Читать книгу The Mulberry Empire - Philip Hensher - Страница 26

Bella, indeed, was downstairs in the drawing room, her mind quite empty. When the double knock came at the door of the house, she was staring abstractedly at a house fly working its way across the walnut table. Her work was in her lap. The fly seemed lost, cautious, bewildered. Its huge jewelled eyes blank, it seemed to be finding its way over the polished table by touch. It leant on its feelers like an old man on a pair of sticks, as if exhausted; then, suddenly, it reached back and swiftly groomed its wings, back, head with three sleek gestures, and with a single snap, flew off on its own purposes. Bella blinked. In front of her was a young man, pink and ginger as a cake. His hat was apologetically in his hand. She did not recognize him.

‘Miss Garraway?’ the young man said. ‘I startled you. I—’

‘Mr Burnes,’ she said crisply, smiling; and, indeed, Emily had a standing instruction to admit Burnes without question, when she was not at home to all others. She had expected, however, some announcement. ‘How pleasant. Do sit down.’

‘I did call,’ he said. ‘I was unable directly to call after the evening at – at—’

‘At Lady Woodcourt’s,’ Bella said, smiling. There were, it was true, an appalling gaggle of hostesses in London, all rather like Fanny Woodcourt; Bella had spent the previous week accompanying her father to a selection of them, in the unfulfilled hope of seeing Burnes. ‘A memorable evening for you, was it, Mr Burnes?’

‘Much resembling a great many other evenings it has been my pleasure to attend in the last few months,’ Burnes said. ‘Indeed, I think I could hardly distinguish it at this distance from a dozen others this last month.’

‘What uninterrupted bliss your life must be,’ Bella said. ‘For a poor female like me, there could be no higher pleasure than a succession of evenings identical to Lady Woodcourt’s. Or perhaps you are weary of them, Mr Burnes? Surely not. Do not disappoint my youthful hopes.’

‘I confess,’ Burnes said, leaning forward in his chair as if she had a lapel to seize, ‘if I thought my life likely to consist of such evenings, I should return to Kabul and never leave again.’

‘No pleasures, then?’ Bella said. ‘None, sir?’

‘One,’ Burnes said, and the drop in his manner into a feeling seriousness was as marked as if he had fixed his gaze with hers. She leant forward, unaccountably disconcerted, and rang for tea.

‘Have you seen your friend, Mr Stokes?’ Bella said, smoothing her dress down as she settled back.

‘Mr Stokes?’ Burnes said, perplexed. He picked up a gold snuffbox, and examined it. ‘Was that the gentleman’s name?’

‘You seemed to be holding an energetic conversation with him at Lady Woodcourt’s,’ she said. ‘A bald gentleman. A writer, I believe. No – I remember now – he is the editor of a periodical. Great things were expected of him, and he wrote a novel – or did he merely promise to write a novel? It is so difficult to remember. Do you plan to write a novel, now, Mr Burnes? You are certainly promising enough to threaten one.’

Burnes took this well. ‘I fear I shall be too occupied with weightier matters shortly. My time is not entirely my own, Miss Garraway – I return to India in six weeks. Do you suppose six weeks enough time to write a three-volume novel?’

‘I feel certain that you, at any rate, possess the dash to carry through such a project. Can it be that the man who bearded the potentates of Asia in their den would shrink from the demands of sending Arabella and Rudolpho through three misunderstandings and the trial of a false suitor before reuniting them in the last pages of the third volume?’

‘Stop, Miss Garraway, I beg you,’ Burnes said, laughing. ‘I am almost moved by your tale. Perhaps it is you who should write a novel – you, after all, have a great deal more than six weeks to write your masterpiece.’

‘I hope you are not suggesting that I do not have a great number of highly important calls on my time,’ Bella said, pretending to be angry. ‘But, I assure you, I could not write such nonsense – I could not write any novel, nonsensical or no – under any motive less pressing than to save my life. By the by, Mr Burnes, you will think me remiss for not thanking you directly for the gift of your book.’

‘It was the smallest task, Miss Garraway,’ Burnes said. ‘If you enjoy it, that will be thanks enough.’

‘I have already enjoyed it,’ Bella said as the tea came in. She got up and went to the window. Outside, two girls were rolling a hoop past; a man sat in a dark gig, his horse’s nose down in a bag of oats. ‘Perhaps you are right; perhaps I have too little to do, as all my sex. Or perhaps your book was more than commonly engaging. What occupation would you advise for a poor unmarried female? My sister writes to German philosophers, but I know I should burst out laughing before I had written a page. It is a great problem, is it not – how the virgins of England shall occupy their time?’

‘I should advise them all,’ Burnes said solemnly, ‘to acquire and read my book. Then they would be transported to unfamiliar worlds of thought, I should quickly grow rich, and virtue would flow from this universal unproductive idleness.’

She answered him in the same vein, and the conversation lapsed for a moment. It was a fine spring day, almost summer in the promise of heat, and, standing there, she suddenly longed to be in the country, where her eyes could rest upon an expanse of green from her father’s house, where there was some relief greater than the Park and the small dusty square of green called Hanover Square, where dogs panted as if in the remotest desert.

She was lost in thought for a moment, and Burnes startled her by saying, ‘When do you go to the country, Miss Garraway?’

He might have been following her thoughts, although it was not an unnatural thing to ask in May, in London. ‘I imagine shortly after your departure, Mr Burnes. I doubt you could have found anything more queer on your travels than our house in Gloucestershire. It is truly something to make a Sultan stare. A moat, castellations, a swarm of savage peacocks, and everything inside so higgledy-piggledy. It is picturesque, as my sister says, to the point of shame.’

‘I’m sure that I should love it very much,’ Burnes said, now entirely serious.

‘Yes,’ she said, having nothing contrary to say. ‘Yes, I think I love it too. Tell me, which of your oriental potentates did you find the most agreeable? From your book, they all seem equally amiable, or almost all.’

Burnes drew his chair a little closer to hers, set down his teacup. A light film of sweat was dewing his forehead; it must now be warm in the street. ‘On the whole,’ he said. ‘I think Dost Mohammed, the Prince of Kabul.’

‘The Prince of Kabul,’ Bella breathed, turning to him with her luminous grey eyes. ‘How I envy you, to number such a tremendous personage among your acquaintance. The Prince of Kabul – it truly sounds like the black villain in a Christmas raree show. I see him, entering, stage left, his face and his intentions for the heroine both as black as pitch. Forgive me, Mr Burnes – I let my tongue run on to no purpose, and I recall now how kind the gentleman was to you from my reading of your book. And now here is my sister.’