Gwendolen Read Online Free PDF Page A

huge, so much huger than his manners. I tried not to cry.
    *
    Clintock the archdeacon’s son came up and asked what
Freudvoll
meant but I did not know. He said he wished I would sing again, for though he could listen to me all night he got nowhere with this sort of tip-top playing. I told him if he wanted to hear me sing he was in a puerile state of culture, for I had just learned how bad my taste was, which gave me growing pains. He smiled politely and asked how I liked the neighbourhood. I replied I liked it exceedingly, for it had a little of everything and not much of anything, and most people in it were an utter bore.
    Clintock then talked of croquet and told me it was the game of the future. I hear my voice now as I cut him down: ‘I shall study croquet tomorrow. I shall take to it instead of singing.’
    *
    Clintock informed me of a friend of his who had written a poem in four cantos about croquet that was as good as anything by Alexander Pope. He offered to send me a manuscript copy. I said he must first promise not to test me on it, or ask which part I liked best, ‘because it is not so easy to know a poem without reading it, as to know a sermon without listening’.
    He did not care to find barb or insult in my remark, he was staring at my breasts and legs, but Mrs Arrowpoint overheard, made a judgement and did not share her Tasso with me.
    *
    Catherine Arrowpoint, pitiful of the smallness of my talent yet assured of Klesmer’s regard for hers, continued to invite me to dinners and soirées but I could not again see her without a wave of jealousy and self-doubt, though her looks were unremarkable, her complexion sallow and her features small. She was an heiress with unshaken confidence in her own talent, secure enough to disregard her plainness as an irrelevance, whereas I who was poor had only my looks and my dreams.
    After that evening at the Arrowpoints’, though at Brackenshaw Castle, The Firs and Quetcham Hall my singing had hitherto given such pleasure, as obstinate as I was offended, I vowed never again to sing before an audience. My admirers viewed me as exceptional. I was determined my detractors should see that too. I was not going to condemn myself to giving lessons to Alice like an impoverished governess or to help in the village school with Anna. Mamma told me I was more beautiful and alluring than the actress Rachel had been in
Phèdre.
If I could not be a singer I would have a stage career.
    *
    Christmas Eve brought my next humiliation. To display my theatrical talent I decided to stage a
tableau vivant
from
A Winter’s Tale
before invited neighbours in the drawing room at Offendene. My intention was to let Herr Klesmer know that though my musical gifts might be unequal to Catherine Arrowpoint’s, my acting skills were another matter.
    I was director and principal player – Hermione, the beautiful, virtuous, vilified queen, shut away from the world for sixteen years. Cousin Rex, home for the holidays from his law studies, was my husband, King Leontes, crazed with jealousy. Mamma, in a white burnous, was my friend Paulina. Anna, Miss Merry and Mr Middleton, uncle’s assistant clergyman, who had pale whiskers, wore buttoned-up clothes and seldom laughed, were to have small parts. Jarrett the village carpenter built the stage.
    *
    The charade’s climax was the miraculous animation when I, the statue, came to life and Leontes knelt to kiss the hem of my dress. Herr Klesmer was to strike the chord of animation. He sat at the piano. I stood immobile, elevated on a sort of plinth. Leontes gave permission for Paulina to make the statue speak and move. ‘Music, awake her, strike!’ mamma declared. Klesmer crashed the piano keys. As he did so the panel in the wainscot opposite the stage flew open. There again, illumined by candlelight, was the dead face and fleeing figure. I screamed, collapsed to my knees and covered my face. Mamma and Rex rushed to help me from the room.
    The perplexed guests