Читать книгу The Woman Who Stole Everything and Other Stories - Arnold Bennett - Страница 10
ОглавлениеHENRY’S HEART
Henry Kearns had a heart of his own, which, after causing him no trouble for some fifty years, was at last beginning to claim a certain amount of attention. Cora had not long left the small upstairs drawing-room to deal with Sweeney in the garden, when a maid came in with a telegram. Henry read the telegram—smiled a rather sardonic smile all to himself, and then drew a letter from his side-pocket and studied it afresh for the fourth or fifth time. It was the only letter on his person; as a man of order, proud of his orderliness, he did not usually carry letters in his pockets; having promptly answered them, he either filed them away or destroyed them. This letter was written on thick, quarto paper in a large, decided, feminine hand. It ran thus:
“Dear Henry Kearns. (I don’t like ‘Mr.’ to a friend, or ‘Miss’ from a friend.) I wonder whether you would care to dine with me on Friday next—8.30—at my flat. If so I would ask just one or two people to meet you; not more than six of us altogether and perhaps only four. I should much like to have you here. I feel we have quite a lot to say to each other, and I think also you would find my friends interesting. And perhaps we could then hit on an evening for that theatre which you suggested. I am going away for the week-end—I seldom spend Sunday in town—but I shall be back on Tuesday. If I get your answer here then, that will give me time to arrange things—assuming of course you say yes, which I hope you will. I’ve been thinking over your arguments about the Allied Debts.
“Very sincerely yours,
“Cynthia Smythe.”
He had met Cynthia Smythe at a dinner at The Hague, in a Foreign Office—Peace Palace circle, and not thought more than twice of her. Then again, on a flying visit to London, at a miscellaneous party with a basis of international trading relations, held at the house of the second partner in his late firm; in which house he had been invited to spend the night. At the end of the second evening, during which he had talked to her a great deal, and she quite as much to him, he had said to himself: “There’s more in that girl than I thought there was.”
Not that she was precisely a girl. But she was a spinster. She looked—well—thirty-four. Therefore Henry, to be on the safe side, had given her forty years. She was slim, if firm of body, and very well-dressed—in her own style. It was apparent that she had means and plenty of friends, and was accustomed to formulate her ideas clearly, and to have them listened to seriously. She was acquainted with things in general and with languages. She said she had only once been in a night-club, and she regarded night-clubs as the resort of individuals of both sexes who had never grown up and who had no intellectual resources. What attracted him to her was her candour, her girlish laugh, a charming trick of raising her left shoulder, and her low voice and exquisite articulation. When his mind dwelt on her it was the shoulder-raising and the quiet, frank laugh that he thought of—saw and heard.
The telegram said:
“Address till Tuesday, The Fowl Hatch House, Stoke Mandeville. Cynthia Smythe.”
He wondered, and wondered sardonically, why she had telegraphed her address, since she had told him that Tuesday would be soon enough for his reply.... She desired to have a letter from him with the minimum of delay. He had indeed mentioned a theatre—the Chekhov play—but very vaguely—not a definite proposition.
The telegram somehow struck him as dramatic. It seemed to have given a new turn to his existence. It revealed to him that his mind had been dwelling on her very considerably. He dropped the letter on to his knee, whence it floated to the floor, and carefully examined the telegram, which had been despatched from the Great Central Station at 2.52. She must have been on the way to her week-end in the country when the idea of sending it had occurred to her. She had chanced his address: Kearns, Cander, Sussex. He had mentioned Cander once, and quite casually: she had remembered the name; the name had sunk into her consciousness. He had told her that he was leaving London for an indefinite period. Had she forgotten the fact—she who remembered a name heard once—or was she assuming that he would come specially to London for her dinner? No doubt the latter. A piece of cheek, eh? But he was flattered and excited. Yes, he was flattered by the notion that he had made an impression. His sedate heart was stirring. He said to himself: “I am a simpleton.” But he did not really believe that he was a simpleton.
Cora ran most informally and startlingly into the room; but of course with an uncle she was entitled to be girlish. She saw the telegram in Henry’s hand, and the large, bold page on the carpet.
“Oh! What a masculine sort of a woman!” she cried impulsively, almost with malicious glee. It was uncanny, unnerving. The insight of women, the agility of their wits, was utterly disconcerting; but Henry kept his presence of mind, picked up the letter, put it in his pocket, looked grave.
“Aren’t we awful?” Cora went on, as if genuinely concerned.
“Who—awful?”
“Women. I can’t understand why men ever have anything to do with us!” She seemed to be quite sincere in her condemnation of women.
Her words destroyed the original drama of the letter, and created a new one in Henry’s mind. Henry was suddenly terrified. He recoiled panic-stricken from the prospect of further relations with Cynthia Smythe. He feared the name Cynthia; he feared the name Smythe. He feared her handwriting, her notepaper. He thought: “She’s forty and she’s a virgin, and so damned self-confident, and she must be so set in her habits—finicky habits of course, like mine.” His liberty, his priceless, beloved liberty: which he was just beginning to enjoy to the full! Was he to let it go? He could not. He was free, free; was he to purchase chains and eternally bind himself? He pictured the sharing of a bathroom with Cynthia Smythe! God knows why at that moment he should picture such a disturbing fragment of dailiness; but he did. And he was affrighted. But through his alarms, as through a gauze, he could see Cynthia lifting enchantingly her left shoulder, and hear her quiet laugh.
“Well,” said Cora cheerfully. “Sweeney’s gone. I’ve packed him off. You’ll never see him again. So that’s all right.”
Evidently, he thought, she meant to stay on. She had been caught in the attempt to use his home as a house of assignation; but she could perceive therein no reason against her staying on.
