Читать книгу The Uncounted Cost - Mary Gaunt - Страница 5

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"If one should love you with real love

(Such things have been,

Things your fair face knows nothing of,

It seems, Faustine)."

"I DON'T think you should, Kitty."

Kitty Pearce lay back in her chair and looked out of the window at the sunshine on the lawn and laughed a little low well-satisfied laugh.

"Why not, may I ask? Are you not yet converted to the belief that any man is fair game?"

Anne flushed. Who was she to reprove another woman? It was not a week since in the glorious June weather she had received the death blow to her hopes. How wearily the days had passed she alone knew, though Kitty might make a fair guess. But after all, even a great shock does not alter a person's nature. Ever since she was a child Anne had believed in the truth of the people she had met, and, as we generally find what we look for, in most instances she had found truth and kindliness; and the very unfaithfulness of the man she had trusted so absolutely seemed but one of the exceptions that prove the rule.

"I don't know about being fair game. But it isn't honourable to play both men false."

"Honourable? Oh, my dear Anne! Here is Fred away in West Africa, amusing himself in all probability with various dusky beauties, and instead of wearying him with regrets and reproaches I am just making the best of my lonely lot. Do you think he would appreciate me one scrap the more because I let my charms rust? It's only wise to keep my hand in."

"It seems to me," Anne Lovat lowered her voice, she was always a little ashamed of being so desperately in earnest, more ashamed than ever now, "that the woman who has the good fortune to have gained a good man's love ought to go——"

"Oh, Anne, Anne, no wonder you came to grief! Hasn't your experience taught you wisdom? Having gained a man's love—and all men I may tell you are much the same—the way to keep it is not to care too much but to keep yourself young and charming, and the way to keep yourself young and charming is not by burying yourself for a year, brooding over the adored one far away, but by taking life's amusements as they come along. As the first amusement in my case happens to be Joe Cunningham, I give him a pleasant time, and when Fred comes back——"

"Ask me to dinner then?"

"You dear little goose! Don't you know that two is company and three none. Do you think either Joe or I would enjoy ourselves with you playing propriety, for the matter of that do you think you would enjoy it yourself?"

"I don't," said Anne frankly, "only I do feel it's rather compromising for you to have Captain Cunningham down here all by yourself so often. He's a nice man, and you're nice, Kitty," and she threw out her hands with a little sigh.

"Man's fire, woman's tow, you would say, but the mistake you make, Anne, is that I'm not tow, I'm only asbestos, and that, as you know, fire cannot hurt, however bright and glowing it may make it appear," and she leaned across the table, helped herself to a cigarette and lighted it. "Leave us alone, Anne, to go our own foolish pleasant way. Because you don't like the primrose path of dalliance yourself, I don't see why you should interfere with me."

"It is not that I don't like the primrose path," said Anne, and her lips quivered a little, "but I can't play at love-making."

"And that earnest love-making is like free trade, the ideal thing if only the other nations would fall into line, but as they won't I'm for protection."

The little lawn was dappled with the sunshine that came through the leaves of the elm-tree, the hawthorn hedge that bounded the garden was gay with pink flowers, among the yellow tassels of the laburnum a thrush was trying his notes, going over and over them softly, as if he must be sure of his love song before he gave it to the world, and there rose a rich perfume from the bed of lilies of the valley just below the window. Summer, the beautiful perfect summer of these northern latitudes, which comes to rejoice our hearts so seldom, was on all the land, and Anne longed to drink in its gladness. If only—if only—was no one happy? She beat her fingers against the frame of the window.

"You can't take pleasure at another's expense."

"The great thing in life is not to think about the expense."

"Or who pays?"

"Certainly not. Everything will be paid for in the end, you may be very sure of that, and my experience is that the one who has the best time pays least. Don't worry, Anne—why will you worry?"

"I don't think I have worried much—considering," said Anne in a low voice.

"Not worried much!" Kitty threw up her hands. "Anne, I do believe if it had not been for me you would have committed suicide last week."

Again the colour crept into Anne's white cheeks. She was fond of Kitty, deeply grateful for her sympathy and help, but for her how could she have lived through these days? How could she possibly have remained alone in the little empty flat at Westminster? Although the dainty cottage at Lettingbourne would always remind her of the cruellest days of her life yet even in her pain she knew it would also remind her of that friendly kindly sympathy. Kitty was a better woman than she thought herself.

"Oh, Kitty, I'm grateful, but I'm not sure that I think life is worth living."

"You'll be very ungrateful to me if you don't manage to pull through till Monday. You can come back then, you know. But I must be free to-night."

