The Riddle of the River Read Online Free PDF Page B

do let’s go,’ I said.
    ‘Good! I knew you would want to!’ he said happily. ‘And Isimply can’t face a whole weekend at home with you waiting. I’ll send Ernest a telegram. Let’s have a look at the paper to see what plays are on.’ He rustled the pages of his newspaper to the theatre section and read over it with undisguised pleasure.
    ‘There’s
Hamlet, Lear
and
Midsummer Night’s Dream
,’ he said in a faintly hopeful tone, ‘but we’ve seen all of them already, of course.’
    ‘Many times,’ I agreed.
    ‘So perhaps you’d like something different,’ he continued. ‘How about this?
The Second Mrs Tanqueray
has come back after a break, with the same cast, at the St. James. Do you remember? It was a great hit about two years ago.’
    ‘I remember hearing something about it,’ I said. ‘It’s one of Pinero’s comedies, isn’t it? We couldn’t go at the time.’
    ‘It isn’t a comedy. It’s supposed to be rather a powerful critique of social mores. It was the big revelation of the actress Stella Campbell, who’s become very famous since then.’
    ‘Oh, I remember now! It’s the play about a woman with a past!’ Indeed, I had been intrigued at the time, both by the ‘dangerous’ content and by the flamboyant reputation of the young actress impersonating the main character. But the twins were tiny, and travelling had been out of the question. I had not even had time to think about it again since.
    ‘Yes, that’s the one. It made quite a splash. What do you say? Shall we go?’
    ‘Yes indeed, if the Dixons haven’t already seen it.’
    Like a magician, Arthur had eased the anxious pressure which seemed to constrict me, and filled my mind with eager anticipation. While not necessarily the most exotic thing inthe world, a day in London, a visit to friends and a trip to the theatre is a sufficiently rare event in my quiet life for it to cause quite a stir and a ripple there. Taking my candle, I went upstairs to pack a few small items in readiness for a departure early in the morning, glancing out of the window as I did so.
    The sky was clear and starry, and beyond being pleased that the weather seemed fine, I felt moved by its endless depth. But my joy was suddenly marred by the thought that that infinity of twinkling eyes had looked down so recently on this same garden, on the road which ran past the bottom of it, on the Lammas Land beyond, on the river which flowed and whooshed softly through it, and on the corpse of the dead girl floating there, carried by the current, held by the weeds.

Saturday – Sunday, June 25 – 26th, 1898
    The four of us sat together at a table beautifully laid with white cloth and crystal glasses, awaiting the arrival of the fish. Ernest and Kathleen had quite insisted on bringing us to this little restaurant near the theatre, a newly discovered favourite of theirs, perfect for a late dinner after the play. I settled down contentedly and indulged in feeling experienced and cosmopolitan.
    â€˜So what have you been working on lately?’ Arthur asked Ernest, unfolding his napkin and spreading it on his knee. Ernest is of course primarily a physicist rather than a mathematician, and an experimentalist, at that. But Arthur is fascinated by any and all sciences.
    â€˜Still the old magnetism experiments,’ replied Ernest. ‘It’s just extraordinary, the power they have. I showed Kathleen some field lines the other day. You know – if you put iron filings on a sheet of paper and hold it over a magnet, the filings literally shift into a picture of force lines, going from one pole to the other. It looks like this,’ and he began scratching out a picture with a point of his fork onto the tablecloth. ‘It’s extraordinary. It means, you must realise, that those lines are more than just abstract pictures of the directions of force. They represent physical action on the atoms! That’s the direction of my present work.’ He