The Collected Works of W. Somerset Maugham (33 Works in One Edition). Уильям Сомерсет Моэм

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ was a great deal too good for any one else. I know that you’re obstinate, Polly, and quick-tempered, and this impertinence I am willing to overlook. Do you still refuse to do as I wish?”

      “Yes.”

      Miss Dwarris rang the bell violently.

      “Tell Martha to pack Miss Ley’s boxes at once, and call a four-wheeler,” she cried, in tones of thunder.

      “Very well, Madam,” answered the butler, used to his mistress’s vagaries.

      Then Miss Dwarris turned to her guest, who observed her with irritating good-humour.

      “I hope you realise, Polly, that I fully mean what I say.”

      “All is over between us,” answered Miss Ley, mockingly, “and shall I return your letters and your photographs?”

      Miss Dwarris sat for a while, in silent anger, watching her cousin, who took up the Morning Post, and, with great calmness, read the fashionable intelligence. Presently the butler announced that the four-wheeler was at the door.

      “Well, Polly, so you’re really going?”

      “I can hardly stay when you’ve had my boxes packed and sent for a cab,” replied Miss Ley, mildly.

      “It’s your own doing; I don’t wish you to go. If you’ll confess that you were headstrong and obstinate, and if you’ll take an umbrella, I am willing to let bygones be bygones.”

      “Look at the sun,” answered Miss Ley.

      And, as if actually to annoy the tyrannous old woman, the shining rays danced into the room and made importunate patterns on the carpet.

      “I think I should tell you, Polly, that it was my intention to leave you ten thousand pounds in my will. This intention I shall, of course, not now carry out.”

      “You’d far better leave your money to the Dwarris people: upon my word, considering that they’ve been related to you for over sixty years, I think they thoroughly deserve it.”

      “I shall leave my money to whom I choose,” cried Miss Dwarris, beside herself; “and if I want to I shall leave every penny of it in charity. You’re very independent because you have a beggarly five hundred a year, but, apparently, it isn’t enough for you to live without letting your flat when you go away. Remember, that no one has any claims upon me, and I can make you a rich woman.”

      Miss Ley replied with great deliberation.

      “My dear, I have a firm conviction that you will live for another thirty years to plague the human race in general and your relations in particular. It is not worth my while, on the chance of surviving you, to submit to the caprices of a very ignorant old woman, presumptuous and overbearing, dull and pretentious.”

      Miss Dwarris gasped and shook with rage, but the other proceeded without mercy.

      “You have plenty of poor relations—bully them. Vent your spite and ill-temper on those wretched sycophants, but pray in future spare me the infinite tediousness of your conversation.”

      Miss Ley had ever a discreet passion for the rhetorical, and there was a certain grandiloquence about the phrase which entertained her hugely. She felt that it was unanswerable, and, with great dignity, walked out. No communication passed between the two ladies, though Miss Dwarris, peremptory, stern, and evangelical to the end, lived in full possession of her faculties for another twenty years. She died at last in a passion occasioned by some trifling misdemeanour of her maid; and as though a heavy yoke were removed from their shoulders, her family heaved a deep and unanimous sigh of relief.

      They attended her funeral with dry eyes, looking still with silent terror at the leaden coffin which contained the remains of that harsh, strong, domineering old woman. Then, nervously expectant, they begged the family solicitor to disclose her will. Written with her own hand, and witnessed by two servants, it was in these terms:

      “I, Elizabeth Ann Dwarris, of 79, Old Queen Street, Westminster, Spinster, hereby revoke all former Wills and Testamentary Dispositions, made by me and declare this to be my last Will and Testament. I appoint Mary Ley, of 72, Eliot Mansions, Chelsea, to be the executrix of this my Will, and I give all my real and personal property whatsoever to the said Mary Ley. To my great-nephews and great-nieces, to my cousins near and remote, I give my blessing; and I beseech them to bear in mind the example and advice which for many years I have given them. I recommend them to cultivate in future strength of character and an independent spirit; I venture to remind them that the humble will never inherit this earth, for their reward is to be awaited in the life to come; and I desire them to continue the subscriptions which, at my request, they have so long and generously made to the Society for the Conversion of the Jews and to the Additional Curates Fund.

      “In witness whereof, I have set my hand to this my Will the 4th day of April, 1883.

      “Elizabeth Ann Dwarris.”

      To her amazement, Miss Ley found herself at the age of fifty-seven in possession of nearly three thousand pounds a year, the lease of a pleasant old house in Westminster, and a great quantity of early Victorian furniture. The will was written two days after her quarrel with the eccentric old woman, and the terms of it certainly achieved the three purposes for which it was designed: it occasioned the utmost surprise to all concerned; it heaped coals of fire on Miss Ley’s indifferent head; and caused the bitterest disappointment and vexation to all that bore the name of Dwarris.

      PART II

       THE MERRY-GO-ROUND

CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

       Miss Ley returned to England at the end of February. Unlike the most of her compatriots, she did not go abroad to see the friends with whom she spent much time at home; and though Bella and Herbert Field were at Naples, Mrs. Murray in Rome, she took care systematically to avoid them. Rather was it her practice to cultivate chance acquaintance, for she thought the English in foreign lands betrayed their idiosyncrasies with a pleasant and edifying frankness; in Venice, for example, or at Capri, the delectable isle, romance might be seized, as it were, in the act, and all manner of oddities were displayed with a most diverting effrontery: in those places you meet middle-aged pairs, uncertainly related, whose vehement adventures startled the decorum of a previous generation; you discover how queer may be the most conventional, how ordinary the most eccentric. Miss Ley, with her discreet knack for extracting confidence, after her own staid fashion enjoyed herself immensely; she listened to the strange confessions of men who for their souls’ sake had abandoned the greatness of the world, and now spoke of their past zeal with indulgent irony, of women who for love had been willing to break down the very pillars of heaven, and now shrugged their shoulders in amused recollection of passion long since dead.

      “Well, what have you fresh to tell me?” asked Frank, having met Miss Ley at Victoria, when he sat down to dinner in Old Queen Street.

      “Nothing much. But I’ve noticed that when pleasure has exhausted a man he’s convinced that he has exhausted pleasure; then he tells you gravely that nothing can satisfy the human heart.”

      But СКАЧАТЬ