CHAPTER XXII
OnSunday it is Cruikshank's custom to rest from his labors in the garden. The custom is not one of hypocrisy. He does it, not that he may be seen of others, but, as I fully believe, because there is a depth of religious sentiment within him, which one would never suspect. This does not absolutely deter him from those little attentions to his flowers and his rose trees which no gardener, however religious his scruples may be, would ever describe as work. That knife with the handle of horn is for ever within reach in the pocket of his coat—a little tangle of bass is always ready to hand should a drooping plant or an overweighted stem demand it, and with these little accessories before the fact, he wanders up and down his garden paths, his mind in such spirit of contentment as I would give my forty years of idleness to possess.
"It's the number seven I like," he says. "I like the idea of an omnipotent power moulding a massive world, hammering and chiselling it, never allowing it a moment of stillness in which to set, keeping it always moving, always in the making for six mighty ages and then, upon the seventh, with tired hands, leaving it to its well-earned rest. The Sabbath in its relation to dogma means very little indeed. It's what it means in its relation to work that I like. It can't honor God that, for one day in the week we do nothing. What honors Him is the work we have done in the six which makes the seventh of necessity a day of rest."
And as he says all this, Bellwattle watches him with admiring eyes. I think she marvels a little at his accurate use of the big words. She would like herself to be able to say—omnipotent—and to say it as he does in the right place. Wherefore when he has finished, she turns to me with a gentle expression that expects my approval.
"I think he's quite right, don't you?" she asks.
Whereupon I bend my head and Cruikshank moves away down the herbaceous border, with an end of bass sticking out of the corner of his pocket.
"What does the Rector say about these opinions?" I asked her one Sunday.
"I don't think he understands them," she replied. "Cruikshank did say something about it once and the Rector jumped down his throat. 'My dear Townshend,' he said, 'if everybody held your views, we shouldn't be able to keep a church open. Everybody would be doing just what they like on Sundays.'"
"And what did Cruikshank say?"
"He asked him whether he thought it was better to make them do the things they didn't like."
"And the Rector?"
"He never said another word. He went straight back to the—what do you call it?—the Rectory or the Victory?"
"In this case," said I, "not being the victor, you call it the Rectory."
"Well, that's where he went," said she.
My last Sunday in Ballysheen was no different to the rest, no different unless I count as an integral part of it the news that was brought to us that day.
Every moment since our meeting with Clarissa's lover on the cliffs, I had been working my mind to arrive at some understanding of his coming to Ballysheen. From the look in Bellwattle's face as we passed him, I felt assured that she knew who it was and, instinctive though her knowledge must have been, I could not but feel she had some ground for her belief. It was no difficult step from such assumption to connect her knowledge with that visit which she had paid to the Miss Fennells' house. Had she then seen Clarissa? Had Clarissa told her he was coming? But if she had known so surely as that, why was her face so white? The sight of him had startled her. Why should it, if she had known?
I determined that Sunday afternoon to make an end of mystery and question her myself.
In the morning it had been raining—those sudden intermittent showers which April lends to May, when the great clouds roll up the blue highways like the dust of a vast army on its march. From the window in his little study whose walls are lined with books that talk of gardens the great gardeners have made, Cruikshank watched each shower with the happy delight of a child. Then, as the rain drops began their gentle kettle-drumming on the pane, he would look round.
"This is fine—we wanted this badly."
"It'll make tea out of doors impossible," said Bellwattle.
But Cruikshank shook his head.
"It'll have cleared off by lunch-time," he replied. And he was right. As we sat down to lunch, the bright white sun, looking as though the passage of those clouds had burnished it, rolled out into the strip of blue which so anxiously I had been stitching into Dutchmen's trousers all the morning. When the meal was over, we walked out into the garden.
There is such color in Ireland after rain, as you will never see in any other country in the world. Blues, purples and greens, deep as the dyes they knew of in Tyre and Sidon, spread far away into every distance that your eyes can find. Across the Bay of Ballysheen, as we stood there then, the purple cliffs of Helvic Head sank nobly down into a sea of emerald. On the far horizon rose the misty mountains, blue as the light of moonstones in the sun.
"And this is what I am going to leave behind," said I.
