Dehan The Cost of Wings and Other Stories

1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-3-98744-934-5
Verlag: OTB eBook publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 273 Seiten

Reihe: Classics To Go

Excerpt: Sheldrick, returning, refreshed and exhilarated, from a spin with a friend who had brought down a racing car of forty horse-power and an enthusiasm to match, found his wife sitting in the same chair, in the same attitude, as it seemed to him, in which he had left her, in the bare, dull sitting-room of their quarters at the Pavilion Hotel, on the edge of Greymouth Links, from which starting point Sheldrick, in fulfilment of his recent engagement with the Aero Club of France, had arranged to take wing for Cherbourg, wind and weather permitting, on the morrow. It would be difficult exceedingly to imagine Caruso as an engineer or a bank manager, or in any capacity other than that of operatic star. It would be equally difficult to picture Shackleton as a side-splitting antic and quip-monger, or Pélissier in the rôle of the dauntless explorer. Sheldrick, the most recent idol of the flying world, was the type-ideal of the aviator.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Dehan, Richard

Leseproben

A FADED ROMANCE
I
THE ladies of the household at Charny les Bois usually sat in the library on sunny mornings. At the southern end of the long room, paneled in black walnut, and possessing a hooded stone fireplace of the fifteenth century, there was a bay, with wide glass doors opening upon a perron of wrought iron and copper work, which led down into the lovely garden—a piece of land originally reclaimed from the heart of the ancient beech forest, whose splendid somberness set off the dazzling whiteness of the château and made the parterres glow and sparkle like jewels—rubies, turquoises, emeralds, sapphires—poured out upon the green velvet lap of princess or courtesan. The Marquis de Courvaux, lord of the soil and owner of the historic mansion, was absent. One must picture him leading the hunt through the forest alleys, attired in a maroon and yellow uniform of the most exquisite correctness, three-cocked hat, and immense spurred jack-boots, and accompanied by a field of fifty or sixty, of which every individual had turned out in a different costume: green corduroy knickerbockers with gold braid accompanying cut-away coats and jockey caps, and bowlers of English make, sported in combination with pink and leathers, adding much to the kaleidoscopic effect. Half a dozen cuirassiers from the neighboring garrison town were upon their London coach, driving a scratch four-in-hand and attired in full uniform; various vehicles, of types ranging from the capacious char-à-banc to the landaulette, were laden with ardent votaries of the chasse. The distant fanfare of the horns sounding the ragot reached the ears of the ladies sewing in the library at the château. One of these ladies, detained by urgent nursery reasons from joining in the morning’s sport, was the young and pretty wife of the Marquis; the other, old as a high-bred French lady alone knows how to be, and still beautiful, was his mother. Over the high-arched cover of the great carved fireplace was her portrait by Varolan, painted at sixteen, in the full ball costume of 1870. One saw, regarding that portrait, that it was possible to be beautiful in those days even with a chignon and waterfall, even with panniers or bustle, and absurd trimmings of the ham-frill type. Perhaps some such reflection passed through the calm mind behind the broad, white, unwrinkled forehead of Madame de Courvaux, as she removed her gold spectacles and lifted her eyes, darkly blue and brilliant still, to the exquisite childish flower face of the portrait. The autumn breeze coming in little puffs between the open battants of the glass doors, savoring of crushed thyme, late violets, moss, bruised beech leaves, and other pleasant things, stirred the thick, waving, gold-gray tresses under the rich lace, a profusion of which, with the charming coquetry of a venerable beauty, the grandmamma of the chubby young gentleman upstairs in the nursery, the thirteen-year-old schoolboy on his hunting pony, and the budding belle but newly emancipated from her convent, was fond of wearing—sometimes tied under her still lovely chin, sometimes floating loosely over her shoulders. “There again!” The younger Madame de Courvaux arched her mobile eyebrows and showed her pretty teeth as she bit off a thread of embroidery cotton. “The third time you have looked at that portrait within ten minutes! Tell me, do you think it is getting stained with smoke? In north winds this chimney does not always behave itself, and Frédéric’s cigars and pipes——” The speaker shrugged her charming shoulders. “But he is incorrigible, as thou knowest, Maman.” “I was not thinking of Frédéric or the chimney.” The elder lady smiled, still looking upward at the girlish face overhead. “It occurred to me that forty years have passed since I gave Carlo Varolan the first sitting for that portrait. His studio in the Rue Vernet was a perfect museum of lovely things.... I was never tired of examining them.... My gouvernante fell asleep in a great tapestry chair.... Varolan drew a caricature of her—so laughable!