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Chapter 23 Oh, more or less. I fancy my smile was pale. Not absolutely. We shouldnt like that! I went on. NoI suppose we shouldnt. Of course we have the others. We have the otherswe have indeed the others, I concurred. Yet even though we have them, he returned, still with his hands in his pockets and planted there in front of me, they dont much count, do they? I made the best of it, but I felt wan. It depends on what you call much! Yeswith all accommodationeverything depends! On this, however, he faced to the window again and presently reached it with his vague, restless, cogitating step. He remained there awhile, with his forehead against the glass, in contemplation of the stupid shrubs I knew and the dull things of November. I had always my hypocrisy of work, behind which, now, I gained the sofa. Steadying myself with it there as I had repeatedly done at those moments of torment that I have described as the moments of my knowing the children to be given to something from which I was barred, I sufficiently obeyed my habit of being prepared for the worst. But an extraordinary impression dropped on me as I extracted a meaning from the boys embarrassed backnone other than the impression that I was not barred now. This inference grew in a few minutes to sharp intensity and seemed bound up with the direct perception that it was positively he who was. The frames and squares of the great window were a kind of image, for him, of a kind of failure. I felt that I saw him, at any rate, shut in or shut out. He was admirable, but not comfortable: I took it in with a throb of hope. Wasnt he looking, through the haunted pane, for something he couldnt see?and wasnt it the first time in the whole business that he had known such a lapse? The first, the very first: I found it a splendid portent. It made him anxious, though he watched himself; he had been anxious all day and, even while in his usual sweet little manner he sat at table, had needed all his small strange genius to give it a gloss. When he at last turned round to meet me, it was almost as if this genius had succumbed. Well, I think Im glad Bly agrees with me! You would certainly seem to have seen, these twenty-four hours, a good deal more of it than for some time before. I hope, I went on bravely, that youve been enjoying yourself. Oh, yes, Ive been ever so far; all round aboutmiles and miles away. Ive never been so free. He had really a manner of his own, and I could only try to keep up with him. Well, do you like it? He stood there smiling; then at last he put into two wordsDo you?more discrimination than I had ever heard two words contain. Before I had time to deal with that, however, he continued as if with the sense that this was an impertinence to be softened. Nothing could be more charming than the way you take it, for of course if were alone together now its you that are alone most. But I hope, he threw in, you dont particularly mind! Having to do with you? I asked. My dear child, how can I help minding? Though Ive renounced all claim to your companyyoure so beyond meI at least greatly enjoy it. What else should I stay on for? He looked at me more directly, and the expression of his face, graver now, struck me as the most beautiful I had ever found in it. You stay on just for that? Certainly. I stay on as your friend and from the tremendous interest I take in you till something can be done for you that may be more worth your while. That neednt surprise you. My voice trembled so that I felt it impossible to suppress the shake. Dont you remember how I told you, when I came and sat on your bed the night of the storm, that there was nothing in the world I wouldnt do for you? |
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