Читать книгу The Stalking-Horse - Рафаэль Сабатини - Страница 7

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The news of the Earl of Lochmore's death was conveyed to his Countess by her kinsman, Glenleven, who, with great tact, came dressed in mourning for the occasion. Also he was aware that black became his slight supple figure and contrasted effectively with his fifty-guinea blond periwig.

He came prepared to offer consolation, but the young widow evinced no immediate overwhelming need of it. True, she went white and limp, and sat down abruptly under the shock of the tragic news. True, she shed a tear or two. But they were of a grief less passionate than had been Burke's. Her pity was chiefly concerned with the futility of her lord's end. Had he fallen in battle, or had his life otherwise been given to profit the cause, her sorrow would have been of a different order, full of reverence, and Lochmore's memory would have remained sacred to her. But he had died as he had lived, in no loftier cause than that of his blundering vanity and aggressiveness. Since he had never learnt, and never could have learnt, how to conduct his life, such a man was better at rest.

The news came at a time that was full of other preoccupations for one who was as stout and enterprising a champion as her ladyship of the exiled King. The disaster to the French Fleet that was to have convoyed the transports bringing over the army of invasion, and the brilliant affair of La Hogue had inflicted a cruel disappointment upon those Jacobites who, secretly armed, had been awaiting the signal for the insurrection. Despair had stilled their rising insolence. They made haste to bury their weapons and to hold their tongues. Further to repress them there had been some arrests, and these by a broadminded government that practised lenity as a matter of policy.

There remained, however, a gallant band which rejected pessimism, maintained a patient fortitude and kept its eyes confidently upon the future. Glenleven, so newly converted from his Whig sympathies had, after the fashion of converts, flung himself so passionately into Jacobitism that he was perhaps the most prominent in this band. His stout courage in that autumn of '92, his constant assertion that steadfastness of purpose must in the end prevail, was an inestimable source of strength to her ladyship. It enheartened her to persevere in spite of set-backs in the work of political sapping and mining which she had made her own.

Nor was it only on political grounds that she and Glenleven were associated. When the period of mourning retirement which the decencies dictated was at an end, she availed herself of the offices of her kinsman and was to be seen with him in public, at court, at the playhouse, in the park, and elsewhere.

Despite their close kinship Glenleven wooed her with a devotion obvious to all but herself. A man who hitherto had led something of a gay life, who was accounted, in fact, something of a rake, and classed by the puritanical with that elegant, accomplished profligate, Tom Wharton, he became suddenly a model of sobriety and circumspection in his habits, confined his gambling within harmless limits and forsook gallantry entirely.

Common report perceived calculation in this. But to the malice of the world of fashion that was inevitable. Because Glenleven's past bold play and general libertinism was known sorely to have reduced his never very considerable fortune, and because the beautiful and stately young widow was known to have been left handsomely endowed, it was assumed that his present circumspection was strategic. To confirm this it was erroneously assumed by some that Ian Macdonald's life was all that stood between his sister Ailsa and the possession of the broad acres of Invernaion. And Ian Macdonald's life did not promise to be a very long one, considering that already there was a price of two thousand pounds placed by the government upon information that would lead to his arrest.

They were not aware, those malevolent gossips, that Glenleven had wooed his kinswoman with the infinitely greater directness of an avowed ardour in Lochmore's lifetime, when there could have been no mercenary ends to serve. But then, had they known it, they would have said that this was no more than in harmony with habits which left the daughter, sister or wife of no friend immune from his pursuit. From the world's irresponsibly malicious tongues there is no security.

Nothing of all this, however, reached the ears of Glenleven. Again like that Tom Wharton, between whom and himself so many parallels were drawn, Glenleven could take care of himself too well sword in hand to make men careless of words uttered in his hearing. Serenely, then, he went his devoted, reformed ways, always at hand when her ladyship might need him, be it as escort, as counsellor, or as political confederate. In addition his presence did her the inestimable if unperceived service of holding aloof those other gallants who had been assiduous in her husband's lifetime, and, but for Glenleven, would have been more assiduous now.

At last, towards the end of the year, Glenleven opined that he had long enough practised reserve, and that the time had come to claim the reward of so much self-denying devotion.

He had supped with her ladyship on the eve of Christmas, and they had passed into the library, which was ever her favourite room. It was a spacious chamber, panelled in rich, dark walnut, in hue akin to that of the tooled calf bindings that along one side of it completely filled the shelves. For Lochmore's father had been possessed of an affectation of scholarship, and he had assembled and displayed here the outward signs of an inwardly absent grace of mind. His portrait by Lely, the only picture in the room, gazed down from its place above the overmantel, a dour, dark, puritanical visage, with the prominent nose and obstinate chin which his son had inherited. Tall windows, now concealed behind heavy velvet curtains of a golden brown, overlooked the garden and the water-gate, giving access to the river.

