Читать книгу Woman in Ambush - Rex Beach - Страница 9

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THOUGH RONNIE was an unusually intelligent young man, contrary to his father’s belief he had never given much thought to the “facts of life”; women, considered as females of the species, had never interested him. Since that side of his nature had lain dormant he attached no particular meaning to Madame Rondo’s evident fondness for his company. The part she took in his affairs seemed to him no more than an evidence of friendship. He found himself often in her company and it pleased his boyish vanity to go to the races with her or to be seen riding in her handsome carriage. Imperceptibly she began to exercise a sort of proprietorship over him; she made him her confidant and that, too, was flattering. He was aware, of course, that she enjoyed a certain reputation and that the better people of the city did not recognize her, but that in itself lent her distinction of a sort and he considered himself lucky to enjoy the friendship of such a powerful personage. Indeed there were men of real standing in New Orleans who would have given much to find themselves in his shoes.

This growing intimacy worried Jim Larkin and he spoke guardedly to his young friend but Ronnie could not bring himself to take the warning seriously. Madame Angela was an old woman, so he declared; she was at least forty! Furthermore she had a mustache and she smoked tobacco! Cigars. That proved she was more of a man than a woman.

As a matter of fact, Ronnie replied, she was hardheaded and practical and immersed completely in her own affairs, and if she felt any sentiment whatever toward him it was maternal. The very idea of anything like that was more than repugnant to the speaker. It was rather—sickening.

“All right,” Jim said. “Her bust is in the forties, too; she don’t have to go swimming to prove that she’s no gentleman. Nero’s mother, Aggie, was a schemer, like her, and the best businesswoman of her time.”

“You mean Agrippina.”

“I know more about hardheaded women than most guys, even if my knowledge is second hand. Nero picked another hellcat in Poppy Sabina. What a gal she turned out to be! She wasn’t the marrying kind, either, but she took Nero like he was a farmer’s son. If Madame Angela ain’t the reincarnation of some dame like that, then she should have lived in those times. Any woman who can run a town like New Orleans could have bagged herself a job as queen when I was in Rome.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Ronnie admitted. “She isn’t a model of womanly virtue. Nevertheless she has done a good deal for me. I’m not concerned with her moral character, but she has something to talk about and that’s more than I can say about girls of my own age.”

“How’s about Madcap Maizie the Frightened Fugitive? She peeled you.”

“It showed what a fool I was,” Ronnie confessed. “Presumably I still am a fool or I wouldn’t be here in New Orleans. But I learned something from Maizie. I told Madame Angela about her and it gave her a good laugh.”

“Humph!” Jim continued to frown. “I didn’t know she could laugh. You must have softened her up.”

An incident occurred not long after which showed Ronnie that Madame Angela was not quite so masculine as he considered her and that she possessed some of the frailties common to other women. One was vanity, a fierce pride in her appearance and a deadly fear of suffering an injury to it.

Madame was entertaining some of her political associates at one of the famous restaurants in the French Quarter. Ronnie was her escort. Her other male guests were men familiar to him by reputation; the women they brought with them certainly had none. They were young and lovely and they were dressed almost as elaborately as their flamboyant hostess. Ronnie rather suspected that Madame had supplied these beauties herself and that they were as much a part of the entertainment as the other delicacies she had provided. He realized that he was not in the best and most respectable society and that this midnight party would not be chronicled in the local newspapers. All the same, it was a novel experience and he felt it was something of a distinction to be seated at the same table with so many political bigwigs. Actually the courtesy with which they treated him was an indication of their respect for Madame Angela. Ronnie wondered what his father would say if he ever heard of this affair. Well, it was another adventure and as entertaining in its way as any that had befallen him. This was life with a capital L, the boy felt.

Madame Angela, who never did anything by halves, had provided extravagantly for her guests. The food was prepared elaborately and in ways unfamiliar to Ronnie and although he drank nothing but water he assumed that the wines were of the rarest vintage.

The serving of café brulot was something of a ceremony in these New Orleans French restaurants and it was a novelty to Ronnie. He watched fascinated as the huge metal brulot bowl was brought in and ignited. When the restaurant lights were dimmed and the headwaiter stirred the blazing brandy with his ladle, Ronnie half turned in his chair to observe the procedure.

