CHAPTER XI
Itwas a day early in the month of May when I said good-bye to Clarissa. The next day following that afternoon when she had expressed her wish to go home, I went away myself, leaving her in the care of Moxon with instructions that when she was ready to return to Dominica I should be sent for. How could I have stayed on there in the house, seeing her possibly every day, knowing that each hour was drawing nearer to that moment when my life was to be empty once more? It was better to train myself to the knowledge of it at once, wherefore I went away seeking the loneliness that was bound to come.
I sometimes think she felt my absence a little during her convalescence; but there is more hope than belief in the thought.
We were very silent as we drove to the station. What, indeed, was there to say? I find that it is not only sufficient that a woman should come to you in trouble, for when she goes, she leaves a whole world of trouble behind her. I suppose I must have taken it for granted in my mind that if she came, she would stay. It can only be then that I am utterly ignorant of women. How indeed should I be otherwise?
I did my best, but so hopelessly failed to understand her tears when, just before the train started, she broke down completely and wept.
"But you're going home," said I, "you're doing the thing you have chosen to be best."
Yet still she cried and muttered brokenly of the kindness I had shown her.
"No one in the world could have been so kind," she said.
"It's been the best time of my life," I replied. "There have even been moments when I've thanked God for your troubles since, in a way, I was able to bear them."
At that she buried her face in her hands and for some moments I could get no word from her at all. She sobbed as though her heart were breaking and I sat there on the seat opposite to her wondering why God had made creatures so incomprehensible as women. She wanted of her own accord to return to Dominica, yet here she was at her departure, crying as though a very world of desolation was before her. It was more than I could understand.
I had to leave the carriage at last. She still sat there weeping, with the bundle of picture papers which I had bought lying on her lap. It was only as the train began to move out of the station that she threw them on to the seat beside her and, rising impulsively to her feet, she leant out of the window.
"Why," she whispered excitedly, "why have you been so good to me?"
I could have laughed at that. For surely she must have guessed by this; but thank God a sense of the ludicrous saved me from telling her then that I loved her. Imagine the declaration of a lover, running by the side of the carriage as a train steamed out of the station.
"God bless you," was all I said and for a long while I stood watching that little white face of hers as she leant out of her carriage window. Suddenly then, so quickly as if some one had drawn her back within, she disappeared. At that I turned away and walked home alone.
It was two days later that Moxon brought me a telegram to my room.
"Come over at once," it read, "most important that I should see you." And it was signed Bellwattle.
"Is the boy waiting for an answer?" I asked.
"Yes, sir."
"Give me a form then."
He brought it to me.
"Coming," I wrote and handed it back to him. "Pack my things," said I, "I'm off to Ireland this evening."
I acted with as little hesitation as that, for I more than welcomed the thought of leaving London. There was beading of green through all that black lace-work of the trees, and often I had felt the yearning that must come to every one of us, that calling of the land, when one's eyes need to be filled with the broad stretches, when one's feet long for the springy turf and all one's heart aches for the great freedom of God's heaven above one's head. And beside all that, I knew I should soon be seeing Dandy once more.
It would be impossible to count the memories that filled my mind when again I mounted Quin's car and set out upon that nine-mile journey from Youghal to Ballysheen. Every corner of the road brought back to my remembrance the day when I had arrived, the day also when I had gone back to London feeling how utterly the madness of my mission had failed.
It was a long time before I spoke a word to Quin who, though the day was fine enough, drove just as ever with that fixed despondency of expression in his face.
"Are you never cheerful," said I at last, "not even on a day like this?"
He looked at me in astonishment.
"What would I be cheerful about?" he asked.
"Good God, man!" said I; "look all round you."
"What for?" said he.
"For everything. God's in His heaven."
"He is indeed," said Quin. "And as far as this country's concerned I'm afraid 'tis the way He'll stay there."
I laughed at that; but his face had no sign of mirth in it.
"They're goin' to give us Home Rule," he continued. "Shure, Glory be to God, what'll we be doin' rulin' ourselves whin Tim Burke and Jim Reilly were fightin' yesterday at the council meeting as to whether the new lamp-post in Dorgan Street should be put opposite Jim Reilly's house or Tim Burke's?"
"And which did they decide?" I asked.
