For a little while that afternoon I watched Cruikshank bedding out his
stocks. He has evidently been warned to be very careful what he says
about my going. I gather that from the fact that he leaves the subject
severely alone. It shows a discretion on his part which, while it may
be the better part of valor, has an irritating way of defeating its
own ends. I can imagine all they have been saying about Clarissa and
myself, while Cruikshank, hiding his head under the sand of silence,
is patting himself on the back in the belief that I cannot see all he
knows.
It was thinking of this hidden head of his that made me ask him did his
back not ache over the labors of a garden.
"When I began," said he, "I used to think I was an old man. I don't
notice it now."
After a pause, during which he never stopped working, I inquired when
the stocks would blossom.
"Late June--July--August--part of September."
It was saying just as little as he could, and I am not surprised, for
all true gardeners hate interruption. It was saying so little, but,
my heavens! it was saying so much. Late June--July--August--part of
September. What abundant, what extravagant generosity! The only other
living things in the world as generous as that are women.
"Do you remember walking round the Quad," said I, "and talking about
women?"
He looked up quickly over his shoulder. Of course, the question was a
startling one to him. He had not followed my train of thought.
"Why? Why?" he repeated.
I turned away on my heel.
"Why? Oh--I don't know. We thought we knew so much about them, didn't
we? All of us begin as teachers in the temple, and the best of us end
by being clowns in a booth."
I looked back at him once as I passed out of the garden. He was
standing up, with the tiny root of a stock in his hand, and his face
was a picture of bewilderment.
Before I had decided upon any direction to follow, I found myself
down by the long, low curve of strand marking the bend of the bay of
Ballysheen. From the first moment that I saw it, it reminded me of
Browning's "Night and Morning":
A mile of warm sea-scented beach,
Two fields to cross till a farm appears.
For there is the mile of sand as though it had been measured to his
pen. There, too, are the low-lying fields and the long white farmhouse
with its roof of thatch. Whenever they put their lamp in those
farmhouse windows as the evening light draws in, I think as well of
"the quick blue spurt of a match," of the "two hearts beating each to
each."
The farm belongs to one named Power, whose land, some fifty acres of
pasture fields and corn, stretches inland behind and around the house.
It was there, through all his fields, I wandered, letting my feet take
me as they wished. It seemed I had no intention left in all the world,
except that I was determined upon one thing. I would not return to the
house to tea. They might suppose what they liked about my appetite, but
I could bear no longer the thought of keeping silent to the generous
inquisition of Bellwattle's desire for my confidence. There were all
the reasons in the world, I know, why I should tell her everything;
but that fear in me of being thought a fool, added to the knowledge of
that which she had already told Cruikshank, would be more than I could
stand. Of course, she would think me a fool. Any woman would think so
of a man who undertakes knight-errantry with such equipment as is mine.
When, therefore, it came to tea-time, I sat down behind a tree of
hawthorn, white with blossom, just looking into the heart of the
country which I knew I should not see again for many a month to come.
It was then as I sat there, that I saw the figure of General Ffrench
approaching. Another instant and Dandy would have been alongside of
him, master at once of those ceremonies of friendly overture which he
knows so well how to conduct. My hand upon his collar came not a moment
too soon.
"Lie down, you young devil!" said I, below my breath, for the old
gentleman was following a beaten track through the field from which,
if he did but continue it, I should escape his notice. For four weeks
I had avoided hearing of the old queen's reception in Dublin, and it
was not in my mind to listen to it then. So I held Dandy severely by
the collar and he passed us by. It was not the sort of treatment Dandy
appreciated. He has a passionate curiosity about human beings. Never
a man can pass along a lonely road but what he must go and speak to
him. He sniffs in a tentative way at his legs and then, if satisfied,
drops his voice to a confidential whisper, whereupon the man always
turns and looks at me with a kindly smile in his eyes, which vanishes
no sooner than he properly has sight of me. I suspect it is that Dandy
is endeavoring to persuade him what a splendid fellow I am, which,
apparently, he has every good intention to believe, until he turns to
find me as I am.
When, then, Dandy found himself a prisoner, compelled to watch this
strange two-legged creature go by without any of his customary
amenities, he twisted his head first this way and then that, till I
thought he would wring his own neck in his collar.
