"Cather, Willa - Alexander's Bridge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cather Willa Sibert)

CHAPTER III


The next evening Alexander dined alone at
a club, and at about nine o'clock he dropped in
at the Duke of York's. The house was sold
out and he stood through the second act.
When he returned to his hotel he examined
the new directory, and found Miss Burgoyne's
address still given as off Bedford Square,
though at a new number. He remembered that,
in so far as she had been brought up at all,
she had been brought up in Bloomsbury.
Her father and mother played in the
provinces most of the year, and she was left a
great deal in the care of an old aunt who was
crippled by rheumatism and who had had to
leave the stage altogether. In the days when
Alexander knew her, Hilda always managed to have
a lodging of some sort about Bedford Square,
because she clung tenaciously to such
scraps and shreds of memories as were
connected with it. The mummy room of the
British Museum had been one of the chief
delights of her childhood. That forbidding
pile was the goal of her truant fancy, and she
was sometimes taken there for a treat, as
other children are taken to the theatre. It was
long since Alexander had thought of any of
these things, but now they came back to him
quite fresh, and had a significance they did
not have when they were first told him in his
restless twenties. So she was still in the
old neighborhood, near Bedford Square.
The new number probably meant increased
prosperity. He hoped so. He would like to know
that she was snugly settled. He looked at his
watch. It was a quarter past ten; she would
not be home for a good two hours yet, and he
might as well walk over and have a look at
the place. He remembered the shortest way.

It was a warm, smoky evening, and there
was a grimy moon. He went through Covent
Garden to Oxford Street, and as he turned
into Museum Street he walked more slowly,
smiling at his own nervousness as he