I descried Mrs. Vernon waiting on the platform to welcome me, with the twins. Alas! I had forgotten the twins, those charming and frail little girls always dressed alike. Invariably, on my previous visits, I had brought something for the twins—a toy, a box of sweets, a couple of bead necklaces. Never once had I omitted to lay my tribute on the altar of their adorable infancy. And now I had forgotten, and my forgetfulness saddened me, because I knew that it would sadden them; they would expect, and they would be disappointed; they would taste the bitterness of life. “My poor little dears!” I thought, as they smiled and shouted, to see my head out of the carriage window, “I feel for you deeply.”
This beginning was a bad one. Like all men who have suffered without having deserved to suffer, I was superstitious, and I felt that the beginning augured ill. I resigned myself, even before the train had quite stopped, to a constrained and bored week-end with the Vernons.
“Well?” I exclaimed, with an affectation of jollity, descending from the carriage.
“Well?” responded Mrs. Vernon, with the same affectation.
It was lamentable, simply lamentable, the way in which that tragic memory stood between us and prevented either of us from showing a true, natural, simple self to the other. Mrs. Vernon could say little; I could say little; and what we did say was said stiffly, clumsily. Perhaps it was fortunate, on the whole, that the twins were present. They at any rate were natural and self-possessed.
“And how old are you now?” I asked them.
“We are seven,” they answered politely in their high, thin voices.
“Then you are like the little girl’s family in Wordsworth’s poem,” I remarked.
It was astonishing how this really rather good joke fell flat. Of course the twins did not see it. But Mrs. Vernon herself did not see it, and I too thought it, at the moment, inexpressibly feeble. As for the twins they could not hide their disappointment. Always before, I had handed them a little parcel, immediately, either at the station if they came to meet me, or at the house-door, if they did not. And to-day I had no little parcel. I could perceive that they were hoping against hope, even yet. I could perceive that they were saying to each other with their large, expressive eyes: “Perhaps he has put it in his portmanteau this time. He can’t have forgotten us.”
I could have wept for them. (I was in that state.) But I could not for the life of me tell them outright that I had forgotten the customary gift, and that I should send it by post on my return. No, I could not do that. I was too constrained, too ill at ease. So we all climbed up into the dog-cart. Mrs. Vernon and I in front, and the twins behind with the portmanteau to make weight; and the white mare set off with a bound, and the Dalmatian barked joyously, and we all pretended to be as joyous as the dog.