Читать книгу Shadows of Flames - Amélie Rives - Страница 12

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At half-past eight the twilight was still clear and soft. The women's bare shoulders and jewelled heads gleamed charmingly against the dark sheen of the light-scattered river. Such of them as were made up for artificial light looked as though they had strayed from another century and forgotten to have their hair powdered also. Those that were prettily painted reminded Sophy of strange orchids that would show best by candle-light. She herself felt still and listless. Glancing at these men and women gathered together for the evening, she saw as she realised their personalities that the occasion would be "bwilliant" as Olive had said. And she felt so dull—as though the flame of her spirit had died down into pale smoke.

Olive found the chance to whisper a few words. Sophy had told her frankly how ill Cecil had been only two weeks before, and of his renewed interest in present political questions. She had begged Olive to "arrange" things a little. She was so afraid that he would get excited if he found himself surrounded entirely by men who were of the Government or on its side.

"Poor dear," Olive now whispered. "You're so pale. I'm sure it's anxiety. Don't be anxious. I've put Cecil at the uttermost end from Jack. Poor, darling Jack does so irritate him with his honest platitudes. I know! Then he'll have that rabid Radical, Cunnynham Smythe, near by. He'd have to out-Herod Herod you know, to fall foul of Cunny Smythe. And there's the Russian Ambassador, Suberov, opposite. You told me that Cecil read the Russians, didn't you? Well—that ought to be soothing. I've gathered all the ultra-Tories at my end. Amaldi's to take you in, and I've put Oswald Tyne on your right—two poets together, you know. There's that provoking Sybil Chassilis—at least half an hour late——"

She went forward to greet Lady Chassilis, and Amaldi came up to Sophy. She saw her husband glance their way, then deliberately turn his back and begin talking to the man next him. Something in that great, stolid, well-shaped back struck Sophy as ominous. She felt herself grow even paler. Her very lips felt cold as they rested on each other. She was filled with a presentiment of coming disaster. But, somehow, as she looked into Amaldi's eyes and listened to his quiet voice, a feeling of reassurance stole over her. This feeling was wholly without reason. It was only that his mere presence seemed to give her a feeling of safety, as on that first occasion of their meeting.

"Did Bobby approve of my offering?" he asked, noticing her extreme pallor. He thought that she looked even more lovely pale like this.

"Yes. It was good of you. He went to sleep with the little boat in his arms."

Here Oswald Tyne approached. He was one of the most remarkable characters of his day. Years ago, when she was a schoolgirl, Sophy had heard him lecture in her own country. He himself had then been a youth but just graduated from Oxford. She remembered him, a slender, poetic figure. Now he was a heavy, middle-aged man. The long face had become jowled; the light irises of his eyes showed too broad a crescent of white below them. The sensual, heavy-lipped, good-natured mouth seemed to weigh upon the chin, creasing it downward. He was always delightful to Sophy, but she always felt ill-at-ease with him. This feeling was obscure to her herself. She had never tried to analyse it. With the oddest contradiction, at one and the same time she admired his gifts, and felt a great compassion for him—the man. And this compassion could not have been called forth by anything in the circumstances of his life.

"Thank you for being so pale to-night, dear lady," he said in his abrupt, whimsical way. "One gets so weary of colour. How Iris must have hated her rainbow at times. Our Englishwomen are too beautifully tinted. One longs sometimes for the sight of an albino. Think of an assembly of negroes and albinos. How austere and weird at the same time. Would you have such an assembly garmented all in black or white or dull orange?"

"But orange is a colour," ventured Sophy, smiling.

Tyne grew extremely serious and impressive. "No; no! Pardon me. Orange is only the earthly body of light. I think we should dress our assembly in orange—the albinos in a clear tulip tint—the negroes in a fierce saffron."

"Oswald! what fwightful nonsense you talk at times!" cried Mrs. Arundel, overhearing this. "Please go and take in Countess Hohenfels. She's dying to hear you talk."

Tyne looked at her out of his heavy, swimming eyes.

