There is something in common between Bellwattle and Dandy. I cannot
easily describe it, but I find a strange resemblance. It lies, I think,
in their powers of intuition, for whereas Dandy takes the color of his
mood from the subtlest tone of my voice, it is with Bellwattle that she
knows my mood before I have so much as uttered a single word.
As I walked up the drive--a broad shingle walk, so called because
it enables Quin's car to come immediately to the front door--I was
thinking of all that had taken place that morning; trying to justify
it in my mind with any reasonable scheme of things however remote. To
what purpose had I heard that story in the restaurant? With what object
had that poor child of ill-fortune been induced to shelter in the very
doorway which I must pass? Or, granting that as reasonable enough, why
had she spoken to me--and, speaking, why had she appealed to me for
charity? There were many things she might have said, less calculated
to catch my sympathy than to ask me for her cab fare home--things at
which I should have hurried by rather than hear. But no--she had caught
the moment's speculation of my mind and, out of my conversation with
her, had grown the belief that I was meant to save Clarissa from
destruction.
Lunch was not ready yet, for I could see Cruikshank still in the
garden, wherefore I stood there for some minutes in the drive, trying
to puzzle it out, to fit it into some logical order of events upon such
lines as you might expect so complicated a matter to be planned. But it
would not go. A set of beads there was, a thread too whereon to string
them. But with all the wishing in the world, I could not make a pattern
bringing the faintest understanding to my mind.
I knew, as truly as the Fate which had brought them together, that
nothing but misery and disillusionment could come of Clarissa's union
with that boy in London. But I had failed to persuade her to go back to
Dominica without him. How utterly I had failed, no one but I, who know
how truly I had hoped for it, can ever realize. Then why had the little
nursery maid ever induced in me a mood? Why had my mood been played
upon by that story in the restaurant? Why had the story been visualized
to me by the meeting with that little creature in the doorway? In a
word, why, in the name of God, had I come to Ireland at all?
What I can have done as I put that final question to myself, I do not
know. Some gesticulation I must have made; some movement which had
betrayed my thoughts and the utter despondency of my mind. Whatever it
could have been, I was made suddenly conscious of Bellwattle's voice
calling to me from the window of her bedroom.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
I looked up, and found her standing at the window drying her hands.
"What should be the matter?" said I, and I came to take my stand below
the window, looking up.
"Why that terrible sigh?" she inquired, "on a day like this?"
"I wasn't aware of it," I replied.
"It's all the worse for that. Is something the matter?"
I tried to read her face. It was not quite inscrutable. I had that
irritating sensation of believing I was very near to the knowledge
of her thoughts; near, yet far enough away to be utterly unable to
translate them. It was almost safe to suppose that she knew I had
been to meet Clarissa. But how could she possibly realize all that
had happened? So I stood there silent for a moment, waiting while I
considered how far I could decoy her from the truth. I did not know
then, so well as I know now, that the truth itself is the only thing
with which to mislead a woman's intuition. All that lies behind
deception she can so easily detect. It is the truth behind the truth
which confuses her.
"Is anything the matter?" she repeated, gently; and then I was forced
to such strategy as I was capable of. How could I tell her what had
happened? God knows I had been fool enough to try; but my folly, now
that I had failed, was not the sort to be softened by sympathy. A fool
and his money may soon be parted. It is his folly which clings to him,
and not the gentlest fingers in the world can ease him of his load.
"There's nothing the matter," said I. "Perhaps I'm tired. I got up
early this morning."
She looked down at me with those generous, straight eyes of hers, and
she said: "Then you won't tell me?"
"If there were anything the matter," I began, "I can think of no one--"
I looked up to conclude my sentence, but she had gone. The window was
empty. Over a matter of this sort evidently she would waste no time. No
doubt she was quite right. My saying that nothing was the matter meant
that I had no intention of telling her and, it being only men who throw
time away upon curiosity--and that mainly by asking questions--she had
let me talk to myself rather than listen to my useless evasions. So,
at least, I understood her sudden departure, therefore I, too, turned
away, and Cruikshank joined me.
"After lunch," said he, "I shall begin bedding out my stocks."
"After lunch?" said I. "In London they only think up to a meal. I don't
think I'll have any lunch at all."
He took me by the arm.
"Appetite going?" he inquired, sympathetically.
I suddenly remembered his surprise at my empty porridge-dish, realizing
that here he imagined he had discovered the first starvation symptoms
of an unrequited passion. That was more than I could stand.
"Oh--I'll come and eat with you," said I. "There's nothing the matter
with my appetite. Getting up early has given me a headache--that's all."
So we went in to lunch together, when Bellwattle was quite wonderful.
