CHAPTER X
I believeone can disarm even Destiny. God knows what might not have happened had that child been born in such surroundings as Clarissa found herself before she came to me. You may be sure the poor little mite would have been sorely in the way. God knows what might not have happened.
But so far as I was concerned with Clarissa, it was welcome. It would give her something to live for who had so little of her own. I was prepared to do my best that it should not be ushered into a world which shuddered at its coming.
Once only in the few times that I saw her Clarissa spoke of it.
"It will be so terrible for you," she said.
"Terrible?" said I. "But why? It's your child. By no right or consideration is it his. You've suffered for it. That's the only right of possession. It won't be terrible at all. I just think of it as your child. He doesn't enter my head."
That was a lie, but worth telling, since it made her mind the easier. He does enter into my thoughts. I burn hot with foolish anger sometimes when I think of him. But all this was disarming Destiny, and Destiny disarmed does strange and unexpected things.
Perowne came late one night at a summons from the nurse. I heard the door of Clarissa's bedroom open and close many times that night. All through the hours I lay awake listening, revolving in my mind a thousand meanings of what it could be. At last I could bear the vague speculation of it no longer. I crept out of my room and button-holed Perowne as he came downstairs.
"I can't stand this," said I. "What is it?"
"The child," said he.
"Born?"
"Yes."
"Well?"
"Dead."
Dead? It meant nothing to me. I knew then it had never held life at all in my mind. That it was still-born seemed to me then the only natural thing that could happen.
"It was what I expected," he added, "after the condition we found her in when she first came here. She was half-starved."
"How is she now?" I asked.
"Not very lively. She'll get all right again though, if she takes it quietly."
So we crept silently through the month of March to that glorious First of April, when the whole world awakes to the great gladness of its folly. For the first two weeks of that month of March I was not permitted to see her. Then I would spend my mornings in the park, intent no longer upon watching the romance of others, but contemplating in long silences the wonderful possibilities of my own. What would it be when she was well again? All hope that I might win her for myself I counted beyond the utmost probability. Such disfigurement as is mine, once a woman has expressed her horror of it, is not forgotten so easily as that. So at least it seemed to me. And as I sat or walked in the park, journeying so far sometimes as the gardens in Kensington to see the crocuses and the young tulips rising above the earth, I thought it all out, making in my imagination the future I would have for her.
I built a cottage then in the country—an old-fashioned place standing far back from the road, with a tiny orchard of gnarled apple trees and a garden where all the sweet peas in the world could grow in such profusion as would shame even Cruikshank himself. It should be within fifty miles of London, so that whenever she needed me I could easily reach her. For a few hundred pounds the freehold of a place like that could be bought, and it should be her very own. The little that it would cost for her to live there, she would surely accept at my hands.
"She's at my mercy," I told myself, cheerfully. "Can she possibly want anything better than that?"
There were other schemes too. I spent a glorious morning devising them. But none pleased me better than this, and I longed for the moment when I might tell her of it.
In the afternoons of that fortnight I wrote long letters to Bellwattle, telling her everything, leading up slowly by the most gradual degrees to that moment when I could ask for my gift to be returned to me. It is a mean thing to do, to give a thing and take a thing. Surely there is some condemnatory couplet which treats of such instability as this.
"Give a thing and take a thing—"
I have long forgotten how it goes. But surely, with a lonely man and his dog it were excusable. I had word from her that he was happy enough when out on the cliffs alone with her, where there was ever the great adventure of the chase. But she hinted sometimes how in the long evenings he would sit thoughtfully before the fire taking no notice of any word that was said to him. I like to think it was then that he thought of me.
At length came that morning when the nurse told me Clarissa was up in her room, sitting before the fire, and that I might take my tea with her in the afternoon.
Before breakfast then Moxon and I went to Covent Garden.
"I just want to get a few flowers," said I.
We staggered back under the weight of those flowers. Freezias, tulips—even lilac there was. Moxon's face grew scarlet among the yellow tulips as he bore them bravely homeward. I sent them up to Clarissa's room before me. When at last I knocked at the door and was admitted, I found her with her face buried in a great bowl of flowers, and her eyes were closed. If you would see into the very heart of the spring, your eyes must be closed. Nurse Barham was not in the room, so I just stood by waiting till she should open them.
Presently she raised her head. The look in her eyes was as though the spring still filled them, and out went my heart quickly beating to it. I would have given much had that glance been meant for me. That in some measure I had been the cause of it was good enough to know.
"When you're able to get out again," said I, "you'll find everything like that in the country."
"Ah, yes," she replied, "in the country. I suppose all the banks in Ballysheen now are filled with primroses."
"No doubt they've opened their current account," said I. Then I sat down and looked closely at her face. "Do you mean to tell me," I went on, "that you're regretting Ballysheen now?"
