Читать книгу Wintersmoon - Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole - Страница 8

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It was very good of the kindly old thing to offer the girls a lift in her four-wheeler. Four-wheelers were now remarkable and even romantic phenomena—you saw them so seldom and were in them simply never! But old Lady Anglish supported the old man with the side whiskers who drove this one, yes, and his whole family! As she explained to Rosalind when they were all settled inside, it wasn't only that she had never been in a motor-car yet and never would, but that Mussel's grandchildren were the sweetest children, and that when she went to see them she knew that there were at least half a dozen human beings in the world who were glad to welcome her.

More people, Rosalind reflected as the cab crept like a sleep-walker over the snow, would welcome her if she looked less odd and didn't talk so continuously about herself and her plans. Her oddness was interesting seen at a dispassionate distance, but embarrassing as soon as you were in any way responsible for it. However, to-night the cab was positively a blessing. Otherwise they must have taken an omnibus. This disgusting poverty, this loathsome compelling of every reluctant penny to do its uttermost "bit"! And then the beauty of the night seen very dimly through the frost-dimmed panes of the cab drew Rosalind from those sordid thoughts. She was always easily drawn by any beauty—or by any ugliness for the matter of that. Life was what she wanted—to savour it, fully, utterly, to the last intensity, never to miss a thing, never to escape an experience, that would be the ecstasy of enjoyment—if it were not for morals and other people's feelings. She had not, she considered, any morals herself. Nothing shocked her. She had heard the most dreadful things and had never turned a hair. Nor did she care, when she looked into it dispassionately, very much for other people's feelings. Unless she loved them. There was the rub. This love. How tiresome it was, forcing you to be considerate and unselfish and yielding when you so definitely did not wish to be! Perhaps one day when she was older she would conquer this feeling and not care for anybody, only for herself. How satisfying that state would be!

The vast white space of Hyde Park Corner encircled them like a crystal lake. St. George's Hospital was black and forbidding like a jutting crag. The cab stopped to allow the motor-cars to pass, and with glaring fiery eyes like wolves out on the hunt they slipped by. Rosalind looked at her sister Janet, and saw that she was sitting back in her corner of the cab, her eyes closed. Something had happened to Janet! Rosalind knew it at once. The sisters always knew about one another. But something had also happened to Rosalind. Young Tom Seddon had as good as proposed to her. Only a few words, but they had been enough to tell her. And she didn't want him to propose. He mustn't propose, because if he did she would only refuse him and then all the pleasant friendly companionship of the last few years would be changed. She would refuse him because for one thing she didn't love him, and because for another and a more important thing he hadn't any money. His mother had just enough to keep herself and her son in that decent genteel poverty that Rosalind so thoroughly loathed. It was true that Tom was clever and might one day be an Ambassador, but all that was far distant. Moreover, there was something else about Tom. He was old-fashioned; he didn't believe in Socialism nor Freudian theories of abnormality nor modern painting, novels, and poetry. That is, when one said that he didn't believe in these things one meant that he considered them all and found them wanting, or, if not wanting, at least not perfection.

Especially with regard to Free Love he was too irritating for words. It was not that Rosalind desired lovers—far from it—but she believed in the theory of freedom, freedom for everybody to do just what they liked provided they left herself alone. But Tom had a hampered, restricted mind. He thought things "horrid" or "bad form." As a husband he would be too tiresome. As a friend he was charming, courteous, unselfish, humorous, gentle. He was intellectually "behind the times," a quite impossible thing for a modern husband.

They had arrived. Old Lady Anglish kissed them both and asked them to luncheon two days from now. They didn't know. They couldn't say. They would telephone. It was too kind of her to have brought them like this. They were grateful! The cab tottered off. They mounted the stairs to their little flat, and once in the sitting-room Rosalind sank into the arm-chair with the crimson peacocks, stretched her arms, yawned, and shivered.

"Of course Frances has let the fire go, although you especially told her."

"It's late. Nearly three. We'll go to bed and be warm in no time." Janet stood up, staring in front of her, seeing through walls and walls and walls far into Destiny.

"Ugh! How I detest this flat! It's shut in like a mortuary. Everything wants re-covering." Then Rosalind smiled. She had remembered something. She got up, disappeared into the next room, returned, a parcel in her hand.

She stood up against her sister smiling very prettily.

"Three o'clock in the morning is an absurd time to give you anything. But I can't wait. I got it this afternoon."

"For me? A present?" Janet's eyes shone, because like all good people she adored presents.

She took the little gilt scissors from the table, cut the string (a wicked proceeding), there was a thin wooden box with a lid, then cotton wool, then——

"Oh, take care!" Rosalind cried. "You'll drop it!"

But not Janet. Slowly, with all the eager awfulness of anticipation, she drew out the treasure. She held it out. She gasped.

It was the loveliest thing, quite the loveliest thing ever seen. It was a little tree, silver and white and green. Its leaves were of coloured metal, its flowers of silver, and it stood in a porphyry bowl. It was perfect. It was enchanted. Already, held there in Janet's hand, it had a life of its own, a magical life, gleaming, glittering under the electric light, but encased too in its own shining armour that held it apart, by itself, in its own natural and unstained beauty.

