I put a few things on my bed—the music box from William Lister, my books—yes, they must come, all of them, because they had provided the escape from fact Elsie Dins-more, Misunderstood, The Wide Wide World, Peep Behind the Scenes, A Basket of Flowers ... stories of children whose lot had been as unhappy as my own; Little Women (how I had thrown myself into that delightful family, taking the parts of Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy in turns); Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Stories of endurance and triumph. I could never part with them. Fanny watched me. “You don’t want that” she said.
It was the cutout cardboard stage—tuppence colored.
“Fanny,” I said. “I remember the first time I saw it It was … wonderful. Six o’clock on Christmas morning.”
“You would wake early. I used to lie there listening for you. I was awake at five on those mornings. You used to get out of bed in the dark.”
“Yes, and feel the stocking; and then take it back to bed and hold it … guessing. I had a pact with myself that I mustn’t open it till the first streak of light was in the sky; because if I did it would disappear and all be a dream.”
“You and your fancies!”
“If it hadn’t been for you, Fanny, there wouldn’t have been a stocking.”
“Oh, some of the others would have seen to it.”
“I don’t think so. They were the best mornings of the year. I remember waking up a week later and the terrible disappointment I felt because it wasn’t Christmas, and that I should have to wait fifty-one weeks for the next”
“Children!” said Fanny, smiling tenderly.
I stood up suddenly and threw myself into her arms.
“Oh, Fanny, dear Fanny, we’ll always be together.”
She was militant in her fierceness. “You bet we will, Miss. I'd like to see the one as could part me from you.”
I released her and sat down on the bed.
“I shall be glad to be finished with this house. I don’t remember ever being really happy here except on those Christmas mornings and times with you. Do you remember how we used to go out into the markets—how we used to toss with the pieman and buy hot chestnuts?”
“You always loved the markets, Miss.”
“They seemed so exciting and colorful, and those people who were so anxious to sell their goods … they were poor and I was rich … but I used to envy them, Fanny.”
“You didn’t know what their lives were, Miss. You just thought selling there in the market was a nice sort of game, and never having felt the chilblains driving you mad with the itch and the soreness, and the rheumatics bending you double, you just thought what a good time they had. You can’t always know what’s going on out of sight, can you.”
“I was too sorry for myself in those days, Fanny. Now all that is over. I shall expect you in Cornwall by the end of the week.”
“You can depend upon it, Miss, that as soon as I’ve cleared up here I’ll be on that train. And what about all the furniture and everything?”
“I suppose the good pieces will come down to Menfreya; the rest well sell. Mr. Bevil will make the arrangements.”
“I reckon he’ll be making all the arrangements in the future, Miss.”
I smiled and I suppose my happiness shone through the smile, because she was silent for a moment; then I noticed her own expression harden and I understood, because Fanny was not usually one to hide her true feelings, that she disapproved of my wedding.
“I hope so, Fanny. As my husband it is natural that he should!”
“Oh yes, hell make them all right.”
“Fanny, for heaven’s sake, stop it! This is a time for congratulation—not doleful prophecy.”
“The time for prophecy is when it comes naturally to make it”
“What on earth do you mean by that?”
“I’m not at ease in my mind, Miss. Couldn’t you wait a while?”
“Wait, Fanny? What for?”
“You’ve been rushed into this.”
“Rushed. I’ve been waiting for Bevil to ask me to marry him for years.”
Tm afraid …”
“Don’t be. Now, I’m not going to discuss this with you anymore. Everything will be all right.”
“There’s one thing I’d like to know.”
“All right. What is it?”
“Did he ask you before your stepmother died … or after?”
“What does that mean?”
“It means a lot to me, Miss. Before you had only your income, didn’t you? I don’t understand these things much, but I reckon that when your stepmother died all that money was yours … without strings like … as there was with her. Well, you see, if he waited till after she died …”
I could have struck her because I was so angry, and I knew myself well enough to understand that I was whipping up anger to hide fear. Why had she put that vague, uneasy thought of mine into words so that now I could no longer ignore it? I had to faring it out and examine it in the light of day.
“What nonsense,” I said. “He was going to ask me before she died … only we were interrupted.”
If only Aunt Clarissa had not come in at that moment when he had called on me! I was certain then that he was about to ask me to marry him. But was he? If he had meant to ask me, wouldn’t he have made the opportunity?
Fanny was looking at me steadily, her eyes dark with fear and suspicion. She was firmly convinced that Bevil was marrying me for my money; more than that, she had watered those seeds of doubt in my own mind so that they were already springing into life.
She twisted her hands awkwardly. “You see, Miss Harriet, I want you to be happy. I just want everything of the best for you. And when things start to go wrong, they have a habit of going on that way.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“I can’t help thinking of that poor lady. She’s on my mind. I see her looking at her lovely skin in the glass and men putting that stuff in her drink , . . and then going like that”
“It’s horrifying. I’m trying not to think of it, Fanny, but I can’t get her out of my mind. Dying like that … without being prepared.”
“Without being prepared,” whispered Fanny. “Yes, that was how it was. She didn’t have a warning. She was there one day and gone the next I expect my Billy had a warning. He’d hear the storm rising, wouldn’t he? They’d be fighting the storm and they’d know there was danger all round… but she, poor lady, she didn’t know...”
“We’ve got to stop thinking of it, Fanny.”
“Thinking can’t do no good,” she agreed.
“Now stop worrying about me. Everything will be all right”
“Oh yes. Well see to that between us.”
Her mouth was set, her eyes hard; she looked like a general going into battle.
And although she had made those doubts spring up in my mind, I knew that as long as Fanny lived I should always have someone to love me.
Lady Menfrey and I were met at Liskeard, and I shall never forget driving to Menfreya. The lanes, made narrower by the summer foliage on the banks, had never seemed so green and colorful; I sniffed the warm breeze as we came near to the sea and when I saw the towers of Menfreya I could have wept with emotion. Now it was more than a house which had caught my fancy, more than an ancient fascinating house; it was my home.
There was the house on the island; and there was the cliff with the walls of Menfreya rising stark above it on the coast side, as though it were part of the cliff face itself.