Читать книгу The Old House - Cécile Tormay - Страница 6

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A glaring white light streamed through the windows into the room. Winter had come over the world during the night and the children put their heads together to discuss it. They had forgotten since last year what winter was like.

Below, the great green water crawled cold between its white banks. The castle hill opposite was white too. The top of the bastions, the ridges of the roofs, the spires of the steeples, everything that was usually sharp and pointed was now rounded and blunted by the snow.

The church tower of Our Lady belonged to Anne. The Garrison Church was little Christopher’s. A long time had passed since the children had divided these from their windows, and, because Christopher grew peevish, Anne had also given him the shingled roof of the Town Hall of Buda and the observatory on Mount St. Gellert. She only kept the Jesuits’ Stairs to herself.

“And I’ll tell on you, how you spat into the clerk’s tumbler. No, no, I won’t give it!” Anne shook her head so emphatically that her fair hair got all tangled in front of her eyes. She would not have given the Jesuits’ Stairs for anything in the world. That was the way up to the castle, to Uncle Sebastian. And she often looked over to him from the nursery window. In the morning, when she woke, she waved both hands towards the other shore. In the evening she put a tallow candle on the window-sill to let Uncle Sebastian see that she was thinking of him.

Then Sebastian Ulwing would answer from the other shore. He lit a small heap of straw on the castle wall and through the intense darkness the tiny flames wished each other good night above the Danube.

“The Jesuits’ Stairs are mine,” said Anne resolutely and went into the other room.

The little boy sulked for some time and then followed her on tiptoe. In the doorway he looked round anxiously. He was afraid of this room though it was brighter than any other and Anne called it the sunshine room. The yellow-checked wall paper looked sparkling and even on a cloudy day the cherry-wood furniture looked as if the sun shone on it. The chairs’ legs stood stiffly on the floor of scrubbed boards and their backs were like lyres. That room was mother’s. She did not live in it because she had gone to heaven and had not yet returned home, but everything was left as it had been when she went away. Her portrait hung above the flowered couch, her sewing-machine stood in the recess near the window. The piano had been hers too and the children were forbidden to touch it. Yet, Christopher was quite sure that it was full of piano-mice, who at night, when everybody is asleep, run about in silver shoes and then the air rings with their patter.

“Let us go from here,” he said trembling, “but you go first.”

There was nobody in grandfather’s room. Only some crackling from the stove. Only the ticking of the marble clock on the writing table.

Suddenly little Christopher became braver. He ran to the stove. The stove was a solid silver-grey earthenware column. On its top there was an urn emitting white china flames, rigid white china flames. This was beautiful and incomprehensible and Christopher liked to look at them.

He pointed to the brass door. Through the ventilators one could see what was going on inside the stove.

“Now the stove fairies are dancing in there!”

In vain Anne looked through the holes; she could not see any fairies. Ordinary flames were bobbing up above the cinders. The smoke slowly twisted itself up into the chimney.

“Aren’t they lovely? They have red dresses and sing,” said the boy. The little girl turned away bored.

“I only hear the ticking of the clock.” Suddenly she stood on tiptoe. When she did so, the corners of her eyes and of her mouth rose slightly. She too wanted to invent something curious:

“Tick-tack.... A little dwarf hobbles in the room. Do you hear? Tick-tack....”

Christopher’s eyes shone with delight.

“I do hear.... And the dwarf never stops, does he?”

“Never,” said Anne convincingly, though she was not quite sure herself, “he never stops, but we must not talk about it to the grown-ups.”

Christopher repeated religiously:

“The grown-ups must never know. And this is truly true, isn’t it? Grandpa has said it too, hasn’t he?”

Anne remembered that grandpa never told stories about dwarfs and fairies.

“Yes, Grandpa has said it,” the boy confirmed himself.

The whole thing got mixed up in Anne’s brain. And from that moment both believed absolutely that their grandfather had said it and that it was really a dwarf who walked in the room, hobbling with small steps, without ever stopping. Tick-tack....

“Do you hear it?”

The peaceful silence of the corridor echoed the ticking of the clock. It could even be heard on the staircase which sank like a cave from the corridor to the hall. And then the dwarf vanished out of the children’s heads.

The back garden was white and the roof looked like a hillside covered with snow. Where the dragon-headed gargoyle protruded, the house turned sharply and its inner wing extended into the deep back garden. Mr. Augustus Füger lived there with his wife and his son Otto.

