Читать книгу Stinging Nettles - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 10

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§ I

LUCIE, with a secretiveness alien to her nature, but which she felt in this case to be very necessary, did not tell anyone of her project.

She arranged her business and her money, got her passport, packed her bags and bought her ticket before she said anything to Mrs. Falconer.

Her husband had replied to her wire and letter accepting, as a matter of course, her consent to come out to him; he said he would meet her at Turin and enclosed a long list of medicines she was to bring out.

Lucie wrote again—a page of arguments for his return to England—and she prepared the flat as well as she could for his arrival; she had it for another six months and they would have to manage with that for the present.

Her little moment of exultation when she had made her resolve to go, had soon faded and she felt utterly dispirited and tired; the fact that her husband would be able to meet her at Turin proved to her that he was not really very ill and she dreaded meeting him again and listening to his lamentations and wild schemes which she would have to discourage while trying to be compassionate and kind.

And perhaps he would resist the idea of returning to England; he had never been anything but difficult.

The Sunday afternoon she went to the studio to tell Mrs. Falconer and Sophie, she found Mrs. Bearish there, chattering in the bitter yet careless way she did when in fairly good spirits.

She was complaining of her daughter Aurora, who despite all her efforts was still unmarried, and who had had so many "little" love affairs with "queer" men that she was really now "licked bread and butter."

Sophie was on the divan with a novel and a headache and Mrs. Falconer smoked and listened and was very charming and sympathetic.

When Mrs. Bearish had gone, Sophie went to the piano and sang odd bits of music; she never seemed to know anything right through; and when this was over, Lucie told her aunt that she was starting for Italy on the Friday—"to fetch Pio home."

Mrs. Falconer disapproved—utterly.

"Why can't he come alone?"

"He is really ill."

"Nonsense! Rubbish! You must not dream of going."

"I'm afraid I've made up my mind already—"

"If anyone must go, send Sophie, she wants a change."

"It is too much to ask of her," said Lucie, who knew that her husband loathed Sophie, with whom he had often violently quarrelled, "it is my job, really."

"I suppose you want to go," sneered Sophie. "You always liked Italy."

"No, I don't want to go," returned Lucie, with some feeling. "I don't want anything, I'm very tired—but I feel I ought to go."

"And expect us to praise you for doing something heroic, I suppose?" said Mrs. Falconer, with that cruelty she was always ready to show to Lucie.

"I feel I ought to go," repeated Pio's wife dully.

Sophie picked up her novel as if the conversation bored her, and Mrs. Falconer talked violently about Lucie's marriage, any marriage, Pio, his people, all foreigners, with powerful choice of words and deep inflections of scorn.

Lucie's heart burned, but she was used to sitting patiently under her aunt's invective, well schooled not to answer back.

"I feel I should go," she repeated at length. "He is my husband," she added.

At this, as if in sullen displeasure, Sophie flung out of the room into the closet, banging the door after her.

And Mrs. Falconer smoked in silence as if Lucie had said something very silly and offensive.

Lucie also sat silent; she was quite sickened by these continual quarrellings and emotional scenes, confused by them, too; both her aunt and cousin made her feel as if she was in the wrong.

It was difficult, too, to defend her marriage, and perhaps her resolve to go to Italy did seem pretentious and priggish—perhaps it was mere convention and worn-out tradition guiding her action.

Faintly she tried to justify herself to her aunt's angry silence.

"You see," she said, "I don't really much care for this London life—I'm afraid I'm one of the women on whom a career has been rather wasted—you know what I would rather have had," she added with difficulty. "No one wants me here—I might as well go to Italy."

"Of course, my dear girl," said Mrs. Falconer acidly. "You will do exactly as you please—as you have always done. I don't pretend to have any authority."

Lucie did not answer; usually, in sheer weakness, she gave in during these arguments with her aunt, but some instinct (she knew not what to call it), was urging her to go to her husband, something far stronger than any lingering pity or affection she might have felt for Pio.

Only once before had she shown this strength in resisting the dominant influence of her life, and that was on the occasion of her marriage.

