Читать книгу Windlestraws - Bottome Phyllis - Страница 11

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Time was like a refuge built of sand. Moment by moment slipped past Jean carrying her nearer towards the gulf of human intercourse. When the reprieve of this half hour was over, she must ask to see Beatrice. She must admit that a catastrophe, which did not arise out of her work, had put an end to it.

She could make no excuses. She could only say: 'I am very sorry. It is impossible for me to work any more with your husband. I must go.' Beatrice would understand, and she would ask no questions; her eyebrows would go up, her eyes would gleam recognition of what the catastrophe was, mixed with a slight contempt that Jean had failed to avoid it.

Didn't all wives, however indifferent to their husbands, believe that other women were to blame for their husband's infidelity? A knock at the door brought Jean trembling to her feet. She hadn't expected Beatrice to come so soon to her. Still less had she wanted Ian. She could not trust her voice to answer his; but she opened the door.

His keen friendly glance took from Jean the cruel sense of enmity between her and mankind. 'I won't keep you long,' Ian said quickly, 'but I'm sure you'll want to be fair! Would you mind talking to me for a few minutes in the china room? There's something Reggie wants me particularly to say to you for him.'

Jean followed him without a word. She had a blurred impression of blue dragon vases, Brussels' tapestries, polished parquet, and austere and frail French furniture. The brilliant little room felt like a ship upon the waves of night. A window was open onto the dark beech avenue. The moor lay beyond the trees, a deeper band of darkness. Ian sat down at some distance from her, his long legs crossed, his head bent forward. He was obviously nervous. Jean thought she would not so much mind what he had to say if he minded saying it. What had hitherto struck her about Windlestraws was that nobody--except herself--ever really minded saying anything.

'Of course I'm awfully sorry to bother you,' Ian began a little stiffly. 'You must think it frightful cheek, my asking you in here like this at all. But sometimes cheek's the best way out of things, isn't it?' He looked up at her with a slight frown and Jean gravely assented. She liked his frowning at her like that; it seemed to give a security to what he meant to say. 'You must forgive me,' he went on after a pause, 'for putting to you all kinds of things which don't usually get said to girls. Anything less than the truth wouldn't help you to see straight and a great deal depends on your seeing straight.' If he would do all the talking, Jean felt that she wouldn't mind what he said. She didn't want to have to talk herself, that would only make the fiery jumble of ugly images come back into her mind. She nodded and Ian, with a brief glance at her, fixed his entire attention upon a green jade bowl which stood between them on a glass-topped table.

'I'm glad you'll let me,' he said with relief. 'I'll smoke too, if you don't mind--you won't yourself? It's much better having things out really. Reggie wants me to tell you that he's frightfully sorry. He doesn't send you any excuses. He only says that he knows he's behaved like a cad; and apologizes. If you could trust him, and stay on, it wouldn't happen again, and I think I may tell you from myself--he'd feel it an immense relief.'

'I thought,' said Jean hesitatingly, 'that I did trust him--as much as I had to; never very much, perhaps, he didn't give me that feeling, but enough to make him understand what couldn't happen.'

'He admits that!' Ian replied eagerly. 'He says your manner to him was perfect. You never gave him the least excuse. You helped him all you could without knowing how awfully he needed your help. What I want to tell you now is why he needed it. Then you'll be able to feel that what happened to you both wasn't a calculated brutality on his part, but just an unfortunate accident, a screw loose in the social order of things--and that it happened not to you alone, but quite as much to Reggie. More--for him it was the greater disaster!'

There was no longer between them the polished shield of his manner. Ian's eyes, quickened and intelligent, held hers with entreaty--the direct and confident entreaty of a friend. Jean wanted to talk herself now, for this was at last a person she could talk to.

'But why should Sir Reginald, why should any of us,' she demanded, 'break loose and attack each other? People who care for women as human beings don't do such things! I wasn't like a human being to him, I was a plate of something to eat--which he snatched at. Why should I forgive him for snatching?'

'Because you've got him all wrong!' Ian answered with intense conviction. 'That not realizing you as a human being, isn't really Reggie--it's the way he's been brought up! You know what cavalry officers are like? They always look on women as mud--or pretend to! It isn't with the decent ones more than a pretence. Reggie's the best fellow in the world--but he's never had those things out with himself. I daresay you're thinking "How can awfully fine fellows do such awfully base things!" Well, they can! Not often--but sometimes! There are special pleas for mercy between men and women--not all on the men's side either. Things aren't as clear as daylight or as safe as houses! If you want to be fair you've got to know what people break loose from! I expect you judge Reggie as a husband and father, don't you? You say to yourself--and quite right too--that his being all that is what makes what happened to you a much more shocking business? He has all the rewards of law and order, why can't he stick to them, and not behave like a pirate on the high seas? Well--the children are his right enough, though you must have seen by now that they're a good deal more Beatrice's than Reggie's. He had to found a line, that's his idea of loyalty to his house; but he's never had any of the rewards. He's not been a husband since Oliver was born; and he's never been an acceptable husband. He has lived under a provocation as nerve-racking as perpetual gun-fire. Try to think of him--lonely--starved--pretty near beaten--with Beatrice before his eyes all day long!' Ian sprang to his feet and began restlessly pacing up and down the small light room between the sky-blue dragons.

