Читать книгу Glory of Youth - Temple Bailey - Страница 8

Table of Contents

All the way down in the train Diana kept saying to her friend, "I am so glad you are going to see my house, Sophie. You can't imagine how lovely it is."

But even then Mrs. Martens was not prepared. She was given a room on the third floor from which glass doors opened on a little balcony which overhung the harbor. It was like the upper deck of a ship with the open sea to the right and left, and with a strip of green peninsula cutting into it beyond the causeway.

"That's the Neck," Diana explained; "the yacht clubs are over there and some hotels and big houses. But I like it on this side, in the town. It's so quaint and lovely. I'll show you some of it to-morrow morning."

"I'm not going anywhere to-morrow morning. I am going to sleep until noon."

Diana bent and kissed her. "Poor thing, is she tired?"

"Dead."

"Well, I won't wake you. But I am going to be up with the dawn, Sophie."

Mrs. Martens turned and looked at her. "Is Anthony here?"

"Yes."

Diana caught her breath as she said it, and the two friends stood, silently, looking over the harbor.

The twilight was taking the blue out of the water, but the beauty was still there—with the lights on the anchored boats twinkling like stars in the grayness, and the lighthouse making a great moon above them.

"When will you see him, Diana?"

"To-night."

"Then I'm going to bed."

"You're not—I want you to meet him, Sophie."

"You want him every bit for yourself. Don't be a hypocrite, Diana."

Diana laid her hands on Sophie's shoulders and shook her a little, laughing.

"Sophie, do you ever feel so young that you are almost wild with it—as if there hadn't been any years since you wore pinafores and pigtails?"

"No—I'm thirty-five, Diana."

"Don't shout it from the housetops. I'm a very few years behind. What a lot of wasted years, Sophie."

"It's your own fault, Diana."

"But I wanted to be free——"

"And now you are longing for your prison——"

"With Anthony—yes."

"You'd better go down and dress, dear. Put on that pale blue, with your pearls, Diana. It fits in with the moonlight."

"Then you won't come down?"

"No. I'll have Peter for company."

Peter Pan was Diana's cat. He was as yellow as a harvest moon, he was fed on fish, and was of a prodigious fatness. During Diana's sojourn abroad he had been looked after by Delia Hobbs.

Delia was Diana's housekeeper. She had a lame hip and a lovely mind. She went up to Mrs. Martens' room after Diana had left to see if the little lady was comfortable for the night.

She eyed Peter Pan, who was in the middle of the big bed.

"Peter," she said, severely, "that's no place for you."

Peter rolled over, and clawed the lace spread luxuriously.

"Shall I take him off, ma'am?" Delia asked.

"It's nice to have him here," said Mrs. Martens, doubtfully, "but perhaps I ought not to let him stay. You know best, Delia."

Delia, a little flattered by such deference, hesitated. "I might bring his basket up here," she said; "he isn't a bit of trouble. He just goes to sleep and doesn't wake up until morning."

As Delia opened the door to go down, the rippling measures of "The Spring Song," played softly, came up to them. Sophie had a vision of Diana in her shimmering gown, waiting in the moonlight for Anthony.

Delia came back with the basket. It was of brown wicker with brown cushions. Peter, curled up in it, made a sunflower combination.

"You are sure you're all right, Miss Sophie?" Delia asked as she stood on the threshold. "If you don't want the electric light, there's a candle on your table, and if you like the air straight from the sea you can open the door on the porch. Miss Diana used to like to lie and look at the moonlight."

The whole world seemed obsessed by the moonlight. Its white radiance, when Mrs. Martens at last turned off the glaring bulbs, seemed to cast a spell over sea and land. She stepped out on the porch, and was awed by the beauty of the wide sweep of shining sky and sea. Then, far below on the hidden road, she heard the beat of a motor.

The sound ceased and a man's quick step came up the path. There was the whirr of an electric bell, and she knew that Anthony had come.

Well, Diana had her Anthony—and she had—Peter! She laughed a little to stifle a sigh. Diana had the substance—she her shadowy memories.

A faint breeze had sprung up. The yachts tugged at their moorings as the tide turned. Far to the southeast Minot's light blinked its one-four-three—"I-warn-you"—message to the ships. Diana had once said of it, "The sweethearts off the coast translate it differently—'I-love-you.' That's what Anthony told me."

How she had always quoted him! Even when for a brief time she had drifted toward that other, she had clung to her belief in Anthony's faith and goodness—and when she had shaken herself free she had flown back to him.

And now—in the dim room below Diana was coming at last into her own!

