"They were here a few minutes ago. I expect they knew my car had broken down, and came to see the fun."
"Nothing serious, I hope? How do cars break down?"
"In fifty different ways. Only mine has chosen the fifty first."
She laughed merrily at the tiny joke, cooed with delicious laughter, and pushed her hat back.
"Let me hear," she said.
"Wait a moment," I cried, "and I"ll get you a cushion."
She set her foot on the rug all covered with spare parts, and stooped above it eagerly. "What delightful things!" The hands through which she saw glanced in the chequered sunlight. "A box here--another box! Why you"ve arranged them like playing shop!"
"I confess now that I put it out to attract them. I don"t need half those things really."
"How nice of you! I heard your bell in the upper wood. You say they were here before that?"
"I"m sure of it. Why are they so shy? That little fellow in blue who was with you just now ought to have got over his fright. He"s been watching me like a Red Indian."
"It must have been your bell," she said. "I heard one of them go past me in trouble when I was coming down. They"re shy--so shy even with me." She turned her face over her shoulder and cried again: "Children! Oh, children! Look and see!"
"They must have gone off together on their own affairs,"
I suggested, for there was a murmur behind us of lowered voices broken by the sudden squeaking giggles of childhood. I returned to my tinkerings and she leaned forward, her chin on her hand, listening interestedly.
"How many are they?" I said at last. The work was finished, but I saw no reason to go.
Her forehead puckered a little in thought. "I don"t quite know," she said simply. "Sometimes more--sometimes less. They come and stay with me because I love them, you see."
"That must be very jolly," I said, replacing a drawer, and as I spoke I heard the inanity of my answer.
"You--you aren"t laughing at me," she cried. "I--I haven"t any of my own.
I never married. People laugh at me sometimes about them because-- because------"
"Because they"re savages," I returned. "It"s nothing to fret for. That sort laugh at everything that isn"t in their own fat lives."
"I don"t know. How should I? I only don"t like being laughed at about _them_. It hurts; and when one can"t see.... I don"t want to seem silly,"
her chin quivered like a child"s as she spoke, "but we blindies have only one skin, I think. Everything outside hits straight at our souls. It"s different with you. You"ve such good defences in your eyes--looking out-- before anyone can really pain you in your soul. People forget that with us."
I was silent reviewing that inexhaustible matter--the more than inherited (since it is also carefully taught) brutality of the Christian peoples, beside which the mere heathendom of the West Coast n.i.g.g.e.r is clean and restrained. It led me a long distance into myself.
"Don"t do that!" she said of a sudden, putting her hands before her eyes.
"What?"
She made a gesture with her hand.
"That! It"s--it"s all purple and black. Don"t! That colour hurts."
"But, how in the world do you know about colours?" I exclaimed, for here was a revelation indeed.
"Colours as colours?" she asked.
"No. _Those_ Colours which you saw just now."
"You know as well as I do," she laughed, "else you wouldn"t have asked that question. They aren"t in the world at all. They"re in _you_--when you went so angry."
"D"you mean a dull purplish patch, like port-wine mixed with ink?" I said.
"I"ve never seen ink or port-wine, but the colours aren"t mixed. They are separate--all separate."
"Do you mean black streaks and jags across the purple?"
She nodded. "Yes--if they are like this," and zigzagged her finger again, "but it"s more red than purple--that bad colour."
"And what are the colours at the top of the--whatever you see?"
Slowly she leaned forward and traced on the rug the figure of the Egg itself.
"I see them so," she said, pointing with a gra.s.s stem, "white, green, yellow, red, purple, and when people are angry or bad, black across the red--as you were just now."
"Who told you anything about it--in the beginning?" I demanded.
"About the colours? No one. I used to ask what colours were when I was little--in table-covers and curtains and carpets, you see--because some colours hurt me and some made me happy. People told me; and when I got older that was how I saw people." Again she traced the outline of the Egg which it is given to very few of us to see.
"All by yourself?" I repeated.
"All by myself. There wasn"t anyone else. I only found out afterwards that other people did not see the Colours."
She leaned against the tree-hole plaiting and unplaiting chance-plucked gra.s.s stems. The children in the wood had drawn nearer. I could see them with the tail of my eye frolicking like squirrels.
"Now I am sure you will never laugh at me," she went on after a long silence. "Nor at _them_."
"Goodness! No!" I cried, jolted out of my train of thought. "A man who laughs at a child--unless the child is laughing too--is a heathen!"
"I didn"t mean that of course. You"d never laugh _at_ children, but I thought--I used to think--that perhaps you might laugh about _them_. So now I beg your pardon.... What are you going to laugh at?"
I had made no sound, but she knew.
"At the notion of your begging my pardon. If you had done your duty as a pillar of the state and a landed proprietress you ought to have summoned me for trespa.s.s when I barged through your woods the other day. It was disgraceful of me--inexcusable."
She looked at me, her head against the tree trunk--long and steadfastly-- this woman who could see the naked soul.
"How curious," she half whispered. "How very curious."
"Why, what have I done?"
"You don"t understand ... and yet you understood about the Colours. Don"t you understand?"