Not far from the place of our meeting there is a rugged pathway,
winding down the steep cliff side to a table of rock below. Your feet
must be as sure as the feet of a goat when you venture down this narrow
edge of the world; but once you have reached it, still greatly high
above the sea, you may sit there like a sea-bird in the sun and never a
soul that walks the cliff-path up above will dream of your existence.
It was to this spot that I persuaded Clarissa to trust herself that we
should have our talk alone.
"People might come," said I. "I don't want you to get into trouble."
The descent was not quite so difficult as it looked; though I remember
the first time when I saw Bellwattle disappear over the cliff side and
vanish out of sight, I almost thought she had gone for ever. Now I
started slowly first, pointing out the footholds for Clarissa's little
feet. Dandy went before us, doing the journey six times over; running
back again and again to show us how easy it was.
It is wonderful the way an animal will take for granted whatsoever
situation may come its way. He asked me no questions about Clarissa,
showed no surprise that we should know or meet each other there. The
adventure it was with him. The adventure it was with me as well, and
the sense in my mind that this little creature, with her shy and timid
voice, did not belong to me, gave me all the hardihood of a buccaneer,
the very daring of a highwayman. It made, in fact, the thrill of a
great romance go tingling in my veins.
As we came to our plateau of rock, a white cloud of sea-birds--herring
and black-backed gulls, guillemots, every kind and variety--rose with
a rushing burr of wings from their resting-places. Dandy stood there
bewildered, looking after them, his eyes in every direction at once.
"Now," said I, when we were seated, "we can talk here till doomsday
without interruption," and although I heard the things I said falling
easily from my lips, I was by this becoming so nervous and confused in
my mind that thoughts would not shape themselves. I could not conceive
what to speak of next. It failed me utterly to begin.
It was an odd little silence that came between us then. Even Dandy did
not offer to smooth matters out, for I had told him there was to be no
jumping. He simply lay, therefore, full-stretched upon the rock where
the sun had warmed it, inviting it to warm him in turn. And all that
time I kept looking at the sea, then at her, lastly at Dandy, then back
once more to the sea.
She appeared so strange with that heavy black veil falling in folds
from the rim of her straw hat. It seemed in my mind as if I had known
her so long, so well, and yet, not even then, as she sat beside me on
those wild cliffs, had I ever seen her face. It is not seeing a woman,
to have nothing but a hat and a veil, a skirt and a pair of boots to
look at. All that I knew of her was the touch of her hand and, much as
it may have meant on our meeting that first night upon the cliffs, it
was ill-sufficient for me now. Indeed, I was not content with it; so,
leaning forward, at last I broke the silence, asking her to take off
her veil.
"Surely you can't shut out the sun for ever," said I.
"I'm so afraid," she answered. "If any one saw me and told the Miss
Fennells."
"But no one will see you here."
"Are you sure?"
"Quite sure. Why are you so afraid of the Miss Fennells?"
She began a nervous interlacing of her fingers.
"Am I afraid of them?" she asked, ingenuously.
"You are--but why?"
"I owe them so much--they've been so good to me. And they'd be angry if
they knew I had been seen without my veil."
"Why would they be angry?"
I found myself speaking to her again in whispers, as you speak to a
little child in the dark to wile away those first few frightening
moments after the candle has been blown out.
"Why should they be angry?" I repeated.
She glanced down in hesitation at her fingers.
"Because people would know--"
"Know what?"
"That--that I'm not quite a white person."
I have never heard anything just so simple in my life or, for the
matter of that, have I ever heard anything so pathetic. Not _quite_ a
white person! Great heavens, that whiteness or blackness should mean so
much to us who in each other see the imagery of God! The blackest man
and the blackest woman I have ever known were white. It is the color of
the heart that matters.
"Take off that veil," I said suddenly. "Take off that veil and let me
see. I don't want to find you a white person--it makes no difference to
me."
I don't know why I spoke about myself. Surely too she must have
wondered at it more than I. But my blood was hot with anger. Those old
women, with their little ideas of family, believing one human creature
made better than another, and that by the virtue of blind circumstance,
they made me forget what I was saying.