The little lady crept into bed, shivering—perhaps with the chill of the spring night, perhaps with the thought of the happiness from which she was left out.

Presently she heard again the beat of the motor. Beginning in front of the house, it grew fainter in the distance; then silence, and at last a soft step on the stairs.

"Sophie," there was that in Diana's voice which made her sit up and listen, "Sophie, are you asleep?"

Mrs. Martens lighted the bedside candle with shaking hands. Diana came forward into the circle of light. Diana—with all of youth gone from her. Diana stripped of joy. Diana with the shimmering blue gown seeming to mock the tragedy in her face.

She came up to the bed and stood looking down at her friend.

"Listen, Sophie," she said, brokenly, "see what I've done. Anthony is engaged, Sophie. Engaged to another girl!"

Peter, in his basket, slept soundly all night. But Sophie slept not at all. And early in the morning she went down to her friend.

Diana had taken the room which had been her mother's. She had kept the carved canopy bed and other massive pieces, but she had changed the hangings and the wall covering from mauve to rose-color.

"You see, Sophie," she had explained one day in Berlin, "there comes a time in the life of every woman when she needs rose-color to counteract the gray of her existence. If you put blue with gray you get gray. But if you put pink with gray you get rose-color. Perhaps you didn't know that before, Sophie, but now you do. And you'll know also that when I dare wear a blue gown I am feeling positively infantile."

Diana, in négligé, had always made Mrs. Martens think of a rose in bloom. She had a fashion of swathing her head, cap-fashion, in wide pink ribbon, and her crêpe kimonos always reflected the same enchanting hue.

But this morning it was a white rose which lay back on the pillows. Diana's loose brown braids hung straight down on each side of her pale face. There were shadows under her eyes.

"Don't look at me that way, Sophie," she said, sharply, as Mrs. Martens came up to the bed. "I—I'm not going into a decline—or break my heart—or——"

She broke off and said in a changed voice, "You're a dear." Then with a pitiful little laugh, "It wouldn't be so hard—but she's so young, Sophie."

"Eighteen—poor Anthony!"

"Do you think he is really unhappy, Sophie?"

The night before when she had lain in Mrs. Martens' comforting arms, she had thought only of her own misery. For a time she had been just a little sobbing child to be consoled. All her poise, all her self-restraint had gone down under the force of the overwhelming shock.

But now a wild hope sprang up in her breast. Why should two people suffer for the sake of one? And the other girl was so young—she would get over it.

Yet, remembering Anthony's face as he had left her, she had little hope.

"I wish you might have been prepared for this," he had said. "I wrote a letter, but it must have missed you. Perhaps it has been best to talk it out—that's why I came. May I still come, sometimes, Diana?"

Then her pride had risen to meet the crisis.

"As if anything could spoil our friendship, Anthony," she had told him bravely. "I want you to come—and some day you must bring—the Girl."

"You will like her," he had said, eagerly, with a man's blundering confidence, "and you can help her. She is very lonely, Diana—and I was lonely——"

That had been the one shred of apology which he had vouchsafed for the act which had spoiled their lives.

When he had first entered the moonlighted room, she had turned from the piano and had held out her hands to him.

He had taken them, and had stood looking down at her, with eyes which spoke what his lips would not say.

And at last he had asked, "Why didn't you marry that fellow in Berlin, Di?"

"Because I didn't love him, Anthony. I found out just in time—and I found out, too, just in time that—it was you—Anthony."

Then he had said, "Hush," and had dropped her hands, and after a long time, he had spoken. "Di, I've asked another woman to marry me, and she has said, 'Yes.'"

Out of a stunned silence she had whispered. "How—did it happen?"

"Don't ask me—it is done—and it can't be undone—we have made a mess of things, Diana——"

He gave the bare details; of the sick mother who had crept back after years of absence to die in her own town, of the girl and her loneliness, of her child-like faith in him.

When he had finished, she had laid her hand on his arm. "But do you love her, do you really love her, Anthony?" had been her desolate demand.

He had drawn back, and not meeting her eyes, had said, very low, "You haven't the right to ask that question, Di, or I to answer it——"

And in that moment she had realized that the barrier which separated herself and Anthony was high enough to shut out happiness.

"Oh—oh." As Diana's thoughts came back to the present, she sat up in bed and wept helplessly. "Oh, I don't know what I am going to do, Sophie. I've always been so self-sufficient, and now it seems as if my whole world revolves about one man——"

Never before had Diana, self-contained Diana, talked to her friend of the things which lay deep beneath the surface, but now she revealed her soul to the little woman who had known love in all its fulfilment, and who, having lost that love, still lived.

