Читать книгу The Halo - Bettina Von Hutten - Страница 10

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Number 57 Golden Square was dark when Joyselle's cab stopped in front of it, and he, after tenderly depositing his violin-case under the little portico, assisted Brigit to alight. "They are, of course, in the kitchen," he remarked as he paid the cabby. "Come, ma belle."

She followed him as if she were in a dream, watching him open the door with a latchkey, after a frantic search for that object in all his pockets, tiptoeing after him as, a finger to his lips, a delighted, boyish smile crinkling his eyelids, he led her down the narrow, oilclothed passage.

"Why are they in the kitchen?" she asked, as excited as he.

"It is nearly eight; she is busy with supper."

Even in the dim light of the single gas burner Brigit caught at once the predominating note of the house: its intense and wonderful cleanliness. The walls, painted white, were snowy, the chequered oilcloth under her feet as spotless as if it had that moment come from the shop, and the slender handrail of the steep staircase glanced with polish, drawing an arrow of light through the dusk.

Putting his violin-case on the table, Joyselle took off his hat and with some difficulty pulled his arms out of his greatcoat sleeves. Then, taking his guest by the arm, he very softly opened the door leading to the basement, and started down the stairs, soft-footed as a great cat. Could it possibly be she, Brigit Mead, creeping stealthily down a basement staircase, her arm firmly held by a man to whom she had never spoken until that afternoon?

The stairs turned sharply to the left half-way down, and at the turning a flood of warm light met them, together with a smell of cooking.

"Ah, little mother, little mother," Théo's voice was saying, "just wait till you see her."

Joyselle's delight in the artistic timeliness of the speech found vent in his putting his arm round his companion's slim waist and giving her a hearty, paternal hug. Her whole face, in the darkness, quivered with amusement. She had never in her whole life been so thoroughly and satisfactorily amused. Then, having gone forward as far as his now simply restraining hold would let her, she looked down into the kitchen.

It was a large room, snowy with whitewash as to walls and ceiling, spotless as to floor. At the far end of it, opposite a pagoda-like and beautiful but apparently unlighted modern English stove, was a huge, deep, cavernous fireplace, unlike any the girl had ever seen. It was, in fact, a perfect copy of a Norman fireplace, with stone seats at the sides, an old-fashioned spit, and the fire burning lustily on the floor of it, unhemmed by dogs or grate. On a long, sand-scoured table in the middle of the room sat Théo, in his shirt-sleeves, deftly breaking eggs into a big, green-lined bowl, while before the fire, gently swinging to and fro over the flames a saucepan with an abnormally long handle—Madame Joyselle. Her short, dark-clad figure, half-covered with a blue apron, showed all its too-generous curves as she bent forward, and when, at Théo's remark, she turned to him with a smile, she showed a round, wrinkled, rosy face and small blue eyes that wrinkled with sympathetic kindness. "She is beautiful, my little bit of cabbage?"

Théo broke the last egg, sat down the bowl, and got down from the table. "Tannier—you remember him? The man who painted everybody last winter—said she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen." The pride in his voice was good to hear.

"Tant mieux! Beauty is a quality like another. And—voilà mon petit, give me the eggs—she loves you?" As she put the question she took the bowl and began beating the eggs violently yet lightly with a whisk. She had turned the mixture into her hot saucepan and was holding it over the fire before the young man answered. He stood, his hands in his trousers-pockets, his head bent thoughtfully. Then he spoke, and his words mingled with the hissing of the omelet. "I think she must," he said with a certain dignified simplicity, "or she would not have accepted me. But—not as I love her. That could not be, you know."

The eavesdroppers started apart guiltily, and for a second Brigit wanted to rush up the stairs and out of the house. She had heard too much.

But Joyselle, gently pushing her out of his way, ran down the steps and with a big laugh threw his arms round his boy and kissed him.

"Voyons l'amoureux," he cried, "show me thy face of a lover, little boy, who only yesterday wore aprons and climbed on my knees to search for sweets in my pockets!"

Madame Joyselle turned quietly, after having, with a dexterous twist of her frying-pan, flopped her omelet to its other side. "Victor! And what brings you back, my man?"

Her pleasant, placid face was a great contrast to his as he rushed at her and kissed her hot cheek.

"Va t'en—you will make me drop Théo's omelet."

