Читать книгу The White Cat - Gelett Burgess - Страница 6

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I was awakened early by the sunshine which came pouring across my bed from the window opposite, lighting up the white wainscoting and showing the room now, clean and brightly distinct to the least detail of the crisp Japanese prints upon the wall.

One sash and the window-shade had been left up, and I could see the slope of a hill which rose behind the house, seeming to shut the place in. The other window was filled with the waving boughs of an apple-tree. The day was fine and balmy; the fresh air of the morning swept deliciously over my bed. It was maddening to have to lie there helpless.

Before long I heard doors opening and closing below, and the sounds of preparations for breakfast—the rattling of a stove, a pump that squeaked whimsically like a braying donkey, the clatter of pots and pans, and a Chinaman's voice singing in a queer falsetto. With the odors of flowers and damp earth the smell of coffee came up to me, mingled, too, with a whiff from the stable. Then the clock, whose hourly chimes had measured for me the slow march of the night, struck seven with a peal of golden notes.

I heard footsteps come up-stairs to the hall outside my half opened door. There was a soft tapping across the way, and Leah's voice asked quietly:

"What would you like for breakfast, Miss Joy?"

I could just make out the reply in Miss Fielding's blithe tones:

"Oh, just a couple of butterflies' wings, Leah, and a drop of rose-dew, please."

How prettily it sounded! From another it might have seemed silly to me, but not from her. I was amused at her fancy. Miss Fielding, then, was a poet. It was all so in key with the freshness of the morning and the gay sweet sunshine!

I was more comfortable now, and more sane. So, as I lay awaiting her, I wondered how such a woman, so instinct with refinement and with the air of having had considerable social experience, was to be found in so far-away a place. I knew of no residences in this vicinity except an occasional farmhouse; it was remote even from any village. The sight of her as she appeared last night in her elegant negligée came back to me, like the scene of a play. I longed to see her again, to discover if, perhaps, I had not exaggerated it all, or even, perhaps, had dreamed of one so exquisitely gracious.

Leah, also, was a part of the strangeness. She had none of the disturbing beauty of the quadroon—her beauty was without diablerie, it was far from showing any sensuality. It was even spiritual in type. Her face, as I brought it up, was more than intelligent, it was lighted by an inward vision. The more I thought of her, the more I wondered if I had not been tricked by my impressionability, by the strangeness of my adventure, by the glamour of the night awakening. To put it to the test, I took advantage of Miss Fielding's suggestion and rang the bell.

Leah appeared in a few moments, and came a little shyly into the room. She wore a clean, fresh, crisp gown of blue, like a hospital nurse's uniform, and was as trim and dignified. No, I had not been mistaken. The light of day showed her still more remarkable than I had remembered. Her regular features, her smooth, coffee-colored skin, her well-kept shapely hands, all testified to an extraordinary breeding.

"Are you ready for your breakfast, sir?" she asked. Her voice was like honey as she inquired how I had passed the night, and apologized for Uncle Jerdon's snoring.

"I'll bring your water first," she suggested, and retired noiselessly, to return in a moment with a bowl, some towels and toilet articles.

She seemed a little embarrassed by the situation, but assisted me in sitting up. Then, finding that I could do for myself well enough, she went down-stairs, and by the time I had finished my washing, she was back with the tray.

"Miss Joy will be in to see you in a little while, sir," she said as she made me comfortable with dexterous adjustments of my pillows.

But for her "sir," she had in no way acted as a servant, though, on the other hand, she had assumed no attitude of equality. I could not help admiring the fine neutrality she maintained without committing herself to either role. All my first impressions of her were intensified by this demeanor, and I awaited the opportunity of assuring her by my own manner of my lack of prejudice on account of her color. Indeed, it was not long before I was almost as unconscious of it, so far as any social distinction was concerned, as a child might have been.

Miss Fielding came in a little later, dewy and shining, dressed all in white—an embroidered linen blouse and a short skirt of serge, which made her seem even younger than I had remembered. The sight of her expressive, thoughtful, eager face, and the music in her sympathetic voice gave my room quite another aspect. It became a stage again where last night's drama would go on. How long I had waited for her, and now she was come! Only an invalid, perhaps, can understand the difference in atmosphere in that first quick sight of an expected delightful presence to one who has waited for the weary hours to go by and bring the wished-for vision.

She made a few kind inquiries as to my condition, moving meanwhile about the room, disposing of the fresh roses she had brought, lowering the window-sashes and raising the shades, rapid and graceful as a bird on the wing. She was all modern, now; the medieval princess had given place to something more complex, and as much more interesting. Every word, every inflection of her voice, every gesture of her hand, every expression of her mobile face showed subtlety of thought and sentiment; she was obviously a creature of fine distinctions, of nuances of feeling, though at present her talk was as simple and joyous as a child's. That simplicity of hers, however, was the simplicity of a Greek temple, made up of subtle ratios and proportions, of imperceptible curves and esoteric laws.

