第63章 A KNIGHT(5)

He got up, paced restlessly to and fro, and sat down again."Iremember every word as if it were yesterday, all the things she said, and did; I've had a long time to think them over, you see.Well, Imust tell you, the first morning that I was able to get up, I missed her.Dalton came in her place, and I asked him where she was.'My dear fellow,' he answered, 'I've sent Eilie away to her old nurse's inn down on the river; she's better there at this time of year.' We looked at each other, and I saw that he had sent her away because he didn't trust me.I was hurt by this.Illness spoils one.He was right, he was quite right, for all he knew about me was that I could fight and had got drunk; but I am very quick-tempered.I made up my mind at once to leave him.But I was too weak--he had to put me to bed again.The very next morning he came and proposed that I should go into partnership with him.He kept a fencing-school and pistol-gallery.It seemed like the finger of God; and perhaps it was--who knows?" He fell into a reverie, and taking out his caporal, rolled himself a cigarette; having lighted it, he went on suddenly: "There, in the room above the school, we used to sit in the evenings, one on each side of the grate.The room was on the second floor, I remember, with two windows, and a view of nothing but the houses opposite.The furniture was covered up with chintz.The things on the bookshelf were never disturbed, they were Eilie's--half-broken cases with butterflies, a dead frog in a bottle, a horse-shoe covered with tinfoil, some shells too, and a cardboard box with three speckled eggs in it, and these words written on the lid: 'Missel-thrush from Lucy's tree--second family, only one blown.'" He smoked fiercely, with puffs that were like sharp sighs.

"Dalton was wrapped up in her.He was never tired of talking to me about her, and I was never tired of hearing.We had a number of pupils; but in the evening when we sat there, smoking--our talk would sooner or later--come round to her.Her bedroom opened out of that sitting--room; he took me in once and showed me a narrow little room the width of a passage, fresh and white, with a photograph of her mother above the bed, and an empty basket for a dog or cat." He broke off with a vexed air, and resumed sternly, as if trying to bind himself to the narration of his more important facts: "She was then fifteen--her mother had been dead twelve years--a beautiful, face, her mother's; it had been her death that sent Dalton to fight with us.Well, sir, one day in August, very hot weather, he proposed a run into the country, and who should meet us on the platform when we arrived but Eilie, in a blue sun-bonnet and frock-flax blue, her favourite colour.I was angry with Dalton for not telling me that we should see her; my clothes were not quite--my hair wanted cutting.

It was black then, sir," he added, tracing a pattern in the darkness with his stick."She had a little donkey-cart; she drove, and, while we walked one on each side, she kept looking at me from under her sunbonnet.I must tell you that she never laughed--her eyes danced, her cheeks would go pink, and her hair shake about on her neck, but she never laughed.Her old nurse, Lucy, a very broad, good woman, had married the proprietor of the inn in the village there.I have never seen anything like that inn: sweetbriar up to the roof! And the scent--I am very susceptible to scents!" His head drooped, and the cigarette fell from his hand.A train passing beneath sent up a shower of sparks.He started, and went on: "We had our lunch in the parlour--I remember that room very well, for I spent the happiest days of my life afterwards in that inn....We went into a meadow after lunch, and my friend Dalton fell asleep.A wonderful thing happened then.Eilie whispered to me, 'Let's have a jolly time.'

She took me for the most glorious walk.The river was close by.

A lovely stream, your river Thames, so calm and broad; it is like the spirit of your people.I was bewitched; I forgot my friend, Ithought of nothing but how to keep her to myself.It was such a day!

There are days that are the devil's, but that was truly one of God's.

She took me to a little pond under an elm-tree, and we dragged it, we two, an hour, for a kind of tiny red worm to feed some creature that she had.We found them in the mud, and while she was bending over, the curls got in her eyes.If you could have seen her then, I think, sir, you would have said she was like the first sight of spring....

We had tea afterwards, all together, in the long grass under some fruit-trees.If I had the knack of words, there are things that Icould say." He bent, as though in deference to those unspoken memories."Twilight came on while we were sitting there.A wonderful thing is twilight in the country! It became time for us to go.

There was an avenue of trees close by--like a church with a window at the end, where golden light came through.I walked up and down it with her.'Will you come again?' she whispered, and suddenly she lifted up her face to be kissed.I kissed her as if she were a little child.And when we said good-bye, her eyes were looking at me across her father's shoulder, with surprise and sorrow in them.'Why do you go away?' they seemed to say....But I must tell you," he went on hurriedly, "of a thing that happened before we had gone a hundred yards.We were smoking our pipes, and I, thinking of her--when out she sprang from the hedge and stood in front of us.Dalton cried out, 'What are you here for again, you mad girl?' She rushed up to him and hugged him; but when she looked at me, her face was quite different--careless, defiant, as one might say--it hurt me.Icouldn't understand it, and what one doesn't understand frightens one.

IV