|
April 1, 1890. 58A, Lincoln's Inn Fields.—I execrate my fellow men—and
women! To-day I was over at Catherine's. Not an unusual occurrence with
me, but on a more than usually important mission. I needn't note down
how I achieved it. Am I likely to forget my impotent speeches? Still,
she had given me plenty of excuse for supposing she liked me, and I said
so. And then Catherine laughed her exasperating little laugh that always
dries up all sentiment on the spot, and makes my blood boil with anger.
"I like you?" she repeated mockingly; "not at all! not in the least!
What can you be dreaming of?"
I did for a moment dream of rolling her elaborately curled head in the
dust of the drawing-room carpet; but I restricted myself to saying a few
true and exceedingly bitter things, and departed without giving her time
to reply; and herewith I register a vow on the tablets of my heart: "If
ever again I make a single friendly overture to that young woman, may I
cut off the hand that so betrays me!"
By-the-bye, it is April Fools' Day, an appropriate date by which to
remember my folly.
April 2.—My feelings are still exceedingly sore. Oh for a cottage in
some wilderness—some vast contiguity of shade—whither I might retire,
like a stricken hart from the herd, and sulk majestically! The very
thing! There rises before me an opportune vision of a certain lonely
farm-house I wot of down by a lonely sea. I discovered it last summer
while staying at Shoreford. I had ridden westward across the marsh lands
of Windle, over the cliffs that form the coastline between this and
Rexingham; and being thirsty, had followed some cows through a
rick-yard, in the hopes of obtaining a glass of milk.
There, behind the hayricks, I had come upon my first view of Down End
Farm; and the picture of its grey stone, lichened walls, red roof, cosy
kitchen and comely mistress, had remained painted on my brain. So, too,
I retained a scrap of my conversation with Mrs. Anderson, and her casual
mention of the London family then occupying her best rooms. "We don't
have many folk at Down End, it being so out of the way, sir; but the
gentleman here now says he do like it, just on account of the solitude
and quiet."
There was no particular reason at the time why these words should have
so impressed me. Solitude was the last thing I desired then, having gone
down to Shoreford for my holiday, merely because Catherine was spending
the summer there too. But now that everything is over between us, the
solitary farm comes as balm to my wounded spirit. Let me see; to-day is
Tuesday the 2nd. Good Friday is the day after to-morrow; I could get
away to-morrow evening. All right! I'll go out and telegraph to Mrs.
Anderson, and pay for her reply.
April 4. Down End Farm.—I reached this last night. At seven o'clock I
found myself driving up from Rexingham station, with the crimson flaming
brands of the sunset behind me, and the soft mysterious twilight closing
in on all sides. It was almost dark when we got to the top of Beacon
Point Hill, and quite dark for a time as we began to descend the other
side, for the road here is cut down between steep red gravel banks,
crowned with sombre fir trees. When these were passed and we reached the
remembered stack-yard gate, there was clear heaven again above my head,
its exquisite ever-darkening blue already gemmed with the more brilliant
stars. The Plough faintly outlined above, and beautiful spica hanging
low over Windle Flats. A cheerful glow-worm of red earth-light gleamed
from the farm-house windows as we drove round to the inner gate, while
at the sound of the wheels the kitchen door opened, and my hostess came
down the flagged pathway between the sleepy flowers to bid me welcome.
How delightful the first evening in country quarters always is. How
comfortable the wood fire that flamed and sputtered on the parlour
hearth, how inviting the meal of tea, new-laid eggs, homemade breads and
jams, honey and hot scones spread out upon a spotless cloth around a
centre piece of daffodils and early garden flowers. For a rejected
suitor I felt singularly cheerful; for a blighted being I made a most
excellent meal; and for the desperate misogynist I had determined on
becoming I surely felt too much placid satisfaction at Mrs. Anderson's
homely talk.
