Читать книгу Bella Donna - Robert Hichens - Страница 8

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Mrs. Chepstow's sitting-room at the Savoy was decorated with pink and green in pale hues which suited well her present scheme of colour. In it there was a little rosewood piano. Upon that piano's music-desk, on the following day, stood a copy of Elgar's "Dream of Gerontius," open at the following words:

"Proficiscere, anima Christiana, de hoc mundo! Go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul! Go from this world!"

Scattered about the room were The Nineteenth Century and After, The Quarterly Review, the Times, and several books; among them Goethe's "Faust," Maspero's "Manual of Egyptian Archæology," "A Companion to Greek Studies," Guy de Maupassant's "Fort Comme la Mort," D'Annunzio's "Trionfo della Morte," and Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter." There was also a volume of Emerson's "Essays." In a little basket under the writing-table lay the last number of The Winning Post, carefully destroyed. There were a few pink roses in a vase. In a cage some canary-birds were singing. The furniture had been pulled about by a clever hand until the room had lost something of its look of a room in a smart hotel. The windows were wide open on to the balcony. They dominated the Thames Embankment, and a light breeze from the water stirred the white and green curtains that framed them.

Into this pretty and peacefully cheerful chamber Nigel Armine was shown by a waiter at five o'clock precisely, and left with the promise that Mrs. Chepstow should be informed of his arrival.

When the door had closed behind the German waiter's back, Nigel stood for a moment looking around him. This was the first visit he had paid to Mrs. Chepstow. He sought for traces of her personality in this room in which she lived. He thought it looked unusually cosy for a room in an hotel, although he did not discover, as Isaacson would have discovered in a moment, that the furniture had been deftly disarranged. His eyes roved quickly: no photographs, no embroideries, one or two extra cushions, birds, a few perfect roses, a few beautifully bound books, the windows widely opened to let the air stream in. And there was an open piano! He went over to it and bent down.

"Proficiscere, anima Christiana, de hoc mundo! Go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul! Go from this world!"

So she loved "Gerontius," that intimate musical expression of the wonder and the strangeness of the Soul! He did not remember he had told her that he loved it. He stood gazing at the score. The light wind came in from the river far down below, and the curtains made a faint sound as they moved. The canaries chirped intermittently. But Nigel heard the voice of a priest by the side of one who was dying. And as he looked at the chords supporting the notes on which the priest bade the soul of the man return to its Maker, he seemed to hear them, as he had heard them, played by a great orchestra; to feel the mysterious, the terrible, yet beautiful act of dissolution.

He started. He had launched himself into space with the soul. Now, abruptly, he was tethered to earth in the body. Had he not heard the murmur of a dress announcing the coming of its wearer? He looked towards the second door of the room, which opened probably into a bedroom. It was shut, and remained shut. He came away from the piano. What books was she fond of reading! Emerson—optimism in boxing-gloves; Maspero—she was interested, then, in things Egyptian. "Faust"—De Maupassant—D'Annunzio—Hawthorne, "The Scarlet Letter." He took this last book, which was small and bound in white, into his hand. He had known it once. He had read it long ago. Now he opened it, glanced quickly through its pages. Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale—suddenly he remembered the story, the sin of the flesh, the scarlet letter that branded the sin upon the woman's breast while the man went unpunished.

And Mrs. Chepstow had it, bound in white.

"Are you judging my character by my books?"

A warm and careless voice spoke behind him. She had come in and was standing close to him, dressed in white, with a black hat, and holding a white parasol in her hand. In the sunshine she looked even fairer than by night. Her pale but gleaming hair was covered by a thin veil, which she kept down as she greeted Nigel.

"Not judging," he said, as he held her hand for a moment. "Guessing, perhaps, or guessing at."

"Which is it? 'The Scarlet Letter'! I got it a year ago. I read it. And when I had read it, I sent it to be bound in white."

"Why was that?"

"'Though your sin shall be as scarlet,'" she quoted.

He was silent, looking at her.

"Let us have tea."

