“...When I first saw Derek I thought I should never feel anything but
shy and hopeless. In four days, only in four days, the whole world
is different.... And yet, if it hadn't been for that thunder-storm,
I shouldn't have got over being shy in time. He has never loved
anybody—nor have I. It can't often be like that—it makes it solemn.
There's a picture somewhere—not a good one, I know—of a young Highlander
being taken away by soldiers from his sweetheart. Derek is fiery and
wild and shy and proud and dark—like the man in that picture. That last
day along the hills—along and along—with the wind in our faces, I could
have walked forever; and then Joyfields at the end! Their mother's
wonderful; I'm afraid of her. But Uncle Tod is a perfect dear. I never
saw any one before who noticed so many things that I didn't, and nothing
that I did. I am sure he has in him what Mr. Cuthcott said we were all
losing—the love of simple, natural conditions. And then, THE moment,
when I stood with Derek at the end of the orchard, to say good-by. The
field below covered with those moony-white flowers, and the cows all
dark and sleepy; the holy feeling down there was wonderful, and in
the branches over our heads, too, and the velvety, starry sky, and the
dewiness against one's face, and the great, broad silence—it was all
worshipping something, and I was worshipping—worshipping happiness. I
WAS happy, and I think HE was. Perhaps I shall never be so happy again.
When he kissed me I didn't think the whole world had so much happiness
in it. I know now that I'm not cold a bit; I used to think I was. I
believe I could go with him anywhere, and do anything he wanted. What
would Dad think? Only the other day I was saying I wanted to know
everything. One only knows through love. It's love that makes the world
all beautiful—makes it like those pictures that seem to be wrapped in
gold, makes it like a dream—no, not like a dream—like a wonderful tune.
I suppose that's glamour—a goldeny, misty, lovely feeling, as if my soul
were wandering about with his—not in my body at all. I want it to go
on and on wandering—oh! I don't want it back in my body, all hard and
inquisitive and aching! I shall never know anything so lovely as loving
him and being loved. I don't want anything more—nothing! Stay with
me, please—Happiness! Don't go away and leave me!... They frighten me,
though; he frightens me—their idealism; wanting to do great things,
and fight for justice. If only I'd been brought up more like that—but
everything's been so different. It's their mother, I think, even more
than themselves. I seem to have grown up just looking on at life as at a
show; watching it, thinking about it, trying to understand—not living
it at all. I must get over that; I will. I believe I can tell the very
moment I began to love him. It was in the schoolroom the second evening.
Sheila and I were sitting there just before dinner, and he came, in a
rage, looking splendid. 'That footman put out everything just as if
I were a baby—asked me for suspenders to fasten on my socks; hung the
things on a chair in order, as if I couldn't find out for myself what
to put on first; turned the tongues of my shoes out!—curled them over!'
Then Derek looked at me and said: 'Do they do that for you?—And poor old
Gaunt, who's sixty-six and lame, has three shillings a week to buy him
everything. Just think of that! If we had the pluck of flies—' And he
clenched his fists. But Sheila got up, looked hard at me, and said:
'That'll do, Derek.' Then he put his hand on my arm and said: 'It's
only Cousin Nedda!' I began to love him then; and I believe he saw it,
because I couldn't take my eyes away. But it was when Sheila sang
'The Red Sarafan,' after dinner, that I knew for certain. 'The Red
Sarafan'—it's a wonderful song, all space and yearning, and yet such
calm—it's the song of the soul; and he was looking at me while she sang.
How can he love me? I am nothing—no good for anything! Alan calls him
a 'run-up kid, all legs and wings.' Sometimes I hate Alan; he's
conventional and stodgy—the funny thing is that he admires Sheila.
