But now, perched up there on the window-sill, he felt that if he could
only bring the fountain in with him out of the Square into his nursery,
he would have the key to both existences. He wanted to understand--to
understand what was the relation between his friend who had left last
night, why he might say "dada," but mustn't say "damn," why, finally, he
was here at all. He did not consciously consider these things; his brain
was only very slightly, as yet, concerned in his discoveries; but, like
a flowing river, beneath his movements and actions, the interplay of
his two existences drove him on through, his adventure.
There were, of course, many other things in the Square besides the
fountain. There was, at the farther corner, just out of the Square, but
quite visible from Ernest Henry's window, a fruit-shop with coloured
fruit piled high on the boards outside the windows. Indeed, that side
street, of which one could only catch this glimpse, promised to be most
wonderful always; when evening came a golden haze hovered round and
about it. In the garden itself there were often many children, and for
an hour every afternoon Ernest Henry might be found amongst them. There
were two statues in the Square--one of a gentleman in a beard and a
frock-coat, the other of a soldier riding very finely upon a restless
horse; but Ernest Henry was not, as yet, old enough to realise the
meaning and importance of these heroes.
Outside the Square there were many dogs, and even now as he looked down
from his window he could see a number of them, black and brown and
white.
The trees trembled in a little breeze, the fountain flashed in the sun,
somewhere a barrel-organ was playing.... Ernest Henry gave a little
sigh, of satisfaction.
He was back! He was back! He was slipping, slipping into distance
through the window into the street, under the fountain, its glittering
arms had caught him; he was up, the door was before him, he had the key.
"Time for you to put your things on, Master Ernest. And 'ow you've
dirtied your knees! There! Look!"
He shook himself, clambered down from the window, gave his nurse what
she described as "One of his old, old looks. Might be eighty when he's
like that.... They're all like it when they're young."
With a sigh he translated himself back into this new, tiresome
existence.
V
But after that morning things were never again quite the same. He gave
himself up deliberately to the new life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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