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Authors: Henry Williamson
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that.” Then recovering from shock with her mind, and making as though to take his hand, she said, “Do come in, we are just going to have tea.”
A looking-glass in a gilt frame over the fireplace showed him what he really looked like—a tramp—untidy long hair, thin brown face smirched by spots of mud, and ten days’ growth of black beard. He felt no social inferiority to the young men in tweed coats, grey flannel trousers and college ties, as he talked to his hostess about the journey, explaining that his hand was shaking the cup upon its saucer, “not from drink, but from gripping the wide forward handlebars of the Norton.”
“I must apologise for what is almost a hold-up, but owing to belt slip I have used up all my petrol, and so came here to borrow enough from Miss Trevelian to get home.” This would, he hoped, camouflage his real motive, and so save Spica from further embarrassment.
June 21. S’s mother writes from Ireland, in reply to a letter in which I said that I thought of S. as one of the ‘larger and more beautiful flowers of God’ …
‘… nearly all your letter was full of Tabitha’s charms; you could not have written more effusively had you been in love with her—I am glad to think there is no nonsense of that sort—I was therefore very sorry to hear from her that you had been down to Cambridge to see her….’
Mrs. Trevelian mentions among other things that she ‘is staying in the district which has the very doubtful honour of being represented in Parliament by de Valera….’
Later.
I replied to this letter tonight, but did not say, as I should have done if asked directly, that I loved Tabitha. I said I had been most reluctant to borrow money for petrol, but having come from Devon via Minehead and Bridgwater, in the rain, I had calculated that I could just reach Cambridge, where I knew she was staying.
Then I looked at the map, and saw that Cambridge was due north of London, and that I could have reached home on what I had in my tank: so I tore up the letter. Just as well: for I had said in it, inter alia, that history would have a different view about de Valera to the one commonly held today by the majority of English people.
I ought to say that before this, I saw Spica in London after she had returned from Cambridge, to stay awhile with her sister Kay at Carapel House Ladies’ Club, near Marble Arch, and paid back the six shillings she lent me to buy petrol. We went to Tristan und Isolde, and sat on the Doves’ Nest in the gods. Afterwards we stood on the Embankment below Waterloo Bridge, and I reminded her how Francis Thompson used to stand there, seeing the river-lights shaking in the tide, like ladders “pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross”, and then slept on newspapers laid on the pavement under the road-arch, where two derelicts were trying to sleep now, one with a row of ribands on his tattered waistcoat, South African war, and 1914 Star.
We looked at Mars, the hue of a hawthorn blossom petal as it is dying, between faint pink and brown, and Spica Virginis below that planet.
“I often think of those two beautiful stars,” she said.
“Spica is loved by Mars,” I whispered.
“I know,” she whispered back, while the water rushed below on its way to the broad sea.
June 22. The days are now shortening instead of lengthening. So much to be seen in the country, while I trudge the pavements; so little time in which to see so much.
When I was in the cottage S. wrote to me that ‘friendship is reserved for few on the earth at a time, and is higher than that which the world calls love’. I did not understand what she meant. I thought that she wished to tell me that she only liked me as a friend. In my foolishness I replied that I had thought that she loved me, etc. To which she replied briefly that I would not see, and therefore it was futile to attempt to make me see.
Now there is light at last, and I see. Spica
A looking-glass in a gilt frame over the fireplace showed him what he really looked like—a tramp—untidy long hair, thin brown face smirched by spots of mud, and ten days’ growth of black beard. He felt no social inferiority to the young men in tweed coats, grey flannel trousers and college ties, as he talked to his hostess about the journey, explaining that his hand was shaking the cup upon its saucer, “not from drink, but from gripping the wide forward handlebars of the Norton.”
“I must apologise for what is almost a hold-up, but owing to belt slip I have used up all my petrol, and so came here to borrow enough from Miss Trevelian to get home.” This would, he hoped, camouflage his real motive, and so save Spica from further embarrassment.
June 21. S’s mother writes from Ireland, in reply to a letter in which I said that I thought of S. as one of the ‘larger and more beautiful flowers of God’ …
‘… nearly all your letter was full of Tabitha’s charms; you could not have written more effusively had you been in love with her—I am glad to think there is no nonsense of that sort—I was therefore very sorry to hear from her that you had been down to Cambridge to see her….’
Mrs. Trevelian mentions among other things that she ‘is staying in the district which has the very doubtful honour of being represented in Parliament by de Valera….’
Later.
I replied to this letter tonight, but did not say, as I should have done if asked directly, that I loved Tabitha. I said I had been most reluctant to borrow money for petrol, but having come from Devon via Minehead and Bridgwater, in the rain, I had calculated that I could just reach Cambridge, where I knew she was staying.
Then I looked at the map, and saw that Cambridge was due north of London, and that I could have reached home on what I had in my tank: so I tore up the letter. Just as well: for I had said in it, inter alia, that history would have a different view about de Valera to the one commonly held today by the majority of English people.
I ought to say that before this, I saw Spica in London after she had returned from Cambridge, to stay awhile with her sister Kay at Carapel House Ladies’ Club, near Marble Arch, and paid back the six shillings she lent me to buy petrol. We went to Tristan und Isolde, and sat on the Doves’ Nest in the gods. Afterwards we stood on the Embankment below Waterloo Bridge, and I reminded her how Francis Thompson used to stand there, seeing the river-lights shaking in the tide, like ladders “pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross”, and then slept on newspapers laid on the pavement under the road-arch, where two derelicts were trying to sleep now, one with a row of ribands on his tattered waistcoat, South African war, and 1914 Star.
We looked at Mars, the hue of a hawthorn blossom petal as it is dying, between faint pink and brown, and Spica Virginis below that planet.
“I often think of those two beautiful stars,” she said.
“Spica is loved by Mars,” I whispered.
“I know,” she whispered back, while the water rushed below on its way to the broad sea.
June 22. The days are now shortening instead of lengthening. So much to be seen in the country, while I trudge the pavements; so little time in which to see so much.
When I was in the cottage S. wrote to me that ‘friendship is reserved for few on the earth at a time, and is higher than that which the world calls love’. I did not understand what she meant. I thought that she wished to tell me that she only liked me as a friend. In my foolishness I replied that I had thought that she loved me, etc. To which she replied briefly that I would not see, and therefore it was futile to attempt to make me see.
Now there is light at last, and I see. Spica
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