The silence and the soft moor air crept between them and increased the sense of their confidence. Jean wondered what Ian was thinking of--what memories and what remorse his words had called up to live before his eyes? Or what relentless beauty? At last he shook himself free from his preoccupation and turned to face her.

'Then you turn up!' he said accusingly. 'Another woman! Not the kind he's used to either! He's thrown with you constantly; his mind is diseased with longing. The nicer the girl, in a sense the stiffer the tussle that must have been going on in his mind! How long have you been here? A month, haven't you! There's something in the very air!----' he broke off abruptly and listened. But the bronze beeches kept the mist upon their leaves--the moor was as silent as a desert burned out by the sun. He tossed himself into his chair as if flung back once more into the strait-jacket of an old patience.

'Well,' he said more kindly, 'a month can be a long time to spend two or three hours every day with a girl. Don't blame Reggie for what happened--if you want to blame anybody, blame the woman and far more the man--since there must be another man--who has made Reggie's nerves raw and shaken his control for ten interminable years! You have a fellow victim! I'm as sorry as he is, about you! But do you begin to see now what he's been up against? If you go away, you'll destroy the last bit of self-respect Reggie has got! That's an awfully dangerous thing to do to a man, as bad as what he tried to do to you! But after all he didn't succeed! And if you go away you will succeed! You'll rob him of his virtue! Some girls would think it would serve him right, but I have an idea that serving people right isn't part of your code?'

'No, it isn't!' Jean answered reluctantly. 'But if he's starved and suffering as you say, won't my staying on only make things worse? I don't blame Reggie after what you have told me, and I'd stand seeing him again if it were any help to him, but after all what is another woman in the house, but another temptation? If I was bad for him before, shan't I be worse for him now?'

'No!' said Ian decisively. 'On the contrary, if you give Reggie back his self-respect--and your staying on would do that--it would ease the whole show! Physical things aren't only physical, nor spiritual things only spiritual. They're a mix-up, and what Reggie wants is a lead. He could follow a woman he'd learned to respect across any country she took him over.'

'But are you quite sure he wants me to stay?' Jean asked doubtfully. 'I understand your wanting it for him because you think it will let him off being ashamed. But will it really? Won't it make him feel worse when he has to look at me? He's a proud man, and surely proud men don't like women they've had to apologize to, under the same roof?'

'If they're as proud as Reggie is,' Ian explained, 'they mind a good deal more having driven a woman out of their house! Reggie has never in his life failed any one who has worked for him. It'll help him awfully to trust you, and he'll know, if you stay on, that you're trusting him back! I don't suppose any woman has trusted him before--certainly not Beatrice!'

Ian had been looking at Jean straight between the eyes, but at the mention of Beatrice he looked away, flicked his cigarette ash into the fire, and swung his foot to and fro with an irritable movement.

'I dare say his pride makes things worse there,' he added after a pause. 'They're unforgivable anyhow, but I can't explain! I'm only trying to show you that his failure of control this afternoon wasn't his fault. It was the breakdown of an unbelievably brave man. Reggie hasn't only physical courage--it's a bigger thing than that: he has unselfishness. He would take any risk to keep some one else safe. That's why what happened this afternoon, is worse for him than it would be for most people. I'm not exaggerating. It's broken him to pieces, and only you can put him together again!'

'I'll stay then,' said Jean, but she couldn't be nice about it. She couldn't say any more or even explain to Ian what she felt. It was as if she must be tied to a heavy weight that flight would have shaken her free from. Her pity for Reggie was larger than the obstacle to which she would be tied but it was not large enough to take away her fears. Ian gave her no direct thanks, he was silent for a moment, then he said slowly: 'I'm trying not to think of it from your point of view. What a girl like you must feel--that's too easy to realize, and far too easy to sympathize with. I hope you'll force yourself to get over that, and remember not to mix up Reggie and nature. Nature's terribly ugly when she's been suppressed--man is at her mercy. It was nature you saw in Reggie; and even if you damned Reggie and ran away from the spot it happened on, you might come on nature again any time, looking quite as ugly. Think of a man who's had four years of Flanders and ten years' marriage with the most beautiful woman of her day, who has consistently loathed him during those ten years, and yet remained before his eyes. Don't you think Reggie has been punished enough?'

Jean rose to her feet. 'I'll go down now,' she said impulsively. 'I'll make any excuse. I----'

Ian interrupted her by saying one of the things they were always capable of saying at Windlestraws: 'No,' he said quickly, 'you can't do that; it's time to dress for dinner. Besides it's always best to go on as usual. Don't say anything. It'll be quite all right.'

He got up and wandered about the light empty room, looking at the treasures in the glass cases with appreciative eyes.

'I think they ought to lock up this Ming,' he announced half to Jean and half to himself.

Everything ended in the brief vague way things usually ended at Windlestraws.

When Jean came down to dinner, Reggie talked to her as if they had parted in the most natural manner in the world. He looked straight at her when she first came into the hall before dinner, and then, without appearing to avoid her eyes, did not look at her again for the rest of the evening. It was as Ian had told her it would be, 'quite all right.' She had crushed down her nerves and foregone the luxury of escape; in return nobody was going to take the slightest notice of her.