She proceeded: "I shall never forget that morning when you went away
the last time. You said you were going to Truro; but I'm not
sure--perhaps it was to London. I only know that it was very far away,
and you were going for a very long time. It was early in the morning,
and I was in bed. You know how late I always am. I heard you calling to
me to come down and say good-bye; so I jumped up and came down in my
nightdress and saw you standing waiting for me at the foot of the
stairs. Then, when I got down, you took me up in your arms and kissed
me. I shall never forget it!"
"Why?" I said, rather lamely, just because it was necessary to say
something. And after a little pause, she returned, "Because I shall
never forget it."
Then, as I said nothing, she resumed: "That day after school I saw
Uncle Charlie and told him, and he said: 'What! you allowed that tramp
to kiss you! then I don't want to take you on my knee any more--you've
lowered yourself too much."
"Did he dare to say that?" I returned.
"Yes, that's what Uncle Charlie said, but it makes no difference. I
told him you were not a tramp, Mr. Hudson, and he said you could call
yourself Mister-what-you-liked but you were a tramp all the same,
nothing but a common tramp, and that I ought to be ashamed of myself.
'You've disgraced the family,' that's what he said, but I don't care--I
shall never forget it, the morning you went away and took me up in your
arms and kissed me."
Here was a revelation! It saddened me, and I made no reply although I
think she expected one. And so after a minute or two of uncomfortable
silence she repeated that she would never forget it. For all the time I
was thinking of another and sweeter one who was also a person of
importance in her own home and village over a dozen miles away.
In thoughtful silence we finished our talk; then there were lights and
tea and general conversation; and if Millicent had intended returning
to the subject she found no opportunity then or afterwards.
It was better so, seeing that the other character possessed my whole
heart. _She_ was not intellectual; no one would have said of her, for
example, that she would one day blossom into a second Emily Bronte;
that to future generations her wild moorland village would be the
Haworth of the West. She was perhaps something better--a child of earth
and sun, exquisite, with her flossy hair a shining chestnut gold, her
eyes like the bugloss, her whole face like a flower or rather like a
ripe peach in bloom and colour; we are apt to associate these delicious
little beings with flavours as well as fragrances. But I am not going
to be so foolish as to attempt to describe her.
Our first meeting was at the village spring, where the women came with
pails and pitchers for water; she came, and sitting on the stone rim of
the basin into which the water gushed, regarded me smilingly, with
questioning eyes. I started a conversation, but though smiling she was
shy. Luckily I had my luncheon, which consisted of fruit, in my
satchel, and telling her about it she grew interested and confessed to
me that of all good things fruit was what she loved best. I then opened
my stores, and selecting the brightest yellow and richest purple
fruits, told her that they were for her--on one condition--that she
would love me and give me a kiss. And she consented and came to me. O
that kiss! And what more can I find to say of it? Why nothing, unless
one of the poets, Crawshaw for preference, can tell me. "My song," I
might say with that mystic, after an angel had kissed him in the
morning,
Tasted of that breakfast all day long.
From that time we got on swimmingly, and were much in company, for
soon, just to be near her, I went to stay at her village. I then made
the discovery that Mab, for that is what they called her, although so
unlike, so much softer and sweeter than Millicent, was yet like her in
being a child of character and of an indomitable will. She never cried,
never argued, or listened to arguments, never demonstrated after the
fashion of wilful children generally, by throwing herself down
screaming and kicking; she simply very gently insisted on having her
own way and living her own life. In the end she always got it, and the
beautiful thing was that she never wanted to be naughty or do anything
really wrong! She took a quite wonderful interest in the life of the
little community, and would always be where others were, especially
when any gathering took place. Thus, long before I knew her at the age
of four, she made the discovery that the village children, or most of
them, passed much of their time in school, and to school she
accordingly resolved to go. Her parents opposed, and talked seriously
to her and used force to restrain her, but she overcame them in the
end, and to the school they had to take her, where she was refused
admission on account of her tender years. But she had resolved to go,
and go she would; she laid siege to the schoolmistress, to the vicar,
who told me how day after day she would come to the door of the
vicarage, and the parlour-maid would come rushing into his study to
announce, "Miss Mab to speak to you Sir," and how he would talk
seriously to her, and then tell her to run home to her mother and be a
good child. But it was all in vain, and in the end, because of her
importunity or sweetness, he had to admit her.