She'll wake him up; she'll stick pins into him. No, I don't want Alan
hurt—I want every one in the world to be happy, happy—as I am.... The
next day was the thunder-storm. I never saw lightning so near—and didn't
care a bit. If he were struck I knew I should be; that made it all
right. When you love, you don't care, if only the something must happen
to you both. When it was over, and we came out from behind the stack
and walked home through the fields, all the beasts looked at us as if we
were new and had never been seen before; and the air was ever so
sweet, and that long, red line of cloud low down in the purple, and the
elm-trees so heavy and almost black. He put his arm round me, and I
let him.... It seems an age to wait till they come to stay with us next
week. If only Mother likes them, and I can go and stay at Joyfields.
Will she like them? It's all so different to what it would be if they
were ordinary. But if he were ordinary I shouldn't love him; it's
because there's nobody like him. That isn't a loverish fancy—you
only have to look at him against Alan or Uncle Stanley or even Dad.
Everything he does is so different; the way he walks, and the way he
stands drawn back into himself, like a stag, and looks out as if he were
burning and smouldering inside; even the way he smiles. Dad asked me
what I thought of him! That was only the second day. I thought he was
too proud, then. And Dad said: 'He ought to be in a Highland regiment;
pity—great pity!' He is a fighter, of course. I don't like fighting, but
if I'm not ready to, he'll stop loving me, perhaps. I've got to learn.
O Darkness out there, help me! And Stars, help me! O God, make me brave,
and I will believe in you forever! If you are the spirit that grows
in things in spite of everything, until they're like the flowers, so
perfect that we laugh and sing at their beauty, grow in me, too; make
me beautiful and brave; then I shall be fit for him, alive or dead; and
that's all I want. Every evening I shall stand in spirit with him at
the end of that orchard in the darkness, under the trees above the
white flowers and the sleepy cows, and perhaps I shall feel him kiss
me again.... I'm glad I saw that old man Gaunt; it makes what they feel
more real to me. He showed me that poor laborer Tryst, too, the one
who mustn't marry his wife's sister, or have her staying in the house
without marrying her. Why should people interfere with others like that?
It does make your blood boil! Derek and Sheila have been brought up to
be in sympathy with the poor and oppressed. If they had lived in London
they would have been even more furious, I expect. And it's no use my
saying to myself 'I don't know the laborer, I don't know his hardships,'
because he is really just the country half of what I do know and see,
here in London, when I don't hide my eyes. One talk showed me how
desperately they feel; at night, in Sheila's room, when we had gone up,
just we four. Alan began it; they didn't want to, I could see; but he
was criticising what some of those Bigwigs had said—the 'Varsity makes
boys awfully conceited. It was such a lovely night; we were all in
the big, long window. A little bat kept flying past; and behind
the copper-beech the moon was shining on the lake. Derek sat in the
windowsill, and when he moved he touched me. To be touched by him gives
me a warm shiver all through. I could hear him gritting his teeth at
what Alan said—frightfully sententious, just like a newspaper: 'We can't
go into land reform from feeling, we must go into it from reason.' Then
Derek broke out: 'Walk through this country as we've walked; see the
pigsties the people live in; see the water they drink; see the tiny
patches of ground they have; see the way their roofs let in the rain;
see their peeky children; see their patience and their hopelessness; see
them working day in and day out, and coming on the parish at the end!
See all that, and then talk about reason! Reason! It's the coward's
excuse, and the rich man's excuse, for doing nothing. It's the excuse of
the man who takes jolly good care not to see for fear that he may come
to feel! Reason never does anything, it's too reasonable. The thing is
to act; then perhaps reason will be jolted into doing something.' But
Sheila touched his arm, and he stopped very suddenly. She doesn't trust
us. I shall always be being pushed away from him by her. He's just
twenty, and I shall be eighteen in a week; couldn't we marry now at
once? Then, whatever happened, I couldn't be cut off from him. If I
could tell Dad, and ask him to help me! But I can't—it seems desecration
to talk about it, even to Dad. All the way up in the train to-day,
coming back home, I was struggling not to show anything; though it's
hateful to keep things from Dad. Love alters everything; it melts up
the whole world and makes it afresh. Love is the sun of our spirits, and
it's the wind. Ah, and the rain, too! But I won't think of that!... I
wonder if he's told Aunt Kirsteen!...”