“Of course. I never thought of it again. Nor did Madala for that matter, though she was quiet enough in the train. There she sat, looking out of the window and smiling to herself. But then she was always like that after any little excitement, very quiet for an hour, re-living it—literally. I think, you know,” she hesitated, “that that was the secret of her genius. Her genius was her memory. She liked whate’er she looked on——”
“And her looks were certainly everywhere,” said the blonde lady in her drawling voice.
“Just so. But it didn’t end there. She remembered. She remembered uncannily. She was like a child picking up pebbles from the beach every holiday, and spending all the rest of its year polishing. She turned them into jewels. The process used to fascinate me—professionally, you know. You could see her mind at work on some trifling incident, fidgeting with it, twisting it, dropping it, picking it up again, till one wearied. And then a year later, or two years, or three years, or ten years maybe, you’ll pick up a novel or a story, and there you’ll find it, cut, graved, polished, set in diamonds, but—the same pebble, if one has the wit to see.”
“Well, what did she say?” Miss Howe cut through the theory impatiently.
Anita frowned. She disliked being hurried.
“Oh, that day? Very little. I was surprised. She usually enjoyed pouring herself out to me. But no, she just sat and smiled. It irritated me. ‘What is it, Madala?’ I said at last. She stared at me as if she had never seen me before. ‘I don’t know,’ she said in her vague way. And then—‘Wasn’t it a lovely day?’ I waited. I knew she would go on sooner or later. Presently she said—‘That stone we sat on was damp. He was quite right.’ Then she said, thinking aloud as it were—‘You know, if a man has a really pleasant voice, I like it better than women’s voices. It’s so steady.’ And then—‘What did you think of him, Anita?’”
Miss Howe chuckled.
“And you said?”
“Oh, I said what I could. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. It was so obvious that the place and everyone in it was beglamoured for her. I said that he seemed a worthy, harmless person, or something to that effect. I forget exactly how I phrased it—I was tactful, of course. Oh, I remember, I said that she ought to put him into a book—that the old country doctors were disappearing, like the farmers and the parsons. I’m sure I appeared interested. But all she said was—‘Old? He’s not old. Would you call him old?’ ‘That was a figure of speech,’ I said. ‘I was thinking of the type. But all the same you can’t describe him as young, Madala.’ ‘Oh, he’s not a boy,’ she said. ‘No one ever said he was a boy.’ She didn’t say any more. But just as we were getting out at Victoria she cried—‘My cowslips! Anita, my cowslips! I’ve forgotten my cowslip ball.’ I told her that it wouldn’t have lasted anyway, with the stalks nipped off so short. But she looked as if she had lost a kingdom.”
“I believe I know that cowslip ball.” Miss Howe looked amused. “A cowslip ball, anyway. She had one sent to her once when I was there. I thought it was from her slum children.”