"Keep still, you little fool!" I whispered.
He looked back piteously over his shoulder into my face.
"It's a man," he whined.
"I know that," said I.
"But he's got a gun."
"He's only got one cartridge," I replied with triumph. "You watch him."
And we watched--Dandy breathlessly, I, with that calm confidence born
of a superior knowledge. It was Dandy who expected him to raise his
gun at the slightest provocation and blow the very heavens to pieces,
when, collar or no collar, he would have been off into the fields,
dancing here, there and everywhere without the faintest conception
of what he was doing. But I knew better than that. The old gentleman
moved slowly and stealthily, as one who is following the subtle and
intricate workings of a trail. Just to see him made me think of the
days at school with a Latin grammar outside the desk and the story of
Sioux Indians within. To manipulate the reading of the one with an
apparently engrossing study of the other, is no mean feat. First, your
face assumes that consternation which comes with the sudden remembrance
that you have forgotten something--up goes the flap of the desk--but
what does it matter? It was all so very long ago. I don't suppose I
could do it now for five minutes without immediate discovery. It was of
a Sioux Indian, anyhow, that the old general reminded me. He had that
way of walking. There was just that watchful poise of the head. You
might have thought, to see him, that he was close upon the tracks of a
giant grizzly instead of some poor little rabbit, which must sit up
motionless for at least a minute before he would consent to shoot.
It was the sight of this old man, sparing and ever sparing his last
cartridge, that made me feel the poverty of Ireland more than any
roofless cottage or empty mill. I compared it for the instant with the
men at Monte Carlo, blazing away their cartridges at the frightened
pigeons, jerking the empty cases with easy callousness on to the
ground. I had no doubt this old fellow would take home his empty
case and keep it on a shelf in some lumber cupboard, looking at it
reminiscently from time to time, rejoicing in the remembrance of the
many days of sport it had brought him. You may be sure this was not
the first time he had come out with that cartridge which the money for
those tomatoes had acquired for him. I can imagine there is plenty of
sport in such a case without firing a single shot.
He certainly found enough to keep him alert that afternoon. Times out
of number he raised the gun swiftly to his shoulder. There were three
breathless moments when he steadied himself as he took aim; but either
it was that the rabbit did not sit still long enough, or he knew that
he had lost that cunning of his younger days; whatever it was, the
world was quite still; the heavens were not blown to pieces. He never
fired once.
For an hour I think I must have sat under that hawthorn bush with the
everlasting expectation of a sudden thunder of sound. It never came.
And then, as I rose to my feet to return home, he appeared once more
in sight. This time he saw me. There was no escaping him then. Dandy
rushed back to meet him; sniffed suspiciously at the barrel of his gun;
asked him in as many words all about it. On this occasion, I imagine he
said not a single word about me.
"Any sport?" I asked, as he came up with me.
He shook his head.
"Not a single rabbit anywhere," said he.
You see, everybody has his little sense of dignity. I am not alone
in the possession of it when I will not tell Bellwattle what a fool
I have been. Four times at least before he had passed out of sight I
had seen him raise his gun to his shoulder, ready to fire at a rabbit
sitting peacefully within twenty yards of him. Then, without a blush
to his face, he assures me he has not seen one. But this is the common
instinct of a man. He will not be thought a fool. God alone knows how
completely he may be one.
"I'm glad to find," said I, "that you're not one of those men who blaze
away for the mere sake of shooting."
He took my arm at that.
"You noticed I didn't fire a shot?" said he.
"I should have heard it," said I, "if you had."
"I think," said he, "without flattering myself, that I'm one of those
men who has an unusual amount of self-control."
But the moment he had said it, Fate played her pranks with him. There
came a rabbit out from the undergrowth to sit blandly on the beaten
track in front of us. Up went his gun.
"Keep still!" he muttered, in a horrible whisper.
And then, whether it were by mistake that his finger pulled the trigger
or, happening on some odd chance, he thought he had found the sight at
once, however it was, he fired. Immediately the rabbit darted back into
the undergrowth, and Dandy leapt forward, barking and jumping wildly as
though he were responsible for the whole affair. The poor old gentleman
blew the smoke disconsolately down the barrel of his gun.
