CHAPTER XII

DAFFODILS

Unwilling to return to his lodgings, where in vain the net was spread in his sight, Bramber walked towards Coombe Cellars. There for sixpence he could have his tea--cockles, winkles, and presumably bread and butter.

There also would he see that pale-faced girl with the large violet-blue eyes, which had been fixed on him with so much sympathy. Disappointed in proportion to the sanguineness of his expectations, Walter felt that he needed some relief from his discouragement, a word from some one who could understand him. On that day he had looked straight into many eyes, into beaming eyes, into irises that were dull with no speech in them, into stupid eyes, into boastful, into defiant, into insolent eyes.

Those of his landlady were clear as crystal, and he could see to their bottom; but what he saw there was but the agglomeration of common details of everyday life--so many loaves per week, a pint of milk, a beefsteak or mutton chop for supper, coals at so much a bushel, so much cleaning, so much washing. As in a revolving slide in a magic lantern, the same figures, the same trees, the same houses, reappear in endless iteration; so would it be with the eyes of the landlady, week by week, year by year, till those eyes closed in death; nought else would be revealed in their shadows but loaves and milk, and coals and washing, over and over and over again. There are eyes that are stony and have no depth in them; such were those of Zerah. Others have profundity, but are treacherous; such were those of Pasco. In the two glimpses into the eyes of the pale girl, whose name he did not know, Bramber had seen depths that seemed unfathomable; wells which had their sources in the heart, deeps full of mystery and promise.

The evening might have been one in summer. A light east wind was playing; the sky was clear. The sun had been hot all day. Marsh marigolds blazed at the water brim, reflecting their golden faces in the tide. The orchards were sheeted with daffodils. The evening sky was blue shot with primrose, and every hue was mirrored in the water.

Bramber asked to have his tea out of doors on the little platform above the water, and Mrs. Pepperill bade Kate attend on the schoolmaster, and remain on the terrace so as to be ready to bring him anything he required; and, in the event of his desiring company, to be present to converse with him. She herself was engaged, and could not give him her attention.

The evening was so warm, so balmy, that it could do the convalescent no harm to sit outside the house. Kate took her needlework and planted herself on the low wall above the water, one foot in a white stocking and neat shoe touching the gravel. She was at some distance from the schoolmaster, who opened a book and read whilst taking his tea. He did not, apparently, require her society, and she had no thought of forcing herself on him.

Yet, occasionally, unobserved by her, Bramber looked her way. Behind her was an orchard-sweep golden with daffodils, and the slant setting sun, shooting down a gap in the hills, kindled the whole multitude of flower-heads into a blaze of wavering sunfire. Kate sat, a dark figure against this luminous background, but her plum-coloured kerchief, bound round her throat and tied across her breast, was wondrous in contrast with the brilliant flowers.

Occasionally, moreover, Kate, who long looked at the flower carpet which by its radiance threw a golden light into her face, turned her head to see if the schoolmaster needed more milk or butter; and then her eyes rested on the book he held with much the same greed with which a child fastens its eyes on sweets and a miser on gold.

The setting sun had fired glass windows on the opposite side of the estuary, and it flashed in every ripple running in from the sea.

Kate wore a little bunch of celandines in her bosom, pinned into the purple kerchief. The flowers were open through the warmth of their position, and when she stooped and a streak of sunlight fell on them and filled their cups, they sent a golden sheen over her chin. The girl was looking dreamily with turned head at the sheet of blazing daffodils, drinking in the beauty of the scene, and sighing, she knew not why, when she was startled to hear a voice at her ear, and, looking round, saw the schoolmaster.

“Are you admiring the daffodils?” he asked.

“Yes,” answered Kate, too shy, too surprised to say more.

“And I,” said he, “I also have been looking at them; and then I turned to familiar lines in Wordsworth, the poet I am reading. Do you know them?”

“About lent-lilies? I know nothing.”

“Listen.”

Then Bramber read--

“I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle in the Milky Way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:-- A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed--and gazed--but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude, And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.”

Kate’s dark blue eyes were fixed with intensity on the reader’s face. Then they became full to overflowing.

“Why,” exclaimed Bramber, “you are crying!”

“It is so true, it is so beautiful,” she said, and her voice shook; and as she spoke the tears ran down her white cheeks. “How did he who wrote that know about my illness, and that I was thinking about, and troubled about, the daffodils when I was in my fever? It is all true”; she put her hands to her bosom; “I feel it--I cannot bear it.”

Walter Bramber paused in surprise. He was himself a passionate lover of nature, of flowers, and he was fond of the words of the poet of nature--words that touched deep chords in his spirit. But here was a pale, reserved girl, to whom the words of the poet appealed with even greater force than to himself.

“Are you fond of poetry?” he asked.

She hesitated, and slightly coloured before answering.

“I do not know. Father sings a song or two. There are words, they rhyme, and they are set to a tune, and sometimes a good tune helps along bad words; but I never before heard words that had the music in themselves and wanted nothing to carry them along as on the wings of a bird. When you read that to me, it was just as though I heard what I had felt in my heart over and over again, and had never found how I could put it.”

“Do you know why these flowers are called daffodils?”

She turned her solemn eyes on him again.

“Because they are daffodils; why else?”

“I suppose,” said Bramber, “when the Normans came to England, they brought these yellow flowers with them, and with the flowers the name by which they had known them in Normandy--_Fleurs d’Avril_, which means April flowers.”

