Читать книгу Run! - Dora Amy Elles - Страница 10

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Sally stayed where she was, and heard James go down the stair. She would give him time to get away before she made her escape. She found him a very disturbing person, and she couldn’t do with being any more disturbed than she was. What she wanted at the moment was Somebody’s Soothing Syrup, oil on the troubled waters, Daphne’s light inconsequent chatter, or the ramblings of one of life’s bigger bores. Not any more James Elliot, and not—oh, certainly not—any Ambrose Sylvester.

She ran up to the next floor and into Daphne’s bedroom. The modern girl is provided against the ravages of emotion. Sally did her mouth again, did her eyebrows, tried Daphne’s powder, thought that it must cost about a pound a box, and approved the result.

These proceedings took some time. She decided that James must have gone, and that this was the moment for her to slip away.

At the head of the stair she listened, and heard the ebb and flow of the laughter and the talk from below. It would be perfectly safe. She must walk quietly down without appearing to hurry and the minute she got downstairs just grab her cloak and be off.

She got as far as the half-landing and stopped, because there was someone there. Ambrose Sylvester rose from the chair in which James had sat and came to meet her.

A deathly panic invaded Sally. She was to rage at herself afterwards and wonder how much or how little her face had shown, but at the moment she couldn’t think at all, only fight to push the panic out and bolt and bar her house against it. She heard Ambrose say in his beautiful voice,

“Daphne said you were upstairs, so I came here to wait for you.”

“Why?” said Sally with her hand on the newel-post at the turn. She managed the one word very creditably, and this heartened her.

He put a hand on her arm.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

Sally pushed her last bolt home.

“All right, here I am,” she said.

He drew her towards the chairs, and they sat down. Sally was herself again, but she was glad enough to sit, because her knees were shaking. She managed a small laugh.

“What is it all about? You know, you said that as if you hadn’t seen me for a year.”

He looked at her with an air of romantic sadness.

“It is a long time since we have really talked, and tonight I felt that if we could have one of our old talks again—if we could put the clock back for an hour—”

“No one can ever put the clock back,” said Sally.

“We could if we tried—together. We might for an hour forget the years, the estrangement—”

“And Hildegarde?”

Her heart was beating a little faster. Ambrose and his ridiculous heroics—But because they had once rung passionately true they could still set her heart knocking against her side, even after all that had happened since then.

He gave a kind of groan at Hildegarde’s name.

“Do you think she has ever taken your place? Do you think I don’t know what she has done to me? Do you think I am happy?”

“No—I don’t think you are very happy, Ambrose.”

He caught at her hand.

“I live on her money. She never lets me forget it. She never stops watching me. When I am starved for a word with you, I must have it here in a public place. Oh, Sally, why did I do it? Why didn’t I wait? You were such an enchanting little girl! I might have known!”

Sally pulled her hand away and jumped up.

“Good gracious, Ambrose! I was seventeen, and I had a schoolgirl schwärm for you, but if you think I want to put back the clock to that and go all damp and miserable over you again, you’d better wake up—to say nothing of Hildegarde probably trying to poison us both.”

She was watching him through her lashes, and he put his head in his hands and groaned again.

“You can laugh at me! You don’t know how damned unhappy I am.”

Sally hesitated. Was it all make-believe—the sound of his own fine voice, the desire for the limelight and the centre of the stage? Or was there a struggling, unhappy Ambrose behind the actor? She sat down again and said in a new, gentle voice,

“What is it?”

“Hell,” said Ambrose Sylvester. “Sally, if you ever know what it’s been, don’t think too hardly of me. You see”—he lifted his head and looked at her with bright, wild eyes—“you take the first step and you have to go on. The ground slides under you and you can’t stop. Yesterday in that damned fog I thought—Hildegarde was driving—and I thought if we could have a smash now and get out of it all, it would be the best thing.”

Sally looked at him steadily. The fog—why did he mention the fog? And what was it all about, this unbelievable scene? A quick, wary thought watched for a meaning behind its unreality. She said,

“I don’t know what this is all about.”

“Do you know what has stopped me making an end of it, not once but many times? It was the thought of you, Sally. You see, when I think of you I am different. I think of what you may be doing. You won’t laugh, will you, Sally? I think, ‘Now she is reading—now she is writing to Jocko—now she is walking,’ and it is a sort of companionship. Now you see how lonely I am when I have to be satisfied with that kind of companionship. And yesterday in that horrible fog I was thinking, ‘Sally won’t be out in this. She will be at home by the fire with a book.’ ”

Sally’s thought spoke sharply and insistently—“That’s what he wants. He wants to know what you were doing yesterday afternoon. What are you going to say? Be careful!” Her heart stood still. Had anyone seen her go, or come back, or take Gladys’s bicycle? “Be careful, be careful, be careful!”

She said in a cool little voice, “You know, Ambrose, this is all rather embarrassing.”

“Is that all you think about?”

“Well, someone’s got to think about it, and I’d rather it wasn’t Hildegarde.” She got up. “Honestly, Ambrose, this sort of thing’s no good. It won’t make you any happier, and it doesn’t get us anywhere.”

“Sally!”

“It’s not going to get us anywhere,” said Sally, and ran down the stair.