Joyselle took Théo's hands in his and looked solemnly at his son. "My dear," he said, "my very dear son, God bless you and—her."

Again Brigit longed to flee, but she knew that if she tried, Joyselle would be after her like a shot, and, she realised with an irrepressible little laugh, probably pick her up and carry her down to the kitchen.

"Are you hungry, my man?" asked Madame Joyselle, slipping the omelet onto a warmed platter, "there is some galantine de volaille truffée, and this, and some cold veal."

Joyselle patted her affectionately on the back.

"Oui, oui, my femme, I am hungry. But—Théo—to-night I am a wizard. I will grant you any wish you may have in your heart."

"Any wish——"

"Pauvre petit, tell him not that, Victor, my man. What would the poor angel desire but the impossible?"

Théo stood silently looking at them. He was evidently in no mood for farce, but as evidently he adored this noisy big father who towered above his slender height like a giant, and tried to force himself to his father's humour. "Dear papa," he murmured, "it is good that you have come. I am so happy."

Joyselle seized the opportunity, such as it was, and turning to the open door, called out in a voice trembling with pleasure and mischief, "Fairy Princess, come forth."

And the disdainful, bored, too often frankly ill-humoured Lady Brigit stepped out of the darkness into the homely light of the simple scene.

For a moment Théo plainly did not believe his eyes, and then as she advanced, scarlet with a quite unusual embarrassment and sense of intrusion, he gathered himself together and met her, his hands held out, his face glowing.

"Victor—oh, Victor—this is terrible," Madame Joyselle burst out, scarlet with shyness, all her serenity gone. "You should not have brought her to the kitchen! Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, a countess' daughter!"

But Théo led his fiancée straight to his mother, and his instinctive good taste saved the situation. "Mamma—here she is. Lady Brigit, this is my mother—the best mother in the world."

The little roundabout woman wiped her hand on her apron, and taking the girl's in hers, looked mutely up at her with eyes so full of timid sweetness that Brigit, touched and pleased, bent and kissed her.

"Voyons, voyons," cried Joyselle, rubbing his hands and executing a few steps by the fire, "here we are all one family. Félicité, my old woman, is she not wonderful?"

Madame Joyselle, the flush dying from her fresh cheeks, bowed. "She is indeed. And now—Théo, call Toinon—we must go to the dining-room." Nobody else, even Brigit, who had never beheld that cheerless apartment, wished to leave the kitchen, but Madame Joyselle's will was in such matters law, and the little party was soon seated round the table upstairs. And the omelet was delicious.

An hour later Brigit found herself sitting in a big red-leather armchair, in a highly modern and comfortable, if slightly gaudy apartment—Joyselle's study. There was a small grate-fire with a red club-fender, a red, patternless carpet, soft, well-draped curtains, and tables covered with books and smoking materials.

There was also a baby-grand piano, covered with music, and a huge grey parrot in a gilded and palatial cage.

It was Joyselle's translation of an English gentleman's room, even to the engravings and etchings on the wall. One thing, however, the girl had never before seen. One end of the room was glassed in as if in a huge oak frame, and the wall behind it was literally covered with signed photographs.

"Most of 'em are royalties," Joyselle explained with a certain naïf pride, "beginning with your late Queen. I used to play Norman folk-songs to her. There is the Kaiser's, the late Kaiser's, the Czar's, Umberto's, Margarita's, who loves music, more than most—and toute la boutique. Then there are also those of all the musicians, and—but you will see to-morrow."

He had brought his violin-case upstairs, and now opened it and took out his Amati. "I will play for you, ma chère fille," he declared.

And he played. Brigit watched him, amazed. Where was the rowdy, loud-voiced, amusing and almost ridiculously boyish middle-aged man with whom she had come to town?

This man's face was that of a priest adoringly performing the rites of his religion. His head thrown back, his fine mouth set in lines of ecstatic reverence, he played on and on, his eyes unseeing, or rather the eyes of one seeing visions.

He was a creature of no country, no age. His grey hair failed to make him old, big unwrinkled face failed to make him young. And as he played—to her, she knew—years of imprisonment and sorrow seemed to drop from the girl; she forgot all the bitterness, all the resentment that had spoiled her life hitherto, and she felt as she leaned back in her chair and listened as if she had at last come to a haven and found youth awaiting her there.