Janet gazed and gazed. She could not speak. Tears filled her eyes. That Rosalind should have given her this, Rosalind whom she loved so utterly, Rosalind——

She placed it on the table, then caught her sister into her arms and held her, cheek against cheek, held her as though it were for life.

"Why, Mops dear, you're crying!" Rosalind gently withdrew herself. "You do like it, then! I thought you would. I was at a little sale this afternoon—you know, Marie Haik's thing—and I saw one or two of these, and I had to get one. They were made by Mrs. Somebody or other, I forget the name, but she's married and got lots of money and just does them for pleasure. I saw it and I had to get it. It was too awfully sweet. I said to myself, 'That's just the thing for Mops!'"

She spoke a little eagerly, a little nervously. To see Janet in tears, controlled and wise-minded Janet, was embarrassing. And she didn't want to be thanked. It made her remember all the wicked selfish things she was always doing.

Janet wiped her eyes. But still she couldn't speak. The thing was too lovely, but lovelier still was it that Rosalind should have bought it, bought it of her own generous volition without any prompting and given it her now, of all times, just when she had such a piece of news to deliver!

"Oh, Rosalind ... I'm so glad. It was wonderful of you, but more than that ... just now ... I would rather that you gave me something just now than at any other time in all our lives."

She turned round to it, gazing at it, drinking in its beauties.

"It makes me feel safer, your giving me that just now. It makes me feel that perhaps I've done right. It's a sign."

"A sign! Of what?" Rosalind was now watching her sister. "I knew all the time that we were coming home that something had happened to you. What is it? Have we come into money?"

"Yes, in a way." Janet's eyes lingered passionately on her sister's face. "But that's a horrid way to put it. I told Wildherne Poole to-night that I would marry him!"

"Oh!... Oh!"

It was Rosalind's turn. She threw her arms around Janet, kissing her, kissing her, kissing her:

"Oh, oh, oh!... Oh! How lovely! How beautiful! How perfect! I've been longing, been hoping, been aching for it to happen! You darling, you pet, you Perfect! Oh, Mops, you'll be a Duchess—my Mops will be a Duchess. You'll have everything you want and be happy for ever. And I'll be Wildherne's sister—good old Wildherne—and no more of this beastly flat. Oh, Mops! how heavenly!"

Then she saw, through her joy, the tears still standing in Janet's eyes.

"But you're happy about it, Mops darling, aren't you? You love him, don't you, and he loves you? It's all going to be perfect?"

"I don't know," Janet answered slowly. "Nothing's perfect ever, is it? And I don't love him. I love no one in the world but you. Perhaps it's a wicked thing I've done. It would be wicked if I didn't love him and he did love me. But he doesn't love me either. We were both quite honest about it."

"Oh, of course." Rosalind's voice was slow. "There's Diana Guard. I'd forgotten. But Diana doesn't care for him any longer. The whole world knows that."

"Yes, but he cares for her. The only one he's ever loved, and he will love her always, he said."

"Janet! Have you done this for me? Tell me—because if you have——"

"No, dear, of course not. A little for you perhaps, but a great deal for myself. I like him—better than any other man I know. And he likes me—better than any other woman except that one. I don't know that love's so important—not in these days. To be good companions is the thing. And I want to do something with my life. Here I am wasting away, getting old. I shall never love any man, not passionately as people mean by love. But I will be good to him and he will be good to me. And I can be of use to other people as well."

And Rosalind, reassured, was brilliantly happy again. Surely it was the most glorious, glorious event! No more this old flat, no more wondering where the next penny would come from. "We shan't be rich, you know," Janet put in. Lots of amusing people. "We shall have to be often in Halkin Street," Janet interrupted again, "and that won't be very amusing." Her darling Mops a Duchess. "They are both very alive, and long may they be so," Janet remarked again. Oh well, anyway, a Marchioness, and even if those things didn't mean very much these days, and nobody minded, still it was better than being cooped up in this hateful little flat....

But at the end of her triumph she folded her arms around Janet.

"You are sure. You swear it isn't for me you're doing this?"

"I swear," Janet answered. "If I didn't like him nothing would induce me."

She turned to the little silver tree as though invoking its friendship.

Alone in her room, brushing her hair, gazing into her glass, Janet considered everything. Rosalind's joy had reassured her. There at least was happiness. But for herself? A little chill caught her body. She shivered, dropping the brushes, pressing her hands to her breast, staring into the glass as though passionately demanding from the face that she saw there a comforting answer. Marriage? And with a man whom she did not love? It was a reassurance to her that he did not love her; she would not have to submit to his passion, but he wanted children, and what would that intercourse be for them both deprived of passion? Would he not close his eyes and imagine that in his arms he held another dearly-loved woman? And she? Could she shelter herself enough behind her liking for him? Did she like him enough for that?

