Читать книгу Grit Lawless - F. E. Mills Young - Страница 9

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The band was playing a barn dance when Lawless and his companion re-entered the ball-room, and most of the dancers had already taken the floor. A disconsolate-looking youth, who was wandering aimlessly round the room with his gaze continually on the exits, hurried towards them when they appeared in the doorway, and eagerly claimed his partner.

“I thought you had forgotten,” he said to her reproachfully, “that this was our dance.”

“Oh no!” she answered as she took his arm. “Only I didn’t hear the music quite at once.”

She let him lead her straightway among the throng of dancers, and was surprised to find how little the excitement of the exercise moved her, to whom dancing had once seemed an all-sufficient joy. Her partner’s rather commonplace, but heretofore entirely satisfying, conversation pleased her no more than the movement. That dance was altogether the dullest and most stupid affair in which she had taken part. Other dull dances were to follow. Throughout the evening she rather unfairly compared each of her partners with the man who was already enshrined in her heart and worshipped as a hero.

Lawless, having handed Miss Weeber over, retired to the stoep to smoke. Van Bleit was there, and several other men who possessed assertive thirsts and a settled belief in a reservation of strength. There was a small bar fixed up at one end of the stoep. Lawless made his way to it, and Van Bleit joined him, but refused to drink. He chaffed Lawless good-naturedly on his partiality.

“It’s most marked, old chap,” he said. “Why don’t you ring the changes? I overheard quite the best-looking girl in the room declare she was dying to dance with you, and I as good as promised to introduce you. She’s keeping the supper dance open.”

“Then you’d better book it yourself, Karl,” the other answered indifferently.

“I’m not booking anything,” Van Bleit replied with a quiet smile. “I’m reserving myself until She arrives.”

Lawless emptied his glass hastily and set it down.

“You don’t mean,” he said, moving away from the buffet, “that Mrs Lawless is coming to-night?”

“Why wouldn’t I mean that?” Van Bleit asked, looking at him curiously.

“It’s close on midnight, man. And... this kind of show...”

“She isn’t such a puritan as you imagine,” Van Bleit rejoined.—“I ought to know something about that by now... And she promised me she would come to-night. There was something—some rotten music she was going to hear first with the Smythes. Then they were coming on here.”

He pitched away his cigar and twirled the ends of his big moustache into fine points curving upward, which gave him, he imagined, a distinguished and military appearance. He was well enough to look upon without going to this excess of trouble.

“She’s not keen on dancing,” he added complacently; “but I’ve had her out on the floor once or twice. Her waltzing! ... it isn’t dancing... it’s a poem. And the satisfaction of her nearness! ... Just to hold her in one’s arms! ... Oh Lord! Lawless, if you only knew what it felt like! But you’re too damned self-contained to understand. You simply sneer till I want to hit the look off your face. I wonder whether any woman ever warmed your fish-blood, and set your pulses beating a fraction of a second quicker!”

“You seem to forget my violent partiality of this evening,” Lawless returned sarcastically.

“Pshaw! It’s no bread-and-butter miss who’ll set your veins on fire.” And then, the man having a kink in his nature which made him peculiarly evil, he added: “It’s quite a safe game, though. There are no interfering male relations. The mother is the widow of a wool-merchant. They’re not well off; and she’d welcome a wealthy son-in-law. Incidentally, there is no reason why a man shouldn’t amuse himself.”

“I will make the mother’s acquaintance to-night,” Lawless answered, and struck a match and lighted himself a cigarette. Van Bleit was sucking cachous for the sweetening of his breath. The smell of musk irritated Lawless’ nostrils. “It takes some living up to,” he observed drily.

“What does?”

“Being enamoured of a goddess.”

“Oh?” Van Bleit laughed sheepishly.

“In these days, when most women smoke themselves, I should consider such precaution unnecessary.”

“Women appreciate it,” Van Bleit responded. “It’s a tribute of masculine homage.”

“One of those tributes,” Lawless answered, “that cost so little either in the way of self-sacrifice or money that men don’t mind offering them. But love asks bigger things. That’s where the majority of us jib. Love is over exacting; we quarrel with it on account of its demands... I suppose where a man’s love was big enough to understand, it would be equal to removing mountains and draining the ocean... In lesser cases it contents itself with sucking sweets.”

