Читать книгу Windlestraws - Bottome Phyllis - Страница 9

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Jean came on Ian suddenly sitting alone in the hall. He was writing at a table in a patch of sunlight. A tall jug of turning bracken stood close to him; the sunlight burned through them both, with a strange transfiguring glory.

Ian looked up as she passed him, and Jean thought of a stag she had caught a glimpse of one day in the park; worsted in a fight, with all the misery of his defeat in his stricken eyes. Had Ian too been locked in a hideous struggle, held, starved, broken, to be at last set free with half his glory gone? She did not speak, but she looked at him with something deeper than pity. They seemed for a long moment to communicate without words, across the pool of light.

Ian's eyes asked her for something--for understanding, or perhaps for recognition. He wanted her to know that he was held where he was by loyalty; and not by being a mere sunk slave to his passion. Jean didn't say 'I know! I know! You aren't light! It's the only thing which keeps this home and all that's in it from spinning straight off into space!' But he must have known from the depths of her answering glance that this was what she meant.

When she found herself a moment later alone in her little sitting-room she knew that she hadn't said anything at all. But what made her feel certain that the communication between them had been as real to Ian as it had been to her, was that he hadn't got up. He had actually let her hover there for a moment close beside him and then pass him, without attempting to meet her with any of the punctilious forms which no one at Windlestraws ever omitted. It was almost as if he had said to her, 'I know I ought to get up, open a door somewhere, and ask you what you're looking for, but then--this thing which has taken place between us--your seeing me in this plight and my having the relief of knowing that you at any rate don't blame me--would all go by the board!' He had actually valued her momentary sympathy more than he had valued the rigid etiquette of Windlestraws.

Jean opened the long window which led onto the terrace. The short afternoon was nearly over but the light still lingered very clear and golden over the autumn flowers. Late roses, leafless and frail, hung heavily from their stalks; the herbaceous borders looked dishevelled, as if, after a riotous youth, age had forced upon them a harsh extravagance of colour. Only the levelled lawns were still as vivid as the spring. The park stretched away beyond the terrace to the edge of the shadowy purple moor. The leaves had changed to bronze and thinned away so that the light fell straight onto the naked beauty of the boughs.

Suddenly Jean heard Beatrice's light laughter, and Ian's voice, as effortlessly gay, joined hers. Was she not rather overdoing the depths of her sympathy?

Jean had been at Windlestraws long enough to find that what mattered most to her mattered least to its inhabitants. Providing that the deep smooth stream of their familiar pleasures rolled on, their broken hearts and their mortal wounds were as insignificant to them as are the bones of the drowned on the ocean floor to the well-fed passengers of an Atlantic liner.

An hour later Jean went into the hall to find Reggie and confront him with an article on the Income Tax which she had carefully boned for his invalid appetite. A large party, cleaned up and well fed, sat round the great open fireplace, the slight thrill of their clever little murders still upon them. Jean had to pass close by Ian, who was deep in conversation with the prettiest girl in the room. He did not look up, but Reggie caught her eye, and, murmuring something about going 'to have his wits sharpened,' joined her outside the circle.

Reggie's study was empty and rather dark; Jean heard him shut the door behind them, and then lock it. The next moment she was in his arms. The scattered points of the income tax were still in her mind, while she found herself incredibly struggling in his embrace. The whole thing was as sudden and as disastrous as a street accident. A burning anger that was almost like jubilation ran through Jean's blood. She had never fought before, but she fought now with every nerve in her body, with every instinct, and with all her wits.

This wasn't Reggie any more; it was a wild beast with a sickening plan to get the better of her. Jean hadn't at first any answering plan. She writhed and twisted in his arms only to get away; then she realized suddenly that her strength would fail her, while Reggie's was not even being tried. Fear ran in upon her like a fresh assailant. Her mad anger sank into the saving clarity of thought. This wasn't only a wild beast, it was Reggie, a man who wanted to be a member of Parliament, who was the master of Windlestraws, whose hall was full of his guests.

Whatever he wanted, Reggie wouldn't dare to pay the price of publicity.

She must scream and to do this she must free her mouth from his covering hand. Jean relaxed suddenly, swaying limply against his breast. Reggie withdrew his hand to reach her lips with his; and then she screamed.

The sound of her voice, wild and shrill, was as terrible to her as Reggie's burning kisses; but her scream saved her. Quick as a flash, Reggie gripped her by the shoulders; with the same expert strength with which he had dropped her out of the loose-box in the morning he pushed her through a door which led into the servants' quarters.

Jean ran breathlessly up the servants' staircase, through a glass door, into the passage to the nursery. She caught for a moment the astonished gaze of Alice, the nurse-maid; but she couldn't face Oliver's little flying figure--she found herself pushing him away from her to avoid the touch of his small innocent hands.

At last she was safely in her own room with the door locked behind her. She threw herself stiff and rigid on the surface of the bed unable to grasp the oblivion for which she blindly prayed.

Even her fierce, helpful anger died away from her. She couldn't feel that she particularly hated Reggie. You would not necessarily hate the sea which had nearly drowned you; you would only want to get as far away from it as possible. What had happened to Jean seemed as inexplicable and as fatal as a tidal wave. This was what Beatrice had meant when she said, 'Lock your door at night and don't come to me with stories!'

But Jean hadn't supposed then that those stories would have so little point. She wouldn't so deeply have resented Reggie's being violent if they had had any relation to lead up to it. She ran over feverishly in her mind her short formal interviews with Reggie. Was there anything in any one of them which excused or even explained his attack? From the moment she had first met his insolent appraising glance she had taken his measure and hidden her sex from him. If he had attracted her, as she admitted to herself that Ian had attracted her, she would never have let Reggie see it. She could not honestly blame herself and yet she shrank from accepting this picture of Reggie as final. He had meant to be nice to her this morning, he had been sorry when he had vexed her. He had never let her feel for an instant the discomfort of having to drag him off to be bored. He was always ready for her when he was visible at all, and he invariably made his guests think that he was dragging Jean off, never that he was being dragged. He had shown her more than once a deliberate thoughtfulness.

She hated to go away with nothing but this dismal enmity between them. It was unbearable to have to remember a relation which began and ended in unconsidered violence! She had been the victim of a mere physical threat when she wasn't a mere physical being, that was bad enough, but Reggie, who was human too and no more merely physical than she was--how would he feel at having trapped her into meeting physical violence? There must be something behind his attack, something that if she could understand it would make her feel less like a creature over whom a troop of cavalry has blindly charged! Her heart beat hard and menacingly within her, as if what had happened to her had not stopped happening. But it was no longer the symptoms of her body which Jean minded. Groping beyond them to what Reggie must feel at having frightened her, she found herself in tears.