THE HEART OF NATURE
During the next three weeks the two conspirators were wildly busy.
Money is a key which smooths many difficulties, and the path before
them was triumphantly easy.
Jasper found Miss Mason a little hard to understand during these days.
She had a way of looking at him and then giving vent to odd little
chuckles of laughter. He hoped she was not becoming childish.
She received several letters from the donkey tourists. One, received
about the tenth day, told her that another of her schemes was on the
way to be started.
"We are," wrote Barnabas, "enjoying ourselves immensely. The weather is
glorious, and Pegasus a model of well-behaved donkeyness. He certainly
deserves wings, even though he hasn't got them. But I heard Pippa
telling him in a consoling voice the other day that when he reached
heaven he'd be provided with a pair of beautiful white ones. I fancy
she sees in herself a female Bellerophon soaring aloft and through
golden streets on a grey donkey. If the golden streets are anything
like as beautiful as the country lanes through which we are driving we
shall be happy. I wish you could see them--the lanes, I mean. They are
a bower of fairy delight. Wild roses, honeysuckle, and meadow-sweet
seem to vie with each other in filling the warm air with perfume.
Larks--I never knew before that the world held so many--sing to us from
heaven, the sweetest feathered choristers. Last night a nightingale
sang to us in the light of a full moon. It was the first Pippa had
heard. There was something almost terrifying in her rapture. She
feels almost too keenly. She is, however, absolutely in her element,
and if I had ever felt any real doubt about her being the child of
Kostolitz I should only have needed to see her out here to convince
me. At times she finds the most adorable bits of language in which to
express her emotions. But then it is always some little thing like
the colour of a flower-chalice or the glint of the kingfisher's blue.
We saw one the other day. It skimmed up a bit of transparent water
and perched on a piece of stick in midstream. Pippa and I watched it,
holding our breath. All at once something--I don't know what--startled
it. There was a streak of iridescent colour and it had gone. But it
left us both with the joyous feeling of discovery. The bird is too
rare and too beautiful to leave one entirely unmoved. Pippa could
talk of that incident. It is the bigger aspects of Nature that hold
her dumb. We came to a wood one evening--pines, straight and solemn
as the aisles of a cathedral, the setting sun slanting down the long
spaces. Pippa's face was a marvel. She just put her hand up to her
throat and held it there as if it ached with the beauty of the thing,
and then she made the sign of the Cross. It was holy ground, though
there had been no priestly ceremonial to proclaim it so. Only the
wind was there to whisper a benediction, and the trees themselves
were like priests scattering the incense of their fragrant breath.
The very memory of it brings thoughts of poetry to my mind. But again
to Pippa. She's yours, and I want you to know her as I'm seeing her
now, for it's the essence of her--the spirit of Kostolitz I'm seeing.
A long line of cawing rooks, whether at sunset or against the blue
sky, affects her strangely. It seems to make her unutterably sad.
Temporarily only, I am glad to say, for she is the gayest of children,
and delights in the smallest of pleasures--namely, a pennyworth of
bull's-eyes and sticks of pink-and-white striped stuff which we buy
from extremely minute shops, whose windows are crammed below with
apples--foreign, of course--and nuts. Above the apples and nuts are
rows of glass bottles full of pear-drops, lemon-drops, peppermints, and
barley-sugar, also sugar candy the real article, rough and scrunchly
on a string. And somewhere in the window, very inconspicuous, is
a slit through which one can drop letters--the sweetstuff shop is
always the post office. But sweets evidently take decided precedence
over such minor considerations as letters and postage stamps. There
is always a garden leading up to the shop, and it is always crammed
with flowers, the stiff old-fashioned kind--sweet-williams, stocks,
marigolds, mignonette, asters, and such-like. There are bushes, too,
of lavender, and lad's-love. I painted one of them, but somehow did
not hit it off. I've made another sketch, though, of a pond, a willow,
meadow-sweet, and blue hills, which pleases me quite a lot. In fact,
I was so absorbed in it that I lost Pippa. You needn't be anxious,
because she is found again, and with her something you wanted, namely,
the first candidate for your School of a Wonderful Chance. I had just
finished my sketch, and having come back to the practicalities of life
realized that Pippa had been absent for two hours. When lo! and behold
she appeared, and with her a loose-limbed fellow of about twenty. When
he fills out he will rival Dan in size--but that is beside the mark.
