Читать книгу Six Days - Glyn Elinor - Страница 10

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It was unlikely that—Laline determining to subjugate Major Lamont, and David having allowed himself the prospect of one hour to amuse himself in—Fate should not smile upon them! Indeed if the jade can spin more complicated threads by granting human beings’ wishes, she often is complacent! Anyway she was so on this last afternoon on board the Olympic!

The three had tea together in the saloon—and then Laline sent Jack down to implore Mrs. Greening to join them at their chairs, to watch the sunset! And the moment that the kind fellow’s back was turned, she raised soft eyes to Major Lamont, and suggested that they should go up on the boat deck for a few minutes first and see how the great orange disk looked from there. She was not at all sure that he would consent—and indeed had he not arranged his plan, he would have been quite capable of refusing point blank!

Her hesitation gave a new charm to her sparkling face.

“It’s a great idea!” David answered, however. “Let’s!”

So they stole away, and up the stairway, and on to the farthest point of the boat deck and there leaned over the rail and gazed to the west. The soft wind which had sunk to a mere zephyr by now, played with the golden tendrils of Laline’s hair, and never had she appeared more delectable.

David allowed himself to bend quite close to her.

“Oh! isn’t it gorgeous!” and she stretched out her little hands to the waves of light: “I am a sun worshipper!”

He did not answer, he just looked at her, and his strongly magnetic eyes seemed to enter her very being, and cause some strange fluttering near her heart.

Then he took out his watch, and glanced at it. It was ten minutes to six. He was saying to himself: “The clever puss! now she intends to excite me—well, she must take the consequences—it is up to her and for an hour she shall!”

“Why do you look at your watch?” Laline asked.

“To see how much time I have to look at you.”

“Do you want to look at me?”

“Of course—aren’t you extremely good to look at?”

She pouted.

“Yes—but I did not make myself—so that does not amount to anything in the way of a compliment!”

“You only like to be flattered about that over which you have will, then?”

“Why, certainly!”

He remained silent.

This exasperated her—she made the deduction that he did not find so much to praise on this point. There was a question and a challenge in her eyes.

“Well, why don’t you say something?”

He laughed.

“I’m a bear and I can only tell the truth!”

“And you think that I would not like it?” She was getting angry.

“Probably not.”

“Try!”

“No, I won’t.”

“I order you to!”

“Order as much as you like!”

“You won’t obey?”

“No.”

“Brute!”

“Honey!”

“I’m not ‘honey’ to you—you are always rude and hateful to me!”

“Why did you suggest coming up on this deck then?”

“On the principle that one takes bitters before dinner, an aperitive!” and she laughed. There was no use in growing mad with him—she knew that she would get the worst of it.

“Well it is better to be that than a chocolate ice cream!”

“Do you mean Jack?”

“No—Jack is the best fellow in the world—far too good for modern flappers to worry between their teeth!”

“Am I to understand that you are insinuating that I am a modern flapper, Major Lamont?” The grey eyes were flashing.

“Not exactly—you have escaped the worst form of their expression—but the flapper epidemic has gone so deep in our country, it seems that hardly a woman under fifty escapes entirely from its influence.”

“What do you just mean by the ‘flapper epidemic’?”

She was trying to be reasonable, and not show her growing irritation.

“Well putting over every impossible bad taste and unattractive ‘sassiness’ under the excuse of infantile years.”

“And you think it has caught me?” Her voice almost trembled.

“Partly.”

“How dare you say such things!”

“You asked me a deliberate question.”

“Then you have just got to explain yourself.”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“You are absolutely insulting, Major Lamont! The inference of everything you have said is that I am an empty headed, posing girl—with not enough horse sense to comprehend plain English!”

He laughed good humouredly.

“When the head is as pretty as yours it does not matter what is inside it!”

“It matters a whole lot! You have made a great mistake, I am neither a flapper, nor empty headed! but why I stand for your insolence I don’t know.”

“I do.”

