A Company of Swans Read Online Free PDF Page A

added chopped carrots, giving the broth a pleasant yellowish tint. A cold codling waited in liquid for its sauce tartare and the leg of mutton (a real bargain from an enterprising butcher who specialized in cheap meat from injured but perfectly healthy animals which had to be despatched in situ) was already sizzling in the range.
    "That seems to be all right, Cook. What about the dessert?"
    Cook motioned her head toward a large plate on which a coffee blancmange, just turned out of its mold, still shivered faintly.
    "I'm going to stick glacé cherries round it," offered Cook.
    "I must say that seems a little excessive," said Louisa. She frowned, thinking. Still, it was a dinner party. "All right, then—but halve them first."
    She made her way upstairs again and was just in time to encounter her niece coming in from her dancing class.
    It was always difficult for Harriet to leave the friendly, interesting streets and re-enter the dark house where the temperature generally seemed to be several degrees lower than that outside. Today, with Dubrov's words still sounding in her ears, she stood more forlornly than usual in the hallway, lost in her unattainable dreams—and justifiably annoyed her aunt.
    "For goodness' sake, Harriet, don't dawdle! Have you forgotten we have dinner guests? I want you changed and in the drawing room by seven o'clock."
    "Yes, Aunt Louisa."
    "You are to wear the pink crepe de chine. And you can put up your hair."
    In her attic Harriet slowly washed, changed into the hideous dress her aunt had bought in the January sales and embarked on the battle to put up the long, soft hair which only curved slightly at the tips and needed a battery of pins to keep it in the coronet of plaits which the Trumpington Ladies had deemed suitable. She would have given anything for a quiet evening in which to re-live what had happened… anything not to face Edward with his pompous and proprietary manner and the underlying kindness which made it impossible to dislike him as one longed to do.
    When she had finished she went over to the bookcase and took down a volume of poetry, turning the pages until she found what she was looking for: a poem simply called "Life":
    I asked no other thing.
    No other was denied.
    I offered Being for it;
    The mighty merchant smiled.
    Brazil? He twirled a button
    Without a glance my way
    "But Madam, is there nothing else,
    That we can show today?"
    She stood for a long time looking at the verses in which Emily Dickinson had chronicled her heartbreak. Loneliness had taught Harriet that there was always someone who understood—it was just that so very often they were dead, and in a book.
    Two hours later the dinner party was in full swing, though this was perhaps not the phrase which would have occurred to pretty Mrs. Marchmont, supping her soup with a slight air of disbelief. She had been warned about the Mortons' dinner parties, but she had not been warned enough.
    At the head of the table, the Professor was explaining to Mr. Marchmont the iniquity of the latest Senate ruling on the allocation of marks in the Classical Tripos. Edward was valiantly discussing the "dreadful price of everything" with Aunt Louisa, while in the grate the handful of smoldering coals—kicked too hard by the underpaid parlormaid—blackened and expired.
    The soup was cleared. The cod, whose sauce tartare surprisingly had come out slightly blue, arrived.
    "Well, Harriet, and how did you fare today?" asked the Professor, addressing his daughter for the first time.
    "All right, thank you, Father. I went to my dancing lesson."
    "Ah, yes." The Professor, his duty done, would have turned back to his neighbor but Harriet, usually so silent, spoke to him once more.
    "A man came to see Madame Lavarre. A Russian. He's going to take a ballet company up the Amazon to Manaus. To perform there."
    Edward, assessing his piece of fish which did not, after all, appear to be a fillet, said, "A most interesting part of the world, one