Читать книгу They Wouldn't Be Chessmen - A.E.W. Mason - Страница 5

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SPRING came early to Europe that year, and to Paris a little earlier than to most cities. On an evening of March a window in an apartment of the Avenue Matignon stood wide open on the gardens of the Champs-Élysées. A fire burned upon the hearth, more for the intimate look and comfort of it than from any need of its heat. The air was warm outside with a scent of flowers, and the rumble of traffic in the Champs-Élysées and the distant streets had here a pleasant rhythm. But the two young people in this dainty drawing-room with the pale grey panels were insensible to the balm of the night and the murmur of the roads. They sat on high chairs at a round table under the crystal chandelier and with frowning and concentrated faces they put together a jig-saw puzzle of the Battle of Waterloo. It was close upon midnight, and the work was almost done. A few tortured pieces of coloured wood alone refused malignantly to be fitted into their places.

Of the two seated at the table, one was a young Indian of twenty-one years, small and slender and smartly buttoned up in a double-breasted dinner jacket. His colour was a pale brown; he had sleek black hair, and melting eyes; he was very good-looking, and he had the easy carriage of a youth trained in the gymnasium and on the polo ground. He was the eldest son and the heir of the Maharajah of Chitipur, in Northern India, and was on his first visit to Europe.

His companion was a girl older by some six years than he, and pretty with the smoothness of youth. Her hair had the fashionable tint of platinum, she had a wide mouth, a pair of big blue eyes, almost too innocent to be true, cheeks, chubby now but definitely fat in ten years' time, and a stubborn little chin against which all the intelligence in the world would break in vain.

"This is the loveliest evening we have ever had, Elsie," the boy whispered, slipping his arm round her shoulders.

"Yes, darling," she answered inattentively, as she picked up a squiggly fragment of the puzzle from the table and tried to insert it where it wouldn't go. "Damn!" she said. "Do you know, Natty, I think I'd like a brandy and soda."

Nahendra Nao were his names. He rose, and crossing behind her to a small table in the corner, mixed her drink. From where he stood he could see her head bent forward over the table, the platinum tendrils on the nape of her neck, the shoulders snow-white and satin-smooth.

"It's marvellous, Elsie," he cried. "I never get used to it. There you are, with all Paris running after you—Paris, just think of it!" And for a moment he raised his eyes from the girl to look out through the window and the balmy night on the lights of the City of Enchantment The murmur of the streets was music to this youth from a sleeping palace, where most of every day was Sunday afternoon. He held his breath to listen. Beyond the gardens and the houses the loom of the lamps in the Place de la Concorde made daylight of the upper air. Paris! "Six weeks ago I had never seen it," the boy continued. "I had never lived, and then I cut right through all your beaux and adorers, and carried you off, didn't I?"

"Yes, darling," said Elsie, and she took up another sliver of the puzzle. "I wonder whether this'll go?"

"Young Lochinvar, eh?" the boy asked, with a rather shrill, high laugh.

It was true enough that Elsie Marsh of the Casino de Paris had a large wake of followers. She was pretty, but not outstandingly pretty. She had lovely movements when she danced, and long slim legs free from the hips, but others could match her. She sang, but with a poor little scrannel voice which stopped at the fourth row of the stalls. But these things, qualities and faults, did not matter. She made an appeal to the passions which was indefinable but manifest. She came across the footlights instantly, kindling the blood and waking desire. She had something which other women had not. It was not charm—that is too cold and polite a word. It was a vital, stinging appeal to the animal in men, and it carried somehow an assurance that the response would be fierce too.

"But I think this evening is perfect, don't you, Elsie?" he went on.

The Casino de Paris had been shut for a week whilst a new revue was being staged. For Elsie Marsh and Nahendra Nao it had been a hectic week of expeditions into the country, large meals at crowded tables, and noisy parties ending with the dawn. On this one night at the end of the week they had dined together alone, in the charming apartment he had taken for her—a domesticated couple engrossed in the simple pleasure of a jig-saw puzzle.

"Perfect, dear," said Elsie. "What about my drink?"

The Prince carried it to her, and sitting down, drew her close to him.

"To-night has made such a difference, hasn't it?" he said in a low and pleading voice. "We've been happy, haven't we? Just you and I together. Don't you think"—and his voice now took on a still more urgent note, and Elsie's face looked up warily from the puzzle towards the window—"don't you think that somehow it could all keep going on for good?"

