Читать книгу Stinging Nettles - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 11

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§ I

LUCIE recognized him by the heavy blue overcoat he wore and the long thick Jaegar scarf wound about his throat; both garments were familiar to her; his face she would hardly have known.

She felt shaken by nervous embarrassment; the man was like a stranger; she tried to force herself to seem natural.

"I hope we are not late—have you been waiting long?"

"I thought you would have come sooner," he said, and kissed her without a smile. "I have been waiting here two days."

His voice was queer, rasping and yet fluting; he looked so terribly ill that her frightened gaze turned from his face; he leant heavily on his stick as if he really needed support.

"Where are the papers for your luggage?"

"I have only these."

"Why?" his face expressed instant annoyance.

"I thought we would go back at once," said Lucie. "You got my letter?"

"Yes. But I'm not going back. Your climate kills me."? porter had her valises now and they were walking out of the station.

"I think you ought to come back," said Lucie wearily. "Please do, Pio."

"Mrs. Falconer has been persuading you," he returned angrily. "Of course I shall not come, Dio Cristo! I should never have been allowed to come alone—have suffered from it."

"You said you were so much better."

"I am, much better. But still I am not quite well. I want a little care, good food and peace—what? never get in these hotels."

"Where are you staying?" asked Lucie.

"Opposite." His breath whistled in gasps, he was walking at a crawl. "The big hotel. To-morrow we will go to Viareggio."

"Viareggio?"

"I have taken a house there, where we can be quiet—the doctor said—I was to have sea air."

They stood under the entrance of the station, the rain poured down steadily; streets, buildings, sky, looked mud-coloured; a sharp wind from the Alps drove the rain, using it as a weapon to slash and drive at houses and people.

"I hate this place," said Pio.

Slowly they crossed the wet piazza, followed by the porter, and passed the glass doors of the hotel and into the lift.

Porter and liftman looked at him anxiously; he seemed absorbed in some secret trouble and not to notice anything.

Luck, acutely self-conscious, saw the glances and shivered.

There were more glances from the chamber maid as Pio asked her to see that tea was brought up to their room.

"He is very ill," thought Lucie, and she was horribly afraid.

When he had first written to her that he was ill, she had had the swift thought—"if he dies, I shall be really free," now she was as frightened as if she had greatly loved him; shocked as well as frightened, for she had ceased to think seriously of the question of his health; he had been always ailing and sickly; but now surely he was in the grip of something fatal.

Still wearing his heavy overcoat and muffler and holding his light gray felt hat on his knee, he sat silent, staring in front of him.

Lucie had not expected any display of affection or gratitude; she was used to his acceptance of her utmost with no hint of acknowledgment; but he had remained, according to his nature, "in love" with her, and her presence had never before failed to evoke from him a certain emotion of pleasure and excitement.

But now he was utterly listless.

Lucie sat by the window; she felt giddy, as if she was still in the rushing train, stiff and constrained as if she was still crushed in a narrow space with a crowd of strangers, bewildered and aching in all her faculties and limbs.

The room was large and very clean, furnished with the light Austrian wood pieces, immaculate linen covered the bed, the long glass in the wardrobe gleamed spotless; the window opened into a tiny balcony; it was very high up; the piazza with the tram terminus, the station, the converging streets, looked like the lines of a map dotted with minute figures.

The chamber maid brought up the tea,—thick white china, butter in thin pats, honey in little saucers, rolls and a pot of tea.

Pio did not move, but as Lucie closed the window through which the rain was drifting, he motioned to her to leave it open.

Lucie took off her hat, opened one of her valises and put some of her things out; she noticed with a furtive eye of dread an array of medicine bottles on the table by the bed; there was a faint acrid smell in the room.

Her husband's luggage, expensive trunks, portmanteaux and cases stood about, looking familiar yet alien; on the dressing-table was the ivory and silver toilet set she had given him and a gold watch in a travelling case.

She poured out the tea and was glad to drink the thin fragrant beverage.

"How long have you been here?" she asked.

"One night."

"You shouldn't have come—I could have travelled straight through."

"I wanted to come—it has been very dull."

"Yes—but if you are not feeling very well—it is a tiring journey—"

"I am quite well—almost cured—only I had a little fever that pulled me down—"

"But when you wrote to me—asking me to come—you thought you were worse?"

