And again the child turned her head and looked earnestly, inquiringly
at the lady, trying, as one could see from her face, to understand why
she was not to say such a thing. But now she was not sure of her ground
as on the other occasion of being rebuked. There was a mystery here
about the expected baby which she could not fathom. Why was it wrong
for her to mention that simple fact? That question was on her face when
she looked at her attendant, the lady in black, and as no answer was
forthcoming, either from the lady, or out of her own head, she turned
to me again, the dissatisfied expression still in her eyes; then it
passed away and she smiled. It was a beautiful smile, all the more
because it came only at rare intervals and quickly vanished, because,
as it seemed to me, she was all the time thinking too closely about
what was being said to smile easily or often. And the rarity of her
smile made her sense of humour all the more apparent. She was not like
Marjorie Fleming, that immortal little girl, who was wont to be angry
when offensively condescending grown-ups addressed her as a babe in
intellect. For Marjorie had no real sense of humour; all the humour of
her literary composition, verse and prose, was of the unconscious
variety. This child was only amused at being taken for a baby.
Then came the parting. I said I had spent a most delightful hour with
her, and she, smiling once more put out her tiny hand, and said in the
sweetest voice: "Perhaps we shall meet again." Those last five words!
If she had been some great lady, an invalid in a bath-chair, who had
conversed for half an hour with a perfect stranger and had wished to
express the pleasure and interest she had had in the colloquy, she
could not have said more, nor less, nor said it more graciously, more
beautifully.
But we did not meet again, for when I looked for her she was not there:
she had gone out of my life, like Priscilla, and like so many beautiful
things that vanish and return not.
And now I return to what I said at the beginning - that there were
several reasons for including this little girl in my series of
impressions. The most important one has been left until now. I want to
meet her again, but how shall I find her in this immensity of London -
these six millions of human souls! Let me beg of any reader who knows
Rose Mary Angela Catherine Maude Caversham - a name like that - who has
identified her from my description - that he will inform me of her
whereabouts.
XXIII
A SPRAY OF SOUTHERNWOOD
To pass from little girls to little boys is to go into quite another,
an inferior, coarser world. No doubt there are wonderful little boys,
but as a rule their wonderfulness consists in a precocious intellect:
this kind doesn't appeal to me, so that if I were to say anything on
the matter, it would be a prejudiced judgment. Even the ordinary
civilised little boy, the nice little gentleman who is as much at home
in the drawing-room as at his desk in the school-room or with a bat in
the playing-field - even that harmless little person seems somehow
unnatural, or denaturalised to my primitive taste. A result, I will
have it, of improper treatment. He has been under the tap, too
thoroughly scrubbed, boiled, strained and served up with melted butter
and a sprig of parsley for ornament in a gilt-edged dish. I prefer him
raw, and would rather have the street-Arab, if in town, and the
unkempt, rough and tough cottage boy in the country. But take them
civilised or natural, those who love and observe little children no
more expect to find that peculiar exquisite charm of the girl-child
which I have endeavoured to describe in the boy, than they would expect
the music of the wood-lark and the airy fairy grace and beauty of the
grey wagtail in Philip Sparrow. And yet, incredible as it seems, that
very quality of the miraculous little girl is sometimes found in the
boy and, with it, strange to say, the boy's proper mind and spirit. The
child lover will meet with one of that kind once in ten years, or not
so often - not oftener than a collector of butterflies will meet with a
Camberwell Beauty. The miraculous little girl, we know, is not more
uncommon than the Painted Lady, or White Admiral. And I will here give
a picture of such a boy - the child associated in my mind with a spray
of southernwood.
And after this impression, I shall try to give one or two of ordinary
little boys. These live in memory like the little girls I have written
about, not, it will be seen, because of their boy nature, seeing that
the boy has nothing miraculous, nothing to capture the mind and
register an enduring impression in it, as in the case of the girl; but
owing solely to some unusual circumstance in their lives - something
adventitious.
It was hot and fatiguing on the Wiltshire Downs, and when I had toiled
to the highest point of a big hill where a row of noble Scotch firs
stood at the roadside, I was glad to get off my bicycle and rest in the
shade. Fifty or sixty yards from the spot where I sat on the bank on a
soft carpet of dry grass and pine-needles, there was a small, old,
thatched cottage, the only human habitation in sight except the little
village at the foot of the hill, just visible among the trees a mile
ahead. An old woman in the cottage had doubtless seen me going by, for
she now came out into the road, and, shading her eyes with her hand,
peered curiously at me.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 40 of 65
Words from 39942 to 40965
of 66164
