Part 5

"Well, now, did you ever hear a more old-fashioned remark?"

"_Passer deliciæ meæ puellæ_," boomed Mr. Fawcus.

Until Mary discovered that new world in the roof, her chief pleasure apart from the backyard had been a cellar in front of the basement which was lighted from a square of opaque glass set in the pavement of the street. She was willing to spend hours here, sitting on an old footstool, surrounded by her dolls and pretending to be a sea-nymph. A wet day, and it was chiefly on wet days that Mary frequented this cellar, heightened the illusion of being under the sea, because the skylight, if such an aperture may be called a skylight, when blurred with rain was more than usually aqueous, and the shadows of people passing overhead were more than usually like fish. Mrs. Fawcus, when she first heard of Mary's pastime, was moved to utter dark interpretations of it.

"Depend upon it, Uncle William, that child's life is going to be mixed up with deep water. Mark my words, she'll cross the sea many a time before she goes down to the grave."

"Do not vaticinate, my dear," her husband commanded. "Absit omen!"

"I don't know what you're talking about, but when any one thinks of that night ten years ago and when any one sees that dear innocent sitting out there and staring up at the fishes, as she calls them, well, any one may be forgiven for doing what any one's told by their husband they mustn't do."

"Ten years ago," Mr. Fawcus repeated. "So it is. I wish you'd keep your thoughts to yourself sometimes, Aunt Lucy. Ten years ago!"

She shuddered, for he was thinking of those fresh proposals to be made in ten years.

"Here's the money from the lawyers," said Mrs. Fawcus one morning in March, handing her husband the familiar envelope which had arrived regularly every quarter-day.

Mr. Fawcus, on whose countenance a decade of looking after the stock of Messrs. Holland and Brown had not left a mark, became suddenly old and flabby when he read through that letter. In that moment even his Latinity deserted him. The dreadful fact could not be evaded like so many other facts in his life by ponderous rhetoric and polysyllabic euphemisms.

"We've got to give her up," he groaned.

His wife snatched the letter from him.

"Where's Mary?" she asked, quickly looking round before she said anything Mary ought not to hear.

"She's gone up to her attic to sow the seeds I bought her yesterday. She wanted to try sweet sultans this year. She's up in the attic sowing sweet sultans."

Mr. Fawcus buried his face in his hands and bent low in unutterable despair, while his wife read the lawyer's letter.

151 Lamb's Conduit Street, W.C., _March 24, 1870_.

_Dear Sir_,

_We are instructed by our Client, Lady Flower of Barton Hall, Barton Flowers, to say that she has decided to receive into her house her granddaughter, Miss Mary Flower. We beg to enclose in addition to the usual quarterly allowance of £25 a check for £50, in order that Miss Mary Flower may be suitably equipped for the journey to Paris, where Lady Flower is now living and where she wishes her granddaughter to join her. If you will give us a call at your earliest convenience, we shall be happy to provide you with any advice you may require in respect of the journey. Lady Flower desires us to thank you for the care you have taken of Miss Mary Flower and begs that if you have not already explained to her the peculiar circumstances in which you took charge of her you will do so now._

_In case you may not be acquainted with the facts, we may add that a year after Mr. Edward Flower lost his life in the wreck of the Wizard Queen, his elder brother, Mr. John Flower, was killed in the hunting-field. By the death of Sir Richard Flower, which occurred last November, Lady Flower inherited the whole of his property and she is no doubt anxious to provide suitably for the youngest and only surviving member of the family._

_Yours faithfully, Hepper and Philcox._

Mrs. Fawcus went across to where her husband was still sitting with bowed head.

"William!" she murmured. It was the first time in thirty-five years of married life that she had dared to call him simply that.

"William!" she repeated more confidently, for the outward semblance of things had not been changed by her daring address. "You must write _them_ a letter."

"It would be useless, my dear," he muttered without raising his head. "Useless, utterly and completely useless. A labor of Sisyphus, my love."

Nevertheless, Mr. Fawcus was persuaded to try, and he composed the following letter to Messrs. Hepper and Philcox:

c/o Messrs. Holland and Brown, Publishers, 95 Paternoster Row, London, E.C., _March 25, 1870_.