She drew up a chair, at last, and sat down beside me. We looked at each other frankly, and smiled, aware of a common thought, the desire to prolong the situation as far as we might. This quickness of her imagination was a delight. But the game was becoming too humorous, now, in broad daylight, for us to keep it up. Our romance was in danger.

"I'm bursting with the obvious," I remarked.

She shook her finger at me with spirit. "If you dare!"

"Oh, I'll not be the first. Man though I am, I can restrain my curiosity."

How quickly her face changed! An almost infantile look came into it, as she said:

"There are so many more curious things than curiosity, if you know what I mean. Curiosity is such a destructive process, don't you think?"

"And this is creative? The not satisfying it, I mean."

"Yes, wonder is—and mystery. It ramifies so. It splits the ray." She made a queer, mystical gesture, all her own.

"Oh, it quite blossoms!" I said. "I breathe all sorts of perfumes never smelt."

Her eager look came back, and she smiled joyously. "How quick you are! I wish we could keep it up a while! I should have liked to marry Bluebeard! What a splendid dowry he gave! Oh, I would never have opened the door! There was so much more outside than in, wasn't there? But now the role is yours; you must be Bluebeard's wife—or Robinson Crusoe. Oh, you must stay on the island—this island with me, and not try to get off. There are a few little places we can explore without danger—will you be satisfied with them?"

Somehow I got the spirit of it, as at hearing some words of a strange language eloquently spoken. She was warning me off—but from what? I would find out soon enough, should the meaning need to be made more definite. It was like a game of jackstraws; if I did not play gingerly I should bring down the commonplace upon us. My situation was delicate—it almost seemed that I had arrived, in some way, inopportunely.

But she had gone on. "Did you read my books?" she asked, taking up one of them.

"I read that one—the poems. I got quite lost in them."

"Which ones?" She looked up from the book eagerly.

"The Journey, and,—" I hesitated, "—The Riders." I was watching her face earnestly.

"Oh, how right you are!" She was perfectly simple about it. There was no conceit in her. "It means, doesn't it, that we already have a language? But you must read the essays, too. Then maybe we'll have a philosophy."

"I'll explore them with pleasure." I tried to keep the appeal out of my voice. "I have such a lot of things to do before I go."

She got this quite as I intended. "Well, we'll be perfectly natural and let come what may, as it seems to be all decided for us. We won't force the game. But I'm afraid you'll never be contented. You'll leave the island first, I'm quite sure."

I protested; she shook her head slowly. I knew she was thinking very hard of something. Her smile was wistful, her eyes, always fixed on mine, were almost somber in their expression.

"Would you dare promise?"

I knew now there was something behind all this; some fear of my presence.

"Shall I?" I fenced, more to draw her on than from any doubt of her meaning or reluctance to agree with her wish.

"It's base of me—it's foolish, too, for it can really do no good. But, you see, I don't quite know you, do I?"

"And don't quite want to?" I was unkind enough to say, but only with the same motive as before. I wanted to get at the bottom of it—find out what it was she dreaded, and dared not acknowledge that she did.

She was a little hurt and said that it wasn't fair to say so, that I wasn't playing the game. I was properly contrite, and, for the moment, gave up the duel.

"Let it be a promise, then," I said.

At this, I thought she looked relieved; and that she should be so at my bare word touched me. It did cross my mind that, perceiving my adaptability to this sort of affair, she might perhaps have taken an adventitious means of heightening the romance of the situation with such innuendo; but she seemed to me to be altogether too direct for that, and too sapient, as well.

"Thank you. I may hold you to that promise. Does that seem ungracious?"

There it was. There was most definitely something which she didn't wish me to know, and which my advent jeoparded. I was truly sorry for her now, and a little embarrassed at my position. Meanwhile her eyes were steadily questioning mine, as if to make sure that I was to be trusted. I took up her last remark to relieve the tensity of her mood.

"You couldn't be ungracious, I'm sure. I should as soon suspect Leah!"

She laughed more freely. "Oh, I'm so glad you appreciate her! That says more for you than all the rest."

"The rest?" I insisted, quite ready for a compliment.

She gave it to me with her head a little on one side, and her right eyebrow, the irregular one, whimsically upraised.

"Yes. Your keeping it up so well, you know."

"Oh, I'll keep it up! It's the chief charm of being here, flat on my back, in a strange place. I'm sure it will be most amusing."

"I'm not so sure. I'm full of moods and whims—you're going to be terribly disappointed in me sometimes—though that sounds like vanity—and I may take advantage of your complaisance, of your promise, that is. I hope you won't regret it."

