Читать книгу The Reckless Lady - Philip Gibbs - Страница 9

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Stephen sloped home from his day in the hills with his sketch-block under his arm and his cap in his pocket. His boots were powdered with the white dust of the roads and he had torn a rent in his shabby old trousers in scaling a rocky ledge to get a good perspective of a church tower above a cluster of brown roofs and a fortress wall. He had had a good day, made some rather jolly sketches, and increased his knowledge of life by listening to the gossip of some French peasants in a hill-top tavern where he had eaten his bread and cheese and oranges over a cup of hot coffee. They had talked about the war, and told frightful stories of trench fighting, with a wealth of gruesome detail and gusts of laughter and blasphemous words.

They had also prophesied another war in twenty years or so, when the sales Boches should be strong enough to come back again.

“And we shan’t have the English with us next time,” said one man. “France is without friends. The English are jealous of us. A nation of shopkeepers, with the souls of slugs! And those sacrés Americans with all the gold of the world——”

Stephen had defended the loyalty of England. There had been a great argument ending with handshakes all round and a bottle of cheap wine at Stephen’s expense, so that he had felt the joy of manhood. Quite amusing, though it was a pity the French were always cursing England and suspecting treachery. A bee in their bonnets, kept buzzing by the French Press.

Stephen was home in time to see Sylvia standing at the garden gate with Count Goldoni, who had brought her back from the thé dansant. It was like Sylvia to dance all the afternoon without a thought of being tired for another dance in the evening. The little Italian was saying farewell with his usual ceremony. He kissed her hands for the third time while Stephen walked from the curve of the road to the garden gate, a distance of fifty yards or so.

“A rivederla! Mille grazie! Un dopopranzo glorioso, bellissima donna!”

Sylvia answered in Italian, which she spoke perfectly, with a cascade of laughing, liquid words.

The little Italian, “my baby Mussolini,” as Sylvia called him, desired to kiss her hands again, but she ran from him up the garden path, and as he bowed and waved his hat he bumped backwards into Stephen, and expressed his regret with hilarious apologies.

“Love makes me blind and deaf!” he declared. “Your most beautiful sister captivates my whole being. She is a sonnet by Petrarch. She is the Beatrice of the divine Dante. And she laughs at me as a fat little man! What a tragedy!”

He departed down the dusty road, much to the relief of Stephen, who was more English in his temperament than Sylvia and found this exuberance a little absurd.

He called out to his sister:

“Where’s Mother?”

It was his mother who answered, from the garden gate.

“Hullo, you dusty tramp! Back again?”

He gave her his usual “Cheerio.”

“Had a good day?” she asked.

“Not too bad, Mother. Did a sketch or two. They came rather well. Had tea yet?”

“No, but I’d like a cup. These hills! Poof!”

“You look tired,” said Stephen.

He thought she looked more than tired as she came slowly up the garden path, holding her sunshade slantwise. He thought she looked ill, and there was a something in her eyes which he had only seen once before, and that last night, when they had come home from Mentone, and he had seen her standing at the little table before she heard him at the door.

“Just a little fagged,” said Mrs. Fleming. “Where’s Sylvia, and what has she been doing with the baby Mussolini? I passed him on the road and hid behind my sunshade. My hands are too hot for any man to kiss.”

“They wouldn’t thwart Goldoni, hot or cold,” said Stephen, and he searched his mother’s face again. She didn’t look at all well.

So Sylvia thought too, when she came out of the verandah with a cry of “Greeting!” The laughter died out of her eyes for a moment.

“Hullo, Mother! Where’s all your colour? Seen a ghost or anything?”

Mrs. Fleming put her hands up to her head with a comical groan.

“An aching noddle! Nothing to make a fuss about, sweet things. I suppose even a mother has a right to a sick-headache now and then, as a special privilege. A cup of tea, Sylvia, and I shall feel as right as a trivet. Get old Madeleine to make me some.”

