Then instantly I discovered the cause of the bird's alarm. At first I
fancied that this strange figure was at some little distance. Then I
realized that his stature had misled me, and that he could not be more
than twenty or thirty yards away. Standing there, with fixed, white face
and black hair, under a flowering blackthorn, he remained as motionless
and as intent as I. He was not more than a few inches, apparently,
superior in height to myself.
"So," I seemed to whisper, as gaze met gaze, "there!" hardly certain the
while if he was real or an illusion. Indeed, if, even then before my
eyes, he had faded out into the tangle of thorn, twig, and thin-spun
blossom above and around him, it would not have greatly astonished,
though it would have deeply disappointed me. With a peculiar, trembling
curiosity, I held him with my gaze. If he would not disclose himself,
then must I.
Slowly and deliberately my cold hand crept out and grasped my parasol.
Without for a moment removing my eyes from this interloper's face, I
pushed its ribbed silk tent taut into the air. Click! went the tiny
spring; and at that he stirred.
"Who are you: watching me?" I cried in a low, steady voice across the
space that divided us. His head stooped a little. I fancied--and
feared--that he was about to withdraw. But after a pause he drew himself
up and came nearer, casting, as he approached, his crooked shadow away
from the sun on the close-cropped turf beside him.
To this day I sometimes strive in vain to see, quite clearly in my mind,
that face, as it appeared at that first meeting. A different memory of
it obtrudes itself; yet how many, many times have I searched his
features for news of himself, and looked passingly--and once with final
intensity--into those living eyes. But I recollect that his clothes
looked slightly out of keeping and grotesque amid the green things of
early spring. It seemed he had wasted in them. So, too, the cheek had
wasted over its bone, and seemed parched; the thin lips, the ears
slightly pointed. And then broke out his low, hollow voice. Scarcely
rising or falling, the mere sound of it seemed to be as full of meaning
as the words.
He looked at me, and at all I possessed, as if piece by piece--as if he
had been a long time searching for them all. Yet he now seemed to avoid
my eyes, though they were serenely awaiting his. Indeed from this moment
almost to the last, I was never at a loss or distressed in his company.
He never called me out of myself beyond an easy and happy return, though
he was to creep into my imagination as easily as a single bee creeps
into the thousand-celled darkness of its hive.
Whenever I parted from him, his remembrance was like that of one of
those strange figures which thrust themselves as if out of the
sleep-world into the mind's wakefulness; vividly, darkly, impress
themselves upon consciousness, and then are gone. So I sometimes wonder
if I ever really knew him, if he was ever perfectly real to me; like
Fanny, for instance. Yet he made no pretence to be mysterious, and we
were soon talking together almost as naturally as if we were playmates
of childhood who had met again after a long separation.
He confessed that, quite unknown to me, he had watched me come and go in
the cold mornings of winter, when frost had soon driven me home again
out of the bare, frozen woods. He had even been present, I think, when
Fanny and I had shared--or divided--the stars between us. A faint
distaste at any rate showed itself on his face when he admitted that he
had seen me not alone. I was unaccustomed to that kind of interest, and
hardly knew whether to be pleased or angry.
"But you know I come here to be alone," I said as courteously as
possible.
"Yes," he answered, with face turned away. "That's how I saw you."
Without my being aware of it, too, he played a kind of chess with me,
seizing each answer in turn for hook on which to hang another question.
What had I to conceal? Of my short history, though not of myself, I told
him freely; yet asked him few questions in return. Nor at that time did
I even consider how strange a chance had brought two such human beings
as he and I to this place of meeting. Yet, after all, whales are but
little creatures by comparison with the ocean in which they roam, and
glow-worm will keep tryst with glow-worm in forests black as night.
Through all he said was woven a thread of secrecy. So low and monotonous
was his voice (not lifting itself much, but only increasing in resonance
when any thought angered or darkened his mind); so few were his gestures
that he might have been talking in his sleep. Not once that long morning
did he laugh, not even when I mischievously proffered him my parasol (as
he sat a few paces away) to screen him from the March sun! Solemnly he
shared Mrs Bowater's biscuits with me, scattering the crumbs to a robin
that hopped up between us, as if he had been invited to our breakfast.
His head hung so low between his heavy shoulders that it reminded me of
a flower stooping for want of water. Not that there was anything limp or
fragile or gentle in his looks. He was, far rather, clumsy and ugly in
appearance, yet with a grace in his look like that of an old, haggled
thorn-tree when the wind moves its branches. And anyhow, he was come to
be my friend--out of the unknown. And when I looked around at the serene
wild loveliness of the garden, it seemed to be no less happy a place
because it was no longer quite a solitude.
"You read," he said, glancing reflectively, but none too
complimentarily, at my book.
"It isn't wise to think too much." I replied solemnly, shutting Miss
Austen up. "Besides, as I haven't the opportunity of seeing many people
in the flesh, you know, the next best thing is to meet them in
books--specially in this kind of book. If only I were Jane Austen; my
gracious, I would enjoy myself! Her people are just the same as people
are now--inside. I doubt if leopards really want to change their spots.
But of course"--I added, since he did not seem inclined to express any
opinion--"I read other kinds of books as well. That's the best of being
a dunce--there's so much to learn! Just lately I have been learning to
tie knots."