Читать книгу Peter Jameson - Gilbert Frankau - Страница 12

Table of Contents

January, 1914. A cold, dry, foggy, London evening. The children—after much protesting—safely asleep. All the electric lights in the big first-floor double drawing-room—pink-walled, parquet-floored, elaborately, comfortably, but by no means artistically, furnished—glowing. A red coal-fire heaped profusely on the tiled, steel-fendered hearth. And, standing before the fire, firm fine hands smoothing the folds of her low-neck, black charmeuse evening-gown, Patricia Jameson.

Not a beautiful woman, this Patricia: yet by no means the “bland, blond Kensingtonian nonentity” which Francis Gordon had once called her. Very English in the poise of the quiet head on the white, well-sloped shoulders; in the repose of the full figure; in the lines of the athletic limbs. Very English, too, about the well-formed, almost Roman, nose, the red healthy lips, the perfect teeth, the firm cheeks. Lacking, perhaps, in vivacity—unless the brown slumbrous eyes, dark and dark-lashed, were an index to something deep, something as yet but half-awakened: something which, given but its chance, might yet turn the Mother into the Mate.

But tonight a hint of trouble showed in those eyes. For Patricia was thinking. Her thoughts came to her clear-cut, logical, in orderly and courageous sequence. Sloppiness—owing to her father’s teaching—had no place in this woman’s mental outfit.

And she thought: “I am nearly thirty. … I have been married eight years. … I like this house, though it takes a lot of running. … I have no money troubles. … I adore Evelyn and Primula. … And I am very fond of my husband. …”

But here Heron Baynet’s system of common sense, of reason against sentiment, broke down—as it had broken down once or twice before when applied to the intimate relation of married life. The cold creed of pure reason did not work. It was no good for Patricia’s brain to tell her that she ought to be satisfied: her heart informed her, quite emphatically, that she wasn’t.

“Mr. and Mrs. Hubert Rawlings, ma’m,” announced Smith, the sour-faced but efficient parlour-maid.

Violet came in first—a slightly older, slightly tawdrier edition of her sister; thinner about the lips, fluffier of hair, not so neat in her over-elaborate clothes; but sprightly—unpleasantly sprightly.

“Good evening, darling,” she cried, kissing. “Isn’t it perishingly cold? We walked from the Tube. Do let me come to that gorgeous fire.”

Hubert Rawlings—tall, clean-shaven, foxy-faced, five years older than his wife—followed at her heels; shook hands.

“Where’s Peter?” he asked.

“In Hamburg,” answered Patricia; and noticed, rather annoyed, the disappointment caused by her reply. Though not by any means “poor relations”—(H. H. Rawlings, “Publicity Specialist,” made quite a decent income)—Hubert and Hubert’s wife had an intolerable habit of making private life an adjunct to business. Patricia was perfectly aware that, had Peter been at home, her brother-in-law would have seized the opportunity to convince him, once and for all, that the Nirvana advertising account could be better handled by Hubert Rawlings than by Charlie Higham. Remembering a phrase of her husband’s, “I never do business with relatives: they always expect to be paid in advance,” she smiled to herself, and turned the conversation.

“Doctor Baynet and Mr. John Baynet, ma’m.”

“Then you can bring up dinner at once, Smith.”

“Not late, are we, Pat?”

“No, pater, punctual to the second.” Patricia and her father shook hands. They were not in the least alike, these two. The doctor—two inches shorter than his younger daughter—had dark brown hair, just graying; the hands of a surgeon; pince-nez; a fine forehead, and an almost colourless face, set in stern lines. Since his wife’s death (he had been a widower twelve years) the already celebrated diagnostician had concentrated on work to the exclusion of every other interest but his children. His face showed the price paid for success.

“Well, Jack, and how are things at Hillsea. I hear you’ve been disappointed in love?”

“Oh, shut up, Pat.” Jack Baynet pulled uncomfortably at his white evening waistcoat; fingered his clipped moustache; trifled with his butterfly tie. As a subaltern in the Field Gunners, almost a senior subaltern too, he disliked being ragged by his older sisters—and, most particularly, he disliked being ragged about Alice Sewell. So, of course, Violet took up the running.

“Poor dear! Fancy your own major cutting you out with her. It’s too bad.”