Cruikshank laid a hand affectionately on my shoulder.
"You've only to say the word and I'll get Tierney to go up to the cottage in the hollow to-morrow morning."
I shook my head and tried to laugh. It was so like his goodness, and seemed so impossible to me then. So he turned away and strolled down by the beds where by now his Lady Grizels and his Young Lord Nelsons are no longer babies together in their kindergarten, but young women and young men with all the summer of life stretched out before them.
"So you've really made up your mind?" said Bellwattle.
"I'm afraid so," I replied. "I don't think you know what it is to be alone." I waited then to get a pause, and after it I turned to her suddenly and said, "Did you know who that man was we passed yesterday?"
"No," she replied, nervously. "Who?"
"Clarissa's lover—the man she's going to marry."
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely."
"How do you know she's going to marry him?"
"For that matter," said I, "what do you know about it at all?"
It was then she told me everything. For this had been the meaning of her visit to Clarissa. It seems on that day when I had returned from the cliffs, that my failure had been written in my face. She assured me she had read it there. And so, when I announced that I must bring my visit to a close, she made certain in her mind of all that had taken place. But it is not only that a woman has instincts in these matters; she acts upon them.
"Upon a slender thread like that," said I, "you go to see Clarissa?"
"Why not? I knew I was right."
"You knew you were right? Without asking me for proof of it?"
"Proof doesn't help," she replied. "It doesn't make things any more real."
And in that one sentence I received a clearer view into the subtle reasoning of a woman's intuition; for reasoning there is in it, an unconscious reasoning from impressions rather than facts, whereby she needs no proof and shuns the sharp edges of a fact lest they should destroy the sensitive surface of her mind.
"So you go straight to Clarissa?" said I.
"It's never any good saying anything to a man," she answered. "I could hear in your voice, when you said you were going back to London, that you had made up your mind. Talking won't do any good to a man when he's got as far as that. I went to Clarissa."
"Where you found that all your suppositions had been wrong. You found that I had never met her before. You found that I am not in love with her. You found that she hates the very sight of me. Weren't you surprised?"
"Not a bit," said she.
Now what is the good of one illuminating sentence against an answer so complex and incomprehensible as this? As surely as a woman gives you the key to her nature, so surely will you find the barrel of it stuffed with wax. She had learnt that she was wrong on every point and she was not surprised.
"You expected, then, to have all your beliefs dashed to the ground?" I said. "You knew, when you thought I was in love, that you would find you were mistaken?"
"No, I didn't."
"Then why no surprise to find you were—all at sea?"
"But I didn't find that. I didn't find I was mistaken. I found I was right. One thing did surprise me—I must admit that. I thought you must have met her before. But I quite expected to find that you were in love with her and that she hated you. So why should I be surprised?"
"My God!" said I, "can't you talk seriously about a matter like this? You know the truth now—you know just how much of a fool I've been. Why go on talking about my being in love with Clarissa? It's ridiculous. I'm not a romantic little boy. You must know how useless it would be for me to let myself drift into an affection for any woman. Women take no violent fancies for me. I don't blame 'em. So for Heaven's sake, when I go and make a fool of myself on a woman's behalf, don't imagine that I'm in love with her. What did you do? When you found everything as you say you'd expected it—what did you do?"
She sat down on the seat beneath the nut trees and she motioned to me to sit beside her.
"I gave her my advice," said she.
"What was that?"
"I believed that every word you'd said about him was true."
"More than true," said I.
"So I told her what to do. I told her to write to him."
"Saying what?"
"Saying that she could not wait for him any longer; that if he did not come and marry her at once, she would go straight back to Dominica."
"My God!" said I, "and he's come!"
"I know, but that doesn't mean he is going to marry her."
At that moment I felt almost contemptuous of her intelligence. I knew what folly she had done.
"When a man is after a woman's money," said I, "he's said good-bye to the faintest sense of honor. He'll marry her right enough. She wrote, of course?"
"She said she would."
"Did she say anything about me?"
"Nothing at first."
"But she said something?"
"Yes—she wanted to know why you had come all that way to tell her what you did."
"Well—"
"I told her it was because you were different to every other man I had ever met except one."
