Читать книгу So Evil My Love: Based on a True Crime Story - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 14

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Mrs. Sacret approved of the litter in her once neat parlor; the painting stand with the shallow drawers, the deal table laden with portfolios, crayons, sketchbooks and pans of color, the light easel and the large chair with the horsehair cushion, placed in the corner, firmly on a stout wooden box, with brass corners and padlock.

Mr. Bellis said that this room was suitable for sketches and drawings to be made in a plain or garden light, after the manner of a map or heraldic design. Upstairs he had stored his oils and canvases.

“You want to know who I am,” he added with his cool smile. “And I think you are the only person in London who cares. So I’ll tell you. But you must look at me, please. I can’t draw you with your eyes always downcast.”

She raised her brilliant hazel glance and trembled as she mounted, under his direction, the raised chair. It was as if she had dreaded to find him repulsive and had not dared to face some suspected and dreaded horror. But forced to look at him, she found he was attractive, fascinating, as she had known he was, and the haze of horror that had clouded her mental image of him and her visions—for every night since she had first met him she had dreamed of him—vanished. “I don’t belong to this labyrinth of London,” he said gravely. “The houses and streets, miles of them, the stench and the fog, the smoke and the dirt. When it comes to telling you where I’ve been all my life—I don’t know that I can.”

He was older than she had thought at first, but robust and healthy with the quick, neat movements of an athlete; his clothes were precise and his linen fresh.

“I had a good education,” he continued, “ran away from college and was disowned. I went aboard ship as a youth. And did a number of things. I’ve searched for gold in California, caught wild horses on the Pampas, driven cattle in Mexico, stayed in large cities and learned to paint. Made money by that. I always wanted to draw. I see in pictures more easily than words. They are clearer and safer.”

“Did you find gold?”

“Yes. But not in California.” He selected a sheet of paper and a crayon. “Now I’m neither rich nor poor. Neither tramping, or settled down. Will you please sit with your head so, three-quarters to me, your bonnet in your hand—so—”

“This yellow shawl? I shall remove it She recalled the other yellow shawl on Susan’s pianoforte.

“Inappropriate, you think? I shall not show the color. I need the line.”

“Have you no more to relate of yourself?”

“Too much. That is all there is for you, Mrs. Sacret. You will see that I have preserved a respectable appearance despite my wanderings.”

He did not indeed look like a man who had lived roughly for years; there was no trace of vice or weakness in his face, and Mrs. Sacret was able to recognize both from the countenances of passers-by on the city pavements.

“I neither drink to excess, gamble at all, nor smoke,” he remarked. “So my wits are fairly sharp and my hand fairly steady.”

“Have you been long in England? Have you visited your family?”

“Three months. I have no family—no one who cares if I am alive or dead.” He smiled cheerfully, pinned the paper to a board and set in on the easel. As he began to draw he began to question Mrs. Sacret.

At first she defended herself. “I’ve nothing to tell. Nothing.” She gave a flat outline of her life. “That is all.”

“What are you doing in Mr. Rue’s house?” he asked quietly, coming to the very center of the very heart of her secret, with the directness of one following a guiding thread through a maze.

“I told you. Mrs. Rue is unhappy—”

He interrupted.

“Tell me more. Why not? If you have not come into a fortune as the gossips think—you have had some good fortune lately, after a hard existence and a long waiting. You have nothing you say, Mrs. Sacret, except—?”

His quiet voice and brilliant look that stared a little, as if he forced his lids up, were so compelling that she almost replied “the letters” and flushed at her own weakness.

“Pray don’t pinch your lips so, I am drawing them. Why not tell me—your affairs? As you have nothing to give I cannot beg or steal anything. I may be gone—in a few days, if I don’t get that work in Kent. Perhaps you need a little advice or comfort. You seem as lonely as I am myself. And you are a very pretty woman to be so unprotected.”

These words, not spoken in a flattering tone, stirred in Mrs. Sacret an emotion unknown to her, one so delightful that it absorbed her whole being, almost to the extent of stifling her native shrewdness.

“There,” continued the painter, stepping back from the easel, “that is sufficient for today—you are beginning to lose the pose.” He did not offer to assist her from her raised chair; she descended carefully, crossed the floor and stood behind him. There was her likeness, for her to see.

Olivia Sacret he had scrawled across the bottom of the paper. The study was in red, black and white crayons; every curve of face and limb, sweepingly accentuated, the gloss of the hair, the brightness of the eyes, the grace of throat and hands indicated in clear lines, the elegance of the mourning gown lightly touched in. So the missionary’s widow was revealed to herself. She changed as she gazed. “You’re clever,” she said.

“Yes. I have had to live by my wits. So far they have not failed me.”

“You have finished?” she asked. “I thought you would take days—”

“You must come again,” he replied, answering her thought. “You do not need the excuse of the portrait—or if you do,” he added carelessly, “say, I still require you to pose for me.”

She was irked because he was so sure of her, but this was a slight blemish on her increasing excitement. “What do you want?” she asked.