The room that night was at once warm and fragrant, from the cedar logs blazing on the wide hearth. These provided also, by her ladyship's wish, the only present light. It was snug and pleasant thus in that mellow chamber of which the leaping flames revealing much, left more in mysterious shadow. Its sheltering luxury was stressed by the moaning of the snow-laden wind outside.

Lady Lochmore in the depths of a winged armchair directly faced the blaze. Glenleven stood beside and a little behind her, leaning on the edge of the chair's tall back. The mellow setting and the mellow moment seemed to him appropriate. This, he felt, was his hour.

Bending over her, he broke, abruptly but softly, that spell of languorous silence.

"Ailsa, my dear! How long now has it been within your knowledge that I worship you?"

She did not stir, and from where he stood he could not see her face. But when presently she answered him, her tone held little promise of any responsive tenderness.

"I remember that you used to distress me with the avowal."

"At least, it need not distress you now. Now that you are free to listen."

"If you had waited until now to say it, I might listen less unwillingly."

"Can the torrent wait when the snows above are melting in the sun?"

"We are poetical."

"Why should we not be? It is the proper language of deep emotion, and—God knows—not inconsistent with deep sincerity."

She laughed a little, very softly "How often has that sentence done duty already, Jamie? The melting snow, the torrent and the sun? How often have you rehearsed it?"

"Cruel! Why will you mock me?"

"It is not mockery to ask a plain question."

"If you so ask it, I must disdain to answer. I have said that I love you."

"You do not understand, Jamie. Had you not said it at a time when to say it approached insult..."

"Insult!" he cried out in horror, interrupting her.

"To an honest woman who has a husband, and who has made no sign to invite such an avowal, the assumption that it could be welcome is an assumption of her frailty. Is there no insult in that?"

He sighed. "Shall we leave the past?"

"It will not leave us, Jamie. It remains always, to be a part of the present. Had you not made love to me then, when to hope that I would listen was to hope that I was a wanton, I should hear you less mistrustfully now."

"You overstate that past," he complained, in distressed impatience. "You forget that you were a woman unhappily married."

"Oh, no, Jamie. I don't forget it. Nor that you were famed as a consoler of unhappy wives. You regarded them as your legitimate prey. No doubt you still do. We do not readily forsake our habits, and I should know little peace or happiness with a husband who had those."

"Ailsa, your words are killing me. Since I have known you, I have lived for you. No other woman has been in my dreams."

"Not in your dreams, perhaps. But dare you tell me how many there have been in your waking hours?"

He let his arms fall heavily to his sides in an expression of despair. "It is the eve of Christmas..." he was beginning, when again with laughter in her voice she cut him short.

"Oh, yes, I know. The season of goodwill." She rose, and turned fully to face him, a slim graceful silhouette against the firelight, her face provokingly in shadow. She held out her hands to him. "Let there be goodwill between us, Jamie. But no more talk of love, save such as should link two cousins. I have been married once, and God knows it was a dismal experience. Then I could not help myself. Now that I am free again I prize my freedom. I will never barter it except for the utter certainty of happiness. That certainty, Jamie, you do not offer me."

He had taken the hands she proffered, and he tightened now his grip of them.

"What can I do to prove you wrong?"

"Nothing, Jamie. For nothing would prevail against my knowledge of you."

"Ailsa!" His melodious voice trembled with emotion. The firelight flickering on his narrow face revealed in it an anguish of supplication. "Ailsa!" He sought to draw her to him, but she resisted, laughing ever a little in her determination not to allow the scene to assume too serious a note. Fearing to annoy her, he abandoned the attempt; but he still clung to her hands. He was very humble. "Ailsa, I understand. I see the prejudice against me. I have only the folly of my past to blame. But do not doom me to suffer all my life for that. Remember that a man needs inspiration to rise above the nature with which he is endowed. In you, my dear, I have found that inspiration, and since I found it my life has been ordered as you would have it. I will not press you now. But I want you to know that I shall continue so to order it. And this whether I am ultimately to win you or not. This because I cannot now hold myself. You are so much to me, my Ailsa, that I could not do otherwise."

The deep sincerity of his tone, and that musical moving voice, touched her senses if not her reason. Long afterwards she admitted that he had won with her in that moment an advantage which, if he had pressed it, might have broached the ramparts she had reared about herself. But his experience, although wide, did not run along these lines, and the sincerity that at last had entered into him made him falter.

She was so desirable as she stood before him there, so much a woman whose possession must fill a man with pride that he could take where she was concerned none of the gamester's risks, over which in the case of another he would never have hesitated.

Having spoken, he stood there, silent and still, like one who for the moment has no more to say. This silence endured some little time.

It became almost unnatural. Then, still without speaking, she gently disengaged her hands from his grasp, uttered a little sigh, and resumed her seat.

"Ring for light, Jamie," she said, in her even, friendly voice. "And bid Angus bring the punch."