‘I do not want it to pass like that, to die of mere numbness. So much else will die along with it, if it does.’
‘Fight it down.’
‘No, no, no! What a bludgeon man you are! You must be killing something. And you can’t kill a sorrow or a weakness by what you call fighting it. Perhaps it will kill you instead. I know; do you think I have never had to try? Now listen to what I say. Whenever you are weak, or whenever you are bad, you are not to go into battle with your own heart and twang off little texts at it. Heart will put on its casing, and turn the points of the texts; or, perhaps, twang back at you, and you will both be wounded and worried, that’s all. And, if you win, you have either a corpse before you, or a slave, and there’s a nice union till death do us part!’
‘You are to run away, perhaps. Is that your woman’s science of war?’
‘Oh, now we have heard the mocking bird on the Island!’ she said, in grave rebuke. ‘But that is just it; you are to run away, but always to higher ground. Leave your weakness and your badness alone, and try for goodness, that is all. Don’t waste yourself in the marshes; the mountain is the best place. An old man who had lived in India with the priests told me that, and I gave him some yams for it. He was cook to a whaler. Yet you say we don’t know how to trade.’
‘But what has all this to do with my healing powers? That is what puzzles me.’
‘Lead us to the higher ground,’ she said, laying her hand on my arm.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Civilise us. Make us like England. Give us larger things to live for. Tell us what we must do. There must be something wanting, but I cannot tell what it is. It all seems so beautiful here—the shining sun, friends to love, peace, the singing, the sea, the very wind in this wood! Yet I know there must be something. That is why the Queen’s ships never come again. We are like children, perhaps.’
‘Keep so.’