FullReads

“But I interested you in a way–you see, I am vain enough to think that. Well, you also interested me, and I urged my aunt to press you to stay. It has been very pleasant, and when you go it will be very humdrum again; our conversation, mustering, rounding-up, bullocks, and rabbits. That, of course, is engrossing in a way, but not for long at a time.”

He did not stir, but went on looking at her. “Yes, I believe it has been pleasant for you, else it had not been so pleasant for me. Honestly, I don’t believe I shall ever get you out of my mind.”

“That is either slightly rude or badly expressed,” she said. “Do you wish, then, to get me out of your mind?”

“No, no—-You are very keen. I wish to remember you always. But what I felt at the moment was this. There are memories which are always passive and delightful. We have no wish to live the scenes of which they are over again, the reflection is enough. There are others which cause us to wish the scenes back again, with a kind of hunger; and yet they won’t or can’t come back. I wondered of what class this memory would be.”

The girl flushed ever so slightly, and her fingers clasped a little nervously, but she was calm. Her voice was even; it had, indeed, a little thrilling ring of energy. “You are wonderfully daring,” she replied, “to say that to me. To a school-girl it might mean so much: to me–!” She shook her head at him reprovingly.

He was not in the least piqued. “I was absolutely honest in that. I said nothing but what I felt. I would give very much to feel confident one way or the other–forgive me, for what seems incredible egotism. If I were five years younger I should have said instantly that the memory would be one–“

“Which would disturb you, make you restless, cause you to neglect your work, fill you with regret; and yet all too late–isn’t that it?” She laughed lightly and gave a lump of sugar to the cockatoo.

“You read me accurately. But why touch your words with satire?”

“I believe I read you better than you read me. I didn’t mean to be satirical. Don’t you know that what often seems irony directed towards others is in reality dealt out to ourselves? Such irony as was in my voice was for myself.”

“And why for yourself?” he asked quietly, his eyes full of interest. He was cutting the end of a fresh cigar. “Was it”–he was about to strike a match, but paused suddenly–“was it because you had thought the same thing?”

She looked for a moment as though she would read him through and through; as though, in spite of all their candour, there was some lingering uncertainty as to his perfect straightforwardness; then, as if satisfied, she said at last: “Yes, but with a difference. I have no doubt which memory it will be. You will not wish to be again on the plains of Nindobar.”

“And you,” he said musingly, “you will not wish me here?” There was no real vanity in the question. He was wondering how little we can be sure of what we shall feel to-morrow from what we feel to-day. Besides, he knew that a wise woman is wiser than a wise man.

“I really don’t think I shall care particularly. Probably, if we met again here, there would be some jar to our comradeship–I may call it that, I suppose?”

“Which is equivalent to saying that good-bye in most cases, and always in cases such as ours, is a little tragical, because we can never meet quite the same again.”

She bowed her head, but did not reply. Presently she glanced up at him kindly. “What would you give to have back the past you had before you lost your illusions, before you had–trouble?”