Love and Mr. Lewisham. Герберт Уэллс

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      "Is this Mr. Bonover approaching?" she asked.

      "Yes."

      Prolonged pause.

      Would he stop and accost them? At any rate this frightful silence must end. Mr. Lewisham sought in his mind for some remark wherewith to cover his employer's approach. He was surprised to find his mind a desert. He made a colossal effort. If they could only talk, if they could only seem at their ease! But this blank incapacity was eloquent of guilt. Ah!

      "It's a lovely day, though," said Mr. Lewisham. "Isn't it?"

      She agreed with him. "Isn't it?" she said.

      And then Mr. Bonover passed, forehead tight reefed so to speak, and lips impressively compressed. Mr. Lewisham raised his mortar-board, and to his astonishment Mr. Bonover responded with a markedly formal salute – mock clerical hat sweeping circuitously – and the regard of a searching, disapproving eye, and so passed. Lewisham was overcome with astonishment at this improvement on the nod of their ordinary commerce. And so this terrible incident terminated for the time.

      He felt a momentary gust of indignation. After all, why should Bonover or anyone interfere with his talking to a girl if he chose? And for all he knew they might have been properly introduced. By young Frobisher, say. Nevertheless, Lewisham's spring-tide mood relapsed into winter. He was, he felt, singularly stupid for the rest of their conversation, and the delightful feeling of enterprise that had hitherto inspired and astonished him when talking to her had shrivelled beyond contempt. He was glad – positively glad – when things came to an end.

      At the park gates she held out her hand. "I'm afraid I have interrupted your reading," she said.

      "Not a bit," said Mr. Lewisham, warming slightly. "I don't know when

      I've enjoyed a conversation…"

      "It was – a breach of etiquette, I am afraid, my speaking to you, but I did so want to thank you…"

      "Don't mention it," said Mr. Lewisham, secretly impressed by the etiquette.

      "Good-bye." He stood hesitating by the lodge, and then turned back up the avenue in order not to be seen to follow her too closely up the West Street.

      And then, still walking away from her, he remembered that he had not lent her a book as he had planned, nor made any arrangement ever to meet her again. She might leave Whortley anywhen for the amenities of Clapham. He stopped and stood irresolute. Should he run after her? Then he recalled Bonover's enigmatical expression of face. He decided that to pursue her would be altogether too conspicuous. Yet … So he stood in inglorious hesitation, while the seconds passed.

      He reached his lodging at last to find Mrs. Munday halfway through dinner.

      "You get them books of yours," said Mrs. Munday, who took a motherly interest in him, "and you read and you read, and you take no account of time. And now you'll have to eat your dinner half cold, and no time for it to settle proper before you goes off to school. It's ruination to a stummik – such ways."

      "Oh, never mind my stomach, Mrs. Munday," said Lewisham, roused from a tangled and apparently gloomy meditation; "that's my affair." Quite crossly he spoke for him.

      "I'd rather have a good sensible actin' stummik than a full head," said Mrs. Monday, "any day."

      "I'm different, you see," snapped Mr. Lewisham, and relapsed into silence and gloom.

      ("Hoity toity!" said Mrs. Monday under her breath.)

      CHAPTER V.

      HESITATIONS

      Mr. Bonover, having fully matured a Hint suitable for the occasion, dropped it in the afternoon, while Lewisham was superintending cricket practice. He made a few remarks about the prospects of the first eleven by way of introduction, and Lewisham agreed with him that Frobisher i. looked like shaping very well this season.

      A pause followed and the headmaster hummed. "By-the-bye," he said, as if making conversation and still watching the play; "I, ah, – understood that you, ah – were a stranger to Whortley."

      "Yes," said Lewisham, "that's so."

      "You have made friends in the neighbourhood?"

      Lewisham was troubled with a cough, and his ears – those confounded ears – brightened, "Yes," he said, recovering, "Oh yes. Yes, I have."

      "Local people, I presume."

      "Well, no. Not exactly." The brightness spread from Lewisham's ears over his face.

      "I saw you," said Bonover, "talking to a young lady in the avenue. Her face was somehow quite familiar to me. Who was she?"

      Should he say she was a friend of the Frobishers? In that case Bonover, in his insidious amiable way, might talk to the Frobisher parents and make things disagreeable for her. "She was," said Lewisham, flushing deeply with the stress on his honesty and dropping his voice to a mumble, "a … a … an old friend of my mother's. In fact, I met her once at Salisbury."

      "Where?"

      "Salisbury."

      "And her name?"

      "Smith," said Lewisham, a little hastily, and repenting the lie even as it left his lips.

      "Well hit, Harris!" shouted Bonover, and began to clap his hands. "Well hit, sir."

      "Harris shapes very well," said Mr. Lewisham.

      "Very," said Mr. Bonover. "And – what was it? Ah! I was just remarking the odd resemblances there are in the world. There is a Miss Henderson – or Henson – stopping with the Frobishers – in the very same town, in fact, the very picture of your Miss …"

      "Smith," said Lewisham, meeting his eye and recovering the full crimson note of his first blush.

      "It's odd," said Bonover, regarding him pensively.

      "Very odd," mumbled Lewisham, cursing his own stupidity and looking away.

      "Very– very odd," said Bonover.

      "In fact," said Bonover, turning towards the school-house, "I hardly expected it of you, Mr. Lewisham."

      "Expected what, sir?"

      But Mr. Bonover feigned to be already out of earshot.

      "Damn!" said Mr. Lewisham. "Oh! —damn!" – a most objectionable expression and rare with him in those days. He had half a mind to follow the head-master and ask him if he doubted his word. It was only too evident what the answer would be.

      He stood for a minute undecided, then turned on his heel and marched homeward with savage steps. His muscles quivered as he walked, and his face twitched. The tumult of his mind settled at last into angry indignation.

      "Confound him!" said Mr. Lewisham, arguing the matter out with the bedroom furniture. "Why the devil can't he mind his own business?"

      "Mind your own business, sir!" shouted Mr. Lewisham at the wash-hand stand. "Confound you, sir, mind your own business!"

      The wash-hand stand did.

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