He didn't - he non-suited her and that was all." "And did not
Antony Prage, or both of them, go into the witness box and swear that
they were innocent of the charge?" "No, they never opened their mouths
in court. When the judge told the young woman that she had failed to
establish her case, they walked out smiling, and their friends came
round them and they went off together." "And these brothers, I suppose,
still live among you at their farm and are regarded as good respectable
young men, and go to chapel on Sundays, and by-and-by will probably
marry nice respectable Methodist girls, and the girls' friends will
congratulate them on making such good matches."
"Oh, no doubt; one has been married some time and his wife has got a
baby; the other one will be married before long."
"And what do you think about it all?"
"I've told you what happened because the facts came out in court and
are known to everyone. What I think about it is what I think, and I've
no call to tell that."
"Oh, very well!" I said, vexed at his noncommittal attitude. Then I
looked at him, but his face revealed nothing; he was just the man with
a quiet manner and low voice who had put himself at my service and
engaged to drive me five miles out to a hill, help me to find what I
wanted and bring me back in time to catch the conveyance to my town,
all for the surprisingly moderate sum of seven-and-sixpence. But he had
told me the story of the two brothers; and besides, in spite of our
faces being masks, if one make them so, mind converses with mind in
some way the psychologists have not yet found out, and I knew that in
his heart of hearts he regarded those two respectable members of the
Pollhampton community much as I did.
VIII
THE TWO WHITE HOUSES: A MEMORY
There's no connection - not the slightest - between this two and the
other twos; it was nevertheless the telling of the stories of the
brothers which brought back to me this ancient memory of two houses.
Nor were the two houses connected in any way, except that they were
both white, situated on the same road, on the same side of it; also
both stood a little way back from the road in grounds beautifully
shaded with old trees. It was the great southern road which leads from
the city of Buenos Ayres, the Argentine capital, to the vast level
cattle-country of the pampas, where I was born and bred. Naturally it
was a tremendously exciting adventure to a child's mind to come from
these immense open plains, where one lived in rude surroundings with
the semi-barbarous gauchos for only neighbours, to a great civilised
town full of people and of things strange and beautiful to see. And to
touch and taste.
Thus it happened that when I, a child, with my brothers and sisters,
were taken to visit the town we would become more and more excited as
we approached it at the end of a long journey, which usually took us
two days, at all we saw - ox-carts and carriages and men on horseback on
the wide hot dusty road, and the houses and groves and gardens on
either side.... It was thus that we became acquainted with the two
white houses, and were attracted to them because in their whiteness and
green shade they looked beautiful to us and cool and restful, and we
wished we could live in them.
They were well outside of the town, the nearest being about two miles
from its old south wall and fortifications, the other one a little over
two miles further out. The last being the farthest out was the first
one we came to on our journeys to the city; it was a somewhat singular-
looking building with a verandah supported by pillars painted green,
and it had a high turret. And near it was a large dovecot with a cloud
of pigeons usually flying about it, and we came to calling it Dovecot
House. The second house was plainer in form but was not without a
peculiar distinction in its large wrought-iron front gate with white
pillars on each side, and in front of each pillar a large cannon
planted postwise in the earth.
This we called Cannon House, but who lived in these two houses none
could tell us.
When I was old enough to ride as well as any grown-up, and my
occasional visits to town were made on horseback, I once had three
young men for my companions, the oldest about twenty-eight, the two not
more than nineteen and twenty-one respectively. I was eagerly looking
out for the first white house, and when we were coming to it I cried
out, "Now we are coming to Dovecot House, let's go slow and look at
it."
Without a word they all pulled up, and for some minutes we sat silently
gazing at the house. Then the eldest of the three said that if he was a
rich man he would buy the house and pass the rest of his life very
happily in it and in the shade of its old trees.
In what, the others asked, would his happiness consist, since a
rational being must have something besides a mere shelter from the
storm and a tree to shade him from the sun to be happy?
He answered that after securing the house he would range the whole
country in search of the most beautiful woman in it, and that when he
had found and made her his wife he would spend his days and years in
adoring her for her beauty and charm.
