75 лучших рассказов / 75 Best Short Stories

Helen went to the Royal Academy, but when asked to deliver her report upon the pictures she began to recite from a pale blue volume, ‘O! for the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still. Home is the hunter, home from the hill. He gave his bridle reins a shake. Love is sweet, love is brief. Spring, the fair spring, is the year’s pleasant King. O! to be in England now that April’s there. Men must work and women must weep. The path of duty is the way to glory—’ We could listen to no more of this gibberish.

‘We want no more poetry!’ we cried.

‘Daughters of England!’ she began, but here we pulled her down, a vase of water getting spilt over her in the scuffle.

‘Thank God!’ she exclaimed, shaking herself like a dog. ‘Now I’ll roll on the carpet and see if I can’t brush off what remains of the Union Jack [579] . Then perhaps—’ here she rolled energetically. Getting up she began to explain to us what modern pictures are like when Castalia stopped her.

‘What is the average size of a picture?’ she asked. ‘Perhaps two feet by two and a half,’ she said. Castalia made notes while Helen spoke, and when she had done, and we were trying not to meet each other’s eyes, rose and said, ‘At your wish I spent last week at Oxbridge, disguised as a charwoman. I thus had access to the rooms of several Professors and will now attempt to give you some idea – only,’ she broke off, ‘I can’t think how to do it. It’s all so queer. These Professors,’ she went on, ‘live in large houses built round grass plots each in a kind of cell by himself. Yet they have every convenience and comfort. You have only to press a button or light a little lamp. Their papers are beautifully filed. Books abound. There are no children or animals, save half a dozen stray cats and one aged bullfinch – a cock. I remember,’ she broke off, ‘an Aunt of mine who lived at Dulwich and kept cactuses. You reached the conservatory through the double drawing-room, and there, on the hot pipes, were dozens of them, ugly, squat, bristly little plants each in a separate pot. Once in a hundred years the Aloe flowered, so my Aunt said. But she died before that happened—’ We told her to keep to the point. ‘Well,’ she resumed, ‘when Professor Hobkin was out, I examined his life work, an edition of Sappho [580] . It’s a queer looking book, six or seven inches thick, not all by Sappho. Oh, no. Most of it is a defence of Sappho’s chastity, which some German had denied, and I can assure you the passion with which these two gentlemen argued, the learning they displayed, the prodigious ingenuity with which they disputed the use of some implement which looked to me for all the world like a hairpin astounded me; especially when the door opened and Professor Hobkin himself appeared. A very nice, mild, old gentleman, but what could he know about chastity?’ We misunderstood her.

‘No, no,’ she protested, ‘he’s the soul of honour I’m sure – not that he resembles Rose’s sea captain in the least. I was thinking rather of my Aunt’s cactuses. What could they know about chastity?’

Again we told her not to wander from the point, – did the Oxbridge professors help to produce good people and good books? – the objects of life.

‘There!’ she exclaimed. ‘It never struck me to ask. It never occurred to me that they could possibly produce anything.’

‘I believe,’ said Sue, ‘that you made some mistake. Probably Professor Hobkin was a gynæcologist. A scholar is a very different sort of man. A scholar is overflowing with humour and invention – perhaps addicted to wine, but what of that? – a delightful companion, generous, subtle, imaginative – as stands to reason. For he spends his life in company with the finest human beings that have ever existed.’

‘Hum,’ said Castalia. ‘Perhaps I’d better go back and try again.’

Some three months later it happened that I was sitting alone when Castalia entered. I don’t know what it was in the look of her that so moved me; but I could not restrain myself, and, dashing across the room, I clasped her in my arms. Not only was she very beautiful; she seemed also in the highest spirits. ‘How happy you look!’ I exclaimed, as she sat down.

‘I’ve been at Oxbridge,’ she said.

‘Asking questions?’

‘Answering them,’ she replied.

‘You have not broken our vow?’ I said anxiously, noticing something about her figure.

‘Oh, the vow,’ she said casually. ‘I’m going to have a baby, if that’s what you mean. You can’t imagine,’ she burst out, ‘how exciting, how beautiful, how satisfying—’

‘What is?’ I asked.

‘To – to – answer questions,’ she replied in some confusion. Whereupon she told me the whole of her story. But in the middle of an account which interested and excited me more than anything I had ever heard, she gave the strangest cry, half whoop, half holloa —

‘Chastity! Chastity! Where’s my chastity!’ she cried. ‘Help Ho! The scent bottle!’

There was nothing in the room but a cruet containing mustard, which I was about to administer when she recovered her composure.