It was half-past eleven. I had heard the little tinkling chime of it
from the open drawing-room window as I stood out in the garden.
Now, whether it were intuition or no, I cannot guess, but at that
moment came Bellwattle to me, pulling off her garden gloves.
"Come round the cliffs," said she, "and have another look at the
cottage in the hollow?"
"Will it look any different to-day?" I asked.
She shook her head.
"Just the same."
"Do you think, then, I shall be more inclined to take it if I see it
again?"
"It's quite possible," she laughed; "but I haven't any real hopes of
that. I expect when you make up your mind, it's not easy to get you to
alter your destination."
"You mean determination," said I.
"Well, it's the counterpane thing," said she.
I asked leave to be amused. I felt my sides shaking. Bless her heart,
for she laughed with me too. I suppose she knew she had said something
very funny.
"Isn't it counterpane?" she asked, for her laughter was not quite so
hilarious as mine. There was the tentative note of query in it. In mine
was the whole-hearted acceptance of the fact. "What ought I to have
said then?" she went on, while I sat down upon the grass. "I suppose I
ought to have said--counterfoil?"
I groaned. "Oh, don't!" said I.
"Well, what is it?" she cried, helplessly.
"You wanted to say counterpart," I replied; "and even then you'd have
been wrong."
"I think English is a ridiculous language," she declared, at which
we laughed all over again. "Well, will you come to the cottage?" she
added, presently.
In all seriousness I rose to my feet and looked her straightly in the
eyes. "I can't," said I.
"Why not?"
"I'm going out."
"Where?"
She saw me pause, I suppose, for the next instant she was apologizing
for her inquisitiveness.
"You mustn't apologize," said I, "I'm your guest. It's only right that
you should look after me, and see that I don't get into mischief."
"Well--you mustn't think I want to know," she continued, quickly. "I
don't. I'm sure it must have sounded like common curiosity, but it
wasn't really. I expect I was surprised. I just asked without thinking."
"So you don't really want to know?"
"No," said she, emphatically, and she began putting on her garden
gloves once more.
"I take it then," said I, "that you know already."
To that she made no reply. She walked straight down to the herbaceous
border where the patches of arabis are just beginning to put forth
their snow and, without looking round again at me, she began to work at
those little things which women always do in a garden--those things,
in fact, which God and Nature combine to leave undone for that very
purpose. It is only women who are thoughtful of the little things in
this world. That is why it is they who are given babies to bear.
I watched her, smiling to myself, as she gently uncoiled the tendrilled
fingers of a plant of sweet pea that was growing up the trunk of an
old apple tree. In the back of my mind I could hear her saying: "Let
go--you must let go--it won't hurt you. I want you to grow up here."
Whereupon she began to train it in such direction as neither Nature nor
its own inclination ever intended it to go.
"I don't know why Bellwattle is a good name," said I to myself, "but it
is." Then with that I called to Dandy and we set off.
Whenever you may be engaged in any adventure, it comes easily to you
to notice how wonderful a place the world can be. If the sky is clear
and the sun is shining on that morning when you set forth to make mark
in the insignificant history of your life, then, indeed, it seems as
though the heavens were never so blue or the sun so bright. If there be
clouds or rain, if everything is grey in a moving mist, then you button
the collar of your coat tight round you and swear to yourself that
never was there such a day for doing things before. You remember, as
Bellwattle would say, you remember everything. The hedgerows look more
beautiful; there is a thousand times more of mystery in the dim forests
of the long grasses. A wren hops, piping, in the budding hawthorn, and
you tell yourself how everything is alive that day. But everything is
always alive. It is only you sometimes who are dead.
So I felt that morning as Dandy and I set out to meet Clarissa. There
seemed an added touch of spring in the turf beneath my feet. Dandy felt
it as well. No obstacle that came in his way did he climb. He jumped
every single thing. If I had not been forty-three, I should have jumped
them all with him. There was no forgetting between Dandy and me that we
were alive. If his expression of it was more strenuous than mine, it
was none the less real for that.
In the breaking buds of gorse, in the clustering sea-pinks ready to
bloom upon the unapproachable pinnacles of rock, in the great broad
surface of that glittering mirror of the sea, in the gentle sound of
its breathing and the clear, bright light of air that filled into my
lungs like a draught of snow water, I felt the wonder of the day as I
have never felt it before.
All the apprehensions of what Clarissa might say had gone from me--all
the fear of what she might think when first she saw me in the broad
light of day, seemed caught away into the breeze that freshened round
those headlands. I had utterly gone from me. I forgot that I was ugly.
I forgot that pitted horror which has disfigured me since I was a
little child and my mother clutched me to her breast when I returned
from the isolation ward. For that--since it is better that you should
understand it--is why the young nursery maid turned her eyes to Dandy
that day in the Park.
But I had forgotten it all. I might have been the Apollo Belvedere--a
god, with all those physical qualities of perfection that a god should
have. My heart was as light as the air I breathed and when, in the
distance, silhouetted against the glowing white line of the horizon, I
saw the fragile figure of Clarissa bent slightly as she leaned against
the wind, I felt that I had accomplished what no god, with all the aids
and instruments of Olympus at his hand, had ever done before.
The moment he discovered we were not the only people on the cliffs
Dandy raced off to meet her. He is always my harbinger, carrying
messages of welcome to friends and enemies alike. I cannot cure him
of it. Times out of number he has tried to force me to associate with
men whom I detest, and he says such things to women about me as makes
me feel absolutely ill at ease. By jumping from one to the other of
us, he endeavors to set up a current of mutual adoration which, while
at times it may not be distasteful to me, is very embarrassing to the
few ladies of my acquaintance. He would have had me married a thousand
times over if he could--but the lady has usually said, "Lie down,
little dog," just at that very moment when he has thought he was within
a tail's wag of success. It is, I know, because he does not realize my
physical disqualifications and, no matter how often I tell him that I
am an ugly devil, he has never learnt to believe it yet.
All the things he said to Clarissa that morning, I shall in all
probability never hear. Whatever they were, she listened to him. I saw
her bending down and patting his back as he laughed and chattered to
her in that inimitably friendly way of his.
There was a good distance separating us. I had a quarter of a mile or
more to walk along that torturous cliff-path before I came up with her
and, before I had half accomplished it, Dandy had returned to my side.
"There's a lady along there," said he, nodding his nose in her
direction.
"I know--I know," said I, sharply. I think I must have been annoyed
that he had reached her and spoken to her first. He is quick to take
these sudden tones in my voice, as quick as many a human being.
Wherefore, when he heard it then, he dropped back softly to my heels
and trotted along behind me. A moment later, I felt that I had been
unreasonable, so I looked back over my shoulder and in a cheery way I
told him that while I was talking to the lady, he could go and catch
rabbits.
"You can do anything you like," said I, "so long as you don't keep
jumping on us."
Directly he heard the change of tone in my voice, he started laughing
from ear to ear and, taking me without hesitation at my word, he raced
off into a clump of furze bushes when by that time I had covered the
distance between us and had reached Clarissa's side.
She was wearing a veil; but the whole spirit of the day was still with
me. I felt so sure of myself and my adventure that I did not even think
to be relieved. When then I took her hand, it came quite easily to me
to laugh with the sheer consciousness of it all and I found myself
saying--
"This is quite an adventure."