Читать книгу The Dull Miss Archinard - Anne Douglas Sedgwick - Страница 5

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AT four that afternoon Odd, his wife, and Mary started for the Archinards’ house. Mary had offered to join her brother; the prospect of the walk together was very pleasant. She could not object when Alicia, at the last moment, announced her intention of going too.

“I have never been to see her. I should like the walk, and Mary will approve of the fulfilment of my duty towards my neighbor.”

Mary’s prospects were decidedly nipped in the bud, as Alicia perhaps intended that they should be; but Alicia’s avowed motive was so praiseworthy that Mary allowed herself only an inner discontent, and, what with her good-humored demeanor, Odd’s placid chat of crops and tenantry, and Alicia’s acquiescent beauty, the trio seemed to enjoy the mile of beechwood and country road and the short sweep of prettily wooded drive that led to Allersley Priory, a square stone house covered with vines of magnolia and wisteria, and incorporating in its walls, according to tradition, portions of the old Priory which once occupied the site. From the back of the house sloped a wide expanse of lawn and shrubberies, and past it ran the river that half a mile further on flowed out of Captain Archinard’s little property into Odd’s. The drawing-room was on the ground-floor, and its windows opened on this view.

Mrs. Archinard and the Captain were talking to young Lord Allan Hope, eldest son of Lord Mainwaring. Mrs. Archinard’s invalidism was evidently not altogether fictitious. She had a look of at once extreme fragility and fading beauty. One knew at the first glance that she was a woman to have cushions behind her and her back to the light. There was no character in the delicate head, unless one can call a passive determination to do or feel nothing that required energy, character.

The two little girls came in while Odd talked to their father. They were dressed alike in white muslins. Katherine’s gown reached her ankles; Hilda’s was still at the mi-jambe stage. Their long hair fell about their faces in childlike fashion. Katherine’s was brown and strongly rippled; Hilda’s softly, duskily, almost bluely black; it grew in charming curves and eddies about her forehead, and framed her little face and long slim neck in straightly falling lines.

Katherine gave Odd her hand with a little air that reminded him of a Velasquez Infanta holding out a flower.

“You were splendid this morning, Mr. Odd. That hole was no joke, and Hilda swallowed lots of water as it was. She might easily have been drowned.”

Katherine was certainly not pretty, but her deeply set black eyes had a dominant directness. She held her head up, and her smile was charming—a little girl’s smile, yet touched with the conscious power of a clever woman. Odd felt that the child was clever, and that the woman would be cleverer. He felt, too, that the black eyes were lit with just a spice of fun as they looked into his as though she knew that he knew, and they both knew together, that Hilda had not been in much danger, and that his ducking had been only conventionally “splendid.”

“Hilda wants to thank you herself, don’t you, Hilda? She had such a horrid time altogether; you were a sort of Perseus to her, and papa the sea monster!” Then Katherine, having, as it were, introduced and paved the way for her sister, went back across the room again, and stood by young Allan Hope while he talked to the beautiful Mrs. Odd.

Hilda seemed really in no need of an introduction. She was not shy, though she evidently had not her sister’s ready mastery of what to say, and how to say it. Odd was rather glad of this; he had found Katherine’s aplomb almost disconcerting.

“I do thank you very much.” She put her hand into Odd’s as he spoke, and left it there; the confiding little action emphasized her childlikeness.

“What did you think of as you went down?” he asked her.

“In the river?” A shade of retrospective terror crossed her face.

“No, no! we won’t talk about the river, will we?” Odd said quickly. However funny Katherine’s greater common sense had found the incident, it had not been funny to Hilda. “Have you lived here long?” he asked. Captain Archinard had joined Mrs. Odd, and with an admirer on either side, Alicia was enjoying herself. “I have never seen you before, you know.”

“We have lived here since my uncle died; about eight years ago, I think.”

“Yes, just about the time that I left Allersley.”

“Didn’t you like Allersley?” Hilda asked, with some wonder.

“Oh, very much; and my father was here, so I often came back; but I lived in London and Paris, where I could work at things that interested me.”

“I have been twice in London; I went to the National Gallery.”

