Читать книгу The Lost Angel - Katharine Tynan - Страница 3

Waring's eye rested on the little image amid the garishness of the fair, and he had a feeling as though he had suddenly emerged into a place of greenness and flowing waters.

It was a little angel in yellowed marble. The edges of the marble were smooth as ivory. It was chipped here and there. Plainly it was very old. How on earth had it come there amid the plaster casts and painted images such as are turned out cheaply by the thousand?

As he took it into his hand something stirred within him, warmed him like a little flame, stabbed him with a resentment which was tenderness wounded to death. The little angel had the rounded cheek, the purity of outline from ear to chin of Mildred, the girl whom he had sworn to forget, whom he had thrust out of his mind as men sometimes thrust away the patient angel we call Conscience.

He stood there a minute staring at the figure. It was beautifully carved. He said to himself that the face had the moulding of an unsheathed lily. All around him were noise, dust, heat, glare. He heard the screaming of a steam merry-go-round. Just opposite where he stood people were going in and out of the tent of the human leopard. Amid the vulgarities of the fair, its indecencies, the innocence he held in his hand struck him as something curiously pathetic. He felt as though he must snatch the little angel away as he would have snatched an innocent, uncomprehending child.

"How much?" he asked.

The man behind the stall looked at him from under his crafty eyelids.

"The little angel? It was very choice. Monsieur had doubtless perceived how excellent it was." He asked for the little angel fifteen francs.

Turning the little figure about Waring had discovered on a feather of one delicate wing the price, one franc. But he handed over the fifteen francs without demur. It was worth a good deal more than that he said to himself, and if the rogue had asked him many times that amount he should have paid it. The little angel seemed to have laid soft constraining hands about his heart.

As he walked home from the fair to his dim old hotel in the Haute Ville he asked himself bitterly why he had made such a purchase. God knows that angels were far enough from him since Mildred and he had parted company.

It was night, and the ill-lit streets with their shiny cobble-stones were more dangerously smooth because of a recent shower. He thrust the little angel which he had been carrying in his hand into his breast, as though he held a child there for warmth and shelter. As he held it with his hand pressed against it he had again the sensation of something warm and comforting. Why? Because the little angel had Mildred's rounded cheek? What unspeakable folly! How dared he think of her! She would go her own honest, honourable way in life while he—went to the Devil. He was going there now as fast as he could. The furies were at his heels.

Suddenly he stopped short in the gloomy street, so suddenly that a sergent-de-ville slipped into the shadows and eyed him suspiciously for a moment or two. He had felt unmistakably as he thought the pressure of a child's hands on his heart, constraining soft hands that he could not break from if he would.

As he went on his heart began to bleed. If he had not been such an accursed fool—he did not stop to pick his words; if Helen had not cast her beautiful, baleful shadow over his life, Mildred would have been his wife more than three years ago. He might have been holding Mildred's child and his against his breast as he was holding the little angel now. But he had destroyed himself; with his own hand he had cut down the fair fabric of his happiness. He panted like a man athirst in the desert at the dream of water as a vision swam into his mind of that unattainable lost Paradise, the life that should have been his with Mildred. He had said good-bye to all things lovely and of fair report. Helen had called him back to his old bondage, and he was going. He had found that the fetters of sin were harder to slip than any that religion and conscience and virtue can forge.

As he went wearily to bed in his room in the Hotel de France he knew that all illusions were over for him. Even his passion for Helen was a dead thing. He knew why she wanted him, now that her husband, the simple, good fellow she had cheated and betrayed, was dead. She wanted him not because she loved him—if she had loved him he said to himself that he could have forgiven her—but because she was no longer so young as she had been; because it was time for her to range herself, to become respectable, now that the middle-age she loathed was in sight. She had always kept on good terms with the world. As Mrs. Waring of Wolvercote Place she could hold her head as high as any of them. In time, he thought with bitter mockery of himself and her, she might become a dragon of respectability. And none would know except her husband how corrupt a heart was hers, how her memory was a place of dead bones and ashes of burnt-out passions.

Helen had called him home to an early private marriage. She had no mind to take the chances. They could be married at once, and as soon as a decent interval of widowhood had passed the marriage could be announced. The time had long passed when the thought of marriage with Helen would have fired his blood. He was going to her from old habit, because he had made such a ruin of his life that it was no use considering what was left. He had so little illusion about it all that he said to himself that if Helen could have brought a wealthier, titled suitor to the point of proposing marriage she would have let him be.