“You do?”

“Yes—it is because you know that I would not attempt to hold you if you bolted away!”

To use her own expression, when she thought of this scene, Laline was so near ‘passing out’ with surprise at his temerity, that she could not find adequate words to annihilate him with. But if she was furious with him, she was more furious with herself for being so horribly attracted that she had not the courage to turn and leave him. So she laughed, instead of becoming really angry—and turned the tables, asking him boldly:

“Well, why did you come up on this deck then? It could not have been only to insult me—you had some other reason?”

“Yes, I had. I wanted to enjoy the pleasure of looking at you in the very few moments that I mean to spare.”

“You only want to look at and not to talk to girls, then?”

“Generally—they have not much that it is interesting to discuss in their heads, which are only filled with themselves, and their own vanity.”

“You are frightfully unjust. We are, as a rule, ten times better educated and more intelligent than you men.”

“Then it is all the more a shame that you make so little use of it. If you are rich enough not to have to work, the whole force goes to drawing incense for your vanity—and learning new tricks to kill time.”

Then he laughed softly—he had not meant to have any serious conversation with her. He did not think her brain was worth it—she was merely a pleasure—but such a very great pleasure that he would have to be careful about it all. The hunting instinct, he knew, was terribly strong in him!

Laline, however, having got her resentment well in hand, only longed to draw him into a discussion—so she answered meekly instead of firing up:

“What would you have us do, then?”

“For the moment I would have you let me hold your arm and walk briskly up and down this deck!”

“But we were talking in the abstract, and you bring it down to the particular.”

She was, however, not displeased!

“Much the best thing to do—the minutes are passing—and I have only allowed myself an hour for enjoyment!”

“I am enjoyment, then?”

“Certainly.”

“And a temptation—to stray from work?”

“Tremendous!”

“My brain counts nothing at all—you just want to hold my arm!”

“I neither know nor care if you have a brain—if you have it is hidden away too deeply under the crust of our rotten education and bringing up of women—for any man without heaps of time to find. Some great shock, or some exceptional circumstance, may drag out the possible golden you from beneath all the false values—but we have only”—and he looked at his watch again—“thirty five more minutes. Let’s get the tangible joy out of a jolly walk—and propinquity!”

Laline was in love with David Lamont. She knew it—although she had never been in love before in her life. She just felt that it did not really matter then if he had been very insulting, and did think her of no account, mentally, the temptation for him to be quite close to her, holding her arm, was greater than her pride—and she knew men very well too, and that the shortest way to their brains and hearts, lies most surely through the door of their senses!

So she smiled up a divine smile, and made a caressing movement nearer to him—and he took her arm, and they began their walk. And if he felt just the agreeable physical excitement of the way of a man with a maid—Laline experienced much more exalted emotions!

Everything in her was thrilling at his touch. His hold was firm. She suddenly felt her rebellion was silly. Of what matter anything, if such a man loved her! She would not be able to put up any fight. He might just be complete master and make her do as he pleased!

The oval exquisite flower of a face glowed with youth and—love! An ambience of sweetness seemed to flow from her. David Lamont felt his pulses bounding. The darling little girl! The little honey—the little sweetheart! He said to himself—he had not felt so much for over two years!

They talked of foolish things, as light as the evening wind—but at each turn his arm seemed to hold her more tightly and more joy and gladness permeated them both.

And David Lamont in his cynical way was analyzing to himself:

“It is the springtime, and all the recreative forces are in the air, and, after all, if they could only stay young and lovely and provide this stimulus to man, what on earth was the use of their having any mind? This was what women were for—only the darndest part was if you took one for this, you might be saddled with a bore when the essential faded.”

Laline glanced at her wrist watch. It now wanted five minutes until the hour should be up. She determined to make him stay with her over the time, if it were only for a few seconds. She would win on some point. The surrender was too ignominious otherwise.

He looked at his watch also.