"No!" Elsie spoke just a little sharply.

"I believe it could. I mean—now that I know—to come back often." There was a hardly noticeable intake of his breath as he had a glimpse of his father the Maharajah preparing to say a word or two about that proposition. Not too easy a man, the Maharajah! But he was a long way off just now, and the boy was twenty-one, and proudly in love with his lady of the halls. "Every year, if I can. And perhaps, afterwards..."

But Elsie Marsh took a sip at her brandy and soda, and shook her stubborn little chin.

"It'd be marvellous if it were possible, but it isn't, Natty. We must just get what we can out of the present." It was Elsie's creed, and she was certainly putting it into full practice these days. She turned towards him, and rubbed her cheek against his. "It'll have to be for both of us just a lovely dream."

Her voice yearned; she knew her words in this part, and exactly how they should be spoken. But this once she spoke them too well. Nahendra Nao, with his eyes full of tears, bent his head down and kissed her throat—and then did not for a little while lift his head again. He remained in that awkward position, very still. Elsie would have thought that he had fainted but for his arm thrown about her shoulders and the clasp of his hand. That tightened and tightened, and in Elsie's eyes a spark of fear suddenly shone, and she shivered. Some day, of course, he would have to find out, sooner or later, but the later the better—and not on a night like this—when they were alone...Of course, he was only a boy, but boys could be dangerous, and one never knew. There were her maid and dresser at the end of the passage—the cook, too, next door to her. But wouldn't they just put their heads under the bed-clothes—if they heard anything—a scream, for instance?

Elsie swallowed once or twice. How long was he going to stay in this ridiculous attitude? She knew how to deal with men—the ordinary men, stuffed with money and high living, amongst whom she lived—no one better. But this boy from the East?...And suddenly Nahendra Nao stood up erect. For a few moments he slipped back through a century or two to an older tradition. Swiftly and deftly, with hands as slender as a woman's, he lifted from Elsie Marsh's shoulders a long rope of enormous pearls which was coiled three times about her throat and even then swung to below her knees. He ran it across the palm of his hand. He stooped to spread it out upon the table; and the cuff of his coat caught the frame of the jig-saw puzzle and upset it, Wellington and his guns, and Napoleon and the Old Guard, in a rattling heap upon the floor. The accident roused Elsie into a fury.

"How dare you do that?" she screamed suddenly. "I had almost finished it!"

"Look!" he said. "Look!" And he spread out the rope of pearls upon the table.

He was not now so much angry as aghast. The pearls had lost their lustre and purity. They were dull, yellowish beads, and here and there mottled and stained.

"My God!" he said, more to himself than to her. "I'm ruined! I daren't go back!"

His face had taken on a greenish tinge which took all his good looks away. He was face to face with a disaster for which there was no cure. At last he turned to Elsie Marsh.

"Why didn't you tell me that you couldn't wear them? Some people can't—that's known. You must have known it for a long while. There might have been time to save them."

"Of course I can wear them," she cried angrily, and she added with a sneer: "if they're real. But those aren't! They're just beads—lousy beads. You thought you were doing a clever thing when you lent a poor girl a lot of rocks on a string and told her they were the family pearls. But you didn't take me in—not for an instant you didn't!"

She was lying. Nahendra Nao was recollecting. "You knew very well," he said.

"I didn't. I didn't. I don't," she shouted, her fist beating on the table, her face red. No woman likes to be told that she can't wear pearls without spoiling them. To a woman like Elsie, whose smooth white body was her god and her livelihood, the statement was a taunt and an insult. Besides, he had upset the jig-saw on the floor—hadn't he? just as she was finishing it.

"Yes, you've been covering them up lately with a feather thing on your shoulders," he went on. "I wondered why. You might have told me, Elsie. It wasn't fair. You know how they came to us..."

"Oh, don't tell me that damned old story again!" she cried. "I'm sick to death of it!" And she stuck her fingers in her ears. "The palace gates and the old faker and the rest of it. I'll tell you there's a faker in this room now, my God, and it's not me!"

"I wasn't going to tell it to you again," said the boy. But it has got to be told. Five centuries ago, the Maharajah of Chitipur, returning from a ride, found his soldiers driving away from the gates an old man with a begging bowl. The Maharajah was young and gentle, and bade them desist. For years afterwards the old man sat in the dust with his beggar's bowl beside him, absorbed in his contemplations; and the Maharajah as he rode in and out would stop and speak about faith and religion with the old man. At times he dismounted and sat in the dust side by side with him, questioning him about the high mysteries. Then came a morning when the Maharajah found the old man standing and waiting.

