It also seemed that she found a way of enforcing her wishes, or at least preventing frequent transgressions of them, although, of course, she was prepared for occasional mishaps. There really was nothing at the "Dog and Pheasant" that the Captain could put up with even if he had not been always very short of money—absurdly short even of coppers—and Julia saw that he was short. There remained nothing for him but the hospitality of acquaintances, and they did not abound in Halgrave, the only place within reach; also, as he declared, they were a stingy lot. The next time he called upon his new friend, the veterinary surgeon, he was at a loss to understand this; it was unlike his previous experience of the man and most disagreeably surprising; he could not think why it should happen. But then he had not seen Julia set out for Halgrave on the afternoon of the same day that she explained things to him. She had on all her best clothes, even her best boots, in spite of the bad roads. She looked trim and dainty as a Frenchwoman, but there was something about her which suggested business.
There are, no doubt, advantages attached to the simple life. It is decidedly easier to deal with your drawback when you do not have to pretend it has no existence. You can enlist help from outside if you can go boldly to veterinary surgeons and others, and say that whisky is your father's weakness, and would they please oblige and gratify you by not offering him any.
CHAPTER XVII.
NARCISSUS TRIANDRUS STRIATUM, THE GOOD COMRADE
The winter wore away; a very long winter, and a very cold one to those at the cottage who were used to the mild west country. But at last spring came; late and with bitter winds and showers of sleet, but none the less wonderful, especially as one had to look to see the tentative signs of its coming. March in Marbridge used to mean violets and daffodils, tender green shoots and balmy middays. March here means days of pale clean light and great sweeping wind which chased grey clouds across a steely sky, and stirred the lust for fight and freedom in men's minds and set them longing to be up and away and at battle with the world or the elements. This restlessness, which those who have lost it call divine, took possession of Julia that springtime, and a dissatisfaction with the simple life and its narrow limits beset her. Surely, she found herself asking, this was not the end of all things—this cottage to be the limit of her life and ambitions; her work to grow cabbages and eat them, to keep her father in the paths of temperance and sobriety, and to make Johnny's closing days happy? The March winds spoke vaguely of other things; they whispered of the life she had put from her; the big, wide, moving, thinking, feeling life which would have been living indeed. Worse, they whispered of the man who had offered it to her, the man whom her heart told her she would have made friend and comrade if only circumstances had allowed him to make her wife. But she thrust these thoughts from her; she had no choice, she never had a choice; now less if possible than before, there was no heart-aching decision to make. The work she had taken up could not be put down; she must go on even if voices stronger and more real than these wind ones called her out.
One day the crocuses which Mijnheer had sent came into flower; Julia thought she had never seen anything so beautiful as the little purple and golden cups, partly because they had been sent in kindness of heart, partly, no doubt, because she had grown them herself, and she had never grown a flower which had its root in the inarticulate joy of all things at the first flowering of dead brown earth and monotonous lifeless days. The next event in her calendar, and Johnny's, was the blooming of the fruit trees. She had seen hillside orchards in the west country break into a foam of flower—a sight perhaps as beautiful as any England has to show. But, to her mind, it did not compare with the sparse white bloom which lay like a first hoar frost on her crooked trees and showed cold and delicate against the pale blue sky. After that, nearly every day, there was something fresh and interesting for Mr. Gillat and Julia, so that the March wind was forgotten, except in the ill-effect on Captain Polkington with whom it had disagreed a good deal, both in health and temper.
That spring, as indeed every spring, there was a flower show in London at the Temple Gardens. The things exhibited were principally bulb flowers, ixias, iris, narcissus and the like; the event was interesting to growers, both professional and amateur. Joost Van Heigen came over from Holland to attend; he was sent by his father in a purely business capacity, but of course he was expected, and himself expected, to enjoy it, too; there would be many novelties exhibited and many beautiful flowers in which he would feel the sober appreciative pleasure of the connoisseur. He came to England some days before the show; he had, besides attending that, to see some important customers on business, also one or two English growers.
Now, certain districts of Norfolk are very well suited to the cultivation of bulbs, so it is not surprising that Joost's business took him there. And, seeing that he had a Bradshaw and a good map, and had, moreover, six months ago addressed Julia's box of bulbs to her nearest railway town, it is not surprising that he found the whereabouts of the town of Halgrave. It was on Saturday night when he found it on the map; he was sitting in the coffee-room of a temperance hotel at the time. He had done business for the day, and, seeing that the English do not care about working on Sundays, he would probably have to-morrow as well as to-night free. Julia's town was close—a short railway journey, then a walk to Halgrave, and then one would be at her home—it would be a pleasant way of spending the morning of a spring Sunday. He thought about it a little; he had no invitation to go and see Julia, and he did not like going anywhere without an invitation or an express reason. She might not want to see him, or it might put out her domestic arrangements if he came; he knew domestic arrangements were subject to such disturbances. He hesitated some time, though it must be admitted that the fact that he had asked her to marry him and been refused did not come much into his consideration. He had not altered his mind about that proposal, and he did not imagine she had altered hers; his devotion and her indifference were definite settled facts which would remain as long as either of them remained, but there was nothing embarrassing in them to him. At last he decided that he would go, and it was the blue daffodil which decided him.