“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 glowworm will keep tryst with glowworm 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.”
I laughed, and discovered that I was blushing.
He raised his eyes slowly to my face, then looked so long and earnestly at my hands, that I was forced to hide them away under my bag. Long before I had noticed that his own hands were rather large and powerful for his size. Fanny’s face
