Читать книгу Stinging Nettles - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 4

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§ I

SOPHIE, in a mood to resent anything, was vexed by Lucie's tone.

"Well, I should not have cared to have lived then," she said pettishly; "nor would you, I should have thought. Lord, we couldn't have lived like we do. Think of the freedom. We do do as we like, really."

Lucie, huddled in one of the pretty chintz chairs, stirred her cocoa; she was not listening to her cousin, but thinking that she didn't like cocoa, really...any more than she liked "dressing up" to have dinner in the grill-room of a big hotel.

"Think how dull it must have been," persisted Sophie. "'Revolting woman' hadn't been heard of—there was nothing one could do."

"Dull?" said Lucie. "Yes, I suppose so—but freedom can be dull, too!"

"That's silly," answered Sophie. "If we are ever dull nowadays it is because we haven't got enough freedom—"

Lucie rose; the room was close, with the fumes from Sophie's careless flare of gas, yet her limbs were chilled and she had a headache.

Somehow, these familiar surroundings, with her own work and books about, seemed almost as revolting as the atmosphere of the huge hotel; both seemed to lack stability, order, permanence: the luxurious hotel, the cheap furnished flat, seemed symbols of a bitter relentlessness, of the coming and going of unsatisfied, struggling people. Lucie had a sensation of everything whirling round her, in and out of chaos. "I've got that horrid feeling that nothing is real," she said wistfully.

"Lots of people have," replied Sophie unsympathetically. "I expect it is the War—at least, everyone says everything is the War."

She picked up a cigarette-case, but did not open it; she seldom smoked save when men were present.

"Let us go to bed," murmured Lucie wearily; "it is most frightfully late. Your room is ready."

"I'm not sleepy a bit," replied Sophie. "And it isn't late, really. You've got a dowdy mind, Lucie. Why shouldn't we sit up all night? I often do."

Lucie thought, but did not say, that her cousin well might do as she pleased, considering her lazy life; for herself there was work she had to do, to get bread-and-butter for all of them and to be able to send cheques out to the ailing husband in Italy, who was too "proud" to live on his family.

She sat down again, unable to cope with Sophie, who always had her way with her.

"You won't be able to work if you sit up so late," she said feebly.

"Work!" cried Sophie. "Why should I have to work?"

"You ought to plod at the singing," said Lucie, exasperated.

"There's nothing in it; you simply can't get money that way. I ought not to have to be trying—plodding spoils one's looks."

This was a reference to Sophie's well-known grievance against her father's family, who were "comfortably off" and offered her no assistance whatever, and appeared only dubiously impressed by her charms and gifts.

Lucie steered away from the subject; her depression had deepened into a sense of foreboding, as if something queer and nasty was going to happen to one, or perhaps both, of them.

"Of course you've been successful," went on Sophie. "You don't know what it is to have to struggle without a reward."

Lucie was used to that, too; she moved near the window so that she could hear the rain.

"Why don't you give it up and get married?" she said desperately. "You've had plenty of chances."

"With penniless men," answered Sophie sharply. "Wow is that going to help?"

"Well, if you can't get a Mr. Sackett—" smiled Lucie dismally.

The vanity of the other woman retorted sharply:

"I could if I wanted to. He isn't the only one who admires me."

"Why bother about the men so much, now we are free?" asked Lucie wearily. "You said yourself there are too many girls."

"Freedom! What is the good of talking! Money brings the only freedom," she added sharply.

Sophie looked at her, not without malice; these two women, forced by circumstances into this intimacy, really often irritated each other very much. Sophie's jealous disposition, soured by continual set-backs on the lines of her desires and some very conspicuous failures, always instantly resented any hint of disapproval or "preaching" on Lucie's part.

She genuinely despised the elder woman for her marriage, which she called, in the jargon in which she spoke and thought, "a hopeless mess."

"Heard from Pio lately?" she asked in a thin artificial voice.

At this mention of her husband Lucie did slightly wince. "Oh, yes; he writes frequently," she answered bravely. "Getting better?"

"Much. All right again, I think."

"Coming back?"

"No," said Lucie firmly. "He is quite happy in Sicily—he always hated this country, really. He is helping his cousin with some orange growing."

"You don't think of joining him?" Sophie's sneer was blatant.

"No," answered the other woman quietly. "I've got my living to earn over here. You know all that, Sophie."

The girl shrugged her shoulders in an artificial fashion.

"Well, you always talk as if you liked all that old-fashioned business of cooking and serving and Darby-and-Joan—but you don't live up to it," she said. "You are glad of this freedom, aren't you? Being able to live like this, and no one asking questions—"

Tears were in Lucie's hazel eyes and her whole body shivered with fatigue and sadness.