The small table at which these rites were performed stood directly back of Madame Rondo and that accounted for the incident which followed.

Some vagrant draft from an open door or window provoked what might have been a tragedy. Unexpectedly the blue flames flared out and ignited a filmy scarf which hung carelessly over the back of Madame Angela’s chair. Instantly the lacy trimming of her evening gown and the drooping plumes in her hair likewise caught fire. In a fraction of a second she became a pillar of flame. It all happened with the suddenness of an explosion.

Confusion followed, women screamed, men shouted, there was the scrape and crash of overturned chairs and the sound of breaking china. Madame’s guests and the nearby diners leaped to their feet. Then, almost as swiftly as the blaze had started, it was extinguished, for Ronnie had been the first to realize what had happened and the first to act. He moved like lightning. Fortunately, within arm’s reach of him was a table at which two people were dining. Seizing the tablecloth, he snatched it from between them with such a sudden and forceful jerk that only a few of the dishes went with it. Then, in the same movement, he flung it over Madame’s head and shoulders. This dexterous maneuver completely enveloped her; roughly he took her in his arms, hugging, rolling, and patting her until the flames were smothered.

When he removed the cloth, she was pallid, frightened and disheveled; her plumes were crushed over her ears; the trimmings of her gown were singed, her eyebrows and her long lashes were gone. Otherwise she appeared to be unhurt.

It had all happened in a moment but the resulting commotion was slow in subsiding. The proprietor of the establishment came on the run, bleating apologies and hurling shrill imprecations at all of his employees. Patrons stood up and some mounted their chairs to see over the heads of Madame’s guests, who surrounded her. The victim of the accident was all but hysterical and, as she realized how narrow was the margin by which she had escaped serious injury, her agitation increased.

One of her guests turned to Ronnie, saying, “Allow me to congratulate you on your presence of mind, Mr. Le Grand.”

“Yes, and his quickness, too,” said another. “Why, Angela, he’s quicker than a cat. If he’d been half a second slower—”

“Ronnie!” Madame cried out. “Take me home. Get me out of here before I faint.”

They brought her wraps and hastened to obey her wishes. It was obvious that the party was over.

Even after Ronnie had helped her into her carriage and the horses were racing homeward, she continued to moan and complain. He assured her that she was unhurt; at most that her skin might be a little blistered.

“Maybe so. I don’t know. I can’t tell yet. But, I have a horror of being disfigured, scarred. It has been a nightmare to me all my life. Sometimes I wake up screaming. It’s the one thing I’m afraid of. I can feel those flames now—”

She uttered a cry and tried to smother it with her hands. Her body was shaking. She leaned against Ronnie and whimpered like a frightened child. He had never seen a woman in such an acute state of nerves.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Next afternoon Ronnie called at Madame Angela’s house to present his compliments and to inquire about her condition. With him he brought a box of long stemmed roses. A Negress in a turban, who spoke a patois he couldn’t understand, smiled on him and insisted that he enter. It was evident that he was expected.

The Rondo residence was old and roomy, and its architecture was in harmony with the other houses in this part of the city. Across its front, flush with the street, ran an elaborate balcony of lacy ironwork, either imported from France generations earlier or fabricated by a pioneer Louisiana foundry. The wide, tiled entrance hall led to a sunny patio at the rear filled with flowers and shrubs; the rooms flanking this passageway had evidently been used for business purposes, in accordance with the thrifty Creole custom of former times. Here no doubt had been laid the foundations for the family fortune.

Above the ground floor the premises were a revelation to Ronnie. They indicated that the owner lived in something more than mere luxury and could indulge her lightest whim, regardless of expense. In the wide upper hallway or gallery there were many paintings, tapestries, exquisite Venetian mirrors, and other objects of art. Through the double doors of a handsomely furnished dining room, he caught the glitter of silver and the sheen of dark, polished furniture, richly carved. But the living room, where the Negress left him standing lor a few moments, fairly took his breath. A spacious room, it was crowded, indeed overfilled with gold and ivory chairs and couches. There were not one or two but several inlaid cabinets ornamented with gilt bronze figures of cupids and flute-playing fauns or satyrs. At each end of the room was an elaborate console. He noticed several Boule tables, the finest he had ever seen. Each item in this haphazard collection appeared to be connoisseur’s prize, and the twin chandeliers, dripping with crystal pendants, might have been looted from Versailles. The place was more like an auctioneer’s showroom than a salon, and Ronnie wondered if it reflected the usual Creole taste or merely indicated the greedy, acquisitive nature of its owner.