She had not met him so seldom. She knew his courtesy, his kindliness to others. She liked him best in his relation to his father and mother, to whom he was devoted. But then who could help but be devoted to the old Duke? No difficult task for any son.

Did she care for Wildherne Poole in any physical way whatever? Did she like him to be near her, was she happier when he took her hand, did her heart beat if he entered a room where she was?

No, none of these things. It was many years now since she had felt the stirring of her blood for any man. During these ten years since her mother's death all passion, all longing, all unselfishness, all ambition had been buried in her sister.

From the very first days when Rosalind had been carried out by the nurse on to the bright lawn at Sopover and the sun, enmeshed, had glittered in her hair, that passion had burned. Rosalind had always been so lovely, so amusing, so alive, so packed with charm. It had always been Rosalind whom everyone had noticed, and during that last awful week when Pamela Grandison had realised that she was leaving her two girls alone, and almost friendless, to fight their hard battle, it had been "Rosalind—Rosalind—Rosalind.... Look after her, Janet darling. She hasn't your character. She can't put up with things as you can. Look after her——"

Janet switched off the light, got into bed, lay down, staring into the darkness. It was true. Rosalind had not the character. Janet was no fool about her sister; she knew that she was selfish, comfort-loving, hard in sudden unexpected places. She, Janet, was never quite sure whether Rosalind loved her or no. Sometimes she did, and sometimes most certainly she did not. She was elusive, always just out of Janet's reach. And was not that very elusiveness partly responsible for Janet's passion? Do we not love the most those persons of whose love for us we are not quite sure?

But darling Rosalind, there was more, far more, than that in Janet's love for her. The struggle of these ten years, the increasing struggle as prices had gone up and up and the tiny investments had gone down and down, the sense that there was no one in the world who cared, no one but distant Medley and Grandison relations, no one at least whom proud Janet would humiliate herself to beg from. Her own best friends—Rachel Seddon, Mary Coane, Ada Darrant, Constance Medley—all women, by the way, older than herself, had they ever realised at all how desperate the struggle was for Janet and Rosalind? And were not they themselves also hard up like all their set, like all their world? Wasn't the need for more money the one cry that nowadays you heard on every side of you? Hadn't Connie Medley her hat shop, and wasn't Ada Darrant dressmaking, and hadn't Janet herself spent months of her life turning old shoes into new ones?

The same with all of them. Why should they then demand more charity than the rest?

Charity! No! Hateful word!

But wasn't it charity that Janet was about to receive from Wildherne Poole? Was she going to him for any reason but the mercenary one? Would she have considered marriage with him for a moment had she and Rosalind been rich?

Yes, she would. The answer came to her with astonishing clearness out of the darkness. She wanted to do more with her life than she was doing. She wanted (strangely, pathetically she knew it) to care for somebody who would quite definitely care for her. She wanted to feel affection for someone who would not, as Rosalind did, at one moment accept her, at another violently reject her. She wanted some sort of society in addition to the excitement of her love for Rosalind. This other thing would not be exciting at all—quite orderly, safe, rather humdrum. But always there and to be relied on. And she would be there for him too. He had his passion elsewhere and that would make him, as passion always does, restless and unhappy and unsatisfied. And she would be there for him to come home to. Someone upon whom he could absolutely rely.

She could not sleep. She turned on her light and lay, watching the pool of purple shadow encircling the little table, the three or four books, a photograph of her mother in a silver frame. Life! What was it? Why did she make so much of this step that she was taking? What matter it if it gave Rosalind happiness, Wildherne Poole a son, the old Duke and Duchess comfort? She felt herself deprived of all personality. She lay there without body, without soul. Only a tiny impetus pushing others who were alive into more agreeable positions.

Then her life leapt back into her veins. She was not negative. She was as alive as they. For ten years, nay, for twenty years she had given herself wholly to others. Now her own time had come.

Then, as though there were disloyalty in this, she felt an aching longing for Rosalind. She must see her, know that she was there, touch her ever so gently.

She rose from her bed, found her dressing-gown and slippers, and stole from the room.

She opened Rosalind's door very gently and then stood there silently listening. From beyond the windows came that strange purring rumble of the London traffic. Once and again some heavier vehicle broke up the murmur and scattered it and the flat quivered, ever so gently, as though it were responding to the life beyond it. Above the murmur was Rosalind's regular soft breathing.

Janet moved forward very gently, felt the hard line of the bed, touched the pillow with her hand, then sank down on to the floor gathering her dressing-gown about her. She rested her head on the bedclothes without touching her sister.

Something deep, deep within her prayed. "Make her happy, God. Make her happy. If I'm doing wrong in this punish me but not her. Give her a lovely life. Give her everything. Make her happy."

She did not know whether she believed in a God. It was the fashion now not to. But sometimes it seemed to her that someone bent down and gathered her up and warmed her heart. A weak sentimental illusion, her friends would tell her. But to-night she was not thinking of her friends. In that dark murmuring room the outside world could not have its say.

She felt comforted and warmed.

Very very softly she leaned forward and kissed her sister's cheek. Then returned to her bed and slept.