Читать книгу The Sinner - Eliza Margaret Humphreys - Страница 10

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There was not a very prolonged discussion between the two friends respecting this meeting, even though there was every temptation afforded it by that sharing of the same room, and that quarter of an hour of hair-brushing which is so conducive to feminine confidence.

But Deborah Gray was a wise woman in her way. She let Nell say just as much as she pleased, and made very few comments herself. All the same she foresaw that this expected holiday would be shared by a third person, and its hours engrossed by a new claimant for Nell's attention.

Still, she had come out to enjoy it, and she meant to do so, even if the proverb of which she had already been reminded were verified. So she laid her head on her pillow and looked at Nell in her little white bed opposite, and smiled the smile of one who knows life and the ways of women, and closed her eyes in satisfied drowsiness, and slept as she had rarely slept for many a month.

They had promised each other to wake early and be out and down to the waterside before breakfast, but when Nell did wake she saw the blind swaying up and down to the persuasion of a gusty, chilling wind, that swept in through the open window, and her dismayed glance as she pulled it aside took in a changed and most melancholy scene. The mountain tops were shrouded in grey mist, the sky was grey, the atmosphere was grey, the trees stood out in blurred masses, their branches weighed down by heavy moisture.

A group of patient cows huddled together under the firs, a crowd of noisy poultry wended their way across the wet grass, the fairy islets were blotted out altogether. It was a weeping, mournful, misten-shrouded Glengariff that lay in its mantle of haze swept ever and again by a cold and chilling wind, that seemed to have strayed back from some winter quarter by mistake.

Nell glanced at Deborah Gray, and saw she was asleep, so she crept hack to her own bed again, comforting herself with the thought that it was but six o'clock, and the weather might change by breakfast time. But when breakfast time came, and they went down into the long dining-room, already crowded with hungry feeders, the prospect was even worse. The rain fell in a steady, continuous downpour, the thick haze still obscured the prospect, and the weather-wise among tourists and visitors who knew the ways of Glengariff, were uttering dismal prophecies between mouthfuls of fried sole and hot coffee.

The two friends found the same table laid ready for them, and the cheerful waiter answered their anxious inquiries with all an Irishman's hopefulness.

'It won't last, miss, never fear. It mayn't be fine altogether, but just a bit hazy.'

Then he whisked off the cover from a delicately-fried sole, and brought them their own teapot and supplies of toast and egg and marmalade enough to atone for any amount of bad weather. Nell ate and drank with an appetite that spoke of mountain air and recovered health. Her spirits rose. She began to take notes of their fellow-travellers, and amused Deborah with her criticisms. At last her attention was attracted by a table adjoining their own. It also stood in a window, it also was prepared for two, and a waiter hovered round giving a final touch to its arrangements, and evidently waiting a given signal to bring in the breakfast.

'I wonder who will come there,' said Nell, with a careless nod in its direction.

'Why wonder about it?' said Deborah Gray. 'You will see for yourself in a moment. A honeymoon, I should say, judging from the waiter's attention. Newly-married men are apt to be reckless in respect of tips.'

'It might be two lone females like ourselves,' said Nell.

'I fancy not,' said Deborah. 'I think it will be a man and a woman!'

Her back was to the door. Nell, from her point of view, had the table on her right, the door on her left. Almost as Deborah spoke, she saw two people enter. The man struck her as being the handsomest man her eyes had ever rested upon. He was very tall, he had the dark, rich colouring, the clear cut features, that mark the Spanish race, and is often seen in some districts of Ireland. He moved with an easy grace that had something foreign about it; a grace that the stare of some two score eyes could not discompose in the slightest degree. He walked up to the vacant table, drew out a chair, and stood waiting for the slower approach of the lady following him. She walked feebly. She had the unhealthy pallor and languid eyes of ill health. Whatever beauty she had once possessed had been wrested from her by suffering, and marred by the weariness of pain.

Her features were sharp—the mouth betrayed intense melancholy. Her hair, soft and abundant as it was, had no gloss or richness of tint. It was of a pale, dull fairness, and her blue grey eyes were rendered almost expressionless by lashes as neutral tinted as the hair.

The contrast between the two was almost startling. The vivid tints, the glow of health and strength on the one face, the wistful attenuated feebleness of the other.

Deborah Gray's keen, professional eye took in the invalid's general appearance with interest. She merely glanced at the man, and as quickly looked away.