"You've no reason to consider what the Miss Fennells think. They'll
count for nothing when men and women are added up in heaven. Let me see
for myself. Take off your veil."
It sounds, I admit, as though I had been rough with her, but it was
not so. My voice, I am sure, was raised no more above the whisper. It
was only that there must have been a different tone in it. And surely
in a voice, in what not besides, that is everything. Whatever it was,
she obeyed. I watched her hands as they rose to the knot in which the
veil was tied at the back of her hat. Her finger-nails alone would have
betrayed her secret; but they were wonderful, nevertheless. I have seen
small shells on a sandy beach just like them; shells wet with the water
from the receding tide.
At last the knot was loosened. She took away the veil and laid it in
her lap. I count that one moment in which I have lived, that moment
when, with the sudden glare of the sun, she closed her eyes and I was
free to look undisturbed into her face.
Once already have I described my imagination of her. There is no sense
in going back to speak of it again. She was all I had thought. She was
more. The tender olive of her skin brought no other picture to your
mind than the lazy heat of the Southern sun. Not a moment's suggestion
of racial coarseness was there in her features, but rather so delicate
a refinement as made you apprehensive of what she must suffer in an
ugly world. It was all as I had imagined it, even from that first
moment in that restaurant in London, when I heard of her gown of
canary-colored satin. She was as timid as a little bird, with just
those same quick, silent movements of fear. No wonder she was afraid of
the Miss Fennells! No wonder she had allowed herself thus willingly to
be caged. It seemed as I looked at her there, with eyelids closed and
turned to meet the sun, that God had made her in such a moment as when
a potter, out of the sheer love of his art, turns for himself alone
some slender, fragile thing upon the gentle motion of his wheel.
I knew then I had been right. My instinct, or whatever you like to call
it, had had the light of truth in it when, on the bare hearing of her
story, I had realized that here was a woman in trouble. However many
hesitations I may have passed through, however often demurred, debating
upon my right to interfere, all such considerations left me then. Her
union with any man of the type I had seen in London could mean nothing
but tragedy, nothing but pitiable disillusionment; wherefore my courage
rose triumphant in me again. I was just waiting for her eyes to open
that I might begin.
And at last she opened them. I saw that liquid blue white of old china,
with the inimitable pattern of her great dark eyes set so wonderfully
upon it; but as I looked at them and as they looked at me, it was
suddenly borne into my mind the everlasting remembrance of myself.
The expression in her eyes was not the same as I had seen in those of
the little nursery maid. I had never seen quite its like in the eyes
of any woman before. But I knew well what it meant and instinctively,
I suppose, I turned away and patted Dandy's head. He licked my hand in
return.
"Well--" said I with an effort. "Isn't it a relief to get rid of that
beastly veil?"
I said what I could--the first words that came to me. It would have
been cruel indeed to her had I let her see that I had observed that
expression of hers. But I am becoming adept at this. I can look at
people now as though I were sure such thoughts of me could never enter
their minds. I have even heard it said that I fancy myself good-looking
so unconscious do I appear to be. That, of course, makes me laugh, for
that is truly funny. I often remind myself of it as a corrective for
depression.
Somehow this morning, however, it seemed I did not assume it so
easily--possibly because it hurt a little more than usual. But why--why
should it hurt any more? Unless it were that, in the pride of my
success, I had forgotten what, usually, I am quite prepared to expect.
And so it was with an effort that I spoke. But when I looked back
again, because she was silent, I found her eyes dreaming to the far
line of the horizon.
"Do you take pennies for your thoughts?" I asked.
A faint blush burnt quickly in her cheeks and she brought her eyes to
earth.
"_Was_ I thinking?" said she. "I don't know what I was thinking about."
"Shall I tell you?" I suggested.
"You couldn't possibly know."
So there were thoughts and she realized them well enough to know that
I could never guess them. Well--it was something to have discovered
that. And then I hazarded still further.
"You were thinking," said I, "of him in London--how handsome he is. You
were calling his face back into your memory, visualizing every feature
of it and trying to forget at the same time that other women might find
it as handsome as you do."