But it was really pleasant to lie back in the capacious leathern chair,
while this good woman cleared away the tea-things, and lazily eyeing the
fire, listen to the history of herself and her family, of her husband,
her children, her landlord, of her courtship, her marriage, her
troubles, of the death of her mother in the room overhead the year
before last, and of the wedding of her eldest boy Robert which is to
take place this summer as soon as the corn is carried.
Such openness of disposition, so often found among people of Mrs.
Anderson's class, is very refreshing, and it is convenient too. You know
at once where you stand. I wish it were the custom in society. I should
then have learned from Catherine's own lips how many fellows she had
already sent to the right-about, and I should have given her no
opportunity of adding to their number.
I came down very late to breakfast this morning—my first breakfast in
the country is always luxuriously late—and I found a tall and pretty
young girl busy building up the fire in my sitting-room. I guessed at
once she was the "Annie" of whom I heard a long and pleasing account
last night. Annie is the image of what her mother must have been twenty
years ago. She has the same agreeable blue eyes, the same soft straw
coloured hair. But while Mrs. Anderson wears hers in bands at each side
of the head, Annie's is drawn straight back to display the smoothest of
white foreheads, the freshest of freckled little faces in the world. She
is about seventeen, and a sweet girl, I feel sure. Could no more play
with a man's feelings than she could torture one of the creatures
committed to her care. She has charge of the poultry, she tells me, and
is allowed half the profits. Mem.—I shall eat a great many eggs.
April 5.—I have done an excellent thing in exchanging the hollow shams
of society for the healing powers of nature. I shall live to forget
Catherine and to be happy yet. And there was after all something
artificial about that girl. Pretty, certainly, but with the beauty of
the stage; now little Annie here is pretty with the beauty of the sky
and meadows.
I am delighted with this place. There is nothing like the country in
early spring. Suppose I were never to go back to town again, but stay
with the Andersons, see them through the lambing season, lend a hand at
tossing the hay, swing a scythe at corn cutting (and probably cut off my
own legs into the bargain), drink a health at son Robert's wedding, and
then during the winter—yes, during the long dark winter evenings when
the wind raves round the old house and whistles down the chimneys, when
the boom of the sea echoes all along the coast as it breaks against the
cliffs—then to sit in the cosy sitting-room, with the curtains drawn
along the low windows, a famous fire flashing and glaring upon the
hearth, one's limbs pleasantly weary with the day's labour, one's cheeks
tingling from exposure to the keen air; would not this be an agreeable
exchange for the feverish anxieties and stagnant pleasures of London
life?
After a time, a considerable time no doubt, it would possibly occur to
Catherine to wonder what had become of me.
April 6.—Easter Sunday. I am writing in my sitting-room window. I raise
my eyes and see first the broad window-sill, whereon stand pots of musk
and geranium, not yet in flower; then through the clear latticed panes,
the bee-haunted garden, descending by tiny grassy terraces to the
kitchen-garden with its rows of peas and beans, its beds of lettuce and
potatoe, its neat patches of parsley and thyme; then a field beyond. I
note the double meandering hedge-line that indicates the high road, and
beyond again the ground rises in sun-bathed pastures and ploughed land
to the gorse-covered cliff edge with its background of pure sky; a
little to the right, yet still in full view from my window, is an abrupt
dip in the cliff, which shows a great wedge of glittering sea. It is
here that my eyes always ultimately rest, until they ache with the
dazzle and the beauty, and then by a natural transition I think
of—Catherine.
At this moment she is probably dressing to go to church, and is
absorbed in the contemplation of a new hat. I should think she had as
many hats on her head as hairs—no, I don't mean that; it suggests
visions of "ole clo'es"—I mean she must have almost as many hats as
hairs on her head.
