Читать книгу Cynthia - Merrick Leonard - Страница 4

Two friends were sitting together outside the Café des Tribunaux at Dieppe. One of them was falling in love; the other, an untidy and morose little man, was wasting advice. It was the hour of coffee and liqueurs, on an August evening.

"You are," said the adviser irritably, "at the very beginning of a career. You have been surprisingly fortunate; there's scarcely a novelist in England who wouldn't be satisfied with such reviews as yours, and it's your first book. Think: twelve months ago you were a clerk in the city, and managed to place about three short stories a year at a guinea each. Then your aunt what-was-her-name left you the thousand pounds, and you chucked your berth and sat down to a novel. 'Nothing happens but the unforeseen'—the result justified you. You sold your novel; you got a hundred quid for it; and The Saturday, and The Spectator, and every paper whose opinion is worth a rush, hails you as a coming light. For you to consider marrying now would be flying in the face of a special providence."

"Why?" said Humphrey Kent.

"'Why'! Are you serious? Because your income is an unknown quantity. Because you've had a literary success, not a popular one. Because, if you keep single, you've a comfortable life in front of you. Because you'd be a damned fool."

"The climax is comprehensive, if it isn't convincing. But the discussion is a trifle 'previous,' eh? I can't marry you, my pretty maid, et cetera."

"You are with her all day," said Turquand—"I conclude she likes you. And the mother countenances it."

"There's really nothing to countenance; and, remember, they haven't any idea of my position: they meet me at a fashionable hotel, they had read the book, and they saw The Times review. What do they know of literary earnings? the father is on the Stock Exchange, I believe. I am an impostor!"

"You should have gone to the little show I recommended on the quay, then. I find it good enough."

Kent laughed and stretched himself.

"I am rewarding industry," he said. "For once I wallow. I came into the money, and I put it in a bank, and by my pen, which is mightier than the sword, I've replaced all I drew to live during the year. Ain't I entitled to a brief month's splash? Besides, I've never said I want to marry—I don't know what you're hacking at."

"You haven't 'said' it, but the danger is about as plain as pica to the average intelligence, all the same. My son, how old are you—twenty-seven, isn't it? Pack your bag, ask for your bill, and go back with me by the morning boat; and, if you're resolved to make an ass of yourself over a woman, go and live in gilded infamy and buy sealskin jackets and jewellery while your legacy lasts. I'll forgive you that."

"The prescription wouldn't be called orthodox?"

"You'd find it cheaper than matrimony in the long-run, I promise you. Now and again, when some man plays ducks and drakes with a fortune for a cocotte there are shrieks enough to wake his ancestors; but marriage ruins a precious sight more men every year than the demi-monde and the turf and the tables put together, and nobody shrieks at all—except the irrepressible children. Did it never occur to you that the price paid for the virtuous woman is the most exorbitant price known in an expensive world?"

"No," said Kent shortly, "it never did."

"And they call you 'an acute observer'! Marriage is Man's greatest extravagance."

"The apothegm excepted. It sounds like a dissipated copybook."

"It's a fact, upon my soul. I tell you, a sensible girl would shudder at the thought of entrusting her future to a man improvident enough to propose to her; a fellow capable of marrying a woman is the sport of a reckless and undisciplined nature that she should beware of."

"The end is curaçoa-and-brandy," said Kent, "and in your best vein. What else? You'll contradict yourself with brilliance in a moment if you go on."

The journalist dissembled a grin, and Kent, gazing down the sunny little street, inhaled his cigarette pleasurably. To suppose that Miss Walford would ever be his wife looked to him so chimerical that his companion's warnings did not disturb him, yet he was sufficiently attracted by her to find it exciting that a third person could think it likely. He was the son of a man who had once been very wealthy, and who, having attempted to repair injudicious investments by rasher speculation, had died owning little more than enough to defray the cost of his funeral. At the age of nineteen Humphrey had realised that, with no stock-in-trade beyond an education and a bundle of rejected manuscripts, it was incumbent on him to fight the world unassisted, and, suppressing his literary ambitions as likely to tell against him, he had betaken himself to some connections who throve in commerce and had been socially agreeable. To be annihilated by a sense of your own deficiencies, seek an appointment at the hands of relations. The boy registered the aphorism, and withdrew. When "life" means merely a struggle to sustain existence, it is not calculated to foster optimism, and the optimistic point of view is desirable for the production of popular English fiction. His prospect of achieving many editions would have been greater if his father had been satisfied with five per cent. He shifted as best he could, and garnered various experiences which he would have been sorry to think would be cited by his biographer, if he ever had one. "Poverty is no disgrace," but there are few disgraces that cause such keen humiliations. Eventually he found regular employment in the office of a stranger, and, making Turquand's acquaintance in the lodging-house at which he obtained a bedroom, contemplated him with respect and envy. Turquand was sub-editing The Outpost, a hybrid weekly for which he wrote a little of what he thought and much that he disapproved, in consideration of a modest salary. The difference in their years was not too great to preclude confidences. An intimacy grew between the pair over their evening pipes in the arid enclosure to which the landlady's key gave them access; and it was transplanted to joint quarters embellished with their several possessions, chiefly portmanteaus and photographs, equally battered. The elder man, perceiving that there was distinction in the unsuccessful stories displayed to him, imparted a good deal of desultory advice, of which the most effectual part was not the assurance that the literary temperament was an affliction, and authorship a synonym for despair. The younger listened, sighed, and burned. Aching to be famous, and fettered to a clerk's stool, he tugged at his chains. He had begun to doubt his force to burst them, when he was apprised, to his unspeakable amazement, that a maternal aunt, whom he had not seen since he was a school-boy, had bequeathed him a thousand pounds.