"Shure, they didn't decide at all. Why would they? They fought like two creatures from hell till Michael Mahony got up and said the only way to settle it was to have no lamp-post at all. 'Twas the judgment av Solomon, he said—but yirrah, what the divil's the judgment of Solomon to do with Dorgan Street? Shure, I dunno know who Solomon was. He might have been a Jew by the sounds av him. 'Tis Dorgan Street anyways that'll have no lamp-post and 'tis as dark there in that street on a night ye couldn't see yeer own fisht to shtrike a man with. Ye could not. An' if they come to do with the land as they did with Dorgan Street, I want to know what the hell is Home Rule goin' to be to us thin?"
"But, good heavens!" said I. "You've been crying for Home Rule for more than a century!"
"We have indeed," said he, "but God help us, we never expected to get ut. An' now they're talkin' of Johnnie Redmond, the hero. Faith, the only heroes in Ireland are the min like Emmet, who died for his country, and didn't get what he wanted even then. Shure, Johnnie Redmond is no hero. He's a prosperous man. He'll be wearin' a diamond shtud in his shirt front before long, and dhrivin' down Pathrick Street in Cork in a carriage and pair on a Sathurday afternoon for the people to look at him. Shure, that's no hero. 'Tis he'll have the lamp-post in front of his house if there are any goin'. He will indeed."
"The fact of the matter is," said I, when I had done with laughing, "that if they give you Home Rule you'll have nothing to complain about, and this'll be a dead country."
"I dunno will ut be a dead country," he replied. "Ye wouldn't have called ut a dead country if ye'd heard what Jim Reilly said to Tim Burke at the last council meetin'. An' it'll all be just about as alive as that."
"What did he say?"
"I should have to be very hot in anger to repeat ut," said he.
So as I drove again from Youghal to Ballysheen I received my second lesson in this glorious sad country. Dead or alive I was glad to be back in it. Even those few weeks the year before had been long enough to plant the call of it in my heart. For there is something in Ireland to those who know it well, which cries to you in the long nights and, in the summer days, holds out its arms mutely appealing to you to return. Indeed, I was glad to be back, and when at the gateway I was met by Dandy and Bellwattle I knew only of one other thing I could have wished more earnestly to see. Even that I forgot while Bellwattle was gripping my hand and Dandy was leaping wildly by my side.
"We're so glad to have you back," said she. "Look at him."
She pointed to Dandy, who stood upon his hind legs, rending the air with hilarious laughter.
"Hooray! hooray!" he yelled, and had he worn a thousand hats on his head he would have flung them all up in the air at once. A welcome like that is worth coming many miles for. Even Cruikshank in his quiet way was exuberant in spirits.
"Good man!" he kept saying. "Good man." As though I had accomplished some feat of virtue by my arrival.
But it was not till we sat down to lunch that I asked what had been the meaning of that important telegram.
"Why was it most important that you should see me?" I asked, and looked from one to the other as I put the question.
Cruikshank kept his eyes fixed upon his plate, whereby I knew that this was a moment when silence was expected of him. I turned my eyes to Bellwattle.
"Well!" said I.
She drank some water from her glass before she answered me. The pause, in fact, was most elaborate.
"It's to do with the cottage," she replied, at last.
"What cottage?"
"In the hollow. Cruikshank has done it up, furnished it, with the idea of letting it for the spring and summer. Autumn, too, if any one wanted it. We thought you'd like to stay there this summer—not, of course, to our letting but our invitation. We—"
"You'd better say yes," interrupted Cruikshank.
"He needn't say yes till he's seen it," Bellwattle broke in again.
I looked from one to the other. My eyes rested last on Bellwattle.
"Like a true prophet," said I, "you're working hard to bring your prophecy true."
"What prophecy?"
"That I should come to the cottage this year. But if I do stay it won't be true to the letter. There'll only be a coloring of truth in it. You said live there. I told you that was impossible."
"Oh—eat your lunch," said Cruikshank, "and go up with Bellwattle afterwards. There's no compulsion for you to stay if you don't like it. There's a bedroom ready for you here."
"Is he cross?" I inquired.
"Do I look it?" asked Cruikshank.
I had to admit that he did not. There was a twinkle of light in his eye the whole time that he was speaking.
It was soon after lunch then that I found myself with Bellwattle and Dandy making our way once more up that old boreen where they tell me the white hemlocks grow so high in summer and the wild geraniums break, in patches of color, the ever freshening wonder of the glorious green.
Heavens! What a rush of memory it brought, carrying me back to that first morning when Bellwattle had brought me up to see the cottage in the hollow. Were they the same sheep grazing there, lifting their heads to stare at us as we swung open the same old gate, whose rusty hinges played the very tune it had played last year? Doubtless they were the very same. This crying for everlasting change is only the restless craving of a neurotic race. There is change enough in the seasons, change enough in the sky to fulfil every requirement of my soul; only that I need another to note those changes with me.