"I took what came my way," she said quietly. "What is the use of going over it? Everything is over for me, of course." The simplicity of this view seemed to Sophie grotesque; she wondered if Lucie could really be so oblivious to her own youth, charming personality and great attractiveness.

As she sat there now, entirely unconscious, She looked, in her long grace, with her pale-brown hair and delicate features, an entrancing figure of soft, womanly allure.

"Do you really mean to stick to that man?" asked Sophie sharply.

Lucie heard the words like an ugly clamour breaking the dreams about her heart, but she answered at once and quite casually:

"Yes—of course; don't be silly."

"Lord!" cried Sophie. "Silly! Why, it just means you're done for—he over there and you here—"

"I don't know what you mean—we get on quite well together."

"With Europe between you!"

Lucie rose, and drew the curtains to open the window a little and feel the rain on her hands.

"I shall go out there presently. Anyhow, there is no divorce in Italy—if that is what you mean, Sophie."

"You would be divorced if you could, I suppose?"

"No. Not for anything."

Sophie was exasperated.

"You've not been tempted."

Lucie tried to turn it off with a laugh.

"No, and I am not likely to be. I've 'settled down,' you know—and quite off the track of that sort of thing."

Sophie had to wish to suppose her cousin likely to inspire emotional adventures, so she agreed with this.

"I suppose not," she answered, rising. "But if you were—could you still cling to these old-fashioned stunts?"

"I hope so," said Lucie. "Yes, of course."

"I don't believe it—I don't believe any woman could or would. Now, if a nice man was to make love to you—"

"They wouldn't. And I don't meet any," answered Lucie incoherently. "Do come to bed. I'm half asleep. Don't keep talking about it, you've no idea how middle-aged and past everything I feel."

Sophie yawned and lounged to the door; her prettiness was eclipsed; with her rather dull hair ruffled and her pale, tired face and her nondescript clothes, she looked a middle-aged woman, her bust and hips, and lines round her mouth showed her age plainly.

"Toby Entwhistle is coming home next week," she said, with a funny little lift of her upper lip that was like an unpleasant smile.

Lucie shut the window sharply.

"I thought he was in Baghdad—for good," she said carefully.

"He isn't. Coming home to look for the jobs that aren't here. You'll be glad to see him."

"Why?" challenged Lucie, with her back to the window. "Oh, he used to admire you a lot, didn't he?"

Lucie ignored this.

"You've heard from him?"

"I often do. He is always writing to me or mother. Yesterday there was just a line to say he was coming back that's all."

"You saw a good deal of him during the War—when I was in Italy?" asked Lucie, as they went out into the tiny corridor.

"He was about with the others," said Sophie carelessly. "We hadn't much use for him."

The odious slang hurt Lucie; in silence she turned up the gas in the slip of a bedroom which Sophie made such frequent use of; it was an airless place, over-furnished, of course, but clean and in a way pleasant.

"I shan't stay here long," said Lucie, with a sudden hint of passion. "I must get a place of my own, some sort of a home."

"What is the use of a home without something to put in it?" asked Sophie brutally, sitting on the bed and dragging off her shoes without untying the laces. "I hope you don't mean to bury yourself in the country," she added, with a touch of anxiety; fir Lucie in town was very useful to her. "You'll never get on if you leave London."

"Get on, get on!—Where to? What for?"

The words whirled foolishly in Lucie's tired head; she stared at a cheap photogravure of "The Golden Stairs" that hung above the fumed-oak bed; the peace and dignity of the poet's vision struck across her mood even through this poor medium.

"That is all just as true as anything else, Sophie," she said irrelevantly.

The girl glanced up.

"What? That fairy tale?"

"Yes—fairy tales are true."

Sophie laughed shortly.

"Well, good-night."

"Good-night. Do try to sleep," said Lucie.

They kissed without affection, and Lucie returned to the little sitting-room as Sophie, half-undressed, was idly searching the bamboo bookshelf to see if there was one of the second-hand novels she hadn't read.

Lucie closed both doors with a sense of resolution; it was good to be alone.

She "tidied" the sitting-room, carried the supper things into the kitchen in readiness for the daily woman, came back, lowered the gas fire and sat beside it in the low chintz chair, staring at what were to her, the most beautiful objects in the room: a gaudy china parrot in yellow and orange that stood behind a bowl of apples and nuts on the little sideboard.

She was, quite suddenly, not sleepy; a new almost feverish vitality flooded her being; she felt almost overwhelmingly alive, sitting alert in this little room, in the sleeping city.