“You are trying to make out that you know something about it, I suppose?” Van Bleit said, slightly nettled.

Lawless laughed.

“I should never attempt the moving of mountains,” he replied.

Mrs Lawless arrived during the extras that followed immediately upon the supper dance. The ball-room was empty, save for a few couples, mostly young enthusiasts who preferred to make the most of their opportunity when the floor was not so crowded, and to sup later when the refreshment-room too had thinned, and the faithful Van Bleit. He insisted upon taking her in to supper. She had come with the Smythes; and she turned to Mrs Smythe at the mention of supper and lifted protesting shoulders.

“One cannot keep on eating,” she said.

“Karl can,” Mrs Smythe responded.

“I’m famished,” he said. “I’ve been waiting until you arrived. In fairness to me you must come and see me through.”

Smythe pointed to the revolving couples.

“We shan’t get seats,” he said; “they’re crowded out, you see.”

“Oh! I’ll find room. There isn’t such a crush as all that.”

“Well, you can take the ladies. There’s a limit to human endurance... a drink will satisfy me.”

“We shall have to go,” Mrs Smythe said, slipping a gloved hand within Mrs Lawless’ arm. “When I have determined people to deal with I never argue. It is so much less trouble to give in.”

Van Bleit conducted his party to the supper-room, and found seats for three at a table near the door.

“What a pity Theo didn’t come,” Mrs Smythe remarked, with a glance at the vacant chair on her right.

She looked round the crowded room and nodded to several acquaintances. There was a confusion of sound that yet was not noisy,—the hum of talk and laughter, the frequent popping of champagne corks, a soft continuous rustle of movement, and the clatter of knives and forks. She glanced smilingly across Van Bleit, who was trying to catch the attention of a waiter, to where Mrs Lawless sat, leaning forward looking away from her towards the next table.

“Zoë, the sight of all these people feeding makes me hungry,” she said.

“Of course you’re hungry,” Van Bleit responded. “You can’t sit up all night on nothing.”

But Mrs Lawless apparently did not hear. She was gazing with unconscious intensity at a man at the table on the opposite side of the opening. He had his face towards her; but he had seen her entry, and, having watched her while he could do so unobserved, he now gave his undivided attention to the girl beside him.

Mrs Lawless regarded the girl with critical interest. There was nothing especially remarkable about her in any way. She was young and fresh-looking, and wore a simple white frock, and a pearl necklace the beads of which were of a size to open up doubts as to their genuineness in an inquiring mind. Mrs Lawless did not question the pearls; she accepted them, as she accepted the peerless youth of the wearer, as parts of a whole the effect of which was pleasing.

She turned in response to a question of Van Bleit’s as to what she would eat, and answered carelessly:

“Oh! anything.”

He ordered for the three of them, and then sat back in his seat and surveyed the scene at his leisure. He saw Lawless at the table opposite with the girl he had danced with most of the evening; but he made no reference to him. He acknowledged the acquaintance before Mrs Lawless, but, remembering what Lawless had told him concerning her disapproval of himself, he never admitted intimacy for fear of prejudicing his cause. Mrs Smythe, on the other hand, made no concealment of her liking for her friend’s discredited kinsman. She did not often speak of him to Mrs Lawless, recognising that the subject was rather more painful than the ordinary family dispute, but nothing would have given her greater pleasure than to assist towards a reconciliation between them. With that end in view she had given Lawless an open invitation to her house, thinking that perhaps if occasionally brought together by chance they might eventually, if only for the sake of appearance, smooth over their differences and close the breach. Continued feud was the invariable result of an exaggerated sense of dignity on both sides, and it was old-fashioned. But Lawless very seldom availed himself of her kindness, and had managed his few visits so far when Mrs Lawless had not been present. She more than suspected design in this, and it helped to strengthen her belief that the estrangement had originated with him, and that he was responsible for its continuation.

“You don’t like that chicken,” Van Bleit remarked abruptly to Mrs Lawless, observing that she was only trifling with the food upon her plate. “Let me send it away and get you something else.”

