To Miss Verinder that knighthood was a uniquely tremendous affair. She refused to remember that quite a large number of knights had been created during the last half century. Those did not count. She thought only of one or two who were like her man, real knights; and she added five or six more from Elizabethan times to make up the splendid company. Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Richard Grenville, Sir John Hawkins, and Sir Anthony Dyke—the linked names rang grandly in her ears.
His title seemed to echo itself like music or the sound of bells, as she walked briskly away from the flat early one morning in October. She felt joyous and strong, not minding the fog, not fearing the motor traffic. It was not really a fog, rather a ground mist; an exhilarating morning of late autumn, with the sun and the mist contending for victory.
In fact, when she had left the Brompton Road, the sun showed itself behind her, high over the hidden houses, shining from a faint yet open blue sky. She stood for a moment at the bottom of Exhibition Road and admired. On this left-hand pavement a stream of students, girls and men, were hurrying onward to their classes and lectures. The right-hand pavement was quite empty; and, looking beyond it, one had a sense of vague grandeurs, a perception of domes high and still fog-shrouded. Ahead, the broad smooth road glistened like dark water beneath the shredding veils of whiteness; the long perspective line made by the unbroken cornice of the houses showed above the mist, and the side wall of a roof of one house, at the turning into Prince’s Gardens, was all sunlit; nearer, the block of building that is known as the Royal College of Science was already emerging, freeing itself, getting definite and illumined, with its walls of delicate rose and upper story of yellow ochre, and a sketchy suggestion of columns; while the farthest end of the vista remained almost lost in the denser mist clouds that were rolling out from the grass of Hyde Park. The whole prospect seemed that of a larger, grander Venice, with the road converted into its splendid silent canal.
She walked on. Gradually and yet very swiftly, as she had seen happen once before, among the mountains of a distant land, the conquering sun tore the veils away and reached all things with its magic touch. Colour and brightness sprang towards the searching rays. Geraniums glowed in dilapidated flower beds of the sunk garden of the Natural History Museum; orange, crimson, and gold flashed from the dead leaves on its sodden paths. When she came to the first turn to the left, that road was quite lovely—an avenue of green trees, marble pavements, and tremulous light; the Imperial Institute seeming like a palace built of dreams; high towers without base or foundation, masonry swimming in air, domes and more domes; and over all, the dome of domes, the high vaulted sky.
She went through the avenue of wonder, into Queen’s Gate. The sun had conquered. Light, not darkness ruled the world. And she thought that the world is beautiful, most beautiful, every part of it—even this Kensington, of straight lines, right angles, and stucco faces.
Miss Verinder walked on, with sunshine and joy in her heart, thinking that great things cannot perish in this beautiful world; thinking that fate gives freely and robs with regret; thinking that love is like the sunshine, the source and fountain of life; thinking that her hero had lived and not died, that her knight was coming back to her and soon would touch her hand.
Presently the newspapers were adding to profuse accounts of the home-coming what they called “an interesting announcement.” They said that a delightful touch of romance had been given to the return of Sir Anthony by the fact (now for the first time disclosed) that he had come back “to claim a bride.”
When claimed, Miss Verinder displayed coyness or diffidence; resuming that slightly mid-Victorian manner, while she asked him, in effect, if he really meant it, if he really wanted it, and so forth. It was only the second proposal of marriage that she had ever received; and perhaps the embarrassment caused by the first one automatically revived itself, making her a little uncomfortable now. As in the first case, the drawing-room of the flat served as scenic decoration or background to the romantic affair.
“What’s that you’re saying?” asked Dyke loudly, not catching the purport of her murmured doubts. He had come back in glorious health; but the deafness, of which he had once seemed to be cured, had again grown very apparent. He was distinctly hard of hearing.