"That's all in the past. There must be no more evasions between us, no more falsehoods," she says, seizing one of Helen's hands.
Helen squeezes back. "I've nothing left to hide from you. My heart's split open as if on the vivisector's table!"
Fido winces at the image. She bends over Helen. "Lean on me, my own one. I'll stand by you."
"Through everything?"
"Everything!"
"I can stay?"
"For as long as you need." Forever, Fido's thinking, though she doesn't dare say it, not yet.
"Oh Fido, how did I ever manage without you, all those lonely years!"
Her mind is leaping into the future. Why not? Women do live together, sometimes, if they have the means and are free from other obligations. It's eccentric, but not improper. She's known several examples in the Reform movement: Miss Power Cobbe and her "partner" Miss Lloyd, for instance. It can be done. It would be a change of life for Helen—but hasn't her life been utterly changed, without her consent, already? Can't the caterpillar shrug off its cramped case and emerge with tremulous wings?
As if reading Fido's mind, Helen clings to her hand like a drowning woman. "If you cast me off or betray me like these men have, I'll perish."
"I never will." There'll be some discomfort, some embarrassment consequent on setting up house with a divorcee, but nothing Fido can't weather for her friend's sake.
"Swear."
"There's no need—"
"Swear it!"
"I swear, then." In the ragged silence, Fido plants a hot kiss on that smooth face.
Later that night, when darkness has drawn a merciful cloak over the lurid sky, Helen's fast asleep, on her front, as still as a baby. Beside her, Fido, propped up on four pillows, strains for breath and represses a nagging cough. Emotion always goes to her lungs.
How long does a divorce take? she wonders. The thing is rare in English fiction. In East Lynne, she recalls with effort, the husband seems to obtain one without much trouble—but by then, the deluded Lady Isabel has already eloped to France, which makes the case clearer. Abandoned by her seducer, unrecognizably scarred, Lady Isabel comes home and takes a position as governess to her own children. Doesn't one of them then die in her arms? Wake up. This is real life, Fido reminds herself sternly.
If Helen were to admit the charges—casting the lion's share of blame on Anderson, for his ceaseless solicitations and threats that induced her to break her vows—then perhaps the thing needn't take very long at all. It could all be resolved before the winter, thinks Fido giddily. She pictures Helen and herself celebrating Christmas in the drawing-room below.
In the faint gaslight from the street that comes through the crack in the curtains, she watches the infinitesimal rise and fall of Helen's shoulder blades under the white muslin of the borrowed nightdress. Some lines from Lord Tennyson repeat themselves in her head.
Strange friend, past, present, and to be,
Loved deeplier, darker understood.
It's too late for qualms. In one turn of the planet, everything has changed. While Helen was out shopping today, she was, all unknowing, robbed of everything. The whole establishment of her life has fluttered to the ground like a pack of cards. At a moment like this, Fido can only follow her nature, which is to hold, to save, to love.
The grandfather clock on the landing chimes two. If she'd known what a storm was brewingjust over the horizon, Fido wonders, would she have turned away, that parched afternoon on Farringdon Street, on the last day of August?
Fido?
You're mistaken.
But you're my long-lost friend, my faithful Fido!
Not I.
The very thought of it makes her despise herself, for lack of nerve, parsimony of heart. No, she can't wish that day—not the whole last chaotic month—undone. In the past, Fido's never come quite first for Helen; she's always known that. But now Helen's been shaken awake; she's learned that men's flattery isn't enough to live on. She's come to treasure the one true friend she possesses, the one soul that speaks to her soul. Helen's going to survive these horrors, somehow, and it's Fido who will pull her through. There could be long years of happiness ahead, waiting for them just around the corner.
On impulse she gets out of bed, very softly so as not to disturb the sleeper, and searches in the back of her bureau drawer. She doesn't need a light to find the roll of linen. There's the choker Helen gave her all those years ago, in memory