Читать книгу The Way of These Women - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 6

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Jermyn led his companion down the narrow path which threaded the shrubberies towards the flower gardens.

‘Sometimes,’ he remarked, as he opened the little iron gate which led into the open spaces, ‘I am inclined to believe that Hazlitt was an idiot, and that your art must be, in reality, of a higher order than any other. You are face to face with a continual struggle to escape from flagrantly artificial surroundings. You have all the time to project yourself into an atmosphere of your own creation. Now down here, for instance, in my study, which looks over these gardens and across the valley, work seems almost spontaneous, the thoughts come unbidden.’

‘You never told me that your home was so beautiful,’ she murmured.

‘I wanted you to come and see it for yourself,’ he replied. ‘You see, one is never sure what the place one cares for most in the world will seem like to anybody else. I do hope that you, and your sister, too, will enjoy this little holiday.’

‘Do you think there could be any doubt about it?’ she asked him, smiling. ‘It was so nice of you to invite Mary. I love to see her in the country. I want to have her grow up fond of the country and country ways.’

He nodded.

‘There is no place quite so dear to me as Annerley,’ he said. ‘At the same time, one has to remember that life is a leaven of many things. We mustn’t be too bucolic. What should we do without the inspiration of the great cities?’

‘Oh, I realize that!’ she answered softly. ‘I know it. I feel that little thrill of excitement every time I enter London. In a lesser degree I feel it every time I enter the theatre. It’s all wonderful, of course, and while it lasts it’s engrossing enough. Yet there is always the reverse side, and the reverse side is horrible.’

‘Is it my fancy,’ he asked, ‘or have you come down to-day a little depressed?’

She hesitated.

‘I started all right,’ she assured him—‘in fact, I think I felt like a child who has a wonderful holiday before it. Of the two, I think I was more excited even than Mary.’

He looked down into her face, frowning slightly for a moment.

‘I can’t help fearing,’ he said, ‘that something has annoyed you. Forgive me, Miss Cluley—forgive me, Sybil, won’t you, if I ask you a rather impertinent question? Lakenham is my cousin, of course, and, I believe, a decent fellow in a general sort of way, but I know also that he can be an unmannerly brute on occasions. He didn’t annoy you, by any chance, on the way here?’

‘Not in the least,’ she answered. ‘He talked to Mary most of the time.’

‘You don’t happen to have any prejudice against him, to have met him or heard of him before—to have met him yourself, I mean?’

Sybil stooped down and picked a spray of lavender, which she arranged in the bosom of her gown.

‘I have never met so exalted a personage as a marquis before in my life,’ she declared. ‘As I told you, I have heard something which has perhaps prejudiced me, but apart from that I do not like him. It is a sort of instinct, I suppose. I am afraid of him. He reminds me of a certain type of man, and that type of man recalls a short part of my life which makes me hysterical when I even think of it. That is all. It is very foolish of me. Let us for these few minutes, at any rate, sweep him away, up into the clouds or down under the earth. It isn’t worth while letting the thought of him poison this perfect afternoon. I think that your gardens are the loveliest I have ever seen. And are those really peaches on the walls?’

He picked one and gave it to her. She ate it with a little murmur of delight.

‘Fancy having all these things growing instead of seeing them only in the restaurants!’ she exclaimed. ‘How Mary will enjoy this!’

‘We’ll have a regular tour of inspection in the morning,’ he promised, ‘but this first half-hour I wanted to spend with you alone. Come a little further still, Sybil.’

He opened a green postern gate, studded with nails and set into the ancient wall, and they passed through it into a corner of the park. A little further on was a thickly-growing plantation, an arm stretched out from the belt of forest behind the house. He opened the gate and they passed inside.

‘Sybil,’ Jermyn said quietly, ‘can’t you imagine why it makes me so happy to have you down here—why I have been looking forward to it so much?’

She looked at him for a moment, genuinely startled. One of the hardest parts of her lonely life during the last few years had been to keep men from making love to her. She flattered herself that she knew the exact symptoms, the exact type of man from whom they might be expected. She was always on her guard. And yet now she had a sudden feeling that something wonderful was going to happen, something wholly unexpected, something against which no measure of preparation nor any possible resistance could avail her. Their meetings in London, every one of which she remembered, had been almost formal. Compared with the men whom she was in the habit of meeting day by day, he had always seemed to her almost unnaturally serious, a writer devoted to his art, with a touch of the monk in his disposition. This change in his voice, a look which she had surprised in his eyes, amazed her. She felt suddenly weak. He went on.

