Читать книгу The Reckless Lady - Philip Gibbs - Страница 4
II
ОглавлениеDown below in Monte Carlo there was a shrill fanfare of trumpets, which rose very clear and sharp to the hills.
“The heralds of old King Carnival!” cried Sylvia, rushing to the gate. The boy followed leisurely with his hands in his pockets. They could hear the noise of distant cheering and knew that the monstrous figure of fun which they had seen so often was being paraded in front of the Casino.
“Might as well go down and have a look at it,” said Stephen. “Perhaps I’ll make a sketch or two.”
He was the first to see a figure whom he would have known a mile away.
“There’s Mother! With one of her elderly cavaliers.”
“Yes,” said Sylvia, shading her eyes with her hands and calling a shrill “Coo-ee!”
She looked again, and gave an exclamation of surprise.
“I believe it’s that Carey man. Mother’s ancient flame. Do you remember, we saw him in Paris a year ago?”
“Rather an old bore,” said Stephen, with the intolerance of youth.
“Oh, no. Rather an old dear,” answered Sylvia, who was only intolerant of her own sex. “A pity he’s as poor as a church mouse, like most of Mother’s English friends, and all our miserable relations. If we had a nice rich uncle to take us about it might make up for the loss of a father.”
“Mercenary little beast!” growled Stephen, good-humouredly. He rather agreed with her.
He gave a “Cheerio” to his mother and she waved her parasol gaily—the blue silk thing he had bought for her birthday after selling a sketch—the first money he had earned—to a little Italian Count who was “gone” on Sylvia; Count Goldoni, whom they had met in Rome.
“Hullo, you babes!” cried Mrs. Fleming. “Here’s Mr. Carey come to see us. He’s going through to Paris this evening. Isn’t that too bad!”
Mr. Carey was a tall, thin man in a grey suit which hung loosely about him as though he had shrunk since it was first made. Stephen noticed that his shirt-cuffs were a little frayed and that one of his patent-leather boots had a crack across the toe. He carried a pair of bright yellow gloves, and silk handkerchief to match protruded from his breast-pocket. He had a gallant air, and swung a silver-knobbed stick in a jaunty way, though he walked stiffly as though he had a touch of gout in the knees. One of those old-fashioned Englishmen who are rather common in Florence and in the little villas at Fiesole.
“I missed you all in Rome,” he said. “Thought you were still in the Piazza d’Espagna. Most annoying. But anyhow ...”
He kissed Sylvia on both cheeks, and then gazed at her in wonderment and admiration.
“Good gracious, my dear! You’ve become a grown-up lady and most alarming.”
“Quite harmless, Mr. Carey,” said Sylvia in a reassuring way.
“I’m not so sure,” laughed Mrs. Fleming. “You want watching, my beauty!”
“As for Stephen,” said Mr. Carey, “why—God bless my soul! he looks old enough to be your brother, Helen!”
“Not well said, Henry! I look young enough to be his sister, you mean!”
Mrs. Fleming’s jolly, full-throated laugh rang out in the garden of the Villa Margherita.
“Perfectly true,” said Mr. Carey, with a humorous smile which twisted his face. “You look ridiculously young, Helen, and just as beautiful as ever.”
“I feel ridiculously young!” said Mrs. Fleming. “As for my beauty—it’s wonderful what a little art will do!”
Mr. Carey shook his head. He couldn’t accept that suggestion.
“No, no. Painting the lily! The English rose, rather. Quite absurd, Helen!”
Mrs. Fleming was glancing at the tea-things in the verandah.
“What’s all that?” she asked. “Visitors?”
Sylvia explained.
“We’ve been playing the Good Samaritan to a stranger at the gate. An old English aristocrat—and rather nice. He looked fagged and Stephen asked him in—chiefly to show off his sketches, I expect.”
“The woman with the serpent’s tongue!” said Stephen, with brotherly contempt at this gibe.
Mrs. Fleming looked amused.
“You two gypsies! You’d ask a tramp to tea. Or the old devil himself, if he happened to look interesting.”
“Why not?” asked Stephen. “I’d caricature the old ruffian and sell it to the newspapers.”
Presently he made an excuse for sloping down to the town to see the arrival of King Carnival. Sylvia decided that her mother would like a quiet talk with Mr. Carey.
“That’s all right,” said Mrs. Fleming, in her tolerant, good-natured way. “Always forsaking your poor mother. Don’t get into mischief—that’s all I ask!”
She kissed her hand to them as they waved at the garden gate.
