"Hang it all, how she sticks in one's mind," said Anthony, with
impatience. "Am I returning to my cubhood, that the mere vision of a
woman should take possession of me like this?"
And then, having, I suppose, weighed the question, "It's the weather," he
decided. "Yes--I 'll bet you ten-and-sixpence that it's nothing more
than just this silly, sentimental, languorous June weather."
He was seated in a shaded corner of his garden, where the day was
murmurous with the humming of bees, and the mingled sweetness of many
flowers rose and fell in the air. Beyond the shade, the sunshine broke
into a mosaic of merry colours, on larkspur and iris, pansies and pink
geraniums, jessamine, sweet-peas, tulips shameless in their extravagance
of green and crimson, red and white carnations, red, white, and yellow
roses. The sunshine broke into colour, it laughed, it danced, it almost
rioted, among the flowers; but in the prim alleys, and on the formal
hedges of box, and the quaintly-clipped yews, and the old purple brick
walls, where fruit trees were trellised, it lay fast, fast asleep.
Without the walls, in the deep cool greenery of the park, there was a
perpetual drip-drip of bird-notes. This was the web, upon which a chosen
handful of more accomplished birds were embroidering and
cross-embroidering and inter-embroidering their bold, clear arabesques of
song. Anthony had a table and a writing-case before him, and was trying
to write letters. But now he put down his pen, and, for the twentieth
time this afternoon, went over the brief little encounter of the morning.
Two ladies had passed him in a dog-cart, as he was walking home from the
village: a young lady driving, an oldish lady beside her, and a groom
behind.
That was all: the affair of ten seconds; and at first he was not aware of
any deeper or more detailed impression. He had glanced at them vaguely;
he was naturally incurious; and he had been thinking of other things.
But by-and-bye, as if his retina had reacted like a photographic plate, a
picture developed itself, which, in the end, by a series of recurrences,
became quite singularly circumstantial. The dog-cart and its occupants,
with the stretch of brown road, and the hedge-rows and meadows at either
side, were visible anew to him; and he saw that the young lady who was
driving had dark hair and dark eyes, and looked rather foreign; and he
said, but without much concern as yet, "Ah, that was no doubt Madame
Torrebianca, with her friend Miss What 's-her-name;"--and proceeded again
to think of other things.
The picture faded; but presently it came back. He noticed now that the
slightly foreign-looking young woman was pretty, and even
interesting-looking; that besides its delicate modelling and its warm,
rather Southern colouring, there was character in her face, personality;
that there were intelligence, humour, vivacity; that she looked as if she
would have something to say. He noticed, too, that she had what they
call "a fine figure,"--that she was tall, for a woman, and slender
without being thin; that she bore herself well, with an air of strength,
with an air of suppleness and resistance. He could even see how she was
dressed: in grey cloth, close-fitting, with grey driving-gloves, and a
big black hat that carried out the darkness of her hair. And he was
intrepid enough to trust his man's judgment, and to formulate an opinion
of her dress. She was very well dressed, he ventured to opine; far too
cunningly and meticulously dressed for an Englishwoman. There was
something of French unity, intention, finish, in her toilet; there was
_line_ in it, the direct, crisp line, that only foreign women seem
anxious to achieve.
And he said, "I rather hope it _is_ Madame Torrebianca--since one has got
to know her. She looks as if she might have a spice of something in her
not utterly banale."
If that was n't saying a great deal, he reflected, one seldom enough, in
our staid, our stale society, meets a person of whom one can say so
much;--and again dismissed her.
But still again, presently, back she came; and then again and again, in
spite of him. And her comings now were preceded by a strange little
perturbation. A strange little vague feeling of pleasantness, as if
something good had happened to him would begin, and well up, and grow
within him, penetrating and intensifying his sense of the summer
sweetness round about, till it distracted his attention, and he must
suspend his occupation of the moment, to wonder, "What is it?" In
response, the vague pleasantness, like a cloud, would draw together and
take shape; and there was the spirited grey figure in the dog-cart, with
the black hat, and the dark hair and eyes, again dashing past him.
And little by little he discovered that she was more than merely pretty
and interesting-looking. Her face, with all its piquancy, was a serious
face, a strenuous face. Under its humour and vivacity, he discovered a
glow . . . a glow . . . could it be the glow of a soul? Her eyes were
lustrous, but they were deep, as well. A quality shone in them rarer
even than character: a natural quality, indeed, and one that should
naturally be common: but one that is rare in England among women--among
nice women, at least: the quality of sex. The woman in the dog-cart was
nice. About that, he recognised with instant certainty, there could be
no two conjectures. But she was also, he recognised with equal
certainty, a woman: the opposite, the complement of man. Her eyes were
eyes you could imagine laughing at you, mocking you, teasing you, leading
you on, putting you off, seeing through you, disdaining you; but constant
in them was the miracle of womanhood; and you could imagine them
softening adorably, filling with heavenly weakness, yielding in womanly
surrender, trusting you, calling you, needing you.
Our melancholic young squire of Craford was not a man much given to
quick-born enthusiasms; but now, as he put down his pen, and her face
shone before him for the twentieth time this sunny afternoon, now all at
once, "By Jove, she's unique," he cried out. "I have never seen a woman
to touch her. If she _is_ Madame Torrebianca----"
But there he checked himself.
"Of course she is n't. No such luck," he said, in dejection.
And yet, he speculated, who else could she be? The simultaneous presence
of _two_ young foreign women in this out-of-the-way country neighbourhood
seemed, of all contingencies, the most unlikely. Well, if she really was
. . .
He was conscious suddenly of a sensation to the last degree unfamiliar: a
commotion, piercing, regretful, desirous, actually in his heart, an organ
he had for years proudly fancied immune; and he took alarm.
"Am I eighteen again? Positively, I must not think of her any more."
But it was useless. In two minutes he was thinking of her harder than
ever, and the commotion in his heart was renewed.
"If she really is Madame Torrebianca," he told himself, with a thrill and
a craving, "I shall see her on Sunday."
The flowers, beyond there, in the sun, the droning of the bees, the
liquid bird-notes, the perfumes in the still soft air, all seemed to melt
and become part of his thought of her, rendering it more poignant, more
insidiously sweet.
At last he started up, in a kind of anger.
"Bah!" he cried, "It's the weather. It's this imbecile, love-sick
weather."
And he carried his writing-materials indoors, to the billiard-room, a
northern room, looking into the big square court, where the light was
colourless, and the only perfume on the air was a ghost-like perfume of
last night's tobacco-smoke.