_Dear Sirs_,

_Your communication of the 24th inst. with kind enclosures was duly received. For the moment I am too much disturbed by the situation thus created to express worthily my repugnance to the notion of losing Miss Mary Flower. I should esteem it a favor if you would, so far as the emotions of a suppositious father can be suitably conveyed through the medium of legal phraseology, convey to Her Ladyship that my good wife and myself are most anxious not to part with the child whom we literally snatched from the angry deep. With all respect I venture to observe that until this moment none of her relatives has shown the slightest concern for the child's welfare beyond the quarterly allowance of £25 sterling. Mrs. Fawcus and myself on the other hand have never felt anything but the profoundest affection for her, and I can assure you that we would have left ourselves with nothing more than the bare necessities of life rather than that she should have wanted for the least thing._

_In the hope of shortly receiving from you a favorable reply to my request_,

_I am, Gentlemen, Your obedient servant, William Axworthy Fawcus_.

It was settled not to say anything to Mary until the lawyers wrote again:

151 Lamb's Conduit Street, W.C. _April 3, 1870._

_Dear Sir_,

_We have to say in answer to your letter of the 25th ult. that we have communicated the substance of your request to Lady Flower, and that she is unable to agree to your suggestion that Miss Mary Flower should remain in your care. We take this opportunity to point out that when in March, 1860, the late Sir Richard Flower invited you to look after his granddaughter he made it clear that such an arrangement was for ten years, at the end of which time he gave you to understand the future of the child would once more come up for discussion._

_Hoping that we shall hear from you in the course of a day or two, appointing a time to call upon us_,

_We are, Yours faithfully, Hepper and Philcox_.

"Who's to tell Mary?" Mrs. Fawcus asked with fear in her voice.

"Well, I had thought of your telling her," Mr. Fawcus admitted. "But perhaps the most equitable way would be for us both to tell her."

The worst of it was that, when they did brace themselves to tell her and were prepared at whatever cost to themselves to alleviate in every possible way her grief, Mary herself jumped for joy at the notion of visiting her grandmother in France.

"She doesn't mean to be cruel," said Mrs. Fawcus, patting her husband's arm reassuringly.

"No, no, certainly not," he agreed. "It's just the heedlessness of youth."

Mrs. Fawcus sighed.

"We were young once ourselves, Mr. Fawcus." The imminent departure of Mary made "Uncle William" sound ridiculous now, and Mrs. Fawcus went back to her time-honored mode of address.

"Many years ago, my love," he said, shaking his head. "And I'm afraid that you've had much to put up with since then. I have wasted my opportunities sadly. I ought to have been in a superb position by now."

"I'm sure I don't wish for anything better than what we've got," Mrs. Fawcus declared, trying to sound cheerful. "I'm sure as basements go, one couldn't wish for a nicer basement. It's so lovely and light for one thing."

"If I were to die, my dear, I'm convinced that Holland and Brown would offer you the refusal of my post."

"Oh, don't talk like that, Mr. Fawcus. Die? What ever next, to be sure?"

"_Tempora, mutantur nos et mutamur in illis._ It won't be the same without our Mary."

"You're going to make me cry if you keep on keeping on so." Mrs. Fawcus uttered a few warning sniffles.

At that moment she, who by her reception of the news had added the last bitterness to the separation, came dancing back from her dolls to whom as a great secret she had been telling about her departure.

"Do you think my granny will be like a fairy god-mother?" Mary asked. "Because if she is I shall ask her to wave her magic wand and bring my dear Uncle William and my dear Aunt Lucy to France."

"Will you, Mary, will you? But I'm too old and fat to be waved by fairy godmothers," said Mr. Fawcus sadly.

Mary began to understand at last that her going away was a grief to her kind guardians, and as she had often done before, when it seemed advisable to propitiate Uncle William, or when Uncle William came downstairs very angry over some new task that Holland and Brown had laid upon him, she asked him a question.

"How big is France, Uncle William?" And folding her hands across her clean pinafore she composed herself to listen more attentively to a long account of France than she had ever listened to any of Uncle William's exegetical discourses before.

But Uncle William did not answer, and Mary, horrified at his silence, began to cry.

"For goodness' sake, child, don't wipe your eyes on your clean pinafore," Mrs. Fawcus sharply adjured her. It was like Mrs. Fawcus to have put Mary into a clean pinafore just to learn that she was to be taken from them.

