Читать книгу Shadows of Flames - Amélie Rives - Страница 4

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In the hansom, glad to be alone, Sophy sat with her arms tight against her breast as though she would keep something in her from bursting. She felt singing from head to foot like a twanged bowstring. She sat gazing at the rhythmic play of the horse's glossy quarters, and the soft blur of the May night. There had been a slight shower. The pavements were sleek and dark. There was a smell of soot and wet young leaves in the air, as of town and country oddly mingled in a kiss.

As this idea occurred to her, she made a movement of irritation. Kisses! Why should she think of kisses? They were nature's most banal lures—nauseous. And moodily, her eyes still black from the spread pupils, she recalled Cecil's first kiss and what it had meant to her. Something golden, vague, wonderful, fulfilling, yet promising more—more than fulfilment—an opening of new desires, new aspirations, future fulfilments more splendid still. He had been a great lover. A line flashed to her. It sparkled through her mind, searing and cynical:

As wolves love lambs—so lovers love their loves.

He was wolf, now—she, lamb. Ah, well; no! He was mistaken—she was jaguar, leopard, catamount (he had called her a "silky catamount" in one of his rages), anything but lamb. She could feel her fangs growing. They were no longer little milk-teeth at which he laughed. Some day—if he continued to treat her in this way—some day she would strike and strike with them—deep into some vital part of that which still lived and which had once been love. Yes; it would be better to drag a corpse between them than this fierce, bloated, soulless body that had once been inhabited by love.

But what was it? What had changed him? She had not been unhappy at first, though shocked by a certain violence in his passion for her which had verged on the brutal. In her own impassioned ignorance she had told herself that this must be the man in him. Later, something finer, surer, stronger than reason, convinced her that this was not so—that the blazing bowels of a smelting furnace have nothing in common with the star-sown flame of love. She mused on the origin of the word desire. "De sidera"—a turning from the stars. Yes; his back was toward the stars.

A waft of perfume from the rose-geraniums in the window-boxes of a house near which they were passing overcame her with homesickness.

She saw the lawn at "Sweet-Waters," the ring of old acacia trees, the little round, green wooden tables in their midst, covered with pots of mignonette and rose-geranium—herself and Charlotte swinging in the hammocks near-by—the peep of blue mountains through the hedge of box. Oh! to feel Charlotte's arms around her!

She pinched the back of her hand sharply, feeling the tears start. Virginia was far away, like her childhood, like her dead mother, like all the other simple, lovely things that had made life joyous.

How strange it seemed to think that the old, familiar life was going on there just the same! She had given her big chestnut, Hal, to Charlotte, when she married Cecil. Charlotte wrote that she rode him every day. Oh, for a ride through the Virginian fields and woods! Oh, to hear the soft jargon of the darkies—to have if only twenty-four hours of the old, free, simple life!

The cab stopped before a house in Bruton Street. This was London. Perhaps there was no Virginia. Perhaps she had only dreamed it.

When she found that her hostess had not yet come down, she was startled.

"Am I too early? Isn't dinner at eight?" she asked the butler.

"At half-past eight, madam."

"Never mind. I will go up to Mrs. Arundel's room."

She went upstairs and knocked at Olive's door.

"Who is it?" said a sweet, slight voice.

"Sophy. I've come too early."

"Oh, you darling!" called the voice. "Come in. It isn't locked." Sophy heard her add, "Open the door for Mrs. Chesney, Marie."

She opened the door herself before the maid could reach it, and entered. The room was charming grey and pink. The dressing-table was as elaborate as a lady-altar. Before it sat Olive, with her beautiful powdery brown hair over her shoulders. Only one soft puff was in place at the back of her head. The air was full of the scent of "Chypre," a perfume then very fashionable and which Sophy disliked. She could not understand why Olive used it. "Violet" or "Clover" would have suited her so much better.

She went up to Olive, and they kissed each other.

"You darling!" said Mrs. Arundel again. "How stunning you look! And what luck! Did you think it was for eight?"

"I thought your note said eight o'clock."

"Then it was my beastly handwriting. But I'm awfully glad, all the same. Now we can have a comfy talk."

Sophy sat in a little Louis XVI chair and watched the hair-dressing. She thought, as she so often did, how much prettier it would look dressed simply, without being frizzled so elaborately in front and puffed so intricately behind. Mrs. Arundel's face had taken on the serious look that women's faces wear when their hair is being dressed. Her eyes were large and candid, of a soft Madonna-blue. Her small, prettily shaped mouth was pastel pink. All her features were small and prettily shaped. She was the type of woman who still looks girlish at thirty-five. As Sophy watched her she was also thinking of how even her friends said that "Olive was never happy unless she had a lover." Three years in England had taught Sophy that a woman may be an excellent mother, a good friend, an attentive wife, and yet have "lovers." How strange it seemed to her! She could not imagine such a thing happening without an upheaval of the universe—her universe, at least. She could understand a woman, made desperate by unhappiness, "running away" from her husband with another man—but to go on living with one man as his wife and having a lover—lovers—— She had given up trying to solve it. She knew that Olive's present flame was a Roman nobleman—Count Varesca—an attaché of the Italian Embassy. She seemed to bloom under it into a sort of recrudescence of virginal charm.

