But it would all be so different with her about. So that they would all go for walks together, all of them. There would be Mummy to take up to the top of Swan’s Wood, and of course June to take there, too, and Nanny to go round the garden on his arm, and Mamma to accompany visiting in the village. What talks they would have, telling Mummy what June was like, Nanny how inferior June was, and Mamma how sorry he was for June, though she would see through that. So that this, perhaps, was a beginning with June and the birds and the trees. They were much nearer, and Mummy was, too. The days would have change in them now.
It was charming to think of Mummy being so close, but she wasn’t. And June was so much more tangible. It was also charming to think of the trees as being in conspiracy with the birds to make life more endurable, but of course they weren’t. One lived, that was all, and at times one lived more than at other times. But they were charming illusions, and they became real if you believed them. Oh! why did he think of these things?
Those gloves and things of hers, why did they have so much of her about them? And why did the trees and the birds conspire together so openly? And why when he was alone did some presence—some companion of days that were dead now, because he could not remember them—why did she come and walk with him and sit by his side and make him understand dimly through his blindness? Mamma would come upon them when they were alone together sometimes, and she would say that he must not become morbid. And she would talk and talk until the longing went away.
Was that what it was—a longing? Would he come upon it suddenly?
There was no pain in his memory of her; if there had been it would have driven her away. That was why it was so lucky he had never known her, another illusion would have gone. Why did he go on thinking these things? Then it was lucky perhaps that he could not see any more, that the little boy had taken his sight away. For she was nearer than she had ever been before, now that he was blind.
Evening was coming and with it the soft, harping rain, rustling, rustling. A bird was muttering liquidly, gently somewhere, and it was very like the night—kind, strange. And she was here with the feel of the air, and June was to-morrow, tangible as the sunlight. He shivered, and getting up he went into the house.
[CHAPTER II
WALKING OUT]
“MY name isn’t June, it’s Joan, and always was.”
“But do you mind my calling you June? I think June is such a lovely name, so much nicer than Joan. You are just like June, too.”