Читать книгу Essential Science Fiction Novels - Volume 7 - Karel Čapek, August Nemo, John Dos Passos - Страница 29

“I AM tired, mother.”

“Tired, child! And why?”

“Mother, I have been spouting to the wild sea waves.”

“And what have you been saying to them, Gloria?”

“Ah, mother! ever so much.”

Let us look at the speakers, a mother and child, the former as she stands leaning against a stone balustrade, which overlooks a small Italian garden, upon which the sun is shining brightly. Far out beyond is the gleaming sea, and on its sparkling, silvery sheen the woman’s eyes are absently fixed as she hearkens to the complaining prattle of the child by her side. She is a beautiful woman is Speranza de Lara, one upon whom Dame Nature has showered her favours freely. As the stranger, looking upon her for the first time, would deem her but a girl in years, and exclaim admiringly at her beauty, it would be difficult to convince him that her age is thirty-five, as in effect it is.

Speranza’s eyes are blue, with the turquoise shade lighting up their clear depths, and a fringe of silky auburn eyelashes confining them within bounds. Her magnificent hair is of a slightly lighter hue, and as the sun plays on the heavy coil that is twisted gracefully upon her noble head, the golden sparks dance merrily around it, like an aureole of gold.

And the child? We must look nearer still at her, for she not only is beautiful, but there is writ upon her face the glowing sign of genius. Like her mother, Gloriana, or, as we shall prefer to call her, Gloria, has blue eyes, but they are the blue of the sapphire, deep in contradistinction to the turquoise shade, which characterises those of Speranza. Auburn eyelashes, too, fringe the child’s wonderful eyes, but again these are many shades darker than the mother’s, while masses of auburn curls play negligently and unconfined, covering the girl’s back like a veil of old-gold. Such is Gloriana de Lara at the age of twelve.

“Won’t Gloria tell mother what that ‘ever so much’ was?”

She puts the question gently, does Speranza. She has never moved from the position in which we first found her, and her eyes are still dreamily searching the waste of blue waters beyond. But as she speaks the child puts her arm caressingly through that of the mother’s, and lays her golden head against that mother’s shoulder.

“Ah! yes, mother, of course I will tell you.”

“Then tell me, Gloria.”

“I was imagining the foam flakelets to be girls, mother, and I looked upon them as my audience. I told them, mother darling, of all the wrongs that girls and women have to suffer, and then I bade them rise as one to right these wrongs. I told them all I could think of to show them how to do so, and then I told them that I would be their leader, and lead them to victory or die. And the wavelets shouted, mother. I seemed to hear them cheer me on, I seemed to see them rising into storm, the wind uprose them, and their white foam rushed towards me, and I seemed to see in this sudden change the elements of a great revolution.”

“Like a dream, Gloria.”

“A living dream, mother; at least it was so to me. It brought a feeling to my heart, mother, which I know will never leave it more, until, until”

The girl pauses, and the great tears rise to her eyes.

Speranza raises herself suddenly, and, confronting the child, lays both hands upon her shoulders .

“Until what, child?”

“Until I’ve won, mother,” cries Gloria, as she raises her glorious eyes, in which the tears still tremble, to her mother’s face.

“Ah, Gloria! the odds are against you, my darling.”

“Don’t I know that, mother; don’t I know that well? But I am not afraid. I made a vow, mother, today, I made it to those waves; and something tells me that I shall keep that vow and win, though in doing so I may die.”

“Hush, Gloria, hush, child; don’t talk like that.”

“And don’t you want me to win, mother? After all you have suffered, after all you have taught me, would you have your child turn back from the path she has set herself to follow, because perhaps at that path’s end lies death?”

“Child, it is a cause I would gladly lay down my life for, but how can I bring myself to wish you to sacrifice yourself?”

“What is sacrifice in a great cause, mother? I fear no sacrifice, no pain, no consequence, so long as victory crowns me in the end.”

The mother’s arms are round her child’s neck now, her head is bending down and the bright gold of Speranza’s lovely hair is close beside the glossy, wandering dark gold curls of Gloria. In the heart of the former a new-born hope is rising, vague, undefinable, yet still there, and which fills it with a happiness she has not known for many and many a day.

“My child,” she exclaims softly, “can it be, that after all these years of weary, lonely suffering, I am awaking to find in you, you, the offspring of a forbidden love, the messenger that shall awake the world to woman’s wrongs, and make suffering such as I have endured no longer possible?”

