Страница 10 из 71
“Don’t you think they want to have things their own way too much?”
“So do we. It isn’t that. It’s ma
“How?”
“Having what used to be the same language is undoubtedly a snare. We must hope for such a development of the American lingo as will necessitate our both learning each other’s.”
“But we always talk about the link of a common tongue.”
“Why this curiosity about Americans?”
“I’m to meet Professor Hallorsen on Monday.”
“The Bolivian bloke. A word of advice then, Di
“Oh! I mean to keep my temper.”
“Keep your left up, and don’t rush in. Now, if you’ve finished, my dear, we ought to go; it’s five minutes to eight.”
He put her into her carriage and supplied her with an evening paper. As the train moved out, he added:
“Give him the Botticellian eye, Di
CHAPTER 7
Adrian brooded over Chelsea as he approached it on Monday evening. It was not what it used to be. Even in late Victorian days he remembered its inhabitants as somewhat troglodytic—persons inclined to duck their heads, with here and there a high light or historian. Charwomen, artists hoping to pay their rent, writers living on four-and-sevenpence a day, ladies prepared to shed their clothes at a shilling an hour, couples maturing for the Divorce Court, people who liked a draught, together with the worshippers of Turner, Carlyle, Rossetti, and Whistler; some publicans, not a few si
Diana’s house was in Oakley Street. He could remember it as having no individuality whatever, and inhabited by a family of strict mutton-eaters; but in the six years of Diana’s residence it had become one of the charming nests of London. He had known all the pretty Montjoy sisters scattered over Society, but of them all Diana was the youngest, the prettiest, most tasteful, and wittiest—one of those women who, without money to speak of or impeachment of virtue, contrive that all about them shall be elegant to the point of exciting jealousy. From her two children and her Collie dog (almost the only one left in London), from her harpsichord, four-poster, Bristol glass, and the stuff on her chairs and floors, taste always seemed to him to radiate and give comfort to the beholder. She, too, gave comfort, with her still perfect figure, dark eyes clear and quick, oval face, ivory complexion, and little crisp trick of speech. All the Montjoy sisters had that trick, it came from their mother, of Highland stock, and had undoubtedly in the course of thirty years made a considerable effect on the accent of Society, converting it from the g-dropping yaw-yaw of the ‘nineties into a rather charming r—and l-pinching dialect. When he considered why Diana, with her scant income and her husband in a Mental Home, was received everywhere in Society, Adrian was accustomed to take the image of a Bactrian camel. That animal’s two humps were like the two sections of Society (with the big S) joined by a bridge, seldom used after the first crossing. The Montjoys, a very old landed family in Dumfriesshire i
He arrived half an hour before di
“Boo! Uncle Adrian—unicorns are imaginative.”
“Not in those days, Sheila.”
“Then what’s become of them?”
“There is only about one left, and he lives where white men ca
“What is the ‘Bu-bu’ fly?”
“The ‘Bu-bu’ fly, Ronald, is remarkable for settling in the calf of the leg and founding a family there.”
“Oh!”
“Unicorns—as I said before I was interrupted—which infested that coast. His name was Mattagor, and this was his way with unicorns. After luring them down to the beach with crinibobs—”
“What are crinibobs?”
“They look like strawberries and taste like carrots—crinibobs—he would steal up behind them—”
“If he was in front of them with the crinibobs, how could he steal up behind them?”