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Page 65
"I was looking for you," he said simply.
Then he glanced over my head and his hand shot up in a manner of salute;
I turned to see why. I was in front of the portrait of Lord Kitchener.
"Did you know him, General Cochrane?" I asked.
"Know him?" he demanded, and the gray glance plunged out at me from
under the thick lashes.
"Don't do it," I pleaded, putting my hands over my eyes. "When you look
at me so it's--bombs and bullets." The look softened, but the lean,
wrinkled face did not smile.
"You asked if I knew Kitchener," he stated.
I spoke haltingly. "I didn't know. Ought I to have known?"
General Cochrane gazed down, all at once dreamy, as if he looked through
me at something miles and �ons away.
"No," he said. "There's no reason why you should. You have an uncommon
knowledge of events of that time, an astonishing knowledge for a young
thing, so that I forget you can't know--all of it." He stopped, as if
considering. "It is because I am old that I have fancies," he went on
slowly. "And you have understanding eyes. I have had a fancy this
evening that you and I were meant to be friends; that a similarity of
interests, a--a likeness--oh, hang it all!" burst out the General like a
college boy. "I never could talk except straight and hot. I mean I've a
feeling of a bond between us--you'll think me most presuming--"
I interrupted, breathless. "It's so," I whispered. "I felt it, only I'd
not have dared--" and I choked.
Old General Cochrane frowned thoughtfully. "Curious," was what he said.
"It's psychology of course, but I'm hanged if I know the explanation.
However, since it's so, my child, I'm glad. A man as old as I makes few
new friends. And a beautiful young woman--with a brain--and charm--and
innocent eyes--and French clothes!"
One may guess if I tried to stop this description. I could have listened
all night. With that:
"'Did I know Kitchener!' the child asked," reflected the General, and
threw back his splendid head and laughed. I stared up, my heart pumping.
Then, "Well, rather. Why, little Miss Fox--" and he stopped. "I've a
mind to tell the child a fairy-story," he said. "A true fairy-story
which is so extraordinary that few have been found to believe it, even
of those who saw it happen."
He halted again.
"Tell me!"
General Coehrane looked about the roomful of people and tossed out his
hand. "In this mob?" he objected. "It's too long a story in any case.
But why shouldn't you and I have a s�ance, to let a garrulous old fellow
talk about his youth?" he demanded in his lordly way. "Why not come out
on the river in my boat? They'll let you play about with an
octogenarian, won't they?"
"I'll come," I answered the General eagerly.
"Very good. Tomorrow. Oh, by George, no. That confounded Prime Minister
comes down to me tomorrow. I detest old men," said General Cochrane.
"Well, then, the day after?"
The Thames was a picture-book river that day, gay with row-boats and
punts and launches, yet serene for all its gaiety; slipping between
grassy banks under immemorial trees with the air of a private stream
wandering, protected, through an estate. The English have the gift above
other nations of producing an atmosphere of leisure and seclusion, and
surely there is no little river on earth so used and so unabused as the
Thames. Of all the craft abroad that bright afternoon, General
Cochrane's white launch with its gold line above the water and its
gleaming brass trimmings was far and away the prettiest, and I was
bursting with pride as we passed the rank and file on the stream and
they looked at us admiringly. To be alive on such a day in England was
something; to be afloat on the silvery Thames was enchantment; to be in
that lovely boat with General Cochrane, the boy Donald Cochrane, was a
rapture not to be believed without one's head reeling. Yet here it was
happening, the thing I should look back upon fifty, sixty years from
now, an old gray woman, and tell my grandchildren as the most
interesting event of my life. It was happening, and I was enjoying every
second, and not in the least awed into misery, as is often the case with
great moments. For the old officer was as perfect a playmate as any
good-for-nothing young subaltern in England, and that is putting it
strongly.
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