Walter De la Mare

“ Every moment, every hour, every day, every year—one, two, three, four, five, seven, ten,” she paused, frowned, “and so on. Sadder and sadder. Why? why? It's strange, but oh, so true. You really can have no notion, child, how very sad I am myself at times. In the evening, when they all gather together, in their white raiment, up and up and up, I sit on the garden seat, on Miss Coppin's garden seat, and precisely in the middle (you'll be kind enough to remember that?) and my thoughts make me sad.” ”

“ Why must I be so guarded? One angel—the greatest fool could see the wisdom of that. But billions!—with their fixed eyes shining, so very boldly, on me. I never prayed for so many, dear friend. And we pray for a good many odd things, you and I, I'll be bound. But, there, you see, poor Miss Duveen's on her theology again—scamper, scamper, scamper. In the congregations of the wicked we must be cautious! ... Mrs. Partridge and grandmamma, so nice, so nice; but even that, too, a little sad, eh?” She leaned her head questioningly, like a starving bird in the snow. ”

“ Time might baffle her, but then, time often baffled me too. Any talk about her mother usually reminded her of an elder sister, Caroline. “My sister, Caroline,” she would repeat as if by rote, “you may not be aware, Arthur, was afterwards Mrs. Bute. So charming, so exquisite, so accomplished. And Colonel Bute—an officer and a gentleman, I grant. And yet ... But no! My dear sister was not happy. And so it was no doubt a blessing in disguise that by an unfortunate accident she was found drowned. In a lake, you will understand, not a mere shallow noisy brook. ”

“ When the time comes, Miss Coppin will close my own eyes, I hope and trust. Death, dear, dear child, I know they say is only sleeping. Yet I hope and trust that. To be sleeping wide awake; oh no!” She abruptly turned her small untidy head away.
“But didn't they shut hers?” I enquired.
Miss Duveen ignored the question. “I am not uttering one word of blame,” she went on rapidly; “I am perfectly aware that such things confuse me. Miss Coppin tells me not to think. She tells me that I can have no opinions worth the mention. ”

“ Miss Coppin, too, I descried sometimes. But I never more than glanced at her, for fear that even at that distance the too fixed attention of my eyes might bring hers to bear upon me. She was a smallish woman, inclined to be fat, and with a peculiar waddling gait. She invariably appeared to be angry with Miss Duveen, and would talk to her as one might talk to a post. I did not know, indeed, until one day Miss Duveen waved her handkerchief in my direction that I had been observed from Willowlea at all. ”

“ And if you would kindly turn your head, dear child, perhaps I could pull him out.”
It was the miniature of a young, languid, fastidious-looking officer which she showed me—threaded on dingy tape, in its tarnished locket.
“Miss Coppin, in great generosity, has left me this,” she said, polishing the glass on her knee, “though I am forbidden to wear it. For you see, Arthur, it is a duty not to brood on the past, and even perhaps, indelicate. Some day, it may be, you, too, will love a gentle girl. I beseech you, keep your heart pure and true. ”

“ My grandmother opened her eyes, smiled pleasantly, paused, glanced remotely at me, and, with another exchange of courtesies, Miss Duveen and I were left alone once more. But it was a grave and saddened friend I now sat beside.
“You see, Arthur, all bad things, we know, are best for us. Motives included. That comforts me. But my heart is sadly fluttered. Not that I fear or would shun society; but perhaps your grandmother ... I never had the power to treat my fellow-creatures as if they were stocks and stones. ”

“ How splendid it is to be a Man. For my part I have sometimes thought, though they do not of course intend to injure me, yet I fancy, sometimes, they have grudged me my part in it a little. Though God forbid but Heaven's best.”
She raised that peering, dark, remote gaze to my face, and her head was trembling again. “They are saying now to one another—'Where is she? where is she? It's nearly dark, m'm, where is she?' O, Arthur, but there shall be no night there. We must believe it, we must—in spite, dear friend, of a weak horror of glare. My cousin, Miss Coppin, does not approve of my wishes. ”

“ I know not which of our hearts beat the quicker, whose eyes cast the most furtive glances about us. My friend's cheeks were brightest mauve. She wore a large silver locket on a ribbon; and I followed her up the faded green stairs, beneath the dark pictures, to her small, stuffy bedroom under the roof. We humans, they say, are enveloped in a kind of aura; to which the vast majority of us are certainly entirely insensitive. ”

“ It was the crowning opportunity of our friendship. The moment I espied her issuing from the house, I guessed her errand. She came hastening down to the waterside, attired in clothes of a colour and fashion I had never seen her wearing before, her dark eyes shining in her head, her hands trembling with excitement. ”

“ My grandmother, on her part, at once discovered that any kind of intimacy with its inmates was not much to be desired. While I, on mine, was compelled to resign myself to the loss of the Willowlea garden as a kind of No Man's Land or Tom Tiddler's ground.
I got to know Miss Duveen by sight long before we actually became friends. I used frequently to watch her wandering in her long garden. And even then I noticed how odd were her methods of gardening. She would dig up a root or carry off a potted plant from one to another overgrown bed with an almost animal-like resolution ”

“ I sat on my stone, watching her, feeling excessively uncomfortable. “But what did she look like, Miss Duveen?” I pressed forward to ask at last.
“No, no, no,” she cried again. “Cast him out, cast him out. Retro Sathanas! We must not even ask to understand. My father and my dear mother, I do not doubt, have spoken for Caroline. Even I, if I must be called on, will strive to collect my thoughts. And that is precisely where a friend, you, Arthur, would be so precious ”

“ At times,” she stepped out of her hiding-place and stood in curious dignity beside the water, her hands folded in front of her on her black pleated silk apron—“at times, dear child, I long for company—earthly company.” ”