Читать книгу The Two Saplings - Mazo de la Roche - Страница 7

A FIRE had been lighted in Mrs. Stuart-Grattan’s drawing-room but so far it was only a bright-coloured crackling blaze that threw little heat. The room was chilly. But its large windows looked on to Regent’s Park in its living springtime brightness, so that the room was cheerful. The trees in the Park seemed to surge with life, billowing one after the other in their bright verdure, with here and there the rosy fountain of a pink hawthorn in flower. Two little girls in pale mauve coats and hats and carrying large brightly-painted hoops were just entering the tall iron gates with their governess. A nurse, in sober grey, was pushing a perambulator and at the same time manoeuvring two small dogs on leads.

There were flowers in the room. Gay polyanthus had been planted in large pots and these gave the effect of a tiny garden in the window. Captain Rendel stood looking down at them, avoiding his wife’s eyes.

“If you knew,” she said, “how I loathe doing this you wouldn’t ask me to.”

“That’s just being stupid,” he answered tersely. “We must face facts. If we didn’t we’d have no peace in the future. The thing to do is to clear up the mystery, whatever it is. You keep on saying there’s nothing to it. If you’re so sure of that, why are you afraid to go?”

Her low voice broke into harshness,—“Would you be willing to give up Mark?”

“No. No more than you. But I think Mrs. Wylde is absolutely sincere and deserves some consideration from us. God, we had all this out last night, didn’t we?”

She answered brokenly,—“I scarcely slept an hour.”

“We shall all of us feel better when we’ve sifted the thing to the bottom.” He looked at his wristwatch.

In the taxi they scarcely spoke, he looking through the window at the moist, gleaming spring streets, she straight ahead of her, seeing now the face of Camilla Wylde, now Mark’s face, now, with a stab of apprehension, the face of the strange boy with his long-lashed hazel eyes so like her own.

Camilla and Robert were waiting for them in their sitting-room. Robert, with a forced air of nonchalance, asked them if they would have cocktails. They took sherry instead. The four raised their glasses to their lips and set them down. Robert’s hand was trembling. Camilla was the first to speak. Her voice was tense.

“I guess none of us had a very good night,” she said, “and I guess we’ve a pretty hard time ahead of us till this thing is cleared up. I, for one, can’t have a minute’s peace till it is. It’s like a nightmare, isn’t it?” Her eyes swept the faces of the other three.

Robert’s face was a sallow mask of weariness. Captain Rendel looked cool, almost imperturbable. But in Phyllis Rendel’s eyes there was a cold hate and resentment.

“How do you expect to clear it up?” she asked. “And, if you find that the babies really were exchanged, do you think we shall have peace then?”

Camilla exclaimed, with a dramatic gesture of her small hand, on which an emerald flashed:

“I’ll throw the whole enquiry up, if you others think we ought to!”

“No,” answered Captain Rendel decidedly. “It’s too late for that. I wish you’d tell us, Mrs. Wylde, just what grounds you have for suspicion, outside what may well be a chance resemblance between our son and your husband.”

“Very well,” she answered. “We’ll speak of the resemblance first.” She took another sip of her cocktail to steady herself. Then she rose and went to a drawer in an occasional table. She took a box from it and returned to her seat. She moved gracefully. She wore a black suit and a very small black-and-white hat. Her feet were beautifully shod. A silver-fox cape lay on the back of her chair. She was quite calm now, and again she had that look of exaltation.

“I have a daughter of seventeen,” she said. “Her name is Janet and she just adores her father. We have a photo of him, taken when he was twelve, and I brought it with me on this trip so I could have a miniature painted from it by a distinguished artist I know in London. It is for Janet’s birthday. He has already done one of me from life and one of Janet from a photo. When we arrived at the hotel yesterday this box was waiting for me. It contains the miniature and the photo it was made from. I’ll let you see them.”

She opened the box and took from it the miniature, which she handed to Phyllis Rendel, and gave the photograph to Captain Rendel. There was dead silence in the room while husband and wife bent their gaze on the likenesses.

“I want you to notice,” Camilla said, “the shape of the head, the strongly marked eyebrows, the little nick in the side of the nostril. I saw Mark only a very little while but I noticed these things, and of course the colouring which is identical. Now, just look at my husband and you will see those characteristics in the grown-up man.”

Obediently the Rendels raised their eyes from the portraits and looked at Robert. He sat looking heavily back at them, his hands clasped on his stomach.