'Not a honeymoon, after all,' said Nell, in a low voice; 'only ordinary man and wife.'

'Man and wife, certainly,' said Deborah Gray, equally low, 'but not—ordinary.'

'Don't tell me you are seeing visions, and reading fates,' said Nell. 'I shall begin to be afraid of you, Debbie, my dear.'

So lightly do we jest with fate; so dimly do we see even one inch of that road of the future stretching before us, leading to issues strange and mystic, and unguessed of, as the hand of Time points onward.

The man took his place after the lady had seated herself. Then his splendid dark eyes turned to the adjoining table and its occupants. He read the undisguised admiration in Nell's innocent face; but Deborah Gray's was like a mask—hard, impassive, inscrutable. His olive skin took a warmer shade of colour. There was just the faintest contraction of the features, scarcely more than a shadow on glass. No one noted it, save, perhaps, Deborah Gray herself. She turned slightly away, and, raising the teapot, poured herself out another cup of tea. Her hand was perfectly steady, but the blood surged from her heart to her temples, and the whole room seemed to sway before her.

Nell went on with her gay chatter, but it seemed as if her voice came from some far distance. There was a hustle of people rising, the noise of tourists' heavy boots, the sharp accents of the American voices proclaiming disappointment at spoiled plans. Then suddenly the old instinct of self-repression came to her aid. Her voice was steady as ever as she answered some question of Nell's. She finished her tea as if perfectly unconscious of the furtive glances that from time to time bridged the space between the two tables—a space that, multiplied by years of severance, lay for ever between two lives.

There was a general move into the porch, and Nell and her friend found themselves there also. The American lady, who seemed to live in her hat, had taken possession of one of the basket chairs. She spoke her mind out on many points with that frankness peculiar to her interesting nation. Her husband was occupied with a toothpick, and made an appreciative audience. The tourists were determined to face the weather on bicycles, and no one raised any objection to their doing so. Nell's anxious glances still turned skywards. Now and then the haze lifted under some attacking shaft of sunlight, and showed the bay was an existing fact; she had begun to doubt it, but the momentary brightness was only briefly tantalising, and the mist took swift revenge by enwrapping the scene in yet more impenetrable mystery.

Disconsolate eyes turned from point to point of the hazy landscape, trying to see hopeful signs from those momentary gleams, or detect them in a change of wind, or hear them in the crowing of a cock, which has been known at times to foretell good weather.

A lady with rheumatic ankles and list shoes, who also occupied a basket chair, took a gloomy view of the situation. She had been staying at the hotel for a week, and there had been five such days as this already. A pretty boy, spending a holiday here with a maiden aunt, tried to give a cheerful tone to the conversation by relating histories of worse days and worse weather, during which he appeared to have killed time in a way more satisfactory to himself than to the maiden relative. Nell appropriated him and his conversation with alacrity. They seemed the most cheerful things about, and she did not wish to lose her holiday spirits. The boy thought that it might clear up for an hour or two in the course of the day, upon which Nell accepted readily his invitation to go off and play a sort of parlour Badminton of his own invention, in the deserted billiard-room.

Deborah Gray did not go with them. Instead, she went swiftly up the stairs to her room, and then locked the door and sank into a chair by the window. Her eyes were glowing with a fierce light. Her whole frame was trembling with suppressed passion. Words broke from her unconsciously.

'So it was for her I was thrown over—for her and her money! Poor soul, what a sorry bargain she made! And he—I saw he remembered me. God! how small the world is after all! Couldn't we two have been kept apart?'

Her hands clenched on the soft linen of her gown, her breast was heaving with a passion of resentment.

'She looks ill—dying, I should say. Dying, after six years of married life. And what hopeless sorrow in her face—poor soul, poor soul, I need not surely envy her!'

She rose abruptly, and began to move about the room.

'What can I do?' she cried hoarsely. 'If I wish to leave, Nell will think it so strange, especially as I can give no reason, and yet, to pretend he is a stranger, that is hard. Would he have spoken, I wonder, had I given him the chance? No, I fancy not. He must be glad enough to avoid me, if he has a conscience at all. What was it he used to call me—a woman with a head and no heart? No heart! My God, if only I had had none for him to win and break, and cast aside, as a worthless toy! If only I could forget as he has forgotten!'

It was no longer Deborah Gray, the quiet, composed nurse, the woman of iron nerve and no emotions, who paced to and fro in that locked chamber. It was a woman fighting a battle fierce and ominous, with herself and with the past.