“They do come in April, but also in March, and this year the weather has been warm, and everything is advanced.”

“So,” continued Bramber, “when the English tried to pronounce the French name, _Fleurs d’Avril_, they made daverils, and then slid away into further difference, and settled down on daffodils. Do you know about the Conquest by the Normans?”

Kate shook her head sadly.

“I know nothing--nothing at all.” Then, after a pause, she asked timidly, “Will you be very good and kind, and repeat those verses, and let me learn them by heart? Oh,” she gasped, and expanded, and clasped her hands, “it would be such a joy to me! and I could repeat them for ever and ever, and be happy.”

“I shall be delighted.”

Kate planted herself on one of the benches by the table, leaned her chin in her hands, and listened to each line of the poem with concentrated attention. One or two words she did not understand, and Bramber explained their meaning to her. When the piece had been read over slowly, she said--

“May I try? Do you mind? I think I know it.”

Then she recited the poem with perfect accuracy.

“You are quick at learning,” said Bramber. “I hope I may find my pupils in the National School as eager to acquire and as ready to apprehend.”

“I never heard words like these before,” said Kate.

“May I tell you what they are like to me?”

“Certainly.”

“They are like lightning on a still night, without rain, without thunder. The heavens are open and there is light--that is all. Is there more in that book?”

“A great deal,” answered the young man; and, pointing to the celandines in Kate’s bosom, said, “The poet has something to say about these flowers.”

“What, buttercups?”

“They are not buttercups. Take them out from where they are pinned. I will teach you a lesson--how to distinguish sorts.”

As the girl removed the bunch and placed it on the table, he said, “Do you see the petals? The golden leaves of the flower are called petals. They are pointed. Now, remember, a buttercup has rounded petals.”

“You are right, and they come out later. They are more like little drunkards.”

“Drunkards? What do you mean?”

“The large golden cups that grow by the water’s edge--these we call drunkards, but they drink only water.”

“You mean the marsh marigold.”

“Perhaps so, but it is very different from the marigold of the garden. The leaves”--

Bramber laughed. “Now you are going to teach me to distinguish. You are quite right--that water-drinker is not a marigold at all. But country people give it that name because it is the great golden flower that blooms at or about Lady Day, and the lady is the Virgin Mary. Now consider. The celandine has sharply-pointed petals. Do you see the difference between them and those of the golden water-drinker?”

“I see this clearly now.”

“He who wrote those verses about the daffodils has written three poems on the celandine.”

“What! on these little flowers?”

Kate coloured with delight and surprise.

“Yes, and very beautiful they are. I will reserve them for another day. You have enough to think about in the lines on the daffodils.”

“How did the man who wrote them know of my illness, and how I dreamed and troubled about the daffodils?”

“He knew nothing of you.”

“He must have done so. He says he was lonely as a cloud, and I am Kitty Alone.”

“Is that your name?”

“They call me so because I have no companions and no friends, and because”--She checked herself and hung her head.

“But you have relatives.”

“Yes--my father and Aunt Zerah. But for all that I am alone. They are grown big and old, and so of course cannot understand me--a child. And at school I didn’t have friends. Then the man must have been here, for he says--

‘Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze

Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle in the Milky Way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay.’

There they are--‘in never-ending line.’”

“There are daffodils elsewhere, as there are solitary spirits elsewhere than in this little being”--and Walter lightly touched the girl’s brow.

Both were silent for a minute. Presently Kate said, “When I was looking at the daffodils, as the sun was on them, they blazed in at my eyes and I was full of light, and now those beautiful words are like the sun on the flowers that I shall carry away with me, and as I lie in bed in the dark I shall think of them, and the golden light will fill my room and fill my heart--

‘Flashing upon that inward eye, Which is the bliss of solitude.’

That is true of the inward eye. You can see more with that than with the real eye. The man was a prophet. He knew and wrote of things that are not known or are not talked about in the world.”

“So they call you Kitty Alone. You did not give me the second reason. What is that reason?”

The girl looked embarrassed.

“You will laugh at me.”

“Indeed I will not,” answered Bramber earnestly.

She still hesitated.

“You fear me? Surely you can trust me.”

“You are so good--indeed I can. You speak to me as does no one else, and that is just why I do not wish to appear ridiculous in your eyes.”

“That you never will.”

Then she said, blushing and hanging her head, “It is all along of a song my father sings.”

“What song is that?”

“It is some silly nonsense about a frog that lived in a well--and the burden is--‘Kitty Alone’--and then ‘Kitty Alone and I.'”

“Sing me the words.”

She did as requested.

“The air is pleasant and very quaint. It deserves better words. Will you remain here whilst I run for my violin?”

“Yes, unless my aunt calls me within.”

Walter Bramber hastened to his lodgings, and brought away his cherished instrument. He made the girl sing over a few verses of the song, and then struck in with the violin.

He speedily caught the melody, and played it, then went off into variations, returning anon to the pleasant theme, and Kate listened in surprise and admiration. Never before had she thought that there was much of air, or of grace and delicacy in the tune as sung by her father, and cast jeeringly at her in scraps by the youths of Coombe-in-Teignhead. Zerah looked out at the door and summoned her niece.

Kate started as from a dream.

“My bunch of flowers,” she said.

Bramber had secured the celandines.