How inexpressibly mean and petty this devotion to rags and tags and
gewgaws seems when one stands in the face of the Immensities and the
Eternities! Yet it would appear as though the feminine mind were really
incapable of impression by such Carlylean sublimities, for I saw Annie
start for church awhile since in a most terrible combination of maroon
and magenta. Her best clothes evidently, cachemire and silk, with two
flowers and a feather in her hat, her charming baby prettiness as much
crushed and eclipsed as bad taste and a country town dressmaker could
accomplish. What I like to see Annie in is the simple stuff gown she
wears of a morning, with the big bib apron of white linen, and the
spotless white collar caressing her creamy throat. I would lock her best
clothes up in that delightful carved oak chest that stands upstairs on
the landing and throw the key into the sea; and little Annie would let
me do it; she is evidently the most docile of child-women. Catherine,
now, had I ever ventured on adverse criticism of her garments, would
have thrown me into the sea instead.
April 7.—Bank holiday, and wet, of course. The weather is never
propitious on the feast of St. Lubbock. The old Saints apparently owe a
grudge to this latest addition to the calendar. How beastly it must be
in town, with the slushy streets and the beshuttered shops! How
depressing for Paterfamilias who arose at seven in the morning to set
off with his wife and his brats and the family food-basket to catch some
early excursion train! How much more depressing for him who has no train
to catch, and nothing at all to do but worry through twelve mortal
pleasure hours!
St. Lubbock's malevolent influence doesn't fortunately extend down here,
where everything seems to work in time-worn ruts. I walked over the
fields opposite. There were a great many new-dropped lambs in the second
meadow. They didn't appear to mind the drizzle, but kneeling with their
little front legs doubled under them, they sucked vigorously at their
mothers, while their long tails danced and quivered in the air.
There was one lamb lying quietly on its side. The ewe stood by, staring
down at it with a sort of quiescent curiosity from her brown, stupid,
white-lashed eyes. When I went over to her I saw the lamb was dying; its
lips moved incessantly, its little body kept rising and falling with its
laboured breath, now and then it made a violent effort to get up, but
always fell back in the same position. I passed back through the same
field about an hour after. There was the lamb still dying, still
breathing painfully, still moving its lips as before, but the mother,
tired of the spectacle, had walked off, and was calmly munching
mangel-wurzel in another part of the field.
I sentimentalised and moralised—naturally; and naturally, too, I
thought of Catherine. Strange there should be that vein of hardness
running through the entire female sex.
As the rain still continued this afternoon, I proposed to Mrs. Anderson
she should show me the house. The excellent creature, busy with the
dairy, offered me Annie as her substitute. We went from cellar to
garret, and the child's companionship and her ingenuous prattle
successfully beguiled a couple of hours. The house in reality consists
of two houses placed at right angles to each other. The older part,
built between two and three hundred years ago, is inhabited by the
Andersons themselves. It consists of a long, low kitchen, with an
enormous hearth-place, an oaken settle, smoke-browned rafters, and a
bricked floor.
In the centre of the room is a massive but worm-eaten table, capable of
seating twenty persons at least. It was built up in the kitchen itself
some two hundred years ago, since no earthly ingenuity could have coaxed
it through the low windows or narrow door.
Two of these, latticed like those of my sitting room, with the door
between them, face west; but long before the sun is down the wooded
eminence opposite has intercepted all his beams. Outside is also a
garden, full of forget-me-not, daffodil, and other humble flowers. Here
Scot, the watch-dog, lies dreaming in his kennel, and beyond the gate
the cocks and hens lay dolefully in the rain, or bunch themselves up,
lumps of dirty feather, under the shelter of the wood shed.
Upstairs are three sleeping rooms, and the attics, with curious dormer
windows, still higher. We come down again to the first floor. A long
matted passage runs from one end of the house to the other. It sinks
half a step where the newer portion is joined on. This part, containing
in all four rooms, two here and two below, was built in July, 1793, as a
rudely scratched tablet on the wall outside informs me.
I sit with Annie on the carved chest at the southern end of the passage.
The window behind us gives an extensive view of grey rain and grey sea.