“Please, don’t,” she remonstrated. “I’ve already dined. I’m just keeping you in countenance.”

“But that’s rotten for you,” he expostulated. “If I had really thought it would bore you, I wouldn’t have brought you here. Drink some more champagne then, if you won’t eat.”

“I’m not in the least bored,” she replied, flashing a brilliant smile at him. “To eat is not my sole source of amusement. There is plenty to interest me here for an hour, if you are inclined to stay that time.”

“I’m not,” he returned. “I’m longing to try the floor. I’ve not danced yet... I’ve been waiting. You’ll give me the first waltz after supper?”

She met his bold, eager gaze pensively, her splendid dreamy eyes expressing a slight hesitation.

“You know I don’t care for dancing,” she said.

“Yes, I know. But... just one waltz!” He leaned nearer to her. “You won’t disappoint me? ... I have waited through the entire evening for this.”

She smiled at the extravagance, but faintly, and looked away across the crowded room with its numberless small tables, and the gay, careless, laughing company that filled them.

“Oh! if you make so much of it!” she said.

Mrs Smythe, who was also gazing about her with more interest in the company than in the supper, here interposed with the irrelevant remark:

“I think Colonel Grey is the most distinguished-looking man I know.”

Van Bleit grunted.

“Oh! I know you don’t like him, Karl... It’s obvious that the antipathy is mutual. But that doesn’t make him any the less interesting from a woman’s point of view. What do you think, Zoë?”

“I think he is exactly what you describe him.”

Mrs Smythe looked at her in surprise. It was not the words, but the manner in which they were delivered, that arrested her attention.

“You don’t like him either,” she said.

Mrs Lawless smiled.

“He doesn’t like me,” she corrected. “And though I find that attitude interesting, it does not encourage affection on my side.”

“Impossible!” Van Bleit exclaimed incredulously. “Dear lady, you must be mistaken. I haven’t much of an opinion of him, but he can’t be such an unappreciative hog.”

The man referred to had risen, and, with his supper companion, now prepared to leave the room. They were not the first to make a move; the tables had thinned considerably since the entry of Van Bleit’s party. He paused for a second by Mrs Smythe’s chair and spoke to her, and bowed to Mrs Lawless. He did not see Van Bleit. Neither did he see Lawless. When he passed his table his head was turned towards his companion and he was deep in conversation with her.

Van Bleit watched him curiously, and the finely pointed ends of his moustache lifted slightly as the lips beneath it smiled.

“He rather overdoes it,” he murmured.

“Overdoes what?” his cousin questioned.

Van Bleit looked at her. He had not, as a matter of fact, intended the remark to be heard.

“His diplomacy.”

“You are pleased to be cryptic,” Mrs Smythe returned.

He suddenly laughed.

“I must have made my meaning very obscure when you’re not on it,” he said. “I was merely criticising the fellow’s habit of ignoring the people it doesn’t suit him to see. But come... Shall we go? You are neither of you eating, and I don’t care to feed alone.”

Lawless rose when they did, and, with his partner on his arm, followed them to the ball-room. The band was playing an extra, a waltz. He passed his arm around his companion’s waist and joined the throng of dancers, whose numbers momentarily increased as the supper-room emptied itself of diners.

Van Bleit was waltzing with Mrs Lawless. He had persuaded her to try the floor when it was not so crowded; but before the dance was far advanced the room had filled surprisingly, and dancing became difficult. A slight block occurred in one corner, and Van Bleit found himself held up temporarily with his partner, so closely wedged that he had much ado to keep the crowd from pressing on her.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “When we get out of this we’ll find a seat somewhere outside.”

Mrs Lawless did not answer him. She was conscious of an arm pressing against her shoulder, pressing hard, and, looking up, met fully the keen grey piercing eyes of the man whom before that night she had not seen since the afternoon when he had called upon her at her house in Rondebosch. The arm, the shoulder of which pressed her shoulder, belonged to him. It encircled the girl who had sat beside him during supper, the girl in the white frock with the string of pearls about her neck. She leant against him, laughing, flushed, and happy, her eager eyes alight with excitement. It was all enjoyment to her; the crush with that strong arm to shield her was part of the fun.

