Death the Knight and the Lady/Chapter 10

this was Geraldine Wilder, or Gerald—Geraldine Wilder, if you please.

This half ghostly being, with brown rippling hair and a face like the face of a wild rose. And the dress of wonderful black lace that seemed draped round the slight figure by the fingers of the wind, and the milk white neck, rising like the stem of some graceful flower to support the small brown head, and the elegance of the whole apparition. I love to think of it even still. But it was Beatrice Sinclair. Oh, yes, beyond any manner of doubt, it was Beatrice Sinclair, and as we gazed at each other for one short second the claws of the falcon tore at my wrist.

Then this vision of the past came across the room and held up its face to be kissed. And it was like two dead lovers kissing through a veil—so it seemed to me. And yet I could have laughed as she sat down in the great arm chair opposite mine, to see the subtle turn of the body with which she arranged the train of her dress, the graceful manner of sitting down, and then to remember that "Miss Geraldine was a boy;" and then the glimpse of immaculate white petticoat! it seemed like a witticism one could not laugh at because one was in church.

I laugh now as I think of it, at least I smile, for I haven't strength to get up a real laugh, and then somehow I cry, perhaps because I am so weak.

Geraldine sat down, and then we began to talk. I talked at random, for I was so busy examining and admiring her I couldn't think of other things. The little division at the end of the nose seemed somehow the most delightful thing I had ever seen, except maybe the arched instep of the tiny foot that peeped like a brown mouse from beneath the skirt.

What a lout I felt beside her. I felt awkward, and stupid, and just as a mole might feel if it were made to sit in the sun. I began to stutter and stammer, and might have made a dreadful fool of myself, only that the recollection shot up in my mind, "she's a boy"; as long as I kept that in mind I was all right, but the instant I began to think of her as a girl, my stupidity returned.

We talked, mercy, what modest and innocent talk, the whole college of Cardinals and the old Pope himself might have listened and been the better for it, but they would not have been much the wiser.

"Gerald—I mean Geraldine—how old are you?"

"I am sixteen years."

"You have never been away from home, you have never seen a city?"

"What is a city?"

"Oh, it's a place, a horrible place where it's all smoke, and houses, and noise."

Geraldine shook her head. She could not imagine what such a place as this could be like.

"Are there many more people in the world from where you come?" asked Geraldine after a pause, resting her chin on her hand and gazing at me with a deep, far-away look, as if she recognised me dimly but was not quite sure.

"Oh, yes; but has your father never told you about the world and the people in it?"

"No," said Geraldine, with a shake of the head; "he told me it was a bad place, and I must never go there, that was all."

"Have you never wished to go there?"

"No, never, till—till now."

"Why now?"

"I would like to go there if it is the place you come from."

Geraldine was gazing at me now intensely—I know no other word—with eyes that seemed appealing to me to say something; never had I been gazed at so before.

I could only falter out, "Why?"

"Because," said Geraldine, "I think I know where you come from, I think I have seen you there, but it was in a dream, and we were not dressed as we are, but I am not sure. Who are you?"

I have never heard anything so soft and yet so full of a kind of fire as those words.

"Has not your father told you, Geraldine?"

"No—he said a lady was coming to see me, but that was all."

"I am Beatrice Sinclair, Geraldine."

"But that is only a name."

A thought shot like a horrible zig-zag firework through my brain; it was, "Geraldine, I was once your murderer."

Then bang from tragedy to comedy. I began to laugh, for no earthly reason, and Geraldine caught the laugh as it flew on her beautiful lips, and we both laughed at each other like two children—at nothing. Then we talked for an hour about—nothing.

As Geraldine vanished that night to her own rooms I called her back, and she came back from the dark corridor like a beautiful ghost.

I only wanted to kiss her again, but she seemed to think that a perfectly good reason for my calling her back.

Then I went to bed and cried like a fool; then I got out of bed and hunted round the room in the dark, guess what for—a match-box, guess what to find—my cigarette box. I really think I must once have been a man.