Nobody will ever understand--that's funny too! Poor Gran! You see, there wasn't any reason--only me.That's the only reason I'm telling you now; Mums is there--but she doesn't count; why don't you count, Mums?"The fever was fighting against the draught; she had tossed the clothes back from her throat, and now and then raised one thin arm a little, as if it eased her; her eyes had grown large, and innocent like a child's; the candle, too, had flared, and was burning clearly.
"Nobody is to tell him--nobody at all; promise...! If I hadn't slipped, it would have been different.What would have happened then? You can't tell; and I can't--that's funny! Do you think Iloved him? Nobody marries without love, do they? Not quite without love, I mean.But you see I wanted to be free, he said he'd take me;and now he's left me after all! I won't be left, I can't! When Icame to the cliff--that bit where the ivy grows right down--there was just the sea there, underneath; so I thought I would throw myself over and it would be all quiet; and I climbed on a ledge, it looked easier from there, but it was so high, I wanted to get back; and then my foot slipped; and now it's all pain.You can't think much, when you're in pain.">From her eyes I saw that she was dropping off.
"Nobody can take you away from-yourself.He's not to be told--not even--I don't--want you--to go away, because--"But her eyes closed, and she dropped off to sleep.
They don't seem to know this morning whether she is better or worse....
VI
"Tuesday, 9th August.
It seems more like three weeks than three days since I wrote.The time passes slowly in a sickhouse...! The doctors were here this morning, they give her forty hours.Not a word of complaint has passed her lips since she knew.To see her you would hardly think her ill; her cheeks have not had time to waste or lose their colour.
There is not much pain, but a slow, creeping numbness....It was John Ford's wish that she should be told.She just turned her head to the wall and sighed; then to poor old Mrs.Hopgood, who was crying her heart out: "Don't cry, Mums, I don't care."When they had gone, she asked for her violin.She made them hold it for her, and drew the bow across the strings; but the notes that came out were so trembling and uncertain that she dropped the bow and broke into a passion of sobbing.Since then, no complaint or moan of any kind....
But to go back.On Sunday, the day after I wrote, as I was coming from a walk, I met a little boy making mournful sounds on a tin whistle.
"Coom ahn!" he said, "the Miss wahnts t' zee yu."I went to her room.In the morning she had seemed better, but now looked utterly exhausted.She had a letter in her hand.
"It's this," she said."I don't seem to understand it.He wants me to do something--but I can't think, and my eyes feel funny.Read it to me, please."The letter was from Zachary.I read it to her in a low voice, for Mrs.Hopgood was in the room, her eyes always fixed on Pasiance above her knitting.When I'd finished, she made me read it again, and yet again.At first she seemed pleased, almost excited, then came a weary, scornful look, and before I'd finished the third time she was asleep.It was a remarkable letter, that seemed to bring the man right before one's eyes.I slipped it under her fingers on the bed-clothes, and went out.Fancy took me to the cliff where she had fallen.I found the point of rock where the cascade of ivy flows down the cliff; the ledge on which she had climbed was a little to my right--a mad place.It showed plainly what wild emotions must have been driving her! Behind was a half-cut cornfield with a fringe of poppies, and swarms of harvest insects creeping and flying; in the uncut corn a landrail kept up a continual charring.The sky was blue to the very horizon, and the sea wonderful, under that black wild cliff stained here and there with red.Over the dips and hollows of the fields great white clouds hung low down above the land.There are no brassy, east-coast skies here; but always sleepy, soft-shaped clouds, full of subtle stir and change.Passages of Zachary's Pearse's letter kept rising to my lips.After all he's the man that his native place, and life, and blood have made him.It is useless to expect idealists where the air is soft and things good to look on (the idealist grows where he must create beauty or comfort for himself); useless to expect a man of law and order, in one whose fathers have stared at the sea day and night for a thousand years--the sea, full of its promises of unknown things, never quite the same, a slave to its own impulses.Man is an imitative animal....
