Daisy's Aunt. Benson Edward Frederic
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Название: Daisy's Aunt
Автор: Benson Edward Frederic
Издательство: Public Domain
Жанр: Зарубежная классика
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"But during all those weeks I suppose I was getting better, and when I went south to Rome in November, though I still could not look forward or contemplate the future at all, I knew better how to deal with the present hour and the present day. There was no joy in them, but there was a sort of acquiescence in me. If life – as seemed the only possible thing – was to be joyless for me, I could at least behave decently. Also a certain sort of pride, I think, came to my help. I felt that it was bad manners to appear as I felt – just as when one has a headache one makes an effort to appear more brilliantly well than usual. One doesn't like people to know one has a headache, and in the same way I settled that I didn't like them to know I had a heartache.
"Victor was in Rome. The manager of the branch of their banking business there had died suddenly, and he had gone to take his place till some one could be sent out from England. The new man arrived there some ten days or so after I did; but he still stayed on, for one morning I saw him in the Forum, and another day I passed him driving. All he knew was that I had not answered the letter which he wrote to me when I was on Como, and he made no further attempt to see me. But he did not leave Rome. And then one day I wrote to him, as I was bound to do, saying that I had not answered his letter because I believed then that I could not; but that if he would forgive that, and come to see me —
"Oh, Alice, it is being such a long story. But there is little more. He came, and I asked him if he was stopping long in Rome, and he said his plans were uncertain. And then – so gradually that I scarcely knew it was happening – he began to take care of me; and gradually, also, I began to expect him to do so. He tells me I was not tiresome; I can't believe him.
"And then – how does it happen? Nobody knows, though it has happened so often. One day I saw him differently. I had always been friends with him, and in those bad years I had always relied on him; but, as I say, one day I saw him differently. I saw the man himself – not as he struck me, but as he was. That is just it, dear Alice. 'How he struck me' was left out, because I was left out. And then I knew I loved him. And – and that is all, I think."
Lady Nottingham gave a long, appreciative sigh.
"I think it is the nicest story," she said – "and it's all true. Oh, Jeannie, I am such a match-maker, and it is so pleasant to be forestalled. I asked him down to Bray simply in order to promote this, and now I find it has been promoted already. But the punt will be useful all the same."
Jeannie joined her friend in the window-seat.
"Yes, just the same," she said.
CHAPTER VII
There was silence for a little while. An hour had passed since they began to talk, but it was still short of midnight, and the hansoms and motors still swept about the square like a throng of sonorous fireflies. Just opposite a big house flared with lit windows, and the sound of the band came loudly across the open space, a little mellowed by the distance, but with the rhythm of its music intact.
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