An Autumn Sowing

by E. F. Benson

That moment of his entry had become to him a matter of daily excitement and expectation. Sometimes the soft furrow would be ruled between her eyebrows, and she would give him but the glance of a stranger and a chilly ‘Good-morning,’ and instantly turn her attention to her work again. Sometimes she would show such a face as she had shown him that Sunday morning on the downs when they had listened to the skylark together, a face of childhood and the possession of spring, sometimes (and it was this that gave the grizzled elderly man the tremulous excitement of a boy when his hand opened the door) she would give him that look which had shot across the town-hall like the launching of a silver spear and transfixed him. But if he did not get it then, sometime during the morning, in some pause in the work, or perhaps even in the middle of his dictation, he would receive it from her, just that one look which made him know, so long as it lasted, that there was no bar or impediment between himself and her. ‘There was neither speech nor language,’ but her essential self spoke, revealing, affirming to him its existence. Then without pause she would drop her eyes to her work again, and her busy pencil scooped and dabbed over the paper, and he heard in some secret place of his brain, while his lips pronounced sharp business-like sentences, the words, ‘And thou beside me singing in the wilderness.’... In the afternoon, when he came to read over her typewritten transcription of the dictation, he always knew at what point in some peremptory letter out of all the sheaf that moment of the clear glance had come. He was always on the look-out for it, but he could never induce it: she gave it him, so it had begun to seem, not in answer to him, but just when she could withhold it no longer.

This morning the correspondence was both heavy and complicated. A whole series of widely scattered dates had to be turned up, in order to trace some question of the payment of carriage on a certain consignment. It was a tiresome job, which Norah recommended him to leave for verification to the clerk downstairs whose business it was, and probably for that very reason Sir Thomas insisted on doing it himself. He was fractious, he was obstinately determined to have the matter settled here and now, and like a child, cross with hunger, he wanted the clear look she had not yet given him. The furrow, that soft smudge, had long been marked on Norah’s forehead, as she turned up letter after letter that failed to deal with the point, and she spent what she considered a wasted half hour over it. She was still rather irritated when she found what she had been looking for, unclipped the communication from the spring that fastened it into its place and passed it him.

‘I think that’s what you are wanting, Sir Thomas,’ she said.

He took it from her, and noticing the rather incisive politeness of her tone, looked up at her. The furrow was still there, very impatiently ruled, but the clear glance was there also: radiantly it shone on him, quite undisturbed by the superficial agitation. It concerned not the surface of her, but the depths.

He did not look at the paper she handed him, on which his unconscious fingers had closed. He was not going to miss one infinitesimal fraction of the moment that she had at last given him. She frowned still, but that was the property of her tiresome search: it was neither his nor hers, as he or she ‘mattered.’

‘You will find it on the third line from the end,’ she said. ‘Messrs Hampden are perfectly right about it.’

And then the moment was over, except that in the secret place of his brain the voice sang in the wilderness, and he looked at the letter she had given him. The words danced and swam; presently they steadied themselves.

‘I see,’ he said. ‘Well then, Miss Propert, you must cross out what I have dictated to you about it. Please read the letter through.... Yes, cross out from the sentence beginning, “Re the payment for carriage of goods.” Dear me, it is nearly one: what a lot of time we have spent over that. The booking-clerk would have done it much more quickly.’

The frown cleared, but the clear look did not return. It was over: it seemed she had satisfied herself.

‘I think we should have saved time,’ she said.