"Wilkie Collins - I Say No" - читать интересную книгу автора (Collins Wilkie)

indulgently, "Miss de Sor, I have nothing to do with it."
"Nothing to do with it? No prizes to win before you leave school?"
"I won all the prizes years ago."
"But there are recitations. Surely you recite?"
Harmless words in themselves, pursuing the same smooth course of flattery as
before--but with what a different result! Emily's face reddened with anger the
moment they were spoken. Having already irritated Alban Morris, unlucky
Francine, by a second mischievous interposition of accident, had succeeded in
making Emily smart next. "Who has told you," she burst out; "I insist on
knowing!"
"Nobody has told me anything!" Francine declared piteously.
"Nobody has told you how I have been insulted?"
"No, indeed! Oh, Miss Brown, who could insult you?"
In a man, the sense of injury does sometimes submit to the discipline of
silence. In a woman--never. Suddenly reminded of her past wrongs (by the
pardonable error of a polite schoolfellow), Emily committed the startling
inconsistency of appealing to the sympathies of Francine!
"Would you believe it? I have been forbidden to recite--I, the head girl of the
school. Oh, not to-day! It happened a month ago--when we were all in
consultation, making our arrangements. Miss Ladd asked me if I had decided on a
piece to recite. I said, 'I have not only decided, I have learned the piece.'
'And what may it be?' 'The dagger-scene in Macbeth.' There was a howl--I can
call it by no other name--a howl of indignation. A man's soliloquy, and, worse
still, a murdering man's soliloquy, recited by one of Miss Ladd's young ladies,
before an audience of parents and guardians! That was the tone they took with
me. I was as firm as a rock. The dagger-scene or nothing. The result
is--nothing! An insult to Shakespeare, and an insult to Me. I felt it--I feel it
still. I was prepared for any sacrifice in the cause of the drama. If Miss Ladd
had met me in a proper spirit, do you know what I would have done? I would have
played Macbeth in costume. Just hear me, and judge for yourself. I begin with a
dreadful vacancy in my eyes, and a hollow moaning in my voice: 'Is this a dagger
that I see before me--?'"
Reciting with her face toward the trees, Emily started, dropped the character of
Macbeth, and instantly became herself again: herself, with a rising color and an
angry brightening of the eyes. "Excuse me, I can't trust my memory: I must get
the play." With that abrupt apology, she walked away rapidly in the direction of
the house.
In some surprise, Francine turned, and looked at the trees. She discovered--in
full retreat, on his side--the eccentric drawing-master, Alban Morris.
Did he, too, admire the dagger-scene? And was he modestly desirous of hearing it
recited, without showing himself? In that case, why should Emily (whose
besetting weakness was certainly not want of confidence in her own resources)
leave the garden the moment she caught sight of him? Francine consulted her
instincts. She had just arrived at a conclusion which expressed itself outwardly
by a malicious smile, when gentle Cecilia appeared on the lawn--a lovable object
in a broad straw hat and a white dress, with a nosegay in her bosom--smiling,
and fanning herself.
"It's so hot in the schoolroom," she said, "and some of the girls, poor things,
are so ill-tempered at rehearsal--I have made my escape. I hope you got your
breakfast, Miss de Sor. What have you been doing here, all by yourself?"