“Where!” exclaimed Nip, looking about her with a touch of kindly Apprehension.
“The Night-Light of Love,” said Saint Musset, “burns I think me in the slightly muted Crevices of all Women who have been a little sprung with continual playing of the Spring Song, though I may be mistaken, for be it known, I have not yet made certain on this Point. There is one such in our midst on whom I have had a Weather Eye these many Years. She is a little concocted of one bad night in Venice and one sly Woman going to morning Mass, her Name is writ from here to Sicily, as Cynic Sal. She dressed like a Coachman of the period of Pecksniff, but she drives an empty Hack. And that is one Woman,” she said, “who shall yet find me as Fare, and if at the Journey’s end, she still cracks as sharp a Whip, and has never once descended the Drivers’s Seat to put her Head within to see what rumpled meaning there sits, why she may sing for her Pains, I shall get off at London and find me another who has somewhat of a budding Care for a Passenger.”
“Be she not the Woman,” said Nip flightily, “who is of so vain and jealous a Nature that do what you will you cannot please her, and mention this or that, she is not contented? For if it be the one, she has passed through my ken as Timid Tom, or Most-Infirm-of-Purpose.”
“It may be,” said Dame Musset, “and it may not.”
“How true that is when ’tis said of a Woman,” acknowledged Nip; “no Man could be both one and neither like to us, and now,” she said “I see Miss Tuck this way wending, hot and hunting, and I think me she stands in Need of a fal-lal or two in the shape of a Sandwich, and a dish of Tea, for she has the look to me of one who has laid Waste a barren Land. That pathetic Expression one occasionally observes on the Faces of our younger, less acute Generation; her under Lip doth hang with a Dexterity that has found no Thanks.”
“Ah Woe is me!” sighed Miss Tuck, seating herself at the Table, and leaning upon a tiny pocket Handkerchief, “you, my dear Musset were, as always, quite right. She thaws nothing but Facts, do what I would, nor one unfathomed Mystery in the Lot! Nor alas, one gentle Fancy. such as sends the Pigeon up among his Feathers, nay, nor one Crumb untabulated, be it ever so infinitesimal. For no matter what I came upon but that Wench had some Word for it! Now it was Horace, now it was Spinoza, and yet again it was the Descent of Man,” she shuddered, “and that Descent,” said she in a dreadful Whisper, “I will have nothing to do with, here or then! When a Woman is as well seasoned in her every Joint as she, with exact and enduring Knowledge, there is nothing for it but to let her add herself up to an impossible Zero, and so come to her Death of that premeditated Accuracy, but then,” she said, putting a soft little Hand into that of Miss Nip, “you know how fast I recover, and how many Hours there are in a Day.”
“Some women”, said Dame Musset, “are Sea-Cattle, and some are Land-Hogs, and yet others are Worms crawling about our Almanacks, but some,” she said, “are Sisters of Heaven, and these we must follow and not be side-tracked.”
“How am I to help it if I go astray,” cried Miss Tuck, “when every Law of Love and Desire was long ago as mixed as a Contortion of Traffic? I do not know a blind Alley from a Boulevard, nor a Cross-Road to what it may be running to, and Sign-Posts never serve for anything but unsettling my Mind!”
“You,” cut in Miss Nip, “would follow, all panting and blind with good Intentions, the Trail of a Field Mouse! There is no Land so uncharterd of Trails but you would find a Ribbon of Comfort even in the Desert, and lead yourself, by your very Fury of Willingness, into a Wallow of Trouble before Sundown!” “Oh God, don’t I know it!” sobbed Tuck.
JUNE hath 30 days
PORTENTS, SIGNS AND OMENS
WHEN Infant Grundy rises like the Sickle The dying Grundy will her nothing stickle, But wane upon this World of Odds and Omen,
The newer Prudy waxing for the Women,
For to a Woman shall a Woman stoop
When she had birched them well about the Coop,
And nowhere else, as they have done ere this;
No Man shall nip them, and no Boy shall kiss,
No Lad shall hoist them gaily Heels o’er Head
Nor lay them ’twixt his Breast-bone and his Bed.
Nor flay them with sweet Portent and with Sign.
Nor reap their Image tiny in this Eyen.
Nay, this shall never be their earthly Cost
But, all unlike the Bird of Memory lost,
Late roosting on the Hollow tree of Time,
Which only backward can the Scaler climb,