Mrs Lawless scarcely noticed the girl; she looked above her, and for a long moment gazed back into the sombre dominating eyes, the owner of which surveyed her as he might have surveyed a stranger, with an intense yet aloof curiosity. In the quiet, steady, concentrated look he bent upon her, and in his grave, unsmiling face, there was an amount of interest, even of admiration, but no outward sign of recognition. The initiative, Mrs Lawless realised, was with her. She smiled faintly, a smile that was half-diffident, half-wistful; and then suddenly the crowd swayed, parted, and moved forward again; and Van Bleit steered his partner between the revolving couples to the nearest exit.

“What a beastly squeeze,” he said, when they emerged into the fresh air. “I’m afraid you will blame me for letting you in for that.”

Mrs Lawless sat down on a settee on the stoep. She was flushed and a little breathless; but it was not owing to the crush in the ball-room; she had been so well guarded that she had scarcely felt the inconvenience of the crowd. She looked at Van Bleit, and there was a gleam that was almost triumphant in her eyes.

“I’m not blaming you... As an experience, I enjoyed it,” she said, and laughed.

She put up a hand to her shoulder. She could still feel the impression of a man’s sleeve against her flesh. It had pressed hard. The man had stood like a rock, immovable and as firm; there had been no give in the shoulder that had, as it were, set itself against hers. In all probability, she decided, there was a red mark upon her arm. If Van Bleit had not been present she would have made an examination.

“I wish you would go and find me a wrap,” she asked him suddenly. “I brought one with me. It isn’t altogether wise to sit here without after getting so hot dancing.”

And when he had gone she moved deliberately into the brighter light that streamed forth through the open doorway of the ball-room, and pulling her sleeve aside examined the arm. The mark she had expected to discover was there, a faint pink stain upon the whiteness of the soft flesh. She lowered the sleeve over it gently, and her face quivered. And yet it was only a small matter that could not have caused her the least pain.

“I trust you were not hurt a while since?” a voice addressed her curtly from the doorway, and lifting her eyes for the second time that night, they encountered the keen gaze of the man who was responsible for the injury. She flushed quickly.

“No,” she answered, and hesitated, confused and obviously nervous.

He stepped out on to the stoep.

“Where’s your partner?” he asked abruptly.

She explained, and he turned and walked beside her away from the bright light and the sight and sound of the dancers. His own partner had been compelled to retire to the dressing-room to have some damage to her frock repaired. She would not be back to finish the dance, which was practically finished then; the music was getting faster and faster, and so were the hurrying feet.

“Do you care to sit down?” he asked, pausing before a couple of low chairs arranged in a sheltered corner of the less-frequented side of the stoep. She seated herself in one, and he took up a position behind the second, leaning forward with his arms on the back of it.

“Shall I stay... until Van Bleit returns?” he asked.

“Please do.”

She clutched at the arm of her chair, grasping it firmly. There were so many things she wanted to say to this man, and time was so short; at any moment they might be interrupted... The precious moments were slipping away... And he gave her so little help. His manner was so curt as to be almost repellent.

“Do you think it necessary,” she asked, “that when we meet it should be as strangers—almost enemies?”

“Aren’t we that?” he said. “I understood that I represented both to you.”

She was silent because his last words had recalled a hard thing she had once in the years gone by written to him in an hour of wounded anger: “I do not know you... I think I have never known you. You are a stranger to me, and, I see now, my greatest enemy...”

“It is for you,” he added, filling in the pause, “to determine our future relations... I am a little surprised that you should meet me as you have done. And I’m not sure that it wouldn’t have been happier for both if you had acted differently... The fires of yesterday are ashes on the hearth of to-day... I don’t know how it is with you, but the sight of greying embers chills me.”

She sat leaning forward, her eyes fixed unseeingly straight before her as though they sought to pierce the blackness that lay beyond the stoep. Some of the pain and bitterness that was in her heart shone through them, so that they looked tortured in the soft glow of the artificial lights. She gripped the arm of her chair more tightly, and, still staring into the darkness, said tonelessly:

“With women it is not usual to leave ashes lying on the hearth.”

