“Ten minutes to Dark Harbour,” said _Godiva’s_ porter, coming into
the vestibule with his whisk brush. She hardly noticed him dusting
her, she was thinking of George the Fourth, the perplexing phantom
she had accidentally startled into life. She felt for him a strange,
almost maternal tenderness; an amusement at some of his scruples, an
admiration at the natural grace of his mind when he allowed himself to
be imaginative. But behind these, a kind of fear: for George the Fourth
had grown gigantic in her dreams; sometimes, in panic, she realized how
much she thought about him. He was so completely hers because he was
hidden in the securest of hiding places--inside a person who belonged
to someone else. So she couldn’t resist the invitation to go down to
the Island, to renew memories of childhood ... and the most interesting
of those ghostly children, she thought, would be George the Fourth,
only twelve months old. She had had to remind herself, sometimes,
that the first three Georges did belong to others ... but if you have
to keep reminding yourself of a thing, perhaps it isn’t so. For the
amazement had been mutual. She had awakened George the Fourth, but he
had awakened someone too.... And frightened by these thoughts (it had
been her lonely pride to stand so securely on her own feet) she was
flying from the dream of George to George himself--and Phyllis.
Over the wide sea meadows the train sounded its deep bluster of
warning: a voice of triumph, a voice of pain, announcing reunions
that cannot unite, separations that cannot divide. And George
Granville--all four of him, at that moment--driving over the long
trestle to the mainland, heard it from afar, and in sheer bravado
echoed the cry with his horn.
X
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account