A shaft of sunlight, the first of the year to reach the basement, came glancing through the geraniums in the window and lit up the cosy kitchen; but it was a cruel shaft, for it lit up also the weary lines and the baggy eyes of Mr. Fawcus: it lit up the crows-feet and the wrinkles of his wife; and most cruelly of all it lit up Mary's auburn hair, reminding the old couple that, though the sun might shine all the summer through, here it would never shine again upon that auburn hair.

The next fortnight went by for Mary in such a whirl of exciting new experiences as no child of ten could be expected not to enjoy, and she was hardly to be blamed if she did appear hard-hearted in her behavior on the verge of parting with her guardians. She could hardly be blamed for not realizing how unlikely it was that she would ever see either of them again, and in justice to the old couple it must be said that neither of them tried to gratify their emotion at Mary's expense. Once the first shock had passed, they did their best to prepare her for a worthy entrance upon the new scene, at whatever cost to themselves. A number of dresses were bought, each one more outrageous than the last, and each one seeming as much more beautiful to Mary.

"I feel like Cinderella going to the ball," she told Mrs. Fawcus.

"Ah, my dear, you'll find that life isn't quite such a fairy story as you think it is now," replied Mrs. Fawcus.

And this was as near as she got to a hint of cynicism in her advice to the little girl.

For the visit to the lawyers Mr. Fawcus arrayed himself in a black suit he had not worn for eleven years, in fact, not since the annual prize-giving at the last school he owned. It had been packed in the bottom of a large trunk to go to Australia, where it was intended to be worn at the ceremonious welcomes that Mr. Fawcus hoped to receive in his new country. By good fortune this trunk had missed being put on board the _Wizard Queen_, and both Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus had been able to live for ten years on the clothes it had contained.

Mr. Hepper and Mr. Philcox were even more desiccated than Mr. Bristowe of Holland and Brown's. Both their waistcoats were dusty with snuff, so dusty that if Mr. Philcox had not happened to prick his finger while he was talking to Mary and displayed on the tip of it an infinitesimal but withal definitely recognizable drop of blood Mary might have thought that they were stuffed with sawdust like her own dolls.

"And what arrangements have you made for conveying Miss Flower to her grandmother?" asked Mr. Hepper.

"Mrs. Fawcus will conduct her to Paris," said Mr. Fawcus. "I should have taken her myself if I had not recorded a solemn vow on Dover Quay ten years ago never to cross the sea again."

"Ah, that would be after you were wrecked, no doubt," said Mr. Philcox. "Yes--um--ah! I've never been wrecked myself, Mr. Fawcus."

"It is an experience which happily falls to the lot of few," said Mr. Fawcus.

"Yes--um--ah! Then I may take it as definite that this young lady will leave by the Dover packet on Wednesday next. How is the glass, Mr. Hepper?"

"The glass is steady, Mr. Philcox."

"The glass augurs well for the voyage across, Mr. Fawcus. You hear what Mr. Hepper says."

"Is there anything more you wish to tell me?" Mr. Fawcus inquired, bowing to each of the partners in turn.

Mr. Hepper looked at Mr. Philcox, who shook his head.

"Nothing more, thank you, Mr. Fawcus," they declared in unison.

Mr. Fawcus was about to take his leave, when Mr. Philcox held up his hand.

"But wait a minute. Dear me, we have forgotten something. Yes--um--ah! Lady Flower instructed us that if on inquiries we should find that you had suitably performed your duty towards her granddaughter we should offer you this handsome token of appreciation."

Mr. Philcox flourished an envelope.

"I am happy to say, Mr. Fawcus, that our inquiries have proved perfectly satisfactory, and so perhaps you will take a little peep inside and also, I think, Mr. Hepper, it might be more in order if Mr. Fawcus were to sign this little receipt."

"Please thank her ladyship from me," said Mr. Fawcus grandly, putting the envelope down on the lawyer's table. "But the only token of her appreciation that I or Mrs. Fawcus should esteem would be an occasional communication from her lawyers if she does not care to write herself letting us know that--er--this young lady is well and happy. I wish you a very good morning, gentlemen." Mr. Fawcus made a bow, and left the office with Mary.

