There Came Both Mist and Snow Read Online Free PDF Page A

dead
    Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
    Give warning to the world that I am fled.’
     
    There was a pause; everybody, I think, was surprised that Wilfred had survived a second round. And now Lucy’s laborious game took a somewhat gloomy turn. Most of the bells in Shakespeare – or most of those which we could remember – ring out upon some occasion of man’s mortality. Geoffrey told us of ‘ sweet Helen’s bells’ ; Cecil cited ‘ a grief comparèd well To one sore sick that hears the passing-bell ’; Anne remembered ‘ a sullen bell Remembered tolling a departing friend .’ And presently – for it was a game which even good and informed memories could not keep up for long – only Lucy and Wale were left.
    It was Lucy’s turn; she knitted her brows as Basil counted again. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I give in to Sir Mervyn.’ Her expression changed. ‘Stop! I can think of just one more: My sighing breast shall be thy funeral bell .’ She glanced at Wale in triumph. ‘ My sighing breast ,’ she repeated to him with emphasis, ‘ shall be thy funeral bell .’
    Wale open his mouth; then I saw him hesitate, his face curiously grim.
    ‘Seven,’ said Basil, ‘eight…’
    I glanced at Lucy, preparing childishly for triumph.
    ‘Nine…’
    Wale raised his head. ‘ This sight of death ,’ he said clearly, ‘ is as a bell That warns my old age to a sepulchre .’
    His eye went round the company and rested for a moment on Cecil, who was fiddling again with the revolver which had been occupying him earlier. Rather awkwardly Lucy said, ‘ Romeo and Juliet – of course.’ She had hardly done speaking when Wale turned abruptly and left the room.
    We stared at each other uncomfortably. Then Geoffrey Roper stirred in his seat. ‘ A bell ,’ he said, ‘ that warns his old age to a sepulchre .’ His face lit up. ‘By God, there’s an idea for a picture in that!’
     
    Oddly enough, dinner three hours later found everyone in excellent spirits. I say ‘oddly enough,’ and if I have succeeded in conveying something of the diffused uneasiness of the earlier meal the reader will understand me. Lucy’s game had been obscurely distressing. It had also been pedantic. I have myself, of course, the professional writer’s dislike of anything savouring of the literary competition, but I believe that the others too felt that searching one’s head for stray lines of Shakespeare was rather a wantonly cultural amusement. It is significant that Basil’s conversation at dinner, though unrelievedly learned, was far from giving any similar impression. Hyetal regions, mean annual cloudiness, co-tidal lines, cyclonic rotations, and progressive low pressure systems are not charming in themselves. But Basil was fascinated by them and made them fascinating. My own attention, so perfunctory at first that I scarcely realized that this was the vocabulary no longer of geology but of meteorology, was completely held in the end. Nothing in the world is more boring than other people’s hobbies – a proposition which I feared that revolver-shooting was amply to illustrate at Belrive. But meteorology, which must have been a mere hobby with Basil some years ago, was now plainly in another category. Basil had more than got it up; it presently emerged that he was discernibly pushing it along. He had recently formulated – and other people had proved – some theory which I understood only imperfectly but which appeared to be a contribution of some little importance to what is a rapidly developing branch of scientific enquiry.
    All this was impressive and said much for Basil’s intellect. But more remarkable, and speaking for the power of personality which had made my cousin a great leader in organized mountaineering, was his ability to make this remote lore an instrument for bringing us together and raising our spirits. With the exception of Wale we were none of us scientifically inclined; we had some of us been at a dreary