Читать книгу Put Out the Light - Ethel Lina White - Страница 6

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WHEN Miss Anthea Vine reached the bend of the staircase her shadow began to grow. It blotched the white marble walls, and then took its flying leap over her head. Like a monstrous bat, it flitted down the corridor, leading the way to Miss Vine's bedroom, as though expectant of grim company.

Tonight? It reached the door, flickered, and then sank into the floor, crushed under the heel of Miss Vine's silver slipper.

It could wait. It began to rise again, to herald the approach of the mistress of the house. A smile was on her lips at a memory of a flushed girlish face, radiant with triumph, as it mocked the desire of youth.

She felt swollen with power. Four suppliants were at her feet, eating out of her hand. They had strength, talents, good looks—but no future. That was hers—because she had what they lacked—her wealth.

They could not afford to let her die. Until she made her will, she was the jewel in their crown.

Her room was in the left wing, beside that of Iris, who occupied what was, in reality, her dressing room. Charles and Francis slept in the same block. This was the intimate family sleeping suite. The picture gallery, the billiard room and the guest chambers were in the central building, while the servants' quarters were situated in the right wing.

As Miss Vine entered her apartment her maid met her in the doorway. She appeared a pale neutral creature, without a positive characteristic. Glancing apprehensively at her mistress, she flattened herself, to let the great lady pass.

Miss Vine inclined her chin slightly, and the maid took the nod as an invitation to speak.

"Good night, madam."

Flattered by the servility of the tone, Miss Vine was gracious in her response.

"Good night, Eames."

The woman closed the door noiselessly and then slunk along broad carpeted corridors, past the blazing well of the great staircase until she reached the right wing. As she opened the small door, which led to the servants' bedrooms, she heard a buzz of voices and an undercurrent of laughter.

In response to the atmosphere of warm humanity and fellowship, Eames changed miraculously, from a robot, to a vital young woman. Bursting open the first door, she plumped herself down in the middle of a bed, interrupting a game of nap.

"Believe it, or believe it not," she declared, "but the Queen wished me 'Good-night.'"

"Go on," said a housemaid incredulously. "Something must have pleased the old girl. Did you find a man under her bed?"

Their burst of ribald laughter was not heard in the cloistered left wing, where Miss Vine slowly advanced to the long triple mirror. She saw her reflection, slim and white, with the reed-like grace of a young girl. With the instinctive urge to play to some unseen gallery, she extended her arms in a dramatic gesture.

"Maiden's bower," she cried. "Chaste and chilly. Oh, Heaven, send me a man."

As she drew nearer to the glass she flinched suddenly, and then stood still, like a dreamer awakened to an ugly reality.

Almost immediately she regained her self-control, as she spoke in tones of biting scorn.

"Fool. Old fool."

She peeled her satin gown over her head and threw it on the carpet. Lighting a cigarette, she began to undress, spilling her ash, and dropping each article where she removed it. Filmy garments lay strewn everywhere, like shredded butterflies' wings; rings and bracelets were scattered, like pebbles, on chair and floor.

Since tidiness was second-nature to Miss Vine, her actions were deliberate. While she had her toilet secrets to preserve, she bitterly grudged her maid her nightly hour of leisure, and wished to make extra work for her in consequence.

Presently, she flung on an orchid wrapper, frothing with ostrich-tips, and went to the bathroom of green-and-rose glass, with concealed flood-lighting, to give the effect of sunshine.

A cloud of steam, perfumed with the scent of roses, hung on the air. But while she steeped herself in the hot, aromatic water, her mind foamed with the figures for Wednesday's board meetings.

"Having passed a nine per cent preferred ordinary dividend, there remains £43,227 to be carried forward...Net profit of £104,750 compared with £106,667 for the preceding twelve months."

From her bitten lips and desperate eyes, Miss Vine might have been facing beggary. She reviewed expedients—reconstruction, increased advertisement, paring of overhead.

Best of all—the ax.

Wearily she climbed out of her bath, poorer than when she had stepped into it. Before her stretched the terrible ordeal of her exercises. Sway, swim, rotate, frog. Stooping to pick imaginary daisies—reaching for the moon. No pause—lest she slackened in her efforts—no respite to regain her breath.

She stopped and pressed her hand, for a moment, over her heart. A slim and supple figure was ensured for another twenty-four hours, at a cost of heart-breaking drudgery. Tomorrow and tomorrow stretched out ahead indefinitely, with their threat of more drastic treatment as time gained yet another point in the losing battle.

But she wasted no vital energy in self-pity. With resolute courage, she crossed to the toilet table and faced the relentless mirror. Before her, on the plate-glass slab, reposed a small fortune, converted into lotions and creams.

She was up against yet another stage in the terrible work of reconstruction. As she rubbed an unguent into her relaxed skin, preliminary to a course of facial exercises, she looked around her with appreciative eyes. Possessed of the mind of a jackdaw, she had copied her scheme of decoration from the ladies' salon in the Kurhaus of a German Spa.

The effect was theatrical, for the walls were of dull silver, and the ceiling blue as an Italian sky, and studded with stars. The silver bed, and silver suite, together with the Persian handmade carpet had been on view, as an advertisement, in the window of an important London furniture store.

Although it was destined for an Oriental monarch, Miss Vine entered into negotiations for a copy. Followed by the attentive manager, she walked into the shop window, as though she were making an entrance upon a stage. Always covetous of attention, she was thrilled to notice that people in the street lingered to watch her, in her rôle of potential customer.

