Part 36 (2/2)

Beth, still leaning against the door-post, clasped her hands behind her head and looked up at the sky. ”Things keep coming to me faster than I can say them to-night,” she proceeded, paying no heed to his remark; ”not things about you, though, because nothing goes with Sammy but jammy, clammy, mammy, and those aren't nice. I want things to come about you, but they won't. I tried last night in bed, and what do you think came again and again?

Yes, yes, that was his cry, While the great clouds went sailing by; Flashes of crimson on colder sky; Like the thoughts of a summer's day, Colour'd by love in a life which else were grey.

But that isn't you, you know, Sammy. Then when I stopped trying for something about you, there came such a singing! What was it? It seems to have gone--and yet it's here, you know, it's all here,” she insisted, with one hand on the top of her head, and the other on her chest, and her eyes straining; ”and yet I can't get it.”

”Beth, don't get on like that,” Sammy remonstrated. ”You make me feel all horrid.”

”Make you feel,” Beth cried in a deep voice, clenching her fists and shaking them at him, exasperated because the verses continued to elude her. ”Don't you know what I'm here for? I'm here to make you feel. If you don't feel what I feel, then you _shall_ feel horrid, if I have to kill you.”

”Shut up!” said Sammy, beginning to be frightened. ”I shall go away if you don't.”

”Go away, then,” said Beth. ”You're just an idiot boy, and I'm tired of you.”

Sammy's blue eyes filled with tears. He got down from the heap of sticks, intent on making his escape; but Beth changed her mind when she felt her audience melting away.

”Where are you going?” she demanded.

”I'm going home,” he said deprecatingly. ”I can't stay if you go on in that fool-fas.h.i.+on.”

”It isn't a fool-fas.h.i.+on,” Beth rejoined vehemently. ”It's you that's a fool. I told you so before.”

”If you wasn't a girl, I'd punch your 'ead,” said Sammy, half afraid.

”I believe you!” Beth jeered. ”But you're not a girl, anyway.” She flew at him as she spoke, caught him by the collar, kicked his s.h.i.+ns, slapped his face, and drubbed him on the back.

Sammy, overwhelmed by the sudden onslaught, made no effort to defend himself, but just wriggled out of her grasp, and ran home, with great tears streaming down his round red cheeks, and sobs convulsing him.

Beth's exasperation subsided the moment she was left alone in the wood-house. She sat down on the sticks, and looked straight before her, filled with remorse.

”What shall I do? What shall I do?” she kept saying to herself. ”Oh dear! oh dear! Sammy! Sammy! He's gone. I've lost him. _This is the most dreadful grief I have ever had in my life._”

The moment she had articulated this full-blown phrase, she became aware of its importance. She repeated it to herself, reflected upon it, and was so impressed by it, that she got up, and went indoors to write it down. By the time she had found pencil and paper, she was the sad central figure of a great romance, full of the most melancholy incidents; in which troubled atmosphere she sat and suffered for the rest of the evening; but she did not think of Sammy again till she went to bed. Then, however, she was seized anew with the dread of losing him for ever, and cried helplessly until she fell asleep.

For days she mourned for him without daring to go to the window, lest she should see him pa.s.s by on the other side of the road with scorn and contempt flas.h.i.+ng forth from his innocent blue eyes. In the evening, however, she opened the back-gate, as usual, and waited in the wood-house; but he never came. And at first she was in despair.

Then she became defiant--she didn't care, not she! Then she grew determined. He'd have to come back if she chose, she'd make him. But how? Oh, she knew! She'd just sit still till something came.

She was sitting on a heap of beech branches opposite the doorway, picking off the bronze buds and biting them. The blanched skeleton of Sammy's whiting, sad relic of happier moments, grinned up at her from the earthen floor. Outside, the old pear-tree on the left, leafless now and motionless, showed distinctly in silhouette against the night-sky. Its bare branches made black bars on the face of the bright white moon which was rising behind it. What a strange thing time is!

day and night, day and night, week and month, spring, summer, autumn, winter, always coming and going again, while we only come once, go, and return no more. It was getting on for Christmas now. Another year had nearly gone. The years slip away steadily--day by day--winter, spring. Winter so cold and wet; March all clouds and dust--comes in like a lion, goes out like a lamb; then April is bright.

The year slips away steadily; slips round the steady year; days come and go--no, no! Days dawn and disappear, winters and springs--springs, rings, sings? No, leave that. Winter with cold and rain--pain? March storms and clouds and pain, till April once again light with it brings.

Beth jumped down from the beech boughs, ran round to the old wooden pump, clambered up by it on to the back-kitchen roof, and made for the acting-room window. It was open, and she screwed herself in round the bar and fastened the door. It was quite dark under the sloping roof, but she found the end of a tallow candle, smuggled up there for the purpose, lighted it, and stuck it on to the top of the rough deal box which formed her writing-table. She had a pencil, sundry old envelopes carefully cut open so as to save as much of the clean s.p.a.ce inside as possible, margins of newspapers, precious but rare half-sheets, and any other sc.r.a.p of paper on which she could write, all carefully concealed in a hole in the roof, from which she tore the whole treasure now in her haste.

”Winter, summer, Sammy,” she kept saying to herself. ”Autumn, autumn-tinted woods--my king--_Ministering Children_--ministering--king.

Moon, noon. Story, glory. Ever, never, endeavour. Oh, I can do it! I can! I can! Slips round the steady year--”

It took her some days to do it to her satisfaction, but they were days of delight, for the whole time she felt exactly as she had done when first she found Sammy. She had the same warm glow in her chest, the same sort of yearning, half anxious, half pleasant, wholly desirable.

<script>