Читать книгу Joan and Peter - H. G. Wells - Страница 27

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Joan was a dancer from the age of three.

Perhaps she got some hint from Dolly, there is no telling; but anyhow she frisked and capered rhythmically by a kind of instinct whenever Dolly played the piano. So Dolly showed her steps and then more steps. Peter did not take to dancing so readily as Joan and his disposition was towards burlesque. Joan danced for the love of dancing, but Peter was inventive and turned his dances into expression. He invented the Fat Dance, with a pillow under his pinafore, the Thin Dance, with a concave stomach and a meagre expression, the One Leg dance and the Bird Dance, this latter like the birds about the crumbs in winter time. Also the Tipsy Dance, bacchic, which Arthur thought vulgar and discouraged. Dolly taught Joan the Flower Dance, with a very red cap like a pistil, and white silk skirt petals upheld by her arms. These she opened slowly, and at last dropped and then drooped. This needed a day of preparation. Peter produced his first remembered æsthetic judgment on a human being on this occasion.

“Pritty Joan,” he said with conviction, as she stood flushed and bright-eyed after the dance, and with that he went and kissed her.

“He’s beginning young,” said Arthur.

It is what all parents say, and it is true of all children. But parents keep on saying it....

Before he was fully four Peter was conducting an æsthetic analysis of his world. He liked some of the tunes Dolly played and disapproved of others. He distributed “pritty” lavishly but by no means indiscriminately over the things of the world. “Oh pritty fo’wers,” was the primordial form of these expanding decisions. But he knew that Nobby was not pretty.

Arthur did his best to encourage and assist these budding appreciations.

One evening there was a beautiful still sunset. The sun went down, a great flattening sphere of reddening gold sinking into vast levels of blue over the remoter hills. Joan had already been carried off to bed, but Arthur seized upon Peter and stood him in the window seat. “Look,” said Arthur. Peter looked intently, and both his parents sat beside him, watching his nice little round head and the downy edge of his intent profile.

“Look,” said Arthur, “it goes. It goes. It’s going... going... going....”

The sun became a crescent, a red scimitar, a streak of fire.

“Ah!” said Arthur, “it’s gone.”

Came an immense pause.

“Do it adain, Dadda,” said Peter with immense approval. “Do it adain....”