There came into view a familiar figure, crossing from the other side of the way. Nancy started, waved her hand, and went to open the door. Her look had wholly altered; she was bright, mirthful, overflowing with affectionate welcome.
This friend of hers, Jessica Morgan by name, had few personal attractions. She looked overwrought and low-spirited; a very plain and slightly-made summer gown exhibited her meagre frame with undue frankness; her face might have been pretty if health had filled and coloured the flesh, but as it was she looked a ghost of girlhood, a dolorous image of frustrate sex. In her cotton-gloved hand she carried several volumes and notebooks.
‘I’m so glad you’re in,’ was her first utterance, between pants after hasty walking and the jerks of a nervous little laugh. ‘I want to ask you something about Geometrical Progression. You remember that formula—’
‘How can I remember what I never knew?’ exclaimed Nancy. ‘I always hated those formulas; I couldn’t learn them to save my life.’
‘Oh, that’s nonsense! You were much better at mathematics than I was. Do just look at what I mean.’
She threw her books down upon a chair, and opened some pages of scrawled manuscript, talking hurriedly in a thin falsetto.
Her family, a large one, had fallen of late years from a position of moderate comfort into sheer struggle for subsistence. Jessica, armed with certificates of examinational prowess, got work as a visiting governess. At the same time, she nourished ambitions, discernible perhaps in the singular light of her deep-set eyes and a something of hysteric determination about her lips. Her aim, at present, was to become a graduate of London University; she was toiling in her leisure hours—the hours of exhaustion, that is to say—to prepare herself for matriculation, which she hoped to achieve in the coming winter. Of her intimate acquaintances only one could lay claim to intellectual superiority, and even she, Nancy Lord to wit, shrank from the ordeals of Burlington House. To become B.A., to have her name in the newspapers, to be regarded as one of the clever, the uncommon women—for this Jessica was willing to labour early and late, regardless of failing health, regardless even of ruined complexion and hair that grew thin beneath the comb.
She talked only of the ‘exam,’ of her chances in this or that ‘paper,’ of the likelihood that this or the other question would be ‘set.’ Her brain was becoming a mere receptacle for dates and definitions, vocabularies and rules syntactic, for thrice-boiled essence of history, ragged scraps of science, quotations at fifth hand, and all the heterogeneous rubbish of a ‘crammer’s’ shop. When away from her books, she carried scraps of paper, with jottings to be committed to memory. Beside her plate at meals lay formulae and tabulations. She went to bed with a manual and got up with a compendium.
Nancy, whose pursuit of ‘culture’ followed a less exhausting track, regarded the girl with a little envy and some compassion. Esteeming herself in every respect Jessica’s superior, she could not help a slight condescension in the tone she used to her; yet their friendship had much sincerity on both sides, and each was the other’s only confidante. As soon as the mathematical difficulty could be set aside, Nancy began to speak of her private troubles.
‘The Prophet was here last night,’ she said, with a girlish grimace. ‘He’s beginning again. I can see it coming. I shall have to snub him awfully next time.’
‘Oh, what a worry he is!’
‘Yes, but there’s something worse. I suspected that the Pasha knew of it; now I feel sure he’s encouraging him.’
By this oriental style Nancy signified her father. The Prophet was her father’s partner in business, Mr. Samuel Bennett Barmby.
‘I feel sure now that they talked it over when the Prophet was taken into partnership. I was thrown in as a “consideration.” ’
‘But how could your father possibly think—?’
‘It’s hard to say what he does think about me. I’m afraid I shall have to have a talk with him. If so, it will be a long talk, and a very serious talk. But he isn’t well just now, and I must put it off.’
‘He isn’t well?’
‘A touch of gout, he says. Two days last week he didn’t go to business, and his temper was that ‘orrible!’ Nancy had a habit of facetiously quoting vulgarities; this from an acquaintance of theirs who often supplied them with mirth. ‘I suppose the gout does make one bad-tempered.’
‘Has he been coming often?—Mr. Barmby, I mean.’
‘Pretty well. I think I must turn matchmaker, and get him married to some one. It oughtn’t to be difficult. The Prophet “has points.” ’
‘I dare say some people would think him handsome,’ assented Miss Morgan, nibbling a finger which showed an ink-stain, and laughing shyly.
‘And his powers of conversation!—Don’t you know any one that would do for him?’
They jested on this theme until Nancy chose to become serious again.
‘Have you any lessons to-morrow?’
‘No. Thank goodness every one is going to see the procession, or the decorations, or the illuminations, and all the rest of the nonsense,’ Jessica replied. ‘I shall have a good long day of work; except that I’ve promised to go in the afternoon, and have tea with the little girls at Champion Hill. I wish you’d come too; they’d be delighted to see you, and there’ll be nobody except the governess.’
Nancy looked up in doubt.
‘Are you sure? Won’t the dowager be at home?’
‘She hasn’t left her room for three weeks.’
They exchanged a look of some special significance.
‘Then I suppose,’ said Nancy, with a peculiar smile, ‘that’s why Mr. Tarrant has been calling?’
‘Has he? How do you know?’
Again they looked at each other, and Nancy laughed.
‘I have happened to meet him twice, the last few days.’ She spoke in an off-hand way. ‘The first time, it was just at the top of the lane; he was coming away. The second time, I was walking along Champion Hill, and he came up behind me, going to the house.’
‘Did he talk?’
Nancy gave a nod.
‘Yes, both times. But he didn’t tell me that the dowager was worse.’
‘High and mighty?’ asked Jessica.
‘Not quite so majestic as usual, I thought. I didn’t feel quite so much of a shrimp before him. And decidedly he was in better spirits. Perhaps the dowager’s death would be important to him?’
‘Very likely. Will you come to-morrow?’
Miss. Lord hesitated—then, with a sudden frankness:
‘To tell you the truth, I’m afraid he might be there.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so, not on Jubilee Day.’
‘But that’s the very reason. He may come to be out of the uproar.’
‘I meant he was more likely to be out of town altogether.’
Nancy, still leaning over the table, propped her chin on her hands, and reflected.
‘Where does he go, I wonder?’
‘Oh, all sorts of places, no doubt. Men of that kind are always travelling. I suppose he goes shooting and fishing—’
Nancy’s laugh made an interruption.
‘No, no, he doesn’t!