第41章 CHAPTER VIII.(4)
"Some days afterwards I got hold of a newspaper four or six months old,and there was a description of all that I thought I had seen and felt,--only far more beautiful and touching,as you shall see,for I cut it out of the paper and have kept it.It seemed to me that it must be some personal experience,--as if the writer had followed some dear friend there,--although it was with the unostentation and indefiniteness of true and delicate feeling.It impressed me so much that I went back there twice or thrice,and always seemed to move to the rhythm of that beautiful funeral march--and I am afraid,being a woman,that I wandered around among the graves as though I could find out who it was that had been sung so sweetly,and if it were man or woman.I've got it here,"she said,taking a dainty ivory porte-monnaie from her pocket and picking out with two slim finger-tips a folded slip of newspaper;"and I thought that maybe you might recognize the style of the writer,and perhaps know something of his history.For I believe he has one.There!that is only a part of the article,of course,but it is the part that interested me.Just read from there,"she pointed,leaning partly over his shoulder so that her soft breath stirred his hair,"to the end;it isn't long."In the film that seemed to come across his eyes,suddenly the print appeared blurred and indistinct.But he knew that she had put into his hand something he had written after the death of his wife;something spontaneous and impulsive,when her loss still filled his days and nights and almost unconsciously swayed his pen.He remembered that his eyes had been as dim when he wrote it--and now--handed to him by this smiling,well-to-do woman,he was as shocked at first as if he had suddenly found her reading his private letters.This was followed by a sudden sense of shame that he had ever thus publicly bared his feelings,and then by the illogical but irresistible conviction that it was false and stupid.The few phrases she had pointed out appeared as cheap and hollow rhetoric amid the surroundings of their social tete-a-tete over the luncheon-table.There was small danger that this heady wine of woman's praise would make him betray himself;there was no sign of gratified authorship in his voice as he quietly laid down the paper and said dryly:"I am afraid I can't help you.You know it may be purely fanciful.""I don't think so,"said Mrs.Ashwood thoughtfully."At the same time it doesn't strike me as a very abiding grief for that very reason.It's TOO sympathetic.It strikes me that it might be the first grief of some one too young to be inured to sorrow or experienced enough to accept it as the common lot.But like all youthful impressions it is very sincere and true while it lasts.Idon't know whether one gets anything more real when one gets older."With an insincerity he could not account for,he now felt inclined to defend his previous sentiment,although all the while conscious of a certain charm in his companion's graceful skepticism.He had in his truthfulness and independence hitherto always been quite free from that feeble admiration of cynicism which attacks the intellectually weak and immature,and his present predilection may have been due more to her charming personality.She was not at all like his sisters;she had none of Clementina's cold abstraction,and none of Euphemia's sharp and demonstrative effusiveness.And in his secret consciousness of her flattering foreknowledge of him,with her assurance that before they had ever met he had unwittingly influenced her,he began to feel more at his ease.His fair companion also,in the equally secret knowledge she had acquired of his history,felt as secure as if she had been formally introduced.
Nobody could find fault with her for showing civility to the ostensible son of her host;it was not necessary that she should be aware of their family differences.There was a charm too in their enforced isolation,in what was the exceptional solitude of the little hotel that day,and the seclusion of their table by the window of the dining-room,which gave a charming domesticity to their repast.From time to time they glanced down the lonely canyon,losing itself in the afternoon shadow.Nevertheless Mrs.
Ashwood's preoccupation with Nature did not preclude a human curiosity to hear something more of John Milton's quarrel with his father.There was certainly nothing of the prodigal son about him;there was no precocious evil knowledge in his frank eyes;no record of excesses in his healthy,fresh complexion;no unwholesome or disturbed tastes in what she had seen of his rural preferences and understanding of natural beauty.To have attempted any direct questioning that would have revealed his name and identity would have obliged her to speak of herself as his father's guest.She began indirectly;he had said he had been a reporter,and he was still a chronicler of this strange life.He had of course heard of many cases of family feuds and estrangements?Her brother had told her of some dreadful vendettas he had known in the Southwest,and how whole families had been divided.Since she had been here she had heard of odd cases of brothers meeting accidentally after long and unaccounted separations;of husbands suddenly confronted with wives they had deserted;of fathers encountering discarded sons!
John Milton's face betrayed no uneasy consciousness.If anything it was beginning to glow with a boyish admiration of the grace and intelligence of the fair speaker,that was perhaps heightened by an assumption of half coquettish discomfiture.