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Read Ebook: Der Spiegel: Anekdoten zeitgenössischer deutscher Erzähler by Lerbs Karl Editor
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Ebook has 44 lines and 2020 words, and 1 pages
THE WIFE OF SIR ISAAC HARMAN
Introduces Lady Harman
The motor-car entered a little white gate, came to a porch under a thick wig of jasmine, and stopped. The chauffeur indicated by a movement of the head that this at last was it. A tall young woman with a big soft mouth, great masses of blue-black hair on either side of a broad, low forehead, and eyes of so dark a brown you might have thought them black, drooped forward and surveyed the house with a mixture of keen appreciation and that gentle apprehension which is the shadow of desire in unassuming natures....
The little house with the white-framed windows looked at her with a sleepy wakefulness from under its blinds, and made no sign. Beyond the corner was a glimpse of lawn, a rank of delphiniums, and the sound of a wheel-barrow.
"Clarence!" the lady called again.
Clarence, with an air of exceeding his duties, decided to hear, descended slowly, and came to the door.
"Very likely--if you were to look for a bell, Clarence...."
Clarence went to the bonnet of his machine, and presented his stooping back in a defensive manner against anyone who might come out. He wasn't a footman, anyhow. He'd rung that bell all right, and now he must see to his engine.
The door behind the neat white pillars opened, and a little red-nosed woman, in a cap she had evidently put on without a proper glass, appeared. She surveyed the car and its occupant with disfavour over her also very oblique spectacles.
The lady waved a pink paper to her, a house-agent's order to view. "Is this Black Strands?" she shouted.
The little woman advanced slowly with her eyes fixed malevolently on the pink paper. She seemed to be stalking it.
"If you think I might."
The lady stood up in the car, a tall and graceful figure of doubt and desire and glossy black fur. "I'm sure it looks a very charming house."
"I'm sure it is," said the tall lady, and put aside her great fur coat from her lithe, slender, red-clad body. "Why! the windows," she said, pausing on the step, "are like crystal."
"It's a perfectly delightful hall," said the lady. "So low and wide-looking. And everything so bright--and lovely. Those long, Italian pictures! And how charming that broad outlook upon the garden beyond!"
"You'll think it charminger when you see the garding," said the little old woman. "It was Mrs. Brumley's especial delight. Much of it--with 'er own 'ands."
Intelligent appreciation supervened.
There was a crowded moment of rapid mutual inspection. The lady's attitude was that of the enthusiastic house-explorer arrested in full flight, falling swiftly towards apology and retreat. She backed over the threshold again.
"I thought you was out by that window, sir," said the little old woman intimately, and was nearly shutting the door between them and all the beginnings of this story.
But the voice of the gentleman arrested and wedged open the closing door.
He came down the length of the room with a slight flicking noise due to the scandalized excitement of his abandoned laces. The lady was reminded of her not so very distant schooldays, when it would have been considered a suitable answer to such a question as his to reply, "No, I am walking down Piccadilly on my hands." But instead she waved that pink paper again. "The agents," she said. "Recommended--specially. So sorry if I intrude. I ought, I know, to have written first; but I came on an impulse."
"Oh! show a house! Why not?"
"The kitchings--you don't understand the range, sir--it's beyond you. And upstairs. You can't show a lady upstairs."
The gentleman reflected upon these difficulties.
"Well, I'm going to show her all I can show her anyhow. And after that, Mrs. Rabbit, you shall come in. You needn't wait."
"I'm thinking," said Mrs. Rabbit, folding stiff little arms and regarding him sternly. "You won't be much good after tea, you know, if you don't get your afternoon's exercise."
"Rendez-vous in the kitchen, Mrs. Rabbit," said Mr. Brumley, firmly, and Mrs. Rabbit after a moment of mute struggle disappeared discontentedly.
"Not at all," said Mr. Brumley. "I hate my afternoon's walk as a prisoner hates the treadmill."
"She's such a nice old creature."
"She's been a mother--and several aunts--to us ever since my wife died. She was the first servant we ever had."
"All this house," he explained to his visitor's questioning eyes, "was my wife's creation. It was a little featureless agent's house on the edge of these pine-woods. She saw something in the shape of the rooms--and that central hall. We've enlarged it of course. Twice. This was two rooms, that is why there is a step down in the centre."
"That was her addition," said Mr. Brumley. "All this room is--replete--with her personality." He hesitated, and explained further. "When we prepared this house--we expected to be better off--than we subsequently became--and she could let herself go. Much is from Holland and Italy."
"And that beautiful old writing-desk with the little single rose in a glass!"
He sighed slightly, apparently at some thought of Mrs. Rabbit.
"Largely. I am--a sort of author. Perhaps you know my books. Not very important books--but people sometimes read them."
The lady made a faint, dishonest assent-like noise; and her rose-pink deepened another shade. But her interlocutor was not watching her very closely just then.
"I still," he continued, "go on. I go on writing about Euphemia. I have to. In this house. With my tradition.... But it is becoming painful--painful. Curiously more painful now than at the beginning. And I want to go. I want at last to make a break. That is why I am letting or selling the house.... There will be no more Euphemia."
His voice fell to silence.
The lady surveyed the long low clear room so cleverly prepared for life, with its white wall, its Dutch clock, its Dutch dresser, its pretty seats about the open fireplace, its cleverly placed bureau, its sun-trap at the garden end; she could feel the rich intention of living in its every arrangement and a sense of uncertainty in things struck home to her. She seemed to see a woman, a woman like herself--only very, very much cleverer--flitting about the room and making it. And then this woman had vanished--nowhither. Leaving this gentleman--sadly left--in the care of Mrs. Rabbit.
"And she is dead?" she said with a softness in her dark eyes and a fall in her voice that was quite natural and very pretty.
"She died," said Mr. Brumley, "three years and a half ago." He reflected. "Almost exactly."
He paused and she filled the pause with feeling.
He became suddenly very brave and brisk and businesslike. He led the way back into the hall and made explanations. "It is not so much a hall as a hall living-room. We use that end, except when we go out upon the verandah beyond, as our dining-room. The door to the r
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