"A German? You have given me a German for dinner? I see. You divined that my mood would be musical. But Germans have mathematical imaginations. Their music is the integral calculus of the spheres. It is——"

Olive firmly drew him away, still pouring forth this flood of easy nonsense.

At table, Sophy noticed that her husband glanced from her to Amaldi once or twice. His look was hard and hostile. She determined to try to talk as much as possible with both Tyne and Amaldi. This would be easier—as it became at once evident that the dinner would be one of those delightful occasions on which little groups talk together, even across the table.

"When are you going to make me see another beautiful dawn?" asked Tyne abruptly.

Sophy gazed at him. She wondered what was coming, and as he smiled at her in his slow way, she thought how much worse it seemed for a poet to have black teeth than for a mere, ordinary mortal like John Arundel.

"How did I make you see a beautiful dawn?" she asked, knowing that he wanted her to put the question.

"By writing your 'Shadow of a Flame' and letting me read it. Yes—all night I played with those lovely, flickering verses."

"You are too kind to me," she said shyly. "Tell me when I am to read another of your books—that are not shadows of flames, but flames themselves."

"Lovely—lovely!" he murmured. "That is quite lovely of you. But as for a new book—— It is so prosaic to publish a book in London. Nothing really happens. Now in Paris—why—one day all the boulevards blossom like beds of daffodils. You are amazed. You ask, 'Why this delicious flowering?' You are answered—'Paul Bourget has published a new novel.'"

He went airily on for some moments in this strain. From across the table, a clever critic and man of letters was listening with pleased amusement. Suddenly he said:

"Tell me, Oswald, have you ever read the works of an American called Edgar Saltus?"

"Why Edgar Saltus, like a stiletto from the blue? Yes; I have read some of his productions. But why?"

"Because the American boulevards seem to blossom with his flowers of rhetoric in the way that you describe. I have often wanted to parody him. But parody crouches at his feet."

Tyne held up one of his suave, heavy hands.

"Softly, please," he murmured. "Tread softly there. I have a certain tenderness for Mr. Edgar Saltus. I know nothing in literature more touching than the way that passion and grammar struggle for mastery on every one of his wonderful pages!"

Amaldi listened with his quiet smile. He himself was not in a talkative mood that night. Besides, he was one of those men who, while seeming outwardly unconscious of what is not directly in contact with them, notice everything that takes place, and he had caught those dark looks cast by Cecil Chesney at Sophy and himself. Now he was glad to see that she was becoming diverted and roused from her listlessness by the talk of Oswald Tyne and his friend. He also observed that Chesney, too, had apparently changed his humour and was engaged in an animated conversation with the men and women nearest him. After a while, he saw that Chesney was holding forth alone. But it was evidently a perfectly amiable harangue, for the others were listening with animated faces. Still Sophy, who could not catch the gist of her husband's talk, looked suddenly anxious, and Amaldi was relieved when the critic, who had been talking with Tyne, and whose name was Ferrars, said to Sophy:

"Your husband's having a brilliant go at Russian literature, Mrs. Chesney. Are you as keen on that subject as he is?"

"Yes, quite, I think."

"Tolstoy and Dostoievsky are our living Pillars of Hercules," said Ferrars, a little didactically. "They guard the portals of modern literature. They are our colossi—we others fuss and potter about under their huge limbs like pygmies."

"Speak for yourself, Charles," said Tyne coolly. "I may not be a colossus, but I have wings. Gauzy, iridescent, little vans maybe, but sufficient to lift me. I am not what sportsmen call a 'heavyweight' of literature—but I can coruscate, which your colossi cannot. And I am not sure that I don't prefer fireflies to eagles."

"Which do you think greater—Tolstoy or Dostoievsky?" Sophy slipped in, before Ferrars could launch a sarcasm.

"Oh, Tolstoy, Tolstoy ... by all means," murmured Tyne.

"Which do you think greater?" said Sophy to Amaldi.

"Well...." Amaldi reflected an instant. "When Tolstoy regards the human race, one feels that he sees it made up of little Tolstoys. When Dostoievsky looks inward—it is as if he saw all humanity in himself—in Dostoievsky."

