Читать книгу Shadows of Flames - Amélie Rives - Страница 7

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It was four o'clock when Sophy and Mrs. Arundel left the ball. Olive would not hear of her taking a cab, but sent her home in her own carriage. As she rolled through the empty streets, above which the dawn was beginning to quicken, Sophy had a queer feeling of driving through the echoing halls of a vast and sinister house from which the roof had been lifted.

Above Regent's Park a late moon hung bleak and glassy. It shone with that wan glare as of a planet sick to death. Richard Burton's line about the moon occurred to her: "A corpse upon the way of night." The reaction of her extraordinary exhilaration of the early evening was upon her. All about her seemed eldritch, sinister. Even the sparrows, the town's familiars, the excellent, shrewd gossips of the pavement, seemed unlike real birds.

When she entered her own hall, the sight of the pallid, heavy-eyed footman who admitted her distressed her still further. She hated servants to have to wait up for her. She always gave Tilda strict orders to go to bed.

The footman lighted and gave her her bedroom candle. Chesney disliked gas to burn all night.

"Good-night, William. I'm afraid you are very tired," said Sophy.

"Not at all, madam," said William politely. His tone suggested that he really preferred taking his rest on a hard hall-chair with an hour's nap in bed before rising at six o'clock.

Sophy sighed as she went upstairs. All her exultant feeling of the evening had been only another illusion. The time was out of joint again. As she passed Chesney's door, a thick, heavy smell of lamp-smoke made her turn. She tried the knob softly. The door opened, and the nauseous smell flooded her. Yes; he had gone to sleep still poring over that odious book. The lamp, almost burnt out, was sending up a thick, brownish smoke—the wick, barely moist with oil, was fringed with little mushrooms of fire. Sophy extinguished the lamp and stood gazing down at her husband. He had been a magnificent looking man, three years ago. He was still handsome, but in the way that a fine stallion is still handsome when its withers and back begin to sink. It was as if he were sinking in on himself—as if the great muscles and sinews were relaxing like elastic that has been over-used. Holding the candle closer, Sophy gazed and gazed at him. It was as if she were gazing at a stranger. There was a fine spangling of sweat on his broad forehead; as he breathed his lips puffed in and out. They looked dry and cracked. He slept heavily, as though his veins held lead, as though his limbs were weighted. The solid heaviness of his sleep struck her as appalling. And, suddenly, what Olive had told her rushed over her again. Standing motionless, her eyes took frightened scurries about the room, over the bed, the dressing-table, the little stand that supported the lamp. A glass and bottle that had held cognac stood empty. She bent closer—then suddenly drew back ashamed. She was not like Psyche spying on Love with her candle; but a woman gazing at defenceless sensuality—at the degraded body that had once housed love. An immense pity came over her. She felt that she had been guilty towards him—guilty of staring at his bare degradation with calm eyes while he lay unconscious. She was not being his wife but a cold critic. And perhaps—perhaps, it was only she who could save him, who could restore to him his real self.

Setting down her candle, she drew away the obscene book from under his heavy hands, closed it, and laid it to one side. He did not stir or mutter. Then she knelt down beside him, hiding her face against the bed. She wished to pray for him and for herself. But her thoughts scattered, whirled with the coiling sparkles against her closed eyelids.

"Mystery ... Mystery ... Mystery ..." This word kept beating through her mind. Yes; it was all mysterious—pain, joy, illness, health, goodness, vice—even love. But love was the greatest mystery of all. Whence did it come, and whither go? Where was her love for Cecil?

"Mystery ... Mystery ... Mystery."

When she reached her own bedroom, and found herself once more alone, that overkeyed, excited feeling came back upon her. She glanced at the bed with distaste. It was impossible to think of stretching her limbs out calmly and resting her head on a pillow. She went from one window to the other, drawing back the curtains. Her room was a corner one and looked south and east. The sun was now rising. The whole lower heaven was covered by a dull-red down of cloudlets. It looked softly convex above the quiet tops of the trees, like the breast of a vast bird. Somewhere, far above, out of sight in the pale-grey vault of air, she fancied its golden crest and beak, darting among the stars, that were as little, shining gnats to it. She went and glanced at her watch which Tilda had placed on the table beside her bed. A quarter to five. She would wait until a quarter past, then she would ring up the butler (he, at least, had had a night's rest) and order her horse.

