Читать книгу Two Black Sheep - Warwick Deeping - Страница 22

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Elsie locked her bedroom door.

Her room was on the fourth floor of the Hotel Elyseo, and when she looked out of the narrow french window she saw the iron grille of a little balcony and beyond it—Rome. She gave a shake of the head as though she had just unfastened some fillet that confined her hair, for this was her one free hour of the day when Sylvia was left with Mrs. Pym in the suite on the second floor, and Elsie could unfasten the buckles of her patience and be herself. She went and stood at the window. The afternoon sun had reached it, and as she stood there her face grew soft and smooth, and her forehead lost a little pucker of effort. How blessed to be alone!

One leaf of the window hung open and she stepped out on to the balcony into the full sunlight. Over there were the green tops of the stone pines in the Borghese gardens, and below her loomed the old red brickwork of the Aurelian wall. There were other balconies dotted along the façade of the Hotel Elyseo, but she was not conscious of them, or of the rooms to which they were attached. Her neighbours were more or less secret people deposited in pigeon-holes, though the Italian woman next her would hang out minor specimens of linen to dry on the rail of the iron grille.

But when she had sunned herself for two minutes she stepped back into the room which was little more than a passage joining door to window, and full of wooden bed and wardrobe and toilet cabinet. The walls of the room had been colour-washed a bright pink, and Elsie did not object to the colour. She needed a rosy flush at the back of this new life which was replete with Mrs. Pym’s brassy head and the blue eyes of Sylvia. There was a very small table in the room, and it would just fit between the bed and the toilet cabinet, and Elsie arranged her chair and table facing this window, and took an exercise book from the drawer. She sat down. She opened the book, and read through the last two paragraphs of the short story she was writing.

She had got herself bogged in the middle of that story. It had developed a glutinous and somewhat sentimental subjectivity to which Elsie’s imagination adhered like a fly. She could not make the thing move. Her characters mooned about in an atmosphere of introspective melancholy. She sat and frowned over those two paragraphs, and groped for some dramatic event that might rescue her little people from their slough of inaction.

Supposing she involved “Jack” in a motor accident on the road to Tivoli? But motor smashes were so usual. She sat and bit her pencil and stared at the top of the trees in the Borghese gardens. Yes, they were just like green clouds, and her Roman tale got lost in them, and the core of her consciousness became Elsie. She knew why she was sitting at a table at this window, and why she was trying to produce an article that might possess some commercial value. She had completed her third week with Mrs. Pym and Sally, and she had experienced days of bewilderment, anger, self-accusation, terror. How strange and horrible that a child should be able to make her afraid!

She had remained awake at night feeling frightened. She had reasoned with herself. “You—must—get control. Go on being patient and kind. She’ll change. Perhaps she’ll get fond of you. Even little animals get fond of people. You—can’t—give up. It would be too weak and futile. Besides—you can’t afford to give up.”

Yes, that was it. She was involved in the moods and appetites of other people. She was a sort of human accessory, an accumulator charged with vicarious whims and tempers, but not allowed to discharge herself. She was supposed to look sweet and to accept. And she had not realized—That really horrible child! What—was—the matter with Sally? But suddenly she pulled herself together. She must not let herself think. She removed her elbows from the table, and with a tense forehead set herself to concentrate upon the blank page.

Jack should have his motor-smash, and Irene should arrive at the right emotional moment. What did it matter? Escape was the necessity, some open window—no matter how obvious and narrow. She pressed her pencil between finger and thumb, and began to write. The words came. They seemed to fall like drops squeezed from her own secret horror of the little, sensual, scolding world in which she found herself involved.

There were footsteps in the corridor, and a sudden hammering at her door. She was startled. She sat rigid in her chair.

“Yes. Who is it?”

“Me.”

That child! Of course! She made herself speak casually.

“What do you want, Sylvia?”

“I want to go out.”

“We are going out after tea. You know that you are supposed—”

“Mother’s gone downstairs. Expect old Allybaster’s called. What are you doing in there?”

The handle was rattled.

“I’m resting. I’m going to rest till four o’clock. Now go away, Sylvia, and read your book.”

“It’s a silly book. Mother told me to come up here.”

Elsie sat very still.

“I’m resting. We’ll go out after tea.”

A kick was administered to the door, and then Sally could be heard rushing away down the corridor. Thank heaven! Elsie ran a hand over her hair, and attempted to return to the affairs of “Jack and Irene.” She read over the last few lines, and was shocked by their egregious futility; she ran a pencil through them, and biting at the selfsame pencil, groped for ravelled ends. Now—what did happen exactly when a motor-car struck a telegraph pole?

She was confronting her own inexperience in such matters when the footsteps returned. Two small fists beat a rub-a-dub on her door.

“Miss Summerhays, I’ve been downstairs.”

“Sylvia, I told you—”

“Mother’s sitting on a sofa with ol’ Allybaster. He’s got his eye-glass in. He’s just like a tom-cat.”

Elsie pushed back her chair. She was aware of herself standing in the middle of that small room, and that she was shaking. She was conscious of making a wild effort to control herself.

“Sylvia, go to your room at once, and stay there.”

The door was given a final kick.

“I’ll spill the soup over you at dinner, you see.”

“Go to your room at once.”

“Boo! Why don’t you get a man, old Summerhays? Cos—your hair grows all wrong,” and then she vanished.