'Do you like my brother, Winifred?' I said.
'Yes.' she said.
'Why?'
'Because he is so pretty and so nimble. I believe he could run
up--' and then she stopped; but I knew what the complete sentence
would have been. She was going to say: 'I believe he could run up the
gangways without stopping to take breath.'
Here was a stab; but she did not notice the effect of her unfinished
sentence. Then a question came from me involuntarily.
'Winifred,' I said, 'do you like him as well as you like me?'
'Oh no,' she said, in a tone of wonderment that such a question
should be asked.
'But _I_ am not pretty and--'
'Oh, but you _are_!' she said eagerly, interrupting me.
'But,' I said, with a choking sensation in my voice, 'I am lame.' and
I looked at the crutches lying among the ferns beside me.
'Ah, but I like you all the better for being lame,' she said,
nestling up to me.
'But you like nimble boys,' I said, 'such as Frank.'
She looked puzzled. The anomaly of liking nimble boys and crippled
boys at the same time seemed to strike her. Yet she felt it _was_ so,
though it was difficult to explain it.
'Yes, I _do_ like nimble boys,' she said at last, plucking with her
fingers at a blade of grass she held between her teeth. 'But I think
I like lame boys better, that is if they are--if they are--_you_.'
I gave an exclamation of delight. But she was two years younger than
I, and scarcely, I suppose, understood it.
'He is very pretty,' she said meditatively, 'but he has not got
love-eyes like you and Snap, and I don't think I could love any
little boy so very, _very_ much now who wasn't lame.'
She loved me in spite of my lameness; she loved me because I was
lame, so that if I had not fallen from the cliffs, if I had sustained
my glorious position among the boys of Raxton and Graylingham as
'Fighting Hal.' I might never have won little Winifred's love. Here
was a revelation of the mingled yarn of life, that I remember struck
me even at that childish age.
I began to think I might, in spite of the undoubted crutches, resume
my old place as the luckiest boy along the sands. She loved me
because I was lame! Those who say that physical infirmity does not
feminise the character have not had my experience. No more talk for
me that morning. In such a mood as that there can be no talk. I sat
in a silent dream, save when a sweet sob of delight would come up
like a bubble from the heaving waters of my soul. I had passed into
that rare and high mood when life's afflictions are turned by love to
life's deepest, holiest joys. I had begun early to learn and know the
gamut of the affections.
'When, you leave me here and go home to Wales you will never forget
me. Winnie?'
'Never, never!' she said, as she helped me from the ferns which were
still as wet with dew as though it had been raining. 'I will think of
you every night before I go to sleep, and always end my prayers as I
did that first night after I saw you so lonely in the churchyard.'
'And how is that, Winnie?' I said, as she adjusted my crutches for
me.
'After I've said "Amen," I always say, "And, dear Lord Jesus, don't
forget to love dear Henry, who can't get up the gangways without me,"
and I will say that every night as long as I live.'
From that morning I considered her altogether mine. Her speaking of
me as the 'dear little English boy,' however, as she did, marred the
delight her words gave me. I had from the first observed that the
child's strongest passion was a patriotism of a somewhat fiery kind.
The word English in her mouth seemed some-times a word of reproach:
it was the name of the race that in the past had invaded her sacred
Snowdonia.
I afterwards learnt that her aunt was answerable for this senseless
prejudice.
'Winnie,' I said, 'don't you wish I was a Welsh boy?'
'Oh yes,' she said.'Don't you?' I made no answer.
She looked into my face and said, 'And yet I don't think I could love
a Welsh boy as I love you.'
She then repeated to me a verse of a Welsh song, which of course I
did not understand a word of until she told me what it meant in
English.