She asked Stephen about his dancing partner for the Bal Masqué, and he answered grumpily:

“I’m dining with the Harveys—worse luck. We’re joining Sylvia later in the evening. That black-eyed Harvey girl—like dancing with a sack! I’ve a good mind to chuck it.”

“No,” said Mrs. Fleming. “Play the game, my dear. Sylvia can’t be left alone without you.”

Certainly she seemed better after tea. A little colour crept into her cheeks though there were dark lines under her eyes, and Stephen, watching her closely, as anxious as any lover with his sweetheart, saw that her hands, the beautiful, delicate hands he loved to draw, twitched in her lap, as though her nerves were all on edge. Presently she was laughing again, telling the latest gossip among her friends in Monte Carlo. Colonel Rivington had the gout, and was using awful language to his poor wife. Miss Brown was going to the Carnival Ball dressed as a peasant-girl. Much too old, poor dear, for that kind of thing. Ethel Byron was engaged to a man at Cannes—enormously rich, they said.

“Headache all right now?” asked Sylvia presently.

“Almost gone,” said Mrs. Fleming cheerily, though presently, as Stephen noticed, she swallowed a little pillule when she thought he was not looking.

“Well, in that case,” said Sylvia, light-heartedly, “if you re absolutely certain you won’t want me, Mother o’ mine, I’ll get into that Carnival frock. You remember we’re going to the Bal Masqué with my American.”

Mrs. Fleming pretended to look alarmed.

“It’s getting serious, with that American. He’s spending a lot of money on you, you minx!”

Sylvia smiled, as if she knew her own worth.

“He can well afford it, and we amuse each other. He has an agreeable sense of humour—for an American.”

Mrs. Fleming took her daughter’s hand and smacked it.

“You’re a siren,” she said. “Half a dozen sweethearts at the same time! Poor little Goldoni! I tremble at the thought of the risks you run!”

“I’m adventurous but not rash,” answered Sylvia with sublime confidence.

“It’s lucky you’ve a brother to look after your manners and morals,” said Stephen. He spoke with his usual mockery to this elder sister, but at the back of his mind he was conscious of uneasiness, a vague sense of calamity at hand. His mother was hiding something from them. He was certain of it. Some frightening thing.

Sylvia was mildly amused.

“I wouldn’t take your manners for a model, sulky Stephen! As for your morals ...”

She gave a tug at his hair and ran into the house to put on her Carnival frock. It was a thing of red and white silk with a Pierrot cap and velvet mask. It had cost only a few hundred francs in a shop at Monte Carlo, and for some reason her mother had made a fuss about the price of it. Her precious mother was always like that—prodigal one day, skinflint the next, grudging them nothing one week, stingy and scraping a week later, and crying out against the least expense. Extraordinary and adorable mother!

“Mother,” said Stephen, “I believe there’s something on your mind. Something that’s worrying you most abominably.”

Mrs. Fleming laughed at him, but it was not quite her old true laugh, as Stephen knew, with his quick ear.

“Something on my mind? Why, yes, it’s that ridiculous hat of mine. Look! That’s better.”

She took off her hat, a blue thing trimmed with forget-me-nots, which Stephen had chosen for her.

“Then you’re ill,” he said stubbornly. “Do you think I don’t know that you’re hiding something? It’s as plain as a pikestaff.”

“Fiddle-de-dee!” answered Mrs. Fleming. “You’re getting morbid, Stephen. It’s that novel you’re reading by Romain Rolland!”

She laughed at him teasingly, but he saw that she was acting. Beneath her smile there was that haggard look.

There was the sound of a motor-horn hooting with a musical note up the road, followed by a swish of wheels outside the gate.

“All these sweethearts for Sylvia!” cried Mrs. Fleming, with mock excitement. “They come by every road and mule-path. Italian counts, American millionaires—I shall have to put a stop to it.”

