Then she realized that he had forgotten everything; forgotten her, forgotten what had happened, even forgotten what he was like when he was young.
“Stop being polite,” she said coldly. “You were not polite when I saw you last.”
“I am very sorry,” he exclaimed, suddenly alarmed.
“Turn round. Look at the mountains.”
“Yes, yes.” His fishy eyes blinked nervously. He fiddled with his watch chain which lay in a furrow of his waistcoat. He ran away to warn some poorly dressed children off the view-terrace. When he returned she still insisted.
“I must tell you,” she said, in calm, businesslike tones. “Look at that great mountain, round which the road goes south. Look halfway up, on its eastern side—where the flowers are. It was there that you once gave yourself away.”
He gaped at her in horror. He remembered. He was inexpressibly shocked.
It was at that moment that Colonel Leyland returned.
She walked up to him, saying, “This is the man I spoke of yesterday.”
“Good afternoon; what man?” said Colonel Leyland fussily. He saw that she was flushed, and concluded that someone had been rude to her. Since their relations were somewhat anomalous, he was all the more particular that she should be treated with respect.
“The man who fell in love with me when I was young.”
“It is untrue!” cried the wretched Feo, seeing at once the trap that had been laid for him. “The lady imagined it. I swear, sir—I meant nothing. I was a lad. It was before I learnt behaviour. I had even forgotten it. She reminded me. She has disturbed me.”
“Good Lord!” said Colonel Leyland. “Good Lord!”
“I shall lose my place, sir; and I have a wife and children. I shall be ruined.”
“Sufficient!” cried Colonel Leyland. “Whatever Miss Raby’s intentions may be, she does not intend to ruin you.”
“You have misunderstood me, Feo,” said Miss Raby gently.
“How unlucky we have been missing each other,” said Colonel Leyland, in trembling tones that were meant to be nonchalant. “Shall we go a little walk before dinner? I hope that you are stopping.”
She did not attend. She was watching Feo. His alarm had subsided; and he revealed a new emotion, even less agreeable to her. His shoulders straightened, he developed an irresistible smile, and, when he saw that she was looking and that Colonel Leyland was not, he winked at her.
It was a ghastly sight, perhaps the most hopelessly depressing of all the things she had seen at Vorta. But its effect on her was memorable. It evoked a complete vision of that same man as he had been twenty years before. She could see him to the smallest detail of his clothes or his hair, the flowers in his hand, the graze on his wrist, the heavy bundle that he had loosed from his back, so that he might speak as a freeman. She could hear his voice, neither insolent nor diffident, never threatening, never apologizing, urging her first in the studied phrases he had learnt from books, then, as his passion grew, becoming incoherent, crying that she must believe him, that she must love him in return, that she must fly with him to Italy, where they would live forever, always happy, always young. She had cried out then, as a young lady should, and had thanked him not to insult her. And now, in her middle age, she cried out again, because the sudden shock and the contrast had worked a revelation. “Don’t think I’m in love with you now!” she cried.
For she realized that only now was she not in love with him: that the incident upon the mountain had been one of the great moments of her life—perhaps the greatest, certainly the most enduring: that she had drawn unacknowledged power and inspiration from it, just as trees draw vigour from a subterranean spring. Never again could she think of it as a half-humorous episode in her development. There was more reality in it than in all the years of success and varied achievement which had followed, and which it had rendered possible. For all her correct behaviour and ladylike display, she had been in love with Feo, and she had never loved so greatly again. A presumptuous boy had taken her to the gates of heaven; and, though she would not enter with him, the eternal remembrance of the vision had made life seem endurable and good.
Colonel Leyland, by her side, babbled respectabilities, trying to pass the situation off as normal. He was saving her, for he liked her very much, and it pained him when she was foolish. But her last remark to Feo had frightened him; and he began to feel that he must save himself. They were no longer alone. The bureau lady and the young gentleman were listening breathlessly, and the porters were tittering at the discomfiture of their superior. A French lady had spread amongst the guests the agreeable news that an Englishman had surprised his wife making love to the concierge. On the terrace outside, a mother waved away her daughters. The bishop was preparing, very leisurely, for a walk.
But Miss Raby was oblivious. “How little I know!” she said. “I never knew till now that I had loved him and that it was a mere chance—a little catch, a kink—that I never told him so.”
It was her habit to speak out; and there was no present passion to disturb or prevent her. She was still detached, looking back at a fire upon the mountains, marvelling at its increased radiance, but too far off to feel its heat. And by speaking out she believed, pathetically enough, that she was making herself intelligible. Her remark seemed inexpressibly coarse to Colonel Leyland.
“But these beautiful thoughts are a poor business, are they not?” she continued, addressing Feo, who was losing his gallant air, and becoming bewildered. “They’re hardly enough to grow old on. I think I would give all my imagination,
