Читать книгу The Coward - Robert Hugh Benson - Страница 17

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The last evening before a day on which something pleasurable and exciting is going to happen has always a peculiarly stimulating effect upon imaginative persons, and the two boys were in a state very nearly approaching exaltation as they came out into the hall after dinner.

Val vanished immediately, to take one more look at the delightful luggage that already lay nearly packed, in the joint sitting-room upstairs. He went up three steps at a time, tore along the passages, and then stood, eyeing it all once more: the sheaf of axes, each with its little leather head-dress, umbrellas and sticks; the two portmanteaux, still open to receive last touches and additions in the morning; the roll of rugs, in the midst of which (as he knew) reposed the coil of rope with its red-thread centre. It seemed to him amazing that the eve of the journey was really come....

He came down more slowly, once, indeed, turning back to reassure himself that his boots were really packed—those boots which, heavy now with the mutton-fat he had reverently administered to them with his own hands after tea, he had worn, in accordance with the directions of “Badminton,” already for two or three days. As he came towards the hall he heard the piano. This was a nuisance; he would not be able to talk to the Professor about couloirs; but at least he could think in peace, so he slipped in noiselessly, tiptoed down the length of the hall, and sat down on the couch behind his mother’s chair.

In times of exaltation, external things take upon them a value out of all proportion to their intrinsic weight; and perfectly ordinary and familiar things appear in a wholly new light. And so it came about that Val, looking upon a scene which he could remember so long as he could remember anything, discovered in one or two trifling modifications of it a significance that really bore no relation at all to their essence.

It was the priest who was playing—a man of whom a certain profane musician had said twenty years before that the Church had only gained a sacrament-monger while the world had lost an artist; and though Val knew nothing at all of music, it was impossible that he should not be enormously affected, all circumstances considered, by the atmosphere generated by the really exquisite performance. For a time he watched the player’s face, thin, quiet, and intent, with the candlelight falling on it and turning to pure silver the grey hairs about his ears and temples, and thought only of rock-climbing. It crossed his mind with a kind of marvel that any man should be as contented, as this priest obviously looked, who was not going to Switzerland next day. And meanwhile the music did its work.

Val knew neither then nor afterwards what music it was that was being played. One phrase in it, however—a motif, if he had only known it—began little by little to colour his thoughts. He began almost to look for it, as it insisted upon itself gently from time to time, like a wise friend intervening with infinite tact. It was simple and clear now, as if speaking alone; it inserted itself a moment or two later across a tangle of controversy; it shouted suddenly across a raging sea; then once again it spoke gently....

So the music began to do its work.

Val scarcely knew afterwards at what instant he first noticed Gertie Marjoribanks from the new angle. They were all very still. His mother’s feather fan lay on her knee; he could see the jewelled fingers, perfectly motionless, clasping it. His father sat opposite, one long leg cocked over the other, one long foot outstretched in the air, with a shoe dangling from its toe; his hands were clasped behind his head, and his face was grave and still. Austin was in the shadow of a window-seat, all but invisible. Miss Deverell was beyond him again, seated beneath a lamp; but her work was lying unheeded in her lap as she leaned back and listened. ... Above and about them all was the darkening beauty of this great old room.

And presently Val perceived that he was staring at Gertie Marjoribanks as if he had never seen her before.

This girl was sitting with her profile towards him, rather forward on her chair, in a pose that seemed to the boy one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen. (Naturally he would not have called it this.) She sat forward in her chair, with her slender white hands clasped round her knee, her face, shadowed in her dark hair, thrown forward and up, with her lips slightly parted, and her breath coming evenly between them. But it was that, so far as he could see it, which he saw on her face that gave such an amazing sense of beauty to the boy as he looked at her—an expression of absolutely real, rapturous attention, as if the sweetness and delicacy of the music had entered into her very life and transformed her altogether. These initiations are mysterious things, and it was Val’s first experience of them. Only, he was aware that something had happened which somehow altered the relations of everything. He went on looking at this slender dark-haired girl, a year younger than himself, in her white frock; at her round arms clasped about her knee—this girl who, to do her justice, had lost during these minutes every ounce of that self-consciousness which girls can rarely evade; and who was actually, as she seemed to be, for the time being entirely absorbed in the astonishing sweetness of sound that was filling the room.... He looked carefully and minutely at her, at her face, again and again, at her hands, her arms, her feet, her thick hair; and suddenly and vividly a perfectly perceptible pang shot through him at the memory that the brougham was ordered for his departure at half-past six next morning.

As he turned a little restlessly in his seat, the music ended.