“Money. Not to hoard. To spend. I live roughly for years, then I think of luxury, and somehow find the means for luxury.”

“Through your painting?”

“No. I told you—this is a livelihood—not luxury. I hope to be employed at Lyndbridge House, as I told you. I met Mr. Fox Oldham in Paris where I exhibited a picture. He was on his way to Switzerland with his bride who is not strong—as they say.” He faced her suddenly, standing so close that their arms almost touched. “You think that you can look after yourself, Mrs. Sacret, but really you are quite helpless. You know nothing about life at all. Other people have always decided everything for you.”

This was, Mrs. Sacret reflected, true, though she had never admitted as much before. Her existence had followed the pattern set by her parents, then that set by her husband. When she had been left alone, she had gone on, mechanically trying to obtain a position that would mean a continuation of the life she had led with Frederick Sacret. Her only original action had been to introduce herself into the Rue household and then she had been hesitant, ineffective, not really knowing what to do, what she wanted, at least not confessing so much to herself. She thought of the three people she was engaged in dealing with and confusion blurred their outlines and her own motives. Nor had she really faced the problem of the letters.

“You are puzzled,” remarked the painter, observing her closely.

“And not least by you,” she replied with a flash of spirit. “I have never met anyone like you before—never had—a chance acquaintance.” She glanced meaningly at his well-shaped, well-kept hand, resting on the easel. “I don’t think I believe your tales of a rough wandering—gold prospecting—wild horse taming—”

“Whereas I,” he interrupted, “believe every word you tell me of yourself—”

“Rut I have told you nothing—save a bare outline—and there is little to tell. I am a simple woman who tries to do the Lord’s will.”

She expected a laugh or a sneer, but he was gravely silent. “Good-by,” she added, leaving everything in his hands.

“Perhaps Mrs. Rue would care for me to sketch her likeness,” he suggested. “Will you recommend me?”

“No,” she replied at once, though instantly thinking how Susan would snatch at such a diversion.

“Then I may sketch you again? Or call on you at your friend’s house?”

“No—I don’t want you at the Old Priory.”

“I can produce credentials,” he smiled. “I should not play the vagabond before this respectable family.”

Mrs. Sacret flushed. She knew this stranger was probably better born and certainly better bred than the Rues, than anyone she had known, save her own father. Indeed, she could persuade herself that she felt a keen class affinity with the painter, as if they were two aristocrats among vulgar people.

“I’ll confide in you,” she said in a low hurried voice. “It is true that I am oddly alone. Most women have someone—Susan Rue is really my only friend—I am staying with her as a—companion—but I don’t take money, of course—only a few presents. Her husband is not kind to her—he wants me to leave—so does his mother. I don’t quite know what to do.”

“Please sit down.” He brought forward one of her own shabby chairs.

“No—I shall go in a moment. It is an—unpleasant position—but I have no resources. I thought if—Susan left her husband—we might go abroad together. She is very rich. Her husband holds most of her money. I want her to get it back.”

She ventured to glance at the painter. He was looking at her from his dark eyes against which the lashes shone thick gold. There was a quality in his agreeable face she had never seen in a human countenance before; she could not name it; to her it was a fascination not to be resisted, as if delights hitherto unknown were suddenly and richly offered to her. He smiled.

“Does Mrs. Rue wish you to stay?”

“I suppose so. She offered me two hundred pounds a year. Of course I could not take it.”

“You are dealing,” he replied at once, “with a woman not only very foolish, but very frightened.”

Mrs. Sacret knew that she was being forced faster and farther than she wished. But she could not resist. “I have some old letters of hers. Quite harmless, I assure you. I never placed any importance on them. I kept them for sentiment.”

“I understand perfectly. Mrs. Rue wants you to destroy them?”

“Yes. Of course I shall do so. I only kept them to show her—how trifling they are.”

“But safely? Locked up?”

“Yes—with other things.”

“Mr. Rue suspects nothing?”

“No. But his mother does. A shot in the dark. She is a horrid woman. She tried to bribe me to give up—letters. I admitted nothing.”

“She—dislikes—her daughter-in-law?”

“Loathes her—out of pure jealousy and spite. She does not know what to do. She doesn’t want a separation as that would mean returning Susan’s money.”

“How tedious all this is for you, Mrs. Sacret,” said Mark Bellis in a tone so quiet as to be touched by tenderness. “You must allow me to help you. With advice—”

“I only want to protect Susan. She is so afraid of Mr. Rue.

“Why?”

Mrs. Sacret, rapidly and looking down, recounted her friend’s simple history.

The painter showed a courteous interest: He might have been a cousin privileged to offer good advice to a gentlewoman in distress. He said that he would think the matter over and give Mrs. Sacret the result of his reflections—in a few days’ time—if she could call for a retouching of her sketch.

When she found herself walking toward the Old Priory again Mrs. Sacret realized that she had agreed to everything he had said and revealed all her secrets to him. Her intelligence was ashamed, even alarmed, but her heart had surrendered without terms.