“Yrs.———
“Seymour.”
[PART III
BUTTERFLY]
PART III—BUTTERFLY
[CHAPTER I
WAITING]
HE was in the summer-house. Light rain crackled as it fell on the wooden roof, and winds swept up, one after the other, to rustle the trees. A pigeon hurried rather through his phrase that was no longer now a call. Cries of rooks came down to him from where they would be floating, whirling in the air like dead leaves, over the lawn. The winds kept coming back, growing out of each other, and when a stronger one had gone by there would be left cool eddies slipping by his cheek, while a tree further on would thunder softly. Every wind was different, and as he listened to their coming and to their going there was rhythm in their play. In the fields, beyond where the trees would be, a man cracked his whip, and a cow lowed. The long grass copied the trees with a tiny dry rustling.
But there was something new to-day; he had met her; he would meet her again, and the wind was lighter for it, the branches danced almost. He had been shy when they had met, and so had she, and he had laughed at himself for being shy, though that was all part of the game. For now at last he could play as the trees were doing now, advance, retreat, and it was a holiday, and she would be wild, so wild. Mamma was horrified at her life, she must have had a queer time, so that she would be interesting. And her voice had been afraid, she had been frightened at his lack of eyes. She would be fascinated later, as he lay by her side—oh, deviltry—to listen to her hoarse voice, to weave question and answer.
There had been doubt in Mamma’s voice when speaking about her, and it had only been through pity that she had brought her to the house. He was old enough to know now, she had said, that the girl lived a most extraordinary life with her drunken father, that she was not quite proper. As if he had not always known, as if he had not told at once from her voice. But she, Mamma, had met her in the lane, looking so ill, with her hand all swollen and the thumb tied up in a rag, a rag-an’-bone man’s rag, and she, Mamma, had said to herself that after all the girl was a parishioner, and she had positively insisted on her coming back to the house at once, that the thumb might be properly done up. And at first the girl had been sulky and silent, and then the poor girl had become quite servile in her thanks. That dreadful man, her father.