Part 18 (2/2)
”I don't like the notion of them growing out at my shoulder-blades. And however would you get on your clothes? If you put them over your wings, they would be of no use, and would, besides, make you hump-backed; and if you did not, everything would have to be b.u.t.toned round the roots of them. You could not do it yourself, and even on Wynnie I don't think I could bear to touch the things--I don't mean the feathers, but the skinny, folding-up bits of them.”
I laughed at her fastidious fancy.
”You want to fly, I suppose?” I said.
”O, yes; I should like that.”
”And you don't want to have wings?”
”Well, I shouldn't mind the wings exactly; but however would one be able to keep them nice?”
”There you go; starting from one thing to another, like a real bird already. When you can't answer one thing, off to another, and, from your new perch on the hawthorn, talk as if you were still on the topmost branch of the lilac!”
”O, yes, papa! That's what I've heard you say to mamma twenty times.”
”And did I ever say to your mamma anything but the truth? or to you either, you puss?”
I had not yet discovered that when I used this epithet to my Connie, she always thought she had gone too far. She looked troubled. I hastened to relieve her.
”When women have wings,” I said, ”their logic will be good.”
”How do you make that out, papa?” she asked, a little re-a.s.sured.
”Because then every shadow of feeling that turns your speech aside from the straight course will be recognised in that speech; the whole utterance will be instinct not only with the meaning of what you are thinking, but with the reflex of the forces in you that make the utterance take this or that shape; just as to a perfect palate, the source and course of a stream would be revealed in every draught of its water.
”I have just a glimmering of your meaning, papa. Would you like to have wings?”
”I should like to fly like a bird, to swim like a fish, to gallop like a horse, to creep like a serpent, but I suspect the good of all these is to be got without doing any of them.”
”I know what you mean now, but I can't put it in words.”
”I mean by a perfect sympathy with the creatures that do these things: what it may please G.o.d to give to ourselves, we can quite comfortably leave to him. A higher stratum of the same kind is the need we feel of knowing our fellow-creatures through and through, of walking into and out of their worlds as if we were, because we are, perfectly at home in them.--But I am talking what the people who do not understand such things lump all together as mysticism, which is their name for a kind of spiritual ash-pit, whither they consign dust and stones, never asking whether they may not be gold-dust and rubies, all in a heap.--You had better begin to think about getting out, Connie.”
”Think about it, papa! I have been thinking about it ever since daylight.”
”I will go and see what your mother is doing then, and if she is ready to go out with us.”
In a few moments all was arranged. Without killing more than a snail or two, which we could not take time to beware of, Walter and I--finding that the window did not open down to the ground in French fas.h.i.+on, for which there were two good reasons, one the fierceness of the winds in winter, the other, the fact that the means of egress were elsewise provided--lifted the sofa, Connie and all, out over the window-sill, and then there was only a little door in the garden-wall to get her through before we found ourselves upon the down. I think the ascent of this hill was the first experience I had--a little to my humiliation, nothing to my sorrow--that I was descending another hill. I had to set down the precious burden rather oftener before we reached the brow of the cliffs than would have been necessary ten years before. But this was all right, and the newly-discovered weakness then was strength to the power which carries me about on my two legs now. It is all right still. I shall be stronger by and by.
We carried her high enough for her to see the brilliant waters lying many feet below her, with the sea-birds of which we had talked winging their undulating way between heaven and ocean. It is when first you have a chance of looking a bird in the face on the wing that you know what the marvel of flight is. There it hangs or rests, which you please, borne up, as far as eye or any of the senses can witness, by its own will alone. This Connie, quicker than I in her observation of nature, had already observed. Seated on the warm gra.s.s by her side, while neither talked, but both regarded the blue s.p.a.ces, I saw one of those same barb-winged birds rest over my head, regarding me from above, as if doubtful whether I did not afford some claim to his theory of treasure-trove. I knew at once that what Connie had been saying to me just before was true.
She lay silent a long time. I too was silent. At length I spoke.
”Are you longing to be running about amongst the rocks, my Connie?”
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