DOI Artikel:
Dixon, Marion Hepworth: A thief in the night
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21805#0247
By Marion Hepworth Dixon 243
they looked at each other and avoided each other’s eyes. Her
husband had been in London on business for three or four days (it
was some years before they finally settled in the North), and was
to return by the last train. He had returned, punctually, as he
did everything, and she recalled, as if it had been yesterday, the
sound of his monotonous breathing through that last night. She
had been unable to sleep, waiting for the morning, the morning
when the dead man, then a slim young lieutenant, was to creep
down to meet her in the little wood they reached by the orchard
gate. Yes, in looking back she remembered everything. Her
foolish fear of being too soon at the trysting-place, her dread of
being too late. She recalled how she had strained her ears to
listen for awakening sounds, how she had at last caught the dick
of an opening door, followed by cautious footsteps in the hall.
To creep down was the work of a moment. Once below, and
outside the cottage walls, the scent of the new-mown hay was
in her nostrils, and in her limbs the intoxicating freshness of
morning. She could see his figure in front of her on the narrow
winding path, and heard her own welcoming cry, as she caught up
her gown in the dewy grass, and darted towards him in the stränge,
westward-trending shadows.
And now he was dead. The white mockery of a man below-
stairs, that shrouded thing, so numbing in its statue-like immobility,
was all that remained. What had she left ? What tangible
remembrance of that lost possession, that she might finger and
gloat over in secret? To unhook the photograph with its tarnished
wire and dusty frame was her first impulse, but even when she
clasped it in her hands the protrait seemed, in a fashion, to evade
her. The modelling of the features had evaporated, the face was
almost blank. She craved for something more tangible, more
human, something more intimately his.
The
they looked at each other and avoided each other’s eyes. Her
husband had been in London on business for three or four days (it
was some years before they finally settled in the North), and was
to return by the last train. He had returned, punctually, as he
did everything, and she recalled, as if it had been yesterday, the
sound of his monotonous breathing through that last night. She
had been unable to sleep, waiting for the morning, the morning
when the dead man, then a slim young lieutenant, was to creep
down to meet her in the little wood they reached by the orchard
gate. Yes, in looking back she remembered everything. Her
foolish fear of being too soon at the trysting-place, her dread of
being too late. She recalled how she had strained her ears to
listen for awakening sounds, how she had at last caught the dick
of an opening door, followed by cautious footsteps in the hall.
To creep down was the work of a moment. Once below, and
outside the cottage walls, the scent of the new-mown hay was
in her nostrils, and in her limbs the intoxicating freshness of
morning. She could see his figure in front of her on the narrow
winding path, and heard her own welcoming cry, as she caught up
her gown in the dewy grass, and darted towards him in the stränge,
westward-trending shadows.
And now he was dead. The white mockery of a man below-
stairs, that shrouded thing, so numbing in its statue-like immobility,
was all that remained. What had she left ? What tangible
remembrance of that lost possession, that she might finger and
gloat over in secret? To unhook the photograph with its tarnished
wire and dusty frame was her first impulse, but even when she
clasped it in her hands the protrait seemed, in a fashion, to evade
her. The modelling of the features had evaporated, the face was
almost blank. She craved for something more tangible, more
human, something more intimately his.
The