The Convert. Elizabeth Robins

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ how-do-you-do when she doesn't hug you.'

      'I'll hug you when I go.'

      But a better plan than that occurred to Cecil. He flung down the covers with the decision of one called to set about some urgent business.

      'Cecil! I simply won't have you catching cold!'

      Before the words were out of Miss Levering's mouth he had tumbled out of bed and leapt into her lap. He clasped his arms round her neck with an air of rapturous devotion, but what he said was—

      'Go on 'bout the alligator.'

      'No, no. Go 'way!' protested Sara, pushing him with hands and feet.

      'Sh! You really will have nurse back!'

      That horrid thought coerced the prudent Sara to endurance of the interloping brother. And now of his own accord Cecil had taken his arms from round his friend's neck.

      'That's horrid!' he said. 'I don't like that hard thing. Take it off.'

      'Let me.' Sara sat up with alacrity. 'Let me.'

      But Miss Levering undid the sapphire necklace herself. 'If you'll be very careful, Sara, I'll let you hold it.' It was as if she well knew the deft little hands she had delivered the ornament to, and knew equally well that in her present mood, absorption in the beauty of it would keep the woman-child still.

      'There, that's better!' Cecil replaced his arms firmly where the necklace had been.

      Miss Levering pulled up her long cloak from the bottom of the bed and wrapped the little boy in the warm lining. The comfort of the arrangement was so great, and it implied so little necessity for 'hanging on,' that Cecil loosed his arms and lay curled up against his friend.

      She held him close, adapting her lithe slimness to the easy supporting and enfolding of the childish figure. The little girl was absorbed in the necklace after her strenuous hour; the boy, content for a moment, having gained his point, just to lie at his ease; the woman rested her cheek on his ruffled hair and looked straight before her.

      As she sat there holding him, something came into her face, guiltless though it was of any traceable change, without the verifiable movement of a muscle, something none the less that would have minded the beholder uneasily to search the eyes for tears, and, finding no tears there, to feel no greater sense of reassurance.

      So motionless she sat that presently the child turned up his rosy face, and seeing the brooding look, it was plain he had the sense of being somehow left behind. He put up his hand to her cheek, and rubbed it softly with his own.

      'I don't like you like that. Tell me about——'

      'Like what?' said the lady.

      'Like—I don't know.' Then, with a sudden inspiration, 'Uncle Ronald says you're like the Sphinx. Who are they?'

      'Who are who?'

      'Why, the Sfinks. Have they got a boy? Is the little Sfink as old as me? Oh, you only laugh, just like Uncle Ronald. He asked us why we liked you, and we told him.'

      'You've never told me.'

      'Oh, didn't we? Well, it's because you aren't beady.'

      'Beady?'

      'Yes. We hate all beady ladies, don't we, Sara?'

      'Yes; but it's my turn.' However, she said it half-heartedly as she stopped drawing the shining jewels lightly through her slim fingers, and began gently to swing the fleur-de-lys back and forth like a pendulum that glanced bewitchingly in the light.

      Miss Levering knew that the next phase would be to try it on, but for the moment Sara had still half an ear for general conversation.

      'We hate them to have hard things on their shoulders!' Cecil explained.

      'On their shoulders?' Miss Levering asked.

      'Here, just in the way of our heads.'

      'Yes, bead-trimming on their dresses,' explained the little girl.

      'Hard stuff that scratches when they hold you tight.' Cecil cuddled his impudent round face luxuriously on the soft lace-covered shoulder of the visitor, and laughed up in her face.

      'Aunts are very beady,' said Sara, absent-mindedly, as she tried the effect of the glitter against her night-gown.

      'Grandmothers are worse,' amended Cecil. 'They're beady and bu-gly, too.'

      'What's bewgly?'

      'Well, it's what my grandmother called them when I pulled some of them off. Not proper bugles, you know, what you "too! too! too!" make music with when you're fighting the enemy. My grandmother thinks bugles are little shiny black things only about that long'—he measured less than an inch on his minute forefinger—'with long holes through so they can sew them on their clothes.'

      'On their caps, too,' said Sara; 'only they're usurally white when they're on caps.'

      'Here's your mother coming! Now, what will she say to you, Cecil?'

      They turned their eyes to the door, strangely unwelcoming for Laura Tunbridge's children, and their young faces betrayed no surprise when the very different figure of Nurse Dampney emerged from behind the tall chintz screen that protected the cots from any draught through the opening door. Cecil, with an action of settled despair, turned from the spectacle, and buried his face for one last moment of comfort in Vida Levering's shoulder; while Sara, with a baleful glance, muttered—

      'I knew it was that old interfiddler.'

      'Now, Master Cecil——'

      'Yes, nurse.' Miss Levering carried him back to his cot.

      'Mrs. Tunbridge has sent up, miss, to know if you've come. They're waiting dinner.'

      'Not really! Is it a quarter past already?'

      'More like twenty minutes, miss.'

      The lady caught up her necklace, cut short her good-byes, and fled downstairs, clasping the shining thing round her neck as she went—a swaying figure in soft flying draperies and gleaming, upraised arms.

      She entered the drawing-room with a quiet deliberation greater even than common. It was the effect that haste and contrition frequently wrought in her—one of the things that made folk call her 'too self-contained,' even 'a trifle supercilious.'

      But when other young women, recognizing some not easily definable charm in this new-comer into London life, tried to copy the effect alluded to, it was found to be less imitable than it looked.

CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

      There were already a dozen or so persons in the gold-and-white drawing-room, yet the moment Vida Levering entered, she knew from the questing glance СКАЧАТЬ