i f6c06dd9cf3fe221 by Unknown (100 books to read in a lifetime .txt) 📗

town of Felling, its streets of little houses clinging to the hillside, rested at peace under the moon.

Rodney brought the car off the road on to the grass verge of the open hilltop. Tut this rug around you," he said, lifting a heavy blanket from the back seat.

"There 1' He leaned back and began to fill his pipe.

"We're all set for our talk, now," he said, giving her a sidelong smile.

"What do you want to know?"

"Oh, Kate, don't say it like that. It makes me feel I'm being rude and inquisitive."

"If you were inquisitive, you wouldn't be asking me now, you would know already all there is to know; you can't keep your life private in the fifteen streets."

"No, I suppose not.... Well, the last time I spoke to you, Kate, you were engaged to be married. Something happened?"

"He wouldn't have Annie," said Kate; 'he wanted me to leave her at home. "

"Not have Annie?" Rodney's voice was incredulous.

"No. He wanted me to leave her with my mother ... for good. But I couldn't give her up altogether, 1 couldn't do it. It it wasn't that it would upset my mother, I'd take her away now. But to leave her there, all her young life, while I was with someone ... oh, you can see it was impossible 1' " Of course, Kate. And it's just as well you found out in time, isn't it? "

"Yes, and for him, too; for I wasn't being quite fair to him."

She did not say where her unfairness lay.

"Couldn't Annie stay with you at the Tolmaches?"

"Yes, they offered to have her years ago.... But it's my mother; she dings to Annie and ... me."

"Of course.... Yes, of course, I can see that."

"You know, doctor, if I hadn't had Annie I should never have met the Tolmaches, and I daren't think what life without them would have been.... Annie, you, Dome Clarke and Doctor Davidson, all leading me to the Tolmaches."

"Why give Dome Clarke credit for a virtuous deed?"

Rodney queried.

"Because had she not hurt her leg you would never have sent out for Doctor Davidson, and had he not come I should never have learned about the Tolmaches. Some other girl would have got the place. He told me of it only to ease my mind; he is what Mr. Bernard calls a psychologist."

Rodney looked at her in silence for a moment.

"Mr. Bernard gives you lessons, doesn't he?"

"Yes," said Kate, her voice vibrating with a depth of feeling; 'nearly every day, except holidays, for six years, Mr. Bernard has given me a lesson. " She clasped her hands on top of the rug and stared across the hilltop, through the sparsely falling snow, into the star-laden sky where it came down to meet the river.

Rodney, still staring at her, thought. And she has certainly profited by them. It seems incredible. "Yes?" he prompted.

"Well, the first year was very hard work," Kate went on, 'but I kept at it because I wanted to speak differently. " She cast a swift glance at him, half apologetic.

"Then followed a period during which I didn't want to learn at all. But Mr. Bernard encouraged me, and the desire suddenly came not only to speak differently but to think differently.

From that time life changed entirely for me. Nothing can affect me in the same way as it did before, nothing! "

"What does he teach you?"

"Oh, mostly English, and appreciation of literature. He was a lecturer in English at Oxford, you know."

Rodney nodded, his eyes riveted on her face.

"I'm doing German now, and I've done quite a bit of French. I can read French works--Honore de Balzac and..." She turned towards him, her blue eyes darkly bright with excitement.

"You are the first one, doctor, I've been able to talk to about it, other than the Tolmaches.

Can you imagine what it means to me? "

He didn't answer, but continued to stare at her, his pipe held within a few inches of his mouth.

"To leave the fifteen streets," she went on, 'and live with those three people, day after day, to listen to them talking, to eat at the same table. Yes, I eat at the same table. Can you believe that? " Her face was serious and her voice questioning, but still he didn't answer.

"And I know of people like Edmond Gosse, the critic ... well, more than I do of you and Doctor Davidson. Mr.

Bernard has promised to take me to the House of Lords some day. He is a friend of Mr. Gosse, who is librarian there. Do you read his articles in The Sunday TimesY Rodney shook his head.

"Then there's Swinburne and Robert Louis Stevenson, and Reade, men I'd never heard of. And I've read everything I can find of Steele and Addison. I've even read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." She was excited now, her hands clasped tight.

"Every evening I read aloud to Mr. Bernard; I'm reading Lord Chesterfield's letters now, Mr. Bernard likes their style. But I think Lord Chesterfield would have been a very dull man to live with; he didn't like laughter, did he?"

"I don't know, Kate, I've never read him."

"Do you know what we are going to do in the New Year?" she asked him eagerly.

"Read Shakespeare, the four of us. We are to take so many parts each.

King Lear first;

there are nice long speeches in that for Mr. Bernard to get his teeth into. Then The Taming of the Shrew. I am to speak Katherine's part; I've already read it over and over again. "

"The Taming of the ShrewY cried Rodney.

"Why, Kate," what do you remember? "I say it is the moon." He made a dramatic gesture through the windscreen.

"I