Читать книгу The Meadows of the Moon - James Hilton - Страница 19

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That afternoon it began to rain, and towards evening a heavy gale-swept downpour set in. She was half-glad, half-sorry, but she could not forbear a smile at Michael as they sat down to dinner to the sound of the swishing of the rain on the creeper outside the window. “The rain will do good,” she said, watching his face.

During the meal John asked her if she would come some day to view the tannery, and she gladly agreed. Meanwhile, Michael glared alternately at her and at the rain-washed window-panes; she glanced sideways at him, thinking how the air of half-sulky boyishness fitted him perfectly, and how infinitely younger he was than herself. Was he really falling in love with her, or was the remark he had made to her the evening before the sort of ecstatic thing he might have said to anybody? You could never be sure with Michael; his falling in love would certainly be unlike other people’s. She found a curious comfort in pondering over the problem, and the only conclusion she reached was that she must be very kind to him, and try to help him in his present difficulties.

After dinner John went out, and the others adjourned to the library. While Nan sat reading magazines at one end of the large room, Fran let Michael take her to the piano at the other. He had a rather fine voice, half-baritone, half-tenor; and his piano-playing was well above the average, despite many faults. In certain moods he played Chopin delightfully, and in all moods he played Bach and Beethoven very badly indeed. He had a marvellously sensitive ear, but his sight-reading was poor, and he rarely played without interposing cleverly-inserted versions of his own which he was too lazy to rectify. He was easily best in self-accompanied songs, when both playing and voice, however eccentric, were at any rate in perfect accord.

That night he played several Chopin studies while Fran watched beside him; she loved Chopin, and the complete unmusicality of John and Nan made her fondness inevitably an additional link with Michael. She felt tranquil while she was listening to him; she did not want him to talk; above all, she did not want him to talk seriously. But during one of the noisier studies he said: “What a pity it’s raining, Fran! ... Tomorrow will do, though. Only it’s awful to wait.”

She shrugged her shoulders almost irritably. “To wait? To wait for what, Micky? And why is it so awful?”

All the time his fingers were racing over the keys with entrancing brilliance; they seemed to be accomplishing their task entirely on their own, while brain and will were occupied elsewhere. He really was a marvellous child.... Perhaps he read her thought, for he went on, in a hoarse rhythmic whisper: “You’re nearly as bad as John. You’re treating me like a schoolboy. You don’t seem to realize—even after last night—that I’m grown-up....”

Anything, she felt, to prevent him from discussing the night before. “Oh, by the way, how’s your wrist, Micky? It doesn’t seem to be interfering with your playing.”

“Oh, damn my wrist. It’s hurting like hell, if you want to know.”

“Then you oughtn’t to play. You’ll make it worse.”

“But I want to play.” He almost shouted. “And when I want things badly enough I don’t mind being hurt.... You do, don’t you? You believe in ‘safety first.’ ”

He looked at her intensely, till she had to turn away from mere embarrassment; then he began to play and sing the Chanson Indoue, by Rimsky-Korsakov. The bewitching plaintive melody suited both his voice and his fingers to perfection, and she felt again—more strongly than she had ever felt it before—the sheer, unearthly fascination of him. With his fingers and his voice and his eyes and his whole body and soul, she felt him drawing her, luring her; she was curious as well as scared.

He said, as soon as he had finished: “I say, I’m damned glad I’m not going back to Oxford.”