During the first days she occupied herself in thinking about changes in

the house. She took the shades off the candlesticks, had new wallpaper

put up, the staircase repainted, and seats made in the garden round the

sundial; she even inquired how she could get a basin with a jet fountain

and fishes. Finally her husband, knowing that she liked to drive out,

picked up a second-hand dogcart, which, with new lamps and splashboard

in striped leather, looked almost like a tilbury.

He was happy then, and without a care in the world. A meal together,

a walk in the evening on the highroad, a gesture of her hands over her

hair, the sight of her straw hat hanging from the window-fastener, and

many another thing in which Charles had never dreamed of pleasure, now

made up the endless round of his happiness. In bed, in the morning, by

her side, on the pillow, he watched the sunlight sinking into the down

on her fair cheek, half hidden by the lappets of her night-cap. Seen

thus closely, her eyes looked to him enlarged, especially when, on

waking up, she opened and shut them rapidly many times. Black in the

shade, dark blue in broad daylight, they had, as it were, depths of

different colours, that, darker in the centre, grew paler towards the

surface of the eye. His own eyes lost themselves in these depths; he saw

himself in miniature down to the shoulders, with his handkerchief round

his head and the top of his shirt open. He rose. She came to the window

to see him off, and stayed leaning on the sill between two pots of

geranium, clad in her dressing gown hanging loosely about her. Charles,

in the street buckled his spurs, his foot on the mounting stone, while

she talked to him from above, picking with her mouth some scrap of

flower or leaf that she blew out at him. Then this, eddying, floating,

described semicircles in the air like a bird, and was caught before

it reached the ground in the ill-groomed mane of the old white mare

standing motionless at the door. Charles from horseback threw her a

kiss; she answered with a nod; she shut the window, and he set off. And

then along the highroad, spreading out its long ribbon of dust, along

the deep lanes that the trees bent over as in arbours, along paths where

the corn reached to the knees, with the sun on his back and the morning

air in his nostrils, his heart full of the joys of the past night, his

mind at rest, his flesh at ease, he went on, re-chewing his happiness,

like those who after dinner taste again the truffles which they are

digesting.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024