Sea of Glass (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) Read Free

one wished to exclude the world, the rails could be swung out so that their draperies formed two parallel walls joined by a canopy. Now, however, they were bunched together above the pillows and the sleeper looked up into the stiff convolutions of the fabric as into the groyning of a cathedral roof.
    Through the open window came a breeze smelling of jasmin. Before going to bed I had discovered that my room looked down onto a flat roof of the storey below, which projected further than the top part of the house. The roof was laid out with flowers in boxes and wicker chairs and potted shrubs. Below, the cliff-like bulk of the house fell away to a garden proper. All the houses in the terrace were so provided, and though the individual strips were narrow they added up, by moonlight, to a seemingly limitless vista of park and coppice.
    I was on the verge of sleep when midnight struck. This was not the usual commonplace event. At 8 Aynho Terrace it began with a mellifluous chirring noise as if a flock of doves were about to take wing. Then chimes broke out from all over the house, striking every note on the keyboard and running in and out of each other like linked cascades. There were big clocks with fruity episcopal voices, and little ones that pinged like mosquitoes. The confusion of sound had—for me, at any rate—a curiously concrete effect. I felt that I was riding up and down on a sea of some tenuous but highly buoyant material.

2
    Next morning the same chorus, playing its nine o’clock hymn, accompanied me downstairs. The dining-room, which opened off the hall, was a very big room entirely furnished in dark mahogany. It seemed to speak, in a low rumbling voice, of eight-course dinners attended by company directors. On the overmantel there was a bronze statue of a knight in armour who was prodding a dragon beneath his feet. The knight’s visor was open, and in the sepulchral light I jumped to the conclusion that this was another portrait of Mr. Ellison in fancy dress. Later when I had the chance to examine this awful piece of bric-à-brac I saw how wrong I had been. The knight had an amiable, foolish, Teutonic expression; Mr. Ellison would have had his mailed pants off him in about two minutes.
    A young woman in a nurse’s uniform was already at the table. As I came in she looked up and choked slightly. The resultant fit of coughing darkened her high-coloured cheeks until they were almost the same shade as the mahogany. I stood shifting about from foot to foot, trying to look both nonchalant and sympathetic.
    Finally she recovered. ‘Pardon me,’ she said. ‘Good morning. I’m Nurse Fillis.’
    Not unnaturally it took me several days to discover that she had not introduced herself by her Christian name.
    ‘I’m David Lindley,’ I said. ‘I’ve come to stay.’
    ‘I hope you enjoy it.’
    ‘Thanks. I’m used to entertaining myself.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Nurse Fillis, ‘it’s not a question of being lonely in this house. Not as things are at present.’
    Her voice carried that supercharge of meaning which somehow I associate with outraged landladies.
    Before we could pursue this curious conversation Turpin came in with a pot of fresh coffee which he put down at my side. As he did so he belched slightly.
    ‘Box on!’ I thought he said, and it turned out that I was quite right.
    Nurse Fillis raised her head from her plate and gave him a look of distaste. The movement brought her face into a shaft of light so that I saw its details more clearly. She belonged to that considerable and unfortunate tribe of young women whose features are individually presentable, but refuse to add up. She had a small clear-cut nose and a neat mouth, but both appeared trivial and slightly vulgar against the wide expanse of her cheeks and her massive but well-shaped chin. She was not fat, but something—perhaps the high complexion—gave her a plethoric air, which combined badly with her obvious nervousness.
    Turpin had gone to the