But I prefer to look at the smiling, freckled face that speaks so
eloquently of sunny days. The wet, trailing fingers of the briar-rose
climbing over the porch tap at the casement, the loose branch of the
plane-tree creaks in the wind, the distant sea moans and murmurs; but I
prefer to listen to my little friend's artless and occasionally "h-less"
English, as she tells me how the Andersons have always been tenants of
Down End since her great-grandfather came to the county and added on the
living-house to the farm-house for his young wife.
"July, 1793." The date takes my fancy. I can see the Anderson of those
days, large-boned, sinewy, stooping, with a red, fiery beard, like his
present representative, stolid, laborious, contented, building his house
here facing the coasts of France, nearly as ignorant of, and quite as
indifferent to, the wild work going on over there in Paris town as
little Annie herself can be. King, Dictator, Emperor, King, Emperor,
Commune, have come and gone, but the sturdy race of farmers sprung from
great-grandfather Anderson still carry on the same way of life in the
same identical spot.
"But I'm not amusing you," says Annie, regretfully. "If only it would
leave off raining we might go out and have a ride on the tin-tan." It
takes me some little time, and a closely-knit series of questions, to
discover that tin-tan is Southshire for see-saw; and I think how
Catherine would laugh at the spectacle of my bobbing up and down on one
end of a plank and this little country damsel at the other. Her
detestable laughter; but, thank Heaven! I need never suffer from it
again.
April 8.—Gloomy again to-day. Ink-coloured rain clouds hanging close
over the hills, their fringe-like lower edges showing ragged across a
pale sky, against which the hills themselves rise dark and sharp. Now
and again a shower of rain falls, but not energetically; the wind blows,
the clouds shift, the rain ceases, and the sky darkens or gleams with a
watery brightness alternately. Looking over the wide landscape and
leaden sea, here and there a patch of sunshine falls, while I myself
walk in gloom; now the sails of a ship catch the radiance, now a
farmstead, now a strip of sand over by Windle Flats.
I feel slightly bored. Annie went into Rexingham this morning with
Robert and the early milk cart. She is to spend the day with an aunt,
and return with the empty cart this evening. Twice a day the Andersons
send in their milk to Rexingham, and winter and summer son Robert must
rise at 3 a.m. to see to the milking, harness Dolly or Dobbin, and jog
off his seven miles. Seven miles there, and seven miles back, morning
and evening; that is twenty-eight miles in all, and ever the self-same
bit of road in every weather. So that a farmer's life has its seamy side
also. But then, to get back of a night! To find a good little wife like
Annie waiting for you at the upper gate or by the house door. To eat
your supper and smoke your pipe, with your feet on the mantel-piece if
you pleased, and no possibility of being ordered into dress clothes to
go to some vile theatre or idiotic dance—above all, to know that
Catherine knew you were perfectly happy without her—by the bye, I
wonder she has not written to me! Not that I want her to, of course.
This would entail a few frozen conventional lines back by way of answer.
But I am surprised she can endure thus easily the neglect of even the
most insignificant of her subjects. I felt sure she would write to ask
why I did not call on Sunday. She trusts, no doubt, to the greatness of
my folly to bring me again, unasked, to her feet. Her confidence is for
once misplaced.
April 9.—A great improvement in the weather. I was awakened by the sun
pouring in at my window, and looked out on to a light, bright blue sky,
full of white cumuli that cast down purple shadows upon a grey-green
sea. I draped myself in the white dimity window curtain, and watched
Annie making her way up between the lettuce rows, with her hands full of
primroses. She came from the orchard, where the green tussucked grass at
the foot of the apple trees is starred with these lovely little flowers.
I must have a talk with Annie in the orchard one day. It would be just
the background to show off her particular style of beauty. I like to
suit my scenery to the drama in hand. Catherine would be quite out of
place in an orchard, where she might stain her gown, or a harmless
beetle or spider terrify her into fits.
There appears to be only one post a day here; but Mrs. Anderson tells me
that by walking up to Orton village I might find letters awaiting
to-morrow's morning delivery. I was ass enough to go over this
afternoon, and of course found nothing.