As the sun rose higher, a thin white mist began to coil softly like steam among the trees of Regent's Park. At five minutes to six she was mounted. The brown gelding seemed as glad to be abroad as she was. He quhirred with pleasure and good spirits at every step. She loved the creaking of the saddle, and the massive satin of his shoulders as each step sent the great joint in rotary motion, making a shining ripple along the sleek hide. She felt all lifted up high above the normal griefs and trials of life. As she galloped to and fro, she thought of Amaldi, and recalled her presentiment of something important about to happen to her last evening. Had it happened? Was her meeting with Amaldi an important thing? Perhaps his friendship was to prove vital. He, too, had known unhappiness—of that she was certain. She thought of her fancying how, if he were a priest, she could confess anything to him. It came to her suddenly that it was because he would be sure to understand—even things alien to his own nature.

She did not see her husband that day. He sent word that he had waked feeling badly and would "sleep it off." Towards evening, when she wished to go to him, his man told her that he was still sleeping. She went to bed herself without seeing him. The next morning again he sent word that he felt better, but would not be up till after luncheon and wished to be left quiet. This made her uneasy; she would have liked to go to him in spite of his wish, but she dared not. Such intrusions only made him furious.

As she had some shopping to do for the baby, she spent the early afternoon in this manner. When she returned and went to her writing-room, a gay little apartment looking out on the small garden, she found Cecil lounging there in one of the easy-chairs. As soon as she glanced at him she saw that he had what she called his "good" look—that is, his face was quiet and rather pale, and his mouth and eyes gentle. He gave a rather embarrassed smile as she entered, lifting one shoulder slightly in a way he had when nervously self-conscious. She knew that he was repentant for the way that he had behaved to her on Thursday evening, and would tell her so.

She went up to him, laid one hand on his hair and kissed his forehead. He put up his hand and patted hers softly.

"So you're all right again? I'm so glad," she said, taking a chair in front of him. "I was worried about you yesterday."

"Yes. I had a devilish time," he said. As he spoke, he blew a cloud of cigarette smoke that half veiled his face from her, and again he smiled in that half-sheepish way. This smile always roused in Sophy a feeling mingled of tenderness and irritation. She sat watching him smoke for a few moments without saying anything more. He always seemed to her to smoke feverishly, avidly, as if the cigarette were a sort of food and he very hungry. His cigarettes were enormous, made to order for him. He smoked without a holder, down to the very end. She thought that it must be bad for him to smoke so fast, and such quantities of these huge cigarettes. But she dared not say anything. A word only was sufficient to throw him from a "good" mood into a "bad" one.

He broke the silence himself.

"I say, Daphne," he blurted suddenly. "I was a beast to you the other night. Beg pardon."

Sophy looked at him consideringly without replying. Somehow this casual apology roused anew all the feeling of outraged anger that she had then felt. She hated, too, for him to call her "Daphne" on these occasions. It seemed such a cheap sentimentality. He had given her the name of "Daphne" in their sweetheart days, because of that book of verse which she had written at twenty-one, and which had brought her a momentary fame.

"Going to sulk a bit—eh?" he now asked, with that self-conscious, conciliatory little grin of his.

"No; it isn't sulkiness," said Sophy. "I'm only wondering how much you really care?"

"I care a deuce of a lot, Daphne. 'Pon my soul I do."

"And you think such things as you said and—and did to me, the other night, can be made all right by a 'beg pardon'?"

Chesney moved uneasily. His eyes slipped from under hers. He lit another cigarette with elaborate care.

"Look here, Daphne," he said in a would-be bluff, frank tone. "What did I say ... and do? You know I get confoundedly blurry sometimes, when one of these beastly attacks is coming on."

