OF HUMAN BONDAGE (An Autobiographical Novel) - Complete Edition. Уильям Сомерсет Моэм

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      Soon, however, there could be no doubt that there was something between the pair, and other people in the Frau Professor's house saw them lurking in dark places. The elderly ladies who sat at the head of the table began to discuss what was now a scandal. The Frau Professor was angry and harassed. She had done her best to see nothing. The winter was at hand, and it was not as easy a matter then as in the summer to keep her house full. Herr Sung was a good customer: he had two rooms on the ground floor, and he drank a bottle of Moselle at each meal. The Frau Professor charged him three marks a bottle and made a good profit. None of her other guests drank wine, and some of them did not even drink beer. Neither did she wish to lose Fraulein Cacilie, whose parents were in business in South America and paid well for the Frau Professor's motherly care; and she knew that if she wrote to the girl's uncle, who lived in Berlin, he would immediately take her away. The Frau Professor contented herself with giving them both severe looks at table and, though she dared not be rude to the Chinaman, got a certain satisfaction out of incivility to Cacilie. But the three elderly ladies were not content. Two were widows, and one, a Dutchwoman, was a spinster of masculine appearance; they paid the smallest possible sum for their pension, and gave a good deal of trouble, but they were permanent and therefore had to be put up with. They went to the Frau Professor and said that something must be done; it was disgraceful, and the house was ceasing to be respectable. The Frau Professor tried obstinacy, anger, tears, but the three old ladies routed her, and with a sudden assumption of virtuous indignation she said that she would put a stop to the whole thing.

      After luncheon she took Cacilie into her bed-room and began to talk very seriously to her; but to her amazement the girl adopted a brazen attitude; she proposed to go about as she liked; and if she chose to walk with the Chinaman she could not see it was anybody's business but her own. The Frau Professor threatened to write to her uncle.

      "Then Onkel Heinrich will put me in a family in Berlin for the winter, and that will be much nicer for me. And Herr Sung will come to Berlin too."

      The Frau Professor began to cry. The tears rolled down her coarse, red, fat cheeks; and Cacilie laughed at her.

      "That will mean three rooms empty all through the winter," she said.

      Then the Frau Professor tried another plan. She appealed to Fraulein Cacilie's better nature: she was kind, sensible, tolerant; she treated her no longer as a child, but as a grown woman. She said that it wouldn't be so dreadful, but a Chinaman, with his yellow skin and flat nose, and his little pig's eyes! That's what made it so horrible. It filled one with disgust to think of it.

      "Bitte, bitte," said Cacilie, with a rapid intake of the breath. "I won't listen to anything against him."

      "But it's not serious?" gasped Frau Erlin.

      "I love him. I love him. I love him."

      "Gott im Himmel!"

      The Frau Professor stared at her with horrified surprise; she had thought it was no more than naughtiness on the child's part, and innocent, folly. but the passion in her voice revealed everything. Cacilie looked at her for a moment with flaming eyes, and then with a shrug of her shoulders went out of the room.

      Frau Erlin kept the details of the interview to herself, and a day or two later altered the arrangement of the table. She asked Herr Sung if he would not come and sit at her end, and he with his unfailing politeness accepted with alacrity. Cacilie took the change indifferently. But as if the discovery that the relations between them were known to the whole household made them more shameless, they made no secret now of their walks together, and every afternoon quite openly set out to wander about the hills. It was plain that they did not care what was said of them. At last even the placidity of Professor Erlin was moved, and he insisted that his wife should speak to the Chinaman. She took him aside in his turn and expostulated; he was ruining the girl's reputation, he was doing harm to the house, he must see how wrong and wicked his conduct was; but she was met with smiling denials; Herr Sung did not know what she was talking about, he was not paying any attention to Fraulein Cacilie, he never walked with her; it was all untrue, every word of it.

      "Ach, Herr Sung, how can you say such things? You've been seen again and again."

      "No, you're mistaken. It's untrue."

      He looked at her with an unceasing smile, which showed his even, little white teeth. He was quite calm. He denied everything. He denied with bland effrontery. At last the Frau Professor lost her temper and said the girl had confessed she loved him. He was not moved. He continued to smile.

      "Nonsense! Nonsense! It's all untrue."

      She could get nothing out of him. The weather grew very bad; there was snow and frost, and then a thaw with a long succession of cheerless days, on which walking was a poor amusement. One evening when Philip had just finished his German lesson with the Herr Professor and was standing for a moment in the drawing-room, talking to Frau Erlin, Anna came quickly in.

      "Mamma, where is Cacilie?" she said.

      "I suppose she's in her room."

      "There's no light in it."

      The Frau Professor gave an exclamation, and she looked at her daughter in dismay. The thought which was in Anna's head had flashed across hers.

      "Ring for Emil," she said hoarsely.

      This was the stupid lout who waited at table and did most of the housework. He came in.

      "Emil, go down to Herr Sung's room and enter without knocking. If anyone is there say you came in to see about the stove."

      No sign of astonishment appeared on Emil's phlegmatic face.

      He went slowly downstairs. The Frau Professor and Anna left the door open and listened. Presently they heard Emil come up again, and they called him.

      "Was anyone there?" asked the Frau Professor.

      "Yes, Herr Sung was there."

      "Was he alone?"

      The beginning of a cunning smile narrowed his mouth.

      "No, Fraulein Cacilie was there."

      "Oh, it's disgraceful," cried the Frau Professor.

      Now he smiled broadly.

      "Fraulein Cacilie is there every evening. She spends hours at a time there."

      Frau Professor began to wring her hands.

      "Oh, how abominable! But why didn't you tell me?"

      "It was no business of mine," he answered, slowly shrugging his shoulders.

      "I suppose they paid you well. Go away. Go."

      He lurched clumsily to the door.

      "They must go away, mamma," said Anna.

      "And who is going to pay the rent? And the taxes are falling due. It's all very well for you to say they must go away. If they go away I can't pay the bills." She turned to Philip, with tears streaming down her face. "Ach, Herr Carey, you will not say what you have heard. If Fraulein Forster—" this was the Dutch spinster—"if Fraulein Forster knew she would leave at once. And if they all go we must close the house. I cannot afford to keep it."

      "Of course I won't say anything."

      "If СКАЧАТЬ