Here the whole summer, the whole autumn and winter had passed with every varied color and design. The spring was back again, and the whole world about us was the same once more as it had been the previous year. The gulls were beating up against the thrusting wind; the songs of larks rose like glittering bells, trilling and tinkling in the bright air above us. Now the gorse was in its full blazonry of yellow, and all the heather buds shook out their music to each little breeze.
As my feet first felt the yielding turf beneath them, I stood still, took off my hat, threw back my head and let the warm, white sun burn down upon my skin.
"Oh, my God!" I muttered, "how wonderful this is!"
"And you might have had it always," said Bellwattle.
I looked at her swiftly. There was more than just what she said. In the tone of her voice I detected a thousand things to which my imagination leapt for answer.
"What do you mean?" said I.
"Why did you send Clarissa home?" she asked.
"Why? Because it was her own wish. Because she wanted to go."
"Never tell me you know anything about women again," said she.
"I was not aware that I'd said anything about any woman," I replied, and then I tried hard to think where I had heard that excellently evasive remark before. For the moment I could not trace it. I was, moreover, too interested in what she had yet to say. "Wasn't that a good enough reason?" I added.
She shook her head as she smiled at me.
"Clarissa never wanted to go home. Do you think a woman ever wants to leave a man who has treated her as you did?"
"If she finds him as repulsive to look at as Clarissa found me," said I.
For a few steps we walked without speaking again. Then she stopped me and looked squarely in my face. There was almost that light in her eyes which I have seen in Dandy's, which I remember having seen in my mother's. I felt almost then as though I might be as other men are.
"Do you know," said she, gently, "that you're morbid about—about—"
"My ugliness."
"You can call it that if you like. You think it debars you from winning. It doesn't. It's only a handicap. I never saw any one so easy first as you must have been with Clarissa."
I gripped her arm quickly. My fingers must have hurt her, for she just winced but made no effort to draw away. It was like a mother giving her boy a hand to squeeze while he was in pain.
"How do you know this?"
"I guessed it."
"When? How?"
"When we went to see Clarissa at Queenstown on her way through."
"You saw her, then?"
"Yes—we went straight off, Cruikshank and I, directly we heard she was coming."
"And she told you?"
"No—I guessed it."
"Then why didn't she stay when I offered her the cottage in Kent?"
"You offered it for her alone. It was like hitting her in the face when she knew she deserved it. She had lived with another man. You had nothing better to offer her than that. But you would have offered her better, wouldn't you?"
"Great heavens, yes! If I thought she'd have taken it."
"I think she would," said Bellwattle. "Now I'm going to sit down here. I'm tired. You go on to the cottage. Don't stay too long. Cruikshank's waiting for us. Go on. Don't mind me."
I think I was glad to be alone then. I wanted to go back every step in my memory of those days in London and count if she were right. So, retracing it all, I came at last to the cottage.
The ground was already being laid out for the garden, and there I stood for some moments thinking what yet might be possible, if all that Bellwattle had said were true. If it should ever be so, we would make that garden together, Clarissa and I, remembering with every seed we sowed, with every flower we tended, that not one moment of Life is to be forgotten—that the whole world, as was that little plot of ground, is a garden of resurrection, where the seeds of promise are ever bringing forth the flowers of remembrance, whose seed again is scattered to the generous earth by the autumn winds.
I made up my mind then that if ever such contentment of Life should come to me, I would make it a hobby to cultivate some new species of sweet pea. Of how these things are done I am as ignorant as the babe unborn. Still, in that moment, I made the determination.
"I will call it Clarissa," said I.
Then every year together we would sow the seeds of it afresh, planting in the mould by their side that little stake of wood, washed white with lime, whereon Clarissa's name should be inscribed. It would serve to help us to remembrance even of death—the remembrance that burial is but the sowing of a seed in God's great garden of resurrection. And then, if ever it came to be my lot to see the small white gravestone on which Clarissa's name should be engraved, I might remember the words of Maeterlinck, "There are no dead," and in the years that followed, myself sow and look forward to the sweet pea in my own small garden and, finding it, achieve some understanding.
"All this shall be," said I, "if what Bellwattle has said is true."
Then at last I opened the door. The kitchen had been turned into a sitting-room. A chair was drawn up to a cheery fire before which, as I entered, some one rose to meet me. I felt my heart beat sick with joy.
It was Clarissa!
Clarissa in her gown of canary-colored satin.
THE END