Читать книгу Stinging Nettles - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 5

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§ I

LUCIE could not sleep; she lay still, overwhelmed with gloom and depression, her body inert, her mind active.

She longed for sleep, she longed for the dawn.

Looking presently at the travelling clock that stood behind the night-light on the chimney-piece, she saw that it was three o'clock.

At the same moment a streak of white light showed under the door.

Lucie heard a footstep; Sophie entered, leaving the electric light up in the corridor as she shut the door.

"I couldn't sleep," she said. "What is the use of trying? I thought you would be awake."

"But I shall go to sleep soon," answered Lucie, "do go back to bed, dear."

Sophie took no notice of this; she sat on the side of the bed and yawned.

She wore a tweed coat over a thin draggled night gown and her hair as it had been all the evening; hair pins sticking in a rough mass of locks and the greasy bow on one side.

Lucie resented her appearance; she detested this habit of the wrong garment at the wrong time; she thought of the clothes she had given Sophie.

"What do you want?" she asked in a voice as free from irritation as she could make it.

"We've got a party at the studio tomorrow. I didn't tell you, we want you to come."

Lucie knew at once that she had not meant to ask her; but on thinking it over had changed her mind.

Lucie was used to not being asked to "parties" arranged by Sophie.

She did not want to go to this one, but was fearful of giving offence.

"All right, we will talk of it to-morrow," she answered. But Sophie did not move.

In the thick wavering light of the night-light she looked a clumsy hunched figure in the heavy incongruous coat. "Simon Kaye is coming," she said.

Lucie heard the name with dread; Sophie's tortuous love affair with this man stretched back years; Lucie had never understood it, lately she had not even tried.

"I thought that was all over," she said, feebly dropping her head on the pillow. "You said so, Sophie."

"I found I couldn't bear it—I wrote to him and he came to see me. I think it is all right now."

"You mean you are going to marry him?" asked the other woman.

"Mother asked him for to-morrow," evaded Sophie. "She got the party up for him, really."

"I don't understand why you bother about other men."

"Oh, just a distraction, I suppose. Besides I don't bother. They come after me."

"Don't let them. Concentrate on Simon Kaye if he is really the one."

"You know he is—"

"Well, then—"

"He doesn't want to marry. Mother says he's too absorbed in money making now—but that it is going to be all right."

Lucie sat up in bed; her nerves were on edge; she had listened so often to the futile, painful confidences about Simon Kaye.

"Sophie—it's nearly ten years that this has been going on. Do put it out of your head," she urged feverishly. "If he wanted to marry you, he would—that seems so plain. Don't let him keep you hanging about like this. It is worrying your mother so."

"You don't understand," answered Sophie with gloomy melancholy. "I don't care for anything else."

Lucie lay silent.

Sophie went on talking.

§ II

Her voice wandered up and down over the tangles of this miserable passion of hers; she went over the interviews, the letters, the telephone calls, the long silences, the waitings, the disappointments—years of it now.

The man cared, but had never spoken; she cared, but could not make him believe it—they had met and parted with "scenes" time after time.

It was all so dreary and dull; the girl seemed weighed with gloomy tragedy, that was without splendour or grandeur.

There was something cold-blooded even in her account of her own suffering.

Her passion, like her youth, seemed abortive; she was like a rootless flower trying to bear fruit.

§ III

Lucie's head was aching furiously. She sat restlessly up in bed.

"I wish you would give him up. He is making a lot of money—too much for our set."

"I ought to have money, too. I ought to be mixing with the people he is—I never have a chance of even meeting him."

"He is standing for Parliament, isn't he?"

"Well, then, that will absorb him even more."

"But I am sure he cares for me. He thinks he isn't good enough. He told me once that there were other women and that he gambled and drank. Of course I don't mind."

"Don't you, really?"

"No. I haven't got your ideas of marriage. I should go crazy—'settled down' with sock mending and cooking—"

"How would you live?"

"Like he does now, in chambers or a hotel—he could go away for weeks if he liked—without me, I mean."

She spoke childishly, yet there was something unpleasant about her manner.

Lucie put her hand to her beating head.

"That's it—you want to get married, like all of them, but you don't want to be married. You want to lead the same old life."

"Why not? Women are free now, aren't they?"

"Oh, this freedom!"

"I could never stand those stuffy Darby and Joan marriages."

"I know. But, Sophie, don't fool about with all these other men if you are so keen on the one."

"Why not?"

"It's silly."

"I don't think so."

Lucie felt angry; her cousin's half insolent indifference, unmoved apathy on these matters hardly ever failed to rouse her; and now she was so tired.

"It isn't decent. It is vulgar."

"I don't mind," said Sophie.

"Those women we saw to-night," said Lucie. "What are they? They just take what they can get out of men ... any men. Well, it's going near it to do what you do—"

Sophie seemed flattered.

"I can't help attracting men," she smiled.

"You could. Don't think so much about it—"

"Everyone does."

"I know," admitted Lucie, "we know too many women of the same kind—it's men, men, men, all the time, either angling for them, or abusing them, and it's all so ineffectual—no one seems to be satisfied even when they do get married. There they still are, scrambling with the others.—for what?"

"Well," sneered Sophie, "you aren't leading an orthodox married life yourself, are you?"

§ IV

Lucie saw the shadow-blotted shape of her husband's letter on the floor.

"I tried to," she said bitterly. "You know I tried to. And at least I leave it alone. N? need because I made a failure for you to do the same."

