Читать книгу The Woman Who Stole Everything and Other Stories - Arnold Bennett - Страница 5

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“Now,” said Henry Kearns, sympathetically but quite cheerfully. “We’re beginning to know each other. Let’s talk straight, shall we—Nick?” It was the first time he had used the Christian name to young Ussher.

The waiters had withdrawn. And Henry, after telling about himself, had led the conversation to Nick and his business, and then his wife: and the husband had cautiously but not unwillingly admitted domestic friction.

Nick gave a very faint cough, pulled at the front of his collar, straightened his black tie, with the latest butterfly ends, and shifted his long legs.

“I’d like to,” said he, with a warm, candid smile.

Kearns answered the smile with another, equally warm and candid. Intimacy was born all of a sudden.

“Your marriage isn’t quite a success?”

“That’s right—uncle,” Nick laughed—a laugh curt and self-conscious.

Henry Kearns liked to be addressed as “uncle.”

They had dined in Henry’s private room, and were sitting in easy-chairs on either side of a dead fireplace, with the round dinner-table and its orange-shaded lamp behind them. No other light in the over-upholstered room. A delicate night-breeze, and the distant sounds of traffic, came through the heavy silken curtains of the large window. Uncle Henry was impressed by the situation so swiftly and clearly revealed. And he was pleased with himself for having surmised it earlier in the day. He felt that he had stepped into a new, romantic and formidable world—the world of sexual complications, the world of women.

For many years he had travelled, in Britain and abroad, as agent for a very large firm of contractors. A sort of commercial traveller; but not one of the ordinary sort. He had travelled “in” such things as bridges and similar public works. A single order might come to a million pounds, on which his modest commission might come to thousands—not counting the considerable item of expenses; Henry had been accustomed to move from place to place in the most luxurious style, for display was part of his successful method, and the firm willingly paid for it all.

He had made money and saved money, and had put a lot of it into shares of the firm when the firm was launched as a large limited company. The shares had risen high. He was rich, rich enough at any rate to offer himself the best of everything, from cigars to suites in hotels. He had triumphed by virtue of his gift of tongues and of persuasive diplomacy.

A year earlier, after living half his life without cost to his private purse, he had bought the house at Cander. The notion of retiring and settling had been in his mind, and now the notion was being realised. He had begun to tire of the life of business. It was a life in only two dimensions; he vaguely and instinctively wanted the third dimension—women. Never had he been worried by aught but the most transitory sentimental complications. He was free; he was bound to consult the wishes of nobody but himself; and nobody but himself had the right to criticise him. Now he desired not to be free; or, more accurately, to be both free and tied.

He looked at Nick Ussher with the concealed superiority of his gift of tongues, of his wide familiarity with countries and men, of his expertise in diplomacy, of his perfect freedom. But also he envied young Nick, though the envy seemed to him to be morbid. Nick was in a mess; yet he envied him, because the youth was more fully alive, was living in three dimensions instead of in two.

He liked Nick, except for his moist, flabby hand—he had shaken hands with him again on his arrival for dinner, his exactly punctual arrival. In addition to being handsome and elegant, Nick was evidently a very serious and dependable person. He had a good chin, a firm voice, and a manner which, if a little shy and awkward, was well poised. Harry Kearns had shown a discreet, cordial curiosity about him, and all Nick’s responses had been frank and satisfactory. Partner in an important legal firm. Very industrious. Genuinely keen on his work. Sound, broad political ideas. Sound ideas on finance—national and domestic. Anxious to learn. Quick to pick up. A substratum of rocky hardness, as indeed was proper. And the young man was fit, too. He sometimes rode a hack in the mornings; played squash rackets of a Sunday; had his preferences among Swedish exercises. He insisted on his physical fitness. But there was a tired look in his eyes, round about which the skin was drawn into a perhaps unnatural smoothness: as if by force of will he rose from his bed untimely. Yes, he had the mien of a man who is the slave of a daily implacable programme. Withal, human, appealing—possibly rendered so by his servitude to the programme.

