England -- Fiction; France -- 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 any persons on the pavement. They were
under the lamps, while I, coming from beneath the trees, was almost
invisible.
The door of the house immediately in front of me as I crossed was
open, and an elderly manservant out of livery was standing at it,
looking 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 before him. But my surprise was great when
he uttered a low exclamation of dismay at sight of me and made as if
he would escape; 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 still 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, as I
was in the act of doing, he cried, "Oh! Mr. George! Oh! Mr. George!"
in a tone that rang out in the stillness rather as 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 shook back 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 thought that I could see the discovery of his mistake dawning
upon him. His pallid face, on which the pallor was the more noticeable
as his plump features were those of a man with whom the world as a
rule went well, regained some of its lost color, 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 at once
to his previous state of miserable expectancy of something or other.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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