Enid had flushed—was it angrily?—at the first mention of Arabella. She was become serious and very still, and looked no more at her neighbour who was apparently studying some drawings of spaniels. Seeing the gentle girl’s pain I was sorry that I had not helped her in the attempt to check the old man. But that was impossible now.
“Arabella was wonderful,” he exclaimed, his old voice slowing to a stronger tone and a new solemnity. “Arabella was wonderful. I believed then that for a man to live as I had lived for so long, and then to see her all suddenly, was the best thing in the world. I used to look at her, and even when I did not see her face, but only her neck and hair and dress and feet, it was just like—like it used to be looking up on a day like this at the blossoming tops of tall elms right in the sky, and hearing the cuckoo’s mate up there.
“Twice a week I used to walk over to her house or to some place near by to see her. I don’t know which was best—the fine weather or the wet—when I went, for in the rain I used to shut out the noise of the rain with my singing all kinds of songs, and sometimes I used to run and whoop as if the hounds had just killed a fox. It was a long way to walk, and sometimes, especially at night, I used to go almost mad with thinking of all the dense space and time and other people, intervening between her and me. Yet I always refused to ride if a farmer stopped his cart, and took footpaths to avoid them. The train to London which I saw all bright on winter evenings used to give me an odd joy and envy—thinking of all those unknown people as if they were hurrying faster than I to see their sweethearts. I did think her beautiful. When I saw Edith in those days, it was somehow painful, like seeing a lamb lying aside dead in a ditch.”
Enid had turned her face away to the window and the lawn. Just so pitiful might she seem were she passed over by her lover.
“I am not going to tell you,” the old lover went on, looking at nothing visible, “what we did when we met. I think sometimes now that we were not wise. But we used to walk and walk, and she would tell me about girls and the ways of girls, and her childhood, so that I wished I had been a boy with her. She would praise me and say that if ever anything happened to me so that I was hurt and maimed, or if I should die, she would not go on living. The thought of such a thing made her angry and she would stop, and, without looking at me and seeming to forget me, would lift her arms and say confused things that sounded fierce which I could not hear, and then suddenly turn to me quite happy again.
“It was the finest day in my life, when, one May day we fished together, and cooked some fresh caught trout by the riverside over a fire of oak branches, and ate them together in the morning, just as the sun grew hot.
“Every day I wished to marry her, especially when she spoke suddenly after being silent, or when I could only smell her lovely breath and see the pale skin under her little ear in the dark.
“She did extraordinary things and she made me do extraordinary things.
“One day as we were walking we heard the sound of the Fair, and Arabella said that we must go. As quick as thought she knocked some walnuts off a tree and we stained our faces with the juice of the rind, and at a friendly cottage borrowed a rude disguise, for we went as gipsies. Arabella told fortunes, first, and I had to tell some too. Then she wanted me to play on a flute while she danced; but instead I kept somewhere near while she danced, to see that all was as it should be; and as it was, I nearly had to knock down a little Welshman whose harp she began dancing to; for while he played and she danced I hardly knew what was happening; it was as if I had gone into a church with rich windows out of a dark night. She danced all the way home, sometimes with her right hand just touching my right shoulder and looking up at me—Ah! Perhaps she thought I was a little careless at seeing her as much in love with me as I with her, and suddenly taking her hand off my shoulder she said quite fiercely that I must do something to show that I would do anything for her.”
Here the old man stopped and laughed and drank his whisky and seemed disinclined to go on. The yeoman rose hastily and we had to follow at once, all but Enid, the old man and the boldest and worst horseman who was taking some more “jumping powder” with an air; and then, when all had mounted in the farmyard, I found courage to equal my curiosity and asked the yeoman for the end of the story. He stopped his impatient horse and said,—