“Let’s see the miniature.” Captain Rendel stretched out his hand and made the exchange with his wife. There was a prolonged silence in the room. Then he said:

“If it weren’t for the clothes and the haircut, Mark might have sat for the pictures. It’s a strange coincidence that you should have had them with you.”

“It’s beyond coincidence,” exclaimed Camilla. “Surely something completely outside our will brought us four—us six—together! The whole thing is predestined. We’ve just got to let ourselves be swept along.”

Phyllis laid the photograph on the table.

“There is nothing in all this,” she said. “What can you prove by a chance resemblance? And what do you want to prove? Do you want to take my boy from me and ask me to accept yours in return? Have you no love for him?”

Camilla answered fiercely,—“I love him so much that I must know the truth for his sake. Nothing else will do. I have to be perfectly selfless in this, no matter what I suffer. And I can see that Captain Rendel feels the same.”

He returned,—“You spoke of some other proof, Mrs. Wylde. What was that?”

“It was instinct, nothing more. But it was an animal instinct and I guess that’s as true as anything there is. When the baby was two days old—I remember the exact day because it was foggy outside and Robert had sent us glowing crimson roses—the nurse brought baby to me to be nursed. When she put him into my arms and I cuddled him a queer feeling of strangeness came over me, as though he were not my baby at all. It lasted just a moment and then I forgot all about it. But last night when I lay tossing and couldn’t get a wink of sleep, till I took a dose of my sedative, the sensation came over me again. I was back in the hospital with the feeling that I had a strange baby in my arms.” She sank back against her silver-fox cape, looking pale and exhausted.

Captain Rendel said,—“That is very interesting. I think the best thing for us to do is for your husband and me to go to the nursing home and try to find the nurse who was in charge of the infants on that day. She would probably lie. But on the other hand she might give us some help.” He turned to Robert Wylde. “What do you say?”

“All right,” said Robert heavily. “If the ladies think we’d better. What do you think, Mrs. Rendel?”

“It’s out of my hands.” She spoke abruptly. “Go if you wish.”

“I think,” said Camilla, “you’re absolutely right. I think you ought to go at once.”

Robert got himself out of his chair. “Do you remember the name of the nurse who bathed the youngsters?” he asked.

“Her name was Nurse Jennings. I remember because we had a maid of the same name at the time.” She turned to Phyllis Rendel. “Wasn’t Jennings her name?”

“I don’t remember. Yes—I believe it was.” She turned to her husband. “I think I shall go home. You can tell me afterward what happens.”

“Oh, please stay with me!” Camilla went impulsively to her and took her hand. “The time won’t seem nearly so long if we are together. Besides, you must be here when they come back. We can’t do anything without you.”

“Yes, Phyllis, I think you should stay here. If Mr. Wylde and I are to be away too long I shall ring you up.” He rose quickly and took up his hat and stick.

The two women were alone. Phyllis Rendel sat with her back to the light, her hands clenched in her lap. Anger surged in her because of what had been done to her in these spring days when she should have been happy returning home after a visit to Italy. Left alone with her, Camilla felt shy and wondered what she could find to say to her. Her support and her background seemed to have gone with the two men. She bore the silence as long as she could and then said:

“Don’t let’s talk about this awful thing. Let’s clear our minds if we can and talk of what’s left undisturbed in our lives . . . Will you tell me what other children you have?”

“You’re leaving me them, are you?” said Phyllis bitterly.

“Oh, Mrs. Rendel, don’t feel like that! I can’t bear you to think that I’d wilfully harm you. It is just the sense of horrible uncertainty that drives me on. It’s the sense of living in a fog. Even a stern wild mountain-top is better than that, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so.” She put her hands to her temples, then took off her brown felt hat and laid it on the floor beside her chair. “My head aches so,” she said.

Camilla looked at her sitting there, in her well-cut tweed coat and skirt, her feet planted side by side. She saw her run her hands through her fair curling hair and, before she could stop herself, she said:

“Palmer’s hair curls too. All the rest of us have such straight hair.”

The other seemed not to hear. Again she pressed her fingers to her temples. Camilla sprang up.

“I’m going to get you an aspirin,” she said.

Left alone, Phyllis Rendel softly beat on the arm of her chair with her clenched hand. Her eyes had a dazed look. When the aspirin tablet was brought she took it meekly.

“Won’t you lie down on the chesterfield for a while? Aspirins always work better if you rest.” If she could get Phyllis to rest, she herself might relax till the men came back.

The door opened and Palmer put in his head.

“Hey, Mom, when are we going to eat?”

“Come in, darling, and speak to Mrs. Rendel. You remember meeting her yesterday.”

