Читать книгу The Man with the Double Heart - Muriel Hine - Страница 11

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Mrs. Merrod gazed into her mirror across the littered dressing-table.

It was a gilded triple affair, each side panel swinging on a pivot so that the woman sitting there could study herself from all angles. Under the crude electric light, from which she had removed the rose-coloured shade, her face looked sallow and almost plain, but was saved from insignificance by the intelligence of her eyes.

Dark topaz colour they were under the fine arched brows, full of deep slumbering fire that accentuated the hint of passion in the full-lipped and mocking mouth.

After a moment's steady gaze, drawing her lace peignoir about her, she rang the bell that lay on the table: a dainty little silver toy where a winged Eros stooped to kiss a smiling Psyche with arms uplifted. When the lips of the little creatures met the electric poles were united, and away in her maid's room she could hear the distant reverberation.

The door opened noiselessly.

"Mélanie, my velvet dress, and the boots with the gray suede tops."

"Bien, Madame." The maid passed into the dressing-room adjoining, where a looped-up curtain of rose-coloured silk revealed an elaborately fitted bath.

"The ermine scarf—no! The gray fox." She still studied her pale face—"and I want those new combs from Lalique—and long gray gloves and my violet toque."

She glanced as she spoke at the little clock which pointed to half-past six, and, with a sigh of relief, leaned back comfortably in her chair.

To pass the time while the maid came and went between the cupboards of the two rooms, Mrs. Merrod opened her manicure case, and began to polish her pink nails.

Then, as the door closed at last behind Mélanie's brisk step, she stirred herself and started upon the lengthy business of her toilette.

Into a saucer she poured from a bottle a thick creamy-looking liquid, and, with a broad camel's hair brush, spread it smoothly over her face. She waited for the skin to absorb it, then, with a piece of chamois leather, she polished the whitened surface lightly, added a faint dust of powder and peered again into the glass.

Satisfied with the result, she drew out the nearest drawer of the satin-wood dressing table, disclosing a number of pencils and lip-salves and little pots of cosmetic.

She hunted for a tiny brush, dipped it in a dark powder and, holding back each eyelid, proceeded to brush the lashes upward. Next a black pencil for her eyebrows, the merest line, traced with skill; then another, this time blue to accentuate the length of her eyes.

Finally, with care, she selected a lip-salve case from among many and held it thoughtfully for a moment against the creamy-white face.

"Too red." Fantine sighed. Her weakness was for carmine lips, but she feared McTaggart's critical gaze, those keen and mischievous blue eyes.

Picking out a paler shade, she passed it slowly over her mouth. At once the face became alive, losing the suggestion of a mask. Beneath the dark curls, bunched low on her ears, she coloured carefully each lobe, and, with her head tilted back, added a touch inside her nostrils.

This singular performance over, she rose briskly to her feet, shed the filmy lace peignoir and stood before the long mirror.

She nodded happily to her image, conscious of her perfect figure. In the shimmering long black silk tights with the frilled lace about her bosom, she looked like a dainty travesty of a Harlequin in a Transformation.

Slipping quickly into her dress, she was sheathed now in black velvet; very severe but with a cut that whispered Paris in each line.

She fastened a single deep red rose into the folds above her waist, then swayed slowly from side to side, very supple, her hands to her hips, a slight smile on the reddened lips.

"Bon!" She reached back for her hat—a violet splash on the lace counterpane—settled it closely on her head, with a final touch to the glossy hair, doubly black now against the warmth of the crumpled purple velvet.

At this moment the knocker sounded. Close at hand it seemed to clatter, for her bedroom door faced the entrance with only a narrow strip of hall.

She heard the maid's step pass and then the well-known voice of McTaggart.

"Entrez donc!" She cried gaily, "I am almost ready, Pierrot." Through the half-open door, glancing sideways with bright eyes, her hands still lifted to her head, she caught a glimpse of his laughing face.

He hesitated on the threshold, drinking in the pretty picture of the dainty pink room with its gleaming mirror and silver toys and the perfect silhouette of Fantine in her sombre velvet dress.

"Épatante! Comment ça va?" For he prided himself on a slender stock of French slang acquired mostly from a painstaking study of Willy's works.

"You do look nice!" He eased the strain of a conversation begun in French.

"Just one?" He stooped down and lightly kissed her smiling lips. Then he stood back, holding her hands, and, with a comprehensive glance, looked her over from head to foot, touched anew by her feminine charm.

"Only my boots now—and gloves, mon cher."

