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—
“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.