LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

to be as unfair as he chose about inanimate things, from snow mountains to objects of art.

      It was the pretension of Switzerland, he said, to please and to attract. Since it neither attracted him nor pleased him, he could not see what harm there could be in saying so. The Rigi's feelings could not be hurt by a sharp remark, nor could Mount Pilatus be supposed to be sensitive. He never abused Switzerland where any Swiss person could hear him. The same things, he said, were true of objects of art. If they failed to please, there could be no reason for their existence, or for not saying so, provided that the artist were not present. As for the latter, the charitable colonel was always willing to admit that he had done his best. It was gratuitous to suppose that any man should wilfully do badly what he could do well.

      The colonel strolled slowly through the back streets, keeping in the shade. The day was hot, and he felt something like humiliation at having allowed himself to yield to circumstances and come out of the house earlier than usual. He would certainly not have acknowledged that he had been driven from the hotel by the fear of his sister's curiosity, but he would have faced a hotter sun rather than be obliged to meet her inquisitive questions again.

      It was true that, being alone, he had to meet himself, and discuss with himself the painful little scene which had taken place that afternoon, for he was not one of those people who can get rid of unpleasant difficulties simply by refusing to think about them. And he examined the matter carefully as he went along, staring alternately at the sky and at the pavement, while his stick rang sharply in time with his light but still military step. He did not see the people who passed, but many of them looked at him, and noticed his face and figure, and set him down for a gentleman and an old soldier, as he was.

      At first sight it seemed ridiculous that Sylvia should be in love with him; then it seemed sad, and then it seemed childish. He remembered the tragedy of Ninon de l'Enclos and her son, and it was horrible until he recalled an absurd story of a short-sighted young man who had fallen in love with his grandmother because his vanity would not allow him to wear spectacles. At this recollection, Colonel Wimpole smiled a little, though he was obliged to admit that Sylvia's eyes had always been very good. He wished, for a moment, that he were quite old already, instead of being only on the edge of old age. It would have been more easy to laugh at the matter. He was glad that he was not ten years younger, for in that case he might have been to blame. As he was turning into the main street, he caught sight of his own reflexion in the big plate glass window of a shop. He stopped short, with a painful sensation.

      Had the image been that of a stranger, he should have judged the original to be a young man. The figure he saw was tall and straight and active, dressed in the perfection of neatness and good taste. The straw hat shaded the upper part of the face, but the sunlight caught the well-cut chin and gilded the small, closely trimmed moustache.

      The colonel was extremely annoyed, just then, by his youthful appearance. He stopped and then went close to the plate glass window, till he could see his face distinctly in it, against the shadows of the darkened shop. He was positively relieved when he could clearly distinguish the fine lines and wrinkles and grey hairs, which he saw every morning in his mirror when he shaved. It was the sunshine playing with shadow that had called up the airy reflexion of his departed youth for a moment. Sylvia could never have seen him as he had appeared to himself in the window.

      He looked a little longer. A lady in black was talking with the shopkeeper, and a short young man stood beside her. Colonel Wimpole's fingers tightened suddenly upon the familiar silver knob of his stick, his face grew a little pale, and he held his breath.

      The lady turned quietly, walked to the window, followed by the shopkeeper and the young man, and pointed to a miniature which lay among a great number of more or less valuable antiquities and objects of art, all of them arranged so as to show them to an undue advantage. She stood quite still, looking down at the thing she wanted, and listening to what the shopkeeper said. The colonel, just on the other side of the thick plate glass, could hear nothing, though he could have counted the heavy lashes that darkly fringed the drooping lids as the lady kept her eyes upon the miniature. But his heart was standing still, for she was the woman he had loved so long and well, and he had not known that she was to pass through Lucerne. The short young man beside her was her son, and Colonel Wimpole knew him also, and had seen him from time to time during the nineteen years of his life. But he scarcely noticed him now, for his whole being was intent upon the face of the woman he loved.

      She was dark, though her hair had never been jet black, and her complexion had always reminded the colonel of certain beautiful roses of which the smooth cream-coloured leaves are very faintly tinged with a warm blush that bears no relation to pink, but which is not red either, a tint without which the face was like marble, which could come in a moment but was long in fading as a northern sunset, and which gave wonderful life to the expression while it lasted. The lady's features were bold and well cut, but there were sad lines of lifelong weariness about the curved mouth and deep-set eyes; and there was a sort of patient but not weak sadness in all her bearing, the look of those who have tired but have not yielded, who have borne a calm face against a great trouble from without and a true heart against a strong temptation from within.

      She was neither tall nor short, neither heavy nor light in figure, a woman of good and strong proportion, and she was dressed in black, though one small jewelled ornament and a coloured ribbon in her hat showed that she was not in mourning.

      The elderly man at the window did not move as he watched her, for he felt sure that she must presently look up and meet his eyes. Then he would go in. But it did not happen just in that way, for her son recognized him first, a dark youth, very squarely built, with a heavy face and straight eyebrows that met over his nose. When he saw the colonel he smiled, lifted his hat, and spoke to his mother. The lady started perceptibly and seemed to press the handle of her black parasol to her side. Several seconds passed after that, before the fringed lids were lifted, and the two looked at each other fixedly through the thick glass. A soft, slow smile smoothed and illuminated the lady's face, but Colonel Wimpole felt that he was paler than before, and his lips moved, unconsciously pronouncing a name which he had never spoken carelessly during two and twenty years. Nor, in that long time, had he ever met Helen Harmon suddenly, face to face, without feeling that his cheeks grew pale and that his heart stood still for a moment.

      But his pulse beat quite regularly again when he had entered the shop and stood before her, extending his hand to meet hers, though he felt that he was holding out his heart to meet her heart, and he was full of unexpected happiness. So, in dim winter days, the sun shines out in a sudden glory, and spring is in the air before her time, for an hour; but afterwards it is cold again, and snow falls before night. Many a far glimpse of the flower-time had gladdened the colonel's heart before now, but the promised summer had never come.

      The two stood still for a moment, hand in hand, and their eyes lingered in meeting, just a second or two longer than if they had been mere friends. That was all that a stranger could have seen to suggest that Richard Wimpole had loved Helen Harmon for twenty-two years, and the young man at her side did not even notice it. He shook hands with the colonel in his turn, and was the first to speak.

      "One meets everybody in Lucerne," he observed, in a tactless generalization.

      "I certainly did not hope to meet you," answered the colonel, smiling. "It is true that the cross-roads of Europe are at Lucerne if they are anywhere. My sister and I are taking Sylvia Strahan home from Japan. Of course we stopped here."

      "Oh, of course!" laughed young Harmon. "Everybody stops here. We have been here ever so long, on our way to Carlsbad, I believe."

      His mother glanced at him nervously before she spoke, as though she were not sure of what he might say next.

      "I am thinking of buying a miniature," she said. "Will you look at it for me? You know all about these things. I should like your advice."

      The dealer's face fell as he stood in the background, for he knew the colonel, and he understood English. But as she spoke, Mrs. Harmon was thinking more of Wimpole than of the miniature; and he, when he answered, was wondering how he could succeed in being alone with her for one half-hour--one of those little half-hours on which he lived for weeks and months after they were past.

      Mrs.

Скачать книгу