"Look at the silly blue-caps, my beauty," she crooned,
holding up the infant to the window, where shone the white
garden, and the blue-tits scuffling in the snow: "Look at the
silly blue-caps, my darling, having a fight in the snow! Look at
them, my bird--beating the snow about with their wings, and
shaking their heads. Oh, aren't they wicked things, wicked
things! Look at their yellow feathers on the snow there! They'll
miss them, won't they, when they're cold later on.
"Must we tell them to stop, must we say 'stop it' to them, my
bird? But they are naughty, naughty! Look at them!" Suddenly her
voice broke loud and fierce, she rapped the pane sharply.
"Stop it," she cried, "stop it, you little nuisances. Stop
it!" She called louder, and rapped the pane more sharply. Her
voice was fierce and imperative.
"Have more sense," she cried.
"There, now they're gone. Where have they gone, the silly
things? What will they say to each other? What will they say, my
lambkin? They'll forget, won't they, they'll forget all about
it, out of their silly little heads, and their blue caps."
After a moment, she turned her bright face to her
husband.
"They were really fighting, they were really fierce
with each other!" she said, her voice keen with excitement and
wonder, as if she belonged to the birds' world, were identified
with the race of birds.
"Ay, they'll fight, will blue-caps," he said, glad when she
turned to him with her glow from elsewhere. He came and stood
beside her and looked out at the marks on the snow where the
birds had scuffled, and at the yew trees' burdened, white and
black branches. What was the appeal it made to him, what was the
question of her bright face, what was the challenge he was
called to answer? He did not know. But as he stood there he felt
some responsibility which made him glad, but uneasy, as if he
must put out his own light. And he could not move as yet.
Anna loved the child very much, oh, very much. Yet still she
was not quite fulfilled. She had a slight expectant feeling, as
of a door half opened. Here she was, safe and still in
Cossethay. But she felt as if she were not in Cossethay at all.
She was straining her eyes to something beyond. And from her
Pisgah mount, which she had attained, what could she see? A
faint, gleaming horizon, a long way off, and a rainbow like an
archway, a shadow-door with faintly coloured coping above it.
Must she be moving thither?
Something she had not, something she did not grasp, could not
arrive at. There was something beyond her. But why must she
start on the journey? She stood so safely on the Pisgah
mountain.