“Yes, mother, I feel it,” answers Gloria earnestly; “and that is why I have made my plans today. Everything must have a beginning you know, mother, and therefore I must begin, and begin at once. You must help me, mother darling. I can do nothing without your cooperation.”

“Tell me your plans, Gloria, and mother will help you if she can.”

“My plans are many, but the first must have a premier consideration. Mother, I must go to school.”

“To school, child! I thought you always have begged me not to send you to school.”

“It must.be to a boy’s school, mother. You must send me to Eton.”

“To Eton?”

“Yes, mother; don’t you understand?”

Here a retrospect is necessary to enable the reader to comprehend the above conversation.

Thirty-five years previously there had been born to a young widow in the Midland Counties of England a posthumous child and daughter, to whom the name of Speranza had been given. The widow, Mrs. de Lara by name, was left badly off. Her husband, who had been an officer in the British service, had sold out, and accepted an estate agency from a rich relative, upon whose property he lived in a tiny but snug cottage, which nestled amidst some pine and oak woods on the shores of as beautiful a lake as was to be seen all the country round. Captain and Mrs. de Lara were a very happy pair. Theirs had been a love match; and she never regretted the rich offers of marriage which she had rejected for the sake of the handsome, dashing but well-nigh penniless young officer. Her father, furious at what he considered a mesalliance, had cut her off with a shilling; and thus it was that the two had had a hard struggle to make ends meet on the little possessed by the captain. What mattered it? They were happy.

Grief, however, soon came to cloud that home of peace and contentment. An accidental discharge of his gun inflicted on Captain de Lara a mortal wound. He died in the arms of his heart-broken wife, who lived just long enough to give birth to the little Speranza, dying a fortnight later, and leaving, penniless and friendless, two little boys and the baby girl referred to. the captain’s rich relative adopted them. He was a kind-hearted man, and felt that he could not turn them adrift on the world, but his wife, a hard-hearted and scheming woman, resented the adoption bitterly, and led the children a sad and unhappy life. She had a sou and daughter of her own, aged respectively five and six years, and upon these she lavished a false and mistaken affection, spoiling them in every possible way, and bringing them up to be anything but pleasant to those around them.

When old enough Speranza’s brothers were sent to school, and given to understand by their adopted father that they might choose their own professions. The eldest selected the army, the youngest the navy, and each made a start in his respective line of life. But Speranza, being a girl, had no chances thrown out to her. She was a very beautiful girl, strong, healthy, and clever; but of what use were any of these attributes to her?

“If I were only a boy,” she would bitterly moan to herself, “I could make my way in the world. I could work for my living, and be free instead of being what I am, the butt of my adopted mother.”

It is necessary to explain that Speranza’s adopted parents were the Earl and Countess of Westray, and that their two children were Bertrand Viscount Altai and Lady Lucy Maree. Dordington Court was the family seat, and it was here that Speranza spent the first sixteen years of her life.

There were great doings at Dordington Court when Lord Altai came of age. A large party was invited to take part in the week’s festivities, and duly assembled for the occasion. Many beautiful women were there, but none could compare in beauty with Speranza de Lara. She was only seventeen years of age at the time, but already the promise of exquisite loveliness could not but be apparent to every one. It captivated many, but none more so than young Altai himself.

He was not a good man was the young viscount. Injudicious indulgence as a child had laid the seeds of selfishness and indifference to the feelings of others. He had been so accustomed to have all he wanted, that such a word as “refusal” was hardly known to him. He had grown up in the belief that what Altai asked for must be granted as a matter of course. And now, in pursuit of his passions, he chose to think himself, or imagined himself, in love with Speranza, and had determined to make her his wife.

He chose his opportunity for asking her. It was the night of a great ball given at Dordington Court during the week’s festivities. Speranza had been dancing with him, and when the dance was over he led her away into one of the beautiful conservatories that opened from one of the reception-rooms, and was lighted up with softly subdued pink fairy lamps. He thought he had never seen her look more beautiful, and his passion hungered to make her his own more than ever.

He put the usual question, a question which—no reason has yet been given why—a man arrogates to himself alone to put. He never dreamed that she, the penniless Speranza de Lara, the adopted orphan of his father and mother, would refuse him. He took it as of course for granted that she would jump at his offer. Were there not girls—and plenty too—in the house who would have given their eyes for such a proposal? He put the question therefore confidently, nay, even negligently, and awaited the answer without a doubt in his mind as to what it would be.