Sophie peered at her curiously, almost malevolently; she was secretly glad that Lucie's marriage had gone to pieces, for it seemed to dispose of, in its failure, many of Luck's annoying, prim and old-fashioned ideals.

She did not answer now; beyond a point it was not expedient to offend her cousin, who, though this was never admitted, represented the Falconers' main source of income.

"Do go to bed," whispered Lucie from the pillow. Sophie rose.

"Mother thought that you might like to buy some of the cakes and things for to-morrow."

"All right."

"We could go out tomorrow morning and get them," added Sophie, "and I must have some new shoes and stockings."

"All right," said Lucie again; she knew she would have to pay for these items and probably a few other things besides.

But this couldn't be mentioned for fear of hurting their feelings.

"It is much more difficult to take than to give," was one of Mrs. Falconer's favourite sayings; and Sophie's attitude was that the utmost Lucie could do was less than she "owed" her relations, more gifted, but not so commercially successful.

§ V

Sophie had gone, but Lucie could not sleep.

She reached out of bed and picked up her husband's letter.

She was glad that Sophie had not seen it; Sophie, though, seldom did see anything that did not directly concern her personally.

The air was cold, but not fresh; the room looked wretched in the smudged flicker of the night-light; everything in it seemed worn and untidy, confused and purposeless.

Lucie put the letter—thin crackling paper it was, like a bank-note—on the table by her bed and dragged the blankets over her shoulders.

She thought of Sophie with sharp distaste; the chaos that surrounded all of them appalled and confounded her; what did they all want, these striving anxious women like Mrs. Bearish and Mrs. Falconer, these girls like Sophie and Aurora? Wan or noisy, sullen or gay, sluts or neat—all somehow desperate—what did they want?

A living, first of all...and after?

Lucie thought of her own case; she was gifted, skilful, her work was in demand, she could earn a good income, and in this she was very fortunate; she realized how very fortunate she was.

A man in her place with her luck and talent and opportunities would be having a very good sort of life.

Then why shouldn't she, since women were as free as men now?

§ VI

What was the use if you were a woman ... you were tripped up ever time, just by the fact you were a woman.

What was work, or success, or talent, compared to your womanhood?

You wanted to be loved.

More than anything you wanted that.

You wanted children and a "home."

All your instincts and passions drove you toward these things.

In your youth they tormented and allured you.

You lay awake at night trembling for fear you should miss them.

"Supposing no man ever wants me?"

"Supposing I never have any children?"

Marriage was the only way for a woman like you—and you married.

There wasn't much choice and you were diffident, very romantic aid you married the man who made most obvious love to you, who was able, if only a little, to compare with your secret ideals.

And then you were caught—"done for."

Your work, your individuality, your chances went by the board, you were swept into another's life...

You had your baby and lost it.

You had a sick man to nurse.

You could never think of love any more, nor of children.

You were a good woman and you had ideals; it was just over and done with for you, and you didn't care, for you were stunned emotionally.

And with this heavy blight over you, you must work—you'd been fool enough to marry a penniless sickly man—he was looking to you now.

Fool, no doubt—but you thought you loved him, you wanted so desperately to be loved, you dreamed you could make it wonderful.

And what else offered save bleak negation?

That which was within you and too powerful for your poor control betrayed you.

§ VII

And now Lucie's sad mind, half delirious with fatigue, turned and beat on another problem.

Supposing you weren't respectable, supposing you disregarded this fetish of marriage?

Wouldn't that be real freedom?

Why was the idea so terrifying?

How little you knew of those other women, the women you mustn't talk about—or know about, really. And you didn't know.

What men said about them, when you weren't there, how they lived and how they spoke among themselves.

You read about them, you saw them, you heard, sometimes, references to them, newspapers were full of them, you suspected them among women you met casually or knew by name—they were feminine creatures like yourself, but intensely unreal to you.

You supposed men, even quiet-looking men, knew all about them and judged or condemned them according to their natures. You couldn't do that.

It was all shut away from you; you were a "nice" woman and you had to get married or be an old maid.

But you often wondered about those other women.

You had to wonder, for you simply didn't know.

§ VIII

Lucie Uden wept into her pillow,

Not from active unhappiness or definite pain, she was past both.

But from wild yearnings and desperate home sickness of the soul.

"The harvest is over and I have garnered no grain

When evening falls there will be no home lights for me,

Only the long gray road that leads into the darkness."

§ IX

It was all so ordinary.

If people remarked upon her career at all, it was only to say how stupid she had been, a woman of her gifts, to get married at all, unless she could have secured a man of wealth and position.

Even Mrs. Falconer had appeared rather relieved at the failure of Lucie's attempt at domesticity.

"A woman like you doesn't want to shut herself up in a nursery, my dear girl."

And though she had been sorry when the baby died, she had been quite definitely glad when Pio's cough had taken him to Italy.

No, there weren't many women in Lucie's set who could have sympathised with her secret anguish—some of them thought that a "good time" and "fun" could be got out of an independent income and a husband abroad.

Anyhow—it was all so ordinary.

§ X

Lucie put her husband's letter under her pillow.

She tried to recall something about him that was pleasant...she went over his love-making, his emotional scenes with her, his gusts of jealousy, his displays of quick crude passion.

Useless, not a spark of any sentiment save compassion could she arouse.

There was nothing there that had been worth while—nothing whatever.

She told herself that it didn't matter—she had to keep on telling herself that.

She was just part of the general chaos—whirling about like a speck of dust before the wind.

It was all so ordinary.