"Seeing a little of Ballysheen was better than seeing a lot of London," she admitted. "You don't know how often I've tossed and turned, lying awake in that bed, thinking how right you were. Oh—you were right!"
"When?"
"All that you said to me on the cliff that day—all about everything—about forgetting that you lived—about remembering that you lived. I've been trying so hard to forget," she sighed, deeply, "and I'm so tired of trying. If you hadn't taken care of me, I should have given up trying. Perhaps that would have been best too. I sometimes think it would have been much the best."
"Wait till you see the country again," I said. "You won't be sorry then. The tulips are up in Kensington Gardens—all the almond trees are pink. You wait till you get up—wait, too, till you've heard what I've got to suggest."
She glanced at me quickly.
"I can't take anything more from you," she began.
"You can wait," said I, "till you hear what I've got to say. Shall we have tea now or afterwards?"
"Afterwards. Perhaps you want your tea, though."
"So far as I am concerned," I replied, "everything can wait."
"Well, then—go on."
For a moment I wondered whether we had better not have tea, whether it were not wiser to wait until that light of excitement had gone out of her eyes. When again she begged me go on, I forgot about it; I was excited myself. For a whole two weeks I had pictured this moment of telling her. The best of us are inconsiderate when it comes to such a pass as this. I was going to show her my little castle in Spain, and it is these habitations of which we are proudest. With my own hands, as I sat in the park those mornings, I had built that little Tudor cottage with its apple orchard, where the sheep grazed in and out between the white-washed trunks. With my own hands I had laid the old garden, planting it with all those old flowers that will remain in every garden so long as England is what she is. Is there any wonder I was proud of it—any wonder that I wanted to tell her of it all just so fast as I could?
She listened with eyes round in wonder. Sometimes her fingers clasped and unclasped, and she beat her little hands about like a child who has something good to eat.
"There are hundreds of places like that in Kent," said I, when I had finished. "Kent is full of them; and when the apple blossom is out and lambs are in the orchard, I can tell you you want to live then. You want to be up with the sun lest you should miss an hour of it. I've been all round the world, but I've never seen anything to touch an apple orchard in Kent, or any English meadow in the heat of summer. I know nothing like it—I know nothing equal to it, unless it is those cliffs at Ballysheen when the gorse and the heather are out and the whole place throbs with the humming of bees. That, perhaps, is as good. But it's too far away. I want you to have a place where, if ever you need me, you can send for me at a moment's notice. There would be times, perhaps, when you might feel lonely."
She had been looking down into the fire, interlacing her fingers, doing and undoing them as in an idle moment, a child plaits rushes in the silent meadows. But when I said she might feel lonely, she looked up quickly to my face.
"Did you mean to go alone?" she asked, "to live there—quite alone?"
"There would be some one to help you look after it," said I.
"Yes—but—otherwise, alone."
"Who else is there that you know?" I asked.
She shook her head.
"No one?"
"I don't know anybody."
"But if you feel what you do about the country," said I, "I don't think you'd be lonely. And if ever you wanted me—at any time—I could come down. There'd be some inn at the village where I could put up."
"Where you could put up?"
"Yes—where I could sleep."
She gazed at me quite strangely, and so direct were her eyes that I remember wondering was she forgetting how repulsive I was. I believe that thought would have grown upon me. I believe, had she looked at me thus a moment longer, I should have taken the bull of fortune by the horns. I should have tried my luck, risking that refusal which I believed to be inevitable, whereby it would have been thrown back at me once more the eternal knowledge of myself. But at that moment two things occurred. I, who will have no mirror in my room, was suddenly confronted by my reflection in a little handglass of Clarissa's that leant against the back of an empty chair. She had been arranging herself, no doubt, before I came into the room; for it is ever the way with women that they must appear at their best, even to those whom least it should concern.
But it was not that which kept back the words then faltering on my lips. Clarissa's lip had trembled. Before another moment had passed she was in tears. It was not only weakness this time. Some spirit of courage had broken within her. She had given way.
Amazed though I was, I let her cry awhile before I questioned her; then, leaning nearer, I begged her tell me what it was.
"I—I couldn't be there alone," she faltered. "I-I couldn't bear it alone. Oh—I must have a little pride! I can't take anything more from you. You have given me so much as it is. I want to go home. I want to go back to Dominica. I wish to God I'd gone when you told me to last year. I should have been spared all this. You would have been spared it, too. Let me go back to Dominica."
"You'd sooner that," said I, "than the castle in Spain—the cottage in Kent?"
"Yes—I couldn't be there alone. Oh—I know what a disgrace I am. Do let me go."
"You're sure of what you say?" I repeated.
"Yes—yes—quite sure."
I shrugged my shoulders and rose to my feet.
"God who made women," said I, "must understand 'em. You shall go back to Dominica."
And I left her.