Kitabı oku: «Маленькая хозяйка большого дома / The Little Lady Of The Big House», sayfa 7

5

The guests asked Paula to play.

“I’m asking you to play ‘Reflections on the Water⁴²’,” Terrence said to her.

“Oh,Debussy⁴³!” Paula laughed.

No sooner was she seated than the three sages slipped away to their listening places. The young poet stretched himself prone on a deep bearskin. Terrence and Aaron took window seats. The girls were sitting on wide couches or in the wood chairs.

All jollity and banter had ceased. Ernestine leaned across from a chair to whisper to Graham:

“She can do anything she wants to do. And she doesn’t work … much. She doesn’t play like a woman. Listen to that!”

Paula played with the calm and power. Her touch was definite, authoritative. Graham watched the lofty room grow loftier in the increasing shadows.

He was slow in getting ready for bed that night. He was stirred both by the Big House and by the Little Lady who was its mistress. As he sat on the edge of the bed, half-undressed, and smoked out a pipe, he was seeing her in memory, as he had seen her in the flesh the past twelve hours, in her varied moods and guises—the woman who had talked music with him, and who had expounded music to him to his delight

Graham knocked out his pipe. Again he heard Paula Forrest laugh; again he sensed her in silver and steel and strength; again, against the dark, he saw her gown. The bright vision of it was almost an irk to him, so impossible was it for him to shake it from his eyes.

He saw the stallion and the beneath the water, the flurry of foam and floundering of hoofs, and the woman’s face that laughed while she drowned her hair in the drowning mane of the horse.

Finally Graham fell asleep.

6

The next morning Graham learned the Big House. Over the billiard table, Graham learned that Dick Forrest never appeared for breakfast, that he worked in bed, had coffee at six, and only on unusual occasions appeared to his guests before the twelve-thirty lunch. As for Paula Forrest, she was a poor sleeper, a late riser, lived behind a door without a knob in a spacious wing, and only on infrequent occasion she appeared before twelve-thirty, and not very often.

Graham came to lunch with an eagerness to see Paula; and he knew definite disappointment when his hostess did not appear.

“A white night,” Dick Forrest said. “Do you know, we were married years before I ever saw her sleep. I knew she slept, but I never saw her. I’ve seen her for three days and nights without closing an eye.”

A new guest had arrived that morning, aDonald Ware⁴⁴, whom Graham met at lunch. Despite his youth, he was a well-known violinist.