The Aerodrome: A Love Story Read Online Free PDF Page B

at least a year before I was born, at a time when the Rector was a young man, before he grew his beard. I could not imagine even his appearance at this time, and so could not connect with the man I knew the scene on the mountainside and its passion and deceit. Yet I knew the Rector to be a man of strong feelings, in spite of the gentleness which he had always shown to me, and I saw that if he had sinned he had certainly suffered for it. I might feel horror for the crime, but I could feel no enmity against the criminal. Had I still believed the man to be my father, I might perhaps have felt differently. As it was I saw the situation as one in which I could not possibly be of help and in which I was myself not even remotely implicated. With the Rector's friend, Anthony, I had not, I reflected, anything whatever to do, and it was difficult either to pity or to condemn a person whom I had never seen and of whom previously I had not heard. I was much more interested in the light which the confession had thrown on the relations between my two guardians, and it was a shock to me to realize that the Rector's wife, so docile in my experience, had ever been, even if ever so slightly, unfaithful to her husband. I began to see that, just as in the case of my assumed parentage, I had been taking things very much too much for granted. Instead of the orderly and easy system of relationships with which I had fancied myself to be surrounded, I began now to imagine crimes and secrecies on all sides, the results of forces to which previously I had given little or no attention. Were even the Squire and his sister, I began to wonder, all that they purported to be? And how much had the Rector's wife already known of the story to which both she and I had listened that night? To judge from the expression on her face when I had first seen her from behind the curtain she was not hearing anything either new or particularly horrifying; but I was wholly unable to account for what had seemed to me the look almost of satisfaction with which she was listening. And again and again my mind went back to the Rector's last words, before he had been interrupted; for these words seemed to indicate that at the dinner party he had not told me the truth, or had only told a part of the truth. Was there some even deeper mystery that surrounded my birth? Or were there clues to the mystery which he had deliberately withheld from me? And what reason could he have had for revealing something but not all? Was his consideration for his wife's honour or for his own? Or had he wished to spare me the knowledge of some degradation or disability? So I thought and questioned myself vainly during the night, and the same thoughts and questions returned to me while I was shaving and dressing for breakfast on the next day. Clearly I could ask no questions of my guardians when they were both together, but I determined that I would make, as tactfully as I could, further inquiries from each of them separately whenever an occasion presented itself. I arrived somewhat late at the breakfast table and observed nothing remarkable in the bearing either of the Rector or of his wife. The Rector had finished his egg and was reading the morning paper. His wife, who as a rule ate little at this meal, was sitting with her hands folded in her lap. She did not turn her head as I entered the room, but smiled at me across the gleaming silver of the coffee pot and milk jug; then slowly extended one hand towards the cup which she would fill for me. The Rector looked up from his newspaper. I noticed that this morning he was entirely himself; the pallor of the previous night had left his face, and his eyes were twinkling beneath his thick black eyebrows. So he would appear nearly always in the morning, fresh and energetic, though by the evening he would often be tired and disspirited, sitting for long periods, gazing into the fire, a pipe between his lips and an unopened book upon his knees. I understood him