DOI Artikel:
Harland, Henry: The bohemian girl
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21805#0023
l9
By Henry Harland
his occasional slight shrug or gesture. But the oddest thing was
this, that he could take as well as give ; he could listen—surely a
rare talent in a monologist. Indeed, I have never known a man
who could make you feel so interesting.
After dinner he would light an immense brown meerschaum
pipe, and smoke for a quarter-hour or so in silence ; then he
would play a game or two of chess with some one ; and by and by
he would open his piano, and sing to us tili midnight.
IV
I speak of him as old, and indeed we always called him Old
Childe among ourselves ; yet he was barely fifty. Nina, when I
first made their acquaintance, must have been a girl of sixteen or
seventeen ; though—tall, with an amply rounded, mature-seeming
figure—if one had judged from her appearance, one would have
fancied her three or four years older. For that matter, she looked
then very much as she looks now ; I can perceive scarcely any
alteration. She had the same dark hair, gathered up in a big
smooth knot behind, and breaking into a tumult of little ringlets
over her forehead ; the same clear, sensitive complexion ; the
same rather large, full-lipped mouth, tip-tilted nose, soft chin, and
merry, mischievous eyes. She moved in the same way, with the
same leisurely, almost lazy grace, that could, however, on
occasions, quicken to an alert, elastic vivacity ; she had the same
voice, a trifle deeper than most women’s, and of a quality never so
delicately nasal, which made it racy and characteristic ; the same
fresh, ready laughter. There was something arch, something a
little sceptical, a little quizzical, in her expression, as if, perhaps,
The Yellow Book,—Vol. IV. b she
B
By Henry Harland
his occasional slight shrug or gesture. But the oddest thing was
this, that he could take as well as give ; he could listen—surely a
rare talent in a monologist. Indeed, I have never known a man
who could make you feel so interesting.
After dinner he would light an immense brown meerschaum
pipe, and smoke for a quarter-hour or so in silence ; then he
would play a game or two of chess with some one ; and by and by
he would open his piano, and sing to us tili midnight.
IV
I speak of him as old, and indeed we always called him Old
Childe among ourselves ; yet he was barely fifty. Nina, when I
first made their acquaintance, must have been a girl of sixteen or
seventeen ; though—tall, with an amply rounded, mature-seeming
figure—if one had judged from her appearance, one would have
fancied her three or four years older. For that matter, she looked
then very much as she looks now ; I can perceive scarcely any
alteration. She had the same dark hair, gathered up in a big
smooth knot behind, and breaking into a tumult of little ringlets
over her forehead ; the same clear, sensitive complexion ; the
same rather large, full-lipped mouth, tip-tilted nose, soft chin, and
merry, mischievous eyes. She moved in the same way, with the
same leisurely, almost lazy grace, that could, however, on
occasions, quicken to an alert, elastic vivacity ; she had the same
voice, a trifle deeper than most women’s, and of a quality never so
delicately nasal, which made it racy and characteristic ; the same
fresh, ready laughter. There was something arch, something a
little sceptical, a little quizzical, in her expression, as if, perhaps,
The Yellow Book,—Vol. IV. b she
B