"I had a nasty turn with a bad cold and the doctor said that I ought to have someone to look after me—he said it was most unfair that I should be left alone—"

"But, Pio," faltered Lucie, "you went home for your people to look after you—"

"Do not talk of Sicily," he replied fretfully. "I wish the whole island was at the bottom of the seamy father has become imbecile, my sister is ill, my brother is impossible, they do nothing but borrow money, I get no comfort there, no encouragement, no place even to live in!"

Lucie gazed at the rain which was making a wet patch on the polished floor.

"Besides," added Pio, "we have been separated long enough. I do not like this kind of life—you said you would come out, it is your aunt prevents you and your friends, they hate me and want to separate us."

This was true enough, but omitted one important particular; Lucie was the breadwinner.

"I had work to finish," she said.

"You can work here as well as in England."

"I can't—really—"

"I will not come back to England—the doctor says I must have the sun."

"Who is he, this doctor?"

"Dr. Villari very good, I think he understands my case—besides I have taken this house—and our tickets for tomorrow."

Lucie knew that to argue further would be to provoke violence; she drank her tea while he lay back in his chair as if exhausted by so much talking.

Pio Simonetti was a Sicilian, about thirty years old, of pure inbred race, from an old and decaying family long resident in a hill town more ancient than Rome.

He was tall, always too slender, handsome in a dark hawk-like fashion, with the fine eyes and sweeping brows so usual in the South, thick waving hair, coarsely modelled nose and lips and a sallow dull complexion.

In the four months since Lucie had seen him he had changed considerably; he was now so thin that all the hollows and contours of his skull were visible, the skin hung flaccid in a double circle under each eye, the hair was thinning on the temples and sprinkled with white, the full lips were of a bluish colour and painfully compressed.

"I will now take a rest," he said and rose as if with an effort.

As he moved he began to cough.

He sat down again and continued coughing.

Lucie was used to his cough but she had never seen anything like this; he beat the air convulsively, he writhed, he twisted, in torture, the sweat stood on his forehead; he motioned to Lucie to give him one of the medicines on the bedside table; she did not know which to give as they were all different from those he had used at home, but she gave him a glass of water from the wash stand, and the paroxysm subsided in a gasp of whispered curses.

In silence she helped him out of his coat and muffler and on to the bed; he was handsomely, even extravagantly dressed; he had never spared money on his clothes and his personal appointments. Propped up on one elbow, he poured himself out a dose from one of the bottles ready.

"I am always to have these," he whispered, "when I cough. It is nerves—my lungs are quite sound—the doctor says so."

He sank back, panting, on the large clean pillow.

"And that 'sirop'—the red—I take two tablespoonfuls at five and they will bring up some eggs and Marsala which I take soon after to keep my strength up."

"Very well," said Lucie.

She went and sat down by the window trying to recollect her wits; Pio was very soon in a heavy, and, as it seemed to Lucie, an unnatural sleep.

It was clear he was very ill; even her ignorance could see that; also it was obvious he was set against a return to England.

He had even undertaken liabilities as to a house, doctors, etc., that she would be able to pay off; there seemed to be nothing for it but for her to at least go to Viareggio and see this doctor and find out the truth.

It did not besides seem to her that he had the strength for the journey to England—perhaps he would gain this shortly—or perhaps he was daily becoming worse.

Anyhow he claimed her, expected, exacted her services and time, her presence and assistance as well as her money, and she did not see how she could repudiate these claims—since he had quarrelled with his family, he had no one save herself.

She almost smiled to think of the complete selfishness of his reception of her; not one word had he said of her health, her comfort, her journey, her possible fatigue.

Yet against this she tried to put the effort he had made in coming to Turin, and to the station, the care he had taken with his appearance—she supposed anyone who was ill was selfish.

Rising wearily she went to look at him as he slept.

She knew now, beyond any shadow of doubt, that she cared nothing for him, was not even interested in him; this sudden sight of him, this realization of his ill-health, had effectively killed any sparks of sentiment she might have been endeavouring to cherish; she loathed sickness and this man's malady repelled her absolutely; she did not feel dislike or contempt, only indifference for the man and horror for the disease.

As she looked back into the past she felt a blushing amazement that she had ever been able to cheat herself into taking this man for any semblance of Love.

He was sunk deep into the pillows, his breath came in hoarse snores; now and then his limbs twitched under his fashionable clothes; he had the appearance of utter futility.

