A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus. Arthur Conan Doyle

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СКАЧАТЬ Frank! Is that really it?’

      ‘Do you like it?’

      ‘What a broad one it is! Mother’s is quite thin.’

      ‘They wear thin in time.’

      ‘It is beautiful. Shall I try it on?’

      ‘No, don’t. There is some superstition about it.’

      ‘But suppose it won’t fit?’

      ‘That is quite safe. I measured it with your sapphire ring.’

      ‘I haven’t half scolded you enough about that sapphire ring. How could you go and give twenty-two guineas for a ring?—oh yes, sir, that was the price, for I saw a duplicate yesterday in the Goldsmith’s Company. You dear extravagant old boy!’

      ‘I had saved the money.’

      ‘But not for that!’

      ‘For nothing half or quarter as important. But I had the other to the same size, so it is sure to fit.’

      Maude had pushed up her veil, and sat with the little golden circlet in her hand, looking down at it, while the dim watery London sunlight poured through the window, and tagged all her wandering curls with a coppery gleam. It was a face beautiful in itself, but more beautiful for its expression—sensitive, refined, womanly, full of innocent archness and girlish mischief, but with a depth of expression in the eyes, and a tender delicacy about the mouth, which spoke of a great spirit with all its capacities for suffering and devotion within. The gross admirer of merely physical charms might have passed her over unnoticed. So might the man who is attracted only by outward and obvious signs of character. But to the man who could see, to the man whose own soul had enough of spirituality to respond to hers, and whose eye could appreciate the subtlety of a beauty which is of the mind as well as of the body, there was not in all wide London upon that midsummer day a sweeter girl than Maude Selby, as she sat in her grey merino dress with the London sun tagging her brown curls with that coppery glimmer.

      She handed back the ring, and a graver expression passed over her mobile face.

      ‘I feel as you said in your letter, Frank. There is something tragic in it. It will be with me for ever. All the future will arrange itself round that little ring.’

      ‘Are you afraid of it?’

      ‘Afraid!’ her grey glove rested for an instant upon the back of his hand. ‘I couldn’t be afraid of anything if you were with me. It is really extraordinary, for by nature I am so easily frightened. But if I were with you in a railway accident or anywhere, it would be just the same. You see I become for the time part of you, as it were, and you are brave enough for two.’

      ‘I don’t profess to be so brave as all that,’ said Frank. ‘I expect I have as many nerves as my neighbours.’

      Maude’s grey toque nodded up and down. ‘I know all about that,’ said she.

      ‘You have such a false idea of me. It makes me happy at the time and miserable afterwards, for I feel such a rank impostor. You imagine me to be a hero, and a genius, and all sorts of things, while I know that I am about as ordinary a young fellow as walks the streets of London, and no more worthy of you than—well, than any one else is.’

      She laughed with shining eyes.

      ‘I like to hear you talk like that,’ said she. ‘That is just what is so beautiful about you.’

      It is hopeless to prove that you are not a hero when your disclaimers are themselves taken as a proof of heroism. Frank shrugged his shoulders.

      ‘I only hope you’ll find me out gradually and not suddenly,’ said he. ‘Now, Maude, we have all day and all London before us. What shall we do? I want you to choose.’

      ‘I am quite happy whatever we do. I am content to sit here with you until evening.’

      Her idea of a happy holiday set them both laughing.

      ‘Come along,’ said he, ‘we shall discuss it as we go.’

      The workman’s family was still waiting, and Maude handed the child a shilling as she went out. She was so happy herself that she wanted every one else to be happy also. The people turned to look at her as she passed. With the slight flush upon her cheeks and the light in her eyes, she seemed the personification of youth, and life, and love. One tall old gentleman started as he looked, and watched her with a rapt face until she disappeared. Some cheek had flushed and some eye had brightened at his words once, and sweet old days had for an instant lived again.

      ‘Shall we have a cab?’

      ‘O Frank, we must learn to be economical. Let us walk.’

      ‘I can’t and won’t be economical to-day.’

      ‘There now! See what a bad influence I have upon you.’

      ‘Most demoralising! But we have not settled yet where we are to go to.’

      ‘What does it matter, if we are together?’

      ‘There is a good match at the Oval, the Australians against Surrey. Would you care to see that?’

      ‘Yes, dear, if you would.’

      ‘And there are matinées at all the theatres.’

      ‘You would rather be in the open air.’

      ‘All I want is that you should enjoy yourself.’

      ‘Never fear. I shall do that.’

      ‘Well, then, first of all I vote that we go and have some lunch.’

      They started across the station yard, and passed the beautiful old stone cross. Among the hansoms and the four-wheelers, the hurrying travellers, and the lounging cabmen, there rose that lovely reconstruction of mediævalism, the pious memorial of a great Plantagenet king to his beloved wife.

      ‘Six hundred years ago,’ said Frank, as they paused and looked up, ‘that old stone cross was completed, with heralds and armoured knights around it to honour her whose memory was honoured by the king. Now the corduroyed porters stand where the knights stood, and the engines whistle where the heralds trumpeted, but the old cross is the same as ever in the same old place. It is a little thing of that sort which makes one realise the unbroken history of our country.’

      Maude insisted upon hearing about Queen Eleanor, and Frank imparted the little that he knew as they walked out into the crowded Strand.

      ‘She was Edward the First’s wife, and a splendid woman. It was she, you remember, who sucked the wound when he was stabbed with a poisoned dagger. She died somewhere in the north, and he had the body carried south to bury it in Westminster Abbey. Wherever it rested for a night he built a cross, and so you have a line of crosses all down England to show where that sad journey was broken.’

      They had turned down Whitehall, and passed the big cuirassiers upon their black chargers at the gate of the Horse Guards. Frank СКАЧАТЬ