IX
BELLWATTLE AND THE LAWS OF NATURE

It is not mine to distinguish between the laws of God and the laws of Nature. This is a distinction peculiar to Bellwattle.

It would be difficult to give precise definition to her conception of the subtle and imaginary line which divides the two, but, so far as I can grasp it, it would seem to be this: The laws of God determine those things which happen despite themselves and to the confusion of all Bellwattle’s pre-conceived opinions. When, for example, a caterpillar, in its hazardous struggle for existence, eats into the heart of her favourite rosebud, that is, for Bellwattle, one of the laws of God.

Now, the laws of Nature are quite different to this. The laws of Nature—so Bellwattle, I fancy, would tell you—command those things which happen of their own accord and to the satisfaction of all Bellwattle’s pre-conceived anticipations. When, for example, a rose tree bears a thousand blossoms from May to the end of December; when the peas are ready to pick in the first week in June, and the delphiniums have grown yet another inch when, every morning, she steps out into the garden to look at them—these are, for Bellwattle, the orderly workings of the laws of Nature.

I see her point. I sympathise with her distinction and I wish—oh, how I wish!—that I could think as she does. For it is a fixed idea with her. Nothing will shake it. And I have never met any one whose appreciation of Nature is as great as hers.

Only the other day—so Cruikshank, her husband, tells me—they came across a wild flower in one of the hedges. In blossom and general appearance it bore so close a relation to Shepherd’s Needle that at first sight of it, he dubbed it straight away. On closer examination it was found that there were no needles; neither could it be Shepherd’s Purse, for there were no purses.

“Perhaps it’s a Shepherd’s Needle gone wrong?” suggested Bellwattle, and Cruikshank tells me he left it at that. The sublime conception of it was beyond the highest reaches of his imagination.

On another occasion, when I had the honour to accompany her on her walk, we heard the raucous note of a bird from somewhere away in the meadows.

“I bet you don’t know what that is!” said I, to test her knowledge; but she answered quite easily—

“It’s a partridge.”

“No,” said I, a little disappointed at her mistake, “that’s a pheasant.”

“Oh, the same thing,” said Bellwattle, unperturbed.

“Of course; they both begin with a P,” said I.

And then she looked at me out of the corner of her eyes and blinked. I thank God I did not smile. She would never have believed in me again.

But it is when Bellwattle puts out her gentle hand to help Nature in her schemes that I think she is most lovable of all. This is the way with all true women when they love Nature for Nature’s sake. In fact, it sometimes seems to me, when I watch Bellwattle forestalling God at every turn, that she is Eve incarnate, the mother of all living. For to see her in the garden and the country, you would feel that she almost believes she has suffered the labours of maternity for every single thing that lives, from the first snowdrop opening its eyes to the spring to the last little tremulous calf, with its quaking knees, which the old cow in the farmyard presents to our neighbour over the way.

“The poor wee mite,” she says, and she gives it the tips of her fingers with which to ease its toothless gums.

But sometimes, as woman will, she carries this motherdom to excess. You may aid Nature to a point. Men do it in their pre-eminently practical way, which has science for the dry heart of it. Watch them pruning rose trees. I believe they take a positive pleasure in the knife. I am perfectly sure Bellwattle’s garden would be a forest of briars were it not that Cruikshank keeps locked within a little drawer a knife with a handle of horn, which he takes out in the month of March, when Bellwattle goes to pay a visit to her mother up in town. In fact, the visit is arranged for that purpose.

“I suppose it has to be done,” she says, packing her trunk. “But it seems a silly business to me that you should have to cut the arms and legs off a thing before it can grow properly. They bore roses last year. Why not this?”

But where Nature needs no aid, there is Bellwattle ready with her ever-helping hand. She constitutes herself in the capacity of nurse to all the birds in the garden.

Only this spring a linnet built its nest in the yew tree that grows in our hedge. In an unwise moment Cruikshank informed her of it. She ran off at once and counted the eggs. Five there were. She had seen eggs before, but these were the most beautiful that any bird had ever laid in its life.

From that moment she became so fussy and excitable that Cruikshank was at a loss to know what to do with her.

“She’ll drive the bird away,” said Cruikshank to me.

“Well, tell her so,” said I.

“I did.”

“Well?”

“She simply said, ‘The bird must know that I don’t mean to do any harm.’”

“No doubt she’s right,” said I. “I don’t suppose there’s an animal in the whole of creation that doesn’t recognise the maternal instinct when it sees it.”

That was all very well while there were only eggs to be reckoned with. But when one morning Bellwattle went to the nest and found five black little heads, like five little Hottentots grown old and grizzled, with shrivelled tufts of grey hair, there was no containing her.

She clapped her hands. She danced up and down and—

“Oh, the dears!” she cried. “Oh, the little dears! I must give them something to eat. What will they eat?”

I looked at Cruikshank. I had come round that morning to count his rosebuds with him—a weakness of his to which he always succumbs. He tells me it is the only way he can justify his use of the knife. I looked at him and he looked at me.

“This is going too far,” he whispered. “Can’t we put a stop to it?”

“Leave it to me,” said I, and Bellwattle, hearing our whispers, turned round and stared at us.

“What is it?” she asked.

“We were talking,” said I.

“Yes, but what about?”

She was fired with suspicion.

“We were wondering the best thing you could feed them with.”

Suspicion fell from her.

“What do you think?” she asked. “Would corn be any good?”

Cruikshank blew his nose.

“A little bit solid,” he said dubiously.

“You can’t do better than give them the same as their mother does,” I suggested.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Small worms,” I replied, and I watched her face; “those little thin, red, raw ones.”

She walked away, saying nothing. She hates worms. Well, naturally—every woman does.

Cruikshank laid an appreciative hand on my shoulder.

“That’s done it,” he said. “I was afraid she’d go worrying about till she made the poor little beast desert, but that’s done it.”

I was not so sure myself. Therefore it surprised me not at all the next morning when, arriving unexpectedly in the garden, I came upon her unawares, carrying at arm’s length two little wriggling worms. There was an expression on her face which will live in my memory for ever. I concealed myself behind a tree and watched. I could see nothing, but this is what I heard—

“Oh, you funny little mites! Bless your little hearts! Here, take it—take it! Open your mouth, you silly! Not so wide—not so wide. Well, if you all sit up like that you’ll fall out, you know. Lie down, you silly little fools; lie down! lie down! Now shut your mouth on it and you’ll find it. Shut your mouth!”

And so on and so on, till my laughter gave me away.

“Were you listening all the time?” she asked.

I nodded my head.

“So was the mother linnet,” said I, “up in that lilac tree. What do you think she’ll do now? She’ll think you’ve been trying to kill them.”

“No, she won’t,” said Bellwattle. “I left a big worm on the edge of the nest for her, so that she’ll know I’ve been feeding them.”

But something worse than that happened. With all this attention paid to that which by every law of Nature should have been kept a dead secret, the attention of Bellwattle’s cat was attracted to the spot. Next morning the nest was found empty and one of those brown little Hottentots hung dangling in the branches.

Bellwattle came running down the garden, wringing her hands, the tears glittering in her eyes, her lips quivering as she told us what had happened.

“That comes of meddling with Nature,” began Cruikshank, but I stopped him very quickly.

“If you stop her tears and make her angry,” I whispered, “she’ll never forgive you. Let her cry; it’s the way women learn.”