A few days later Mr. Fawcus, from the gliding shore, was waving farewell to the little girl.

"Don't forget to water my sweet sultans, Uncle William," Mary cried above the turmoil of the paddles.

"The less you say about water to poor Uncle William," Mrs. Fawcus commented almost sharply, "the better. It must have been just here that he carried you ashore in his arms ten years ago."

The steamer backed and brought poor Uncle William within earshot again.

"I was telling Mary that just about here you carried her ashore," Mrs. Fawcus called to her husband.

"_Sunt lacrimæ rerum_," he chanted, and, when this time the paddles churned up the water in earnest, Mr. Fawcus buried his face in a bandana handkerchief and waved a limp glove from the receding shore, a limp glove that pathetically expressed the condition of mind and body to which its owner was by now reduced.

The journey was too full of excitement for Mary to be long saddened by the vision of Mr. Fawcus on the quay. Most children remember their first Channel crossing; but this great event in Mary's case was made doubly noteworthy from its being the only adventure of any importance she had ever known, so placid had been her life in that Paternoster Row basement.

"Ah, you wouldn't be dancing about quite so gaily, Miss, if you could remember the first time you was on the sea," said Mrs. Fawcus. "Still, I'm bound to say you behaved very well then, all considering. Though why you didn't die of that perishing wind I'm sure I don't know, and that's a fact."

"Shall we be wrecked to-day, Aunt Lucy?"

"For the love of mercy, don't talk of such things," Mrs. Fawcus begged. "If you feel sick, chew a bit of lemon peel and let it come. Don't be afraid. Them as manages this boat have seen thousands of people sick. They don't consider it any more than blowing the nose, as you might say."

But Mary was not sick, and when Mrs. Fawcus came back to Paternoster Row she told her husband of this convincing indication of a mysterious bond between Mary and the sea.

"If I have a window-box in Paris," said Mary, when the chalk cliffs of England were become ghosts in the mist, "I shall plant sweet williams, because Uncle William is sweet, isn't he, Aunt Lucy?"

"Bless your heart, my little treasure," Mrs. Fawcus exclaimed as she clasped Mary to her heart. "It'll be meat and drink to poor Uncle William to hear that."

When the various difficulties of customs and porters and trains and cabs had been surmounted, and Mary holding tightly to the hand of Mrs. Fawcus was standing on the steps of her grandmother's house in the Avenue de Wagram, she felt a sudden desire to turn round and go back to the basement in Paternoster Row. So far it had all been a delightful adventure, but now she was tired of the adventure and was thinking about her thrush which always sang so sweetly in the month of April.

"Oh dear, I wish it _was_ really a dream and that I was going to wake up now," she whispered to Mrs. Fawcus; but just then the door opened, and in a moment Mary was inside her grandmother's house.

She was vaguely aware, when she was stumping upstairs behind the footman, of tiger-skins and dark paneled walls and soft carpets; but before she had time to look round, two great doors had been flung open, and while Mrs. Fawcus drew back she had to walk over an immense slippery floor to where in a kind of inner room her grandmother was reading a yellow book by the fire. She heard from far away in that vast outer room the sharp whisper of Aunt Lucy: "Run along quick and give your grandmother a nice kiss." However, Mary did not dare to run, but stepped very carefully over the head first of a polar bear and then of a black bear until she stood before her grandmother's chair.

"I've come to see you, Grandmamma," she announced.

Lady Flower rose from her chair and looked critically at the little girl for a moment before she bent over and kissed her cheek.

"And is this good woman Mrs. Fawcus?" she asked.

"That's Aunt Lucy," said Mary.

Lady Flower frowned slightly.

"I expect you'll like a cup of tea after your journey, Mrs. Fawcus," she said, pulling a big purple bell-rope that hung before the fireplace.

"Oh, no, thank you, my lady. Nothing at all, thank you. I think I ought to be getting back to Mr. Fawcus as soon as possible."

"Is your husband waiting outside?" Lady Flower inquired.

"Oh, no, thank you, my lady. He sent many apologies for not coming too, but he's never been to sea since he was wrecked."

The footman came in at this moment, and Lady Flower told him to take Mrs. Fawcus downstairs for a cup of tea.

