DOI article:
Harland, Henry: When I am king
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27812#0084
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When I am King
order out of the chaos in my mind, and half automatically watching
and considering him as he played his dance—Edmund Pair playing
a dance for prostitutes and drunken sailors. He was not greatly
changed. There were the same grey eyes, deep-set and wide
apart, under the same broad forehead ; the same fine nose and
chin, the same sensitive mouth. The whole face was pretty much
the same, only thinner perhaps, and with a look of apathy, of
inanimation, that was foreign to my recollection of it. His hair
had turned quite white, but otherwise he appeared no older than
his years. His figure, tall, slender, well-knit, retained its vigour
and its distinction. Though he wore a shabby brown Norfolk
jacket, and his beard was two days old, you could in no circum-
stances have taken him for anything but a gentleman. I waited
anxiously for the time when we should be alone—anxiously,
yet with a sort of terror. I was burning to understand, and yet
I shrunk from doing so. If to conjecture even vaguely what
experiences could have brought him to this, what dark things
suffered or done, had been melancholy when he was a nameless
old musician, now it was appalling, and I dreaded the explana-
tion that I longed to hear.
At last he struck his final chord, and rose from the piano. Then
he turned to me and said, composedly enough, "Well, I'm ready."
He, apparently, had in some measure pulled himself together. In
the street he took my arm. " Let's walk in this direction," he
said, leading off!, " towards the Christian quarter of the town."
And in a moment he went on : " This has been an odd meeting.
What brings you to Bordeaux ? "
I explained that I was on my way to Biarritz, stopping for the
night between two trains.
"Then it's all the more surprising that you should have
stumbled into the Brasserie des Quatre Vents. You've altered
very
When I am King
order out of the chaos in my mind, and half automatically watching
and considering him as he played his dance—Edmund Pair playing
a dance for prostitutes and drunken sailors. He was not greatly
changed. There were the same grey eyes, deep-set and wide
apart, under the same broad forehead ; the same fine nose and
chin, the same sensitive mouth. The whole face was pretty much
the same, only thinner perhaps, and with a look of apathy, of
inanimation, that was foreign to my recollection of it. His hair
had turned quite white, but otherwise he appeared no older than
his years. His figure, tall, slender, well-knit, retained its vigour
and its distinction. Though he wore a shabby brown Norfolk
jacket, and his beard was two days old, you could in no circum-
stances have taken him for anything but a gentleman. I waited
anxiously for the time when we should be alone—anxiously,
yet with a sort of terror. I was burning to understand, and yet
I shrunk from doing so. If to conjecture even vaguely what
experiences could have brought him to this, what dark things
suffered or done, had been melancholy when he was a nameless
old musician, now it was appalling, and I dreaded the explana-
tion that I longed to hear.
At last he struck his final chord, and rose from the piano. Then
he turned to me and said, composedly enough, "Well, I'm ready."
He, apparently, had in some measure pulled himself together. In
the street he took my arm. " Let's walk in this direction," he
said, leading off!, " towards the Christian quarter of the town."
And in a moment he went on : " This has been an odd meeting.
What brings you to Bordeaux ? "
I explained that I was on my way to Biarritz, stopping for the
night between two trains.
"Then it's all the more surprising that you should have
stumbled into the Brasserie des Quatre Vents. You've altered
very