England -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction; Social classes -- England -- Fiction
Dorothy wanted her husband's presence as she had never wanted it; she
wanted to help the illusion that she was back in Oxford with all the
adventure of life before her. She wanted to see him here in this
familiar setting and revive ... what?
"I hope Agnes will be happy," she sighed.
Close by a couple of Jews in wasp-striped gabardines were arguing about
something in a mixture of Spanish and Yiddish; without thinking and
anxious only to get back to the present, Dorothy asked Houston if he
could understand what they were talking about. Again that dark blush
showed like a bruise.
"Why should I understand them?" he asked, savagely.
"No, of course. I really don't know," she stammered, in confusion, for
she was thinking how much better a gabardine would suit Houston than his
yachting-suit and how exactly his pendulous under lip resembled the
under lips of the two disputants. An odd fancy came into her mind that
she would rather like to be carried off by Houston, to be held in
captivity by him in the swarming ghetto through which they had picked
their way a few minutes ago, to sit peering mysteriously through the
lattice of some crazy balcony ... to surrender to some one strong and
Eastern and.... Oh, but this was absurd! The sun was hot in this
quadrangle; she was in an odd state; it must be that the news about
Agnes had upset her more than she had thought. At that moment her eyes
rested upon the broken headpiece of a tomb that was leaning against the
cloister, and she found herself reading in a dream: "Gilbert Clare of
Clarehaven. With God. 1501." The palm still swayed against the blue sky;
the Jews still chattered at one another. Dorothy looked round her with a
dazed expression, and then impulsively knelt down among the rubble that
surrounded the tombstone and read the words again: "Gilbert Clare of
Clarehaven. With God. 1501." The Italian curator of the museum that was
being formed in the old hospital drew near and explained to Dorothy in
French that this was the tombstone of an English knight.
"An ancestor of mine," Dorothy told him.
The curator smiled politely; being a Latin, he certainly did not believe
her.
"I've never seen you so much interested by anything," said Houston.
"I never have been so thrilled by anything," she declared. "Gilbert
Clare of Clarehaven! Clarehaven! And when he left it he must have often
thought of our little church on the headland; and when he died here, how
he must have longed to be at home."
"Does Clare mean very much to you?" Houston asked.
"_You_ could never imagine how much. For Clare I would do anything!"
"Anything? That's a rash statement."
"Anything," she repeated.
Houston tried to persuade the curator to let him have the tombstone for
Dorothy to take away with her; but the curator was shocked at such a
suggestion and explained that it was an unusual inscription--the
earliest of the kind in English that he knew; he should have expected
Latin at such a date.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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