Читать книгу Two Black Sheep - Warwick Deeping - Страница 25

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Sally disposed of three more cakes, and with Elsie refraining from emitting “dont’s,” a fallacious peace prevailed. Miss Summerhays had come downstairs wearing a hat, and when tea was over she sent Sally in search of headgear.

“We’ll go out now. We will walk to the Pincio.”

Sally was docile. She reappeared wearing a red beret on her flaxen head, and between that red button and her light blue pullover her fleshly little face was curiously solemn. They passed through the Golden Gate and across the road into the Borghese gardens where the tops of the stone pines caught the sunlight. Rome was here, enjoying the same sunlight, old men and nurse-maids and mothers sitting on chairs, and idle men leaning on the railings by the horse track. There were cavalry officers in dramatic blue cloaks, and Sally looked at the officers.

“Miss Gasson’s got one like that.”

Elsie refrained, for Sylvia was walking very decorously, and if Elsie desired anything in particular it was that this decorum should not be disturbed. The afternoon was so very beautiful, the grass vivid and refreshed, the tall trees sunning themselves. She looked across and up at the Villa Medici serenely set amidst black ilex against a sky that was beginning to colour. How very beautiful Rome was, both so brilliant and so softly blurred, the old and the new, youth and antiquity. She felt as though a cool hand had been passed gently over her face.

Sally addressed her, a Sally who was playing at being good.

“Miss Summerhays, why do people get married?”

Elsie looked very serious.

“Because they love each other, dear.”

“And supposing—supposing they stop loving each other, do they get unmarried?”

“Sometimes.”

“Why doesn’t Miss Gasson get married? She’s had lots and lots of men.”

The conversation was becoming difficult, and Elsie made an effort to divert it into other channels.

“It’s not our business, Sylvia. Miss Gasson may be hard to please. Look at that officer on the white horse.”

Sally looked.

“I’d like to see old Monte on a horse. He’d go bump-bump, and his eyeglass would fall out.”

“Mr. Allabaster may be quite a good rider.”

“I bet he isn’t. And he walks like this.”

Sally gave a rendering of Mr. Allabaster’s particular method of progression, and then seeing three officers strolling towards them she became utterly demure. She met them with sweet decorousness, gazing up with naïve innocence into their faces.

“Did you see them look at me, Miss Summerhays?”

“Perhaps—because you are looking a good little girl?”

“Do gentlemen like looking at good little girls?”

“Of course.”

Metaphorically, Sally put out her tongue. And Elsie was feeling challenged. The vanity of the child! But of course most children were vain little creatures, and you had to allow them their candour. Besides, might it not be possible to use a child’s vanity and turn it into what Elsie would have described as self-respect and nice behaviour? They strolled on up the long straight walk to the ilexes and statues of the Pincio, and suddenly the sky opened and Rome lay before them under the westering sun. They crossed to the terrace and stood there with the sunlight on their faces, and Elsie Summerhays seemed to hold her breath.

“Isn’t it beautiful, Sylvia?”

Rome! Roofs all bronze and gold, the grey blue bubble of St. Peter’s, other domes, the soul of a city shaped in stone, a sky that was growing gold above the heights of the Janiculum. Elsie stood and dreamed, while the child looked up inquisitively into her face. Beauty! Miss Summerhays was always mooning about beauty, and Sally would have said: “The world’s got to look—at me, because I’m going to be beautiful.” She scrambled up on to the balustrading, and craned her head over the wall, and Elsie’s reaction was instant. She came out of her dream.

“Don’t do that, Sylvia.”

“Why?”

“You might fall over. And you’ll dirty your pullover.”

Sally kicked her toes against the stone and at her leisure slithered down.

“When I’m grown up I’m going to say ‘don’t’ to everybody. But I shan’t be paid to say it—like you. Why isn’t the silly old band playing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s go and look at that funny fountain.”

“I think it is time we turned back, Sylvia.”

“I believe you’re afraid of the fountain.”

“Afraid! Why should I be?”