The Birds Fall Down Read Online Free PDF

step towards them, and then came to a halt, shaking her head and smiling shyly, as if she expected a scolding.
    “Mother!” said Tania in a whisper. “Mother!” She caught her hat to her bosom and drove her hatpin through the bird which trimmed it, as if she were killing something which must not be permitted to exist for one more moment.
    “Well, I warned you I wasn’t feeling healthy as a peasant,” said Sofia Andreievna, with a little laugh, and the two women stood quite still, looking at each other.
    Laura hated her grandfather for what his grief had made of this apartment. It was horrible to see what breathing the poisoned air had done to her grandmother. In the past, before her grandfather had gone into exile, Sofia Andreievna had visited them often in Radnage Square. Then she had been almost as beautiful as Tania, though in a quite different way, for her hair was black and her face a smooth oval and she was not at all barbaric; and she was very grand, prodigiously so, considering that she was small and slight. She had an immense amount of jewellery, all the stones very large, and she had furs that were as weightless and warm as good weather; and she possessed only what would have been for anybody else best clothes. Even in bed, she was grand, wearing jackets frothing over with feathers between sheets she brought from Russia, sheets of linen so fine that it was dark, under bedcovers that dripped heavy Venetian lace to the floor. But within all this magnificence, and under the other weight of her years, she remained supple as a young animal. On her very last winter visit she had hunted regularly in Leicestershire, rushing back to town glittering with well-being, ready for whatever was going in the way of operas and theatres and dinner parties and balls. They said she owed her vitality to her descent on her mother’s side from a Polish family famous for strength and longevity; an ancestress of hers had ridden out at the head of an army of her serfs to do battle against an army commanded by her own great-grandson.
    None of that stock died before eighty, or lost their health before they died. She could not be much more than sixty, Laura calculated. She had been married at seventeen to her middle-aged bridegroom, her eldest son was a little over forty. But now she might have been an ugly and weakly old woman. Her neck had been round and white, but now the flesh had shrunk away under her chin and her neck was a narrow fluted tube, and her face was like a mask of stretched hide stuck on top of it. She did not look only ugly and old, she looked poor, like the women in the slums between Radnage Square and the Fulham Road. Her hair had lost its colour and its lustre. It might not have been washed and brushed for a long time. Her eyes, which had been heavy-lidded and almost vacuously serene, stared anxiously out of deep sockets, as if she were wondering where the rent would come from. She must be got away at once, back to Radnage Square, fed on butter and cream and allowed to rest, and given a chance to swim at the Bath Club. She would soon be all right. She was so very strong. It was all a question of getting her out of this apartment.
    Her grandfather said, with mild patriarchal censure, “My dear wife, where have you been?” Having received a murmured apology, he went on, “Now look at our Tania and see how well she is, and look at our little Laura and say who she is like.”
    “My darling Tania,” said Sofia Andreievna, “don’t make such a sad face. It’s not so bad really.”
    “Oh, Mother, Mother,” whispered Tania. She let her hat slide out of her hands on to the floor, crossed the room and laid her arms about her mother’s wasted body, resting her golden head on the thin shoulder.
    “It’s not so bad,” repeated Sofia Andreievna, “and during the last three days I am much, much better. Ask Monsieur Kamensky.”
    “Oh, without a doubt the Countess has improved lately,” agreed the small bearded man,