A Pierrot came up the path—a very elegant and serious Pierrot with silk clothes and lace ruffles and shiny shoes. He pulled off his white cap and stood, with a touch of self-consciousness, before Mrs. Fleming. It was Edward Hillier of Grand Rapids, Michigan, wherever that might be.

“Good evening, Mrs. Fleming. Excuse this ridiculous disguise. I’ve come to fetch Miss Sylvia. Rather early I’m afraid!”

“The early Pierrot catches the Columbine,” laughed Mrs. Fleming.

The elegant Pierrot shifted on one foot—he certainly felt awkward in his costume—and gave an appreciative smile at this jest. Then the gravity of his face returned.

“I forgot to ask about your health. I’m sorry you were taken ill in the Casino this afternoon. I drove over from Mentone for an hour.”

“It was nothing,” said Mrs. Fleming quickly. “A sick-headache for a moment.”

“Yes, of course,” said the young man. “Quite so.”

He looked ill at ease, as though he had spoken indiscreet words.

“Have a cigarette,” said Stephen, after a quick glance at his mother. Yes, she was trying to hide something from them. She had said nothing about being ill in the Casino. Yet she chatted gaily with the American, making him laugh by some reference to Prohibition. Then she explained the programme about Stephen. He was dining with friends and would join Sylvia later in the evening.

“Fine!” said the American.

Presently Sylvia came out in her Carnival frock and a little black mask beneath which her laughing mouth appeared.

“Good evening, Mr. Hillier. How’s this for a Carnival night?”

“Perfectly wonderful!”

The tall young American took the girl’s outstretched hand and bowed low, with a gallant sweep of his white cap.

“Take care of her!” said Mrs. Fleming. “It’s a world of wickedness down there in Monte Carlo.”

“I’ll be her watch-dog,” answered the American cheerfully. “No need to worry, Mrs. Fleming.”

“Back before dawn!” cried Sylvia. “See you later, Stephen, with that black-eyed Harvey girl!”

“Possibly,” answered Stephen grumpily. “If the mater’s all right. Not otherwise.”

Mrs. Fleming put her hands on her son’s shoulders.

“What a fuss the boy makes about a little headache!”

She waved her hand to Sylvia and Mr. Edward Hillier, junior.

“Have a good time.”

The sun was going down behind the hills, and there was a purple twilight in the valley. Already the lights were twinkling in Monte Carlo which was white and glamorous round the curve of a darkening sea. The lamps along the promenade made a chain of stars, and there was a brilliant cluster about the Casino and its white dome.

“Hurry up for Fairyland!” cried Sylvia at the garden gate.

She sprang into the Citroen and in another moment the American Pierrot was at the wheel.

A pretty picture on the way to a Carnival night, as the car turned and dived down the steep road! A group of peasant boys and girls followed them, singing and shouting. They too were in Carnival dress, not of silk but of cheap cotton, gaudily coloured. The young men wore pasteboard masks with big noses. The girls pelted them with confetti and ran screeching from their pursuit.

“Jolly stuff to paint,” said Stephen, with his artist’s eye.

His mother was standing at the garden gate, looking down the road to the city of enchantment. Presently she shivered a little, and came towards the house again.

“It looks like fairyland to Sylvia,” she said. “To me it looks like—something else. Think of all the vice there, Stephen, the tragedy, the tempting of souls.... I wish we had never come to this villa. I want to get away from it.”

“It’s a very good little villa,” said Stephen. “Nothing wrong with it.”

He had put his arm round his mother’s waist and led her indoors to the room beyond the verandah. Old Madeleine came in and lit two of the lamps and left them alone again.

The boy sat in a low chair in a corner of the room, while his mother played a tune on the rosewood piano, a gay little tune, until suddenly she slurred the notes and looked over at her son, and said, “A penny for your thoughts, Stephen!”

The boy leaned forward a little in his chair.

“Mother,” he said, “are you ill, or frightened? There’s a scared look in your eyes. What does it mean?”

Mrs. Fleming looked at the boy searchingly. These sudden questions seemed to take her breath away.

