A BEWITCHING
IF this--his own voluntary invitation--had surprised Father Maloney,
twenty minutes later he was more surprised still. His mind was in one
chaotic state of surprise. It had entirely lost its bearings; it had
drifted into an extraordinary geniality with, apparently, no volition
on his own part. As surely as he contracted it momentarily into a state
of astonished frigidity, so surely it expanded, thawed again, into an
altogether untoward hospitality.
“Sure, it’s entirely bewitched I am,” he muttered sternly, bewildered
at one moment, and the next expatiating on the individual beauties
of some rose, as a mother expatiates on the virtues of her child,
provided, of course, that her audience be sufficiently sympathetic.
“’Tis in June you should have been seeing them,” he said at length,
tenderly fingering a Madame Abel Chatenay, salmon pink, pale, and
graceful, “’tis in June you should have been seeing them. For every one
rose on the bushes now, there were ten then. Sure, I never know which
of them I’m for loving best. At times I think ’tis this fair lady,
then I’m for thinking ’tis yonder creamy Devonionsis, or that drooping
white Niphetos, or Caroline Testout smiling away over there. But for
the most I’m always coming back to General Jacqueminot. ’Tis the
old-fashionedness of him, and his sturdy ways, and, more than all, the
sweet scent of him. If you’re down on your luck, and take a good sniff
at him, why, the world’s a different place that very minute. There’s
all the sunshine of the summer, and the humming of the bees, and the
laughter of children, and your mother’s voice, and all the memories of
your boyhood in the scent, there is that. And you’d laugh yourself, the
while there’s a queer tenderness is catching at your heart for happy
tears.”
“I know,” nodded David. (I have not insulted your intelligence by
giving him a former and formal introduction.) “I know. There are
scents like that. They are alive. They are worth a million words, or
a million pictures. I could be taken blindfold across the world, and
if I were set down on the veldt I would know the scent in an instant.
It’s hot, pungent, aromatic. I’d see the scrubby bushes, the scarlet
everlastings, the flame-coloured heaths, and the straggling blue
lobelia. I’d see the mountains, blue against the sun, and golden facing
it. I’d feel the great spaces, and the vast distances. I’d--” he broke
off with a laugh. “There I am trying to give you in words what only the
scent of the place can really give you.”
“Words are poor things,” said Father Maloney smiling, “when you come to
wanting to express what lies closest to your heart. I’m thinking ’tis
like the Tower of Babel over again, after a fashion. We can talk fast
enough when our thoughts are down near the earth, but the moment they
get up a bit, for the most of us our tongue is halting and stammering,
and there’s confusion. I’m thinking it’s as well, or we might get a
bit above ourselves with glibness of speech, and be fancying ourselves
embryo prophets and visionaries, and getting others to fancy it along
with us.”
David flicked an insect off a rose.
“There’s not much need for speech if you happen to be with the right
person, is there?” said he thoughtfully.
Father Maloney’s eyes twinkled.
“There is not,” quoth he. “Or, at all events, your stammering will
stand you in good stead.”
And then Anastasia rang the tea-bell.
Father Maloney started almost guiltily. Time had stolen a march on him,
it would appear. He looked uneasily towards the house.
“That’s your tea-bell,” said David calmly, voicing the obvious.
“It is that,” said Father Maloney. “I--will you be having a cup,” he
blurted out.
For one instant, for just one brief instant, David hesitated, then,
“Thanks,” he said.
“’Tis altogether bewitched I am,” groaned Father Maloney inwardly, as
he accompanied his guest towards the house.