Читать книгу Best Stories of Walter de la Mare онлайн

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Like most children, I liked best to hear Miss Duveen talk about her own childhood. I contrived somehow to discover that if we sat near flowers or under boughs in blossom, her talk would generally steal round to that. Then she would chatter on and on: of the white sunny rambling house, somewhere, nowhere—it saddened and confused her if I asked where—in which she had spent her first happy years; where her father used to ride on a black horse; and her mother to walk with her in the garden in a crinolined gown and a locket with the painted miniature of a 'divine' nobleman inside it. How very far away these pictures seemed!

It was as if she herself had shrunken back into this distant past, and was babbling on like a child again, already a little isolated by her tiny infirmity.

'That was before——' she would begin to explain precisely, and then a criss-cross many-wrinkled frown would net her rounded forehead, and cloud her eyes. Time might baffle her, but then, time often baffled me too. Any talk about her mother usually reminded her of an elder sister, Caroline. 'My sister, Caroline,' she would repeat as if by rote, 'you may not be aware, Arthur, was afterwards Mrs. Bute. So charming, so exquisite, so accomplished. And Colonel Bute—an officer and a gentleman, I grant. And yet.... But no! My dear sister was not happy. And so it was no doubt a blessing in disguise that by an unfortunate accident she was found drowned. In a lake, you will understand, not a mere shallow noisy brook. This is one of my private sorrows, which, of course, your grand-mamma would be horrified to hear—horrified; and which, of course, Partridge has not the privilege of birth even to be informed of—our secret, dear child—with all her beautiful hair, and her elegant feet, and her eyes no more ajar than this; but blue, blue as the forget-me-not. When the time comes, Miss Coppin will close my own eyes, I hope and trust. Death, dear, dear child, I know they say is only sleeping. Yet I hope and trust that. To be sleeping wide awake; oh no!' she abruptly turned her small untidy head away.