Surely he was drugged; Lucie looked at the bottle from which he had taken his dose; it was labelled "goceie Mafenjie" which told her nothing.

§ II

Lucie washed and changed her frock and felt rested, even reanimated despite the senseless figure on the bed.

She went again to the window and stepped out; the rain had almost ceased; the sky was showing a pale washed blue through the rifts in the watery clouds; a man with a close packed basket of roses on his back passed below, a faint tremulous indefinable excitement stirred Lucie.

She could imagine how wonderful it would be to come here, young and happy, with health and love for company...she would have liked to go out and see the strange famous town, which she did not know at all; but he had asked for his medicine at five—and might wake before and miss her. He always displayed his fiercest jealousy of her slightest independent action.

§ III

Again Lucie reminded herself that she was absolutely free; she lived in an age of feminine "emancipation"; there was hardly any length of freedom to which women might not go, she was able to earn her own living, and there was not only no one with any authority over her, but no one who had any right whatsoever to offer her advice.

And those most interested in her affairs, Mrs. Falconer, Sophie, her few friends, would certainly absolutely applaud her in any assertion of independence she chose to make.

She could hardly exaggerate the extent of her own freedom; whatever course seemed best to her own judgment she might securely take.

And she knew perfectly well what was the obviously sensible and prudent thing for her to do—perhaps also the wisest and kindest—that was to refuse to listen to anything Pio might do or say and insist on his return to England and his entry into a good nursing home; if she did this, and saw that he was well treated and paid for him out of her own not too easily earned money, she knew that everyone would consider that she was behaving quite well, even generously.

Or, if he was quite obdurate about this course, she could give him a small sum of money and let him return to Sicily, or drift about Italy, as he wished, while she went home and resumed her own life.

And why, in resuming that life, should she submit again to that other tyranny of Mrs. Falconer and Sophie?

There also, there was no real obligation on her, over and over again she had repaid anything she might have owed for being just barely clothed and scarcely fed and not in the least educated; since she was sixteen she had earned rather more than her own keep and everything she knew she had taught herself, with hardly encouragement. Why, therefore, did she not cut herself free from both Mrs. Falconer and Pio and live her own life free from emotional entanglements—really, her own life, at last.

There were so many things she would have liked to do that she had never been able to dream of doing—yet things that were quite in her power to do, if she could only have stood upright, given herself room to move.

Travel, for instance, and leisure for her work, and some beauty of surrounding and adornment. But what was the use?

§ IV

What was the use of talking of freedom for women, when the sheer fact of your sex trippled you every time?

Lucie always came back to that.

You weren't free, you simply couldn't be free, when all the instincts of your nature (instincts how strong, how terrible!) were driving you to find a mate, and the only way for you to secure this mate was marriage, an institution but ill adapted for the independent woman.

And what was the use of freedom if you weren't trained to use it?—if, from generations of enclosed women, you had inherited the wish to be enclosed and protected—if you hated to stand alone and be free—simply made a mess of it, if you tried.

And this without being a fool or a dinging sentimental coquette—but a creature intelligent enough to know yourself.

Intelligent enough to know that you, as a woman, because you were a woman, never could be really free, because of your nerves, and your emotions, and your physical weaknesses, your lack of mental stability, your desperate need of love.

§ V

Lucie looked again at the bed; the sleeping man had never moved.

How he had trusted her!

He was passing as quite a wealthy man, taking a fashionable villa, going to expensive doctor after doctor, lending money to his family—his clothes costly, all his habits luxurious—and without troubling even to be grateful or pleasant, he was quite certain that she would support him in everything, never mentioning whose money it was, playing the dutiful wife as if every penny was his.

And Lucie knew that he had not relied in vain; she knew she could not go back on him.

§ VI

She tried to be very honest and sincere with herself; to think the problem well out; this man stood for a good dead in her life.

She had set him up, as the primitive Greeks had set up their Xoamen, those first formless images of the Gods they worshipped, rude, with hardly any likeness to a human form, but the best they could achieve.

But these archaic statues, "handless, footless, eyeless," were draped in embroidered veils, adorned with boughs of myrtle, drenched in scented oil and decked with wreaths until they became beautiful to the gaze of the worshippers.

And Lucie had done the same, since this man must stand for at least one God to her; she had lavished herself and her money to disguise and elevate him.

Was it for her, the priestess of this poor altar, to strip the idol bare and show it for the wretched block of wood it was?