No longer did she treat me to her sympathy. Instead, we heard from her
some of those wild schemes and fancies which take possession of her
mind, I suppose, in such moments as when she gazes into far distances,
or in the strange hours of her day when she is alone and talks in
animated conversation with herself.
It chanced that Cruikshank spoke of the number of rats in the farmyard
over the way.
"They eat everything," said he.
"The creatures!" she exclaimed.
"That's all very well," said Cruikshank, "but when it comes to a whole
field of corn being ruined--that's what'll happen this summer if
they're not put down."
"But surely you can stop them?"
"How?" said I.
"Keep the things covered up."
"What do you suggest should be put over a field of corn?" I asked--"A
tarpaulin?"
"It 'ud be too heavy," she replied, and then her quick eye caught the
apoplectic tint in Cruikshank's cheek, and her face became full of
questions.
"What is it? What is it? Couldn't you cover it up?"
"You could," said I, "but I'd sooner leave it to the rats. What are you
going to do about them?" I added, to Cruikshank. "You'll have to have a
wholesale slaughter."
His frown to me came too late. I had said it, and Bellwattle was up in
arms at once.
"Why should you kill them?" she cried. "Oh, I think it's a shame! They
have as much right to live as we have. They must eat! If you don't want
them to eat corn they ought to be fed."
"Who's going to stand the expense of that?" we asked.
"The Government," she declared, "the State."
"You'd have to give them old-age pensions too," said I. "When you make
human paupers they're not content with being fed. They want provision
in their old age as well. It 'ud be just the same if you made rodentian
paupers."
"What's that?" she asked quickly.
"Paupers," explained Cruikshank, "of that order of creatures to which
the rat belongs."
"Well, why doesn't he say so?" she replied.
The fact that I had said so seemed to make no difference. I felt that
I had been put in my place; especially when it was Bellwattle herself
who changed the subject. She wanted to keep a cow, she said, declaring
as the basis of her suggestion that it was so much nicer having one's
own milk.
"But we only have to go fifty yards across to the farm to get it," said
Cruikshank.
But that was not her point. I was conceited enough to imagine I knew
all that lay in the back of her mind.
"Fifty yards is a long way," said I, "when you like cows for
themselves."
She gave me a genuine glance of gratitude.
"And I love cows," said she. "I'd look after it. I'd feed it too. Do
let me have one. I'd love to keep a diary."
"Just to record," said I, "what the cow does and thinks. It's quite
natural."
"Don't be silly!" said she. "You know I mean a dairy. Cows don't
think--do they?"
"Depends on who milks them," said Cruikshank. "The cow that you
tampered with might have ideas. And what are we going to do when the
milking season's over? Just keep it in the paddock and feed it?"
Her eyes opened wide in amazement.
"Don't they give milk all the year round?" she inquired.
Cruikshank's awkward endeavor to dispel that idea from her mind, and
at the same time give no offence, was nearly the nicest thing said
during lunch. "It was," he explained, "only when their condition was
interesting that they obliged."
"Surely you didn't imagine," he continued, "that cows were made to give
milk to human beings, irrespective of their calves?"
"Well--eggs are eggs," said Bellwattle, conclusively. And as we could
not deny it she took it for granted that her supposition about the cows
was correct. Logically, no doubt, she is quite right. If eggs will be
eggs, it seems on the face of it an error of Nature that cows should
not always be cows. The fact that they are not had no power to destroy
the line of argument in her mind. She still thought that Cruikshank
ought to keep one of those amiable beasts and that she ought to be able
to milk it the whole year round.
And so she talked on all through that lunch-time. I could never have
dreamed, from the rippling stream of her conversation, that she had
ever been curious to know what was the matter with me. But then, when
in a sudden silence I announced that I must be drawing my visit to a
close her eyes lit up with a burning fire of questions, not one of
which she asked. For the moment she was content and clever enough to
let Cruikshank interrogate me. At first he refused all hearing of it.
"But you forget," said I, "I can't live on here for ever. Next Friday
makes my fifth week."
"It might make your fiftieth," said he. "We don't care."
I laughed. These dear people are too hospitable to know what
hospitality means. There is no such thing--or, indeed, should be no
such thing--as hospitality. Hospitality is giving within reason. But
if there be reason in it, why call it giving? What is mine cannot be
yours within reason, for if there were reason in it, then everything I
possess would be my own.
"I'll wait till the end of the week," said I, "then I must get back."
"That's only three days!" they exclaimed in a chorus of disgust.
"It'll be more than five weeks since I came," said I. "No--I must be
off by then."
