Читать книгу HILDA LESSWAYS - Arnold Bennett - Страница 26

A somewhat shabby-genteel, youngish man appeared at the head of the stairs; he was wearing a silk hat and a too ample frock-coat. And immediately, from the hidden corridor at the top, she heard the voice of Mr. Cannon, imperious:

“Karkeek!”

The shabby-genteel man stopped. Hilda wanted to escape, but she could not, chiefly because her pride would not allow. She had to go on. She went on, frowning.

The man vanished back into the corridor. She could hear that Mr. Cannon had joined him in conversation. She arrived at the corridor.

“How-d’ye-do, Miss Lessways?” Mr. Cannon greeted her with calm politeness, turning from Mr. Karkeek, who raised his hat. “Will you come this way? One moment, Mr. Karkeek.”

Through a door marked “Private” Mr. Cannon introduced Hilda straight into his own room; then shut the door on her. He held in one hand a large calf-bound volume, from which evidently he was expounding something to Mr. Karkeek. The contrast between the expensive informality of Mr. Cannon’s new suit and the battered ceremoniousness of Mr. Karkeek’s struck her just as much as the contrast between their demeanours; and she felt, vaguely, the oddness of the fact that the name of the deferential Mr. Karkeek, and not the name of the commanding Mr. Cannon, should be upon the door-plates and the wire-blinds of the establishment. But of course she was not in a position to estimate the full significance of this remarkable phenomenon. Further, though she perfectly remembered her mother’s observations upon Mr. Cannon’s status, they did not in the slightest degree damage him in her eyes—when once those eyes had been set on him again. They seemed to her inessential. The essential, for her, was the incontestable natural authority and dignity of his bearing.

She sat down, self-consciously, in the chair—opposite the owner’s chair—which she had occupied at her first visit, and thus surveyed, across the large flat desk, all the ranged documents and bundles with the writing thereon upside down. There also was his blotting-pad, and his vast inkstand, and his pens, and his thick diary. The disposition of the things on the desk seemed to indicate, sharply and incontrovertibly, that orderliness, that inexorable efficiency, which more than aught else she admired in the external conduct of life. The spectacle satisfied her, soothed her, and seemed to explain the attractiveness of Mr. Cannon.

Immediately to her left was an open bookcase almost filled with heavy volumes. The last of a uniform row of Law Reports was absent from its place—being at that moment in the corridor, in the hands of Mr. Cannon. The next book, a thin one, had toppled over sideways and was bridging the vacancy at an angle; several other similar thin books filled up the remainder of the shelf. She stared, with the factitious interest of one who is very nervously awaiting an encounter, at the titles, and presently deciphered the words, ‘Victor Hugo,’ on each of the thin volumes. Her interest instantly became real. Characteristically abrupt and unreflecting, she deposited her basket on the floor and, going to the bookcase, took out the slanting volume. Its title was Les Rayons et Les Ombres. She opened it by hazard at the following poem, which had no heading and which stood, a small triptych of print, rather solitary in the lower half of a large white page:

Dieu qui sourit et qui donne

Et qui vient vers qui l’attend

Pourvu que vous soyez bonne,

Sera content.

Le monde où tout étincelle,

Mais ou rien n’est enflammé,

Pourvu que vous soyez belle,

Sera charmé.

Mon coeur, dans l’ombre amoureuse,

Où l’énivrent deux beaux yeux,

Pourvu que tu sois heureuse,

Sera joyeux.

That was all. But she shook as though a miracle had been enacted. Hilda, owing partly to the fondness of an otherwise stern grandfather and partly to the vanity of her unimportant father, had finally been sent to a school attended by girls who on the average were a little above herself in station—Chetwynd’s, in the valley between Turnhill and Bursley. (It was still called Chetwynd’s though it had changed hands.) Among the staff was a mistress who was known as Miss Miranda—she seemed to have no surname. One of Miss Miranda’s duties had been to teach optional French, and one of Miss Miranda’s delights had been to dictate this very poem of Victor Hugo’s to her pupils for learning by heart. It was Miss Miranda’s sole French poem, and she imposed it with unfading delight on the successive generations whom she ‘grounded’ in French. Hilda had apparently forgotten most of her French, but as she now read the poem (for the first time in print), it reestablished itself in her memory as the most lovely verse that she had ever known, and the recitations of it in Miss Miranda’s small classroom came back to her with an effect beautiful and tragic. And also there was the name of Victor Hugo, which Miss Miranda’s insistent enthusiasm had rendered sublime and legendary to a sensitive child! Hilda now saw the sacred name stamped in gold on a whole set of elegant volumes! It was marvellous that she should have turned the page containing just that poem! It was equally marvellous that she should have discovered the works of Victor Hugo in the matter-of-fact office of Mr. Cannon! But was it? Was he not half-French, and were not these books precisely a corroboration of what her mother had told her? Mr. Cannon’s origin at once assumed for her the strange seductive hues of romance; he shared the glory of Victor Hugo. Then the voices in the corridor ceased, and with a decisive movement he unlatched the door. She relinquished the book and calmly sat down as he entered.