“But I should have missed a precious experience,” said he. “You forget what I couldn’t help being supremely conscious of—that I bear those arms with a difference. I hope, though, that you won’t begrudge the journey to town. I think there are certain aspects of your character that I might never have discovered if I’d met you in any other way.”
That evening Johannah wrote a letter:
“Dear Mr. Burrell,—Ce que femme veut, Dieu le veut. The first part of my rash little prophecy has already come true. Will Stretton is staying in this house, a contented guest. At the present moment he’s hovering about the piano, where Madame Dornaye is playing Chopin; and he’s just remarked that he never hears Chopin without thinking of those lines of Browning’s:
’I discern
Infinite passion, and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn.’
I quite agree with you, he is a charming creature. So now I repeat the second part of my rash little prophecy: Before the summer’s over he will have accepted at least a good half of his paternal fortune. Ce que femme veut, le diable ne saurait pas l’empêcher. He will, he shall, even if I have to marry him to make him.—Yours ever, Johannah Silver.”
III
Will left his room somewhat early the next morning, and went down into the garden. The sun was shining briskly, the dew still sparkled on the grass, the air was heady with a hundred keen earth-odours. A mile away, beyond the wide green levels of Sumpter Meads, the sea glowed blue as the blue of larkspur, under the blue June sky. And everywhere, everywhere, innumerable birds piped and twittered, filling the world with a sense of gay activity, of whole-hearted, high-hearted life.
“What! up already?” a voice called softly, from behind him.