Читать книгу King John of Jingalo - Laurence Housman - Страница 26

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The King found the Queen at her knitting, very placid and contented and well pleased with herself, for she had just been giving Charlotte a mild talking to. Charlotte had come home with adjectives in her mouth of which the Queen did not approve, and with enthusiasms that went riotously beyond bounds. She had talked of some Professor's translation of a Greek play as "glorious"; and of the play itself—a play all about expatriated women who, their proper husbands having been killed in a siege, were forced to accept at the hands of their enemies husbands of a less proper kind—she had talked of that play as "the most immense, immortal, and modern thing in all drama."

"I told her," said the Queen, "that she was talking about what she didn't understand; but she answered that she had seen it three times. I said, that to go and see the same play three times—especially a play with murders in it—showed a morbid taste. She didn't seem to mind: 'Then I am morbid,' was her reply. And when I said, 'That comes of making friends with these intellectual women,' she only laughed at me. I shan't let her go again, it is doing her harm; she has far too many ideas, far too many: and where she picks them all up I'm sure I don't know; she doesn't get them from me!"

And then the conversation—though Charlotte remained its subject—took another turn, for the King put into his wife's hand the letter he had received from the Prince of Schnapps-Wasser, and immediately her comments began.

"He writes a nice hand," she said, "and expresses himself very well. Speaks of writing a book on his travels; he must be clever. Well, at all events, it's very evident that he means to come, and wants to. We must ask him to send his photograph. I think, my dear, we have made a very good choice, and Charlotte may consider herself very fortunate. But what a pity he's not coming sooner. Well, Charlotte must wait, that's all!"

And so in her own mind the matter was settled, and only the usual details waited to be arranged. She handed the letter back to him.

"Of course," she said, "before he comes Charlotte must have a bigger allowance." She became meditative. "By the way, you had better leave it in my hands; don't give it to Charlotte herself. She wheedles you, I know; but she has ideas about dress which I am not going to encourage; she makes herself far too noticeable as it is. Somebody has been talking to her about 'national costume' and the folly of fashions; and she actually said just now that she wanted to have some kind of dress that she could wear three years running! I told her that fashions were made to be followed, and that it was her duty to follow them. Oh, she was quite sweet about it, and said she supposed I knew best, which of course is true. But she had a sort of 'I'll ask papa' look in her eyes that made me suspicious. She went out just before you came."

"I met her," observed the King.

"And she said nothing?"

"Not a word about her dress allowance."

"Ah, that's all right, then: she takes what I tell her sometimes." Then with a quick glance the Queen asked abruptly: "Have you seen Max?"

"I fancy I may be seeing him this evening," returned the King casually, for he wished to conceal even from his wife the importance he had begun to attach to his son's visits.

"Something is happening," said the Queen pointedly; "at least, so I am informed. That—that person I told you about—she isn't there now."

"However do you come to know that?" inquired the King, surprised; but his question was ignored.

"She has gone abroad," went on his informant. "Had you said anything to Max?"

"I did speak to him."

"Then it seems to have had its effect."

The King very much doubted whether the effect was any of his doing; but he held his peace.

"Now we must find somebody for him," continued the dear lady, covering the past in a tone of charitable allowance.

"I think that Max will find somebody for himself."

But this was not to her taste at all. "How can he," she objected, "unless we send him abroad? I'm sure there's nobody here."

But the King had come recently to know more about Max than his wife did. "Max will find somebody for himself," he repeated; "and if he thinks it worth while, he will go all round the world on a wild goose chase to look for her."