; it may have been happiness, it may have been illusion; whatever it was Miss Quincey thought it was the a.r.s.enic--if it was not the weather, the very remarkable weather. For that year Spring came with a burst.

Indeed there is seldom anything shy and tentative, anything obscure and gradual about the approaches of the London Spring. Spring is always in a hurry there, for she knows that she has but a short time before her; she has to make an impression and make it at once; so she works careless of delicacies and shades, relying on broad telling strokes, on strong outlines and stinging contrasts. She is like a clever artist handicapped with her materials. Only a patch of gra.s.s, a few trees and the sky; but you wake one morning and the boughs are drawn black and bold against the blue; and leaves are sharp as emeralds against the black; and the gra.s.s in the squares and the shrubs in the gardens repeat the same brilliant extravaganza; and it is all very eccentric and beautiful and daring. That is the way of a c.o.c.kney Spring, and when you are used to it the charm is undeniable.

One day Miss Quincey walked in Camden Town and noted the singular caprices of the Spring. Strange longings, freaks of the blood and brain, stirred within her at this bursting of the leaf. They led her into Camden Road, into the High Street, to the great shops where the virginal young fas.h.i.+ons and the artificial flowers are. At this season Hunter's window blooms out in blouses of every imaginable colour and texture and form.

There was one, a silk one, of so discreet and modest a mauve that you could have called it lavender. To say that it caught Miss Quincey's eye would be to wrong that maidenly garment. There was nothing blatant, nothing importunate in its behaviour. Gently, imperceptibly, it stole into the field of vision and stood there, delicately alluring. It could afford to wait. It had not even any pattern to speak of, only an indefinable white something, a dice, a diaper, a sprig. It was the sprig that touched her, tempted her.

Amongst the poorer ranks of Miss Quincey's profession the sumptuary laws are exceptionally severe. It is a crime, a treachery, to spend money on mere personal adornment. You are clothed, not for beauty's sake, but because the rigour of the climate and of custom equally require it. Miss Quincey's conscience p.r.i.c.ked her all the time that she stood looking in at Hunter's window. Never before had she suffered so terrible a solicitation of the senses. It was as if all those dim and germinal desires had burst and blossomed in this sinful pa.s.sion for a blouse. She resisted, faltered, resisted; turned away and turned back again. The blouse sat immovable on its wooden bust, absolute in its policy of reticence. Miss Quincey had just decided that it had a thought too much mauve in it, and was most successfully routing desire by depreciation of its object when a shopman stepped on to the stage, treading airily among the gauzes and the flowers. There was no artifice about the young man; it was in the dreamiest abstraction that he clasped that fair form round the collar and turned it to the light. It shuddered like a living thing; its violent mauve vanished in silver grey. The effect was irresistible. Miss Quincey was tempted beyond all endurance; and she fell. Once in possession of the blouse, its price, a guinea, paid over the counter, Miss Quincey was all discretion. She carried her treasure home in a pasteboard box concealed under her cape; lest its shameless arrival in Hunter's van should excite scandal and remark.

That night, behind a locked door, Miss Quincey sat up wrestling and battling with her blouse. To Miss Quincey in the watches of the night it seemed that a spirit of obstinate malevolence lurked in that deceitful garment. Like all the things in Hunter's shop, it was designed for conventional well-rounded womanhood. It repudiated the very idea of Miss Quincey; in every fold it expressed its contempt for her person; its collar was stiff with an invincible repugnance. Miss Quincey had to take it in where it went out, and let it out where it went in, to pinch, pull, humour and propitiate it before it would consent to cling to her diminished figure. When all was done she wrapped it in tissue paper and hid it away in a drawer out of sight, for the very thought of it frightened her. But when next she went to look at it she hardly knew it again. The malignity seemed all smoothed out of it; it lay there with its meek sleeves folded, the very picture of injured innocence and reproach.

Miss Quincey thought she might get reconciled to it in time. A day might even come when she would be brave enough to wear it.

Not many days after, Miss Quincey might have been seen coming out of St.

Sidwell's with a reserved and secret smile playing about her face; so secret and so reserved, that n.o.body, not even Miss Quincey, could tell what it was playing at.

Miss Quincey was meditating an audacity.

That night she took pen and paper up to her bedroom and sat down to write a little note. Sat down to write it and got up again; wrote it and tore it up, and sat down to write another. This she left open for such emendations and improvements as should occur to her in the night. Perhaps none did occur; perhaps she realized that a literary work loses its force and spontaneity in conscious elaboration; anyhow the note was put up just as it was and posted first thing in the morning at the pillar-box on her way to St. Sidwell's.

