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.
