Читать книгу The Dawn of Reckoning - James Hilton - Страница 16

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When he came home from Cambridge in December he found there was no need for any more formal lessons. As the taxi curved along the drive she came running out to him, shouting: "Hallo, Fee-lip Hallo!"

She was a child of amazing quickness and adaptability. Not only had she learned in two months to chatter English coherently if not always grammatically, but she had thoroughly acclimatised herself to the district in which she lived and to the friends she met. She had, too, something of Mrs. Monsell's fond ness for company, as well as a passionate love of the open-air.

Christmas, Stella's first Christmas at Chassingford, was bitterly cold, and the pond in the woods was frozen over. She clapped her hands in ecstasy when Venner, reputed an expert on the subject, declared that skating was possible. Philip was in the library as usual; he was working for some University prize for which a good deal of research was necessary. She came rushing in, making a draught that blew some of his papers off the desk on to the floor. "Oh—Fee-lip—I'm sorry—I'll pick them up—Fee-lip, you come down to the pond to see me skate!—Oh, yes, you do come, don't you! I skate beautiful...And I skate with you, I do, eh?"

"I'm afraid I don't skate at all, Stella," he said, smiling ruefully at his disturbed papers.

"Then I—I learn you, eh?"

"'Teach,' not 'learn.'"

"'Teach,'" she repeated dutifully.

He went on: "I'm afraid it wouldn't be any good. Skating isn't much in my line."

Her eyes flashed indignantly. "'In your line,' eh? What is that?—What is 'in your line'?"

"I mean I don't do—I can't do that sort of thing. It isn't my—" He paused, reflected, and finished up: "It wouldn't suit me."

She picked up a sheaf of his neatly typewritten notes. "This suit you more—eh?" she exclaimed, with a touch of scorn in her voice.

He smiled. "I must work, Stella. I have a great deal to do. You don't understand."

"Will you learn—teach me to understand?"

"Some time. Some evening when it's raining and you've nothing to do, I'll tell you all about it."

"If I come this evening?"

"Well, no, better not to-night. I'm rather too busy just now. Some night soon—perhaps next week."

"All right. And now I go—skate—by myself."

One thing they discovered very quickly: she was intensely musical. She had never had any instrument to play till she came to Chassingford, and by that time she was almost too old to begin learning. But she taught herself to play the piano just well enough to accompany herself when she sang; the accompaniments were very simple, and always her own composition. Her voice was a contralto, not at all powerful, but of fine quality, and on dark winter afternoons when there was nothing to do, she used to sing scores of old Hungarian tunes one after the other, solely for her own amusement. Neither Philip nor his mother was especially musical, or thought these songs anything more than queer and perhaps picturesque. But to Stella they were full of wild passion or else of rocking melancholy, and sometimes she translated the words into quaint English for the benefit of anybody who was interested. But the tr

"Volt szeretom de mar nincsen

O volt az en draga kincsem..."

—she sang, and then stopped at the piano, puckered her forehead, and went on: "That means 'One day I loved, but now not any more...My bride also—but now I have him not.'...Understand? But English is not a language for a love-song."

She played over the air softly and then added "You English have no passion. Passion—is that right? At your concerts—I went to one last week—everybody is bored. You are not full—as the Hungarians are—of music—and love—and what is the word?" She paused, and then said slowly and curiously: "Music—it means a nothing to you...you do not think about love and death...oh, I cannot say it. But this—this is what you English people are not full of."

She played a wild rhythmic tune which, even with her inexpert handling, conveyed something of its native restlessness.

Philip said sombrely "All Englishmen are not like me, Stella. Some are more like—like what you played."

"When I meet one I tell you so," she answered, with lightning rapidity.