United States or Réunion ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"But it's impossible!" cried Ishmael, profoundly shocked, not so much at any personal feeling for Hilaria, as an instinctive protest that such things could be. "Hilaria why she was never still, and the things she did why, you remember her walks and her fencing and everything " "Old Dr. Harvey at St. Renny puts it down very largely to those excessive walks she used to take," said Carminow.
There had been no real reason till this evening, when Hilaria had told of his evil-speaking, for Ishmael to dislike Doughty, but now he knew that he had done so all along. Doughty hated Ishmael because he did not understand him, and he was of the breed which hates the incomprehensible.
He was too solidly set on getting all that was possible out of his fresh life. But in his most curious searchings into the likely future as he lay that night for an hour or so upon a wakeful pillow, he did not picture anything as delightful as, in after years, he was to realise Hilaria Eliot had been for those boys who at the time so casually and unthinkingly enjoyed her wayward companionship.
In a fight Doughty's superior size would have given him all the advantage; in the West Country method of wrestling this would not necessarily hold true. And Ishmael was in far better condition. Polkinghorne turned to Hilaria. "Someone will see you home, of course," he said politely. "I shall have to stay as stickler, and Carminow as well, but I'll send Moss and the young 'un with you.
Hilaria a sense of outrage had been added to that; it was not her death that taught him anything beyond the mere commonplace that death can be a boon, but the news of her illness, that illness which unseen had been upon her even in the days when they had tramped the moors together and she had read to an enthralled ring of boys the breathless instalments of "The Woman in White."
If Killigrew had died when they were both young, Ishmael would have felt a more passionate grief an emptiness, a resentment that never again would he see and talk with him; but part of himself would not have died too. As he lay, there suddenly came into his mind the first two occasions on which he had heard of deaths that affected him at all intimately the deaths of Polkinghorne and of Hilaria.
I thought from Ruan's mention of her you had neither of you heard." "Heard what?" "Why," said Carminow in rather a shocked voice, "about her illness." "No!..." exclaimed Ishmael and Killigrew in a breath; and Killigrew went on: "What illness? I can't imagine the Hilaria we used to know ill." "She's not the Hilaria we used to know, I'm afraid. You would hardly recognize her.
Ishmael had a sly chuckle as he thought of others who would do likewise, and, catching a twinkle in the Parson's eye, it occurred to him for the first time that day that perhaps all the subtlety of the race was not confined to those of the age of himself and Killigrew. He grew a little hot; then the Parson began to speak on another theme, and he thought no more of Hilaria.
While he was lost and groping in the wastes it had left him in, there swam up the memory of Hilaria again, but no horror went with it. And though this second impinging of her life on his bore the far-off memory of fear, yet it now seemed as vital and natural as the first. She had shown him something long ago which he was fully understanding now.
The boys lay, thrilled by the splendid melodrama, their little differences forgotten with the rest of their personal affairs, and so they all stayed, Hilaria as enthralled as they, while unperceived the light began to fade and evening to creep over the moor. Hilaria read on till, though she held the page close to her eyes, she seemed to fumble over the words.
Word Of The Day