As I passed the barn on my way in, my ear was saluted by much laughter
and shouting. I came upon Annie giving her little brothers a swing. Both
great doors of the barn were turned back upon the outside wall and the
swing hanging by long ropes to the rafters, and holding two chubby
urchins together on the seat, swung out now into the sunshine, now back
into the gloom, while Annie stood and pushed merrily. Three tiny calves,
penned off in a loose box at one end of the building, stared over the
low partition with soft, astonished eyes. It was a charming little
picture.
"There, Tim! I can only give you six more!" cries Annie. "I've got to go
and make the puddings" (she said "puddens," but what matter?). Before
she goes she pulls a handful of grass from the threshold and offers it
to the calves. While they tug it this way and that to get it from her
hand, she endeavours to plant a kiss on the moist black muzzle of the
smallest, but he promptly and ungallantly backs and the grass falls to
the ground. At the same moment the children discover me, and an awed
silence succeeds to their chatter. Not to embarrass them, I move off and
fall a-musing as to whether Catherine could make a pudding to save her
life? It is pretty certain it would cost a man his to have to eat it;
does not even her violin playing, to which she has given indubitable
time and attention, set one's teeth on edge to listen to?
Yet why this bitterness? Let me erase Catherine and her deficiencies
from my mind for ever.
April 10.—Again no letter! Very well! I know what I will do. I am
almost certain I will do it. But first I will go down to the beach and
give it a couple of hours' sober reflection. No one shall say I acted
hastily, ill-advisedly, or in pique.
I cross over to the cliff edge. Here the gorse is aflame with blossom;
the short dry grass is full of tiny insect life. Various larks are
singing; each one seems to sing the same song differently; perhaps each
never sings the same arrangement twice!
I go down the precipitous coastguards' stairs. At every step it grows
hotter. Down on the beach it is very hot, but there is shade to be
found among the boulders at the cliff's base. I sit down and stare along
the vacant shore; at the ships floating on the sea; at the clouds
floating in the sky; there is no sound but the little grey-green waves
as they break and slosh upon the stones.
I think of Catherine and Annie, and I remark that the breakwaters are
formed of hop-poles, twined together and clasped with red-rusted iron
girdles; the wood has been washed by the tides white and clean as bones.
I wonder whether I shall ask Annie to be my wife, and I wonder also
whence came those—literally—millions of wine bottle corks that strew
the beach to my right. From a wreck? from old fishing nets? or merely
from the natural consumption of beer at the building of the breakwater?
Coming back to Down End, I find a travelling threshing machine at work
in the rick-yard. I had heard the monotonous thrumming of its wheels a
good way off. The scene is one of great animation, the machine is drawn
up against the conical-shaped haystack, its black smoke stretches out in
serpentine coils against the sky. A dozen men are busy about her: those
who work her, old Anderson, son Robert—a dreadful lout he is too, quite
unlike his sister—various other louts of the same calibre, the two
little boys, very much in everyone's way, and Mrs. Anderson and Annie,
who have just brought out jugs of ale. I naturally stop to say a few
words to Annie and watch the threshing. Anderson is grinding out some of
last year's oats for the cattle.
Son Robert comes to take a pull out of Annie's jug. "That's prime,
measter, ain't it?" he says to me, and wipes his mouth with the back of
his hand. I go in thoughtfully. Is son Robert exactly the sort of man I
should care to call brother-in-law?
April 11, 12.—These two days I have been casting up the pros and cons
of a marriage with Annie. Shall it be—or not be? I suffer from a
Hamlet-like perplexity. On the one hand I get a good, an amiable, an
adoring little wife, who would forestall my slightest wish, who would
warm my slippers for me, for whom I should be the Alpha and Omega of
existence. She would never argue with me, never contradict me, never
dream of laughing at me; would never laugh at all unless I allowed
her, for she would give into my keeping, as a good wife should, the key
of her smiles and of her tears. But of course I should wish her to
laugh. I should wish the dear little creature to remain as merry and
thoughtless as possible. Dear Annie! what surprise and delight will
shine in your innocent blue eyes when I tell you my story! Your
childlike gratitude will be almost embarrassing. Last, and perhaps most
weighty pro of all—when Catherine hears of it she will be filled with
regret; yes, she may act indifference as gaily as she pleases, I am
convinced that in her heart of hearts she will be sorry.
