There was no need for us to announce ourselves. Dandy, who in two weeks
has made himself known to the whole village, had finished with every
preliminary. As the three figures came in sight round a sudden bend of
the cliff path, we could see him trotting amiably by their side.
"And the invalid," said Bellwattle, in a whisper.
"And the invalid," I repeated, below my breath, but I know she did not
hear me. I scarcely heard myself.
Another moment, in which my eyes were staring through the darkness at
that dim third figure which I knew to be Clarissa, and then we had
met. A nervous, hurried introduction took place. I caught no word of
it then but the name--Clarissa's name. They said Miss Fawdry. That
was all I heard. It was what I saw which occupied all my attention.
Clarissa was dressed in black--just as I had imagined. A thick veil
covered her face, falling to her shoulders, so that only a dim line of
the features could be seen behind it. She bowed to us both in a quaint,
timid, old-fashioned way. I shall never forget this my first meeting
with Clarissa on that wild headland of those cliffs in Ireland. There
will never die out of my ears the long, lonesome cries of the sea
birds, the sound of the waters rolling to the rocks three hundred feet
below, or those vivid stillnesses which fall upon you between the sound
of the waves and the child-cries of the gulls away at sea. These things
and that little black figure of a girl whom I had come some hundreds of
miles to meet on the bare credit of a story--these I shall never forget.
It could not have been so pregnant a moment with Bellwattle. For if
indeed she guesses--as well I know she must--there is bound to be
many a mistake in her speculations. Doubtless, she thinks I have met
Clarissa before; that, like some Knights of the Round Table, I am
pursuing the lady to whom my heart is captive. Whatever she thinks,
there will be romance to it. There is not that in a woman capable to
conceive so prosaic a mission as mine. Thank God for it too. A woman
will stitch the thread of love into the heel of an old sock while a
man is impatiently waiting to put it on. For romance to a man is the
winning and riding away--away into the heart of a sunset--but to a
woman it is all horizon and beyond.
Whatever, then, she thought at our first meeting, there was no such
confusion in her mind as was in mine; wherefore she went straight to
the point, inquiring of Clarissa's health because, I suppose, it was
the most natural thing to say.
"Are your eyes any better, Miss Fawdry?" she asked.
The Miss Fennells glanced quickly at her, and in those glances I felt
the cruel power of their coercion. By those glances they forced her to
give the answer that she made.
They were no better, she said, quietly.
"But they're no worse, my dear," added Miss Teresa, cleverly. "I'm sure
the doctor that Harry made you see in London has treated you the right
way."
She made no reply to that. When forced to play a part, it must be
difficult to enter with one's whole heart into the spirit of it. I
could hear in her silence the brokenness of spirit, that exhaustion of
courage which must come when the wings have been beating, ceaselessly
beating against the bars of a cage.
They gave her a moment in which to make answer, and then, glad, no
doubt, of her silence, they declared they must be going home. Miss Mary
held out her hand.
"Good-night, Mrs. Townshend," she said.
But it needed very little cleverness to be cleverer than that.
"Oh, we're coming back, too," said Bellwattle. "We had just agreed to
turn when we heard your voices."
So we all set back for Ballysheen. Now, this was the moment I had been
waiting for. Their suspicion fell least upon me. By her questions
alone, if not also from the fact that she was a neighbor, it was their
strategy to manœuvre that Bellwattle should walk with them. Not for
one moment would they have trusted her alone with Clarissa; wherefore,
the path being a narrow one, Miss Teresa walked first, leaving
Bellwattle in the charge of Miss Mary. And so it fell out that I walked
with Clarissa alone.
You may imagine how, with those few moments before me, my thoughts were
like leaves on a swollen stream. Round and round my head they eddied
and swirled, and not a one could I grasp to give it words. We must have
walked fifty yards before a thing was spoken. Now, this is not my way
with women. As a rule I talk to them with ease. True, it is while they
are talking to Dandy, and doubtless that gives me confidence. But in
this case everything seemed different. I might never have spoken to
a woman before. But when we had walked so far in silence it came to
desperation with me. I said anything; what, indeed, seemed nonsense at
the time. In the light of things, as I see them now, I can imagine that
it was the very best beginning I could have made.
"Are you happy in Ireland?" said I.
She looked round at me quickly. From an utter stranger I can understand
how odd that question must have seemed.
