Читать книгу The Passionate Year - James Hilton - Страница 11

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After dinner they all returned to the drawing-room, where inferior coffee was distributed round in absurdly diminutive cups, Potter attitudinising over it like a high priest performing the rites of some sinister religious ceremony. Clare and Helen sat together on one of the settees, discoursing inaudibly and apparently in private; the Head commenced an anecdote that was suggested by Speed's glance at a photograph on the mantelpiece, a photograph of a coloured man attired in loose-fitting cotton draperies. "My servant when I was in India," the Head had informed Speed. "An excellent fellow—most—um, yes—faithful and reliable. One of the earliest of my converts. I well remember the first morning after I had engaged him to look after me he woke me up with the words Chota Hazra, sahib—"

Speed feigning interest, managed to keep his eyes intermittently on the two girls. He wondered if they were discussing him.

"I said—'I can't—um—see Mr. Chota Hazra this time in the morning."'

Speed nodded with a show of intelligence, and then, to be on the safe side if the joke had been reached, gave a slight titter.

"Of course," said the Head, after a pause, "it was all my imperfect knowledge of Hindostanee. Chota hazra' means—um, yes—breakfast!"

Speed laughed loudly. He had the feeling after he had laughed that he had laughed too loudly, for everything seemed so achingly silent after the echoes had died away, silent except for the eternal hiss of the gas in the chandeliers. It was as if his laughter had startled something; he could hear, in his imagination, the faint fluttering of wings as if something had flown away. A curious buzzing came into his head; he thought perhaps it might be due to the mediocre Burgundy that he had drunk with his dinner. Then for one strange unforgettable second he saw Helen's sky-blue eyes focussed full upon him and it was in them that he read a look of half-frightened wonderment that sent the blood tingling in his veins.

He said, with a supreme inward feeling of recklessness: "I would love to hear Miss Ervine play Mendelssohn."

He half expected a dreadful silence to supervene and everybody to stare at him as the author of some frightful conversational faux pas; he had the feeling of having done something deliberately and provocatively unconventional. He saw the girl's eyes glance away from him and the blush rekindle her cheeks in an instant. It seemed to him also that she clung closer to Clare and that Clare smiled a little, as a mother to a shy child.

Of course it was all a part of his acute sensitiveness; his remark was taken to be more than a touch of polite gallantry. Mrs. Ervine said: "Helen's very nervous," and the Head, rolling his head from side to side in an ecstasy of anticipation, said: "Ah yes, most certainly. Delightful that will be—um, yes—most delightful. Helen, you must not disappoint Mr. Speed on his first night at Millstead."

She looked up, shook her head so that for an instant all her face seemed to be wrapped in yellow flame, and said, sombrely: "I cant play—please don't ask me to."

Then she turned to Clare and said, suddenly: "I can't really, can. I, Clare?"

"You can," said Clare, "but you get nervous."

She said that calmly and deliberatively, with the air of issuing a final judgment of the matter.

"Come now, Helen," boomed the Head, ponderously. "Mr. Speed—um—is very anxious to hear yon. It is very—um, yes—silly to be nervous. Come along now."

There was a note in those last three words of sudden harshness, a faint note, it is true, but one that Speed, acutely perceptive of such subtleties, was quick to hear and notice. He looked at the Head and once again, it seemed to him, the Head was as he had seen him that afternoon in the dark study, a flash of malevolent sharpness in his eyes, a menacing slope in his huge low-hanging nose. The room seemed to grow darker and the atmosphere more tense; he saw the girl leave the settee and walk to the piano. She sat on the stool for a moment with her hands poised hesitatingly over the keyboard; then, suddenly, and at a furious rate, she plunged into the opening bars of the Spring Song. Speed had never heard it played at such an alarming rate. Five or six bars from the beginning she stopped all at once, lingered a moment with her hands over the keys, and then left the stool and almost ran the intervening yards to the settee. She said, with deep passion: "I can't—I don't remember it."

Clare said protectingly: "Never mind, Helen. It doesn't matter."

Speed said: "No, of course not. It's awfully hard to remember music—at least, I always find it so."

And the Head, all his harshness gone and placidity restored in its place, murmured: "Hard—um yes—very hard. I don't know how people manage it at all. Oh, very difficult, don't you think so, Lydia?"

"Difficult if you're nervous," replied Mrs. Ervine, with her own peculiar note of acidity.