As she spoke, she went, with her slow and careless walk which Isaacson had noticed, towards the fireplace, and touched the electric bell. Then she sat down on a sofa close to the cage of the canary-birds, and with her back to the light.

"I suppose you are fearfully busy with engagements," she continued, as he came to sit down near her. "Most people are, at this time of year. One ought to be truly grateful for even five minutes of anybody's time. I remember, ages ago, when I was one of the busy ones, I used to expect almost servile thankfulness for any little minute I doled out. How things change!"

She did not sigh, but laughed, and, without giving him time to speak, added:

"Which of my other books did you look at?"

"I saw you had Maspero."

"Oh, I got that simply because I had met you. It turned my mind towards Egypt, which I have never seen, although I've yachted all over the place. Last night, after we had said good night, I couldn't sleep; so I sat here and read Maspero for a while, and thought of your Egyptian life. I didn't mean to be impertinent. One has to think of something."

"Impertinent!"

Her tone, though light, had surely been coloured with apology.

"Well, people are so funny—now. I remember the time when lots of them were foolish in the opposite way. If I thought of them, they seemed to take it as an honour. But then I wasn't thirty-eight, and I was in society."

The German waiter came in with tea. When he had arranged it and gone out, Nigel said, with a certain diffidence:

"I wonder you don't live in the country."

"I know what you mean. But you're wrong. One feels even more out of it there."

She gave him his cup gently, with a movement that implied care for his comfort, almost a thoughtful, happy service.

"The Rector is embarrassed, his wife appalled. The Doctor's 'lady,' much as she longs for one's guineas, tries to stop him even from attending one's dying bed. The Squire, though secretly interested to fervour, is of course a respectable man. He is a 'stay' to country morality, and his wife is a pair of stays. The neighbours respond in their dozens to the mot d'ordre, and there one is plantée, like a lonely white moon encircled by a halo of angry fire. Dear acquaintance, I've tried it. Egypt—Omaha—anything would be better. What are you eating? Have one of these little cakes. They really are good. I ordered them specially for you and our small festivity."

She was smiling as she handed him the plate.

"I should think Egypt would be better!" exclaimed Nigel, with a strength and a vehemence that contrasted almost startlingly with her light, half-laughing tone. "Why don't you go there? Why don't you try the free life?"

"Live among the tribes, like Lady Hester Stanhope in the Lebanon? I'm afraid I could never train myself to wear a turban. Besides, Egypt is fearfully civilized now. Every one goes there. I should be cut all up the Nile."

The brutality of her frankness startled and almost pained him. For a moment, in it he seemed to discern a lack of taste.

"You are right," she said; and suddenly the lightness died away altogether from her voice. "But how is one not to get blunted? And even long ago I always hated pretence. Women are generally pretending. And they are wise. I have never been wise. If I were wise, I should not let you see my lonely, stupid, undignified situation."

Suddenly she turned so that the light from the window fell full upon her, and lifted her veil up over the brim of her hat.

"Nor my face, upon which, of course, must be written all sorts of worries and sorrows. But I couldn't pretend at eighteen, nor can I at thirty-eight. No wonder so many men—the kind of men you meet at your club, at the Marlborough, or the Bachelors', or the Travellers'—call me an 'ass of a woman.' I am an ass of a woman, a little—little—ass."

In saying the very last words all the severity slipped away out of her voice, and as she smiled again and moved her head, emphasizing humorously her own reproach to herself, she looked almost a girl.

"The 'little' applies to my mind, of course, not to my body; or perhaps I ought to say to my soul, instead of to my body."

"No, 'little' would be the wrong adjective for your soul," Nigel said.

Mrs. Chepstow looked touched, and turned once more away from the light, after Nigel had noticed that she looked touched.

"Have you seen your friend, Doctor Isaacson, to-day?" she said, seeming to make an effort in changing the conversation. "I like that man, though usually I dislike Jews because of their love for money. I like him, and somehow I feel as if he had liked me the other night, as if he had felt kindly towards me."

"Isaacson is a splendid fellow. I haven't seen him again. He has been called away by a case. We were to have ridden together this morning, but he sent to say it was impossible. He has gone into the country."