When I went, during school hours, to give a talk to the children, there
I found Mab, one of the forty, sitting with her book, which told her
nothing, in her little hands. She listened to the talk with an
appearance of interest, although understanding nothing, her bugloss
eyes on me, encouraging me with a very sweet smile, whenever I looked
her way.
It was the same about attending church. Her parents went to one service
on Sundays; she insisted on going to all three, and would sit and stand
and kneel, book in hand, as if taking a part in it all, but always when
you looked at her, her eyes would meet yours and the sweet smile would
come to her lips.
I had been told by her mother that Mab would not have dolls and toys,
and this fact, recalled at an opportune moment, revealed to me her
secret mind--her baby philosophy. We, the inhabitants of the village,
grown-ups and children as well as the domestic animals, were her
playmates and playthings, so that she was independent of sham blue-eyed
babies made of sawdust and cotton and inanimate fluffy Teddy-bears; she
was in possession of the real thing! The cottages, streets, the church
and school, the fields and rocks and hills and sea and sky were all
contained in her nursery or playground; and we, her fellow-beings, were
all occupied from morn to night in an endless complicated game, which
varied from day to day according to the weather and time of year, and
had many beautiful surprises. She didn't understand it all, but was
determined to be in it and get all the fun she could out of it. This
mental attitude came out strikingly one day when we had a
funeral--always a feast to the villagers; that is to say, an emotional
feast; and on this occasion the circumstances made the ceremony a
peculiarly impressive one.
A young man, well known and generally liked, son of a small farmer,
died with tragic suddenness, and the little stone farm-house being
situated away on the borders of the parish, the funeral procession had
a considerable distance to walk to the village. To the church I went to
view its approach; built on a rock, the church stands high in the
centre of the village, and from the broad stone steps in front one got
a fine view of the inland country and of the procession like an immense
black serpent winding along over green fields and stiles, now
disappearing in some hollow ground or behind grey masses of rock, then
emerging on the sight, and the voices of the singers bursting out loud
and clear in that still atmosphere.
When I arrived on the steps Mab was already there; the whole village
would be at that spot presently, but she was first. On that morning no
sooner had she heard that the funeral was going to take place than she
gave herself a holiday from school and made her docile mother dress her
in her daintiest clothes. She welcomed me with a glad face and put her
wee hand in mine; then the villagers--all those not in the
procession--began to arrive, and very soon we were in the middle of a
throng; then, as the six coffin-bearers came slowly toiling up the many
steps, and the singing all at once grew loud and swept as a big wave of
sound over us, the people were shaken with emotion, and all the faces,
even of the oldest men, were wet with tears--all except ours, Mab's and
mine.
Our tearless condition--our ability to keep dry when it was raining, so
to say--resulted from quite different causes. Mine just then were the
eyes of a naturalist curiously observing the demeanour of the beings
around me. To Mab the whole spectacle was an act, an interlude, or
scene in that wonderful endless play which was a perpetual delight to
witness and in which she too was taking a part. And to see all her
friends, her grown-up playmates, enjoying themselves in this unusual
way, marching in a procession to the church, dressed in black, singing
hymns with tears in their eyes--why, this was even better than school
or Sunday service, romps in the playground or a children's tea. Every
time I looked down at my little mate she lifted a rosy face to mine
with her sweetest smile and bugloss eyes aglow with ineffable
happiness. And now that we are far apart my loveliest memory of her is
as she appeared then. I would not spoil that lovely image by going back
to look at her again. Three years! It was said of Lewis Carroll that he
ceased to care anything about his little Alices when they had come to
the age of ten. Seven is my limit: they are perfect then: but in Mab's
case the peculiar exquisite charm could hardly have lasted beyond the
age of six.