She gazed at me in astonishment. So amazed was she that she could not
keep it from her eyes.
"I don't think I was thinking at all," said she. "Unless I was
wondering what you have got to tell me. What are you going to say? How
did you know about my satin dress? Did he tell you? Do you know him?"
For a long time I looked at her, speculating upon how it were best to
begin. When the God of a Thousand Circumstances takes it into his hands
to break a woman's heart, he does it often by infinitely slow degrees.
The mills of God, they say, grind slowly--but I was wondering whether
one sudden blow were not the kindest of all. And then again, the
question of my right to deliver such a blow came surging to my mind.
"It is not I who am doing it," I said to myself. "I am but one of the
links of circumstances which go to make the chain of this child's
existence. That night in the restaurant in London bound me into it.
It's inevitable that I say what I have come to say. That we are sitting
here together now, proves it. If I had imagined such a situation as
this suddenly possible when first I heard that story in London, I
shouldn't have hesitated. It's only because I've come to it by slow
degrees that I begin questioning my right. Of course, I, myself, have
no right. But then, this is not myself--this is Fate."
Wherefore, so persuading my conscience, I found determination to tell
her everything.
"I want you to listen to a story," said I. "It'll hurt you to hear it.
You'll have to be brave--braver even than you are when you sit all day
long behind those muslin curtains, waiting and waiting and waiting for
what sometimes it seems will never come to pass. I've come all the way
over here to Ireland to tell it to you, and when I've finished you'll
think I'm cruel--that I have got some evil motive at the back of my
mind; but whatever you think of me, it's far better that you should
know."
It seemed as if my words were turning her to stone. She did not move.
There must have been some apprehension already in her mind, for she sat
there silently, asking no questions, as one who is nerving herself for
the inevitable falling of a blow that long has been hanging over her.
It was then I hesitated most of all, for suddenly there had come to me
a picture of her in tears. I have never, as you may well suppose, made
a woman cry in my life. No woman has ever come to me in trouble, and
for the moment I mistrusted myself, wondering what I should do if she
wept.
"You must be very brave," I said again, and then I told her everything;
all that I had heard that night at supper when the glasses were
tinkling and the violins played their everlasting melodies of
forgetfulness.
Until that story was finished, I dared not look at her. It was enough
to hear the silence with which she listened. Every word I uttered had
the sound of some dead thing falling into the fathomless depth of still
water. I had not the courage to watch her face, seeing them vanish out
of sight as they sunk one by one into her heart. I guessed what misery
she felt, what utter despair had come to her as she listened to the
bitter end. When I had finished, I turned and looked into her eyes.
"When you know little of it," said I, "the world is like that. Either
you must know nothing, or you must know all."
She was fumbling with the veil in her lap. Her little fingers were
picking at the threads of it as though there were the tangle of her
life, if she could but unravel it. Presently she looked up and met my
eyes.
"Why did you come all this way to tell me that?" she whispered, and
there was such reproach in her voice as made me wish to God I had never
spoken.
"Isn't it better that you should know," said I, "better than staying
here in this prison with those two old women for gaolers, never seeing
the proper light of day except by such subterfuge as you've had to make
use of this morning?"
For another moment or two she was silent again; then suddenly she
crushed the veil passionately in her hands. "I don't believe it's
true!" she exclaimed. "It wasn't him you saw. It was some one like him,
but it wasn't him. He's always promised he'd come back and marry me.
We're going to live in London and he's going to take me to theatres.
Oh--there are a thousand things we're going to do when we're married.
I'm going to see the world. And he's told me over and over again that
he loves me. It wasn't him you saw. It was some one like him."
She could have persuaded herself to that belief had I allowed her,
driving it again and again into her mind until the facts had become
unrecognizable. But I had fulfilled my duty to Destiny so far. There
could be no meaning in it if I turned back now.