‘Sybil, I want you to be my wife. I want you, if you can, to care for me just a little at first so that I can teach you some day to care a great deal. I want to tell you here and now, if only you will listen, what you have come to mean to me, how much I love you.’

‘You can’t be serious!’ she gasped. ‘You don’t really mean this!’

He laughed as he stooped a little towards her. All her strength was passing away. All her power of resistance, if indeed she had ever desired to resist him, seemed numb. A rapturous lassitude was upon her. The very instinct of resistance had perished. She yielded herself willingly to his arms, his lips.

‘Sybil, you must care for me a little,’ he pleaded. ‘You don’t know how much you have come to mean to me. You have found your way into every corner of my life, and when I sit down to write, my heroine comes back to me and smiles out of your eyes. Then I put my pen down and I fill my room with fancies which are so much more wonderful than anything one can write about. I want you so much, dear. I want to see you here alone with me, just as I have seen you in your pretty frocks and with your quaint, fascinating little ways, drawing the tears and laughter from all those crowds in London just as easily as you have stolen my heart. Dear, before we read the play, won’t you promise to be the one heroine of my life?’

‘I am not good enough,’ she sobbed presently, hiding her face against his shoulder. ‘You are much too clever, and you ought to marry some one quite different. But of course I love you, and of course I’ll marry you, if you really mean it.’ ...

It was nearly seven o’clock before they returned. Lucille was playing languid croquet with Mary. Lakenham was lounging in a wicker chair, with his hands in his pockets and a disfiguring scowl upon his none too handsome features.

‘Shall I tell them?’ Jermyn whispered.

She caught at his arm.

‘Not just yet, please,’ she begged. ‘I am a little afraid of the Duchesse, and I am afraid——’

She stopped short. He followed her gaze—she was looking at Lord Lakenham.

‘There is nothing in the world, dear,’ he insisted, quietly but firmly, ‘which should make you afraid. Remember that you have me to protect you now.’

She looked up at him swiftly. That one look was quite enough for the people upon the lawn!

‘It shall be just as you decide,’ she said, ‘only—not this instant, at any rate.’

Lucille raised the lorgnettes which hung from her waistband, and looked at them.

‘My dear people,’ she exclaimed, ‘you have had time to act a play instead of reading it!’

Jermyn laughed good-humouredly. His cheeks were a little flushed, his eyes very bright.

‘I make no excuses,’ he declared. ‘I was perfectly honest when I announced my intention of monopolizing Miss Cluley. How’s the croquet going?’

‘Execrably,’ Lucille replied. ‘The child is much too good for me. That lazy person in the chair flatly refused to play, or I should never have offered myself up as a sacrifice.’

‘I am for the last hoop with the blue ball and black’s a rover,’ Mary announced. ‘It’s quite the loveliest lawn I ever played on.’

Sybil crossed over to her sister. Jermyn and Lucille stood side by side.

‘You really are an angel,’ he whispered to her. ‘I am afraid you must have been bored to death. Never mind, you shall have your reward. I have some people coming to play bridge with you this evening.’

‘Country bridge!’ she sighed. ‘My dear Jermyn, you do make large demands upon your friends.’

‘You told me only a few weeks ago,’ he reminded her, ‘that auction bridge was your only real diversion.’

‘Not the sort of auction bridge, my dear Jermyn, that your neighbours here know anything about, I am afraid. Never mind, I trust I know my duty as a hostess, although I don’t think I quite understood.... I have to do something with this ball—I am not sure what. Please stand out of the way.’

They all trooped into the house a few minutes later. Lakenham lingered behind with Mary.

‘You play that game jolly well,’ he told her.

‘I love all games,’ the child confided to him—‘cricket best, though.’

‘Did you live in the country when you were young?’ he asked.

‘Not that I remember,’ Mary confessed. ‘I learnt to play cricket at school.’

‘Can’t you remember anywhere at all before London?’ he persisted.

She shook her head.

‘I don’t think I can remember as far back as some people,’ she said. ‘It isn’t much fun trying, anyway. Are you going to play cricket to-morrow, Lord Lakenham?’