“You liked that?”

“Oh, very much.” She was a quiet little girl, and spoke quietly, her wide gentle gaze on Odd.

“And what else did you like in London?”

Hilda smiled a little, as if conscious that she was being put through the proper routine of questions, but a trustful smile, quite willing to give all information asked for.

“The Three Fates.”

“You mean the Elgin Marbles?”

“Yes, with no heads; but one is rather glad they haven’t.”

“Why?” asked Odd, as she paused. Hilda did not seem sure of her own reason.

“Perhaps they would be too beautiful with heads,” she suggested. “Do you like dogs?” she added, suddenly turning the tables on him.

“Yes, I love dogs,” Odd replied, with sincere enthusiasm.

“Three of our dogs are out there on the verandah, if you would care to know them?”

“I should very much. Perhaps you’ll show me the garden too; it looks very jolly.”

It was a pleasure to look at his extraordinarily pretty little Andromeda, and he was quite willing to spend the rest of his visit with her. They went out on the verandah, where, in the awning’s shade, lay two very nice fox terriers. A dachshund sat gazing out upon the sunlit lawn in a dog’s dignified reverie.

“Jack and Vic,” Hilda said, pointing out the two fox terriers. “They just belong to the whole family, you know. And this dear old fellow is Palamon; Arcite is somewhere about; they are mine.”

“Who named yours?”

“I did—after I read it; they had other names when they were given to me, but as I had never called them by them, I thought I had a right to change them. I wanted names with associations, like Katherine’s setters; they are called Darwin and Spencer, because Katherine is very fond of science.”

“Oh, is she?” said Odd, rather stupefied. “You seem to have a great many dogs in couples.”

“The others are not; they are more general dogs, like Jack and Vic.”

Hilda still held Odd’s hand: she stooped to stroke Arcite’s pensive head, giving the fox terriers a pat as they passed them.

“So you are fond of Chaucer?” Odd said. They crossed the gravel path and stepped on the lawn.

“Yes, indeed, he is my favorite poet. I have not read all, you know, but especially the Knight’s Tale.”

“That’s your favorite?”

“Yes.”

“And what is your favorite part of the Knight’s Tale?”

“The part where Arcite dies.”

“You like that?”

“Oh! so much; don’t you?”

“Very much; as much, perhaps, as anything ever written. There never was a more perfect piece of pathos. Perhaps you remember it.” He was rather curious to know how deep was this love for Chaucer.

“I learnt it by heart; I haven’t a good memory, but I liked it so much.”

“Perhaps you would say it to me.”

Hilda looked up a little shyly.

“Oh, I can’t!” she exclaimed timidly.

“Can’t you?” and Odd looked down at her a humorously pleading interrogation.

“I can’t say things well; and it is too sad to say—one can just bear to read it.”

“Just bear to say it—this once,” Odd entreated.

They had reached the edge of the lawn, and stood on the grassy brink of the river. Hilda looked down into the clear running of the water.

“Isn’t it pretty? I don’t like deep water, where one can’t see the bottom; here the grasses and the pebbles are as distinct as possible, and the minnows—don’t you like to see them?”

“Yes, but Arcite. Don’t make me tease you.”

Hilda evidently determined not to play the coward a second time. The quiet pressure of Odd’s hand was encouraging, and in a gentle, monotonous little voice that, with the soft breeze, the quickly running sunlit river, went into Odd’s consciousness as a quaint, ineffaceable impression of sweetness and sadness, she recited:—

“Allas the wo! allas the peynes stronge,

That I for you have suffered, and so longe!

Allas the deth! allas myn Emelye!

Allas departing of our companye!

Allas myn hertes quene! allas, my wyf!

Myn hertes lady, endere of my lyf!

What is this world? What asketh man to have?

Now with his love, now in his colde grave

Allone, withouten any companye.”

Odd’s artistic sensibilities were very keen. He felt that painfully delicious constriction of the throat that the beautiful in art can give, especially the beautiful in tragic art. The far-away tale; the far-away tongue; the nearness of the pathos, poignant in its “white simplicity.” And how well the monotonous little voice suited its melancholy.