"Must have hit him," said he, "but I can't understand how the deuce he
got away."
So firmly, moreover, did he believe it that he tried to set Dandy
searching for the poor little beast.
"Fetch him! Fetch him!" said he, and Dandy jumped around from one
rabbit-hole to another till he almost made me giddy.
"It was not an easy shot," said I, for I must confess I felt sorry for
him. I knew he would never have fired that last cartridge had it not
been for me.
"No, it was not easy," he agreed. "I had to be very quick," and then,
sorrowfully, he took out the empty cartridge-case. I watched him
secretly as he slipped it into the pocket of his coat.
We walked on together up to the village, and all the time, as I knew
to be inevitable, he entertained me with his story of the old queen's
reception in Dublin. At his own gate we parted, though to this day I
scarcely know how I escaped. His desire that I should meet his sister,
Mrs. Quigley, was expressed in such inordinate terms of flattery as
to make my refusal tantamount to an insult. It was only the fixed
determination in my mind to see Clarissa's prison once more before I
left Ballysheen that made me adamant.
Why this determination had come to me is more than I can explain.
I wanted to catch a last glimpse of her between those white muslin
curtains to assure myself perhaps that, complete as my failure may have
been, I had not shirked the duty which an unreasonable Destiny had so
plainly pointed out to me. I had done my best; moreover, there was yet
the slender hope that the wisdom of my words might plant a seed of
doubt within her. She might yet refuse to marry him.
But there was a bitterness in that hope for me. If such an event did
happen, she would never come to me in gratitude. And it is gratitude
from a woman, I think, which makes a deal of difference in the color of
the world. For that I had envied my electrician, because, when he gave
the little nursery maid his narcissus, she must have said "Thank you."
In the same way it is not because I have the faintest shadow of an
idea as to how a woman should be dressed, that I would like to clothe
her from head to foot. It is to see her strutting before a glass like
some peacock on a garden wall, to catch the gleam of perky pleasure
in her eye; it is to see her suddenly turn the last of all her peacock
little thoughts to you, to hear the sudden rustle of the skirt you
have bought, to feel her hand in the glove that you have paid for laid
swiftly on your arm and then to hear the voice which only God and a
great heart can give her, saying, "You dear old thing, and I'd nearly
forgotten to thank you."
I believe she always does forget, just at first. And judging by the men
whose faces at such moments I have watched, it must be so much nicer
that way. She would not be human if she remembered straight away.
All such gratitude as this then from Clarissa I had lost. Through
the dim light behind those white muslin curtains, the utmost I could
imagine of her was that she was down upon her knees, praying God that
she might never see me again. And when I did reach the house, it was
just this picture and no other that my mind painted for me.
Why had I come into her life? But I did not put it that way. I asked
myself why she had come into mine. And what is more, I knew that I
could answer it. It was because of the terrible loneliness which hemmed
her in on every side. That it was which had made its appeal to me. She
was more beset with the utter solitude of life even than I. I at least
had Dandy. There was Moxon, too, who, if it came to such a pass, would
willingly serve me for nothing rather than leave me to myself. But
this poor child had no one, and as I gazed up at the cheerless window
staring out across the sea I felt that, were it given to me--disfigured
as I am--I could bring her nearer to that mysterious secret of content
which needs no qualities of possession to make it clear.
"But that," said I to myself, "is the talk of a child."
"Out of the mouths of babes--" began an urgent voice within me.
"That," said I, emphatically and aloud, "is the talk of a child." To
which the voice within me had no more to say.
It was at this moment that I turned away and simultaneously saw the
figure of Bellwattle emerge from the front door, hurrying away towards
home.
In a dozen steps I had come up with her. Suspicion was working quickly
in my mind.
"What have you been doing in there?" I asked.
"Seeing the Miss Fennells," she replied, promptly.
"The Miss Fennells," said I, "are in Youghal, and will not return till
late this evening."
"Why did you ask, then?" she replied, and there was the suggestion in
her voice that it was I who should be blamed for leading her to tell
the lie.
"I asked," said I, "because I wanted to know."
"When you tell a person nothing yourself," she answered, "that's the
very worst reason you could have," and after that I could get her to
say no more.