So it rested, my promise not to be too inquisitive (for I took its meaning to be that), given and accepted. It quite whetted my appetite, you may be sure. If all this talk seems fine-spun, it is my fault in the telling of it, for in the give-and-take we perfectly understood each other. I can not, of course, give her delicate inflections, but these, with her looks and gestures, said as much as her words.

But if this equivocal conversation was vague and shadowy, she could pass into the sunshine as deftly. She seemed to do so now, as she rose and went to the open window and whistled. A chorus of barks answered her. She turned to me.

"I must go down to my dogs," she said. "I wish you could see them—that is, if you like collies. I have five, all thoroughbreds—they're beauties! You'll have to get acquainted with them as soon as you're able to go down-stairs."

She leaned a little out of the window and called, "Hi! Nokomis!" drawing out the vowels. A deep bark responded.

"Hiawatha!" she called next, and she was answered by a sharp, frenzied yelping. "Minnehaha!" followed—she almost sang the name, which was replied to like the others. Then Chevalier and John O'Groat greeted her in turn.

"I'm going to take them for their morning run," she said, as she left me. "I'll examine you on the essays when I come back."

She went down, and soon after I heard her talking, evidently to Uncle Jerdon and to King. Then the barking rose ecstatically, receded in the distance, and finally was lost. I took up the essays and read for a while. My head was much better, and my soreness was slowly disappearing, but the constrained positions I had to hold to keep my rib from paining me made me too weary and impatient to put my mind on my book. I could hardly wait for Miss Fielding to return, and lay inert, watching the flies drift lazily through the sunshine that filled the room, hoping that Leah, at least, might come in to break my ennui. I welcomed even the hoarse, squeaky cry of King's pump, the occasional crowing of a rooster, the twittering of birds in the apple-tree, and the many little homely sounds of country life. The fragrant perfume of the roses in the room was a blessed reminder of Miss Fielding's kindness.

In a half-hour, I heard the dogs approaching, and she came into the room again, hatless, bringing a new breath of June with her. Her hair was blown to a silky veil through which her eyes shone and her rosy cheeks glowed as she smiled at me over the footboard of my bed. Throwing off her little white bolero, a saucy thing with black velvet collar and cuffs, she went to the mirror and gathered up the loose strands of hair, tucking them in, here and there, with deft touches of her fingers, and adjusting them with dark tortoise-shell pins, until her little head, coiffed high, was as smooth as a cat's.

She came up to the bedside and was quick to notice by my nervous movements that I was suffering. Sitting down she began to tell gaily of her walk over the hill, and, as she spoke, my aching was calmed as if she had laid a finger on the electric switch that controlled it. Then she suggested reading to me, and took up the volume of poems we had discussed.

Her voice was not quite intense enough for strong emotion; it had not the momentum, so to speak, to carry the lines along with the swing and rhythm necessary. It was too light for that, but it more than made up for it by its sympathetic tenderness and the delicacy of its inflection. Her tones lulled me, and I fell asleep.

In the afternoon she brought her mending, and we talked for a couple of hours or so, always keeping, as she expressed it, "on the island." What personalities we discussed, that is, had no reference to her history or her plans. She warned me off very cleverly several times when the talk approached her circumstances or even her moods and tastes.

When she confessed that she played a little on the piano and violin, I positively insisted upon my rights as an invalid to be amused. She rolled up her work and went to get her violin without excuses or apologies.

I waited with considerable anxiety to hear what and how she would play, not committing myself as to my own choice of composers. She began in her own room, and through the opened doors I heard the strains of the Prize Song played with great verve and sentiment. I was delighted. She came, still playing, into my chamber, her sleeves rolled up (she said she could not play else), and accepted my compliments graciously and simply. Then, walking up and down, absorbed, she gave me fragments of Cesar Franck's sonata for the violin and piano. To watch her, supple, virile, rapt, to note her clever, accomplished technique, her passionate, free-armed command of the bow—I have seldom seen such a splendid attack or so sure and true a vibrato—was a joy beautifully associated with the clarity and subtle craftsmanship of the master.

So she ran on, alternating her renditions with scraps of talk that showed a keen musical sense and an appreciation of the radical, ultra-modern movement of the time. Next she burst into a vibrant, dramatic Polish folksong that excited me like a fire. And finally, as a tour de force, her eyes dancing as she watched me over her shoulder with some new audacious devil in her smile, she enchanted me with a vivid piece most astonishingly enlivened with flights of technique—trills, brilliant chord passages, and runs with the upward and downward "staccato bow." Then she threw down her fiddle and came up to me, laughing.

That evening she had another delight for me, coming to my bedside and reading Villon and Verlaine in the original, translating the old French for me when I was perplexed by the argot. And for the picture, I need only add that Leah was of the circle, and made her own comments!