Mrs. Augustus Füger, Henrietta, was for ever sitting in the window and sewing. At this very moment, her big bonnet was visible, looking like a white cat on the window sill. Fortunately, she did not look out of the window. The garden belonged entirely to the children. Theirs was the winged pump of the well, theirs the circular seat round the apple tree. Their kingdom.... In winter the garden seemed small, but in summer when the trees were covered with leaves and the lilac-bushes hid the secret places, it became enormous. Through its high wall a gate led to the world’s end; a grilled gate which grown-ups alone were privileged to open.

Sometimes Anne and Christopher would peep longingly for hours through its rails. They could see the roof of the tool-shed, the tar boiler and a motley of pieces of timber, beams, floorings, piles. What lovely slides they would have made if only one could have got at them! The old folks called this glorious, disorderly place, where rude big men in leather aprons used to work, the timber yard. The children did not approve of this name, they preferred “world’s end.” They liked it on a summer Sunday best when all was quiet and the smell of the heated timber penetrated the courtyard and even the house. Then one could believe in the secret known to Christopher. It was not a timber yard at all. The grown-ups had no business with it. It was beyond all manner of doubt the playground of giant children who had strewn it with their building bricks.

“And when I sleep, they play with them,” the boy whispered.

“One can’t believe that just now,” Anne answered seriously, “when everything is so clear.”

Crestfallen, Christopher walked behind her in the snow. They only stopped under the porch in front of a door bearing a board with the inscription “Canzelei.”[A] This word sounded like a sneeze. It tickled the children’s lips. It made them laugh.

Anne and Christopher knocked their shoulders together.

“Canzelei.... Canzelei!”

The door opened. The clerk appeared on the threshold. He was a thin little man with a starved expression, wearing a long alpaca frock-coat; when he walked, his knees knocked together. Anne knew something about him. Grandpa had said it when he was in a temper: Feuerlein was stupid! The only one among grown-ups of whom one knew such a thing beyond doubt.

The children looked at each other and their small cheeks swelled with suppressed laughter; then, like snakes, they slid through the open door into the office.

“He is stupid, though he is grown up,” Anne whispered into the boy’s ear.

“And I will spit into his tumbler!” Now they laughed freely, triumphantly.

Their laughter suddenly stopped.

Mr. Gemming, the draughtsman, had banged his triangular ruler down and began to growl. Augustus Füger tugged the sleeve-protector he wore on his right arm during business hours.

“Don’t grumble, Gemming. Don’t forget that one day he will be head of the firm, won’t you, little Christopher? And you will sit in there behind the great writing table?”

Christopher looked fearfully towards the door that led to his grandfather’s office. In there? Always? Quiet and serious—even when he wanted to play with his tin soldiers? With a shudder, he rushed across the room. No, he would rather not set his foot here again; nasty place that smelt of ink.

The door from which he had fled opened. Ulwing the builder showed a strange gentleman through the room.

The little book-keeper began to write suddenly. Gemming dipped his pencil into the inkstand. In the neighbouring room the pens scratched and the children shrank to the wall. The strange gentleman stopped. Anne saw his face clearly; it was fat and pale. Under his heavy double chin the sail-like collar looked crushed.

“Thank you,” said the strange gentleman and cast his eyes down as if he were ashamed of something. He held out a flabby white hand to Christopher Ulwing. The hand trembled. His lips quivered too.

“Don’t mention it, Mr. Münster. It is just business....”

This was said by the builder under the porch, and they heard it in the office.

Gemming began to shake the point of the pencil he had dipped in the ink. Füger blinked and blinked. Both felt that Martin George Münster had fallen from his greatness to their own level. He too was in Ulwing’s service.

When the builder returned, his crooked chin settled snugly in his open collar.

Suddenly he perceived the children.

“What are you doing here?” He would have liked to sit down with them on the heap of office books. Just for a minute, just long enough to let their hands stroke his face. He took his repeater out of his pocket.

“It can’t be done.” He still had to settle with many people. Contractors, timber merchants, masons, carters—they were all waiting behind the grating, in the big room opening into the garden. And John Hubert had already twice thrust his head through the door as if he wanted to call him. He went on. But on the threshold he had to turn back. “This afternoon we will go to Uncle Sebastian. We will take leave of him before the floating bridge is removed.”

The children grinned with delight.

“We shall go in a coach, shan’t we?” asked the boy.

“We shall walk,” answered Ulwing drily; “the horses are needed to cart wood!” And with that he slammed the door behind him.

“Walk,” repeated Christopher, disappointed. “I don’t like it. And I won’t go. And I have a pain in my foot.”

He walked lamely, rubbing his shoulders against the wall. He moaned pitiably. But Anne knew all the while that he was shamming.