"My second summons has come to me," he said. "I have now to go up to the hills, and I shall not come back. But because I have received much kindness at your hands, I give you the only thing I have to give."

As he spoke, he untied the rags of his long coat, and placed in the Maharajah's hands a long rope of unrivalled pearls. The Maharajah, however, drew back, thinking that through all these years he had harboured a thief at his gates. But the old man smiled.

"Have no fear, my son. They are mine to give."

"And who then are you?" asked the Maharajah.

"A nameless one," said the other. "But before the first call came to me, now many years ago, I was Ulla Singh Bahadur, Maharajah of Laipur," and he named thus a great kingdom to the east of Chitipur. Then he took up his bowl, and went up the road towards the hills.

This is the story which Elsie Marsh refused to hear again in her apartment in the Avenue Matignon, and this was the necklace which the young Rajah was now looking at in dismay.

"How can I go back?" he asked pitifully.

He had come to England upon a great occasion, his father's representative. The rope of pearls had been trusted to him and to the Maharajah's secretary, who went with him, that he might pay due honour to his King and Emperor by wearing it in the ceremonies. And those ceremonies once over, he had lent it to Elsie Marsh.

"I was mad," he said, and his voice broke.

How was he going to face that stern man with this ruined thing in his hands? It was sacred, it was the very luck of his dynasty. His heart stopped beating in his breast as he thought of that meeting and what would come of it.

"He'll disinherit me...He'll keep me in prison...He may—who's to stop him—even have me killed?"

His voice sank to a whisper as he spoke. All the boyish swagger had gone. He was a son facing his father in an extremity of terror.

And suddenly Elsie Marsh laughed; but without amusement, spitefully, jeeringly. Pity was not within her range. Affection, such as she had, was reserved for some worthless little parasite. Men were shadows upon a mirror. They appeared in and passed away from it. What they were before, and what became of them afterwards, didn't matter, didn't exist, for her. In a month she had forgotten their names. They must have money whilst they were passing—money for her to waste—that was all.

"I'm done for," said Nahendra Nao, running the rope of pearls through his fingers. "It's no use laughing, Elsie—we've got to face it."

"We?" she shouted. "What have I got to do with it? Isn't that like a man? I didn't ask you to come running after me, did I?" And Nahendra Nao began really to raise his eyes to her angry face, and to take stock of her—his marvellous girl—for the first time. The knowledge that he was doing it fanned her wrath. It grew with the words she used. She felt wronged.

"I had lots of friends, hadn't I? You were as proud as you could be, weren't you?—to show me off, and yourself off for being with me. You got what you paid for, didn't you?" Her voice had risen to a screech. Nahendra Nao was staring at her, amazed, incredulous, that what he heard, she spoke. The marvellous evening together! The dream of some sort of future when the months of separation would sharpen the ecstasy of the months when they were together. He and this girl, ugly in her rage, with the mud bubbling up in her and out of her mouth.

"And you needn't think it has all been peaches and cream for me—my word, no! Bored?" She reached her arms above her head. "I've been bored as stiff as if I was in a coffin. My God! All that polo talk at Delly or Helly, or wherever you play it. And what about my position, eh? Did you ever think of that, you and your pearls? What do I care what happens to you? After all—" and she smiled horridly and licked her lips round with her tongue. These were the words, and she was going to use them, the unforgivable words: "After all, it didn't do Elsie Marsh much good, you know, to be running round with a coloured boy."

Nahendra Nao stood up as if a spring had been released in him, his shoulders back, his head erect; and once more for a second Elsie Marsh was afraid. The lad noticed her fear. A bitter smile twisted his lips.

"You have nothing to fear from me, Elsie," he said, gently and quietly.

He took out his handkerchief, and wrapped the rope of pearls as best he could within it. It was too big a parcel for him to stow away in any pocket.

"I'll send round for my clothes in the morning, Elsie," he said, and he went out of the room. Elsie Marsh sat and listened. She heard the door latch gently.

"That's over, then," she said to herself. Men who slammed doors behind them came back. Men who closed them gently did not. "And he upset that puzzle, too, just as I was finishing it. On purpose. I'll swear he did! That's the sort of boy he is." And Elsie Marsh finished her brandy and soda.