England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, English
Well, I have never felt any of these things; but as I was passing
through Fitzhardinge Square about half-past ten o'clock one evening in
last July, after dining, if I remember rightly, in Baker Street,
something happened to me which I fancy may be of interest to such
people.
I was passing through the square from north to south, and to avoid a
small crowd, which some reception had drawn together, I left the
pavement and struck across the road to the path round the oval garden;
which, by the way, contains a few of the finest trees in London. This
part was in deep shadow, so that when I presently emerged from it and
recrossed the road to the pavement near the top of Fitzhardinge
Street, I had an advantage over persons on the pavement. They were
under the lamps, while I, coming from the shadow under the trees, was
invisible.
The door of the house immediately in front of me as I crossed was
open, and standing at it was an elderly man-servant out of livery, who
looked up and down the pavement by turns. It was his air of furtive
anxiety that drew my attention to him. He was not like a man looking
for a cab, or waiting for his sweetheart; and I had my eye upon him as
I stepped upon the pavement beside him. My surprise was great when he
uttered an exclamation of dismay at sight of me, and made as if he
would retreat; while his face, in the full glare of the light, grew so
pale and terror-stricken that he might before have been completely at
his ease. I was astonished and instinctively stood, returning his
gaze; for perhaps twenty seconds we remained so, he speechless, and
his hands fallen by his side. Then, before I could move on, he cried,
"Oh! Mr. George! Oh! Mr. George!" in a tone that rang in the stillness
more like a wail than an ordinary cry.
My name, my surname I mean, is George. For a moment I took the address
to myself, forgetting that the man was a stranger; and my heart began
to beat more quickly with fear of what might have happened. "What is
it?" I exclaimed. "What is it?" and I pulled from the lower part of my
face the silk muffler I was wearing. The evening was close, but I had
been suffering from a sore throat.
He came nearer and peered more closely at me and I dismissed my fear;
for I could see the discovery of his mistake dawning upon him. His
pallid face, on which the pallor was the more noticeable, seeing that
his plump features were those of a man with whom the world went well,
regained some of its lost colour, and a sigh of relief passed his
lips. But this feeling was only momentary. The joy of escape from
whatever blow he had thought imminent gave place to his previous state
of expectancy of something.
"You took me for another person," I said, preparing to pass on. At
that moment I could have sworn--I would have given one hundred to one
twice over--that he was going to say yes. To my immense astonishment,
he did not. With a visible effort he said "No!"
"Eh! What?" I exclaimed. I had taken a step or two.
"No, sir."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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