It said much for her strength of will that she did not cry out or give external sign of the hysterical passion that rent her very soul—that no tear fell from her flaming eyes, nor sob, nor sigh, escaped her quivering lips. The years of discipline and self-repression came to her aid. She calmed herself just as she would have tried to calm a turbulent patient, a despairing mourner.

From the corridor beyond came the sound of high-pitched voices, the curious drawl that has its distinctive use in smart sayings. She ceased her restless pacing, and went over to the window and knelt down, leaning her arms on the sill.

There was a little rift of light in the clouds, above the Caha Range—but to right and left they lay in heavy masses. The rain still pattered on the gravel roadway and glistened on the heavy foliage. Some ducks were solemnly pacing to and fro the wet sward and quacking their appreciation of unwary worms, or taking occasional baths in the little pools beneath the clumps of pampas grass.

'Shall I put on a waterproof and go out?' thought Deborah. 'I feel stifling, and rain never hurts me. . . If I could but escape Nell!'

She rose and took her cloak from the peg where it hung, and put a tweed travelling cap on her head, then softly opened the door and went downstairs. She knew she must pass through the porch to get out, but she trusted that Nell and the pretty boy were still at their game. Whether they were or not, at least Nell was not visible. She hurried through the doorway and down the steps, taking no notice of the people she passed. She drew the hood of her waterproof over her head, and walked straight on, down the wet drive, under the drenched and sodden boughs. A few paces further on she came face to face with a man also waterproofed, and holding an umbrella over himself.

It was Dick Barrymore.

She stopped in sudden dismay.

'Oh, are you going to the hotel?' she cried. 'Surely you don't expect us to carry out your programme in this weather?'

'No, that's just it,' said the young man, glancing round to see if she were alone. 'I was coming to say it must be put off till to-morrow. They tell me it never rains two days running like this. Are you going for a walk?'

'I am, but you will find Miss Nugent in the hotel, in the billiard-room, I believe,' said Deborah. 'She doesn't know I'm out. I don't wish her to get wet,' she added, diplomatically, 'but I'm so strong; rain never hurts me.'

'Oh, I'll prevent her going out,' he said, eagerly. 'My uncle was coming over to call on you both,' he added. 'But he thought he would give the weather a chance of improving, but I was to ask you if you and Miss Nugent would come for a drive after luncheon, if it did clear. We thought of going to the Bantry shooting lodge. It is charming, we hear, and just a nice distance. Do say you'll come.'

'I have no objection,' said Deborah, 'if Nell wishes?'

'May I tell her so?'

'Certainly, but the weather has something to say in the matter as well.'

'Oh, I have hopes of the weather,' he said, laughing. 'I suppose you are going to the village?' he added, as Deborah seemed inclined to move forward.

She nodded, and with a hasty goodbye passed on.

'He will entertain Nell. Nothing could be better,' she said to herself. 'And she won't miss me. I can fight my "seven devils" out of me as I please.'

She turned aside, attracted by the sound of water foaming and dashing over a rocky bed. The path that led to it was stony and narrow, the wet boughs struck her face and showered their glittering moisture over her hair. She felt nothing, heeded nothing, saw nothing. Only her eyes burnt like a flame beneath their dusky brows, and the fierce beats of her heart almost stifled her. The throbbing of an unhealed wound hurt her with almost physical pain. After seven years of peace that wound could still remind her of its giver.

She stumbled on, led instinctively by the sound of the one thing in nature that seemed in harmony with her mood. She reached it at last. A torrent falling and dashing over great rocky boulders, a cascade of impotent wrath that foamed and raged, dashed itself wildly against opposing barriers, as puny human wills oft dash themselves against the iron barriers of Fate.

She stood there, and gazed down, a human embodiment of passion as vain and useless as those seething waters, rushing with overlapping haste to the cold and quiet heart of a distant river. The birds twittered above, amidst the quick patter of the rain and the chill breath of the wind. Naught cared they for the agony of a human soul fighting out its battle of womanly pride and womanly love. Naught knew they of the dumb agony that rent that motionless figure, as with pangs of childbirth. She covered her face with her hands, and a groan of anguish escaped her. Then the iron hands of misery broke, and a rain of hot tears showered from her hidden eyes.

'Once I cursed life and him,' she moaned. 'Oh God! Am I still such a weak fool that the mere sight of him can make me regret!'