Читать книгу The Gazebo - Dora Amy Elles - Страница 9

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Mrs Graham’s state of mind was becoming very much confused. On the one hand it was desirable that Althea should be paying more attention to her appearance, having regard to the fact that no one is going to believe you are under forty yourself if you have a daughter who might be thirty-five. But on the other hand it was impossible to help connecting the change with Nicholas Carey’s undesired return. When anyone had been away for five years you really don’t expect them to turn up again. Not that he was likely to take the slightest interest in Thea after all this time. She had always thought that French proverb about coming back to your first loves very silly—just a jingle for the sake of the rhyme.

‘On revient toujours

A ses premiers amours!’

In her experience once a man went away he stayed away. All the same she hoped they wouldn’t meet. Thea might be upset, and when she was upset it made a very depressing atmosphere in the house. Really the best thing would be to sell the house to this Mr Blount who seemed to want it so badly. They could store the furniture and be off on their cruise before the cold weather set in. She wondered whether he would rise beyond seven thousand. If he did, it would be madness to refuse, and Thea would be kept much too busy to have any time to spare for Nicholas Carey.

She continued in this frame of mind until the afternoon of Mrs Justice’s cocktail party. By an irony of fate it was Ella Harrison who disturbed it. Making her way to the comfortable chair which Mrs Graham had managed to secure, she sat down on the arm of it and embarked upon a kind of running commentary.

‘What a crowd! I see the three Miss Pimms are here. I thought they never went anywhere together, but as Sophy Justice married a connexion of theirs I suppose they felt bound to show up. Mabel’s been wearing that blue dress ever since we came to Grove Hill, and whatever induced her to buy it in the first instance I can’t imagine! But none of them have got any taste!’

‘She had it for Sophy’s wedding five years ago.’

Mrs Graham spoke with the complacency induced by the fact that her own dress was quite new. It was of a soft shade of blue with a matching coatee, and it had really cost her more than she was justified in spending, but if they sold the house she could take it off the price and it wouldn’t be noticed. She would, in fact, have got it for practically nothing.

Mrs Harrison said,

‘It looks like it! It must always have been pretty awful anyhow. Where’s Thea? You don’t mean to say she hasn’t come! I’ve brought Nicholas Carey, you know. I wonder whether they will have anything to say to each other! He’s staying with us to clear up all that mess in the attic. He left it with Emmy Lester, and she left it with us, and goodness knows I shall be glad to get rid of it! Why, there is Thea over there by the window talking to Nettie Pimm! My dear, what has she done to herself—I never saw such a change! If I hadn’t known that green dress of hers I really don’t suppose I should have recognized her! You know, Winifred, if you take her away on a cruise looking like that she’ll be getting off with someone and you’ll be left lamenting!’ There was a certain edge on the words.

Mrs Graham’s delicate eyebrows drew together in a frown.

‘What a ridiculous thing to say!’

‘Not at all! Of course I don’t say the men you meet are always serious, but there would be plenty of fun and games. I know I’d go off again tomorrow if I could! But there isn’t much chance of that the way Jack keeps harping on about how much it cost, and the losses he’s been having. Why, to hear him you’d think he expected me to sit down in Grove Hill and economize for the rest of my life! What a hope! You know, I always say one might just as well be dead as dull. That cruise was fun. I haven’t enjoyed anything so much for years. I only wish I had your chance of doing it all over again!’

Mrs Graham looked away.

‘I don’t know that I should care about it.’

Ella Harrison had a moment of exasperation. What a weathercock Winifred Graham was! She had been keen enough to go on this cruise when she thought she might pick up a man for herself, but the minute anyone suggested that there might be a chance in it for Thea she was off again.

Ella took a look at her own interest in the matter. Fred wanted the house, and she would be doing him a good turn if she got the Grahams to sell. She couldn’t think why he wanted it, but she meant to find out. She was seeing Fred every day—meeting him casually for coffee, going to the cinema with him in the evenings. If he wasn’t falling for her all over again, he was putting on a pretty good act. She knew just what a piece of folly it would be if she let herself fall for him. He was up to something—she knew him well enough to know that. You couldn’t trust him an inch—she knew that too. She oughtn’t to have any truck with him, and that was a fact. Even as the thought was in her mind she knew that she was just as much of a fool about him as she had ever been in the past, and that if he wanted the Grahams off the map she would go all out to help him.

These thoughts were all in her mind as she answered Mrs Graham.

‘My dear, you’d love it! And you’d have no end of admiration. Men always fall for the fragile type! And there’ll be plenty of them! Why shouldn’t Thea have her share? I’ll say that for her, she pays for a bit of brightening up!’

