Читать книгу CLAYHANGER - Arnold Bennett - Страница 27

Clara entered, with a curious sidelong movement, half-winning and half-serpentine. She was aged fourteen, a very fair and very slight girl, with a thin face and thin lips, and extraordinarily slender hands; in general appearance fragile. She wore a semi-circular comb on the crown of her head, and her abundant hair hung over her shoulders in two tight pigtails. Edwin considered that Clara was harsh and capricious; he had much fault to find with her; but nevertheless the sight of her usually affected him pleasurably (of course without his knowing it), and he never for long sat definitely in adverse judgement upon her. Her gestures had a charm for him which he felt but did not realise. And this charm was similar to his own charm. But nothing would have so surprised him as to learn that he himself had any charm at all. He would have laughed, and been ashamed—to hear that his gestures and the play of his features had an ingratiating, awkward, and wistful grace; he would have tried to cure that.

“Father wants you,” said Clara, her hand on the handle of the thin attic-door hung with odd garments.

Edwin’s heart fell instantly, and all the agreeable images of tea vanished from his mind. His father must have read the school report and perceived that Edwin had been beaten by Charlie Orgreave, a boy younger than himself!

“Did he send you up for me?” Edwin asked.

“No,” said Clara, frowning. “But I heard him calling out for you all over. So Maggie told me to run up. Not that I expect any thanks.” She put her head forward a little.

The episode, and Clara’s tone, showed clearly the nature and force of the paternal authority in the house. It was an authority with the gift of getting its commands anticipated.

“All right! I’m coming,” said Edwin superiorly.

“I know what you want,” Clara said teasingly as she turned towards the passage.

“What do I want?”

“You want the empty attic all to yourself, and a fine state it would be in in a month, my word!”

“How do you know I want the empty attic?” Edwin repelled the onslaught; but he was considerably taken aback. It was a mystery to him how those girls, and Clara in particular, got wind of his ideas before he had even formulated them definitely to himself. It was also a mystery to him how they could be so tremendously interested in matters which did not concern them.

“You never mind!” Clara gibed, with a smile that was malicious, but charmingly malicious. “I know!”

She had merely seen him staring into the empty attic, and from that brief spectacle she had by divination constructed all his plans.