"Oh, no, thank you, my lady. Too kind of you, I'm sure, but I'd really rather be going, now that I've seen Mary safely here. I've arranged to go back to Calais and wait there the night. Mr. Fawcus thought he'd be less anxious that way than if I was to stay in Paris all by myself. We shall miss Mary most terribly, my lady. If I might just kiss her good-by and be off? I'm sure it's a pity Mr. Fawcus couldn't have come. He's much superior to me in every way."

"Well, if you insist on going back at once," said Lady Flower, who was beginning to think that after all she had nothing to say to Mrs. Fawcus, and who would have cut out her tongue rather than ask the one question she wanted to ask about the death of her son.

"Yes, indeed I think I will, my lady, and thank you kindly, I'm sure, for the offer of tea."

Mrs. Fawcus darted forward, kissed Mary passionately several times, and seemed to slide out of the room across the parquet and out of her life forever.

When Lady Flower was alone with her granddaughter she was more at ease. She was little changed by ten years; she was still the same delicately ivorine creature as when she banished this child's father from her heart with words of contempt for this child's mother. Not that she ever really did banish Edward; the death of her elder son with all his valor and renown did not touch her half so deeply as the loss of Edward. If it had not been for Sir Richard's determination to ignore Edward's offspring she might long ago have sent for Mary. Her husband's bitterness against Edward, drowned dead though he was by that time, was intensified when John was killed in the hunting-field. He declared fiercely to his wife that he was glad Edward had not left a son, for that he would rather the name and title of the Flowers should perish utterly than that the fruit of his son's disgraceful alliance with one of his own tenants should carry on both.

Mary was astonished to find how young her grandmother was. She had expected a very old lady--almost she had pictured her with a spinning-wheel and wearing a steeple-crowned hat--who would be bent double and talk in a high, cracked voice. Instead of that she found some one who looked much younger than Aunt Lucy.

"You'll have to go to school, you know," her grandmother was saying. "You'll have a great deal to learn. Let me look at your hands, child. Dear me, I believe you're going to have hands like mine. But your nails are a little grubby."

"That's because I've been gardening all last week."

"Gardening? Where did you garden in London?"

"In the attic. Mr. Bristowe let me garden there."

"No wonder your nails are grubby. And who is Mr. Bristowe?"

"He was the manager of Holland and Brown, where Uncle William was caretaker."

Lady Flower shuddered.

"Listen, Mary. I would rather you gave up calling Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus uncle and aunt. They are not any relation to you, and now that you are getting older you must learn to speak of them as Mr. Fawcus and Mrs. Fawcus."

"But I always called them Uncle William and Aunt Lucy."

Lady Flower tapped her foot impatiently.

"I know that, and that is why I want you to break yourself of the habit of calling them uncle and aunt. They are good and worthy people, but you are going to lead quite a different kind of life nowadays, and it wouldn't do...."

Lady Flower hesitated. Worldly woman though she was, she hesitated almost shamefacedly to tell this child gazing up at her with astonished eyes that Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus were common. She decided to let her granddaughter learn gradually to be ashamed of the lowly couple who had watched over her from infancy to girlhood.

"You have my hands, and you have your father's eyes," said Lady Flower, changing the subject.

"And my mother's hair, Aunt Lucy said."

"Yes, and now I think you'd better go and take off your things. We'll go shopping to-morrow, and when you're equipped I'll take you myself to the school where you're going to learn...." Once again Lady Flower broke off. She had been on the point of saying: "To forget all about your life in London." Perhaps if she had known that Mary had lived in a basement she would not have been able to refrain, for life in a basement would have seemed to Lady Flower unimaginably squalid.

"Go shopping again?" echoed Mary in amazement. "Why, all these last days I've been shopping with Aunt Lucy."

"Yes, I did not want you to arrive in rags."

Mary found that there were many other things her grandmother did not want before she had been long in her new home. Accustomed to have her ordinary behavior regarded with admiration and approval by Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus, she could not understand that to her grandmother her manners appeared uncouth, her habit of speech common. She was continually being reproved for the way she held her knife and fork, or for using a spoon naturally, that is by putting the narrow end into her mouth first.

"But if I drink my soup sideways I make a noise," she expostulated. "And Aunt Lucy--I mean Mrs. Fawcus told me not to make a noise."

"I do not make a noise, do I?" Grandmamma asked with raised eyebrows.