As an exponent of the art of brightness Ella Harrison could certainly speak with authority. Everything about her appeared to glitter, from the brassy hair, the eyes set off by long black lashes, the teeth which were so much in evidence that she seemed to be advertising somebody’s dentifrice, to the diamond studs in her ears, the dazzling sunburst at her shoulder, and the valuable rings which flashed with every movement of her hands.

The skilfully applied complexion and startling lipstick achieved emphasis from a clinging garment of royal blue, the colour being repeated by a twist of tulle and a jewelled clasp in the hair. She had felt a good deal pleased with herself when she came down the stairs at Grove Hill House to where Nicholas Carey was waiting in the hall. He stood and watched her, and seemed quite unable to look away. It gave her the feeling that she was on the stage again. There was nothing like a staircase for an entrance. She would have been gratified to know that a somewhat similar idea had presented itself to Nicholas, though she might have been offended if she had guessed that he was summing her up with stage directions: ‘A Blare of Trumpets. Enter the Barbaric Queen!’

Althea, looking across the intervening crowd, wondered for the hundredth time or so how her mother could stand the woman. She could put up with her being vulgar and overdressed, but when it came to her pushing this frightful idea of a cruise and selling the house it was just too much. In the last resort, of course, she would be driven into playing her own trump card. The house was hers and it couldn’t be sold without her consent, only she hoped—very much she hoped—that she wouldn’t have to say so.

Nicholas Carey, in the far corner of the room where the massive figure of Mrs Justice practically screened him from view, saw Althea’s face change. He had been watching her whilst Mrs Justice told him all about Sophy’s wedding which he ought not to have missed and then went on to impart the latest particulars about her husband, her elder boy, her second boy, her girl, and last but most important of all, her twins. ‘One of each, and regular little dumplings, she says. And oh, my dear boy, they’ve all got red hair and she glories in it—though between you and me, I do think there’s some chance of its darkening as they get older. At present, she says, it’s just pure carrots. Of course it’s a cheerful colour, and they are a very cheerful family.’

He said, ‘Sophy always was cheerful.’

She rolled on to speak to someone else, and he continued to look at Althea. She had on a green dress. Not linen like the one in the photograph, but it altered the colour of her eyes in the same way. Ella Harrison had tried to make him believe that she had changed, but what took hold of him now was a sense of how little five years had done to make any difference in the familiarity of her every movement, every look. He had shut her image away and locked the door on it and walked in strange exciting paths, and at the end of it all he had come home to find that nothing had changed. The locked place was open and empty. Althea was just across the room from him, and he might never have been away. She turned her head and their eyes met.

It was a most curious experience. It was like waking up and finding that something horrible had never happened. He saw a flush come to Althea’s face quick and bright, and he saw it fade and leave a patch of colour on either cheek. She had put it on so carefully that no one could have told it was not her natural bloom until everything in her failed and left it visible. She began to make her way towards the door.

She had known all along that Nicholas might be there. And so would the Miss Pimms have known, and all the other people who knew about her and Nicholas, and who would all be deeply interested to see them meet again. It was going to be a really absorbing moment for Grove Hill, and there had been times when she felt as if she couldn’t face it, but they passed, because there was something that she could face even less. If it came to seeing him in a crowd or not seeing him at all, there wasn’t really any choice to be made. He wouldn’t come and see her—not after the way they had parted five years ago. Now he was back for an hour or two, a day or two. If she didn’t see him in this little space of time she would never see him again. She stopped reasoning about it. If you are very thirsty in a desert and there is water within your reach, you don’t reason about it and say, ‘It will be worse afterwards,’ you snatch and drink.

But when she looked across the room and saw him and he looked at her, she couldn’t go through with it. She didn’t know what was happening, or what was going to happen. She only knew that it couldn’t happen here under all these curious eyes. The long unnatural control of years was cracking, she must get out of the room before it broke. She threaded her way between people all shouting at each other without very much chance of making themselves heard. She didn’t look at Nicholas again. She heard Ella Harrison’s metallic laugh, and quite suddenly in a momentary lull a girl’s voice said, ‘and his nose was as cold as ice!’ And then she was at the door. There was a fat man leaning against it. He seemed to have had a good many cocktails and to need support. She was wondering how she was going to get past him, when she heard Nicholas say, ‘Just a minute, old chap, we want to get out.’ A hand came over her shoulder. The fat man was eased along the wall, the door opened, and she found herself in the passage. Nicholas said, ‘Quick!’ and ran her along with an arm about her shoulders to the little room which used to be Sophy’s. With the door shut on them, he let go of her and stood back. They didn’t speak, they looked at each other. In the end he said, ‘Well?’ and she said, ‘Where have you been?’