At the further corner from the cedar she perched herself up upon the
parapet and achieved an air of comfort among the lichenous stones. “Now
tell me,” she said, “all about yourself. Tell me about yourself; I know
such duffers of men! They all do the same things. How did you get—here?
All my men _were_ here. They couldn’t have got here if they hadn’t been
here always. They wouldn’t have thought it right. You’ve climbed.”
“If it’s climbing,” I said.
She went off at a tangent. “It’s—I don’t know if you’ll
understand—interesting to meet you again. I’ve remembered you. I don’t
know why, but I have. I’ve used you as a sort of lay figure—when I’ve
told myself stories. But you’ve always been rather stiff and difficult
in my stories—in ready-made clothes—a Labour Member or a Bradlaugh, or
something like that. You’re not like that a bit. And yet you _are!_”
She looked at me. “Was it much of a fight? They make out it is.”
“I don’t know why.”
“I was shot up here by an accident,” I said. “There was no fight at
all. Except to keep honest, perhaps and I made no great figure in that.
I and my uncle mixed a medicine and it blew us up. No merit in that!
But you’ve been here all the time. Tell me what you have done first.”
“One thing we didn’t do.” She meditated for a moment.
“What?” said I.
“Produce a little half-brother for Bladesover. So it went to the
Phillbrick gang. And they let it! And I and my step-mother—we let, too.
And live in a little house.”
She nodded her head vaguely over her shoulder and turned to me again.
“Well, suppose it was an accident. Here you are! Now you’re here, what
are you going to do? You’re young. Is it to be Parliament? heard some
men the other day talking about you. Before I knew you were you. They
said that was what you ought to do.”...
She put me through my intentions with a close and vital curiosity. It
was just as she had tried to imagine me a soldier and place me years
ago. She made me feel more planless and incidental than ever. “You want
to make a flying-machine,” she pursued, “and when you fly? What then?
Would it be for fighting?”
I told her something of my experimental work. She had never heard of
the soaring aeroplane, and was excited by the thought, and keen to hear
about it. She had thought all the work so far had been a mere
projecting of impossible machines. For her Pilcher and Lilienthal had
died in vain. She did not know such men had lived in the world.
“But that’s dangerous!” she said, with a note of discovery.
“Oh!—it’s dangerous.”
“Bee-atrice!” Lady Osprey called.
Beatrice dropped from the wall to her feet.
“Where do you do this soaring?”
“Beyond the high Barrows. East of Crest Hill and the wood.”
“Do you mind people coming to see?”
“Whenever you please. Only let me know”
“I’ll take my chance some day. Some day soon.” She looked at me
thoughtfully, smiled, and our talk was at an end.