"You forget the story," I said, "the story of Clarissa and the gown
of canary-colored satin. Your sitting here now with me is a proof
that he was the man I saw. Don't deceive yourself into any belief to
make yourself happy for the moment. Give him up--he'll only make you
miserable; he's only thinking of marrying you because of what he will
get by you. Give him up, go back to Dominica, break your heart for a
month or two if you must. It'll heal again. You're in love with love,
far more than you're in love with him. You don't know it perhaps. How
should you! Are you twenty yet? Twenty and a day--not more. How should
you know who's worth loving and who is not? Every girl and every boy
falls in love with love, and many a lover must come and go before a
girl shall learn which one is worth the beating of her heart. Go back,
my dear child, to that home of yours in the sun, where you can dress
yourself in all those colors that make you happy; go back and love your
love, with an aching heart if you like, until there comes along some
better man than he is. You don't know him--you don't know anything
about him. In that little island of yours, I've no doubt he seemed a
hero for Romance. But there's no Romance about him here. All that I say
comes coldly from my head. You are only thinking with your heart and,
of course, you don't believe a word I've told you. But think again, am
I not a far better judge than you? Think again and keep on thinking. I
know, but you only feel."
What I had feared then, came suddenly. She buried her face in her
hands, and her shoulders shook to the sobs that were trembling in
little broken gasps between her fingers.
I confess it, I looked helplessly about me. The bright light of the sea
had grown suddenly somehow grey. Brilliance had gone out of everything.
I wished a thousand times to Heaven I had never told her, yet knowing,
every time I wished it, that nothing, not even the certain knowledge of
her tears, could have stopped me.
At the sound of her crying, Dandy had looked up.
"What is it?" he asked me with his ears.
"For God's sake don't cry like that," said I and, scarce thinking what
I did or said, I laid my hand gently on her shoulder and whispered
again, "Don't cry like that. It makes me feel so contemptible. I know
I have no right to come over all this way just to tell you things that
will make you miserable. But I couldn't let it go. Everything seemed
driving me to do it, because you were rushing blindly towards such a
ghastly reckoning. You don't know the world that he is offering to
show you. You think it's all a garden where things grow beautiful;
but London, where he's going to take you, is not like that. It's very
difficult to find the things that grow beautiful there. Every effort
they make in London is not to find the beautiful things, but to forget
the ugly ones. The man who sees beauty in a great city like that is
called a sentimentalist. They all laugh at him. If you wore your
canary-colored satin in the streets, you'd have a crowd of little boys
jeering after you. Men and women would laugh into your face. Oh no; do
go back to your island of sun and love your love, even if your heart
should break. A broken heart need never be a broken spirit. A broken
heart can be a brave and a noble thing. And sometimes--remember--it
mends. But in London they'd break the spirit in you, as they're trying
to break it here--break it so that nothing will ever mend it again.
And then you'll begin that awful struggle towards forgetfulness--a
struggle to forget that your spirit is gone, that the world is ugly
with sin and shame and misery. And oh, they'll make it so difficult
for you to forget. They'll wave placards in front of your eyes telling
you that there have been murders in the East End, that women have died
of starvation, that children have been killed at their birth. They'll
scream to you from the house-tops that the world is an ugly place. You
will go to the theatres you speak of and there they'll tell you that
men and women are unfaithful. They'll keep driving into your ears that
truth and beauty are at opposite poles of the earth. Never, never for
one moment, if they can help it, will they let you forget. You will
find those who have even passed the desire of forgetfulness, and that
is the last and the worst stage of all. For there are people in London
now who only want to remember that the world is ugly. They go to the
divorce trials and the murder trials; they rush in crowds to see a
horror in the streets. Yet once upon a time, when they were children,
they remembered that everything was beautiful. Then they played in
their garden with hoops and with skipping ropes--you'll see them in
Kensington Gardens now--and every day they woke to was a joy to live
in. After a time came the phase when they tried not to see the placards
of the newspapers in the streets, when they began to hear that the
world was ugly, and then, they tried to forget. They went out to the
theatres and to music-halls, to dinners and to suppers, working like
slaves, making the bricks of forgetfulness without the last straws of
hope. Then, last of all, with spirit utterly broken, they accepted the
ugliness of the world, took their pleasure in remembering it; bought
their newspapers and devoured them with their breakfast, mingling
horror and crime and misery with the very food they put into their
mouths. Those are the people in London to-day who will point out to you
the ugliness of life and call it beautiful because it is real. Oh--my
dear child--go back--go back to your little island and don't look for
the ugliness of the world he wants to show you. Go back, and one day
you'll come to learn that I was a friend--the best friend you ever had."
