* * * *
*
I was not at Mittleham when she came over to announce
her engagement, but I heard of it when Mrs. Godfrey
and Attley came, forty miles an hour, over to me,
and Mrs. Godfrey called me names of the worst for
suppression of information.
‘As long as it wasn’t me, I don’t
care,’ said Attley.
‘I believe you knew it all along,’ Mrs.
Godfrey repeated. ’Else what made you drive
that man literally into her arms?’
‘To ask after the dog Harvey,’ I replied.
‘Then, what’s the beast doing here?’
Attley demanded, for Malachi and the dog Harvey were
deep in a council of the family with Bettina, who
was being out-argued.
‘Oh, Harvey seemed to think himself de trop
where he was,’ I said. ’And she hasn’t
sent after him. You’d better save Bettina
before they kill her.’
‘There’s been enough lying about that
dog,’ said Mrs. Godfrey to me. ’If
he wasn’t born in lies, he was baptized in ’em.
D’you know why she called him Harvey? It
only occurred to me in those dreadful days when I
was ill, and one can’t keep from thinking, and
thinks everything. D’you know your Boswell?
What did Johnson say about Hervey—with an
e?’
‘Oh, that’s it, is it?’ I
cried incautiously. ’That was why I ought
to have verified my quotations. The spelling
defeated me. Wait a moment, and it will come
back. Johnson said: “He was a vicious
man,"’ I began.
‘"But very kind to me,"’ Mrs. Godfrey
prompted. Then, both together, ‘"If you
call a dog Hervey, I shall love him."’
’So you were mixed up in it. At
any rate, you had your suspicions from the first?
Tell me,’ she said.
‘Ella,’ I said, ’I don’t know
anything rational or reasonable about any of it.
It was all—all woman-work, and it scared
me horribly.’
‘Why?’ she asked.
That was six years ago. I have written this tale
to let her know—wherever she may be.
Until thy feet have
trod the Road
Advise not
wayside folk,
Nor till thy back has
borne the Load
Break in
upon the Broke.
Chase not with undesired
largesse
Of sympathy
the heart
Which, knowing her own
bitterness,
Presumes
to dwell apart.
Employ not that glad
hand to raise
The God-forgotten
head
To Heaven, and all the
neighbours’ gaze—
Cover thy
mouth instead.
The quivering chin,
the bitten lip,
The cold
and sweating brow,
Later may yearn for
fellowship—
Not now,
you ass, not now!
Time, not thy ne’er
so timely speech,
Life, not
thy views thereon,
Shall furnish or deny
to each
His consolation.
Or, if impelled to interfere,
Exhort,
uplift, advise,
Lend not a base, betraying
ear
To all the
victim’s cries.