Old Martha was cleaning the steps as Miss Quincey went out; but Miss Quincey carefully avoided looking Martha's way. Like the ostrich she supposed that if she did not see Martha, Martha could not see her. But Martha had seen her. She saw everything. She had seen the note open on Miss Juliana's table by the window in the bedroom when she was drawing up the blind; she had seen the silk blouse lying in its tissue paper when she was tidying Miss Juliana's drawer; and that very afternoon she discovered a certain cake deposited by Miss Juliana in the dining-room cupboard with every circ.u.mstance of secrecy and disguise.

And Martha shook her old head and put that and that together, the blouse, the cake and the letter; though what connection there could possibly be between the three was more than Miss Juliana could have told her. Even to Martha the a.s.sociation was so singular that it pointed to some painful aberration of intellect on Miss Juliana's part.

As in duty bound, Martha brought up her latest discovery and laid it before Mrs. Moon. Beyond that she said nothing, indeed there was nothing to be said. The cake (it was of the expensive pound variety, crowned with a sugar turret and surrounded with almond fortifications) spoke for itself, though in an unknown language.

"What does that mean, Martha?"

"Miss Juliana, m'm, I suppose."

Martha pursed up her lips, suppressing the impertinence of her own private opinion and awaiting her mistress's with respect.

No doubt she would have heard it but that Miss Juliana happened to come in at that moment, and Mrs. Moon's attention was distracted by the really amazing spectacle presented by her niece. And Miss Juliana, who for five-and-twenty years had never appeared in anything but frowsy drab or dingy grey, Miss Juliana flaunting in silk at four o'clock in the afternoon, Miss Juliana, all s.h.i.+ning and s.h.i.+mmering like a silver and mauve chameleon, was a sight to take anybody's breath away. Martha dearly loved a scene, for to be admitted to a scene was to be admitted to her mistress's confidence; but the excellent woman knew her place, and before that flagrant apparition she withdrew as she would have withdrawn from a family scandal.

Miss Quincey advanced timidly, for of course she knew that she had to cross that room under fire of criticism; but on the whole she was less abject than she might have been, for at the moment she was thinking of Dr. Cautley. He had actually accepted her kind invitation, and that fact explained and justified her; besides, she carried her Browning in her hand, and it made her feel decidedly more natural.

Mrs. Moon restrained her feelings until her niece had moved about a bit, and sat down by her enemy the cabinet, and presented herself in every possible aspect. The Old Lady's eyes lost no movement of the curious figure; when she had taken it in, grasped it in all its details, she began.

"Well, I declare, Juliana"--(five-and-twenty years ago she used to call her "Jooley," keeping the full name to mark disapproval or displeasure.

Now it was always Juliana, so that Mrs. Moon seemed to be permanently displeased)--"whatever possessed you to make such an exhibition of yourself? (And will you draw your chair back--you're incommoding the cabinet.) I never saw anything so unsuitable and unbecoming in _my_ life--at this hour of the day too. Why, you're just like a whirligig out of a pantomime. If you think you can carry off that kind of thing you're very much mistaken."

That did seem to be Miss Quincey's idea--to carry it off; to brazen it out; to sit down and read Browning as if there was nothing at all remarkable in her personal appearance.

"And to choose lilac of all things in the world! You never could stand that shade at the best of times. Lilac! Why, I declare if it isn't mauve-pink."

"Mauve-pink!" She had given voice to the fear that lay hidden in Miss Quincey's heart. A sensitive culprit caught in humiliating guilt could not look more cowed with self-consciousness than Miss Quincey at that word. Criminal and crime, Miss Quincey and her blouse, seemed linked in an awful bond of mutual abhorrence. The blouse s.h.i.+vered as Miss Quincey trembled in nervous agitation; as she went red and yellow by turns it paled and flushed its painful pink. They were blus.h.i.+ng for each other.

For it _was_ mauve-pink; she could see that well enough now.

"Turn round!"

Miss Quincey turned round.

"Much too young for you! Why, bless me, if it doesn't throw up every bit of yellow in your face! If you don't believe me, look in the gla.s.s."

Miss Quincey looked in the gla.s.s.

It _did_ throw up the yellow tints. It threw everything up to her. If she had owned to a little fear of it before, it affected her now with positive terror. The thing was young, much too young; and it was brutal and violent in its youth. It was possessed by a perfect demon of juvenility; it clashed and fought with every object in the room; it made them all look old, ever so old, and shabby. And as Miss Quincey stood with it before the looking gla.s.s, it flared up and told her to her face that she was forty-five--forty-five, and looked fifty.

"Louisa," murmured the Old Lady, "was the only one of our family who could stand pink."