How it was, I don't know, but all this time my hand had been upon her
shoulder. Suddenly then she shook it off and, brushing the tears from
her eyes, rose quickly to her feet.
"I don't believe you!" she cried, and there was that note in her voice
as when you try to drown the things you feel with the things you say.
"I don't believe you!" she cried again. "You have some reason for
saying all this--some reason that I can't see. You want to do him
harm--you hate him--I can see you do."
That struck strangely on my ears, for it was strangely true. She was
quite right. I did hate him. I knew then that I did. But I had not come
to Ireland because of that. When first I had heard that story, I had
been indifferent to him--wholly, almost elaborately, indifferent. It
was the injustice, the impending tragedy, that had moved me. But now--I
hated him. And how had she found that out? Not from anything I had
said. I had not shown it there. Then how--?
"You don't say no to that," she went on, impetuously. "Why do you hate
him? Oh--I suppose you would not tell me--"; and now all that warm
blood of hers was lighted in her veins. If, like those girls along the
coast of Lombardy, she had carried a dagger in her garter, I should
have found the warm steel of it in my flesh by then. As it was, only
her eyes stabbed me, one blow swift after another as you stab the thing
you hate.
"So do you think I'm going to listen to a single word you've said? I
can hate, and hate more than you. And I hate you for coming to pour
those lies into my ears. If I had seen your face that night on the
cliffs when you gave me your letter, I should never have come. I hate
to look at you. You're ugly--you couldn't tell the truth."
Words failed her then--they choked in her throat. She tried to
speak but could not. The only words were in her eyes, and they were
glittering like the sun upon a dancing blade of steel.
"Was it necessary to tell me that?" I asked. "I know it so well."
Perhaps it was the quietness of my voice after the storm of
hers--whatever it may have been, her eyes were suddenly dimmed. No
longer rapier points were glittering there. In place of them came forth
a flood of tears. I stepped quickly to her side, whereupon she looked
up at me once more.
"Don't touch me again!" she sobbed, "don't touch me again! And never
say another word to me as long as you live. Nothing you have told me
makes any difference. I love him better than ever--better than anything
in the world."
And as she said this, all I can remember thinking was to bless her
heart and wonder from what thrilling book in yellow covers had she
learnt her words, her love or hatred.
I could have said it aloud, but that moment she had gone. For an
instant, too amazed, I watched her climbing the little narrow pathway
up the cliffside and then I hurried after her.
"Let me help you up," said I, imperatively. "You can't get up here
alone."
So I climbed before her and stretched down my hand which, without
question, she took confidingly in her fingers. And I clasped them,
saying nothing. I had touched her once more. It is never wise to let a
woman know how human she is.
The moment she reached the level path once more, I found my hand empty.
With a sudden movement she had drawn her fingers away and, without a
word of good-bye, had turned her face towards Ballysheen.
"Had you better walk back alone?" I asked.
"I came alone," said she, over her shoulder.
"You would rather I did not come with you?"
At first I thought she would not answer that, but suddenly she whipped
round, showing me the anger in her eyes once more.
"I shall ask God to-night," she said, "that I shall never see you
again."
Against my will that made me smile. She would ask God! Indeed, she was
just one of those little creatures who in their loves or hatreds would
ask a Deity to help them.
I sat down then by the path's edge. At my side sat Dandy, and
together--just as once we had looked after the little nursery maid--we
watched Clarissa out of sight. When at last she turned the corner and
disappeared, I leant forward, my elbows on my knees, staring at the
sea. It was not the sea that filled my eyes. All that I beheld was a
picture of Clarissa on her knees, asking God that she should never see
me again.