I washed her skirt with my handkerchief as well as I could, saying:
“Let me just sear it for you; we can go to the Kennels. Do — you ought — I don’t feel safe otherwise.”
“Really,” she said, glancing up at me, a smile coming into her fine dark eyes.
“Yes — come along.”
“Ha, ha!” she laughed. “You look so serious.”
I took her arm and drew her away. She linked her arm in mine and leaned on me.
“It is just like Lorna Doone,” she said as if she enjoyed it. “But you will let me do it,” said I, referring to the cauterising.
“You make me; but I shall feel — ugh, I daren’t think of it. Get me some of those berries.”
I plucked a few bunches of guelder-rose fruits, transparent, ruby berries. She stroked them softly against her lips and cheek, caressing them. Then she murmured to herself:
“I have always wanted to put red berries in my hair.”
The shawl she had been wearing was thrown across her shoulders, and her head was bare, and her black hair, soft and short and ecstatic, tumbled wildly into loose light curls. She thrust the stalks of the berries under her combs. Her hair was not heavy or long enough to have held them. Then, with the ruby bunches glowing through the black mist of curls, she looked up at me, brightly, with wide eyes. I looked at her, and felt the smile winning into her eyes. Then I turned and dragged a trail of golden-leaved convolvulus from the hedge, and I twisted it into a coronet for her.
“There!” said I, “you’re crowned.”
She put back her head, and the low laughter shook in her throat.
“What!” she asked, putting all the courage and recklessness she had into the question, and in her soul trembling.
“Not Chloe, not Bacchante. You have always got your soul in your eyes, such an earnest, troublesome soul.”
The laughter faded at once, and her great seriousness looked out again at me, pleading.
“You are like Burne-Jones’s damsels. Troublesome shadows are always crowding across your eyes, and you cherish them. You think the flesh of the apple is nothing, nothing. You only care for the eternal pips. Why don’t you snatch your apple and eat it, and throw the core away?”
She looked at me sadly, not understanding, but believing that I in my wisdom spoke truth, as she always believed when I lost her in a maze of words. She stooped down, and the chaplet fell from her hair, and only one bunch of berries remained. The ground around us was strewn with the four-lipped burrs of beechnuts, and the quaint little nut-pyramids were scattered among the ruddy fallen leaves. Emily gathered a few nuts.
“I love beechnuts,” she said, “but they make me long for my childhood again till I could almost cry out. To go out for beechnuts before breakfast; to thread them for necklaces before supper — to be the envy of the others at school next day! There was as much pleasure in a beech necklace then as there is in the whole autumn now — and no sadness. There are no more unmixed joys after you have grown up.” She kept her face to the ground as she spoke, and she continued to gather the fruits.
“Do you find any with nuts in?” I asked.
“Not many — here — here are two, three. You have them. No — I don’t care about them.”
I stripped one of its horny brown coat and gave it to her. She opened her mouth slightly to take it, looking up into my eyes. Some people, instead of bringing with them clouds of glory, trail clouds of sorrow; they are born with “the gift of Sorrow”; “Sorrows,” they proclaim, “alone are real. The veiled grey angels of sorrow work out slowly the beautiful shapes. Sorrow is beauty, and the supreme blessedness.” You read it in their eyes, and in the tones of their voices. Emily had the gift of sorrow. It fascinated me, but it drove me to rebellion.
We followed the soft, smooth-bitten turf road under the old beeches. The hillside fell away, dishevelled with thistles and coarse grass. Soon we were in sight of the Kennels, the red old Kennels which had been the scene of so much animation in the time of Lord Byron. They were empty now, overgrown with weeds. The barred windows of the cottages were grey with dust; there was no need now to protect the windows from cattle, dog or man. One of the three houses was inhabited. Clear water trickled through a wooden runnel into a great stone trough outside near the door.
“Come here,” said I to Emily. “Let me fasten the back of your dress.”
“Is it undone?” she asked, looking quickly over her shoulder, and blushing.
As I was engaged in my task, a girl came out of the cottage with a black kettle and a tea-cup. She was so surprised to see me thus occupied that she forgot her own duty, and stood open-mouthed.
“S’r Ann! S’r Ann,” called a voice from inside. “Are ter goin’ ter come in an’ shut that door?”
Sarah Ann hastily poured a few cupfuls of water into the kettle, then she put down both utensils and stood holding her bare arms to warm them. Her chief garment consisted of a skirt with grey bodice and red flannel skirt, very much torn. Her black hair hung in wild tails on to her shoulders.
“We must go in here,” said I, approaching the girl. She, however, hastily seized the kettle and ran indoors with an “Oh, Mother —!”
A woman came to the door. One breast was bare, and hung over her blouse, which, like a dressing-jacket, fell loose over her skirt. Her fading, red-brown hair was all frowsy from the bed. In the folds of her skirt clung a swarthy urchin with a shockingly short shirt. He stared at us with big black eyes, the only portion of his face undecorated with egg and jam. The woman’s blue eyes questioned us languidly. I told her our errand.
“Come in-come in,” she said, “but dunna look at th’ ’ouse. Th’ childers not been long up. Go in, Billy, wi’ nowt on!”
We entered, taking the forgotten kettle lid. The kitchen was large, but scantily furnished save, indeed, for children. The eldest, a girl of twelve or so, was standing toasting a piece of bacon with one hand, and holding back her night-dress in the other. As the toast hand got scorched, she transferred the bacon to the other, gave the hot fingers a lick to cool them, and then held back her night-dress again. Her auburn hair hung in heavy coils down her gown. A boy sat on the steel fender, catching the dropping fat on a piece of bread. “One, two, three, four, five, six drops,” and he quickly bit off the tasty corner, and resumed the task with the other hand. When we entered he tried to draw his shirt over his knees, which caused the fat to fall wasted. A fat baby, evidently laid down from the breast, lay kicking on the squab, purple in the face, while another lad was pushing bread and butter into its mouth. The mother swept to the sofa, poked out the bread and butter, pushed her finger into the baby’s throat, lifted the child up, punched its back, and was highly relieved when it began to yell. Then she administered a few sound spanks to the naked buttocks of the crammer. He began to howl, but stopped suddenly on seeing us laughing. On the sack-cloth which served as hearth-rug sat a beautiful child washing the face of a wooden doll with tea, and wiping it on her night-gown. At the table, an infant in a high chair sat sucking a piece of bacon, till the grease ran down his swarthy arms, oozing through his fingers. An old lad stood in the big armchair, whose back was hung with a calf-skin, and was industriously pouring the dregs of the tea-cups into a basin of milk. The mother whisked away the milk, and made a rush for the urchin, the baby hanging over her arm the while.
“I could half kill thee,” she said, but he had slid under the table — and sat serenely unconcerned.
“Could you”— I asked when the mother had put her bonny baby again to her breast —“could you lend me a knitting-needle?”
“Our S’r Ann, wheer’s thy knittin’-needles?” asked the woman, wincing at the same time, and putting her hand to the mouth of the sucking child. Catching my eye, she said:
“You