"Who?"
"Cruikshank."
"What do you mean?"
"What I say. I believe Cruikshank would have done the same before he married me."
I laughed—bitterly.
"There's no more resemblance between Cruikshank and me," said I, "than between a Chinee and a Red Indian. We're at opposite poles. At the 'varsity he was mathematics, I was classics. There's the difference in a nutshell."
"We won't argue it," she replied. "I know what I mean and that's what I told her. She asked me if you had not done it out of spite."
"What did you say then?"
"I just took her little face in my hands and I kissed her—she is so pretty to kiss."
And then Bellwattle paused.
"Yes—yes—" said I—that pause frightened me. I wanted her to finish her sentence.
"I kissed her," she repeated, "and I told her that when she was a little older she'd know that there are only three things that make a man move out of a spot where he's comfortable."
"You're a clever—" and then I stopped. I remembered how the word "woman" had silenced her once before. "Go on," said I; "what are they?"
"Work—fresh air—adventure."
Now there is a lot of sense in that. I know a man who would have said, "Wine—women and horses." And not only would he have thought it sounded well, but he would have believed it to be true.
"Did you convince her?" I asked.
"I don't know. One never can know. A woman's convictions are things that grow in the dark. She never knows whether they have blossomed until she suddenly has to take them out in the light. I told her that you were the best friend she could possibly have. I told her where you lived in London—that you lived all alone with your dog—I told her—"
"Good Lord! You didn't tell her I was in love with her!"
"No—of course, I didn't. Because you're not."
"What then?"
"I told her that if she ever was in trouble she was to go to you."
"You think she will go to London then?"
"No."
"Then why did you say that?"
"To show her that I expected she would. I don't know women who do what you expect them to."
I was just about to laugh at that, when the gate upon the drive opened, and through the golden hedge of barberry we saw the Miss Fennells walk up towards the house.
"What have they come for?" I asked.
"They often come on Sunday afternoons," she replied, easily. "They won't stay long—you needn't be afraid. They have to drink five other cups of tea at five other different houses."
A moment later came the tea with the Miss Fennells demurely following.
"It almost looks as if they'd brought it with them," said I.
They came on chance, they said, but the tea belied them. I saw Cruikshank raise his head, like the guardian of a herd, as he caught the sound of their voices, then on tip-toe he crept through an opening in the hedge that gives access to a path leading to the farmyard. I suppose he had tea with the farmer. He never appeared again till they had gone.
It was as they rose to leave that Miss Teresa held out her hand, and said: "I wish you could have met our nephew, Mr. Bellairs. It would be so nice for you to know each other in London. I would have told him to look you up there, but I didn't know your address."
I thanked Heaven from the bottom of my heart that she did not. It would be difficult to know the best thing to do with that young man if he came round to Mount Street.
"Where does he live in London?" I asked, politely.
She gave me the address of his rooms in Chelsea, and I made a mental note of it.
"He's gone already, then?" said I, with a wild hope rising in me.
"Oh, yes—he went yesterday with Miss Fawdry. They're to be married from my sister's house in London directly they get over."
There may have been more said than that before they actually departed. I cannot recall a word of it, for after that I knew my failure was complete. She had gone to learn the bitter lesson of forgetfulness, and I was powerless to help her now.
"You needn't come to the gate," whispered Bellwattle in my ear; so when I had shaken hands with them I sat down again on the seat under the nut trees trying to see one faint glimmer of hope where there was none.
It was then, as ever he does when life is offering me of its blackest, that Dandy came and, sitting down at my feet, stared, full of comprehension, into my face.
"Well, old fella," said I, "she's gone. It's all over. It was never suggested—where all these things are arranged—it was never suggested that I should help a woman in distress. They won't take it from me—they don't think I'm quite capable of telling the truth because I'm so damned ugly."
Why he did it then I cannot for the life of me understand; but he repeated a trick that I had taught him when he was a wild, young puppy all energy and no manners—a trick he had never taken to because it hurt his dignity. When he found that he could get all he wanted in life without it he gave it up. I had not seen him do it for two years or more; but he did it then.
"I'm so damned ugly," I repeated.
Whereupon he sat up on his hind paws and begged.