Mrs. Falconer knew she would not yield now, and the two women parted, as they had so often parted, in sadness and coldness.

But that was not the end of opposition for Lucie.

Sophie, the next day, came and lectured her on the "pain and distress you are causing my mother" and everyone to whom Mrs. Falconer mentioned her journey (Lucie herself would not speak of it) quite frankly laughed at her; there didn't seem to be a woman of their acquaintance who approved of Lucie Uden's resolve.

And Lucie, during the last days of her stay in London, felt lashed by scourges of scorn and hostile criticism.

"I wish I felt more like a free, liberated, emancipated woman," she thought, "and not so dreadfully desirous of someone, something to shelter behind."

Mrs. Falconer veered to a distressed affection more hard to resist than her anger.

"Mind, you are to come straight back, whatever Pio says or does—you can't possibly nurse him—and mind, if he is ill, you are to put him into a nursing home the moment you get back—you control the money."

And then she would wander off about Sophie and her mysterious love affair, and the last intrigue to catch the attention of Simon Kaye, who, inflated by money as a balloon by air, was ever floating further away above their heads.

Lucie paid over about half the money she had in the Bank, gave them the use of her flat while she was away, and presented Sophie with a few evening frocks, thus salving her conscience and placating their discontents.

§ II

And so, on a bitter iron-gray morning in February, a nervous, tired, rather shabby young woman was among the passengers on the boat-train from Charing Cross, having two small valises as her sole luggage, and her passport, money and ticket pinned inside her dress, after the manner of timid female travellers.

She was now no longer to be considered as Lucie Uden, the quite well-known designer and illustrator, but Signora Lucia Simonetti, Italian subject, returning to her country and her husband.

She wore a serge dress, a poney skin coat, a wine-coloured felt hat and veil, suede gloves and shoes; the ugliness of these clothes depressed her, yet she was used to clothes both ugly and cheap.

She felt herself so little, so inadequate, so foolish, so unwanted—so old compared to the pretty women she saw travelling with her, escorted, fussed over; she never expected that kind of thing, she had never had it, nor was she in the least envious or jealous, but she felt very self-conscious, lonely and "unwanted."

Mrs. Falconer had wept when she had said "goodbye," and Lucie wept now, gazing out of the window of the train, to think of her; but by staying she could have "done no good."

§ III

A sense of exhilaration at the sight of the gray tossing sea, the long curved arm of the harbour, the waiting boat, the scurry of porters, officials and sailors—the sight of your own coastline, of a few swooping gulls, of the juicy dusters of seaweed round the iron piers of the steps—the smell of the sea and the rain—the sense of a voyage, of transition, of all common daily things having stopped like a run-down clock; the cold pinching you, the wind dragging at your hair and clothes, the rain slashing your face—yet a sense of the eternal in all these things and you one with the eternal!

§ IV

Long discomfort of railway travelling, a dash across a city looking alien, more travelling in a rocking tearing train, sleeping huddled up with a green shade drawn over the electric light, waking to hear the "clink, clink" of axes testing the wheels, throat and nose dry from steam heating, blasts of damp cutting air when you opened the window, waking cramped, touzled, dirty, "tidying" yourself as best you could, pitched into the restaurant car to drink bitter coffee and eat reheated rolls in common with people as soiled, as absorbed, as queer as you felt yourself; pitched back to your seat to stare out of the window at rain, rain, across the fields of France, heavy with headache and stiff with cramp, sick of the commonplace yet grotesque folk among whom you had spent so many hours, clutching your money, your ticket, your passport—so into Italy, so into the station, cavernous, iron, dirt, vile smells of Turin.

§ V

Lucie climbed out of the train, a fellow passenger handed down the two valises, she stood with them at her feet, staring down the length of the huge covered station; on the roof the rain drummed steadily.

She could not see her husband.

The train roared away.

Lucie felt isolated, ready to cry. Supposing he was not able to come?

§ VI

She saw him coming down towards her, leaning on a stick.