So Well Remembered Read Online Free PDF Page B

because somebody threw some apple-pie in my face during an
election. The pie stuck but the name didn’t.” He laughed and Winslow laughed,
and it was as if one of several barriers between them was from then on let
down. “Too bad I haven’t that drop of whisky for you,” George continued. “But
how about changing your mind about another cup of tea?”
    “Thanks, I will.”
    George went to the door and shouted down the corridor to Annie, then came
back and began to search a time-table on his desk. “If we’re both going to
start in the morning, maybe you’d like to spend the night here?”
    “That’s very kind, but I think I’d better go back to London as I planned
and join you there tomorrow.”
    “Just as you like. There’s a good train at five-eighteen—that still
gives you an hour, so take it easy.”
    Winslow seemed now better able to do this, and until the time of leaving
they both relaxed, arranged further details of their meeting the next day,
and talked quite casually on a variety of subjects—some even verging on
the intellectual, though George was not in the best mood for
appreciation.
    Then he took Winslow to the train, and only in the final minutes before
its departure did they refer to the personal matter again. Winslow muttered,
leaning out of a first-class compartment: “I—I must say it, Boswell
—I—I really don’t know how to thank you for—for taking all
this in the way you have…”
    “What other way was there to take it?”
    “I know, I know… but it’s such an extraordinary situation for you to
have been able to come to terms with.”
    “Who says I’ve come to terms with it?”
    “Yes, but I mean—when I try to imagine myself in your
place—”
    “DON’T.” And there was just the ghost of a smile on George’s face to
soften the harsh finality of the word.
    “All right… but I can’t help feeling more hopeful already—thanks
to you. Of course the affair’s still incomprehensible to me in many ways
—for instance, to fathom the kind of person who could do such a
thing… of course you know her, but then I know Jeff, and he’s not a fool
—that’s what makes HIS side of it so hard to understand.”
    “Oh, maybe not so hard,” George replied. “It’s probably what you said that
you couldn’t find a name for.”
    “Infatuation?”
    “If you like.” And then, abruptly and without caring for the awkwardness
of time and place, George began to tell something about Livia that he had
never mentioned to anyone before. Perhaps it was the atmosphere of a railway
station that reminded him, for it had happened (he said) at the end of their
honeymoon when they were to catch a night train from a seaside place back to
London. They had spent the last day pottering about the promenade between
showers, and during one of these, while sheltering, they had got into
conversation with a well-dressed and rather distinguished-looking man of
sixty or so. It was one of those chance acquaintanceships that flourish
amazingly without either background or future prospects; almost immediately
the stranger offered to conduct them through an adjacent art gallery which,
though full of very bad canvases, gave him the chance to talk so
fascinatingly about paintings that they thought he must belong to that world
himself until later he talked with equal fascination about literature, music,
and politics. Within an hour they were all chattering together like old
friends, and as evening approached it seemed perfectly natural to accept the
stranger’s invitation to dine. (He had given them his name and told them he
was French, which had further amazed George because of his completely
accentless English.) The two newly-weds were presently entertained in a
manner to which they were wholly unaccustomed and which they could certainly
not have afforded—George smilingly declined to break his temperance
pledge, but ate two dozen oysters with gusto while