“Cora hasn’t left you, by any chance?” Uncle Henry asked, with a gentle, disarming smile.

“No——” Nick hesitated. It seemed to him that the interview was sliding quicker and quicker down a slope into the last depths of utterly unreserved self-revelation. And this to a man whom he had met for the first time that day!

Henry Kearns silently passed a cigar-box to his guest.

“Take a fresh cigar. Don’t relight that one. Now! Let’s hear the trouble.”

“Yes. That’s all very well,” said Nick, with the cigar in his mouth and a match at the end of the cigar. “That’s all very well, but Cora’s your niece, and I’ve always understood you’re rather fond of her. You mightn’t like——”

“So I am rather fond of her. But what then? That won’t prevent me from being impartial. Be as blunt as you please. You needn’t have the least fear of putting my back up. I’m not that sort. You go right on.”

Nick puffed violently, and then examined the ignition.

“Oh! It’s so difficult to describe. It’s so darned silly. There are a million things—you know.”

“Quite!” observed Henry Kearns, sagely comprehending—the wise elder!

Nick thought:

“There’s no ‘quite’ about it. You’re a decent, kindly old cove, but you know nothing about women and they don’t interest you. You haven’t a care. You do yourself thundering well, and you’re only interested in yourself.”

This reflection, however, was tinged with bravado; it lacked perfect sincerity; Nick was admiring his uncle-in-law, and also he was passionately envying the old cove’s freedom from cares of a certain kind. In that moment Nick regarded singleness as the highest form of earthly bliss.

“Yes,” said Henry Kearns. “I know there are a million things—there always are. Just tell me one. Tell me the last one.”

“I will!” The young husband’s tone was decided. “I’ll tell you the very last one. She won’t let me get enough sleep. I took her out to the Legation Club last week. It’s infernally expensive, but she wanted to go, so I took her. Well, we dance and so on. She likes my dancing, and I’m very fond of dancing. At twelve o’clock I say to her, ‘Look here, my girl, we must be hooking it. I’ve got a day’s work in front of me to-morrow, and even as it is I shan’t be asleep before one o’clock.’ I say to her I can’t work if I don’t sleep, and if I don’t work I can’t find the money to take her about to places like the Legation Club. Plain enough, eh? Stands to reason, doesn’t it? Mind you, she sleeps till ten or eleven after an evening out, but I have to be up at seven as usual. What about it?”

“Quite, quite!” Henry Kearns eagerly encouraged the husband. “She jibbed, eh?”

“Well, of course they’re very clever, all of ’em. She said we might just stay a little longer—she was quite nice about it. Of course you asked me to tell you, and I’m telling you. It may sound nothing, it is nothing, but——. Well, at twelve-thirty or so, I said to her, ‘Now what about going home?’ Then she said a late night now and then would do me all the good in the world. I needed it. Mustn’t get in a rut. Mustn’t get middle-aged. Quite a new tack, you see. She was enjoying her evening, no mistake. Funny how they can enjoy it when they know somebody else isn’t! But they can, somehow. At one o’clock I told her straight I was going home. Gloves were off then. She said she shouldn’t go, anyway, and there were several friends there who’d be glad of her company even if I wasn’t. She danced with one or two of them. I said, by all means stay. We stopped at a table and she began to talk. I said, ‘Well, I’m off, Cora.’ She said to the people at the table, ‘Here’s my tyrant insists on taking me home. We’re both middle-aged.’ She came with me. It always takes her about ten hours to undress. She came into my room at three-fifteen—three-fifteen, if you please—and asked me if I was asleep. Fat lot of difference it would have made if I had been! We had a regular old scene. Lasted till after four. I had to get up in less than three hours. Of course I had no sleep. When I got up at seven I thought it would do her good to wake her. She was sound asleep. She wanted some waking. But I woke her all right. Never more surprised in her life! I said I thought she might like to know how it felt to be kept awake when you wanted to sleep. She simply couldn’t think of anything to say. I left her. She didn’t follow me. You see, we’re very busy in our office, and I’m the youngest partner, and I like to be there by nine o’clock, or soon after. And, by God, I am!” Nick laughed courageously. “Well, that’s one thing.”

