The Complete Five Towns Collections. Bennett Arnold

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      Chapter XII

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      The little red-armed servant beamed an amiable recognition.

      "Very hot day!" Richard said.

      "Beg pardon, sir."

      "Very hot day," rather louder. They were in the passage.

      The door of the sitting-room opened, and Mr. Aked's niece stood before him, her finger on her lips and her eyebrows raised in a gesture of warning. She suddenly smiled, almost laughed. Richard remembered that smile for a long time afterwards. It transformed not only a girl's face, but the whole of Carteret Street. He had never seen anything like it. Shaking hands in silence, he followed her into the room, and she gently closed the door.

      "Uncle's not well," she explained. "He's asleep now, and I don't want you to wake him. In this house, you know, if any one speaks in the passage, you can hear it even in the attic. Uncle was caught in the rain last night; he has a very weak chest, and gets bronchitis directly."

      "I'm awfully sorry I disturbed you," said Richard. "The fact is I was down this way, and I thought I'd call." It sounded a sufficiently reasonable excuse, he considered. "I hope you weren't asleep too."

      "Yes, I was dozing in this chair." She put her head back, and drummed with her fingers lightly on the arms of the chair. "But I'm glad you've called."

      "Why?"

      "Oh! Because one wants to see some one—some one new, especially after being in a sick-room."

      "You've been sitting up late." His tone was accusing. It seemed to him that somehow they were already intimate.

      "Only till three o'clock, and I slept later this morning. How changeable the sun is to-day!" She moved her chair, and he saw her in profile. Her hands were on her lap. She coaxed a foot stool into position with her toes, and placed her feet on it.

      "You look just like a picture in this week's 'Illustrated London News'—I mean in general pose," he exclaimed.

      "Do I? How nice that sounds! What is it?"

      "Whistler's 'Portrait of his Mother.' But I hope you don't think I think you look old."

      "How old do I look?" She turned her head slightly towards him.

      "About twenty-three, only I imagine you're much younger."

      Although she did not reply, she made no pretence of being annoyed, nor did Richard tax himself with a gaucherie.

      "It took me years to like Whistler's pictures," she said; and in response to Richard's surprised question she was beginning to explain that a large part of her life had been passed in the companionship of works of graphic art, when a slippered step was heard in the hall and some one fumbled with the door-handle. Mr. Aked entered.

      "Uncle! You wicked old man!" She sprang up, flushed, and her eyes sparkled angrily. "Whatever did you get up for? It's enough to kill you."

      "Calm yourself, my child. I got up because I didn't want to stay in bed,—exactly that." Mr. Aked paused to take breath and sank into a chair. "Larch, I heard your voice in the passage. Upon my word, I quite forgot you yesterday. I suppose Adeline's been telling you I'm seriously ill, eh? Ah! I've had many a worse attack than this. Put that antimacassar over my shoulders, child."

      He had given Richard a hot, limp hand, on which the veins formed soft ridges in the smooth, brittle skin. His grey hair was disarranged, and he wore a dirty, torn dressing-gown. His face had lost its customary alert expression; but his sunk, shining eyes glanced with mysterious restlessness first at Richard, then at Adeline, who, uttering no further word, covered him well and put the hassock under his feet.

      "Well, well, well!" he sighed and closed his eyes wearily. The other two sat silent for a time; then Adeline, talking very quietly, and with a composure not quite unaffected, took up their interrupted conversation. Richard gathered that her justifiable vexation would remain in abeyance till he had gone. Soon her tone grew more natural; she leaned forward with hands clasped round one knee, and Richard felt like a receiver of confidences as she roughly outlined her life in the country which had come to an end only two years ago. Were all the girls so simply communicative, he wondered; it pleased him to decide that they were not, and that to any other but himself she would have been more reserved; that there was, in fact, an affinity between them. But the presence of her uncle, which Adeline seemed able to ignore utterly, hindered Richard from being himself.

      "How do you like London, after living so long in the country?" he asked inevitably.

      "I know practically nothing of London, real London," she said; "but I think these suburbs are horrid,—far duller than the dullest village. And the people! They seem so uninteresting, to have no character!"

      The hoarse, fatigued voice of Mr. Aked crept in between them. "Child!" he said—and he used the appellation, not with the proper dignity of age, but rather like an omniscient schoolboy, home for the holiday, СКАЧАТЬ