Now for the cons; they, too, are many. As I said before, I should not
like son Robert to call me brother. I should find honest old Anderson
père rather a trial with his red beard, his broken nails, the yawning
chasm between his upper teeth; even Mrs. Anderson, so comely and
pleasant here in her own farm-house, would suffer by being transplanted
to Lincoln's Inn. So might little Annie herself. A lapsed "h" in a
country hay-field has much less significance than when lost at a London
dinner-table. How is it, I wonder, that while the dear child generally
speaks of 'ay and 'ouse, she invariably besmirches with the strongest of
aspirates the unfortunate village of H'Orton? Still, it would be easy to
correct this, delightful to educate her during our quiet evenings, to
read with her all my favourite prose writers and poets! And, even
supposing she couldn't learn, is classical English in the wife an
infallible source of married happiness? Let me penetrate below externals
and examine into the realities of things.
I spend most of Friday and Saturday in this examination without making
any sensible progress until supper on Saturday night, when I casually
mention to Annie, who is laying the table, that I am bound to leave Down
End on the following Monday, as term begins on the 15th.
"Must you really go? Well, we shall miss you, surely," says Annie. And I
am not mistaken; there is a wistfulness in her blue eyes, a poignant
regret in her voice that goes to my heart.
No, Annie! that decides me; I have suffered too much from blighted
affection ever to inflict the same pangs on another. I am too well read
myself in Love's sad, glad book to mistake the signs written in your
innocent face. Without vanity I can see how different I must appear in
your eyes to all the farm hands and country bumpkins you have hitherto
met; without fatuity I can understand how unconsciously almost to
yourself you have given me your young affections. Well, to-morrow you
shall know you have won back mine in exchange.
If Catherine could but guess what is impending!
April 13 (Sunday).—Annie in the maroon and magenta gown, carrying a
clean folded handkerchief and a Church Service in her hand, has gone up
to church.
The bells are still ringing, and I am wandering through the little Copse
on the right of the farm. This wood, or plantation rather flourishes
down hill, fills up the narrow, interlying valley, and courageously
climbs the eminence beyond. As I descend, it become more and more
sheltered. The wind dies away and the church bells are heard no longer.
I am following a cart-track used by the woodcutters. It is particularly
bad walking. The last cart must have passed through in soft weather, the
ruts are cut so deep, and these are filled with water from the last
rains. The new buds are but just "exploding" into leaf; here and there
the Dryades have laid down a carpet of white anemone flowers to dance
on; trailing brambles lie across the track, with October's bronze and
purple-green leaves, still hale and hearty, making an exquisite
contrast with the young, brilliant, fan-folded shoots just springing at
their base.
I will find an opportunity to speak to Annie this very afternoon. She is
likely to be less busy to-day than at other times. I need not trouble
much as to how I shall tell her. She is sure to listen to me in a sweet,
bewildered silence. She will have no temptation to laugh at the most
beautiful and sacred of earthly themes. There is, to my mind, something
incurably frivolous about a woman who laughs when a man is in earnest. I
have tried over and over again to impress this upon Catherine, but it
never had any other effect but to increase her amusement. She is a young
woman entirely without the bump of veneration, and this, I should say,
far more than an elegant pronunciation, is the desideratum in a wife.
Sunday evening. I am in the mental condition of "Truthful James." I ask
myself: "Do I wake? Do I dream?" I inquire at set intervals whether the
Caucasian is played out? So far as I represent the race, I am compelled
to reply in the affirmative. This is what has happened. I was smoking my
post-prandial cigar in the terraced garden, lying back in a comfortable
basket-chair fetched out from the sitting-room, when a shadow fell upon
the grass, and Mrs. Anderson appeared in her walking things to know if
there was anything I was likely to want, as she and "Faäther" and the
little boys were just starting for H'Orton.
