Маленькая хозяйка большого дома / The Little Lady Of The Big House

5

The guests asked Paula to play.

“I’m asking you to play ‘Reflections on the Water[42]’,” Terrence said to her.

“Oh, Debussy[43]!” Paula laughed.

No sooner was she seated than the three sages slipped away to their listening places. The young poet stretched himself prone on a deep bearskin. Terrence and Aaron took window seats. The girls were sitting on wide couches or in the wood chairs.

All jollity and banter had ceased. Ernestine leaned across from a chair to whisper to Graham:

“She can do anything she wants to do. And she doesn’t work … much. She doesn’t play like a woman. Listen to that!”

Paula played with the calm and power. Her touch was definite, authoritative. Graham watched the lofty room grow loftier in the increasing shadows.

He was slow in getting ready for bed that night. He was stirred both by the Big House and by the Little Lady who was its mistress. As he sat on the edge of the bed, half-undressed, and smoked out a pipe, he was seeing her in memory, as he had seen her in the flesh the past twelve hours, in her varied moods and guises—the woman who had talked music with him, and who had expounded music to him to his delight

Graham knocked out his pipe. Again he heard Paula Forrest laugh; again he sensed her in silver and steel and strength; again, against the dark, he saw her gown. The bright vision of it was almost an irk to him, so impossible was it for him to shake it from his eyes.

He saw the stallion and the beneath the water, the flurry of foam and floundering of hoofs, and the woman’s face that laughed while she drowned her hair in the drowning mane of the horse.

Finally Graham fell asleep.