Читать книгу A Butterfly on the Wheel - Thorne Guy - Страница 7

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Mrs. Admaston pulled aside the long curtains of green silk. She turned the oblong handle which released two of the windows, pulled it towards her, and drank in the fresh night air.

How fragrant and stimulating it was. How pure, and how different from the horrid, scented air of the sitting-room!

"'From the cool cisterns of the midnight air my spirit drinks repose,'" Peggy quoted to herself; and she did, indeed, seem to be bathed by a sweet and delicate refreshment, a cleansing, reviving air, which washed all hot and feverish thoughts away and made her one with the stainless spirit of the night.

The black masses—the black, blotted masses—of the trees in the Tuileries gardens cut into the sky-line. But even now, late as it was, innumerable lights twinkled over Paris, and a big honey-coloured moon, which shamed the firefly lights below, and seemed almost like a harvest moon, had risen and was staring down upon the City of Pleasure.

In front of the window was a balcony, and, lightly clad as she was, the girl went out upon it and with an impulsive gesture stretched out her arms to where the Lamp of the night, depended from a little drift of fleecy-white and amber-coloured clouds, swung over Paris.

"O moon," she said, "dear, round, red moon, I am going to be good! I really, really am. I am going to turn over a new leaf; I am going. … "

There was a sharp whirr, hard, metallic, and insistent, from the room behind.

The telephone bell was ringing.

Peggy started—the world called her back. In her mind, as it were, she put down her good resolutions on the balcony and hurried in to see who had rung her up.

She fluttered up to the telephone, caught the receiver to her ear, and spoke breathlessly:

"Well, who is it? What? Yes. Who is it? Oh! Where are you? Chalons! You have arrived, then? What?"

A voice, not over the telephone wire, but behind her and in the room, came to Peggy's disengaged ear.

She started violently and turned round as if upon a pivot.

She saw standing before her a slim, tall, clean-shaved man, anywhere between thirty and forty. He was in evening clothes—that is to say, he wore a dinner jacket and black tie. His hair was dark and curly and grew low upon his forehead; his eyebrows were beautifully pencilled; and below them two shrewd, mocking, and yet somehow simple and merry eyes of a brilliant grey looked out upon Mrs. Admaston. The nose was aquiline; the lips, a trifle full, were nevertheless beautifully shaped. They were parted now in a smile.

"Who is it? Let me speak, Peggy?" Collingwood said.

Peggy looked at him. "Oh, how you startled me!" she cried, with a little shriek of alarm and embarrassment. Then without a further word she fluttered towards the door of her bedroom, dropping the receiver of the telephone, which hung by its twisted cord and swung this way and that.

Roderick Collingwood took a couple of quick, decisive steps to the wall. He caught up the receiver.

"Hello! That you, Ellerdine? Yes, just finished supper. What? What? 2.34 to-night—I mean this morning? What time do you reach Paris? What?—five o'clock?"

He turned round to Peggy, who was standing by her bedroom door. "They are coming on here," he said.

"Now?" the girl asked.

"Yes! they get here at five." He caught up the receiver again and pressed it to his ear, leaning forward to the mouthpiece.

"I say, Ellerdine—I say, why not wait for us at Chalons? What? You have decided not to go on? Very well. We will wait for you."

He placed the receiver of the telephone back upon its rest, and turned the handle to ring off. Then he looked at Peggy, walking slowly towards her as he spoke.

"Ellerdine is vexed," he said.

Peggy's face was the most alluring pink, her eyes looked angry.

"Please leave the room," she said.

Collingwood stopped. "I am sorry," he said. "I heard the telephone ring, and before I knew where I was. … "

Peggy cut him short, pointing to the door on the left-hand side of the room, the door not far from that which led into the corridor. "Is that your room?" taking a couple of steps towards him.

"Yes," the dark man answered; "the hotel was full—it was the only room left. Don't be vexed, Peggy."

The girl's face had a sort of hard impatience in it, though mingled with something else also—something very difficult to define. "Wait," she said. "That door was locked when I tried it before you came in to supper. Did you unlock it?"

Mr. Collingwood laughed a pleasant, musical laugh, which seemed to resolve the somewhat tragic note of Mrs. Admaston's voice into nothing—to make it seem rather unnecessary and absurd. It was a thoroughly boyish laugh.

"Why, Peggy," he said, "what a very serious mood you are in! Unlock it? Of course I unlocked it, when I heard you at the telephone. I thought you would not mind. Besides, I wanted to know what Ellerdine was up to. Come, come, Peggy; this is not the first time we have been together so late."

Peggy looked at him with wide eyes. "Oh, but it is different," she said; "we are in a strange hotel—by accident. Colling, it was by accident, wasn't it?"

He started, bent forward a little, and answered her with great eagerness.

"Of course, of course; surely you did not think——"

"Oh, I don't know what I thought; but I feel so funny, so nervous."

Collingwood laughed again—really, it was the most reassuring and musical laugh. "Peggy nervous?"

"Well, it is rather alarming," Peggy replied.

Collingwood laughed once more, and stepped up towards her. "But rather nice—isn't it rather nice?—what, Peggy?"

There was something so irresistibly amusing in his voice and smile that Mrs. Admaston began to bubble over with laughter.

"Isn't it rather nice?" he went on, crossing over to the little switch-board and putting out the big central light which depended from the roof. "Isn't it rather nice?"

Peggy had entrenched herself behind the little table on which supper had been laid. She was obviously tremendously amused, but she made a great effort to be serious. "Colling!" she said, "it is mad. Supposing anybody knew!"

Collingwood was quite calm. He treated the whole thing as if it were the most ordinary occasion. He strolled lazily over to the fireplace, took a cigarette-case from his pocket, a cigarette from it, and struck a light.

"How can anyone know?" he asked.

Peggy seemed alarmed once more.

"No! Colling, please don't light a cigarette. It is too late. I must go to bed."

Collingwood's only answer was to blow out a cloud of smoke, to cross over to the sofa and throw himself upon it.

"Not yet," he said. "Don't be unkind, Peggy. Just one cigarette. Just one, in front of the fire—which, by the way, is out—and then bye-byes."

"Well, one cigarette, but only one," Peggy said.

Collingwood sat up. "Good little Peggy," he said in a low, quiet voice; and then, raising his head, he looked at her intently with his brilliant grey eyes.

Peggy looked him straight in the face also, and then the spirit of mischief, the excitement of this odd meeting, got the better of her prudence. She came to the back of the sofa and leant over it. "Isn't Peggy going to have one?" she said.

The man took his cigarette-case from his waistcoat pocket, opened it, and gave her a cigarette. Her face was tantalisingly close to his, and she noticed, well enough, that his hand was trembling as he did so. She kept her face close to his just half a moment longer than the situation required.

Collingwood's voice began to shake also. "Now, Peggy, you little devil," he said.

"Why is Peggy a little devil?"

With a slim brown hand, which, despite all the man's sang-froid, still shook like a leaf in the wind, he lit the cigarette for the girl, looking up into her face as he did so.