"Is there anything--?" began Cruikshank, and then Bellwattle
interrupted. I could see she did not think it safe to let him continue
any longer. In matters of judgment where the heart is concerned, men
are not to be relied upon. They thought, no doubt, that I had been
disappointed in my little love affair, wherefore, Bellwattle demanded
that I should be left to her, and under the table she kicked Cruikshank
meaningly upon the ankle. I happen to know that, because it was my
ankle which received the blow. When, then, he took no notice of her
signal, she came to the conclusion that as a race men were the most
obtuse animals God ever thought of, and rising from the table she asked
me to smoke a cigarette with her in the garden.
"What are you going to do with me?" said I.
She made no answer till we came to the little nut walk at the bottom of
the garden. Then she turned and looked me in the face.
"Is this decision unalterable?" she asked.
I nodded my head.
"When you're miserable do you always want to go and be alone?"
In the tone of her voice I felt the shadow of what was coming. She was
going to make this the last and most determined bid for my confidence.
I was no less determined to tell her nothing. What good could it do?
There may be a certain beauty in sympathy which makes any abasement
worth while, but so far as I am concerned it is a quality in human
beings I have done without for so long, that a childish sense of
dignity has double its value to me.
Now it would have been most undignified to tell any one of the folly of
my adventure, or to seek to gain their sympathy because it had failed.
The real tragedy of failure is not its want of success; it is the
knowledge that you may not tell it to a soul. Therefore, I said boldly
that I was quite happy, and not so far below my breath as that she
might not hear, I hummed the catchy fragment of a tune.
"Then, why are you suddenly going?"
"Because," said I, "there is a difference between a visit and an
infliction. I want to be asked again. I don't want to stay on until you
really will be glad to see the last of me."
"Why do you talk nonsense to me?" she inquired.
"Do you think I forget things? Do you think I've forgotten what you
said to me on the cliffs that day we went to see the cottage?"
"What did I say?"
"'It's not good for man to live alone.' I don't know whether you
invented it yourself, but you said it."
"No--that's not mine."
"But you said it?"
"Oh--yes."
"Then, why are you going back to London and leaving us?"
I looked all round the garden and, upon my soul, for the moment I
wondered why the deuce I was doing it myself. There was the arabis in
blossom, the deep purple tulips, with strong, straight shafts of green,
were standing in their rows in orderly array, as though a Roman emperor
were passing down their lines. The faint breath of a wandering breeze
just caught them and, as they bowed, I heard the sound of distant music
in the emperor's train. But that was only fancy, and it was not for a
fancy alone that I marvelled at myself or wondered how I could bring
myself to leave it. These was the whole breadth and length of the sea,
the whole vast arena of the sky, the great sweep of the cliffs, which
no line of purple tulips could compass, with which no snow of arabis
could compare. And for the cramped spaces in a city, no matter how
immense, I was going to leave it all--all consciousness of freedom,
all remembrance of my heritage of life--just that I might pursue that
bitter pleasure of forgetfulness.
"Don't ask me," said I. "I suppose when they say that you hear London
calling to you there's something in it. It has a voice--you can't deny
it."
"Yes--and who was it who didn't put wax in his ears, but got his men to
tie him up so he could hear the women singing?"
"It was Ulysses," said I; "but it doesn't apply in my case. The song of
London after this is a raucous melody to me. It's here the voices sing."
Her eyes were full of tenderness as she looked at me. I was getting my
sympathy after all, and that without any expenditure of my childish
dignity. Oh--women are generous creatures! If they cannot make a
bargain with their hearts, then they offer them in both hands--and for
nothing.
When I saw that look, I had the audacity to take her hand.
"Don't ask me anything more," said I, "let me put the wax in my ears
and get back to my little theatres. I shall be happy enough when I take
my seat once more in the Park and see the play begin. Next year perhaps
I'll come back for a week or two, when there are not so many fish as
we've caught in the last few weeks."
I said that for her to laugh at, but she did not even smile.
Instead, she took her hand away from mine and her lips set firmly in
determination.
"Very well," said she, "tell me nothing. It's not the way to treat a
woman when she really wants to know. But you'll learn that as you get
older."
"I shall never learn anything about women," said I.
She shrugged her shoulders and began to walk back to the house.
"Was that a threat?" I called after her.
"It was whatever you'll find it," said she.
I ran down the path and caught her up.
"What do you mean?" I asked. "What are you going to do?"
"You don't understand my tone of voice, I suppose?" she replied.
I admitted I did not, whereupon she made a statement that I shall carry
back with me to London and remember for the rest of my days.
"Every woman," said she, "has her little idios-an-crazes;" and she
walked on into the house.