"Capital!" cried Ferrars. Sophy looked at Amaldi, pleased at hearing her own conviction so well put into words. Tyne regarded the young man dreamily.

"How charming is the multiplicity of opinion," he then said. "If I ever sacrificed it would be to the goddess of Variety. Now to me, Tolstoy is by far the greater figure of the two."

Ferrars had begun to talk to the woman on his right and was not listening any longer. The women on the left and right of Tyne and Amaldi were eagerly attentive.

"Why?" asked several voices at once.

"Because Tolstoy is the greatest Immoralist of his time," said Tyne serenely.

"Oh! Oh!" came several voices.

"He is immoral in spirit where others are only immoral in fact," continued the poet, quite unmoved. "Never was there so irreligious, so immoral a spectacle as that Titan in the throes of religion. For this religion of his violates and thwarts every natural instinct and desire of his pagan nature. To deny one's true nature is irreligion. To be egotistically selfless is the paradox of the inferno. Besides, is there a greater sin against genius than to worship the commonplace? Now virtue is the norm—the level convention invented by civilised man. The crime of virtuous genius is that it becomes null. The cult of virtue is the eighth deadly sin—in a creative mind. Fancy a virtuous Creator!"

He laughed suddenly into the faces which seemed not to have decided whether to look shocked or to smile.

Sophy turned to Amaldi. But try as she might, she could not overcome the gêne cast upon her by those hostile looks of her husband. She felt that she was not being natural with Amaldi, and the more this feeling overcame her, the more she felt it impossible to recover her free, delightful intercourse with him. They talked conventionally, gliding over the surface of things. Once, in spite of herself, her eyes strayed towards Cecil. But he was not looking at her. He was leaning close to Lady Chassilis. A flush had come into his face. His eyes glittered. He seemed to be saying something delightful but rather shocking, for Sybil Chassilis gave him a sidelong flash out of her black eyes—then flushed and cast them down, smiling in a peculiar way. Sophy noticed with a sinking heart that he drank glass after glass of champagne. It must indeed be good wine for Cecil to drink so freely of it. He usually cursed the champagne of his friends.

Suddenly Tyne turned again to Sophy.

"I have a grievance—a sorrow—a real sorrow," he said. "I wonder if you can console me?"

"What is it?" asked Sophy in a low voice. He seemed never to be in earnest, yet, at that moment, the queer feeling of compassion that he always excited in her, rose in her heart.

He drew a deep sigh. Now she was sure that there was a mocking light, far back in his pale eyes.

"It is that no one will believe in my real wickedness—my beautiful vileness. I have no disciple who really believes in me. Yet I am wonderfully vile. Virtue seems like a pale, pock marked wench to me. I feel like crying out on her like old Capulet: 'Out, you tallow-face! You baggage!' But Sin, with the clear black flames curled about her naked feet like the petals of a lotus—Sin, with her delicate, acrid lips that never satiate and are never satiated—her I worship! her I serve!—Do you believe me?"

Sophy sat gazing at him. Something strange and wild, and unbelievable took place in her. She saw—no, she knew—not by ratiocination, but as one knows when one falls into the sea that one is wet—she knew that this man was truly vile, that he was speaking the truth to her. But even more wonderful, she knew that horror and tragedy unspeakable waited for him. It was as if the poisonous shadow fell over him as she looked—as if its outer hem touched her like a thing of palpable texture.

He was looking at her strangely, too—half as if afraid, but curious. Like a man who knows that the oracle can divine truly—that it may answer to his undoing, and that, if it answers thus, that answer will surely come to pass.

"Do you believe me?" he said again, keeping up the bravado of his light tone, but some chord in his voice stirred oddly.

Sophy drew a long breath. She felt herself shivering, then, "Yes," she said almost inaudibly. He continued to look at her—a strange, musing look.

"Thank you," he said blandly. "So I have a disciple at last."

Then that passion of horror and pity broke down all conventional restraint in Sophy.

"But why?" she said, in a passionate whisper. "Why? Why?"

He was silent just for an instant's pressure, then he answered by the most extraordinary and appalling piece of blasphemy.

"Because," he said, "'before Abraham was I am.'"