"Will he be away long?"

"I don't know. I hope not. I want him here badly."

"Oh?"

"I mean that he's congenial to me in many ways, and that congenial spirits are rare."

"You must have troops of friends. You are a man's man."

"I don't know. What is a man's man?"

"A man like you."

"And a woman's man?" he asked, drawing his chair a little towards her.

"Every man's man is a woman's man."

"You say you cannot pretend. Cannot you flatter?"

"I can pretend to that extent, and sometimes do. But why should I flatter you? I don't believe you care a bit about it. You love a kindly truth. Who doesn't? I've just told you a kindly truth."

"I should like to tell you some kindly truths," he said.

"I'm afraid there are not many you, or any one else, could tell. I dare say there are one or two, though, for I believe there is in every one of us a little bit—almost infinitesimal, perhaps—of ineradicable good, a tiny flame which no amount of drenching can ever extinguish."

"I know it."

"Oh, but it does want cherishing—cherishing—cherishing all the time, the tiny flame of ineradicable good."

She took his cup quickly, and began to pour out some more tea for him, like one ashamed of an outburst and striving to cover it up by action.

"Bring Doctor Isaacson to see me one day—if he'll come," she said, in a changed, cool voice, the non-committal voice of the trained woman of the world.

He felt that the real woman had for an instant risen to the surface, and had sunk again into the depths of her; that she was almost ashamed of this real, good woman. And he longed to tell her so, to say to her, "Don't be ashamed. Let me see the real woman, the good woman. That is the woman I seek when I am near you." But he did not dare to strike a blow on her reserve.

"I will bring Isaacson," he said, quietly. "I want him to know you really. Why are you smiling?"

"But—I am not smiling!"

Nor was she; and, seeing her quiet gravity and wonder, he was surprised that he had imagined it.

"I must tell you," she said, "that though I took such a fancy to Doctor Isaacson, I don't think he is like you; I don't think he is a psychologist."

"You think me a psychologist?" said Nigel, in very honest surprise.

"Yes, and I'll tell you why, if you'll promise not to be offended."

"Please—please do."

"I think one reads character as much with the eyes of the heart as with the eyes of the brain. You use two pairs of eyes in your reading. But I am not sure that Doctor Isaacson does."

"Why did you ask me not to be offended? You meant to put it differently. And you would have been right. Isaacson is a brilliant man, and I am not. But he has as much heart as I, although he has so much more brain than I. And the stronger each is, the better for a man."

"But the brain—oh, it has such a tendency to overshadow, to browbeat the heart. In its strength it so often grows arrogant. The juste milieu—I think you have it. Be content, and never let your brain cry out for more, lest your heart should have to put up with less."

"You think too well of me," he said; "much too well."

She leaned forward over the tea-table and looked at him closely, with the peculiar scrutiny of one so strongly concentrated upon the matter in hand as to be absolutely unself-conscious.

"I wonder if I do," she said; and he felt as if she were trying to drag the very heart out of him and to see how it was beating. "I wonder if I do."

She relaxed her muscles, which had been tense, and leaned back, letting her right hand, which for a moment had grasped the edge of the table, drop down on to her lap.

"It may be so. I do think well of you. That is certain. And I'm afraid I think very often badly of men. And yet I do try to judge fairly, and not only to put on the black cap because of my own unfortunate experiences. There are such splendid men—but there are such utter brutes. You must know that. And yet I doubt if a man ever knows how good, or how bad, another man can be. Perhaps one must be a woman thoroughly to know a man—man, the beast and the angel."

"I dare say that is true."

He spoke almost with conviction. For all the time he had been with her he had been companioned by a strange, unusual feeling of being understood, of having the better part of him rightly appraised, and even too greatly appreciated. And this feeling had warmed his mind and heart almost as a generous wine warms the body.

"I'm sure it is true."