The Negro parlormaid spoke to him from the doorway and led him to Madame Rondo’s bedroom. It could not be called a dainty boudoir. The walls and ceiling were painted black and the furniture was massive and somber. Heavy draperies at the windows practically shut out the sunlight.

Madame Angela, clad in a voluminous black lace negligee, lay propped up in her bed—and what a bed it was! Her caller had never seen anything like it.

“Hello, Ronnie!” She extended her hand, exposing a plump but shapely arm bare to the shoulder. “So many have sent flowers and messages, but I knew you would stop by in person, so I left word to be on the lookout for you.”

In answer to his inquiry, she confessed that she suffered merely from effects of nervous shock; actually her worst injury had been the singeing of the long dark lashes of which she was proud. Again she mentioned her horror of being maimed. To his considerable embarrassment, she thanked him effusively once more for saving her from that catastrophe.

As his eyes became accustomed to the gloom, he surveyed the bedroom with curiosity. It was the sort of chamber in which he could picture some old French seigneur but certainly not a woman. The bed, in particular, was wholly incongruous and heavy; it was an enormous four-poster, the largest he had ever seen. Its handsome, polished columns supported a huge, canopied tester; the thing reminded him of a barge of state or a massive tomb.

Four-posters had always looked to him like dead mules lying on their backs; this one had the proportions of a defunct elephant. And yet it was undeniably handsome. He asked permission to examine it and Madame Rondo told him to draw back the window drapes.

“I’m like an owl,” she explained. “I hunt at night and I hate daylight.”

“It’s a pity to hide a genuine Seignouret bed, especially one with wood like this,” he told her. “It must be worth a fortune.”

“I presume it is; anyhow it has been in my family a long while. But what is a Seignouret?”

“Francois Seignouret. He was born in France and came here about 1810 so that bed must be pretty old. He always autographed his pieces. There is the initial S worked into the scroll on the headboard. It’s on the chairs and the dressing table and—”

“You know all about everything, don’t you?” Madame inquired. “Everything except love and women. I watched you with those girls last night at the restaurant. Weren’t you interested in any of them?”

Ronnie shook his head. “Not greatly. I don’t know much about girls, but I do know something about old paintings, old furniture, old silver, and such things. I guess I skipped the romantic age, anyhow I haven’t fallen in love yet. I was too busy with books.”

“And I skipped the books,” Madame confessed. “I don’t believe there is one in the house except journals and daybooks and ledgers. I’ve studied them all right. Maybe I’d like books. Maybe you’ll bring one along someday and read it to me. Will you? I’d love to have you read to me.”

He saw that her dark eyes were fixed upon him and that they were aglow. Somehow they reminded him of the eyes of a cat. Cats are nocturnal; they are luxury-loving creatures and their eyes glow in the darkness. Madame was a sort of black panther, he thought.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Jimmy the Lark was worried. He was nervous sitting alone in his room one night a little later. Nervousness, he claimed, is the result of tension and tension starts in the feet. “Cows and horses have stiff feet and their legs are stiff, too,” he said. “Elephants are different; there is no tension in an elephant. The same applies to monkeys. Monkeys have feet like hands and whoever heard of a worried monkey? The human foot is full of bones, and nerves, too. When it is loose and pliable, so is the owner. When a man’s feet stiffen up like hoofs, the nerves are squeezed and they begin to scream. That’s rheumatism.”

Whenever the Lark felt a lessening in his sense of wellbeing, either mental or physical, he took off his shoes and went to work on Rover and Butch. He manipulated them vigorously; he twisted them and he wrung them out; he put them through a course of sprouts.

Tonight he placed a Derby hat on the floor and scattered a handful of marbles broadcast. He picked them up, one by one, in his toes; then, walking on the sides of his feet, he carried them to the hat and dropped them in. It was an exercise which he asserted stimulated his brain, improved his circulation, and brought a tingle to his psyche. It was too bad this discovery could not be patented.

