Читать книгу The Patchwork Papers - E. Temple Thurston - Страница 10

IV

BELLWATTLE AND THE LAWS OF GOD

I often wonder why God evolved a creature so antagonistic to all His laws as woman. I must tell you what I mean.

Bellwattle—she is named Bellwattle for the simple reason that one day in an inspired moment, she called her husband Cruikshank, and he replied giving her the name Bellwattle, quite foolish except between husband and wife—Bellwattle has the genuine mother’s heart for animals. Everything that crawls, walks or flies, Bellwattle loves. Some things, certainly, she loves more than others; but for all she has the deep-rooted, protective instinct. Spiders, for example, terrify her; flies and beetles she loathes, but would not kill one of them even if they crawled upon her dress. And they do.

Now Bellwattle has a garden which she loves. You can see already, if you have but the mind for it, the tragic conflict which, with that love of her flowers, she must wage between her own soul and the laws of God.

For this, I must tell you, is a lovely garden—not one of those prim-set portions, with well-cut hedges and beds in orthodox array. It is an old garden that has been allowed to run to ruin and Bellwattle, possessing it in the nick of time, has planted primroses amongst the nettles; has carved a little herbaceous border where once potatoes grew. She has thrown roses here, there, and everywhere and, in soap and sugar boxes covered with glass at the bottom of the garden under the nut trees, she forces the old-fashioned flowers that we knew—you and I—in the long-ago days when sweet-william and candytuft were things to boast about and foxgloves grew like beanstalks up to heaven.

But perhaps the most glorious thing in Bellwattle’s garden, that also in which she takes the greatest pride, is her hedges of sweet pea. They grow in great walls of dazzling colour, and the bees hum about them all day long. But they are the devil and all to raise.

Now this is where the tragic conflict comes in, between the mice and the birds and the slugs and Bellwattle’s kitten and Bellwattle’s heart. It is a terrible conflict, I can tell you; for the laws of God are unalterable, and so is the heart of Bellwattle.

This, then, is what happens: Bellwattle forgot to cover the sweet pea seeds with red lead. It is just the sort of thing a woman would forget. I doubt if I could think of it myself. Then followed the natural result. A shrew-mouse got hold of one or two of them, and Bellwattle wondered why on earth God ever made shrew-mice.

“But they’re dear little things,” I told her.

“I can’t help that,” said she. “What’s the sense in making a thing that goes and eats up other things?”

Which, of course, was unanswerable.

Two days after this had happened, the kitten was seen playing with a live shrew-mouse.

Bellwattle screamed.

“Oh, the little wretch! If I could only catch it!”

“What—the mouse?” shouted Cruikshank.

“No, no; the wretched little kitten! Look at the way she’s torturing it! Oh, I never saw such a cruel little beast in all my life!” and her face grew rosy red.

Now, Cruikshank is a dutiful husband. Moreover, he knows positively nothing about women. Perhaps that is why. When, therefore, he realised that it was the kitten who was the cruel little beast, and a sense of duty claiming him, he chased it all over the garden, picking up stones as he ran.

“Make her drop it!” cried Bellwattle.

“I will, if I can hit her,” replied Cruikshank and, like a cowboy throwing a lasso from a galloping horse, he flung a stone. The kitten was struck upon the flank and in its terror it dropped the mouse and fled. Cruikshank approached it and, he assures me, with much pride in his prowess picked up the poor little mouse by the hind leg. Then he looked up and saw Bellwattle’s face. It was white—ashen white.

“You’ve hurt her,” she said, half under her breath.

“It’s better than hurt,” said Cruikshank—“it’s dead.”

“No—the kitten—you hit it with a stone.”

“’Twas a jolly good shot,” said Cruikshank.

“I never meant you to hit her,” said Bellwattle.

Cruikshank looked disappointed. To hit a flying object whilst one is in a tornado of motion one’s self is no mean feat. Failing an appreciation of the woman herself, I am not surprised he was disappointed.

“I made her drop it, anyhow,” he said.

“You’ve frightened her out of her life and now perhaps she’ll never come back,” said Bellwattle, and in and out of the garden she went, all through the forests of rhododendra—where the kitten, I should tell you, hunts for big game—and with the gentlest, the softest, the most wooing voice in the world, she cried the kitten’s name. Cruikshank was at a loss to understand it. When he met her down one of the paths still calling, with tears in her eyes, he assures me he felt so ashamed of himself that he began, in a feeble way, calling for the kitten too. When they met again, still unsuccessful in their search, he dared not look her in the face.

Now this is only one of the conflicts that take place in Bellwattle’s soul. She worships the birds, but they eat the young shoots of the sweet peas. Then she hates them; then the kitten catches one. And now, Cruikshank tells me, he will have no hand in the matter.

“You leave it to God,” I advised.

“I do,” said he; “it’s too difficult for me.”

I believe myself it is too difficult for God.

Only the other day, in the farmyard, Bellwattle saw two cocks fighting—fighting for the supremacy of the yard. Cruikshank and I looked on, really enjoying the sport of it in our hearts, yet deadly afraid of saying so.

“Can’t you stop them?” exclaimed Bellwattle. “They’re hurting each other!”

We neither of us moved a hand.

“If you don’t, I shall have to go and do it myself,” said she.

“Much better leave it to God,” said I. “They’re settling matters that have nothing to do with you.”

But do you think logic so profound as that deterred her? Not a bit of it! Out she ran into the farmyard, throwing her arms about in the air—as women will when they wish to interfere with the laws of God.

“Shoo! shoo! shoo!” shouted Bellwattle.

And one of the cocks, at the critical moment of victory, reluctantly leaving go of its opponent’s comb, looked up with considerable annoyance into her face and shrieked back—

“Cock-a-doodle-do!”

Cruikshank glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, and out of the corner of his mouth he whispered—

“We shan’t have any eggs to-morrow.”