"You really don't remember?" Sophy asked, looking at him keenly. She saw a slow red cloud his pale face.

"Well ... I've a hazy notion that I went for Gerald ... about those pearls. Nasty things!" he broke off viciously. "Mere pretty diseases—tumours—you know I loathe 'em."

Sophy had wondered many times what had become of her pearls after he had strewn the floor with them. She said now:

"What have you done with them, Cecil?"

His shoulder went up crossly.

"Oh, they're safe enough," he said grudgingly. "I'll have 'em strung over for you. Counted 'em this morning. They're all there. So you haven't got that against me."

Sophy sat looking down at her hands, and turning her wedding ring slowly round and round. She had never thought that she could come to hate an inanimate object as fiercely as she sometimes hated her wedding ring. But to-day she did not hate it. It seemed a dreary little symbol of a dreary fact that must be borne somehow, that was all. Suddenly she lifted her eyes to his.

"I don't harbour things 'against you,' Cecil," she said. "The pearls were the least of it all. It was the way you spoke of Gerald and that ... that loathsome book." Her look grew suddenly impassioned with resentment. "Why should you wish to show me such a thing?" she asked very low, and her voice trembled.

Chesney was deeply embarrassed again. He looked away from her, and that slow red rose in his face.

"Oh—men are hell!" he said thickly. "You'd never really understand a man, Sophy. There are abysms ... cess-pools in us."

He got up suddenly and flung himself on his knees beside her, hiding his face in her lap like a child.

"Don't try to understand," she heard him muttering. "Just try to ... to forgive."

There was something at once piteous and repulsive, in that huge figure crouching so humbly at her knee.

Sophy felt a choking sensation.

"Get up ... get up, dear," she pleaded. "I do forgive you! Please, please get up!"

"Will you kiss me then?" came the muttering voice, muffled by her skirts.

"Yes. Yes, I will. Only get up—do, dear, do!"

He knelt up, and, flinging his arms around her, reached his mouth thirstily to hers. That kiss was a deathly draught to Sophy, but pity made her accept it without shrinking visibly. In her mind the thought went round and round: "Mystery—mystery. What was once like life to me is now like death—worse." Then: "I must be kind to him. If I am kind perhaps I can save him."

Chesney was fingering the folds of her gown shyly.

"I say—what a darling you look in this frock, Daphne," he said. "It clings so—shows your lovely Greek body so beautifully. What's it made of?"

"They call it Chudder Cloth," she said, smiling.

Chesney gasped, as if she had sprinkled water in his face, then, sinking back upon the floor at her feet, he went into fits of the most immoderate mirth. "Oh! Ah!" He could scarcely get his breath. "Forgive me, Sophy! But 'Chudder Cloth'—'Chudder'—I never heard anything so ludicrous in my life——"

And he rolled over on the floor, shaken from head to foot with preposterous laughter, beating the carpet with his hands.

Sophy was used to these outbursts caused by some especial, yet apparently trivial, word. Sometimes they took the form of mirth, as to-day, sometimes that of rage. She remembered what Olive had told her. Her heart felt very heavy.

There came a knock at the door. Chesney sprang to his feet, scowling at the closed door.

"Come in!" said Sophy.

It was William, with a card on a tray.

"The Marquis Amaldi to see you, madam."

"Very well," said Sophy.

Cecil lighted another of his huge cigarettes.

"Who's this——foreigner?" he asked, amiably enough.

Inwardly Sophy contracted at the brutal adjective that she detested. Outwardly she was unmoved.

"A friend of Count Varesca's. I met him at the Illinghams'—no, at the Ponceforths' the other night."

"Mh!—— Well, so long. I'll make myself scarce for a bit. Can't stand foreigners."

He started towards a side door, turned, came back, and lifting her hand kissed it tenderly.

"You're a splendid thing!" he said very low. "I'm often a beast to you—but I love you—always."

He was gone. Sophy stood looking after him for some seconds, then she lowered her eyes to Amaldi's card, which she still held. She left the room thinking ... thinking....