He put down his cup. Suddenly there had come to him the desire to go away, to be alone. He saw the curtains moving gently by the windows, and heard the distant, softened sound of the voices and the traffic of the city. And he thought of the river, and the sunset, and the barges swinging on the hurrying tide, and of the multitudes of eddies in the water. Like those eddies were the thoughts within his mind, the feelings within his heart. Were they not being driven onwards by the current of time, onwards towards the spacious sea of action? Abruptly his heart was invaded by a longing for largeness, a longing that was essential in his nature, but that sometimes lay quiescent, for largeness of view, such as the Bedouin has upon the desert that he loves and he belongs to; largeness of emotion, largeness of action. Largeness was manliness—largeness of thinking and largeness of living. Not the drawing-room of the world, but the desert of the world, with its exquisite oases, was the right place for a man. Yet here he was in a drawing-room. At this moment he longed to go out from it. But he longed also to catch this woman by the hand and draw her out with him. And he remembered how Browning, the poet, had loved a woman who lay always in a shrouded room, too ill to look on the sunshine or breathe the wide airs of the world; and how he carried her away and took her to the peaks of the Apennines. The mere thought of such a change in a life was like a cry of joy.

"What is it?" said Mrs. Chepstow, surprised at the sudden radiance in Nigel's face, seeing before her for the first time a man she could not read, but a man whose physique now forcibly appealed to her—seemed to become splendid under some inward influence, as a half-naked athlete's does when he slowly fills his lungs, clenches his fists, and hardens all his muscles. "What is it?"

But he did not tell her. He could not tell her. And he got up to go away. As he passed the piano, he looked again at the score of "The Dream of Gerontius."

"Are you fond of that?" he asked her.

"What? Oh—'Gerontius'"

She let her eyes rest for a brief instant on his face.

"I love it. It carries me away—as the soul is carried away by the angel. 'This child of clay to me was given'—do you remember?"

"Yes."

He bade her good-bye. The last thing he looked at in her room was "The Scarlet Letter," bound in white, lying upon her table. And he glanced from it to her before he went out and shut the door.

Just outside in the corridor he met a neatly dressed French girl, whose eyes were very red. She had evidently been crying long and bitterly. She carried over her arm the skirt of a gown, and she went into the room which communicated with Mrs. Chepstow's sitting-room.

"Poor girl!" thought Nigel. "I wonder what's the matter with her."

He went on down the corridor to the lift, descended, and made his way to the Thames Embankment.

When the door shut behind him, Mrs. Chepstow remained standing for a minute near the piano, waiting, like one expectant of a departing guest's return. But Nigel did not come back to say any forgotten, final word. Presently she realized that she was safely alone, and she went to the piano, sat down, and struck the chords which supported the notes on which the priest dismissed the soul. But she only played them for a moment. Then, taking the music off the stand and throwing it on the floor, she began to play a Spanish dance, lascivious, alluring, as full of the body as the music of Elgar is full of the soul. And she played it very well, as well, almost, as a hot-blooded girl of Seville could have danced it. As she drew near the end, she heard a sound in the adjoining room, and she stopped abruptly and called out:

"Henriette!"

There was no reply.

"Henriette!" Mrs. Chepstow called again.

The door of the bedroom opened, and the French girl with red eyes appeared.

"Why don't you answer when I speak to you? How long have you been there?"

"Two or three minutes, madame," said the girl, in a low voice.

"Did you meet any one in the corridor?"

"Yes, madame, a gentleman."

"Coming from here?"

"Yes, madame."

"Did he see you?"

"Naturally, madame."

"I mean—to notice you?"

"I think he did, madame."

"And did he see you go into my room—with those eyes?"

"Yes, madame."

An angry frown contracted Mrs. Chepstow's forehead, and her face suddenly became hard and looked almost old.

"Heavens!" she exclaimed. "If there is a stupid thing to be done, you are sure to—Go away! go away!"

The maid retreated quickly, and shut the door.

"Idiot!" Mrs. Chepstow muttered.

She knew the value of a last impression.

She went out on to her balcony and looked down to the Embankment, idly watching the traffic, the people walking by.

Although she did not know it, Nigel was among them. He was strolling by the river. He was looking at the sunset. And he was thinking of the poet Browning, and of the woman whom love took from the shrouded chamber and set on the mountain peaks.