“Yep,” said Palmer. He came in confidently and smiled at Phyllis. “Why didn’t you bring Mark with you?”

Her eyes searched his face. “Mark has gone to the Zoo.”

“To the Zoo! Gosh, why can’t I go to the Zoo! Tell me where it is, Mrs. Rendel, and I’ll start out right now. Give me some money, Mom, so I can start out for the Zoo.”

“Palmer,” said Camilla, “you cannot go to the Zoo alone.”

“What’s to hinder me? I’m not scared, am I? How long is it since Mark started for the Zoo, Mrs. Rendel?”

“Oh, some time ago. You see, we’re staying near Regent’s Park, so Mark walks there.”

“What bus should I take?”

“Palmer,” said Camilla, “go down to the dining-room and get yourself some lunch. Then, when your father comes back, perhaps he’ll take you.”

“Oh, yeah! I know how it will be. He’ll keep me waiting till we’ll just have time to see owls before the Zoo closes.” He thrust his hand in his pocket and drew out a handful of silver. “I guess I’ve got enough,” he said. “But if I had a little more I’d take a taxi. I’d get there quicker and I’d be safer.”

Camilla rose, found a ten-shilling note and gave it to him. She straightened his tie and kissed him. “Hadn’t you better have lunch before you go?”

“I guess I can get a hot-dog there or a Chelsea bun or a plum pudding, or something. Anyways I’m not hungry, now I know I’m starting for the Zoo.”

“You are to take a taxi,” said Camilla, “and be back here by five o’clock.”

He was gone. Camilla waited for Phyllis to say something. Then, as Phyllis did not speak, she asked:

“Well—did you see?”

“I saw nothing unusual,” answered Phyllis coldly. Camilla gave an impatient sigh. Phyllis stared down at the buses moving slowly along Park Lane, at the rounded tree-tops in Hyde Park and the people sitting in the little green chairs. She saw Palmer waiting on the street corner. Then she saw him mount a bus. Camilla was repeating:

“I do wish you’d lie down on the chesterfield—the aspirin will do you more good.”

“It’s very warm here. Could we have a window open?”

“It will let the noise and dust in. But, of course, if you want it open——” She moved slowly toward a window.

“Never mind. I’ll take off my coat.” She took it off, showing the strong supple lines of her body in its silk blouse, and hung it carefully over the back of a chair. Then she lay down, pushing the pillow under her cheek and drawing up her long legs.

Camilla thought,—“And twenty-four hours ago I’d never seen her! And she is Palmer’s mother!”

The time would pass quicker, she thought, if she were by herself. There was nothing about Phyllis she could understand and every moment spent with her was an effort. She went to her bedroom and sat down by a table where she would get the scent of a nosegay of spring flowers Robert had bought her. She lighted a cigarette.

Sinking back in her chair she recaptured that strange moment in the nursing home when the two-days-old Palmer had felt an alien in her arms. If only she had followed up this animal instinct what misery might have been spared them all! But she had denied it—pushed it from her. Now they had to face a possible agonizing upheaval. Her eager brain sought means of mitigating its pain. No one could say, she thought through sudden tears, that she did not render up herself to life and whatever it brought of change and cruelty. It was a part of her philosophy to give herself and give herself again—not counting the cost. It was strange, she thought, how she had this power of living outside herself, watching her own gestures in the performance of life, as an observer. One thing it did was to make it possible for her to keep her head where others were flustered. Twice she tiptoed into the other room and saw that Phyllis Rendel slept, her back hunched toward the light, one hand covering her face.

She grew hungry and ordered chicken sandwiches and coffee for the two of them, but Phyllis did not wake and Camilla ate her share in her bedroom alone. She drank three cups of coffee, then she put on a little powder and lipstick and tried to read the morning paper. The headlines told of the renewed threat of war but she could not settle down to read, not at such a crisis in her own life. Suddenly she became unbearably anxious. Her heart began to thud. Surely the men would come soon, or telephone!

Soon they came, entering the outer room quietly, with masculine deliberation. She hurried to meet them. Both were looking at Phyllis, asleep on the divan. She beckoned them and took them into her room.

“It would be cruel to wake her,” she whispered. “She has such a headache.”

She closed the door softly. It was strange having Captain Rendel here, in these intimate surroundings, when a few hours ago he had been a stranger. He sat down on the window-sill and crossed his legs. He looked composed but she could feel that he was shaken. It was Robert who spoke.

“Well,” he said, “we’ve seen Nurse Jennings.” Camilla breathed,—“Yes? And does she remember anything?”