To me, I may say, he
was even extraordinarily kind. We talked painting, for example: Count
Bragard folded a piece of paper, tore it in the centre of the folded
edge, unfolded it carefully, exhibiting a good round hole, and remarking:
"Do you know this trick? It's an English trick, Mr. Cummings," held the
paper before him and gazed profoundly through the circular aperture at an
exceptionally disappointing section of the altogether gloomy landscape,
visible thanks to one of the ecclesiastical windows of The Enormous Room.
"Just look at that, Mr. Cummings," he said with quiet dignity. I looked.
I tried my best to find something to the left. "No, no, straight
through," Count Bragard corrected me. "There's a lovely bit of
landscape," he said sadly. "If I only had my paints here. I thought, you
know, of asking my housekeeper to send them on from Paris--but how can
you paint in a bloody place like this with all these bloody pigs around
you? It's ridiculous to think of it. And it's tragic, too," he added
grimly, with something like tears in his grey, tired eyes.
Or we were promenading The Enormous Room after supper--the evening
promenade in the _cour_ having been officially eliminated owing to the
darkness and the cold of the autumn twilight--and through the windows the
dull bloating colours of sunset pouring faintly; and the Count stops dead
in his tracks and regards the sunset without speaking for a number of
seconds.
Pages:
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261