Margarita's Soul: The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty. Josephine Daskam Bacon
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Название: Margarita's Soul: The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty

Автор: Josephine Daskam Bacon

Издательство: Bookwire

Жанр: Языкознание

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isbn: 4057664612069

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СКАЧАТЬ that the owner of that voice possessed neither or else was a very great and convincing actress. Mere print cannot excuse him, perhaps, but I give you my word he was as a matter of fact excusable, since he was a bachelor. Most men are very susceptible to the human voice, especially to the female human voice, and it has always been a matter of the deepest wonder to me that the men who do not hear a lovely one once in the year are most under the dominion of their females. I mean, of course, the Americans. It is one of the greatest proofs of the power of these belles Americaines that they wield it in spite of the rustiness of this, their chief national weapon.

      The bell notes, the grave, full richness of this veiled woman's voice touched Roger deeply and with a brusque motion he drew out from his pocket a banknote and pressed it into the hand under his arm.

      "Take this and go home," he said severely. "If you will promise me to call at an address I will give you, I will guarantee you a decent means of livelihood. Will you promise me?"

      She reached down without a word into a bag that hung en chatelaine at her waist and drew out something in her turn.

      "I have a great many of those," she said placidly, "and more at home. See them!"

      And under his face she thrust a double handful of stamped paper—all green.

      "Each one of these is called twenty dollars," she informed him, "and some of them are called fifty dollars. They are in the bottom of the bag. I do not think that I need any more."

      Roger stared at her.

      "Put that away directly," he said, "and lift your veil so that I can see who you are. There is something wrong here."

      They stood in the lee of the flaring stall, a pair so obvious in their relation to each other, one would say, as to require no comment beyond the cynical indifference of the red-eyed woman who tended it. No doubt she had long ceased to count the well-dressed, athletic men who drew indifferently clothed young women into the shelter of her stand. And yet no one of his Puritan ancestors could have been further in spirit from her dreary inferences than this Roger. Nor do I believe him to be so exceptional in this as to cause remark. We are not all birds of prey, dear ladies, believe me. Indeed, since you have undertaken the responsibilities of the literary dissecting-room so thoroughly and increasingly; since you have, as one might say, at last freed your minds to us in the amazing frankness of your multitudinous and unsparing pages, I am greatly tempted to wonder if you are not essentially less decent than we. One would never have ventured to suspect it, had you not opened the door. …

      The woman threw back her veil so that it framed her face like a cloud and Roger looked straight into her eyes. And so the curtain rolled up, the orchestra ceased its irrelevant pipings and the play was begun.

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      Roger told me afterward that he literally could not say if it were five seconds or five minutes that he looked into the girl's eyes. He has since leaned to the opinion that it was nearer five minutes, because even the news-woman stared at him and the passing street boys had already begun to collect. Some subconscious realisation of this finally enabled him to drag his eyes away, very much as one drags himself awake when he must, and to realise the picture he presented—a dazed man confronting an extraordinarily lovely girl with her fist full of banknotes on a Broadway kerbstone. An interested cabby caught his eye, wagged his whip masterfully, wheeled up to them and with an apparently complete grasp of the situation whirled them off through a side street with never so much as a "Where to, sir?"

      And so he found himself alone with an unknown beauty in a hansom cab, for all the world like a mysterious hero of melodrama, and Roger hated melodrama and was never mysterious in all his life, to say nothing of disliking mystery in anyone connected with him. He says he was extremely angry at this juncture and I believe him.

      "What is your name?" he asked shortly. "Have you no parents or friends to protect you from the consequences of this crazy performance? Where do you live?"

      "My name is Margarita," she replied directly and pleasantly, "I never had but one parent and he died a few days ago. I live by the sea."

      An ugly thrill shot down his spine. No healthy person likes to be alone with a mad woman, and under a brilliant fleeting light he studied her curiously only to receive the certain conviction that whatever his companion might be, she was not mad. Her slate-blue eyes were calm and bright, her lips rather noticeably firm for all their curves—and the mad woman's mouth bewrayeth her inevitably under scrutiny. Nor was she drugged into some passing vacancy of mind: her whole atmosphere breathed a perfectly conscious control of her movements, however misguided the event might prove them. Before this conviction he hesitated slightly.

      "You have another name, however," he said gently, "and what do you mean by the sea? What sea?"

      For it occurred to him that although her English was perfect, she might be an utter stranger to the country, unthinkably abandoned, with sufficient means to salve her betrayer's conscience.

      "Is there more than one sea, then?" she inquired of him with interest. "I thought there was only mine. It is a very large one with high waves—and cold," she added as an after-thought.

      Roger gasped. "You did not tell me your other name," he said.

      "Joséphine," she replied readily, pronouncing the name in the French manner.

      "But you have another still?"

      "Yes. Dolores," she said, with an evidently accustomed Spanish accent.

      "And the last name?" he persisted in despair, noting with some busy corner of his mind that they were drifting down Fifth Avenue.

      "That is all there are," she assured him, "surely three different names are sufficient for one person? I do not use the last two—only Margarita."

      Roger squared his shoulders, took the banknotes from her unresisting hand and gravely folded them into her bag before he spoke again.

      "Listen to me, Miss Margarita," he said slowly and with exaggerated articulation, as one speaks to a child, "what was your father's name? What did the people in the town you live in call him?"

      "I told you we lived by the sea—did you forget?" she answered, a shade reprovingly. "There is no town at all. And there are no people. We live alone."

      "But your servants must have called him something?" he persisted.

      "Hester called my father 'sir' and the boy cannot talk, of course," she said.

      "Why not?"

      "Because he is dumb. His name is Caliban," she added hastily, "and he has no other, only that one."

      "What is Hester's name?" Roger demanded doggedly.

      "Hester Prynne," said Margarita Joséphine Dolores, СКАЧАТЬ