A Traveller in Little ThingsHudson, W. H. (William Henry)
History
A Traveller in Little Things
Hudson, W. H. (William Henry)
Authors, English -- 19th century; English essays; Natural history -- England
But I haven't finished with the young lady yet. I had no sooner said
what I have said and was just about to turn my eyes away and forget all
about her, when, in response to some remarks of her aged companion, she
laughed, and in laughing so great a change came into her face that it
was as if she had been transformed into another being. It was like a
sudden breath of wind and a sunbeam falling on the still cold surface
of a woodland pool. The eyes, icily cold a moment before, had warm
sunlight in them, and the half-parted lips with a flash of white teeth
between them had gotten a new beauty; and most remarkable of all was a
dimple which appeared and in its swift motions seemed to have a life of
its own, flitting about the corner of the mouth, then further away to
the middle of the cheek and back again. A dimple that had a story to
tell. For dimples, too, like a delicate, mobile mouth, and even like
eyes, have a character of their own. And no sooner had I seen that
sudden change in the expression, and especially the dimple, than I knew
the face; it was a face I was familiar with and was like no other face
in the world, yet I could not say who she was nor where and when I had
known her! Then, when the smile faded and the dimple vanished, she was
a stranger again--the pretty young person with the shallow brain that I
did not like!
Naturally my mind worried itself with this puzzle of a being with two
distinct expressions, one strange to me, the other familiar, and it
went on worrying me all that day until I could stand it no longer, and
to get rid of the matter, I set up the theory (which didn't quite
convince me) that the momentary expression I had seen was like an
expression in some one I had known in the far past. But after
dismissing the subject in that way, the subconscious mind was still no
doubt working at it, for two days later it all at once flashed into my
mind that my mysterious young lady was no other than the little Lillian
I had known so well eight years before! She was ten years old when I
first knew her, and I was quite intimately acquainted with her for a
little over a year, and greatly admired her for her beauty and charm,
especially when she smiled and that dimple flew about the corner of her
mouth like a twilight moth vaguely fluttering at the rim of a red
flower. But alas! her charm was waning: she was surrounded by relations
who adored her, and was intensely self-conscious, so that when after a
year her people moved to a new district, I was not sorry to break the
connection, and to forget all about her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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