Читать книгу These Twain (Unabridged) - Arnold Bennett - Страница 28

Holding the green book in front of her, Edwin said quietly:

“Read this!”

“Which?”

He pointed with his finger.

She read:

“I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained.

I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition.

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins.

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God.

Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things.

Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago.

Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.”

Edwin had lately been exciting himself, not for the first time, over Walt Whitman.

“Fine, isn’t it?” he said, sure that she would share his thrill.

“Magnificent!” she agreed with quiet enthusiasm. “I must read more of that.” She gazed over the top of the book through the open blue-curtained window into the garden.

He withdrew the book and closed it.

“You haven’t got that tune exactly right, you know,” he said, jerking his head in the direction of the music.

“Oh!” She was startled. What did he know about it? He could not play the piano.

“Where are you?” he asked. “Show me. Where’s the confounded place on the piano? Well! At the end you play it like this.” He imitated her. “Whereas it ought to be like this.” He played the last four notes differently.

“So it ought!” She murmured with submission, after having frowned.

“That bit of a tune’s been running in my head, too,” he said.

The strange beauty of Whitman and the strange beauty of Dvorak seemed to unite, and both Edwin and Hilda were uplifted, not merely by these mingled beauties, but by their realisation of the wondrous fact that they both took intense pleasure in the same varied forms of beauty. Happiness rose about them like a sweet smell in the spaces of the comfortable impeccable drawing-room. And for a moment they leaned towards each other in bliss—across the open question.... Was it still open? ... Ah! Edwin might be ingenuous, a simpleton, but Hilda admitted the astounding, mystifying adroitness of his demeanour. Had he abandoned the lithographic project, or was he privately nursing it? In his friendliness towards herself was there a reserve, or was there not? She knew ... she did not know ... she knew.... Yes, there was a reserve, but it was so infinitesimal that she could not define it,—could not decide whether it was due to obstinacy of purpose, or merely to a sense of injury, whether it was resentful or condescending. Exciting times! And she perceived that her new life was gradually getting fuller of such excitements.

“Well,” said he. “It’s nearly three. Quarter-day’s coming along. I’d better be off down and earn a bit towards Maggie’s rent.”

Before the June quarter-day, he had been jocular in the same way about Maggie’s rent. In the division of old Darius Clayhanger’s estate Maggie had taken over the Clayhanger house, and Edwin paid rent to her therefor.

“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that,” said Hilda, pouting amiably.

“Why not?”

“Well, I wish you wouldn’t.”

“Anyhow, the rent has to be paid, I suppose.”

“And I wish it hadn’t. I wish we didn’t live in Maggie’s house.”

“Why?”

“I don’t like the idea of it.”

“You’re sentimental.”

“You can call it what you like. I don’t like the idea of us living in Maggie’s house. I never feel as if I was at home. No, I don’t feel as if I was at home.”

“What a kid you are!”

“You won’t change me,” she persisted stoutly.

He knew that she was not sympathetic towards the good Maggie. And he knew the reasons for her attitude, though they had never been mentioned. One was mere vague jealousy of Maggie as her predecessor in the house. The other was that Maggie was always very tepid towards George. George had annoyed her on his visits previous to his mother’s marriage, and moreover Maggie had dimly resented Edwin’s interest in the son of a mysterious woman. If she had encountered George after the proclamation of Edwin’s engagement she would have accepted the child with her customary cheerful blandness. But she had encountered him too soon, and her puzzled gaze had said to George: “Why is my brother so taken up with you? There must be an explanation, and your strange mother is the explanation.” Edwin did not deny Maggie’s attitude to George, but he defended Maggie as a human being. Though dull, “she was absolutely the right sort,” and the very slave of duty and loyalty. He would have liked to make Hilda see all Maggie’s excellences.

“Do you know what I’ve been thinking?” Hilda went on. “Suppose you were to buy the house from Maggie? Then it would be ours.”

He answered with a smile:

“What price ‘the mania for owning things’? ... Would you like me to?” There was promise in his roguish voice.

“Oh! I should. I’ve often thought of it,” she said eagerly. And at the same time all her gestures and glances seemed to be saying: “Humour me! I appeal to you as a girl pouting and capricious. But humour me. You know it gives you pleasure to humour me. You know you like me not to be too reasonable. We both know it. I want you to do this.”

It was not the fact that she had often thought of the plan. But in her eagerness she imagined it to be the fact. She had never seriously thought of the plan until that moment, and it appeared doubly favourable to her now, because the execution of it, by absorbing capital, ought to divert Edwin from his lithographic project, and perhaps render the lithographic project impossible for years.

She added, aloud:

“Then you wouldn’t have any rent to pay.”

“How true!” said Edwin, rallying her. “But it would stand me in a loss, because I should have to pay too much for the place.”

“Why?” she cried, in arms. “Why should Maggie ask too much just because you want it? And think of all the money you’ve spent on it!”

“The money spent on it only increases its value to Maggie. You don’t seem to understand landlordism, my child. But that’s not the point at all. Maggie won’t ask any price. Only I couldn’t decently pay her less than the value she took the house over at when we divided up. To wit, £1,800. It ain’t worth that. I only pay £60 rent.”

“If she took it over at too high a value that’s her look-out,” said the harsh and unjust Hilda.

“Not at all. She was a fool. Albert and Clara persuaded her. It was a jolly good thing for them. I couldn’t very well interfere.”

“It seems a great shame you should have to pay for what Albert and Clara did.”

“I needn’t unless I want to. Only, if I buy the house, £1,800 will have to be the price.”

“Well,” said Hilda. “I wish you’d buy it.”

“Would she feel more at home if he did?” he seductively chaffed her.

“Yes, she would.” Hilda straightened her shoulders, and smiled with bravado.

“And suppose Mag won’t sell?”

“Will you allow me to mention it to her?” Hilda’s submissive tone implied that Edwin was a tyrant who ruled with a nod.

“I don’t mind,” he said negligently.

“Well, one of these days I just will.”

Edwin departed, leaving the book behind. Hilda was flushed. She thought: “It is marvellous. I can do what I like with him. When I use a particular tone, and look at him in a particular way, I can do what I like with him.”

She was ecstatically conscious of an incomprehensible power. What a rôle, that of the capricious, pouting queen, reclining luxuriously on her lounge, and subduing a tyrant to a slave! It surpassed that of the world-renowned pianist!...