"What you must do," said Sophie, softly, "is to face it. You've got to look at the thing squarely, dearest-dear. It is because you and Anthony forgot to keep burning the sacred fires that this trouble has come upon you."

"What do you mean, Sophie?"

"When two people love each other," said Sophie, slowly, "it is a wonderful thing, a sacred thing, Diana. What you gave Ulric was not love—you were fascinated for the moment, and when you found him disappointing, you let him go lightly, yet all the time, deep in your heart, was this great Anthony—is it not so, my Diana?"

"Yes," the other whispered, with her face hidden.

"And Anthony, when he thought he had lost you, took this little girl to fill your place—and she can never fill it, and so because each of you has made of love a light thing, you must have your punishment. We must reap what we sow, Diana.

"Don't think I am not sympathetic, liebchen," she went on, "but, oh, Diana, I'd rather see you this way than with Ulric Van Rosen as your lover."

She knelt by the bed with her arms about her friend. Two years before Diana had comforted Sophie when death had claimed the great-hearted husband who had made the little woman's life complete. Since then they had clung together, and there had developed in Sophie an almost maternal devotion for the brilliant girl who had hitherto moved through life triumphant and serene.

Delia, at the door, presented a worried face. "I've got some milk toast for Miss Diana," she explained, "and your breakfast is waiting for you, Miss Sophie——"

"Breakfast," Diana pushed back the brown brightness of her hair and laughed hysterically; "is that the way the world must go on for me now, Sophie? You know—for you've been through it—must I eat and drink and be merry when my heart is—broken——?"

"Hush." Again she was in Sophie's arms. "Delia will hear."

But Delia's imagination had not grasped the possibility of any mental or spiritual disturbance. "I guess she's got one of her mother's headaches," she said, as she edged herself further into the room. "I always knew she'd have them some day—although up to now she's been perfectly well."

"Set the tray on the table, Delia," Mrs. Martens spoke over her shoulder, "and I'll come down presently—and you might go up and get Peter. I think I shut the door as I came out——"

Delia took the hint. "There's broiled fish and waffles," she complained, as she departed, "and they don't taste any better for waiting."

"You go down, Sophie," said Diana, when they were alone—"and I'll get up presently, and then—I'll see some way out of it——"

At her tone, her friend who had crossed the room to pull up the shades turned and looked at her. "What way can you see, Diana?"

Diana slipped out of bed and stood up, tall and white, with the long brown braids hanging heavily to her knees.

"There must be some way," she said, "for all of us. I don't believe in sitting down and letting things go wrong, and they may be as wrong for that little girl as for Anthony and me—surely one must use common sense in a case like this——"

Sophie pulled up the curtain, letting in a flood of sunshine.

"One may use common sense," she said, "but one must be very careful——"

Diana twisted her braids into a coronet, and put on a padded Japanese robe, for the air blew cool from the sea. Then she sat down at her desk.

"I am going to ask her to come and visit me, Sophie. I want you to take the letter when you go down to breakfast."

"To visit you—who?"

"Bettina. She can stay until Anthony's big house is ready. I want to know his little girl."

While Diana wrote her note, Sophie stepped out on the porch which matched her own above it. The harbor lay still and beautiful, a sapphire sheet in the morning calm. The anchored boats seemed to sleep like great white birds on its bosom.

Suddenly there broke upon the stillness the sound of a great buzzing, as of some mammoth bee.

"What is it?" asked Diana, standing in the doorway.

"Look, oh, look," cried Sophie, and then they saw above them, darting like a dragon-fly through the golden haze, a magic ship of the air.

"I wonder who's flying," said Diana, as they watched it go up and up until it was a mere speck against the blue. "They are daring folk, these flying men—yet there are men more daring. If you could see Anthony's hands! Those strong, competent hands that work with instruments and surgeon's needles, and a slip may mean some one's life—it's such men who are the bravest, Sophie, not the men who fly."

The little woman stepped back within the circle of her friend's arm. Diana towered a head above her, yet spiritually she leaned on Sophie's fineness and faith.

Their eyes followed that astounding flight, but their thoughts were with a man whose mornings were spent not in the golden radiance of the upper air, but in the bare blackness of an operating room.

Suddenly Diana spoke sharply. "If I have lost him, Sophie, what shall I do?"

"What do all women do," said Sophie, still gazing with rapt face up into the heavens, "what do all women do who lose the men they love? They pray for courage, Diana, and for strength—and then—and then they fight as best they can until the end—Diana."