“I have four and three-quarter minutes more,” he said. “Come,” and he drew her rapidly to the end where they would be quite alone by a boat. The waves were rosy pink there to the west, and all the sky was as an opal.

When they reached the spot where no one could possibly see them David let go her arm and seized both her little hands.

“I want to kiss you,” he said.

The coquette in her fenced.

“Of course! Well, perhaps you shall if you stay and chuck your old work.”

“No; I am going in four minutes. Let me kiss you now.”

“No! The price is for you to wait.”

“I will pay no price. Do you mean to struggle? The seconds are going by.”

The magnetism of his eyes, blazing now with passion, held her. Here was emotion for her! Here was feeling! But she must try to rule once more.

So she tossed her golden head and pouted.

“If I am not worth waiting for, I am not worth kissing.”

“You are probably not. But I am a man and for the moment you seem so to me. I suppose there are only about three minutes now. Why waste them?”

Laline felt everything in her melting as his black eyes held her, and his firm mouth, smiling a little, showed just a white gleam of his perfect teeth.

“Ah!——” she gasped, overcome, and he folded her in his arms.

She had never dreamed of such a kiss! She had had others, but they had not meant a thing to her, rather nuisances which she had experimented with. But this kiss! Ah! It seemed to draw her whole being to him. Time and place vanished in one divine thrill.

That anything so passionate, so long, so utterly tender, too, could come from that stern, fierce brute, David Lamont, was too glorious! She only knew that she loved him wildly, adoringly, completely.

He picked her up in his arms when at last his lips left hers, and deposited her in a vacant chair.

“Thank you, honey,” he whispered, and then turned and left her, striding on and down the companion stair to A deck.

And when the intoxication quieted a little in Laline, she glanced at her watch, it was within a minute of ten minutes to seven o’clock. He had done as he said—the hour was not yet up!

She felt exhausted—deliriously, divinely exhausted! Her cheeks kept paling and glowing alternately—her lovely, lithe figure just stayed limp in the chair.

No, of course, there was nothing like love in the whole world. Shelley’s lines came back to her:

Nothing in the world is single,

All things by a law divine

In one another’s being mingle—

Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high heaven,

And the waves clasp one another;

No sister flower would be forgiven

If it disdained its brother:

And the sunlight clasps the earth,

And the moonbeams kiss the sea—

What are all these kissings worth,

If thou kiss not me?

Yes—indeed! “What were all these kissings worth, if thou kiss not me?” Presently a reaction began to set in. He had won, and she was beaten. He had kissed her, and gone off to work. What was this imperative work? Of course, men must work, but Jack would never have done that! Just a few minutes more or less could not have mattered to the horrid old task, whatever it was, and the “more” would have been so perfectly glorious for them! But there was to-night! and there would be a half-moon—and—Oh! she must go down and make herself just as beautiful as she and Celestine, between them, knew how to make her. She would wear the soft pervenche georgette which was not so very short, and which seemed to turn her grey eyes into dewy hyacinths, she had been told.

She got up from the chair and leaned for a few moments over the rail to look at the sunset. The great disc had disappeared and all the heavens were a crimson glow. The waves were clasping one another. Ah!

Then with a recrudescence of emotion she walked on and down the stairs. But as she came nearer the lee-side door, near where their chairs were, what incredible sight met her eyes in the middle distance!

David Lamont, pacing the deck between Judge Whitmore and his tiresome wife, who had only emerged from her cabin that afternoon. Pacing the deck from the other end, showing that he had been round already once, and must have joined them deliberately on his leaving her. He was not working, then! he could never have intended to work.

The shock was perfectly horrible to her. She went cold all over, and walked forward to the chairs, her head in the air, and her grey eyes like icicles—and before she reached them, the three people came face to face with her.

“Perfect evening for a stroll, Miss Lester,” David Lamont called cheerily—“Where’s Jack?—you should not be so lazy, but tramp as we do!”

And then he went on.

Laline got to her chair, and fell into it, her knees almost giving way under her.