Читать книгу The Erratic Flame - Ysabel De Teresa - Страница 6

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It was one of those crystal October days, when the air is crisp and clean, tempered by a kindly sun and Central Park is etched in russet and gold against a sky of opalescent clouds.

Huddled against the cushions of a high window seat, Claire gazed down upon it all from the eleventh story of the huge apartment building in 59th Street where she and Mme. Petrovskey had been installed for the last year. It was the customary, rather sumptuous, decidedly characteristic studio apartment which they had been in the habit of occupying for the last five or six years, ever since Alexis had commenced to be known. Walnut paneling, canopied bed, old blue brocade covers and hangings, reeked of the interior decorator; the only personal touches which had survived Claire’s listlessness being a carved ivory rosary hanging over the bedpost, a few French and Italian novels of the emotional school, and a large photograph of Alexis which scowled out upon the world from the dressing table.

At first glance, the crouching girl upon the window seat seemed as nondescript as the room. Almost frighteningly fragile in her dark street dress, she would have been entirely insignificant if it had not been for the appalling misery of her eyes. They brimmed with the sorrowfulness of a kicked puppy. In their heavy-lidded gaze was mirrored the atavistic agony of womankind. Weary, all-revealing, they stared down upon the brilliant park below, while she listlessly stroked the bizarre head of a Brussels Griffon curled upon her skirts.

It was the creature next to Alexis which she loved the best in the world, both because Alexis had bought it for her himself on a sudden boyish impulse, and because it loved her with all the devotion in its tiny body. And love was to Claire the food and drink for which her soul was starving. Not that she had ever been cruelly treated. Hers had been a negative sort of misery. When she was a child of six, her mother had died, leaving her in the charge of her aunt, Mme. Petrovskey, in whose boarding house they were then living. Of her father she knew nothing. But sometimes she suspected his official existence. All she knew was that her name was the same as that of her aunt before she had married Nicholas Petrovskey, that strange and exotic Russian musician, who had invaded the boarding house one day before she herself was born, and had never left it until his death several years later.

How well she remembered that boarding house in old London. How scrupulously clean and unutterably dreary it had all been! And how well she remembered her aunt’s foreign husband who filled the house from morning till night with the weird sobbings of his violin, until it almost seemed to her child’s understanding that one were not in a London boarding house at all, but in an enchanted castle which continually bewailed its pristine glories. It was this music and the author of it which had supplied the only romance of a childhood singularly dull and colorless. And strange to say, the frail, emaciated figure of the musician stood out more clearly in her memory than that of his little boy Alexis, who had been her playmate ever since the beginning of things. It was not until several years later, when his father had died and Alexis was almost ten years old, that he had become the greatest interest and only affection of her lonely little life.

And then the music had come between them. He was always at his violin and the old house echoed plaintively as in the years gone by; only as Claire grew older the wailing ceased to be fairy strains and seemed to be flowing from her own over-charged heart. Then they had suddenly sold the boarding house and gone to Berlin, where Alexis’ ambitious mother had put him under one of the best masters. Followed years of traveling and recitals while the boy’s fame grew and spread until the outbreak of the great war, when Alexis was fourteen and she a few months younger. They had come to the United States and made it more or less their headquarters while they toured South America, Mexico, and the West Indies.

Now, at the age of twenty-three, Alexis was an idol, not only in every large city of the United States, but in Paris and London as well. Since the end of the war they had returned to the Continent several times and it was while on a visit to Paris, five or six years before, that Alexis had bought Bébé for her.

How well Claire remembered it all. He had been away almost all day, playing for the wounded soldiers in Auteuil and had returned to the hotel downcast and tragic, as always after the sight of the brave poilus. She had induced him to go for a walk and had led him along the arcade in the Rue de Rivoli as people and shops always amused and distracted him. They had passed by a dog-fancier’s and he had insisted upon going in and buying for her the small Brussels Griffon which stared at them with bulging and egocentric eyes from the shop window. They had been quite gay when they returned to the hotel with the new member of the family, saying they had been married and acquired progeny in the short space of an hour and a half. Mme. Petrovskey had watched them grimly, a strange look in her small eyes, and perhaps, who knows, at least Claire had always imagined that it was then that she conceived the idea of their marriage? But it was not until years after, six months ago in fact, that it had actually occurred, and then so quietly, so almost clandestinely, that it had hardly seemed like a marriage at all. Except for necessary witnesses, the small chapel had been deserted, the priest a stranger. Claire had timidly requested for old Father Gregory to officiate. But her aunt’s manner had been so unapproachable that she had not dared to insist. And Alexis so unlike himself that he had scarcely spoken to her for days, barely said more than a few words, in fact, since the night she had gone to his room and Mme. Petrovskey had found her there and acted so strangely. And yet there had been nothing wrong in her going to Alexis like that. She had often done so in the years gone by, especially after a concert, when she knew it would be hours before his tension could relax into sleep. She would sit beside the bed and rub his burning forehead, and they would talk a little in soft whispers, not because they feared his mother might hear, but so as not to break the calm which was stealing over him. Time and time again Alexis had fallen asleep beneath her fingers.

