Read Online And We Go On by Will R. Bird - Free Book Online

him the part I wished most to see, and how I liked the “Old Curiosity Shop,” and my visit to Stratford-on-Avon, and he invited me to come with him on a motor ride. I got a few necessities for an over-night stop, and went.
    We went from Paddington through a sunlit country, past the turreted mass of Windsor Castle, over the shimmering Thames, in and out of Maidenhead and through an English part of England. There were green, shadowy valleys, sharp little hills, a countryside soft in the glow of evening sun, woods, trickling brooks, wide pastures, a long street of quaint, low red-tiled houses, an old tavern with an ancient sign, “The Black Boar.” Something gripped me, held me. I turned to the officer. “If you’ll let me out here, please,” I said, “I’d like to stay over night.”
    He acceded quietly. “I hope you like it,” he said. “I’ll be going back tomorrow and I’ll pick you up.” Something had urged me to stop there. I had intended going with the officer to his home, but it was as if some person had pulled me from my seat. I went into the Inn and after some difficulty in getting myself understood, arranged for a bed and meals. Then, outside again, I strolled on through the village. A rambling, ivy-covered rectory, nestling in a rose garden and embowered in great sheltering trees, was within easy reach of a little, gray, weather-beaten church. A soft wind, an evening wind, almost imperceptible, brought to me the sound of running water, a humming droning music that fitted the harmony of the evening.
    The street was very quiet with only a few children playing in a field and an old man smoking his pipe on the bench outside the Inn. I passed down a narrow lane and found the little droning waterfall. It was by the ruins ofan old water mill, and as I stood there drinking in the scene I suddenly shivered. It was dusk, and a strange chill blew towards me as if an unseen door had opened.
    I turned swiftly, and there stood a girl. She had appeared like a phantom, but she was very warm and real, for she took my hand and welcomed me to the village. “I am so glad,” she said, “that you have come.”
    We talked about England, and her past, and a little about Canada, then she began to listen in a curious way, as if she could hear things a long way off. I asked her the reason, and her answer chilled me as the cold breath had done. “I am comparing voices,” she said. “Yours and his.”
    â€œHis?” I exclaimed. “Who’s?”
    She glanced at me impatiently. “Your brother’s, of course,” she said. “Steve’s.”
    I did not start or cry questions, though she had not asked my name. It seemed, all at once, as if I had entered a different sphere of existence, that such a coincidence were natural and that it was not mine to either doubt or query. We talked long there together and when we parted she told me that Steve had told her that I would come. I believed her.
    The next day the officer came and took me back to London. I had not asked a question at the Inn, and I knew nothing about Phyllis, except that she lived with her uncle in a cottage next to the rectory, and that she had met Steve in London. The officer chatted a little as he drove, but we were each preoccupied with our thoughts. He was a tolerant, easygoing fellow with Cambridge manners and that peculiar English drawl so often affected. I never saw him again.
    We were glad when the train pulled out of Le Havre. In mud and slush and a snowstorm we had been paraded through an open hut, stripped naked save for boots that the muck tugged from our feet, and examined by a doctor who sat in the gloom beside a table and checked off names. He did not even look up as I passed by and went, growling and fuming, to dress again. Tommy was especially excited. “We’re away from all that blasted outfit down there,” he said, “and I’m sure