United States or Uganda ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
If Lord Brayfield had ever been anything to me I should just be quiet, say nothing. But I didn't like him. If I had liked him I shouldn't have burnt his letter. And now" to Dion's great astonishment she made slowly the sign of the Cross "requiescat in pace." After a long pause she added: "Now come and see the other room. I'll give you Turkish coffee there."
What would Mrs. Clarke say? What would she look like? What would she do? He remembered the sign of the cross she had made in the flat in Knightsbridge. With that sign she had dismissed the soul of Brayfield into the eternities. Would she dismiss the soul of Dion Leith with the sign of the cross?
"He mustn't be small," she said, evidently comprehending both soul and body in the assertion. "D'you know Lord Brayfield who was talking to me just now?" "You mean a fair man?" "Yes, with a meaningless mouth. Jimmy mustn't grow up into anything of that kind." The conversation took a decidedly Doric turn as Mrs. Clarke developed her ideas of what a man ought to be.
Since nobody knew anything about Maurice Dale except that his father was an Honourable, rumour had plenty of elbow-room. It took advantage of the situation, and Maurice was more talked about than anybody in Brayfield. And Lily Alston, the daughter of Canon Alston, Rector of Brayfield, launched out into surmises which, however, she kept to herself.
"No. I thought I had read everything. But I didn't happen to see it." "And I didn't mention it when I wrote. I thought I'd tell you if I came home. Brayfield, poor fellow, didn't die immediately. He suffered a great deal, but he was able to write two or three letters last messages home. One of these messages was written to Mrs. Clarke.
He was looking at the letter lying on the divan, and Brayfield was before him, tormented and dying. He had always disliked the look of Brayfield, but he had felt almost a sort of affection for him when he was dying. Foolishly perhaps, Dion wanted Mrs. Clarke to say something kind about Brayfield now. "If you admire it, why don't you like it?" she asked. "A person I could understand; but a room!"
It was so sweet that tears came stealing from under Lily's eyelids and dropped down upon her clasped hands. She sat there motionless till the twilight came over the moor, and Maurice entered, white and weary, to ask impatiently of what she was dreaming. As Maurice wished it, they returned the next day to Brayfield and settled into the house that was to be their home.
It seemed to him as if nature gathered herself together to delay him, to turn him from his purpose of obeying the summons of Lily. Even the line from Brayfield to London was blocked, and when at length Maurice reached London he found the great city staggering under a burden of snow that rendered its features unrecognisable. All traffic was practically suspended.
Brayfield only began to talk steadily about Lily and the young doctor from the day of this meeting of self-consciousnesses which had, as it chanced, taken place on the pavement of the curved parade by the sea. Till that day the little town had attributed to Maurice hopelessness, to Lily simply friendship for a sad young man.
The emaciation of her figure almost startled him. She wore a black dress. It seemed to him a very simple dress. She could have told him that such simplicity only comes from a few very good dressmakers, and is only fully appreciated by a very few women. Brayfield, though he was dying, had been very careful in what he had said to Dion. In his pain he had shown that he had good blood in him.
Word Of The Day