I cross over to the cliff edge. Here the gorse is aflame with blossom; the short dry grass is full of tiny insect life. Various larks are singing; each one seems to sing the same song differently; perhaps each never sings the same arrangement twice!
I go down the precipitous coastguards' stairs. At every step it grows hotter. Down on the beach it is very hot, but there is shade to be found among the boulders at the cliff's base. I sit down and stare along the vacant shore; at the ships floating on the sea; at the clouds floating in the sky; there is no sound but the little grey-green waves as they break and slosh upon the stones.
I think of Catherine and Annie, and I remark that the breakwaters are formed of hop-poles, twined together and clasped with red-rusted iron girdles; the wood has been washed by the tides white and clean as bones. I wonder whether I shall ask Annie to be my wife, and I wonder also whence came those—literally—millions of wine bottle corks that strew the beach to my right. From a wreck? from old fishing nets? or merely from the natural consumption of beer at the building of the breakwater?
Coming back to Down End, I find a travelling threshing machine at work in the rick-yard. I had heard the monotonous thrumming of its wheels a good way off. The scene is one of great animation, the machine is drawn up against the conical-shaped haystack, its black smoke stretches out in serpentine coils against the sky. A dozen men are busy about her: those who work her, old Anderson, son Robert—a dreadful lout he is too, quite unlike his sister—various other louts of the same calibre, the two little boys, very much in everyone's way, and Mrs. Anderson and Annie, who have just brought out jugs of ale. I naturally stop to say a few words to Annie and watch the threshing. Anderson is grinding out some of last year's oats for the cattle.
Son Robert comes to take a pull out of Annie's jug. "That's prime, measter, ain't it?" he says to me, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. I go in thoughtfully. Is son Robert exactly the sort of man I should care to call brother-in-law?
April 11, 12.—These two days I have been casting up the pros and cons of a marriage with Annie. Shall it be—or not be? I suffer from a Hamlet-like perplexity. On the one hand I get a good, an amiable, an adoring little wife, who would forestall my slightest wish, who would warm my slippers for me, for whom I should be the Alpha and Omega of existence. She would never argue with me, never contradict me, never dream of laughing at me; would never laugh at all unless I allowed her, for she would give into my keeping, as a good wife should, the key of her smiles and of her tears. But of course I should wish her to laugh. I should wish the dear little creature to remain as merry and thoughtless as possible. Dear Annie! what surprise and delight will shine in your innocent blue eyes when I tell you my story! Your childlike gratitude will be almost embarrassing. Last, and perhaps most weighty pro of all—when Catherine hears of it she will be filled with regret; yes, she may act indifference as gaily as she pleases, I am convinced that in her heart of hearts she will be sorry.
Now for the cons; they, too, are many. As I said before, I should not like son Robert to call me brother. I should find honest old Anderson père rather a trial with his red beard, his broken nails, the yawning chasm between his upper teeth; even Mrs. Anderson, so comely and pleasant here in her own farm-house, would suffer by being transplanted to Lincoln's Inn. So might little Annie herself. A lapsed "h" in a country hay-field has much less significance than when lost at a London dinner-table. How is it, I wonder, that while the dear child generally speaks of 'ay and 'ouse, she invariably besmirches with the strongest of aspirates the unfortunate village of H'Orton? Still, it would be easy to correct this, delightful to educate her during our quiet evenings, to read with her all my favourite prose writers and poets! And, even supposing she couldn't learn, is classical English in the wife an infallible source of married happiness? Let me penetrate below externals and examine into the realities of things.
I spend most of Friday and Saturday in this examination without making any sensible progress until supper on Saturday night, when I casually mention to Annie, who is laying the table, that I am bound to leave Down End on the following Monday, as term begins on the 15th.
"Must you really go? Well, we shall miss you, surely," says Annie. And I am not mistaken; there is a wistfulness in her blue eyes, a poignant regret in her voice that goes to my heart.
No, Annie! that decides me; I have suffered too much from blighted affection ever to inflict the same pangs on another. I am too well read myself in Love's sad, glad book to mistake the signs written in your innocent face. Without vanity I can see how different I must appear in your eyes to all the farm hands and country bumpkins you have hitherto met; without fatuity I can understand how unconsciously almost to yourself you have given me your young affections. Well, to-morrow you shall know you have won back mine in exchange.