"Do I like Ireland, do you mean?" she asked, and that was the first
time properly that I heard her voice. It was a whisper, full of
timidity. I had to bend my head to catch the words, and they sounded
like the steps of feet in satin slippers through some far-off
corridor of an old house. This is my way of describing things. It
may mean nothing to you. I only know I heard the tiny heel taps, and
unconsciously I lowered my voice to answer to them.
"No," said I, and my voice ran almost to a whisper too. "No--I didn't
mean that. You're shut up all day in that room with the white lace
curtains. I don't suppose you can either like or dislike Ireland. You
never see it. No--I meant what I said. Are you happy in Ireland?"
I swear if I had not said it in a whisper it would have frightened her.
As sure as Fate, she would have run away. But because I whispered--by
the chance of God, too, perhaps--she just spoke out of her little heart
and told me she was not.
It was so simple and so genuine an admission that, though I knew it
well, I was still utterly unprepared to hear her confess it. It took me
completely by surprise. I found myself marvelling at her ingenuousness,
for, as you must know well, it was so unlike her sex, who will seldom
admit to any emotion but what does justice to their appearance, and
never will they confess it to a total stranger.
It disarmed me. Had she said she was happy, indeed, I could have gone
on gaily, knowing what I believed. But there is no so violent an
interruption to conversation as the sudden truth. For a few moments
it left me in silence. I could not have believed it possible that
she was so unhappy as that, and all through my mind there surged an
overwhelming tide of bitter resentment against those who were the
cause of it. I cursed that young cub in England from the bottom of my
heart. I have no doubt my eyes had a ludicrous expression in them as I
glanced at the Miss Fennells before us.
"What makes you unhappy?" I asked, at length.
She looked nervously about her as though there might be listeners
everywhere.
"It's not like where I come from. It's all so dark and grey. It was so
bright in Dominica. I know the sun shines here, like it did to-day--but
it's so different."
"White lace curtains make a difference," said I. "So do black dresses.
Why don't you wear your canary-colored satin?"
For just one instant, she stopped quite still. I was almost sure that
I had frightened her too much; but perhaps it was only with curiosity
that her eyes burnt through that thick impenetrable veil. Of course,
she was curious. I guess how her heart set beating straight away.
"What do you know about my satin dress?" she asked, as we walked on
again.
"I know a lot," said I; and then it seemed to me the moment I had been
waiting for. I took the letter from my pocket.
"Are you good at keeping secrets?" I asked.
She bent her head. Every one is good at keeping secrets, but you must
ask them first. They never know how good they are until they are
waiting for a secret to be told.
"Well, I want you to read this letter," I went on. "Don't let the Miss
Fennells see it. Tuck it away into your dress. Read it to-night, and
when you can, let me have an answer. I don't know how you can manage
it; you must find that out for yourself; but let me have an answer.
I shall stay here in Ballysheen till I get it. You heard my name,
didn't you? Bellairs--I'm staying with the Townshends. Send the answer
there--to their house--if you can."
So I gave Clarissa the letter. I saw her bury it in the stiff bodice of
that black prison dress where her heart beat warm against it.
I had given it only just in time. A few more paces and we had come to
the end of the cliff path. Here, as you know, it broadens to a wide
road and the wall begins, protecting the field where stands the Miss
Fennells' house.
By clever manœuvring they made us all come into line, and we walked
the remainder of the distance, talking of such ordinary things as the
Miss Fennells are conversant with. Their range of topics, I must admit,
is most limited even then. When we had said good-night and I had felt
the first touch of Clarissa's hand--a slight hesitating little hand it
is--Bellwattle and I walked home.
She said not a word to me. That is so wise in women. However wrong
in fact their guessing may be, there is a fundamental instinct of
right about it which tells them what the circumstances demand. A man,
guessing as she had been, would have poured questions upon me, asking
me what I thought of Clarissa, and not because he was curious, but only
to find out if he were right. Now, a woman never does that. To begin
with, she knows she is right, and, filled as she is with curiosity, she
asks no questions. She just finds out.
So Bellwattle said nothing. She just let me think. And over and over
again I thought: "Will she go home if I tell her to? Will she go home
if I tell her to?"
But there was a little thought that kept creeping in between each one
of those questions. "Will she ever go home if I tell her to?" I said to
myself, and then I thought how warm that letter would be when, in the
secrecy of her bedroom, Clarissa should take it from her dress to read.
And the more I asked myself the one, the more I pictured to myself the
other.
"It's the very devil," said I at last to Bellwattle, "when you can't
think the thing you want to think."
"Do you think you really want to?" said she.
Now, what the devil did she mean?