The Well of Loneliness Read Online Free Page A

Stephen might suddenly push her, in anger: ‘You’re a beast! How I hate you, Collins!’
    And now Stephen had taken to keeping awake every night, in order to build up pictures: pictures of herself companioned by Collins in all sorts of happy situations. Perhaps they would be walking in the garden, hand in hand, or pausing on a hillside to listen to the cuckoo; or perhaps they would be skimming over miles of blue ocean in a queer little ship with a leg-of-mutton sail, like the one in the fairy story. Sometimes Stephen pictured them living alone in a low thatched cottage by the side of a mill stream—she had seen such a cottage not very far from Upton—and the water flowed quickly and made talking noises; there were sometimes dead leaves on the water. This last was a very intimate picture, full of detail, even to the red china dogs that stood one at each end of the high mantelpiece, and the grandfather clock that ticked loudly. Collins would sit by the fire with her shoes off. ‘Me feet’s that swollen and painful,’ she would say. Then Stephen would go and cut rich bread and butter—the drawing-room kind, little bread and much butter—and would put on the kettle and brew tea for Collins, who liked it very strong and practically boiling, so that she could sip it from her saucer. In this picture it was Collins who talked about loving, and Stephen who gently but firmly rebuked her: ‘There, there, Collins, don’t be silly, you are a queer fish!’ And yet all the while she would be longing to tell her how wonderful it was, like honeysuckle blossom—something very sweet like that—or like fields smelling strongly of new-mown hay, in the sunshine. And perhaps she would tell her, just at the very end—just before the last picture faded.
    4
    In these days Stephen clung more closely to her father, and this in a way was because of Collins. She could not have told you why it was so, she only felt that it was. Sir Philip and his daughter would walk on the hillsides, in and out of the black-thorn and young green bracken; they would walk hand in hand with a deep sense of friendship, with a deep sense of mutual understanding.
    Sir Philip, knew all about wild flowers and berries, and the ways of young foxes and rabbits and such people. There were many rare birds, too, on the hills near Malvern, and these he would point out to Stephen. He taught her the simpler laws of nature, which, though simple, had always filled him with wonder: the law of the sap as it flowed through the branches, the law of the wind that came stirring the sap, the law of bird life and the building of nests, the law of the cuckoo’s varying call, which in June changed to Cuckoo-kook!’ He taught out of love for both subject and pupil, and while he thus taught he watched Stephen.
    Sometimes, when the child’s heart would feel full past bearing, she must tell him her problems in small, stumbling phrases. Tell him how much she longed to be different, longed to be someone like Nelson.
    She would say: ‘Do you think that I could be a man, supposing I thought very hard—or prayed, Father?’
    Then Sir Philip would smile and tease her a little, and would tell her that one day she would want pretty frocks, and his teasing was always excessively gentle, so that it hurt not at all.
    But at times he would study his daughter gravely, with his strong, cleft chin tightly cupped in his hand. He would watch her at play with the dogs in the garden, watch the curious suggestion of strength in her movements, the long line of her limbs—she was tall for her age—and the poise of her head on her over-broad shoulders. Then perhaps he would frown and become lost in thought, or perhaps he might suddenly call her:
    ‘Stephen, come here!’
    She would go to him gladly, waiting expectant for what he should say; but as likely as not he would just hold her to him for a moment, and then let go of her abruptly. Getting up he would turn to the house and his study, to spend all the