Fraternity. Galsworthy John

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СКАЧАТЬ Stone stopped, and turned towards her. His daughter saw that he had gone quite pink; her annoyance vanished.

      “Father! About that girl – ”

      Mr. Stone seemed to reflect. “Yes, yes,” he said.

      “I don’t think Bianca likes her coming here.”

      Mr. Stone passed his hand across his brow.

      “Forgive me for reading to you, my dear,” he said; “it’s a great relief to me at times.”

      Cecilia went close to him, and refrained with difficulty from taking up the tasselled cord.

      “Of course, dear,” she said: “I quite understand that.”

      Mr. Stone looked full in her face, and before a gaze which seemed to go through her and see things the other side, Cecilia dropped her eyes.

      “It is strange,” he said, “how you came to be my daughter!”

      To Cecilia, too, this had often seemed a problem.

      “There is a great deal in atavism,” said Mr. Stone, “that we know nothing of at present.”

      Cecilia cried with heat, “I do wish you would attend a minute, Father; it’s really an important matter,” and she turned towards the window, tears being very near her eyes.

      The voice of Mr. Stone said humbly: “I will try, my dear.”

      But Cecilia thought: ‘I must give him a good lesson. He really is too self-absorbed’; and she did not move, conveying by the posture of her shoulders how gravely she was vexed.

      She could see nursemaids wheeling babies towards the Gardens, and noted their faces gazing, not at the babies, but, uppishly, at other nursemaids, or, with a sort of cautious longing, at men who passed. How selfish they looked! She felt a little glow of satisfaction that she was making this thin and bent old man behind her conscious of his egoism.

      ‘He will know better another time,’ she thought. Suddenly she heard a whistling, squeaking sound – it was Mr. Stone whispering the third page of his manuscript:

      “‘ – animated by some admirable sentiments, but whose doctrines – riddled by the fact that life is but the change of form to form – were too constricted for the evils they designed to remedy; this little sect, who had as yet to learn the meaning of universal love, were making the most strenuous efforts, in advance of the community at large, to understand themselves. The necessary, movement which they voiced – reaction against the high-tide of the fratricidal system then prevailing – was young, and had the freshness and honesty of youth…'”

      Without a word Cecilia turned round and hurried to the door. She saw her father drop the sheet of paper; she saw his face, all pink and silver, stooping after it; and remorse visited her anger.

      In the corridor outside she was arrested by a noise. The uncertain light of London halls fell there; on close inspection the sufferer was seen to be Miranda, who, unable to decide whether she wanted to be in the garden or the house, was seated beneath the hatrack snuffling to herself. On seeing Cecilia she came out.

      “What do you want, you little beast?”

      Peering at her over the tops of her eyes, Miranda vaguely lifted a white foot. ‘Why ask me that?’ she seemed to say. ‘How am I to know? Are we not all like this?’

      Her conduct, coming at that moment, over-tried Cecilia’s nerves. She threw open Hilary’s study-door, saying sharply: “Go in and find your master!”

      Miranda did not move, but Hilary came out instead. He had been correcting proofs to catch the post, and wore the look of a man abstracted, faintly contemptuous of other forms of life.

      Cecilia, once more saved from the necessity of approaching her sister, the mistress of the house, so fugitive, haunting, and unseen, yet so much the centre of this situation, said:

      “Can I speak to you a minute, Hilary?”

      They went into his study, and Miranda came creeping in behind.

      To Cecilia her brother-in-law always seemed an amiable and more or less pathetic figure. In his literary preoccupations he allowed people to impose on him. He looked unsubstantial beside the bust of Socrates, which moved Cecilia strangely – it was so very massive and so very ugly! She decided not to beat about the bush.

      “I’ve been hearing some odd things from Mrs. Hughs about that little model, Hilary.”

      Hilary’s smile faded from his eyes, but remained clinging to his lips.

      “Indeed!”

      Cecilia went on nervously: “Mrs. Hughs says it’s because of her that Hughs behaves so badly. I don’t want to say anything against the girl, but she seems – she seems to have – ”

      “Yes?” said Hilary.

      “To have cast a spell on Hughs, as the woman puts it.”

      “On Hughs!” repeated Hilary.

      Cecilia found her eyes resting on the bust of Socrates, and hastily proceeded:

      “She says he follows her about, and comes down here to lie in wait for her. It’s a most strange business altogether. You went to see them, didn’t you?”

      Hilary nodded.

      “I’ve been speaking to Father,” Cecilia murmured; “but he’s hopeless – I, couldn’t get him to pay the least attention.”

      Hilary seemed thinking deeply.

      “I wanted him,” she went on, “to get some other girl instead to come and copy for him.”

      “Why?”

      Under the seeming impossibility of ever getting any farther, without saying what she had come to say, Cecilia blurted out:

      “Mrs. Hughs says that Hughs has threatened you.”

      Hilary’s face became ironical.

      “Really!” he said. “That’s good of him! What for?”

      The frightful indelicacy of her situation at this moment, the feeling of unfairness that she should be placed in it, almost overwhelmed Cecilia. “Goodness knows I don’t want to meddle. I never meddle in anything-it’s horrible!”

      Hilary took her hand.

      “My dear Cis,” he said, “of course! But we’d better have this out!”

      Grateful for the pressure of his hand, she gave it a convulsive squeeze.

      “It’s so sordid, Hilary!”

      “Sordid! H’m! Let’s get it over, then.”

      Cecilia had grown crimson. “Do you want me to tell you everything?”

      “Certainly.”

      “Well, Hughs evidently thinks you’re interested in the girl. You can’t keep anything from servants and people who work about your house; they always think the worst СКАЧАТЬ