Bellwattle—she is named Bellwattle for the simple reason that one day in an inspired moment, she called her husband Cruikshank, and he replied giving her the name Bellwattle, quite foolish except between husband and wife—Bellwattle has the genuine mother’s heart for animals. Everything that crawls, walks or flies, Bellwattle loves. Some things, certainly, she loves more than others; but for all she has the deep-rooted, protective instinct. Spiders, for example, terrify her; flies and beetles she loathes, but would not kill one of them even if they crawled upon her dress. And they do.
Now Bellwattle has a garden which she loves. You can see already, if you have but the mind for it, the tragic conflict which, with that love of her flowers, she must wage between her own soul and the laws of God.
For this, I must tell you, is a lovely garden—not one of those prim-set portions, with well-cut hedges and beds in orthodox array. It is an old garden that has been allowed to run to ruin and Bellwattle, possessing it in the nick of time, has planted primroses amongst the nettles; has carved a little herbaceous border where once potatoes grew. She has thrown roses here, there, and everywhere and, in soap and sugar boxes covered with glass at the bottom of the garden under the nut trees, she forces the old-fashioned flowers that we knew—you and I—in the long-ago days when sweet-william and candytuft were things to boast about and foxgloves grew like beanstalks up to heaven.
But perhaps the most glorious thing in Bellwattle’s garden, that also in which she takes the greatest pride, is her hedges of sweet pea. They grow in great walls of dazzling colour, and the bees hum about them all day long. But they are the devil and all to raise.
Now this is where the tragic conflict comes in, between the mice and the birds and the slugs and Bellwattle’s kitten and Bellwattle’s heart. It is a terrible conflict, I can tell you; for the laws of God are unalterable, and so is the heart of Bellwattle.
This, then, is what happens: Bellwattle forgot to cover the sweet pea seeds with red lead. It is just the sort of thing a woman would forget. I doubt if I could think of it myself. Then followed the natural result. A shrew-mouse got hold of one or two of them, and Bellwattle wondered why on earth God ever made shrew-mice.
“But they’re dear little things,” I told her.
“I can’t help that,” said she. “What’s the sense in making a thing that goes and eats up other things?”
Which, of course, was unanswerable.
Two days after this had happened, the kitten was seen playing with a live shrew-mouse.