Flushed, he leaned back in his chair.

As for Henry Kearns, he took the man’s part without any reservation. He knew Cora as a very charming girl, an enchanting girl; and how Tommy, his deceased elder brother, a dull, honest fellow, had contrived to be the father of such a girl, he never could understand! Cora and Henry were great friends; he gave her fine presents. But he was absolutely convinced of the truth and justice of Nick’s narration, and quite ready to revise his rosy estimate of Cora. After all, he was not attached to Cora, and he could judge her as objectively as anyone. Further, by her conduct thus revealed, she had put him, as her uncle, in a position of humiliation, and he resented that, and blamed her for it.

“She was very naughty,” he said kindly, but not too seriously; for he had an instinct against disparaging his own kin. Sort of disloyalty in so doing!

“But you see how cruel it was, don’t you?” cried Nick passionately, sitting up straight again in sudden excitement. “You don’t defend her, do you? If you can offer any defence of her I should very much like to hear it. Because I can’t think of any. I’ve tried to. Now do be frank with me!”

Nick gave such a display of emotion that Uncle Henry was startled, positively frightened by it. He could feel perspiration on his forehead—but it was a warm night.

“No, I don’t see any defence,” he agreed, quiet and compassionate.

“It’s so cruel!” Nick repeated fiercely, just as if Uncle Henry had disagreed instead of agreeing. “It’s so cruel! That’s what I say. What can you do? What can a man do? What is there to do? How can you handle a woman when she behaves like that? Just think of me all that day! And the next night! And the day after! Just think of me!”

The young man seemed to have lost all shame, all reserve. Uncle Henry wished the scene could end. He had an acute sense of awkwardness. A young solicitor, in large practice, prim like most lawyers, immersed in his profession—breaking out like this! It was terrible; it was shocking.

Uncle Henry tried to reassure himself by thinking:

“It’s nothing to do with me, anyhow. I shan’t let it disturb me.”

The self-centred, confirmed bachelor, without a care! He was aghast at the unexpected glimpse of the horrors of marriage. Aghast! How wise he had been to remain single! What a life! But had he not always known, in his heart, that women were like that?

Nick leaned forward still more.

“And that’s only one thing!” he exclaimed, waving a hand towards Henry. He kept the pose, arm outstretched, lips tight, gaze fixed on Henry. Almost a menace! The glowing end of Nick’s cigar fascinated Henry. Certainly the young man had entirely forgotten any diffidence he might have had in criticising the niece to the uncle.

“See, how long have you been married?”

“Well, you ought to know. You sent her an A1 ring. She’s lost it.”

“The deuce she has!” said Uncle Henry, aggrieved. The ring had cost him a hundred and fifty pounds.

“She loses everything. Three years—we’ve been married, nearly. Yes, that’s it. Three years, nearly.”

“I suppose there’s nothing I can do?” Henry’s conscience compelled him to suggest.

“It’s awfully good of you. But I doubt if there’s anything to be done.” (Henry was much relieved; his mind lightened.) “Ah! Well! Things may settle down. Let’s hope so. I don’t know why I should come here bothering you like this. It was just seeing you—happening to see you—I thought——You must excuse me.”

The young man’s tone was now changed to the resigned, the calm, and the matter-of-fact. He had returned to his senses, in a sweat. He was ashamed of his outspokenness about a private and most intimate affair. He felt as though he had just wakened up to find himself parading a fashionable thoroughfare in pants and undershirt.

“I suppose she doesn’t happen to have taken a fancy to anybody else?” Henry Kearns timidly suggested. A daring suggestion!

“God knows! I don’t! ... No, honestly I don’t think it’s that. It’s——Well, what’s the use? ... You’ve been very nice about it.”

“You ought to have a child.”

“Cora! A child! You should hear her on that point.”

The interview ended thus.