"'Barnabas,' she cried--ceremony and with it the Monsieur has lapsed
into disuse in the open air--'do look at ze lovely little figure 'e
'as made. 'Is name is Andrew McAndrew.' And she rolled her r's with
gusto. Well, it is pleasant to think that Pippa should be the one to
find your first candidate, and it is curious to think it is one who, if
I am not much mistaken, will one day be a great sculptor. The little
figure of a young girl, made from the clay of the river, was to my mind
simply a marvel. I learnt his story. I'll not give it in the broad
Scotch in which he told it, for it would take you your whole time to
make it out. He lived in London--Bayswater way--with a widowed mother,
whom he supports by typing in a stuffy little office which he loathes,
though he has not been without hope that 'Aiblins the gud Lorrd would
find a way out for him one o' these days.' Whenever he has any spare
time he models in clay, which mercifully is an inexpensive material.
He has at the moment a week's holiday, during which he is tramping the
country, sleeping under a hedge or at the foot of a hayrick, eating
bread and cheese like any tramp, and enjoying himself finely--as we
are. Pippa, it appears, watched him at work, herself hidden, like the
fairy she is, in a mass of meadow-sweet. Suddenly she appeared from
among it, and they entered into a conversation which must have been
curious, conducted in a broad Scotch on his side, and in broken English
on hers--though her English is progressing rapidly. Anyhow, she made
him understand she was out with a party of artists. He was all agog
to meet us, and she brought him along. He will join us for the next
three days, instead of making his way again in the direction of London
as he had intended, and we've arranged between us to send him back by
train. As soon as I'm at my studio again he will look me up, and I'll
bring him along to see you. I've given him no inkling of the Wonderful
Chance before him. That is for you to do. But he's one of the right
ones for it and no mistake. You won't mind if we keep on the tour till
the end of June, will you? Cupid is sitting gaily in the donkey-cart
alongside Pippa, and though Aurora and Alan don't quite realize his
presence yet, they soon will discover him, and will no doubt bring
him back as a permanent guest to London. That, of course, was my main
idea when I proposed the tour. High Art, thank goodness, is getting
wan and pale. She had almost her death-blow the other day when Aurora
made a daisy-chain with which she adorned Alan, and he fell into a pond
dabbling after tadpoles for Pippa. We fished him out and wrapped him
in a rug, while we spread his clothes in a buttercup field to dry. The
warmth of their gold was enough to dry them, let alone the sun. I heard
Cupid chuckling, the rogue! We miss you a lot, and the best thing we
have to look forward to on our return is your welcome...."
Miss Mason put down the letter with a little sigh of happiness. Her
heart felt nearly as warm and sunny as the buttercup field.
Then she set out to meet Bridget at Storey's in Kensington High Street.
* * * * *
Exactly three weeks after Miss Mason's peregrination to Chiswick she
put a request to Jasper.
"I want," she said, in as careless a voice as she could assume, "to
call on a friend of mine this afternoon, and I want you to come with
me."
Jasper looked dismayed. "I should be delighted," he said mendaciously,
"only calling isn't a bit in my line."
"It's quite near at hand," said Miss Mason; "only at a flat in Beaufort
Street, and I particularly want you to meet my friend."
"Very well," said Jasper, suppressing a sigh.
"We'll start," said Miss Mason, "at half-past three."
At the hour appointed Jasper appeared.
"You had better call a taxi," said Miss Mason. She felt it impossible
to walk. She would have run all the way, a proceeding which would have
undoubtedly have astonished Jasper.
As the taxi drew up at the door of a block of flats in Beaufort Street,
a woman looked for a moment from a window. As she saw the two figures
get out she drew back into the room. Her heart was beating so loudly
she could almost hear it.
Miss Mason rang the bell of the flat.
"Your mistress at home?" she said to the dapper little maid who opened
the door.
"Yes'm. What name 'm?"
"Miss Mason and Mr. Merton," said Miss Mason firmly.
They went into the bright little passage, and the maid threw open the
door of the drawing-room.
"Miss Mason and Mr. Merton," she announced.
A woman in a pale green dress came forward to meet them.
Jasper stared.
"Jasper," she said, with a little shaky laugh, and she held out both
her hands.
"Bride!" he exclaimed, and it was nearly seven years since she had
heard that name.
Miss Mason went quickly from the room, and closed the door softly
behind her.
It was nearly an hour before they realized her absence. Then Bridget
started up from the sofa.
"Aunt Olive!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Jasper, isn't she a dear! I must go
round and find her."
"She'll be back at her studio by now," said Jasper calmly.
"I'd quite forgotten her," said Bridget contritely. "Oughtn't we to
go----"
"Presently," said Jasper. "Come back to me now. I want you. Aunt Olive
will understand."