II
But at first, as I say, it was nothing more than the flavour of the country-side which she carried with her that held me. When next I saw her she had shed a little of that tender radiance. She had been furnished by some charitable person with clothing less grotesque. She certainly wasn’t so indefinitely tragic; but now that she was less tired her country complexion—so very different from the parched skins of women who have lived for long in the East African highlands—made her noticeable.
She had been dumped by Mr. Oddy’s friend (or wife, for all I know) into the Norfolk Hotel, the oldest and most reputable house in Nairobi, and it was in the gloomy lounge of this place that I was introduced to her by the only respectable woman I was privileged to know in the Protectorate. She said: “Cheer her up . . . there’s a good fellow. She’s lost her brother, poor thing! A missionary, you know.”
And I proceeded to cheer up Eva Burwarton. My methods didn’t answer very well. It was obvious that she wasn’t used to the kind of nonsense which men talk. She took me very seriously, or rather, literally. I thought: “She has no sense of humour.” She hadn’t . . . of my kind. And all the time those frightfully serious dark eyes of hers, which had never yet lost their hint of suffering, seemed full of a sort of dumb reproach, as if the way in which I was talking wasn’t really fair on her. I didn’t realise then what a child she was or a hundredth part of what she had endured. I knew nothing about M‘Crae (alias Hare) or Godovius, or of that dreadful mission house on the edge of the M’ssente Swamp. And if it hadn’t been for that fortunate vision of mine on the station platform I don’t suppose that I should ever have known at all. The thing would have passed me by, as I suppose terrible and intense drama passes one by every day of one’s life. An amazing thing. . . . You would have thought that a story of that kind would cry out to the whole world from the face of every person who had taken part in it, that it simply couldn’t remain hidden behind a pale, childish face with puzzled eyes.
But when we seemed to be getting no further, and whatever else I may have done, I certainly hadn’t cheered her at all, I brought out the fruits of my deduction. I said:
“Do you come from Shropshire or Hereford?”
Suddenly her whole face brightened, and the eyes which had been gazing at nothing really looked at me. Now, more than ever, I was overwhelmed with their childishness.
“Oh, but how do you know?” she cried, and in that moment more than ever confirmed me. I know that inflection so well.
It was Shropshire, she said. Of course I wouldn’t know the place; it was too small. Just a little group of cottages on a hilly road between the Severn and Brown Clee. I pressed her for the name of it. A funny name, she said. It was called Far Forest.
I told her that veritably I knew it. Her eyes glowed. Strange that so simple a thing should give birth to beautiful delight.