“A handsome couple,” said Mr. Carey. “That Sylvia of yours is marvellous. Just like you, Helen, when I met you first, only not so beautiful. Not quite, I swear!”
Mrs. Fleming laughed.
“Tell me the news, Henry. How’s England?”
She raised her arms—with a loud sigh of longing.
“Stuffy old England! How I want to see it again after all this foreign life. This exile!”
“Yes,” said Mr. Carey. “Ten years away. Too long, my dear.”
Mrs. Fleming said “London!” as though its name were paradise.
“I’d give all the beauty of Monte Carlo to see its dear dirtiness again. Oh, to hear the roar of ’buses up Piccadilly, to walk up Bond Street on a rainy day, to go shopping in the Brompton Road!”
“Why not?” asked Henry Carey, smiling at her through his monocle. “Nothing easier, Helen. A rather uncomfortable journey of thirty-six hours—not too bad with a wagon-lit, which I can’t afford—and there you are!”
“Yes, there I should be!” said Mrs. Fleming, as though he spoke of fairy-tales.
Henry Carey seemed to think there was no miracle needed.
“I’d go flat-hunting with pleasure. Somewhere in Kensington. Or the little streets off Knightsbridge. What about that?”
She laughed and shook her head.
“Tempting, but impossible. Henry. What about the Income Tax?”
He winced as though his shoe pinched.
“Lord, don’t mention it! It has bled me white. I’m a poor man now, Helen. Devilish poor, my dear, like so many of your old friends who used to be pretty comfortable before the war.”
“My old friends!” said Mrs. Fleming tenderly.
“The younger sons who are now middle-aged fathers—and deuced anxious!” said Henry Carey. “The young bucks of twenty years ago, now on half-pay, poor old buffers! Impecunious peers selling their estates. England’s not the same place!”
“My old friends!” said Mrs. Fleming again, with a kind of sob, as though seeing dear ghosts.
Henry Carey rubbed his monocle on the yellow silk handkerchief.
“Yes, the old crowd of ours,” he said. “The smart young fellows of Edward’s reign who used to worship you, Helen, when I was the humblest of your lovers, as still I am, my dear.”
Mrs. Fleming laid her hand on his for a moment.
“You’ve been loyal all through, Henry, through thick and thin, fair and foul.”
“Your lover,” he said. “Before your marriage, afterwards and now.”
He laughed a little at old romantic memories.
“How many times did I propose to you before I sulked off to South Africa to get a bullet in my heart, with any luck, which didn’t happen? Every day of the week, I verily believe!”
“Not the only one,” said Mrs. Fleming, blushing a little at her indiscretion. “There were half a dozen of you, all plaguing me. I must have been a fascinating minx, and eaten up with vanity. Well, I’m still vain.”
“You ought to be,” said Henry Carey in his simple way.
She asked after that half-dozen—her old lovers.
Billy Mostyn, killed in the Great War. Arthur Purcell—Bishop of Crossminster and impossible to believe. Philip Thorndyke—run over by a taxi-cab in Piccadilly on a dark night in war-time. One of the gayest of them all, and as handsome as a Greek god! Dick Lavington. Went down with his ship in the North Sea. Freddie Verney—died of wounds.
“Yes,” said Henry Carey. “That’s why one feels a bit lonely now in London. One misses the old faces. It’s not the same at the Club.”
However, he did not wish to exaggerate that side of things. The old set had not gone altogether. They could still talk of the good old times before the war, and deplore the social revolution. The privilege of middle-age and advancing senility!
“Do they ever talk of me?” asked Mrs. Fleming.
Henry Carey smiled at her. She had always made herself the centre of the universe.
“Now and then, Helen. Wonder why you haven’t married again. Club gossip and all that.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Fleming. “That’s why I keep away from England. Old scandals crop up, be they buried ever so deep. Stephen and Sylvia would get to hear, as sure as fate.”
“Don’t they know?” asked Henry Carey, who seemed to be startled by her words.
“Nothing,” said Mrs. Fleming. “Nothing to make them ashamed of me.”
Henry Carey stroked his lean jaw uneasily.
“One day it will be awkward for you,” he said.
Mrs. Fleming nodded and said, “That’s my tragedy.”
There was a silence between them for a little while. It grew chilly in the garden and they moved into the verandah, and talked again of old friends and old times until the light faded outside and inside the room there was a pleasant dusk. Mrs. Fleming did not light the lamp. Henry Carey’s cigarette glowed as he sat back in a deep chair, with his legs crossed and one hand on a bony knee.
