Читать книгу The Young Physician - Francis Brett Young - Страница 16

And when she had passed downstairs to the dining-room where her husband sat before the fire in a plush arm-chair, lightly dozing, she kissed him, too. She was feeling queerly flushed and emotional, and somehow the atmosphere of that little room felt stuffy to her after the air of the open spaces.

“I’m restless to-night, dear,” she said. “I hate Eddie going back to school. It’s dreadful to be parted from your baby just when he’s beginning to be more and more part of you.”

“Come close to me, by the fire, child,” he said.

“No . . . I want some music, I think.”

She went into the drawing-room and lit the candles on the piano. Sitting there, in the pale light, with a shawl thrown over her muslin tea-gown, she looked very frail and pathetic, against the piano’s ebony. She played the Sonata Appassionata of Beethoven, and the rather tawdry little knick-knacks on the piano danced as if they were made uncomfortable by the rugged passion. The whole room seemed a little bit artificial and threadbare, ministering to her discontent. When the Sonata was finished she still sat at the piano, conscious of her own reflection in its polished panels, and wanting to cry. She could not bear the taunting of that image, and so she snuffed the candles and sat in the dark.

Edwin tossing on the verge of sleep was conscious of the music ceasing, and, in the silence that followed, the cool cries of the owls.