He was going home to atone for the folly and wickedness of his youth. He was going to make Helen the lady of Wolvercote, to set her up there where only good women and honourable men had reigned. He mocked again at himself when he thought of Helen and himself sitting in the places his father and mother had occupied. Why had he ever been born? Why had he not died before he had come to such things?

As he turned on his pillow a little radiance fell on his closed eyelids. He opened his eyes and looked towards the shelf on which he had placed the little angel. There was surely a light about it. Moonlight, it must be moonlight of course, through a rift in the window curtains. He felt the radiance on his face as he fell asleep. It lay palely over all his dreams, which were peaceful ones, dreams of child-hood, of his mother and Mildred. It was long since he had had such dreams.

He had a wet and stormy crossing, and when he reached London he found it in reeking rain and heat. No one expected him. He had not even written to Helen to say that he would come. He might obey her, but it was unwillingly. He would make no pretence at eagerness. She herself had killed his ardour long ago.

He was hungry too. But before he ate he must have dry clothes. He had remained on deck during the passage and had sat in wet clothes ever since.

He drove to his flat and let himself in. It had been unoccupied for some months and drifts of dust were over everything. The ashes of a fire of last winter lay in the grate. What daylight there was from the obscured sky hardly struggled through the dirty windows. The discomfort of it smote him coldly through his unhappiness.

He unstrapped his portmanteau to find dry clothes. One of the first things to come out was the little angel. He had put it away wrapped in a bit of beautiful silk, one of the many things he had purchased in his wanderings, not so much because of any pleasure in acquiring them as from an old habit. Though life was over for him he still could not help buying a beautiful thing when he saw it.

He laid it down still swathed in the silk. The next thing to come out was his case of razors. As he put it aside a thought struck him. Many a man would have found a way out that way. It might be the decentest thing to do, not by way of the razors—his fastidiousness recoiled from that—but by way of a drenched handkerchief over the face, a pilule, a few drops in a glass. That would save Wolvercote, at least. If there was another world out there among the shades he need not fear the scorn of the clean honourable men, the eyes of the good women, he had sprung from.

There was a chemist's shop around the corner. They knew him. They would give him what he asked for without a doctor's prescription.

He changed his clothes and went out. He had forgotten the little angel lying on the floor in its silk wrappings. The thought of the euthanasia so easily procurable around the corner for a few coins had engrossed him. He had not even a dog to miss him when he was gone. Wolvercote would go to his cousin Reggie, that irreproachable parson with a parson's quiverful. With Reggie, Wolvercote might keep its honour untarnished. He did not suppose Helen would care. She would be angry with him for thwarting her plans—and—she would look for a new lover.

When he came back again, with his key to the great mystery resting unromantically in the breast-pocket of his coat, his foot knocked against the little angel. The room now was full of the dusk and of shadows. He lifted it with a compunction, as though he had struck flesh and blood, and cleared a space for it on the chimney-piece amid the debris of six months ago. Then he stood regarding it unhappily.

Again he had the delusion that a light came from it. So mild and wavering was it that he could not be sure if it was an effect of the twilight and the newly lit lamp in the street. The outline of the cheek glimmered. It was Mildred: no, it was an angel: it was a praying child: if a man had had a dead child in Heaven he might have thought of it so.

He covered his eyes with his hand and leant upon the chimney-piece. He touched the little figure with a caress and had a feeling as though virtue came out of it. Slowly, slowly he drew from his pocket the thing that was to have procured him his way out. He opened the window and scattered it to the night air. At least he need not add cowardice to his other shames, and Wolvercote might await its deliverance. No child of his would step into his shoes; in time a son of Reggie's would succeed him, and things would go on in the old blameless way.

Well, he supposed he ought to go to Helen. She was in town and must be expecting him every day. He was still chilled and uncomfortable. She would have fire, light, luxury; yet he was unwilling to go.

He dropped into a chair under the eyes of the little angel, and sat there staring at the cold grate. Presently he would summon up energy enough to go downstairs, call a cab, and be carried away to Clarges Street. He shivered and turned hot. His head swam. He wondered if he was going to be ill. Why, if he fell ill there in the flat which had been untenanted so long he might die alone like a rat in the dark. No one had seen him come back. If he were to die it might be months before they discovered him.