He started. She was speaking in reply. Could he believe his ears, and was that answer No? And yet there was no mistaking it, for the voice, though low, was clear and very distinct. It decidedly said him Nay. Yes, Speranza had refused him. It was the first rebuff he had ever received in his life, the first denial that had ever been made to request of his. It staggered him, filled him with blind, almost ungovernable, fury. More than ever he coveted the girl who had rejected him, more than ever he determined to make her, what the law told him she should be if he married her, his own.

He left her suddenly, anger and rage at heart, and she, with a sad and weary restlessness upon her, wandered out into the clear moonlit night, and stood gazing over the beautiful lake at her feet, and at the tiny cottage at the far end where her father and mother had died, and where she had been born.

What was it that stood in Speranza’s eyes? Tears, large and clear as crystals, were falling from them, and sobs shook her graceful upright frame, as she stood with her hands clasped to her forehead in an agony of grief. Only seventeen, poor child, and yet so miserable! It was a cruel sight for any one to see. But no one saw it save the pale moon and twinkling stars that looked down calmly and sweetly on the sobbing girl.

A harsh voice sounded suddenly at her elbow, a rough grasp was laid upon her arm. With a cry in which loathing and horror were mixed Speranza turned round, only to confront the contemptuous, haughty woman, who had never said a kind or nice word to her in all her life.

“How dare you, girl, behave like this?” had cried the countess furiously. “How dare you so answer my darling boy, who has thus condescended to honour you with his love?”

In vain the miserable child had striven to explain to the infuriated woman that she did not care for Lord Altai. Such an explanation had only aggravated the countess’s auger, who, after many and various threats, had declared that unless Speranza consented to gratify her darling boy’s passion, she would induce the earl to deprive Speranza’s two brothers of their allowances, and therefore of their professions, which, in other words, meant ruin to them.

She was a clever woman was Lady Westray. She knew exactly where to strike to gain her end. The threat which she threw out about Speranza’s two brothers she knew pretty well would take effect; for did she not also know that out to them the poor child’s whole heart had gone? Rather than injure them, the girl determined to sacrifice herself.

A month later a great wedding took place. Envied of all who saw her, Speranza de Lara became Viscountess Altai, and the wife of the man whom she detested and loathed. Sold by the law which declares that however brutally a man may treat his wife, so that he does not strike her, she has no power to free herself from him; sold by the law which declares her to be that man’s slave, this woman, bright with the glory of a high intellect, perfect in Nature’s health and strength, was committed to the keeping of a man whom Fashion courted and patted on the back, whilst declaring him at the same time to be the veriest roué in London. He could go and do as he pleased; indulge in brutal excess, pander to every hideous passion of his heart, poison with his vile touch the beautiful creature whom he looked down upon as “only a woman”; but she, if she dared to overstep the line of propriety, and openly declare her love for another, she would be doomed to social ostracism, shunned and despised as a wanton, and out of the pale of decent society.

She did so dare! For six long years she bore with his brutal excess and depraved passions; for six long years she suffered the torture which only those who have so suffered can understand. Then she succumbed.

It was a dark November evening when she met her fate. The Altais were in Scotland, entertaining a party of friends for the covert shooting in Lord Westray’s splendid Wigtownshire preserves. The guests had all arrived but one, and he put in an appearance when the remainder of the party had gone upstairs to dress for dinner. Lady Altai had waited for him, as he was momentarily expected, and on his arrival he had been ushered into the drawing-room. His name was Harry Kintore, a captain in a smart marching regiment. As she entered the drawing-room he was standing with his back to the fire, and their eyes met. Right through her ran a thrill, she knew not why or wherefore, while he, transfixed by her beauty, could not remove his eyes. There have been such cases before of love at first sight. This was a case about which there could be no dispute; both felt it was so, both knew it to be beyond recall.

How she struggled against her fate none can tell. With her husband’s increased brutality the gentleness and devotion of young Kintore was all the more en evidence. And when at length he bade her fly with him beyond the reach of so much misery and cruelty, was it a wonder that she succumbed, and flew in the face of the law that bound her to the contrary?

She left him, that cruel brute, who had made her life a desert and a hell. She left him for one who to her was chivalrous and tender, loving and sympathetic. The world cried shame upon her, and spoke of Lord Altai as an injured man; the world ostracised her while it courted anew the fiend who had so grievously wronged her. And when, in the hunger of his baffled passion, this pampered roué followed the two who had fled from him, and with cold-blooded cruelty shot dead young Harry Kintore, the world declared it could not blame him, and that it served Lady Altai right.