She felt herself indicated as a lady of wealth, so she played up to her audience, trying every chair, looking at herself in the mirror, and posing on the bed.

But even as she arched her brows in criticism, or smiled her approval, she became aware that the faces pressed against the glass were laughing at her postures and her pantomimic conversation. Instantly her pleasure turned to gall. At her furious gesture, the manager had the blinds pulled down.

The first night she occupied her new bedroom she was puffed up with peacock pride of circumstance. It was good then to recall that long-ago day of late summer, when she had first seen the original apartment in the Kurhaus.

She had been on a conducted tour—a youthful outsider in a party of sightseers. She hated those women, because they were different from herself. While she was flat and pale, they had piled puffs of hair and curved figures. Some were married, while others were accompanied by men. She was sure that they derided her solitary state and were holding her up to ridicule. All the time her eyes kept flickering to the faces of the unconscious strangers, to detect the covert smile and glance.

She thought of them again as she gloated over her glittering splendor. Where were they now—those victorious women of yesterday? Probably hemmed in by cheap bedroom suites of pitch pine or fumed oak, paid for by instalments. Handles that came off—drawers that stuck. The ultimate triumph was hers—expressed in her blue-and-silver magnificence.

Suddenly her pleasure was dulled by a familiar sense of uneasiness. She felt that someone was laughing at her. She glanced nervously at the drawn blue satin curtains, for she could not rid herself of the impression that faces were pressed outside the glass. In spite of her common sense, which reminded her that her window was on the first floor, she was obsessed by the conviction that the crowd was still outside, jeering at her.

Miss Vine did not try to overcome her weakness, because an unnecessary effort only drained her of vitality. Since her room could not be overlooked from the grounds, she merely drew the curtains apart.

Her serenity was instantly restored; and, after that night, a blazing star in one window of Jamaica Court shone out during the hour that Miss Vine prepared for bed.

As she frowned, grinned, and grimaced in futile endeavour to keep wrinkles at bay she thought of a new enterprise, little more than an embryo, but ready to fructify in her brain.

This was a new terra-cotta Munster hotel for Timberdale.

At present the little seaside place was only a secluded bay, unvisited by trippers or char-à-bancs; but, with her uncanny intuition for anticipating the morrow, Miss Vine was always a leap ahead of her competitors. She had heard the stir, which was the forerunner of the whisper, of building development in Timberdale.

She opened and shut her jaws for the last time, and applied fresh cream. The end of facial exercise was but the beginning of massage.

No pause yet—no rest. She stroked her cheeks and pinched her throat, while her lids were dropping for lack of sleep. Rub, pat, knead, flick. Always upwards. Across the lines. Butterfly touches around the eyes. As it was yesterday—as it would be tomorrow.

Miss Vine's mind worked in sympathy with her aching wrists. She had taken lunch at the Timberdale Arms, a few days previously, in order to spy out the land.

"That old pub is no opposition," she gloated, "Run by a woman, too. I can smash her inside of three months. Only one bathroom, no central heating, telephone in bar, and cold meats for lunch. Custom running to waste. I counted twenty cars passing inside of ten minutes. They'll stop when I open my Munster. But the place does a good counter trade. Men like these moldy old pubs, dating back to the Flood, where they can swill home-brewed and crack jokes with the landlady. She's a fat fool, but a draw with customers. Might be a sound plan to buy her out, and build on, so that they could still come to the old place. She wouldn't stick up the price, once she's scared of competition. I'll put Casey on the job. He'll take her down the garden."

She stopped to apply the welcome ice pack. The end of her drudgery was near. There only remained the strips of plaster for the elimination of lines.

As she stuck them to her face, her thoughts winged on another flight.

"Those young ones. They hate each other. Good. Always aim to split. Coalition is dangerous. And now my secretary is helping on the good work. Charles is jealous of Lawrence, and Iris hates the girl. Who does little Morgan hate? No matter. I keep her too busy to hate. She's my machine. And I'm above them all. They all feel me. Tonight, they only looked at me."

Her toilet was finished. It was a terrible indictment on human vanity—so much time, money and effort expended for such inadequate result. Yet, it was illuminative of the qualities which had created a woman of wealth out of a penniless nonentity.

Miss Vine had worked according to timetable, although she had neither clock nor watch to consult. Each operation occupied so many minutes and she never allowed the stages to overlap, in proof of a perfectly planned routine. More significant still was the fact that she never slackened in her movements, or yielded to the rebellion of her aching muscles. Directing her least action was the power of her will.

Dressed in pale petal-pink satin pajamas, Miss Vine lay in the great silver bed. Her hand was raised to the electric switch. Before her stretched the hours of darkness, when the rats crept out to gnaw the cheese.

A whistle shrieked in the valley and the eleven-fifty-seven puffed into the hillside station. Among the straggle of passengers who passed through the wicket, were two season-ticket holders, who always returned to Oldtown on this train. One was a musician in a cinema orchestra, and the other kept a restaurant.

As they stumbled down the steep stony lane leading to the town, the saxophone player grumbled to his companion:

"Never knew the blinking train so slow. We must be late."

"No," dissented the restaurant-keeper. "It's not gone twelve. Miss Vine's light's still on."

He pointed to the star blazing somewhere in the left wing of the dark pile of the Court. As though to confirm his words, while they watched, the Town Hall clock struck twelve.

At the same minute, the light went out.