Dieppe had dined, and the Grande Rue was astir. He watched the passers-by with interest. In the elation of his success he was equal to tackling another novel on the morrow, and he saw material in everything: in the chattering party of American girls running across the road to eat more ices at the pastrycook's; in the coquettish dealer in rosaries and Lives of the Saints, who had put up her shutters for the night and was bound for the Opera; in the little boy-soldiers from the barracks, swaggering everywhere in uniforms several sizes too big for them. Sentences from the reviews that he was still receiving bubbled through his consciousness deliciously, and he wished, swelling with gratitude, that the men who wrote them were beside him, that he might be introduced, and grip their hands, and try to express the inexpressible in words.

"I should like to live here, Turk," he remarked: "the atmosphere is right. It's suggestive, stimulating. When I see a peasant leaning out of a window in France, I want to write verses about her; when I see the same thing at home, I only notice she's dirty."

"Ah!" said Turquand, "that's another reason why you had better go back with me to-morrow. The tendency to write verses leads to the casual ward. Let us go and watch the Insolent Opulence losing its francs."

The Casino was beginning to refill, and the path and lawn were gay with the flutter of toilettes when they reached the gates. Two of the figures approaching the rooms were familiar to the novelist, and he discovered their presence with a distinct shock, though his gaze had been scanning the crowd in search of them.

"There are the Walfords," he said.

The other grunted—he also had recognised a girl in mauve; and Kent watched her silently as long as she remained in view. He knew that he had nerves when he saw Miss Walford. The sight of her aroused a feeling of restlessness in him latterly which demanded her society for its relief; and he had not denied to himself that when a stranger, sitting behind him yesterday in the salon de lecture, had withdrawn a handkerchief redolent of the corylopsis which Miss Walford affected, it had provided him with a sensation profoundly absurd.

If he had nerves, however, there was no occasion to parade the fact, and he repressed impatience laudably. It was half an hour before the ladies were met. Objecting to be foolish, he felt, nevertheless, that Cynthia Walford was an excuse for folly as she turned to him on the terrace with her faint smile of greeting; felt, with unreasoning gratification, that Turquand must acknowledge it.

She was a fair, slight girl, with dreamy blue eyes bewitchingly lashed, and lips so delicately modelled that the faint smile always appeared a great tribute upon them. She was no less beautiful for her manifest knowledge that she was a beauty, and though she could not have been more than twenty-two, she had the air of carrying her loveliness as indifferently as her frocks—which tempted a literary man to destruction. She accepted admiration like an entremets at a table d'hôte—something included in the menu and arriving as a matter of course; but her acceptance was so graceful that it was delightful to bend to her and offer it.

Kent asked if they were going in to the concert, and Mrs. Walford said they were not. It was far too warm to sit indoors to listen to that kind of music! She found Dieppe insufferably hot, and ridiculously over-rated. Now, Trouville was really lively; didn't he think so?

He said he did not know Trouville.

"Don't you? Oh, it is ever so much better; very jolly—really most jolly. We were there last year, and enjoyed it immensely. We—we had such a time!" She giggled loudly. "How long are you gentlemen remaining?"

"Mr. Turquand is 'deserting' to-morrow," he said. "I? Oh, I shall have to leave in about a week, I'm afraid."

"You said that a week ago," murmured Miss Walford.

"I like the place," he confessed; "I find it very pleasant, myself."

Mrs. Walford threw up her hands with a scream of expostulation. Her face was elderly, despite her attentions to it, but in her manner she was often a great deal more youthful than her daughter; indeed, while the girl had already acquired something of the serenity of a woman, the woman was superficially reverting to the artlessness of a girl.

"What is there to like? Dieppe is the Casino, and the Casino is Dieppe!"

"But the Casino is very agreeable," he said, his glance wandering from her.

"And the charges are perfectly monstrous. Though, of course, you extravagant young men don't mind that!"

"A friend might call me young," said Turquand gloomily; "my worst enemy couldn't call me extravagant."

"Oh, I mind some of the charges," returned Kent. "I hate being 'done.'"

She was pleased to hear him say so. Her chief requirement of a young man was that he should be well provided for, but if he had the good feeling to exercise a nice economy till he became engaged, it was an additional recommendation. Her giggle was as violent as before, though.

"Oh, I daresay!" she exclaimed facetiously; "I'm always being taken in; I don't believe those stories any longer. Do you remember Willy Holmes, Cynthia, and the tales he used to tell me? I used to think that young man was so steady, I was always quoting him! And it turned out he was a regular scapegrace and everybody knew it all the time, and had been laughing at me. I've given up believing in any one, Mr. Kent—in anyone, do you hear?" She shook the splendours of her hat at him, and gasped and gurgled archly. "I've no doubt you're every bit as bad as the rest!"

He answered with some inanity. Miss Walford asked him a question, and he took a seat beside her in replying. Turquand sat down too. Twilight was falling, and a refreshing breeze began to make itself felt. A fashionable sea purled on the sand below with elegant decorum. In the building the concert commenced, and snatches of orchestration reached them through the chatter of American and English and French from the occupants of the chairs behind. Presently Mrs. Walford wanted to go and play petits chevaux. The sub-editor, involuntarily attached to the party, accompanied her, and Kent and the girl followed. The crowd round the tables was fairly large, but Turquand prevailed on the dame to see that there was space for four persons in a group. She complimented him on his dexterity, but immediately afterwards became "fatigued," and begged him to take her to the "settee in the corner." The party was now divided into couples.