Having scattered and collected the marbles several times, he practiced with short lead pencil stubs. It was late, and he was in his nightshirt, of course. He even picked up his violin bow with the toes of his right foot and sawed it back and forth. He spoke aloud to his left foot, saying,

“Butch, if that big toe of yours was a thumb, I could play the fiddle with my feet. That’s more than Nero could do.”

He heard quick footsteps in the hall; the hall door of the room opened so violently that it banged against the wall; and Ronnie lurched in. He was hatless, disheveled; he was breathing heavily and his face was streaming with sweat. More startling, however, was the expression upon it; he looked terrified, hunted.

“What’s wrong?” the older man asked quickly. “Is the Law after you?”

“No. I—I’m sick, I guess, or crazy. I ran all the way back.” The speaker flung himself into a chair and took his head between his hands, but the next instant he was on his feet again. “I must be drunk or drugged. I can’t think straight and I’m burning up inside. My guts are afire. I can’t sit still and I can’t—”

“I’ll get a doctor,” Jim offered, but the boy vehemently vetoed this suggestion. “No! No! I’d have to tell him what ails me and everything that happened. I tried to outrun it, leave it behind me, but I couldn’t.”

“Leave what behind?”

Instead of answering, Ronnie made his way blindly into the bathroom, turned on the tap, and splashed water into his face.

“I’m better than I was. I’ll fight it out but—don’t leave me. I’ll tell you everything as soon as I can but I couldn’t tell a stranger.”

“Is it about Rondo?”

The boy nodded. He seemed willing, almost eager to talk but his agitation was so deep seated that the story refused to come. He was strangely hesitant, almost incoherent. Now and then his voice failed utterly, as if terror had dried it up or as if he lacked the courage to put his thoughts into words. Meanwhile, there was no doubt that he had suffered a physical distress as painful as his emotional turmoil. Jim was alarmed and mystified, too, but there was little he could do. “You went to her house for dinner, didn’t you?”

“Yes. My God! That house! It’s a—a glorified brothel.”

“Who else was there?”

“Nobody. I was the only guest. We were alone. She was all right at first, only she acted a little strange, I thought, but later on—” The speaker shivered; he shook himself as if to free his mind of some unbearable memory.

“Honestly, Jim! She went into a—a sort of delirium. So did I, for that matter. Something came over me, too. I must have gone out of my head.”

“Go on. I’m beginning to understand. Take it easy, kid. Start at the beginning.”

“Well, it was a wonderful dinner and I felt rather set up at being there alone with her.”

“What did you drink?”

“Nothing. There was everything to choose from and of course she helped herself.”

“What did you have to eat?”

“Oh, everything. It was a feast, I tell you, and just what you’d expect from her. Strange Creole dishes, all highly seasoned. There was soup, fish, game, salad, pastries—”

“What kind of game?” Jim demanded. “Birds?”

Ronnie nodded. “Little birds. Snipe, I guess. They were mighty good.”

Larkin uttered a sound and moved across the floor, his nightshirt flapping about his ankles.

“All right! Then what?”

“After a while—I mean some time after dinner was over, I began to feel queer. Awfully queer. At first I was exhilarated, then I seemed to take fire inside. I couldn’t sit still and I had the wildest thoughts. I was ashamed of them. I told her I was sick and I’d have to go home. The servants were gone by that time so she offered to get something for me. After a while she called me from her bedroom and I went in there.”

Again the speaker fell silent while he wrestled with himself. “I don’t recall things clearly from there on. It was dark but her eyes glowed, Jim. She was like a—a maniac. She reminded me of a big black panther . . . in heat. She had her arms around me. She was kissing me. That perfume of hers made it all the worse. She’s an old woman, Jim—a monstrous old hag, old enough to be my mother. She’s soft and flabby; her lips are loose and wet. Nothing I could do or say had the slightest effect. The trouble is I was nearly out of my head, too.”

“And no wonder! She had you drugged.”

“I remember finally she began cursing me. You’ve no idea, Jim! That was when I tore myself away from her. I could hear her scream curses at me all the way downstairs.”

“Never mind any more right now,” Larkin told him. “That was a rough deal for a kid like you. You’re altogether different from other boys of your age but she didn’t have the sense to know that, You must not let it hurt you. The stuff she gave you is wearing off and it’ll be gone by-and-by. You must hang onto yourself and sweat it out. Take it easy, Ronnie. Tomorrow we’ll have to make some plans and make ’em fast.”