DAFFODILS
Unwilling to return to his lodgings, where in vain the net was spread in
his sight, Bramber walked towards Coombe Cellars. There for sixpence he
could have his tea--cockles, winkles, and presumably bread and butter.
There also would he see that pale-faced girl with the large violet-blue
eyes, which had been fixed on him with so much sympathy. Disappointed in
proportion to the sanguineness of his expectations, Walter felt that he
needed some relief from his discouragement, a word from some one who
could understand him. On that day he had looked straight into many eyes,
into beaming eyes, into irises that were dull with no speech in them,
into stupid eyes, into boastful, into defiant, into insolent eyes.
Those of his landlady were clear as crystal, and he could see to their
bottom; but what he saw there was but the agglomeration of common
details of everyday life--so many loaves per week, a pint of milk, a
beefsteak or mutton chop for supper, coals at so much a bushel, so much
cleaning, so much washing. As in a revolving slide in a magic lantern,
the same figures, the same trees, the same houses, reappear in endless
iteration; so would it be with the eyes of the landlady, week by week,
year by year, till those eyes closed in death; nought else would be
revealed in their shadows but loaves and milk, and coals and washing,
over and over and over again. There are eyes that are stony and have no
depth in them; such were those of Zerah. Others have profundity, but are
treacherous; such were those of Pasco. In the two glimpses into the eyes
of the pale girl, whose name he did not know, Bramber had seen depths
that seemed unfathomable; wells which had their sources in the heart,
deeps full of mystery and promise.
The evening might have been one in summer. A light east wind was
playing; the sky was clear. The sun had been hot all day. Marsh
marigolds blazed at the water brim, reflecting their golden faces in the
tide. The orchards were sheeted with daffodils. The evening sky was blue
shot with primrose, and every hue was mirrored in the water.
Bramber asked to have his tea out of doors on the little platform above
the water, and Mrs. Pepperill bade Kate attend on the schoolmaster, and
remain on the terrace so as to be ready to bring him anything he
required; and, in the event of his desiring company, to be present to
converse with him. She herself was engaged, and could not give him her
attention.
The evening was so warm, so balmy, that it could do the convalescent no
harm to sit outside the house. Kate took her needlework and planted
herself on the low wall above the water, one foot in a white stocking
and neat shoe touching the gravel. She was at some distance from the
schoolmaster, who opened a book and read whilst taking his tea. He did
not, apparently, require her society, and she had no thought of forcing
herself on him.
Yet, occasionally, unobserved by her, Bramber looked her way. Behind her
was an orchard-sweep golden with daffodils, and the slant setting sun,
shooting down a gap in the hills, kindled the whole multitude of
flower-heads into a blaze of wavering sunfire. Kate sat, a dark figure
against this luminous background, but her plum-coloured kerchief, bound
round her throat and tied across her breast, was wondrous in contrast
with the brilliant flowers.
Occasionally, moreover, Kate, who long looked at the flower carpet which
by its radiance threw a golden light into her face, turned her head to
see if the schoolmaster needed more milk or butter; and then her eyes
rested on the book he held with much the same greed with which a child
fastens its eyes on sweets and a miser on gold.
The setting sun had fired glass windows on the opposite side of the
estuary, and it flashed in every ripple running in from the sea.
Kate wore a little bunch of celandines in her bosom, pinned into the
purple kerchief. The flowers were open through the warmth of their
position, and when she stooped and a streak of sunlight fell on them and
filled their cups, they sent a golden sheen over her chin. The girl was
looking dreamily with turned head at the sheet of blazing daffodils,
drinking in the beauty of the scene, and sighing, she knew not why, when
she was startled to hear a voice at her ear, and, looking round, saw the
schoolmaster.
“Are you admiring the daffodils?” he asked.
“Yes,” answered Kate, too shy, too surprised to say more.
“And I,” said he, “I also have been looking at them; and then I turned
to familiar lines in Wordsworth, the poet I am reading. Do you know
them?”
“About lent-lilies? I know nothing.”
“Listen.”
Then Bramber read--
“I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle in the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:--
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.”
Kate’s dark blue eyes were fixed with intensity on the reader’s face.
Then they became full to overflowing.
“Why,” exclaimed Bramber, “you are crying!”
“It is so true, it is so beautiful,” she said, and her voice shook; and
as she spoke the tears ran down her white cheeks. “How did he who wrote
that know about my illness, and that I was thinking about, and troubled
about, the daffodils when I was in my fever? It is all true”; she put
her hands to her bosom; “I feel it--I cannot bear it.”
Walter Bramber paused in surprise. He was himself a passionate lover of
nature, of flowers, and he was fond of the words of the poet of
nature--words that touched deep chords in his spirit. But here was a
pale, reserved girl, to whom the words of the poet appealed with even
greater force than to himself.
“Are you fond of poetry?” he asked.
She hesitated, and slightly coloured before answering.
“I do not know. Father sings a song or two. There are words, they rhyme,
and they are set to a tune, and sometimes a good tune helps along bad
words; but I never before heard words that had the music in themselves
and wanted nothing to carry them along as on the wings of a bird. When
you read that to me, it was just as though I heard what I had felt in my
heart over and over again, and had never found how I could put it.”
“Do you know why these flowers are called daffodils?”
She turned her solemn eyes on him again.
“Because they are daffodils; why else?”
“I suppose,” said Bramber, “when the Normans came to England, they
brought these yellow flowers with them, and with the flowers the name by
which they had known them in Normandy--_Fleurs d’Avril_, which means
April flowers.”