§ II

Toby Entwhistle was returning to London. He had been in the East four years; during the War she had been in Italy and not seen him when he renewed his acquaintance with the Falconers, who, though they had formerly snubbed him as an utter nobody, were not displeased to have another very personable young officer to go about with during his leave.

Lucie counted up how long it was since she had seen him. Not for long before—why, it must be eight, ten years—why, they must have been boy and girl then.

There had never been any kind of a love affair—only, somehow, they had liked each other. Then Mrs. Falconer had disapproved of the modest youth who was so hopelessly "no good" to any one of them—then the War, and her marriage...Queer how distinctly she remembered him.

He hadn't married.

Lucie sighed, stirred in her chair...And now he was coming home.

Home!—to what?

Socially he was, like herself, a mere waif and stray, orphaned—a "nobody" struggling for existence, never master of so much money as when on active service—nothing definitely but a good soldier. She was curiously pleased to remember how often she had heard that of him—she, tied to an invalid who looked upon the War as a "nuisance" because it took all the good doctors out of the country.

He used to like all the things she liked. How wonderful, to have another chance, with this kind of man...

But she was bound—"done for"; everything was over for her—quite definitely over—and of course he would not care about her now.

He would be fallen upon by all these overwhelming girls and women, flattered and caressed, f or—"a good time" and "fun." Sophie would be glad to go about with him as long as he paid for her; Aurora would "take him up"; though their ultimate prey were rich husbands, these desperate huntresses were eager for any other victims in the meanwhile; and they were but two of these "free" girls who seemed to Lucie to be stampeding the very meaning out of life.

"I am a fool to be even giving it a thought," she told herself. "Of course I am free too; I've got the right to any love that comes my way—but it won't come—I'm not the sort. Marriage isn't much nowadays, at least a marriage like mine. Pio wouldn't care what I did," she thought. "But there is nothing I want to do—I'm done for. I feel quite old—I looked a hag to-night."

A clock outside struck half-past one. Lucie walked up and down the narrow strip of matting.

She recalled Sophie's words.

"I can do exactly as I like," she repeated, half aloud.

She was self-supporting; she had no one to consider; Pio, idling in Sicily, was so completely estranged by differences of temperament and character that he would hardly care what she did; rigid faithfulness to Pio, such as she had preserved hitherto, seemed really rather grotesque.

She glanced half guiltily, half defiantly, at the engraving of the woman in the crinoline.

"After all, Sophie is right," she admitted. "They are hideous, and I will take them away. I do belong to this time J live in. I am quite independent—it would be silly to be bound by rules and conventions that don't any longer exist."

She looked at herself in the mirror with the border of gay fruit, looked almost apprehensively...Could she still make herself lovely if she wanted to do something better than go round with Sophie and girls like Sophie and women like Mrs. Falconer, to clutch at "luck"?

Fatigue was over her like a mantle, but her soul was alert. She thought of the Burne-Jones picture. "I wonder if I could get something like that out of it, after all."

§ III

She put out the gas and went into the corridor, which was in darkness; her fingers went mechanically to the bracket where the matches were kept, and struck one. As the light flared out she saw the white square of a letter on the floor; she must have stepped on it when she entered.

Usually she looked for the post; to-night she had been preoccupied by the failure of the evening. She stooped and picked up the letter; the match went out; but she had seen the Italian postmark.

From her husband.

Funny to think of it lying there while she and Sophie talked; while she thought of Toby Entwhistle.

But what difference would it make? It would be a friendly letter, as usual. And probably he wanted money.

She lit the gas in her bedroom...cold now, and tired.

"It doesn't matter about Pio," she told herself. "He doesn't want me, and I can do exactly as I like. As Sophie said. Free—we women are all free."

She noticed her own fair hand as she opened the thin envelope—really a fair hand, frail and lovely.

The letter was quite brief—the name at the top that of a hotel in Florence.

He, her husband, had left Sicily, after quarrelling with his family; he was ill, seriously ill. He had taken a furnished house on the coast, and wanted her to come out and nurse him...at once; he was both appealing and imperative...at once.

"I can do exactly as I like," murmured Lucie. "Of course, I shan't go."

She lit a night-light; she was afraid of the dark since the baby died, afraid of her own nerves.

She put out the gas, undressed and got into bed.

It didn't seem real that she had a husband; what he asked of her was grotesque.

He was a weakling.

How he had cried when the baby died; sobbed and screamed like a hurt child.

Their baby, that seemed grotesque, too.

She lay down, flicking the letter off the coverlet with a shudder.

§ IV

Seriously ill.

If he died she would be really free.

But it was too late. Nothing could happen now.