“What are you driving at, Stephen? What makes you think I’m scared?”

“I can see it in your eyes,” said the boy. “You can’t hide from me, Mother. What’s the mystery of it all?”

“All what?” asked Mrs. Fleming. “What do you mean by mystery, my dear?”

She spoke with an attempt at gaiety, but her voice trembled.

The boy rose from his chair and walked up to the fire-place.

“There always has been a mystery,” he said in a low voice. “I’ve been conscious of it since I was a kid. Why not tell me, Mother? I might help; and it’s time I knew.”

“Knew what?” asked Mrs. Fleming. “What do you want to know, my dearest dear?”

Again she spoke lightly, trying to fence with him, trying to ward off these questions for which she had been waiting—always. One day he was bound to ask. Now he was asking.

He spoke slowly, with his eyes upon her.

“I want to know how you get your money, Mother; and why sometimes we seem so rich and at other times get into debt so damnably. Why do we wander about, year after year, without any settled home, owing bills everywhere, though you spend so much on Sylvia and me—Sylvia’s riding-lessons, her frocks, her dances, all this life of ours?”

Mrs. Fleming shirked his questions, and talked on, with a shrill little laugh, not like her usual voice of laughter.

“Do you blame me for my love of you? The way I spoil you two?”

The boy answered with emotion which he tried to check.

“We owe everything in the world to you, Mother. You’ve been wonderful. But, all the same, something’s wrong. Dead wrong.”

“In what way, my dear?” asked Mrs. Fleming. She still tried to avoid his questions. Even her eyes shirked his straight, thoughtful look.

“In all sorts of ways,” said the boy. “Somehow I’ve known it for years, without saying anything. Decent people won’t know us. Only strangers—like that American. When they come to know us better, they fade away—pretend not to see us when they meet us again.”

“Snobs!” said Mrs. Fleming, carelessly. “Cads, Stephen.”

“No! The Lavingtons weren’t snobs. Nor the Vincents. And they’ve no reason for snobbishness that I can see. Why did that Mivart girl sheer off at Trouville, and Captain Ellis at Biarritz? What’s wrong, Mother? And why have you been frightened lately?”

“What makes you think that?” she said. “After all my laughter, all my jokes?”

Stephen came over to his mother and looked into her eyes.

“It’s no use pretending,” he said. “I can read your face like a book, Mother. You’re afraid of something to-night. Horribly afraid.”

Mrs. Fleming tried to speak, but only her lips moved, and then, without speaking, she gave a queer kind of sob.

In a moment the boy was by her side, his arms round her.

“Tell me,” he said. “I want to help.”

She put her fingers through his hair—her favourite caress.

“The luck’s against me, Stephen. That’s why I’m scared a little.”

“What luck?” he asked.

Mrs. Fleming answered with strong irony.

“The God of Luck by which I’ve lived and tried to make you two happy—you two dears. You and Sylvia are the children of Luck. Didn’t you guess?”

She spoke with a touch of hysteria, laughing, and crying a little, too.

“I don’t understand,” said Stephen, utterly mystified, and frightened too.

His mother pressed his head against her shoulder.

“How innocent you are, my Stephen! That’s one up to me. It will be counted unto me for righteousness, your fresh, clean mind. But don’t you know the ways of life in Monte Carlo, this beautiful hell? Why, the very roads are made out of the profits of the gambling-tables. The gardens, the palaces, the bright lights down there are paid for by the little white chips that women like me lose at the tables, sometimes with their souls, dear sonny!”

“Oh, lord!” said the boy, with a kind of groan.

“You and Sylvia have lived on my luck at the tables, Stephen. That’s how I’ve been keeping you lately, gambling in the Casinos of Europe, winning money at cards in Continental watering-places to pay for your studies, your clothes, your fun in life, son o’ mine. Ekeing out my miserable allowance from poor old Uncle Jack.”

“Good God!” said Stephen, harshly.