“They do come in April, but also in March, and this year the weather has
been warm, and everything is advanced.”
“So,” continued Bramber, “when the English tried to pronounce the French
name, _Fleurs d’Avril_, they made daverils, and then slid away into
further difference, and settled down on daffodils. Do you know about the
Conquest by the Normans?”
Kate shook her head sadly.
“I know nothing--nothing at all.” Then, after a pause, she asked
timidly, “Will you be very good and kind, and repeat those verses, and
let me learn them by heart? Oh,” she gasped, and expanded, and clasped
her hands, “it would be such a joy to me! and I could repeat them for
ever and ever, and be happy.”
“I shall be delighted.”
Kate planted herself on one of the benches by the table, leaned her chin
in her hands, and listened to each line of the poem with concentrated
attention. One or two words she did not understand, and Bramber
explained their meaning to her. When the piece had been read over
slowly, she said--
“May I try? Do you mind? I think I know it.”
Then she recited the poem with perfect accuracy.
“You are quick at learning,” said Bramber. “I hope I may find my pupils
in the National School as eager to acquire and as ready to apprehend.”
“I never heard words like these before,” said Kate.
“May I tell you what they are like to me?”
“Certainly.”
“They are like lightning on a still night, without rain, without
thunder. The heavens are open and there is light--that is all. Is there
more in that book?”
“A great deal,” answered the young man; and, pointing to the celandines
in Kate’s bosom, said, “The poet has something to say about these
flowers.”
“What, buttercups?”
“They are not buttercups. Take them out from where they are pinned. I
will teach you a lesson--how to distinguish sorts.”
As the girl removed the bunch and placed it on the table, he said, “Do
you see the petals? The golden leaves of the flower are called petals.
They are pointed. Now, remember, a buttercup has rounded petals.”
“You are right, and they come out later. They are more like little
drunkards.”
“Drunkards? What do you mean?”
“The large golden cups that grow by the water’s edge--these we call
drunkards, but they drink only water.”
“You mean the marsh marigold.”
“Perhaps so, but it is very different from the marigold of the garden.
The leaves”--
Bramber laughed. “Now you are going to teach me to distinguish. You are
quite right--that water-drinker is not a marigold at all. But country
people give it that name because it is the great golden flower that
blooms at or about Lady Day, and the lady is the Virgin Mary. Now
consider. The celandine has sharply-pointed petals. Do you see the
difference between them and those of the golden water-drinker?”
“I see this clearly now.”
“He who wrote those verses about the daffodils has written three poems
on the celandine.”
“What! on these little flowers?”
Kate coloured with delight and surprise.
“Yes, and very beautiful they are. I will reserve them for another day.
You have enough to think about in the lines on the daffodils.”
“How did the man who wrote them know of my illness, and how I dreamed
and troubled about the daffodils?”
“He knew nothing of you.”
“He must have done so. He says he was lonely as a cloud, and I am Kitty
Alone.”
“Is that your name?”
“They call me so because I have no companions and no friends, and
because”--She checked herself and hung her head.
“But you have relatives.”
“Yes--my father and Aunt Zerah. But for all that I am alone. They are
grown big and old, and so of course cannot understand me--a child. And
at school I didn’t have friends. Then the man must have been here, for
he says--
‘Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle in the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay.’
There they are--‘in never-ending line.’”
“There are daffodils elsewhere, as there are solitary spirits elsewhere
than in this little being”--and Walter lightly touched the girl’s brow.
Both were silent for a minute. Presently Kate said, “When I was looking
at the daffodils, as the sun was on them, they blazed in at my eyes and
I was full of light, and now those beautiful words are like the sun on
the flowers that I shall carry away with me, and as I lie in bed in the
dark I shall think of them, and the golden light will fill my room and
fill my heart--
‘Flashing upon that inward eye,
Which is the bliss of solitude.’
That is true of the inward eye. You can see more with that than with the
real eye. The man was a prophet. He knew and wrote of things that are
not known or are not talked about in the world.”
“So they call you Kitty Alone. You did not give me the second reason.
What is that reason?”
The girl looked embarrassed.
“You will laugh at me.”
“Indeed I will not,” answered Bramber earnestly.
She still hesitated.
“You fear me? Surely you can trust me.”
“You are so good--indeed I can. You speak to me as does no one else, and
that is just why I do not wish to appear ridiculous in your eyes.”
“That you never will.”
Then she said, blushing and hanging her head, “It is all along of a song
my father sings.”
“What song is that?”
“It is some silly nonsense about a frog that lived in a well--and the
burden is--‘Kitty Alone’--and then ‘Kitty Alone and I.'”
“Sing me the words.”
She did as requested.
“The air is pleasant and very quaint. It deserves better words. Will you
remain here whilst I run for my violin?”
“Yes, unless my aunt calls me within.”
Walter Bramber hastened to his lodgings, and brought away his cherished
instrument. He made the girl sing over a few verses of the song, and
then struck in with the violin.
He speedily caught the melody, and played it, then went off into
variations, returning anon to the pleasant theme, and Kate listened in
surprise and admiration. Never before had she thought that there was
much of air, or of grace and delicacy in the tune as sung by her
father, and cast jeeringly at her in scraps by the youths of
Coombe-in-Teignhead. Zerah looked out at the door and summoned her
niece.
Kate started as from a dream.
“My bunch of flowers,” she said.
Bramber had secured the celandines.