Читать книгу The Coward - Robert Hugh Benson - Страница 8

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She sat a little apart after dinner, as her manner was, in the tall chair by the wide fire-place, gently embroidering a piece of appliqué work in a fashion which she believed herself to have invented, and looking up tranquilly from time to time. There was no need to talk much; the girls were at the piano, and her husband dozed unobtrusively opposite her, over a book dealing with Afghanistan from a military point of view.

It is worth while describing the place in which she sat, as this hall was, so to speak, the essential framework of that Medd spirit which she had learned so completely to live.

It was Caroline, not Tudor (as has been said), but it was none the worse for that; it was some sixty feet long by twenty wide, and the roof rose high and stately overhead. Opposite her was the gallery, where glimmered gilded organ-pipes among a riot of fat cherubs, resting on the great screen that shut off the approach to the dining-room at one end and the kitchens on the other. (She caught a glimpse of Val once or twice, leaning over the gallery, and nodded to him to come down and sit by her, but he seemed not to notice. She had learned well the supreme art of the mother of sons, and made no more of it.) The hall itself was panelled with dark Jacobean oak up some sixteen feet of its sides, lit by candles in sconces that projected below the cornice; and above, in a dignified row, hung the splendid collection of portraits, tilted slightly forward—that collection which is one of the first things for which the instructed sightseer asks. Between these, here and there, hung tattered colours; and, higher yet, the trophies of Royalist arms once worn by the Medhurst troop of horse at Naseby. (Hitherto the General had entirely refused to allow all these to be lighted by those shaded electric lamps just then coming into use.)

The floor of the hall was furnished extremely suitably. Against the walls stood, of course, the heavy shining tables and the stiff chairs of state; but the couches and the little dark tables and the deep leather chairs made the rest of it completely habitable. Great bowls of roses stood here and there—a delight to smell and sight; there were carpets, skins, standing candles, and all the other unnoticeable things that make the difference between comfort and bleakness. The tall windows still stood open to the summer air that breathed in, fragrant with the evergreen mignonette that bordered the narrow beds outside.

There then she sat, contented and soothed by that atmosphere to which she herself largely contributed—that atmosphere of dignity and comfort and, above all, of stately beauty. It had been compounded year by year, distilled, refined seventy times seven; and hung as heavy and as sweet and as delicate as that of the old pot-pourri in the great china jars on the side-tables....

Now and again she looked up at the girls. Her daughter May was accompanying now, while Gertie sang—Gertrude Marjoribanks that is, the friend her daughter had made out at Mentone last year.

The two girls looked charming—real jeunes filles—the one fair, as became a traditional Medd, the other startlingly dark, olive-skinned, and black eyed. The piano-playing of the second was really remarkable too, considering her age, in its extraordinary delicacy of feeling. It was her single accomplishment or, rather, it was the accomplishment into which she put all her energy; for she did other things sufficiently well: she rode, she talked a couple of languages besides her own, she sketched a little, and she was beginning to act. But her piano-playing was her real passion; she practised a couple of hours a day; she continually hung round the piano at odd times.

“Gertie,” said the great lady when the last rippling chord died on the upper octave, “Gertie, have you ever met Father Maple?”

“No; who is he?”

(To see this girl look up suddenly was a real pleasure. Her face was still alight with the pathos of the music.)

“He’s the Roman Catholic priest here. He’s a great musician, I believe.”

The girl got up and came round the piano.

“I think May told me about him. He’s quite old, isn’t he?”

The other smiled, as she fitted her needle into the stuff.

“He’s about fifty,” she said.

Gertie sat down, clasping her knees with her two slender hands. She still wore frocks above her ankles, and a thick pigtail of hair; but she had no trace of the adolescent clumsiness that May occasionally showed.

“Does he play, Lady Beatrice?”

“Oh! I think so. But he’s composer too, you know. Ecclesiastical music, I expect.”

Gertie said nothing. Ecclesiastical music seemed to her tiresome.

“We’ll ask him to dinner before you go. We’ll ask him when Professor Macintosh is here.”

Lady Beatrice laid her embroidery resolutely aside and reached for her stick.

“Well, my dears, bed. Where are the boys?”

Austin rose from a deep couch in the corner behind.

“Here, mother.”

“You’ve been asleep, my son.”

He shook his head.

“I’ve been listening to the music.”

“And Val?”

“Val went out ten minutes ago.”

Then the General opened his eyes with a start, and rose briskly from his chair as Miss Deverell began to clink about the bedroom candlesticks.