“Hard work, Stephen,” said his mother. “No fun for me, I can tell you, in those overheated rooms crowded with the worst people in the world, clawing at the chips, watching the beastly little ball roll round, working out their ridiculous systems, with no sound in the silence except the sing-song of the croupiers and the hot breathing of scraggy women—like myself!”

“Why in the name of goodness have you done it?” asked the boy, with anguish in his voice. “Surely——”

She ignored that question and went on explaining her way of life, its sordid details.

“I’ve had no system, Stephen. None at all! Just luck. I’ve betted on the number of my cloak-room ticket, on the day of the month, on any old figures on a tram-car or a taxi-cab or a hotel bill. I’ve had amazing luck, mostly. Beat all their silly systems, sonny. Then we’ve had great times together, you and Sylvia and I. It was all for your sake, to give you a good time and a decent chance. Sometimes I’ve been unlucky. Then I’ve had to stint and scrape, without enough ready money to pay the weekly bills. That’s why we’ve had to leave so many places in a hurry. You’ll remember those flittings, poor dear!”

“Leaving the bills unpaid?” asked Stephen, coldly.

“I’ve paid some of them afterwards, when the luck has turned again. It always did.... That’s why the decent people cut us. They don’t like a woman who is known to earn her living that way, especially at cards in private hotels. That has been my life, Stephen, for two years or more. And that’s why I’m a little scared to-night. For the last month I’ve had no luck at all, sonny, and unless it changes pretty quick it’s going to be—unpleasant—for all of us. See?”

She glanced anxiously at her son to see how he took all this. All this revelation of the secrets she had hidden from him with infinite care, with many white lies, under a mask of gaiety.

He was taking it badly. It had made a physical change in him. He looked older, graver, and there was no colour in his face.

“Mother!” he said sharply. “In God’s name, why have you played this rotten game with life? Didn’t my father send you any money? Or his relatives? All those Fleming people?”

“Not a penny,” said his mother. “I wouldn’t take it from them. How could I touch their money, after their harshness, their cruelty, their snobbishness? I had a little pride of my own, though precious little else.”

She spoke angrily, in remembrance of old feuds or insults. Even now pride leapt into her eyes at these memories.

“Whose fault was it?” asked the boy. “Why did you have to leave my father? Is that another secret, Mother?”

He spoke with a harsh irony, for the first time in his life, to this woman who was his mother, whom he had worshipped.

She paled under his searching eyes, and made a little tragic gesture. She would not tell him the truth, even now. Not all the truth. Not a word about the father who had come back.

“We needn’t go into that, Stephen. Not to-night. And it’s ancient history, anyhow. Fifteen years ago, after three years of quarrelling, tears, misery. Not all my fault, anyhow, though I was a little fool, up to the eyes in vanity and self-conceit. But not really bad, though your father thought so, and drove me to—despair.”

Stephen rose from his chair and strode about the room, with his hands thrust in his side-pockets.

“Stephen,” said his mother, “you look like that father of yours in one of his black moods. Are you shocked at my wickedness?”

“It was a rotten game,” said the boy. “Rotten all through. But it’s been rough luck on you. I see that all right. I’m not blaming you. If only you had told me before! I might have tried to earn some money—as an office-boy, anything, to keep us honest.”

Mrs. Fleming’s voice broke a little.

“I played the game for your sake, my dear. Every time I won I thought, ‘That will give my boy a better chance!’ Every time I lost I thought, ‘What will happen to Sylvia and Stephen? How can I save them from squalor and wretchedness, my genius Stephen, my exquisite Sylvia?’ ”

The boy spoke roughly again, impetuously.

“What’s to be done now? Have you lost everything, more or less?”

“Rather more than less,” his mother answered, with a pitiful laugh.

She rose from her chair and went to the windows and looked down at Monte Carlo with its clustered lights—that little city of enchantment, as it looked. She stood there by the open verandah. Presently she turned, and spoke in a voice of anguish.

