Double Harness. Anthony Hope
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Название: Double Harness
Автор: Anthony Hope
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 4064066235581
isbn:
"My dear Sibylla, you're not fit to discuss things rationally at present. We'll say no more now; we shall only be still more unjust to one another if we do. Only I must be obeyed."
"Yes, you shall be obeyed," she said. "But since it's like that, I think that, whatever happens now, I—I won't have any more children, Grantley."
"What?"
He was startled out of the cold composure which he had achieved in his previous speech.
She repeated her words in a low tired voice, but firmly and coolly.
"I think I won't have any more children, you know."
"Do you know what you're saying?"
"Oh, surely, yes!" she answered, with a faint smile.
Grantley walked up and down the room twice, and then came and stood by her bed, fixing his eyes on her face in a long sombre contemplation. The faint smile persisted on her lips as she looked up at him. But he turned away without speaking, with a weary shrug of his shoulders.
"I'll send the nurse to you," he said as he went towards the door.
"Send Mumples, please, Grantley."
Mrs. Mumple had done all the harm she could. "All right," he replied. "Try to sleep. Good-night."
He shut the door behind him before her answer came.
On the stairs he met Mrs. Mumple. The fat woman shrank out of his path, but he bade her good-night not unkindly, although absently; she needed no bidding to send her to Sibylla's room. He found Jeremy still in the study, still wide awake.
"Oh, go home to bed, old fellow!" he exclaimed irritably, but affectionately too. "What good can you do sitting up here all night?"
"Yes, I suppose I may as well go—it's half-past two. I'll go out by the garden." He opened the window which led on to the lawn. The fresh night air came in. "That's good!" sniffed Jeremy.
Grantley stepped into the garden with him, and lit a cigarette.
"But is it all right, Grantley? Is Sibylla reasonable now?"
"All right? Reasonable?" Grantley's innermost thoughts had been far away.
"I mean, will she agree to what you wish—what we wish?"
"Yes, it's all right. She's reasonable now."
His face was still just in the light of the lamp which stood on a table in the window. Jeremy saw the paleness of his cheeks and the hard set of his eyes. There was no sign of relief in him or of anxiety assuaged.
"Well, thank heaven for that much, anyhow!" Jeremy sighed.
"Yes, for that much anyhow," Grantley agreed, pressing his arm in a friendly way. "And now, old boy, good-night."
Jeremy left him there in the garden smoking his cigarette, standing motionless. His face was in the dark now, but Jeremy knew the same look was in the eyes still. It was hard for the young man, even with the new impulses and the new sympathies that were alive and astir within him, to follow, or even to conjecture, what had been happening that night. Yet as he went down the hill it was plain even to him, plain enough to raise a sharp pang in him, that somehow the little child, unborn or whether it should yet be born, had brought not union, but estrangement to the house; not peace but a sword.
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