Free Eva Trout by Elizabeth Bowen

Meantime, there was suspense in the glassed-in classroom; nobody stirred.
    One afternoon—before, even, the rain had had time to cease—the sun burst out, taking advantage of the recreational half-hour following school tea. It (the sun) caught Eva halfway along one of the brick paths intersecting the lawn. Then Miss Smith was beheld, coming straight towards her in one of the school oilskins—which, too capacious, enveloped her semi-transparently like a tent of yellow lit from within. The vision advanced on a shaft of light blinding to Eva. Instinctively making way, the girl side-stepped off the not narrow path. Her foot sank into the lawn with a deep squelch.
    “That’s not necessary!” called out the other.
    “I’m sorry,” said Eva. She got back on to the path.
    “I’m not royalty.”
    “I could not,” Eva explained, “see.”
    “No—this is dazzling, all of a sudden!” Miss Smith, bringing to light two books which she’d been keeping for shelter, while yet the rain fell, under the oilskin, came to a standstill not far from Eva, casting round her a look at the brilliantly glistening grass and despoiled cherry trees quivering with prismatic drops. “There should be a rainbow?” She threw a glance round the sky.
    “No?” said Eva, sharing the disappointment.
    “Are you in a hurry?” Miss Smith asked. (It had not seemed so.) “I only was looking for a snail.”
    “You collect them?”
    “This was for nature-study.”
    “It’s not urgent?” Eva shook her head. “I am glad we met, then.—How are you getting on?”
    “I am trying to,” said the girl, with a touch of passion.
    “You listen very intently. But I really wanted to know, are you glad you’re here?—or does ‘here’ seem strange, still?”
    Eva examined the path’s brickwork; then, down to its very roots, some nearby grass.
    “Or perhaps that is rather a question?” asked Miss Smith.
    “Anywhere—” Eva began. She began again: “Anywhere would seem strange to me that did not.”
    “Eva, do look at me!—not away.”
    “The sun’s in my eyes.”
    “Yes, of course it is,” the other said quickly, penitent. “Let’s both go the way I’m going, shall we, then we shall both have the sun behind us.” So they began to. Ahead stood the pleasant house with nothing to hide: the original Lumleigh Court, now the school’s headquarters. Towards it, ahead of the walkers went their two shadows: Eva saw nothing else. Miss Smith, too, saw them—”Yes, we’re like coming events! But,” she went on, “what were you saying before? Anywhere would seem strange to you that did not… what?”
    “Seem strange.”
    “That is a complicated thought.”
    “To me,” said Eva, expanding, “nowhere does not, by now —a little.” But then she thought of the castle. “Or almost nowhere.”
    “How steamy it all is, suddenly!” cried the other. Oppressed, stifled, she moved apart from Eva. “Tropical. You’ve been in the tropics, have you?—I know you’ve travelled.” Sweat came out on her forehead. “Will you hold these”—she thrust the books at the girl—”and help me out of this?”—she tugged at the oilskin. Eva, demented, clutching the books, one-handedly tugged at the oilskin also. Miss Smith got herself out of it, but let Eva carry it, saying: “Thank you.” Adding: “They’re suffocating, those things. I’m better now.”
    “Are you delicate, Miss Smith?”
    “No; made of steel. Only, I’m claustrophobic.” She left the warning to sink in. They walked on. “Why,” asked Miss Smith retrospectively, “did you say, ‘by now’? I wonder whether that means that you’ve travelled too much? Satiation could give you that feeling of unreality.”
    “Have I that feeling?”
    “You’ve been trying to say so. You go everywhere with your father, somebody told us—there is only your father?”
    “Only my father.”
    “He must miss you,” speculated Miss Smith, gently.
    Here came the nice house. And in a way