“Sonny, things are looking rather bad, I’m afraid. I’m drowned in debt down there. Unless the luck turns again——”

She seemed on the edge of a breakdown, ready to weep, but rallied, by a painful effort of self-control, for the boy’s sake.

“I think I had better go to bed, Stephen. I’m tired out. Perhaps things will look brighter in the morning.”

“They may look worse,” he answered gloomily.

She kissed him on the forehead and said, “Cheer up, my dear. There’s bound to be a way out.”

Stephen heard her bedroom door close, gently, and for a little while, standing there motionless as she had left him, listened to her moving about, opening the oak cupboard where she kept her dresses, shifting a chair on the polished boards before her dressing-table—dear familiar sounds which he had liked to hear while sitting up alone reading or drawing, after she had gone to bed, as an assurance of her presence near at hand, so close that he could answer her call if she needed him. To-night it was different. That conversation with his mother had closed down all that history of boyhood with its careless faith in established things—its happy-go-lucky belief in the truth of appearances—his mother’s laughter, the sunshine of life, the good game of their wandering habits. His mother’s laughter had been but a mask to hide her anxieties, her fears, her nerve-racking adventures on the edge of a precipice over which ruin lay in wait for all of them. Beneath the sunshine of their life she must have been conscious always of black shadows creeping about her when luck was out—felt their cold touch and terror. Neither he nor Sylvia had guessed at her mode of life. They had taken everything for granted, with only vague wonderings, an occasional sense of uneasiness. Even now Sylvia knew nothing. She was down there in the city of Carnival, dancing with that American in fancy-dress, in a laughing crowd with false noses and toy balloons; while he was aware of the tragedy of life which had been revealed to him by the mother upon whose essential and absolute goodness his faith in life had been built. Now something had broken in him. That faith, the ideal image of his mother’s beauty, his adoration. Of course, he didn’t blame her; that was absurd. She had done it all for his sake and Sylvia’s. But he was sorry, frightfully sorry. Those debts! Those unpaid bills! They were worst of all. Somehow he must find work to pay those things off, and put things straight. Never again could he let his mother enter one of those damnable casinos with their wheels of luck. Not if they had to live in the direst misery. He would have to tell Sylvia; he would tell her to-night, Carnival or no Carnival. Like himself, she would have to face up to realities, the cold truth of things. And she had the pluck all right. She was dead straight, was Sylvia, and full of spirit.

The boy looked at his wrist-watch and went into his bedroom. He would have to hurry to dine with the Harveys and get his dancing partner. He had promised to go in fancy-dress. What mockery it was! He gave a queer harsh laugh as he took out his clothes—the costume of a Spanish troubadour. The splendour had gone out of it.

Well, there would have to be an end of all this nonsense and make-believe. No more sketching expeditions and mountain-climbing. He would have to go into an office for a weekly wage, and keep his mother honest, if he could.

She called to him from the next room.

“Are you going, Stephen?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Come and say good night before you go.”

He went to her room, moodily. She was already in bed, and as he bent to kiss her, she pulled his head down and held it in her arms.

“Sonny! Sonny!”

Something broke in him, and he cried a little like a small boy after the breaking of a priceless treasure.

“I’m not so wicked as you think,” she said. “I’m not all bad, Stephen. Love me a little. Your poor old mother!”

“It’s because I love you such a lot,” he said, and then went from her to the door.

“You’ll be all right when I’m gone?” he asked, trying to hide the tears in his eyes.

“Don’t worry about me. Have a good time. Keep up the Carnival spirit, my dear!”

He laughed, miserably.

“Curse the Carnival!” he said. “It’s only make-believe. Life underneath is all rotten.... Well, I’ll be back when Sylvia gets tired. Somewhere about two, I guess.”

“Later, if you like,” said Mrs. Fleming. “Let Sylvia have a good time—while it lasts. You won’t wake me if you’re quiet when you come in.”

She kissed her hand to him as he went out of her room, looking older than the boy who had greeted her with a “Cheerio!” that afternoon.