"Because Captain Cunningham is coming?" There was a wistful ring in Anne's voice. Was not Captain Joseph Cunningham commander on board the Irrepressible, where Dicky Bullen was gunnery lieutenant?

Kitty blew a long ring of smoke from her cigarette.

"Anne, for a long time longer than you guess I've taken a great interest in the gunnery lieutenant of the old Irrepressible."

"Kitty!" It is not quite comfortable to get a sidelight on our own doings.

"Joe Cunningham is beginning to be quite concerned at my interest in Dicky Bullen's matrimonial projects."

"Then you do know who she is?" and Anne's heart fluttered and stood still and went on again, and she sat down quickly and tried to keep the world from whirling round.

"Well, Joe Cunningham thought it was Maud Somerset. You know the old admiral took her with him from Vigo right up to the Shetlands, and Joe said Dicky was inclined to be attentive. In fact he couldn't make Dicky out. We wondered why he didn't clinch matters, as a match with Maud Somerset would, of course, be the making of him. I might have enlightened him," she knocked her ash off into a little Burmese tray, carefully keeping her eyes the while away from her cousin, "if I had been disposed."

Anne gathered together all her strength. "Is she—is she pretty?"

"Oh, so-so, fair-haired and blue-eyed and willowy and rather innocent, perhaps if she weren't an admiral's daughter we might say a little inane."

"Younger than I am?"

"A good ten years younger than you, I should say."

"She couldn't be the companion to him I was," said Anne slowly in a half whisper, as if she were weighing her rival's charms.

"A man doesn't want a companion I tell you. He wants the excitement of the chase, and you made the mistake of letting the hunter come up with his quarry. Don't think about him."

Anne might put a man out of her life. Her pride enabled her to do that, but it was impossible to put him out of her thoughts in a week. She did not think she would be able to accomplish it in a year, or ten years. In the watches of the night, all the livelong day, in her thoughts she was going over her relations with Dicky Bullen. She even thought sometimes she understood his action. He had only his pay and she was a struggling storywriter, no wonder that an admiral's daughter, fair, young, influential, had tempted him from his allegiance. He so hated sordid poverty. She was not afraid of poverty, she would have been afraid of nothing with him beside her, but it was characteristic of her that she did not demand as much as she was willing to give. If he married that would be final; but if he did not marry what difference could his infidelity make to her?

"Because I have failed," said Anne, "it does not prove that my ideas are wrong. It does not even prove that they are unworkable. If love is perfect——"

Mrs Pearce interrupted ruthlessly.

"For a budding novelist, Anne, you are a very one-sided person. To hear you talk you would think there was but one thing in the world for a woman."

"It is the salt of the earth either for a man or a woman."

"Nonsense. There are other things in the world, other interests. You must realise that now."

Anne could hardly breathe, but she stuck to her point. "It's the salt of the earth, I said, neither bread nor meat, but without it bread and meat have lost their savour."

"Anne, don't be intense. You must do as I do in the future. I take my pleasures. I live and let live. I can't always be thinking whether I'm pleasing or shocking, or even hurting, my next-door neighbour."

Anne felt she was giving Kitty the lie direct when she wrenched her thoughts from her unfaithful lover and insisted on speaking of Kitty's absent husband.

"You might think a little of Fred. Something is surely due to him. You should not ask Captain Cunningham down here so often unless you invite someone else, at the same time, so that the enemy may have no occasion to scoff."

Kitty tossed away the stump of her cigarette and deliberately chose another.

"You're a dear good girl, Anne, but you must let me play my own game. I can assure you the hunter will not come up with the quarry if he stays here till you arrive again on Monday."

"Oh, I—I——"

"Even in your thoughts you don't think so ill of me as that. Oh, Anne, Anne! Don't worry about me, there never was anyone more capable of taking care of herself. Now go and put on your hat. It will be so much easier if you are not here when Joe Cunningham arrives. Cheer up, be brave, and don't think about Dicky Bullen. If you could only see him as he really is you'd be surprised at what a poor figure he cuts. But you can't—well, no, come over on Monday and tell me you've written the first two chapters of your novel."

There was nothing for it but to take her departure. Alone with her thoughts, alone with a desperate longing for her lover, she began to face her desolate life as it must be in the future. On her walk to the station, and in the leafy lane where the elderberry-trees were already a mass of white blossom, she passed one of the broken-down landaus that did duty for a cab at Lettingbourne. On the back seat was Commander Joseph Cunningham, and beside the driver was his suit case. So he was going to stay the night? Kitty Pearce was certainly sailing very near the wind.