"Don't trouble about me," said I; "go and enjoy yourself. No one better
deserves it than you, Mrs. Anderson." And I add diplomatically: "Doesn't
Miss Annie also go with you?"
"Annie's over Fuller's Farm way," says the good woman smiling; and I
smile too, for no particular reason. "She mostly walks up there of a
Sunday afternoon."
I know Fuller's Farm. I have passed it in my rambles. You skirt the
copse, cross the sunny upland field, drop over the stile to the right,
and find yourself in Fuller's Lane. The farm is a little further on, a
comfortable homestead, smaller than Down End, but built of the same
grey, lichened stone, and with the same steep roof and dormer windows.
I gave the Andersons ten minutes start, then rose, unlatched the gate,
and followed Annie. I reached the upland field. It was dotted with
sheep: ewes and lambs; long shadows sloped across it; a girl stood at
the further gate. This was Annie, but alas! someone was with her; a
loutish figure that I at first took to be that of son Robert. But as I
came nearer, I saw it was not Robert but his equally loutish friend, the
young fellow I had seen working with him by the threshing machine. That
day, in his working clothes, he had looked what he was, a strong and
honest young farmer. To-day, in his Sunday broadcloth, with a brilliant
blue neck scarf, a brass horseshoe pin, and a large bunch of primroses
in his button-hole, he looked a blot, an excrescence, on the sunny
earth. Personally, he might have been tall, but for a pronounced stoop;
fair, but that he was burnt brick colour; smooth-faced, but for the
multitude of lines and furrows, resulting from long exposure to the open
air. His voice I couldn't help admitting was melodious and manly, yet
the moment he caught sight of me he shuffled his feet like an idiot, and
blushed like a girl. He whispered something to his companion, dropped
over the stile like a stone from a catapult, and vanished from view.
Annie advanced to meet me, blushing sweetly. She had put a finishing
touch to the magenta costume by a large pink moss rosebud. She looked at
it with admiration.
"Me and my young man have changed nosegays," she remarked simply; "he
asked me to give him my primroses, and he gave me this. They do grow
beautiful roses up at Fuller's."
"Your what?" said I dismayed. "Who did you say?"
"My young man," repeated Annie; "Edward Fuller, from the next farm. He
and me have been keeping company since Christmas only, but I've known
him all my life. We always sat together in school; he used to do my sums
for me, and I've got still a box full of slate pencil ends which he had
touched."
So my card castle came to the cloth. Here was a genuine case of true
idyllic boy and girl love, that had strengthened and ripened with mature
years. Annie had no more given me a thought—what an ass, what an idiot
I am! But really, I think Catherine's cruelty has turned my brain. I am
become ready to plunge into any folly.
And it would have been folly. After the first second's surprise and
mortification, I felt my spirits rise with a leap. I was suddenly
dragged back from moral suicide. The fascinating temptation was placed
for ever beyond my reach. And it was Edward Fuller who thus saved me!
Good young man! I fall upon your neck in spirit, and kiss you like a
brother.
I am still free! who knows what to-morrow may bring.
April 14.—To-morrow is here and has brought a letter from Catherine. I
find it lying by my plate when I come down to breakfast. I take it up,
look at the superscription, partly in Catherine's well-known writing,
partly in my landlady's spider scrawl—for it had gone first to my
London rooms. I turn it over, feel it, decide it contains one sheet of
paper only, and put it resolutely down. After breakfast is time enough
to read it; nothing she can say shall ever move me more.
I pour out my coffee; my resolutions waver and dissipate themselves like
the steam rising from my cup. I tear the letter open, and find myself in
Heaven straightway. And these are the winged words that bore me there:—
"Why do you not come and see me? Why are you so blind? It is true I do
not like you! But I love you with all my heart. Ah! could you not
guess? did you not know?"
|