Читать книгу The Three Lovers - Frank Swinnerton - Страница 22

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Presently the two girls busied themselves in preparing a meal in the small kitchen attached to the studio. It was not a feast; but it satisfied them, and Patricia loved the sense of camping out. They ate it off a small round table with a large coloured napkin used as a tablecloth. The crockery was all odd, as Amy had purchased it from a former tenant, and one plate bore upon it the name of a famous hotel. They had an egg dish and some potted meat and some thin claret, with an apple apiece to complete the meal and some coffee which was rather the worse for wear. Amy smoked cigarettes continuously throughout, laying them upon the edge of her plate during mastication. Her consumption of cigarettes during the day was considerable, and she even smoked and read in bed. Patricia made a note of this, as it seemed to be a part of the bohemian life.

"I never noticed this plate before," she suddenly cried, alluding to the one which had upon it the name of the hotel. "D'you suppose it was stolen, or what?"

Amy shrugged, and wiped a small piece of clinging tobacco from her lip with a forefinger.

"May have been," she said. "Or else its a throw-out. You get them cheap in markets, I believe."

"I hope it was stolen," breathed Patricia. "Fancy eating off a stolen plate! But you'd wonder how any body smuggled anything so large out of an hotel. Awful if it fell!"

"You're perfectly ridiculous, Patricia," said Amy.

What strange eyes Amy had, thought Patricia. They were like big blue-green marbles. They stood out a little. Or perhaps it was only that her eyelashes were fair. Harry had beautiful eyelashes—long and dark; and they made his eyes look charming. She hadn't noticed Edgar Mayne's eyes.... Oh, yes, she had. They were kind and brown. Funny! The thought of him made her smile; but she had at the same time a curious warming of the heart.

"Isn't it strange," she remarked, thoughtfully, "that you can feel perfectly——"

But what Patricia had been about to commend to Amy's notice was lost; for at that moment there came a tapping at the studio door. Instantly Patricia had one of those celebrated intuitions to which all young women at times are liable. She felt sure that the person knocking was Harry. It proved to be Jack Penton, who came in as though the place were familiar to him, and stood frowning at the signs of their feast. He was as smooth and insignificant as ever.

"Oh," he said, in his rasping voice. "You've had your meal."

"Nothing left for you," answered Amy, brusquely.

Jack's manner in reply was protestingly sullen, as if he had been detected in a fault.

"I was going to ask you to come out to dinner," he grumbled.

"I don't think I could eat anything more," smiled Patricia. "It's so nice of you." That was her solace for him, a contribution to what she felt might be a disappointment to so worthy a young man.

"Well...." He hesitated. "I've just got along. Erm.... Look here, I'll go and get something to eat, and come back, if I may."

Amy agreed, and Jack was letting himself out when a notion occurred to her.

"If you meet anybody, bring them with you," she called after him. And when the door had clicked she turned to Patricia. "Don't go, whatever you do...." She put her hand to her brow. "That young man.... He's beginning to be a nuisance."

"What, Jack?" Patricia was full of sympathy for the absent. "But he's most agreeable. I like him."

"Yes," responded Amy, with rather a morose air. "You don't have to put up with him. He's moody. He's got a fearful temper, and he sulks. It's the temperament that goes with that complexion. He's dark and sulky. He hasn't got any notion of.... He's old-fashioned...."

"Do you mean he's in love with you?" asked Patricia. "That seems to be what's the matter."

"Oho, it takes two to be in love," scornfully cried Amy. "And I'm not in love with him."

"But he's your friend."

"That's just it. He won't recognise that men and women can be friends. He's a very decent fellow; but he's full of this sulky jealousy, and he glowers and sulks whenever any other man comes near me. Well, that's not my idea of friendship."

"Nor mine," echoed Patricia, trying to reconstruct her puzzled estimate of their relations. "But couldn't you stop that? Surely, if you put it clearly to him...."

Amy interrupted with a laugh that was almost shrill. Her manner was coldly contemptuous.

"You are priceless!" she cried. "You say the most wonderful things."

"Well, I should."

"I wonder." Amy moved about, collecting the plates. "You see ... some day I shall marry. And in a weak moment I said probably I'd marry him."

"Oh, Amy! Of course he's jealous!" Swiftly, Patricia did the young man justice.

"It didn't give him any right to be. I told him I'd changed my mind. I've told him lots of times that probably I shan't marry him."

"But you keep him. Amy! You do encourage him." Patricia was stricken afresh with a generous impulse of emotion on Jack's behalf. "I mean, by not telling him straight out. Surely you can't keep a man waiting like that? I wonder he doesn't insist."

