The Dark Flower | Page 5

brightening her deep-set, ice-green eyes under their black
lashes. It was sometimes a great comfort to her that she remained so

good-looking. It would have been an added vexation indeed to have felt
that she ruffled her husband's fastidiousness. Even so, her cheekbones
were too high for his taste, symbols of that something in her character
which did not go with his--the dash of desperation, of vividness, that
lack of a certain English smoothness, which always annoyed him.
"Harold!"--she would never quite flatten her r's--"I want to go to the
mountains this year."
The mountains! She had not seen them since that season at San Martino
di Castrozza twelve years ago, which had ended in her marrying him.
"Nostalgia!"
"I don't know what that means--I am homesick. Can we go?"
"If you like--why not? But no leading up the Cimone della Pala for
ME!"
She knew what he meant by that. No romance. How splendidly he had
led that day! She had almost worshipped him. What blindness! What
distortion! Was it really the same man standing there with those bright,
doubting eyes, with grey already in his hair? Yes, romance was over!
And she sat silent, looking out into the street-- that little old street into
which she looked day and night. A figure passed out there, came to the
door, and rang.
She said softly: "Here is Mark Lennan!"
She felt her husband's eyes rest on her just for a moment, knew that he
had turned, heard him murmur: "Ah, the angel clown!" And, quite still,
she waited for the door to open. There was the boy, with his blessed
dark head, and his shy, gentle gravity, and his essay in his hand.
"Well, Lennan, and how's old Noll? Hypocrite of genius, eh? Draw up;
let's get him over!"
Motionless, from her seat at the window, she watched those two figures

at the table--the boy reading in his queer, velvety bass voice; her
husband leaning back with the tips of his fingers pressed together, his
head a little on one side, and that faint, satiric smile which never
reached his eyes. Yes, he was dozing, falling asleep; and the boy, not
seeing, was going on. Then he came to the end and glanced up. What
eyes he had! Other boys would have laughed; but he looked almost
sorry. She heard him murmur: "I'm awfully sorry, sir."
"Ah, Lennan, you caught me! Fact is, term's fagged me out. We're
going to the mountains. Ever been to the mountains? What--never! You
should come with us, eh? What do you say, Anna? Don't you think this
young man ought to come with us?"
She got up, and stood staring at them both. Had she heard aright?
Then she answered--very gravely:
"Yes; I think he ought."
"Good; we'll get HIM to lead up the Cimone della Pala!"
III
When the boy had said good-bye, and she had watched him out into the
street, Anna stood for a moment in the streak of sunlight that came in
through the open door, her hands pressed to cheeks which were flaming.
Then she shut the door and leaned her forehead against the
window-pane, seeing nothing. Her heart beat very fast; she was going
over and over again the scene just passed through. This meant so much
more than it had seemed to mean. . . .
Though she always had Heimweh, and especially at the end of the
summer term, this year it had been a different feeling altogether that
made her say to her husband: "I want to go to the mountains!"
For twelve years she had longed for the mountains every summer, but
had not pleaded for them; this year she had pleaded, but she did not
long for them. It was because she had suddenly realized the strange fact

that she did not want to leave England, and the reason for it, that she
had come and begged to go. Yet why, when it was just to get away
from thought of this boy, had she said: "Yes, I think he ought to come!"
Ah! but life for her was always a strange pull between the
conscientious and the desperate; a queer, vivid, aching business! How
long was it now since that day when he first came to lunch, silent and
shy, and suddenly smiling as if he were all lighted up within--the day
when she had said to her husband afterwards: "Ah, he's an angel!" Not
yet a year--the beginning of last October term, in fact. He was different
from all the other boys; not that he was a prodigy with untidy hair,
ill-fitting clothes, and a clever tongue; but because of
something--something-- Ah! well--different; because he was--he;
because she longed to take his head between her hands and kiss it. She
remembered so well