Malvina of BrittanyJerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka)
Science
Malvina of Brittany
Jerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka)
Brittany (France) -- Fiction; Short stories, English
And the next evening he told himself the same. He dared not whisper to
himself anything else. And each succeeding evening again. He never
remembered how many. For a time he would sit watching the path by
which she had always come; and when the hour was long past he would
rise and walk towards the gate, look east and west, and then return.
One evening he stopped one of the park-keepers and questioned him.
Yes, the man remembered her quite well: the young lady with the fawn
gloves. She had come once or twice--maybe oftener, the park-keeper
could not be sure--and had waited. No, there had been nothing to show
that she was in any way upset. She had just sat there for a time, now
and then walking a little way and then coming back again, until the
closing hour, and then she had gone. He left his address with the
park-keeper. The man promised to let him know if he ever saw her there
again.
Sometimes, instead of the park, he would haunt the mean streets about
Lisson Grove and far beyond the other side of the Edgware Road, pacing
them till night fell. But he never found her.
He wondered, beating against the bars of his poverty, if money would
have helped him. But the grim, endless city, hiding its million
secrets, seemed to mock the thought. A few pounds he had scraped
together he spent in advertisements; but he expected no response, and
none came. It was not likely she would see them.
And so after a time the park, and even the streets round about it,
became hateful to him; and he moved away to another part of London,
hoping to forget. But he never quite succeeded. Always it would come
back to him when he was not thinking: the broad, quiet walk with its
prim trees and gay beds of flowers. And always he would see her seated
there, framed by the fading light. At least, that much of her: the
little spiritual face, and the brown shoes pointing downwards, and
between them the little fawn gloves folded upon her lap.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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