Snow Shadow Read Free

I detected here—reading tension even in the way a glass might be set upon a tray!
    Theodosia had slipped away. Hanno Horvath, sunk in what appeared to be a state of dark brooding, had slipped well down in his chair, his long legs thrusting forth to the very edge of the hearth. Now Leslie stared into the flames as if she were utterly alone, the rest of us wiped out of her state of existence.
    Preston Donner again broke an awkward silence. I was not even aware he had gone and returned until he presented a dish of canapes at my elbow.
    “I recommend the small pink ones, Miss Jansen.They have a most intriguing flavor. And the horns contain shrimp paste—”
    I relaxed determinedly. His deference sprang from the secure manners of Aunt Otilda’s world, in which I bad been bred, and I liked the man.
    “Do I detect a prejudice against shrimp paste?” I refused to be cowed into silence—as I once might have been—by Leslie’s attitude.
    “Allergies are always one’s bane. Yes, fish and I must keep apart.”
    We drifted into book talk, and so I discovered that Donner was a dealer in rare editions, who made periodic trips to Ladensville to confer with the head of the Grachian Trust Library at the university. His period by choice was the early nineteenth century, and soon we were engrossed to the point of interrupting each other with comment or stories of discoveries, until we were summoned to a buffet supper.
    Preston Donner dealt quickly and competently with the filling of plates, and then shepherded me back as if he had cut out some prize he was determined to keep to himself. I bloomed a little. He was so manifestly interested in me —a situation I had not found to be true very often.
    “No American to rival Jane Austen—” I continued our discussion.
    “So you are a Janite, too! But how fortunate. Right over there,” he so forgot manners as to use his fork for a pointer, “lies Northanger Abbey.”
    I blinked. The word “abbey” for a connoisseur of Victorian fiction has a meaning all its own, including headless monks, wheeling bats, and such delightfulpeople as slink off Charles Addams’ drawing board. But there is only one Northanger Abbey, and it has no existence in the modern world.
    However, Preston Donner was continuing. “Surely you have heard of our local celebrity, Dr. Edward Austin?”
    A hazy half-memory of a recent comment on the will of Dr. Austin, a monomaniacal collector of Austeniana, returned.
    “But he’s dead.” I tried to recall a date and could not.
    “Yes, he died five years ago—lived to be nearly a hundred. Miss Elizabeth, his eldest daughter, inherited the house for her lifetime. Unfortunately, the doctor’s collection had absorbed most of his capital, even the fortune his wife had left him. And, by the terms of his will, nothing can be sold. It is a pity. His wife died over twenty years ago. She was Tessie Polchek, old Anton Polchek’s daughter.”
    Another vague memory—steel—yes, one of those American success stories once so extolled, before it became a slightly shameful thing to work one’s way up in the world by hard application to a job. Anton Polchek must have been one of the very last of the Alger heroes.
    “—so Miss Elizabeth takes paying guests now.” I must have missed a word or two. “This property belongs to her sister, Mrs. Emma Horvath. There is a garden walk uniting it to the Abbey.”
    The quaint term—again an echo of Aunt Otilda’s world—”paying guest” riveted my attention. I had been in an inn room for a week, and I disliked inns,even when they were within walking distance of the library in which I had come to bury myself. I would be here for at least six weeks. What if—?
    Taking courage, I mentioned my need. To my surprise, Preston Donner pounced upon my question eagerly. In fact, he was so interested I was flattered.
    “How lucky! The large corner room is at present vacant. Perhaps I should explain that I am one of Miss Elizabeth’s