“I’m going to put these shortest-stemmed ones in a saucer,” Ariel explained. “Isn’t there something special, don’t you think, about little white and yellow violets? Secret and special? They sort of break my heart....”
He should hear how her voice didn’t tremble. She repeated the silly words to make sure that he heard how it didn’t: “They sort of break my heart.”
“Yes? Well, spring sort of breaks my heart,” Hugh responded.
Chapter XXI
Joan heard voices over toward Wild Acres. They came from the top of the wall which for half a mile or so shut off Holly’s well-kept grounds from the wildwood tangle of the neighboring estate. Although she was courting solitude this afternoon, or had intended to, Joan turned that way, out of curiosity, and in a minute or so four backs were presented to her. Persis, Nicky, their nurse, Alice, and Ariel Clare were all up on the wall, their legs swinging over on the Wild Acres side, their faces wildwood-tangleward, talking. Much overheard talk sounds like monkey chatter, when the words are indistinguishable, but not this of the two girls and the two children. With such inflections, such deliberate tranquillity, the gods might converse on Olympus. Joan drew nearer the beatitude of intercourse, walking softly on moist spring ground, ears beginning to catch the words.
The children sat between the two girls. It was Nicky speaking now, but with a manner of speech Joan had never heard him use before, unhurried and clear. So many imaginative and sensitive children, when speaking to an adult, or even to their own contemporaries, have a nervous, anxious note in their voices, from fear of interruption or misapprehension; and Nicky was no exception. But now it was different. Now he spoke with unruffled but expedient precision.
“Yes.... I should stay away as long as I wished. Perhaps until the next spring. And even then I would not come home unless the pony would come with me. But he would come. He would come for a year.”
Persis interrupted, but calmly, not startlingly. “Where would he sleep, Nicky? Would he have to sleep with the horses in the stables?”
“Of course not. Not this pony. He would just walk up the back stairs, nights, not disturbing anybody. And mornings, long before anybody else is up, even before the servants are up, he will take me for long rides on his back, first through Wild Acres, jumping all the lowest trees and streams, and this wall, and then way beyond even Wild Acres. But Ariel will be awake. She will lean out of her window and call, ‘Whoa!’ I’ll pull him up, and we’ll say good morning to each other, and how did we sleep? When we go on Ariel’ll see us jump the sundial in the rose garden. But that will be nothing, quite a low jump, compared to some of the trees we take in our leaps. And during the day, Persis can sometimes go rides on him if she likes, so long as she’s careful that nobody sees him, and Alice, you can have him too, often. But Ariel can have him nights. When there’s starlight. And she’ll wear the hat with the green feather. And nobody but us four’ll know there is a pony. And that’s all.... Now it’s Ariel’s turn.”
When before, in Joan’s knowledge, had Nicky ever had a chance to say, “And that’s all”? She was pricked by a light remorse. Some time she must be patient, let him say his say through to her, his mother,—and for reward at the end, hear his “And that’s all,” like a little clear bell ringing benedictus through a tranquil world.