‘I am not sure,’ he answered. ‘I am moving on to-morrow or the next day. Don’t you want some lemonade?’

They all gathered round a small table in the middle of the hall, where a great bowl of iced claret-cup and another of lemonade had just been brought. Jermyn filled the glasses himself with a silver ladle. Then he took Sybil’s hand.

‘Lucille,’ he said, ‘and you, Aynesworth, and you too, Mary,’ he added, drawing her to him, ‘please all of you drink our healths. Sybil has promised to marry me.’

The child gave a little scream of delight which, in its way, was merciful. Lucille stood for a moment white and still. Lakenham smiled—not at all a pleasant smile.

‘Quite an interesting announcement,’ he declared, lifting his glass to his Lips. ‘My dear Jermyn, I congratulate you. When this is known you will be the most envied man in England. I wish you every happiness, too, Miss Cluley. Jermyn’s a good fellow, and he’s been a pretty hard nut to crack from a matrimonial point of view. Sure I wish you every happiness.’

‘Did you bring me here, Jermyn,’ Lucille asked him quietly, ‘on purpose to give me this delightful surprise? If so, it was indeed good of you!’

Jermyn shook his head.

‘When I asked you, Lucille,’ he replied, ‘I had neither made up my mind myself nor had I the least idea that Sybil would accept me.’

Lucille looked at him steadily for a moment. Then she turned away with a little shrug of the shoulders.

‘I wish you both—what can I say?—all the happiness that you deserve,’ she declared. ‘There is nothing more than that, is there?’

‘There is nothing more,’ Jermyn agreed.

‘Will Sybil really live here?’ Mary inquired in an awed tone.

‘Whenever she chooses,’ Jermyn replied. ‘This will be her home, at any rate, and yours too, Mary, but we shall have to have a little corner of our own in town somewhere. If I took your sister away from her work all at once, I should probably find myself the most unpopular man in London.’

‘The new play, then,’ Lakenham asked, lighting a cigarette and moving towards the staircase, ‘will not be postponed?’

‘Certainly not,’ Jermyn assured him. ‘Sybil and I are going to begin studying it to-night.’

The two sisters went up the stairs with their arms around one another. Jermyn was left alone for a moment with Lucille. Even he, with his mind full of his new-found happiness, could scarcely help noticing the change which the last few minutes seemed to have wrought in his companion.

‘You are tired, Lucille,’ he said compassionately. ‘I ought not to have left you alone with the child for so long.’

‘It is nothing,’ she answered. ‘Your news was just a little surprising, wasn’t it? Tell me, Jermyn, have you had this in your mind for long?’

‘In a way, I have,’ he admitted, ‘and in a way, to tell you the honest truth, I have been fighting against it. I write plays, and I enjoy writing them, but, between ourselves, I hate the English stage and everything connected with it. I detest the atmosphere of the green room, I dislike intensely a great many of the people with whom Sybil has to associate. I always admired her, and yet, for the reasons I have mentioned, I made up my mind that I would try and conquer it. You see, I have failed. Sybil is an honest, sweet, faithful girl, and I should be a fool to hesitate because I dislike her surroundings. All the more credit to her for the way she has lived.’

Lucille raised her magnificent eyes to his.

‘Is there any doubt whatever, Jermyn,’ she asked, ‘as to the way she has lived?’

There was silence for a moment. Jermyn winced as though he had been struck. He drew himself up a little. He seemed suddenly taller and graver.

‘My dear Lucille,’ he said, ‘that question from a stranger would have led to serious consequences. From you I must treat it as simply the first error in good taste of which I ever remember you to have been guilty.’

She walked away very slowly, without any further word. She ascended the great stairs, passing with her head erect between the long lines of those ancestors of his and hers. She had never realized, perhaps, until that moment how confidently she had planned some day or other to find her resting-place in this house as its mistress. She had looked upon Jermyn as her certain possession. He had, if anything, disliked women. She alone had known how to soothe his fancies, to talk with him on his favourite subjects, to bring even the admiration sometimes into his eyes. She had trifled with the thing until it was too late. Her nails dug into the palms of her hands as she passed along the corridor, her head thrown back, her cheeks bloodless. There was, indeed, but one chance. If only Aynesworth could remember!