Читать книгу The Celestial City - Baroness Orczy - Страница 9

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Litta had listened in silence and almost motionless to the sad story, which was only a repetition of what she knew already. But somehow the repetition did not fret her; the occasion, the amazing occasion, seemed to justify the Princess Bobrinsky’s reiteration of the oft-told tale. It was only when Gabrielle paused and the sad story had come to an end that Litta once more questioned her friend.

“And you never thought,” she asked, “to get hold of your valuables before this?”

“No. Not really,” Gabrielle replied with an indifferent shrug. “You see, so many of us have been hugging the fond, foolish dream that one day everything would come right in Russia, that those of us who have been driven out into exile would all return some day and come back into our own. Then I had nobody—or thought I had nobody—to worry about. It didn’t seem worth while to risk one’s life, and probably worse, to go on what you call this mad adventure. Money meant so little to me—until last night.”

“If it is only a question of money——” Litta exclaimed impulsively.

“You would offer it to me with both your dear lovely hands,” Gabrielle Bobrinsky broke in quickly, and for once her voice lost its listless monotone and her eyes glowed with unshed tears. “I know, dear—I know. You are the most wonderful friend in the world, and why you should bother about me at all I can’t think.”

“Don’t trouble to think,” Litta rejoined softly, “or rather put it all down to the fact that I am not altogether an ungrateful beast, after all you’ve meant to me.”

“Not more than you have meant to me, my darling. You were the one bright star in my life during those awful times when gradually I began to realise that I should never see Cyril again. I felt so utterly lonely—and I can’t tell you what a horrid feeling that is.”

“I know,” Litta murmured under her breath.

“Oh! my dear!” Gabrielle protested with her sad little smile. “I never think of you as lonely. You have such a host of friends—look at the crowd you had here this afternoon—and you have your husband.”

“Yes, as you say, I have my husband.”

And as she said this Litta’s voice once more grew harsh and almost shrill, as if a sob was fighting to pass her throat and she was trying to crush it down with a mirthless laugh and flippant phrase. She picked up a cigarette, lit it, then threw it down and jumped to her feet: there was a jerkiness in all her movements now. She knelt on the hearthrug and picked up a heavy log to throw it on the fire. With it in her hand, she paused, kneeling before the fire, the glow from the burning wood casting a soft, flickering light upon her face. Everything was so still! so still! just the crackling of the fire, and the ticking of the English grandfather clock, and now and again a gust of wind causing the orange trees below the terrace to shake and rustle their sharp, metallic leaves.

Gabrielle was silent in the corner of the sofa, thoughtfully twirling her wedding ring round her finger, her thoughts far away in that cruel, far-off Russia, where the husband she adored starved and toiled as a convict.

Everything was so still! Litta, kneeling in front of the fire, gazed into the glow, searching in the depths of those mysterious fiery caverns for an answer to the many puzzles that agitated her mind—her friend’s future, this fairy-tale in which she could not bring herself to believe, and also something of her own destiny, which a strange, unaccountable foreboding told her was somehow interlinked with this miracle of a long-lost husband and a buried treasure.

So still!—now the wood even had ceased to crackle, even Gabrielle had ceased to sigh. Only the old clock ticked away with solemn monotony, and presently a gentle tap-tap, irritating in its persistence, disturbed the silence that seemed to become so full of portent. A tap-tap that, after a moment or two, roused Litta from her dreams. She threw the log on the fire and struggled to her feet.

Large folding glass doors shut the room off from the beautiful winter garden, which in its turn gave on a loggia and so on to the garden beyond. One of the folds of the door had come ajar, and the draught was causing it to swing to and fro. Litta went to close it. As she did so she gave a peep into the winter garden, and for the space of a few seconds inhaled the delicious scent of the Niel roses that hung in heavy festoons from pillars and roof, and mingled with the more heavy odour of heliotrope and hyacinths, the subtle, insinuating perfume of freesia and lemon-scented verbena. In one corner there was an artificial rockery where clumps of brilliant scarlet anemones flaunted their garish colour against the soft lichen-covered grey of the stones, whilst farther on the columns of the loggia were smothered in the brilliant veils of purple bougainvillea.

The staff of well-trained servants had already obliterated every trail left by the lounging, tea-drinking crowd. Supreme order and peace reigned in this kingdom of flowers. Amidst the bowers of plants and blossoms the cosy armchairs once more invited to repose, the satin cushions, of hues more vivid than tulips or anemones, no longer held the impress of expensive ermine cloaks or bejewelled arms. The small tables had been cleared of empty tea-cups and dishes of cream-tarts, and were once more littered with books and papers, whilst on the mosaic floor, the rich Persian rugs, soft and warm to the feet, were spread again in order to deaden the tread that might disturb that perfect quiescence which once more reigned in this world peopled by flowers. Litta’s eyes roamed instinctively round the familiar place, which somehow at this moment seemed to her more than ever before to represent a priceless casket holding all that men value so much on this earth—ancestry, culture, affluence, the means wherewith to satisfy every whim and indulge every caprice.

And as she gazed round she gave a long, long sigh—a sigh that had in it something of impatience and perhaps something of satiety, but also an infinity of longing. Longing for what? She couldn’t have told you, would have flouted the idea, no doubt, that she really longed vaguely for what her poor, plain, uninteresting friend was getting in such plenty: romance, adventure, hope, and in the end perhaps a return to that love of long ago, all the more precious as it seemed to rise again from the grave; above all, the power to do, to live every minute of this dull, wearying life, to risk everything for the sake of the beloved, to throw life and liberty as a hazard, like a gambler, determined to win everything yet ready to lose all—the power, in fact, to act and to suffer, to have something to believe in, something to hope for, and something to love.