“Any other news, Henry?” asked Mrs. Fleming, after further talk.
He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward in his chair, and tried to speak in a casual voice.
“I suppose you know Dick has come back from India?”
She drew a sharp breath, but answered calmly:
“I saw it in the papers. After that affair in the Punjab. Broken.”
“Yes; a bad blow, after all his service to India. Unfair, too. He did his duty.”
“In a way I’m sorry for him,” said Mrs. Fleming.
Henry Carey seemed struck by her words.
“I’m glad to hear you say that, Helen. It’s generous—after the way he’s treated you. Not well, in my opinion.”
“Well enough,” said Mrs. Fleming. “You know what happened, old friend.”
Her long lashes veiled her eyes a moment.
“He ought to have made you free,” said Henry Carey. “Most people think so.”
“No,” said Mrs. Fleming. “No more married life for me! As long as he left me the children. He was generous in that. Not that he wanted them! But he could have taken them.”
Henry Carey agreed.
“Legally, yes. Perhaps even morally. It’s a difficult problem.”
“Not morally,” said Mrs. Fleming. “I deny that. A mother’s rights——”
Henry Carey jerked the ash off his cigarette.
“The law is devilish hard,” he said. “In some cases it doesn’t recognise a mother’s rights, when they’re forfeited—by certain things.”
He asked a cautious, nervous question.
“I suppose it would break your heart to part with them now and again?”
Mrs. Fleming cried out sharply.
“Part with them? Henry! What do you mean?”
“The question comes up,” he answered gravely. “It’s going to be—awkward.”
He fumbled about in his breast-pocket and pulled out a letter.
“It’s from your husband,” he said. “Sent to your brother Jack, who asked me to bring it as I was passing this way. I know what’s in it.”
“What’s in it?” asked Mrs. Fleming, coldly.
It seemed as though her heart stopped beating for a moment.
“Well,” said Henry Carey. “He wants the children back, in a way. A share of them. It’s damnable for you. Tragic! I hardly know what to advise, my dear, as an old friend, as your faithful and true old friend.”
He spoke with emotion and coughed a little. He knew that this letter he had brought which he could hardly bring himself to give her, was a most cruel blow, smashing any little happiness she had built up.
Mrs. Fleming had raised her arm as though to ward off a blow. She had risen from her chair to take the letter, and she stumbled, and held on to the little mantelshelf painted in the Italian way with Cupids and flowers.
“No!” she cried. “No!”
Henry Carey looked at her anxiously. Could she bear the other thing he had to tell her?
“I’m afraid he means trouble,” he said gently. “As a matter of fact, Helen, he has come out here. I saw his name in the list of visitors. Hôtel des Anglais. Quite close here. You ought to know.”
Mrs. Fleming was breathing hard, like a creature at bay. She had a wild look in her eyes.
“Courage!” said Henry Carey in his gentle, knightly way.
It was then that Stephen and Sylvia came back from their walk into the town to see the coming of King Carnival. She heard Sylvia’s voice singing in Italian, and Stephen’s call to the dog.
“Come here, old lad! Down, boy, down! You silly old devil!”
They came noisily through the verandah.
“Hullo, Mother!” said Stephen. “Lighting-up time! Hope we haven’t been too long.”
He saw Henry Carey in the dusk of the room which seemed darker coming from the open road.
“Still here, sir?”
Mrs. Fleming rumpled her son’s hair.
“It sounds like a hint for him to go. Manners, Stephen! Manners, my son!”
She was wonderful in her recovery. Her laughter rang out in a very natural way. She put her arm round Sylvia’s waist.
“Well, my dear, how much confetti have you got down your neck?”
“She asked for it,” said Stephen. “Made eyes at the best-looking lads.”
“Slanderer!” said Sylvia, and she flung a cushion at her brother’s head, which he dodged and caught, threatening vengeance.
“Peace!” cried Mrs. Fleming. “And for goodness’ sake mind my furniture!”
Henry Carey admired her pluck, that quick recovery, this laughing mask hiding the fear in her eyes. She had always been like that.
He stayed another hour, and then had to go for that train to Paris. There was no chance of a private talk again, except a word at parting. It was the word he liked best, the one that helped most in bad times.
“Courage!”
He turned at the gate to lift his hat, and saw her standing there between her son and daughter.
“Give my love to England!” she called out, merrily.
“What pluck!” he thought. “And what a tragedy!”
