Man was made for Joy and Woe
And when this we rightly know
Thro' the World we safely go…
Every Night and every Morn
Some to Misery are born.
Every Morn and every Night
Some are born to Sweet Delight,
Some are born to Sweet Delight,
Some are born to Endless Night…
She looked up and saw me.
'Why are you looking at me like that, Mike?'
'Like what?'
'You're looking at me as though you loved me…'
'Of course I love you. How else should I be looking at you?'
'But what were you thinking just then?'
I answered slowly and truthfully: 'I was thinking of you as I saw you first – standing by a dark fir tree.' Yes, I'd been remembering that first moment of seeing Ellie, the surprise of it and the excitement…
Ellie smiled at me and sang softly
Every Morn and every Night
Some are born to Sweet Delight,
Some are born to Sweet Delight,
Some are born to Endless Night.
One doesn't recognise in one's life the really important moments – not until it's too late.
That day when we'd been to lunch with the Phillpots and came back so happily to our home was such a moment. But I didn't know it then – not until afterwards.
I said: 'Sing the song about the Fly.' And she changed to a gay little dance tune and sang:
Little Fly
Thy Summer's play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.
Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?
For I dance
And drink, and sing
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing
If thought is life
And strength and breath
And the want
Of thought is death;
Then am I
A happy fly
If I live
Or if I die.
Oh, Ellie – Ellie…
Chapter 15
It's astonishing in this world how things don't turn out at all the way you expect them to!
We'd moved into our house and were living there and we'd got away from everyone just the way I'd meant and planned. Only of course we hadn't got away from everyone. Things crowded back upon us across the ocean and in other ways.
First of all there was Ellie's blasted stepmother. She sent letters and cables and asked Ellie to go and see estate agents. She'd been so fascinated, she said, by our house that she really must have a house of her own in England. She said she'd love to spend a couple of months every year in England. And hard on her last cable she arrived and had to be taken round the neighbourhood with lots of orders to view. In the end she more or less settled on a house. A house about fifteen miles away from us. We didn't want her there, we hated the idea – but we couldn't tell her so. Or rather, what I really mean is even if we had told her so, it wouldn't have stopped her taking it if she'd wanted it. We couldn't order her not to come there. It was the last thing Ellie wanted. I knew that. However, while she was still awaiting a surveyor's report, some cables arrived.
Uncle Frank, it seemed, had got himself into a jam of some kind. Something crooked and fraudulent, I gathered, which would mean a big sum of money to get him out. More cables passed to and fro between Mr. Lippincott and Ellie.
And then there turned out to be some trouble between Stanford Lloyd and Lippincott. There was a row about some of Ellie's investments. I had felt, in my ignorance and credulity, that people who were in America were a long way away. I'd never realised that Ellie's relations and business connections thought nothing of taking a plane over to England for twenty-four hours and then flying back again.
First Stanford Lloyd flew over and back again. Then Andrew Lippincott flew over.
Ellie had to go up to London and meet them. I hadn't got the hang of these financial things. I think everybody was being fairly careful in what they said. But it was something to do with the settling up of the trusts on Ellie, and a kind of sinister suggestion that either Mr. Lippincott had delayed the matter or it was Stanford Lloyd who was holding up the accounting.
In a lull between these worries Ellie and I discovered our Folly. We hadn't really explored all our property yet (only the part just round the house). We used to follow up tracks through the woods and see where they led. One day we followed a sort of path that had been so overgrown that you couldn't really see where it was at first. But we tracked it out and in the end it came out at what Ellie said was a Folly. A sort of little white ridiculous temple looking place.
It was in fairly good condition so we cleared it up and had it painted and we put a table, and a few chairs in it and a divan and a corner cupboard in which we put china and glasses, and some bottles. It was fun really. Ellie said we'd have the path cleared and made easier to climb and I said no, it would be more fun if no one knew where it was except us. Ellie thought that was a romantic idea.
'We certainly won't let Cora know,' I said and Ellie agreed.
It was when we were coming down from there, not the first time but later, after Cora had gone away and we were hoping to be peaceful again, that Ellie, who was skipping along ahead of me, suddenly tripped over the root of a tree and fell and sprained her ankle.