He sweated at the thought. Then he was dry and hot again, and he heard his pulses thudding in his ears. The Night folded her shadows in the room. If he were going to die it must not be in the dark.

He tried in his pocket for matches and found none. He felt about the chimney-piece among the rubbish, and found everything but matches. Still there was surely a glory, a radiance in the place. Ah, he saw now that it was coming from the face of the angel. A delusion, of course, he said to himself, a part of the fever that was coming upon him. Still it was comforting. He could see the face of the little angel plainly. It was Mildred's face and it smiled upon him.

It might have been a few minutes later, it might have been an hour, two hours, when the words that were thudding in his brain took shape.

"Go to Mildred! Go to Mildred!" He heard the words quite plainly, and the voice was like the voice of a little child.

He struggled to his feet and went down the stairs, holding on by the sides because his head reeled. He heard himself giving the cabman the old beloved address as he might have heard a stranger's voice.

A little while later Mildred Chesham, sitting in her room which was like a shrine of good woman-hood, heard his name announced. She went to meet him with the most wonderful smile. It was the smile of the little angel. She held out her two hands to him. Before he could reach her he stumbled. "Ah!" she cried, "you are ill," and the compassion in her voice was like the mother's. There was his mirage of living waters, there in her breast. He had found it at last.

* * *

A year later, Waring and Mildred, still on their leisurely honeymoon—they had been married as soon as Waring was convalescent from his illness—came one afternoon of summer to a fishing-village in the North of France. After a meal, delicate and dainty, of an omelet, a chicken, delicious fruit, a bottle of white wine, and coffee, they strayed out hand in hand over the sand-hills. They had not yet forgotten to be lovers.

Amid the corn-fields and the sand-dunes they came upon a tiny chapel open to the sea-wind.

They had been talking of the little angel who had gone with them on all their wanderings. When they went home at last to Wolvercote, Waring said, they would build him a shrine. He would have it that the little angel had brought them together—would bring them yet to greater joys if that were possible. Wherever they went Waring would set him up in their room to watch over them. He was beautiful enough to be a miracle, Mildred said, when Waring talked of the light he had seen about the little figure. To be sure that was an illusion of the illness which was creeping upon him; but even with Mildred the child-angel had found a place in her heart, perhaps with a premonition of the child that was to come.

Waring had been talking half-whimsically of the shrine he would make. They stepped across the threshold of the little chapel on to the blue and white tiles of the floor. The prie-dieus overflowed into the open air. Within there was only space for the garish little altar with its artificial flowers, the screen behind which the priest vested himself, and a dozen chairs at most.

As they went in the full western light streamed within the chapel. As they looked they cried out in amazement. On a little side altar, with a row of votive tapers in front of it, was a photograph of the little angel. There was no mistaking it; the tender little face, the praying hands, the wings—why the very chippings were reproduced faithfully.

While they stared in amazement the small cure with the round good-humoured face and curly hair, whom they had already saluted in the village street, came in behind them. There were a couple of boy acolytes following him. People came down from the village and took the chairs outside the chapel.

Waring turned to the cure. "The little angel, monsieur?" he said, indicating the picture. "I fancy I have seen it before."

"Alas!" The cure was vesting himself with characteristic energy. "Monsieur will have seen the little angel in former years. It was a miraculous image cast up by the sea. It had wrought many cures, procured many favours. It was the patron of the village. Alas, it is five years ago since, during the week of the patronage, the chapel had been robbed, stripped bare. And with everything else had gone the little angel. There had been bad seasons since, storms at sea. The people were desolated for the little angel. While he was with them he procured them many graces."

"If he were to be restored!" Waring was excited with the prospective excitement of the village at the restoration of its angel.

"If it were the will of God!" The cure shrugged his shoulders and flung out his hands. Plainly he expected no miracle.

* * *

So after all the little angel went back to his shrine amid the sand-hills, between the corn-fields and the sea, where he yet works his beneficent miracles. And Wolvercote was the poorer. Waring had the little angel copied in yellow Italian marble and gave the copy the shrine he would have given the original. But it is not the same thing. It is as a picture of a dead child to the living child.

Yet after all the angel worked the great miracle for Waring. And year after year the simple children of the little angel remember him at the shrine.