CHAPTER XXI
THE RING OF EROS
FAR away from London Pippa was swinging on a gate. Her dress had become rather faded from much sunshine, and her straw hat had been baked quite brown. She had it well pulled down to shade her eyes, so that it hid the upper part of her face.
An hour ago Pippa had been crying, and for the reason that the purple-shadowed landscape had refused to be interpreted on canvas through the medium of paints and brushes and her own little brown right hand. Barnabas at her earnest request had lent her the materials. It was not the first time she had tried with them. He had watched her in silence as she messed away with the paints. Suddenly she flung the canvas face downwards on the grass and burst into tears.
“What is it, Kiddy?” asked Barnabas, putting his arm round her.
“It’s all out vere,” she said, nodding towards the sunny landscape, “and I can see it, and I want to tell it to myself and ozzer peoples, like you tell your pictures, and I can’t—oh, I can’t.” She rubbed her tear-stained face up and down on Barnabas’ coat-sleeve in an access of despair.
“But, childie,” expostulated Barnabas, “one can’t ‘tell pictures,’ as you say, all in a moment. One has to learn.”
Pippa shook her head. “Not me,” she said. “I shall never learn. I can’t ever tell pictures. And it’s all here,” she put her hand to her heart, “and I want to say it so badly.”
For a minute Barnabas was silent. Then he spoke.
“Once,” he said, “there was a boy who saw that the world was very beautiful and he wanted to tell his own beautiful thoughts about it to himself and to other people. One day he heard a man playing the violin. And the man made the violin speak so that in its music it said the most wonderful things. It told about the moon shining on a sleeping sea, and the secrets the little waves whispered to the shore. It told of silver streams whose banks were starred with primroses, and it told of great forests where the trees were standing dark and still in the purple night waiting for the first rosy flush of dawn. It told of the laughter of little children, and the songs young mothers sing to their babies. All these things the music of the violin told, and the boy listened, and said to himself, ‘I will play the violin, for I know now the way I can tell my thoughts to the world.’”
Pippa was listening entranced. “Had he got a violin?” she asked.