“Stark isn’t a major yet; only a captain,” snapped Jack; then, realizing a tactical error, “And anyway, I never was in love with her.”

“Dinner is on the table, ma’m,” announced Smith. …

Dinner, quietly served by two maids in the dark, square dining-room—oak-panelled, lit only by electric candles, mauve-shaded, on the oval table and the huge Chippendalish sideboard—was a leisurely meal. Thick soup followed the smoked salmon, grilled sole the soup, a chick en casserole the sole. Talk, family gossip of no interest to outsiders, flowed—slowly at first, quicker as Peter’s second-best Burgundy loosened constraint.

“And why,” asked Rawlings suddenly, “has Peter gone to Hamburg?”

“I think,” answered Patricia, always on guard against her brother-in-law’s curiosity, “that it’s something to do with cigars.”

“Cigars? You mean cigarettes, don’t you? He hardly bothers about the cigar business nowadays.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” said Patricia—knowing he wasn’t.

“When is he coming back?”

“Tomorrow, as far as I know.”

“Do you ever see Francis nowadays?” put in Violet. “I was trying to read something of his in the English Review just before we came out tonight. He’s a bit beyond me, you know.”

“Francis Gordon,”—Heron Baynet spoke slowly, almost professionally—“might become a great writer, if he weren’t such a neurotic.”

“Oh, pater, do keep off your hobby, just for this one evening,” Patricia protested. But, once launched, her father was not an easy person to stop.

“My hobby,” he said, “is merely life. Not animal life only, but mental life—which is the most important. Francis Gordon’s hobby is—Francis Gordon. That’s where he, and most of the literary young men nowadays, are making their mistake. They’re half-baked; emasculate. Instead of facing life, they run away from it; shut themselves up in their studies—usually with some equally epicene petticoat to assist their musings. Life, the battle of life, is the only thing worth writing about. Or,” he added, “reading about.”

Again Patricia turned the conversation: “Anyway, he’s much nicer, much more human, than he used to be.”

“You mean, since he lost his money,” interrupted Violet.

Patricia nodded. …

On the arrival of port and cigars, the three men were left alone; and Hubert Rawlings, who felt himself just a little out of the picture, attempted to talk himself into it.

“Gunnery,” he said to the young soldier, “must be amazingly interesting. A client of mine—he’s in the steel trade—was talking to me only this morning about the Creusot factory. He says the French field-guns are infinitely better than ours. …”

“Really.” Jack Baynet had been trained not to talk “shop” in mess.

“Oh, yes. My friend saw them firing tests. And he was amazed, absolutely amazed.”

“I’ve no doubt.” Jack relented a little, finding it beyond him to keep off his hobby. “I remember when our battery” (he pronounced it “bettery”) “was in India, we were ordered to demonstrate at dummy targets—just to show the infantry the effect of modern shrapnel-fire.” He paused.

“And …” queried his father.

“After inspecting the targets, the General thought it better that the infantry shouldn’t see them. Bad for their morale, you know.”

“If ever we do have this European war that Lord Northcliffe is so fond of talking about,” said the doctor, “it will last about a week. Modern nerves will never stand it.”

“Oh, we shall have war, all right,” announced his son.

The advertising agent and the nerve-specialist smiled cynically; demonstrated—till it was time to join the ladies—that the young man knew nothing whatever about international politics. …

They played family bridge, half-a-crown a hundred, Violet and her husband permanently partnered. Patricia—who had cut herself out of the first rubber—stood watching them. And again thought troubled her.

This—family parties, theatre-going, houses in Kensington, five servants, a summer holiday with the children, mornings at home and afternoons at the skating-rink—oh! it was all right, a very reasonable and nice existence. But could it go on? Obviously, it had to go on. … Mentally, she shook herself; laughed a little. What did she want? A lover? No, very definitely no. She was not that sort of woman; had too much self-respect. … What then? “Colour”—the words came involuntarily to her mind: “Colour! That’s what I need. Colour—and warmth.”

But when her family had departed, and she sat alone again in the drawing-room, Patricia Jameson took herself firmly to task. “If I don’t take more exercise,” she decided, “I shall become like one of those unpleasant creatures one meets in novels: the misunderstood married woman.”

Before going to bed, she tiptoed through the night nursery; looked lovingly down on the two dark-brown heads of Evelyn and Primula; and thereafter slept—even as they—dreamlessly.