“You sweep them up and throw them away,” he answered. “It is wiser so... One forgets.”

“Some do,” she rejoined slowly. “And others—collect their ashes carefully and kindle them anew.”

He looked at her closely.

“Foolish and futile,” he said. “Ashes can never give forth the glow and the heat of unspoilt fuel. A thing that is dead has served its end. It should then be applied to other uses; for it is impossible that it should ever again serve its original purpose.”

“If that is your philosophy,” she began.

“It is,” he interrupted shortly.

“Then with you the ashes remain ashes to despoil the hearth of to-day!”

“I brush them out of sight,” he returned lightly. “I have lived so long now amid the dust of such memories that I have learnt to turn my back upon the muddle till it no longer inconveniences me...” He smiled cynically, and added: “There was room for a retort there. You might have flung out at me that I have always shown a propensity for turning my back.”

She winced. His speech cut her more than he would have believed any words of his could wound her. It was with great difficulty that she kept back the tears.

“That wasn’t worthy of you,” she said.

He reddened suddenly.

“I beg your pardon... It was an ill-considered remark. But it’s one of the memories that sticks closest... The dust of it lies thick upon everything and clouds the rest of life.”

She sat back in the depths of her chair and turned her white face up to his; a great sadness and a great yearning showed in the beautiful eyes.

“I think you make too much of it,” she said... “The accident of a moment!”

“An accident that ruined my career,” he returned with great bitterness.

“Not ruined it,” she expostulated,—“checked it. You could have made a name and a place for yourself in spite of it.”

“And I didn’t.”

“And you have not,” she corrected,—“yet.”

He laughed abruptly.

“Think of the time that has been wasted,” he said. “You might have said all this to me years ago. I don’t say it would have made any difference... unless it were to keep green some corner of my heart. But encouragement to be efficacious should be given when life is hardest, not when one has learnt to adapt it to one’s needs. But it’s generous of you to offer even a belated encouragement. I don’t wish to appear ungrateful. It’s more than I have deserved—or, indeed, expected of you.”

She stretched out a hand and laid it on his arm.

“Don’t be bitter, Hugh... We both have made mistakes.”

He looked down at the white glove that rested on his sleeve, and his lips tightened. The arm inside the sleeve was tense. There was no more response than if she had touched instead the stuffed arm of the chair.

“Perhaps,” he allowed. “But we won’t add to our mistakes by growing sentimental.”

She removed her hand without speaking, and sat silent with strained face, curiously still and composed. He watched her in his aloof fashion. If he felt any interest in her beyond the ordinary interest that a man experiences in a beautiful woman, he concealed it admirably. He betrayed not the slightest regret when Van Bleit came hurrying up to them with a light wrap over his arm. He had had some difficulty in finding it. Mrs Smythe eventually assisted in the search. He was voluble and apologetic. He shot a suspicious glance at Lawless, standing at the back of the chair in the same position, leaning forward with his arms on the top of it, and then turned again to the quiet figure of the woman who had not spoken after the first smiling word of thanks.

“You moved,” he said. “I looked for you where I left you, but the seat was unoccupied.”

“It was quieter here,” she explained. She rose and stood while Van Bleit put the wrap around her shoulders, and, with an exaggerated air of devotion, drew it close about her throat. Lawless bowed to her and moved away, making a slow progress along the stoep against the stream of dancers, pouring forth from the ball-room in quest of air.

“Gods!” he mused, avoiding the stream mechanically while seeming not to see it. “What a queer trick of fate! What has brought her out here, I wonder? ... That’s what I should like to get at... What has brought her out here?”

When in the early hours of the morning Mrs Lawless appeared on the pavement on Van Bleit’s arm, Lawless was standing on the kerb beside the waiting motor in the act of lighting a cigar. He tossed away the match, and opened the door for her. Then he raised his hat, and turning silently, disappeared into the blackness beyond the lights of the car. She turned her head to look after him; but the darkness had swallowed the tall figure, and the throbbing of the engine drowned the sound of his rapidly retreating steps.