Her eyes with their half-veiled topaz lights returned his gaze hardily, with an answering pressure of tiny hands. "Go, now—there's a good boy. Mélanie!" she raised her voice—"vite! mes bottines." She sank down on a low chair, her feet outstretched.

"Let me do it," McTaggart begged, "I'm sure I'd make a splendid maid."

"No, no—Mélanie." The sly face of the femme de chambre drove him effectually from the room.

He sauntered across into the salon, where a fire was burning cosily. The wide portière was drawn across the larger room beyond where, on the evenings when they played, the card table was set out.

He warmed his hands before the blaze, glancing at the crowded mantel-piece, covered with many photographs, most of them portraits of men.

He smiled as he recognized the face of a youthful college friend. It was signed in a sprawling hand—"Yours, Archie," and the thought flashed into his mind that no power of blandishment could win from himself a similar trophy.

Whatever his weakness for Fantine might cost, McTaggart knew, deep down in his heart, respect did not share in the feeling; his shrewdness would balance his desire. But he knew as well that she held a charm which set her apart from her type, not only physical but mental, appealing to his intellect.

There lay the danger. For after her the English women he admired seemed heavy; they lacked her spice; their calmer beauty was apt to cloy on close acquaintance.

He was idly scanning the photographs, his mind partially abstracted, when he caught a glimpse of a curious face, half-hidden from his sight.

The portrait, old and faded, had slipped into the crack between mirror and wall and he rescued it and held it a moment underneath the electric light.

A man with a short square beard, his dark hair cut "en brosse," with evil eyes and an aquiline nose, rather crooked below the bridge. Something Eastern, McTaggart thought, lay in the lazy, sensuous smile, in the heavily lidded narrow eyes, slightly tilted toward the temples.

A Frenchman? hardly. A Greek? perhaps. A "wrong un'"!—of that he was sure.

He had just time to replace the photo before Fantine entered the room.

"Me voilà donc!—you admire my gallery?—all the men I have loved and lost..."

"It makes me glad I am not among them." McTaggart turned with a short laugh. "I should like to flatter myself with the thought, that I am the one you will love ... and keep!"

"That depends." She came nearer and the faint perfume she affected floated up into his nostrils as he looked down from his height at her.

"On what?" Despite his control the narrow face upturned to him, above the shimmering gray fur, with its red lips in a mocking line cutting the dead-white of her skin, made his pulses beat faster.

"On yourself." She turned away with a quick, indifferent shrug. Fully aware of her power, she never strained a situation.

"My friend—I'm famished!" She fastened her glove. "Why talk about the little heart when the big rest of one is empty? I thought you were here to take me out to a new restaurant to-night?"

"But it's only seven o'clock." He smiled at the rueful note in her voice. "You can't eat anything yet, can you? Of course we'll start—at once, if you like."

"Good." She clapped her hands like a child. "I'm ver' hungry, really, Pierrot. I slept late and missed lunch."

McTaggart noticed, with amusement, that the question of his own appetite never occurred to the fair speaker. Manlike, a trait which would have aggrieved his sense of mastership in his home, appeared to him as involving no martyrdom in this piquante egoist's hands.

"Greedy child! As a matter of fact, I told my taxi to wait. It's such a nice one, almost new. I thought, perhaps, you'd like a drive?"

"Merci, non." She drew her furs carefully about her shoulders, the gray head of the fox nestling under her little pink ear.

"Lucky beast!" said McTaggart, with a gesture pointing his remark. "Why wasn't I born a fox?"

"Because the English are born sheep!" Her topaz eyes flashed wickedly. "They only ask for a stupid leader—and off they go, baa ... baa ... quite contented—straggling down the same dull path paved with precepts."

They passed out as she spoke and entered the narrow lift where a saddened-looking individual clung to the rope like a drowning man. Mrs. Merrod glanced at him, recognizing a new porter.

"Slowly, please,"—she commanded. "I hate..." she explained to McTaggart—"to feel my feet running up my spine. Once when I went into the City to see my lawyer the lift went down at such a terrible pace, mon Dieu!—I found a boot-button in my hair."

"You're sure it wasn't the top of a hat-pin?"

McTaggart's voice was studiously grave.

"Mais non! A button. But I'm not quite certain whether it came off a boot..."

The sad-looking porter, his back turned, relaxed into a sudden grin. He saw the pair into their taxi and stood for a moment watching them.

"There goes a little bit of all right!"—he confided to the world at large. Then he solemnly spat on McTaggart's shilling "for luck" and burrowed back into the lift.