"Jack insist!" Amy was again scornful. "Not he!"

There was a moment's pause. Innocently, Patricia ventured upon a charitable interpretation.

"He must love you very much. But Amy, if you don't love him."

"What's love got to do with marriage?" asked Amy, with a sourly cynical air.

"Hasn't it—everything?" Patricia was full of sincerity. She was too absorbed in this study to help Amy to clear the table; but on finding herself alone in the studio while the crockery was carried away to the kitchen she mechanically shook the crumbs behind the gas-fire and folded the napkin. This was the most astonishing moment of her day.

Presently Amy returned, and sat in the big armchair, while, seated upon the podger and leaning back against the wall, Patricia smoked a cigarette.

"You see, the sort of man one falls in love with doesn't make a good husband," announced Amy, as patiently as if Patricia had been in fact a child. She persisted in her attitude of superior wisdom in the world's ways. "It's all very well; but a girl ought to be able to live with any man she fancies, and then in the end marry the safe man for a ... well, for life, if she likes."

Patricia's eyes were opened wide.

"I shouldn't like that," she said. "I don't think the man would, either."

"Bless you, the men all do it," cried Amy, contemptuously. "Don't make any mistake about that."

"I don't believe it," said Patricia. "Do you mean that my father—or your father...?"

"Oh, I don't know. I meant, nowadays. Most of the people you saw last night are living together or living with other people."

Patricia was aware of a chill.

"But you've never," she urged. "I've never."

"No." Amy was obviously irritated by the personal application. "That's just it. I say we ought to be free to do what we like. Men do what they like."

"D'you think Jack has lived with other girls?"

"My dear child, how do I know? I should hope he has."

"Hope! Amy, you do make me feel a prig."

"Perhaps you are one. Oh, I don't know. I'm sick of thinking, thinking, thinking about it all. I never get any peace."

"Is there somebody you want to live with?"

"No. I wish there was. Then I should know."

"I wonder if you would know," said Patricia, in a low voice. "Amy, do you really know what love is? Because I don't. I've sometimes let men kiss me, and it doesn't seem to matter in the least. I don't particularly want to kiss them, or be kissed. I've never seen anything in all the flirtation that goes on in dark corners. It's amusing once or twice; but it becomes an awful bore. The men don't interest you. The thought of living with any of them just turns me sick."

Amy listened with attention. Her eyes protruded. She tapped her foot upon the floor.

"Yes, but you're not sensual," she said. "You're not an artist. Experience is a thing every artist must have. Not a humdrum marriage, and children, and washing books ... I must have experience—to do great work...."

Patricia's eyes flew to the canvas, now covered, which stood upon the easel.

"But ..." she began.

"You drive me perfectly mad!" cried Amy, suddenly beside herself with impatience. "You ask questions. You're like a child. You don't know what torment is. You don't know what it is to be bothered the whole time with all this ... never to get away from it."

"It can't be very healthy," said Patricia. Amy showed her teeth in an angry smile. She did not answer for several minutes, during which her face became set in an expression of discontented egotism.

"Sometimes I think I'll marry Jack just to find out what marriage is like," she said at last. "I could always leave him and go off on my own."

"Poor Jack!" thought Patricia. She said aloud: "He wouldn't like that."

"Oho, he wouldn't be any worse off than he is now."

"He'd be prevented from marrying anybody else."

"If I left him I shouldn't mind what he did," explained Amy. "Of course, he could divorce me."

Patricia thought she had never heard such confident expression of selfishness. It was one thing, she felt, for her to be selfish, because she really was wonderful; but to hear Amy speaking as though she had no need to consider others struck Patricia as almost abominable. She was pleased with the word—it was almost abominable. There was a long silence, while their thoughts ranged.

"I certainly don't think you ought to marry him," remarked Patricia. "It wouldn't be fair. You must consider him a little. His feelings, I mean."

Amy stretched her legs out in front of her and nestled her head in the corner of the chair. She lighted one cigarette from another, and slowly took two or three puffs.

"You'll find that it's best not to consider other people," she said at length. "They only become a nuisance. I'm kind to Jack, and he's a nuisance. I've told him he can go; but he won't go unless I definitely say I won't marry him."

"He's very weak!" exclaimed Patricia, fiercely. "I'm ashamed of him."

"He's not at all weak. He wants something, and he's waiting for it, that's all."

"If you feel like that, surely it shows that you mean to marry him in the end."

"I wonder if I shall," murmured Amy. "Perhaps. Perhaps not...."

"I could give you a good shaking!" cried Patricia.