"How you stare with your great eyes, you dear!" said Olive. "Don't I look nice?"

"You look perfectly lovely."

"Wait till you see what a deevy frock Jean has sent me."

"Jean Worth?"

"Is there any other Jean?"

Sophy laughed.

Then Olive sent Marie away.

"You know, Sophy dear, I really have something to tell you."

"Is it nice?"

"No, it's nasty ... perfectly disgusting!"

"What is it about?"

"Your dear mother-in-law—Lady Wychcote."

Sophy stiffened.

"Well?" she said.

"Sophy dear! You mustn't take it too seriously. Only—I thought you ought to know. She's saying it everywhere."

"Saying what?" asked Sophy quietly. "Please go on, Olive."

"She's saying perfectly beastly things about your influence on Cecil. Trying to put it all on you."

"To put what on me?"

"All his—his queerness. She says you've alienated him from his family. And...."

Even Olive's glib little tongue stuck here.

"Well?" said Sophy, as before.

"She's saying—— Oh, she's really a beast, that woman! She's saying that you've given him drugs ... taught him how to take them."

"Drugs?" said Sophy. Her brows knitted together. She was very pale. "Drugs?" she repeated.

"Yes—opium—morphine ... that kind of thing.... I consulted Jack before telling you." (Jack was Mr. Arundel.) "And he said I should by all means. You aren't vexed with me for telling you, are you?"

Olive's italics were very plaintive.

Sophy was looking down at the tip of her shoe, which she moved slightly to and fro on the soft carpet. She said in a low voice, very gently:

"No; I thank you."

Then she turned and went to the window, pulling aside the curtains and looking blindly out into the soft, pale night.

Drugs! She had never thought of that in her inexperience. All resentment at her mother-in-law's accusation was engulfed in that appalling revelation.

Behind her back, Mrs. Arundel stole nervous peeps at the little ormolu clock on the mantelpiece. That new frock had quantities of hooks and eyes on it. She wished now that she had not sent Marie away, or that she had waited to tell Sophy until the gown was on. It was unfortunate. One couldn't go up to a person who was overcome with righteous wrath and say: "Would you mind, dear, just hooking me up, before you give way further to your feelings?"

But just here Sophy turned and came towards her.

"We'd better be getting on with your toilette, Olive," she said.

"What a darling you are!" cried Mrs. Arundel, quite melted. "You're so unselfish.... It's perfectly touching."

Sophy couldn't help smiling.

"It isn't unselfishness," she said; "it's the instinct of self-preservation. I can't give way to decent, moderate little angers."

She was talking to keep Olive from seeing how deep the thing had pierced her. And she hooked deftly and lightly, with fingers that were icy cold but nimble. After she had admired her friend and the new gown sufficiently, she said: "Was there any more? What motive did she say I had?"

Mrs. Arundel glanced slyly at the clock again. She had still a good twenty minutes before her guests would arrive.

"Let's sit here cozily by the window—and I'll tell you everything!"

The homely yet amorous fragrance from the white carnations in the window-box flowed gently over them. It drowned out the smell of soot—the London smell. They might have been in a cottage-garden.

"My dear," Olive began, "the old cat hates you. That explains evewything."

"She hates all Americans," said Sophy evenly.

"So stupid of her! Yes; I believe she does. And she's wild with rage because poor, dear Gerald is sickly—and won't marry. And Cecil has married you and flouted the family politics."

"Those liberal articles he wrote some years ago?"

"'Liberal'! You never read such radical stuff in your life! The Wychcotes are the Toriest Tories in England. Yes; he did that. That was bad enough. Then he went exploring in Africa and got laurels from the R. G. S. and chucked that. But you know it all——"

"Yes," said Sophy.

"He's really awfully able, Sophy—bwilliant——"

"Yes. I know."

Olive paused a moment.

"Can't you do anything with him, Sophy?"

"No."

"Poor dear! Well, I suppose not. He was always as obstinate as—as ... a Behemoth."

Sophy couldn't restrain a tired little laugh.

"Well, you know what I mean. But when one thinks of how...."

Sophy broke in on her firmly:

"Olive dear, this isn't telling me 'everything.' I want to know what motives Lady Wychcote attributes to me."

"Really, dear—it's so disgusting of her!"

"What did she say?"

"You will have it?"

"Yes ... please."

"She says you want to get rid of Cecil on account of Gerald."

Sophy was silent for some moments. Olive leaned forward and took her hand, caressing it.

"Don't mind too much, dear," she coaxed. "Only—be on your guard."