—with a dozen strokes of the charcoal on the canvas, and then rubbed it all out with a grave expression that made me laugh more. I was only just sixteen, and going to be married in a fortnight.... And I could laugh like that!” The antique brooch of black pearls and pigeons’ blood rubies that fastened the costly laces upon the bosom of Madame la Marquise rose and fell at the bidding of a sigh. “I cried for days and days before my marriage with Frédéric,” the little Marquise remarked complacently. “And I should cry at the bare idea of not being married at all!” said a fresh young voice, belonging to Mademoiselle Lucie, who came up the steps from the garden with the skirt of her cambric morning frock full of autumn roses, her cheeks flushed to the hue of the pinkest La France. She dropped her pretty reverence to her grandmother, kissed her upon the hand, and her mother on the forehead, and turned her lapful of flowers out upon the table, where vases and bowls of Sèvres and China ware stood to receive them, ready filled with water. “You know I would, Grandmamma!” “It is a mistake either to laugh or to weep; one should smile only, or merely sigh,” said Grandmamma, with the charming air of philosophy that so became her. “One should neither take life too much to heart, nor make a jest of it, my little Lucie.” “Please go on with the story. Your gouvernante was asleep in the chair; Monsieur Varolan caricatured her. You were laughing at the drawing and at his droll face, as he rubbed it out, and then——” “Then a gentleman arrived, and I did not laugh any more.” Grandmamma took up her work, a delicate, spidery web of tatting, and the corners of her delicately chiseled lips, pink yet as faded azalea blossoms, quivered a little. “He was staying at the British Embassy with his brother-in-law, who was Military Attaché, and whose name I have forgotten. He came to see his sister’s portrait; it stood framed upon the easel—oh! but most beautiful and stately, with the calm, cold gaze, the strange poetic glamour of the North. He, too, was fair, very tall, with aquiline features, and light hazel eyes, very piercing in their regard, and yet capable of expressing great tenderness. For Englishmen I have never cared, but Scotch gentlemen of high breeding have always appeared to me quite unapproachable in ton, much like the Bretons of old blood, with whom their type, indeed, has much in common. But I am prosing quite intolerably, it seems to me!” said Grandmamma, with a heightened tint upon her lovely old cheeks and an embarrassed laugh. Both Lucie and the little Marquise cried out in protestation. Lucie, snipping dead leaves from her roses, wanted to know whether Monsieur Varolan had presented the strange Scotch gentleman to Grandmamma. “He did. At first he seemed to hesitate, glancing toward Mademoiselle Binet. But she slept soundly, and, indeed, with cause, having over-eaten herself that day at the twelve o’clock breakfast upon duck stewed with olives, pastry, and corn salad. An excellent creature, poor Binet, but with the failings of ces gens-là, and you may be assured that I did not grudge her her repose while I conversed with Monsieur Angus Dunbar, who spoke French almost to perfection. How it was that I, who had been brought up by my mother with such absolute strictness, yielded to the entreaties of Monsieur Varolan, who was quite suddenly inspired with the idea of what afterward proved to be one of his greatest pictures, I cannot imagine,” said Grandmamma; “but it is certain that we posed together as the Lord of Nann and the Korrigan standing in the forest by the enchanted well. It would have been a terrible story to travel home to the Faubourg St. Germain, I knew, but Mademoiselle still slept sweetly, and out of girlish recklessness and gaieté de cœur I consented, and down came my long ropes of yellow hair, which had only been released from their schoolroom plait, and dressed in grown young-lady fashion six months before. Monsieur Varolan cried out, and clasped his hands in his impulsive southern way. Monsieur Dunbar said nothing—then; but by his eyes one could tell, child as one was, that he was pleased. But when Varolan’s sketch was dashed in, and the painter cried to us to descend from the model’s platform, Monsieur Dunbar leaned toward me and whispered, as he offered me his hand, ‘If the fairy had been as beautiful as you, Mademoiselle’—for Varolan had told him the story, and he had pronounced it to be the parallel of an antique Highland legend—‘had the fairy been as beautiful as you, the Lord of Nann would have forgotten the lady in the tower by the sea.’ He, as I have told you, my children, spoke French with great ease and remarkable purity; and something in the earnestness of his manner and the expression of his eyes—those light hazel, gleaming eyes”—Grandmamma’s delicate dove-colored silks rustled as she shuddered slightly—“caused me a thrill, but a thrill——” “Young girls are so absurdly impressionable,” began the little Marquise, with a glance at Lucie. “I remember when our dancing master, hideous old M. Mouton, praised me for executing my steps with elegance, I would be in the seventh heaven.” “But this man was neither hideous, old, nor a dancing master, my dear,” said Grandmamma, a little annoyed. She took up her tatting, which had dropped upon her silver-gray lap, as though the story were ended, and Lucie’s face fell. “And is that all—absolutely all?”...