And so, on this particular night, when she heard the restless pacing in the room near hers, it had been purely instinctive to get up and go to his aid. And indeed he had seemed glad to see her as usual, that is until her aunt had come in upon them and ordered her out so peremptorily. She never knew exactly what passed between them, although the sound of their muffled voices had penetrated to her room for almost an hour, and she herself had not been able to sleep all night for sheer bewilderment.

The next day Alexis had come to her and asked her to marry him. His face was very pale and his manner more distant than she had ever known it, not with the familiar absent-minded air behind which she knew lurked affection and kindness, but vested with a new hostile courtesy that would have struck her as sinister if she had not been too utterly dazed with joy to be analytical.

Since then she had often wondered in secret, and an icy fear had invaded her at times. Could Mme. Petrovskey have had anything to do with it? Was it possible that she had forced Alexis to ask her to marry him, because she had discovered them together in his room? But if that was the case, would he not have told her about it in one of those unguarded moments when it seemed as if her love had suddenly struck flint to his steel? One of those abandoned moments when he lay in her arms with closed eyes, identity swamped in a vast surge of primitive passion? Ah, yes, he would have told her then. The alternative was too horrible to contemplate. She shuddered. The months passed like a delirious moment. Perched on a see-saw of rapture and terror, she had been flung to the heavens and then plunged into the abyss according to Alexis’ moods. And he had become more eccentric every day. His passion, spasmodic from the first, had quickly degenerated into the old absent-minded kindliness at best. At times, his irritability had been frightful, but she had always excused it, attributing everything to nerves, constantly strained from excitement and overwork. Then had come his breakdown in Carnegie Hall and the collapse of the world. The doctors had sent him to a sanitarium in the mountains and all had gone well for a few weeks. Until about ten days ago when Alexis had disappeared suddenly off the face of the earth, since when Claire and his mother had existed on the verge of despair. Of course, Mme. Petrovskey had tried to keep it quiet, but it had leaked out as things always do, and the newspapers had been headlining it for the last week.

Thus it was that Claire’s eyes, always plaintive at best, brimmed with the age-old sorrow of the world, and she lay upon the window-sill, heavy with misery, recalling the scenes of childhood, clinging pitifully to their memory like an old woman for whom life has already withdrawn all hope of a future. While at her side, his small soul vaguely troubled, the Griffon whined and tugged at her skirts. Her weary eyes falling upon him presently, a sudden pity seized her for his helplessness. Her hand closed fondly upon his small head.

“Poor Bébé,” she murmured, following the little dog’s longing glance into the street below. “Shall I take you for a walk?”

At her words, he leaped up into her face rapturously, his furry body vibrant with joyful tail-waggings. She smiled wanly at his eagerness. “Poor Bébé, I’ve neglected you, haven’t I? But I’m so miserable, so miserable!” She caught him up in her arms and hugged him to her so tightly that he yelped in shrill remonstrance. Setting him down with a patient smile she sat down at her toilet table and put on her hat, an uninteresting dark blue turban which emphasized disastrously her insignificance.

As she met her weary eyes in the mirror, her pallor deepened. “No wonder Alexis couldn’t love me,” she exclaimed in a bitter whisper. “I am ugly, no——” she paused, beating her little fist upon the toilet table. “I am worse than ugly, I am nothing, nobody! How could I expect to hold a genius, a man of fire? And now,” she bent her head upon her arms and burst into low, suppressed weeping, “he is lost, perhaps dead! But I can’t believe it,” she raised her head and gazed at her reflection savagely. “He is not dead, he is only hiding somewhere—from her,” she added in a tense whisper. “From us both! Perhaps he has met another woman whom he can really love. If that should happen I wonder what I would do? Kill her? God knows I would want to!” The clenched fists rose to her mouth in a passionate gesture.

The little dog tugged at her skirts. An odd smile upon her lips, she controlled herself with an effort, caught up gloves and bag and led him out of the room.

As they reached the entrance-hall, the doorbell whirred noisily. Claire’s heart leaped, and then fell leadenly. Could it, might it be Alexis, at last?

Ito opened the door. A chauffeur was standing there, a letter in his hand. With a gasp of disappointment Claire signed to the Jap to give it to her.

It was from Alexis.

The beloved hieroglyphics sprawled before her eyes in a happy mist. Addressed not to herself but to Mme. Petrovskey, they gave her a momentary pang, that vanished quickly beneath the certainty of Alexis’ safety. She spoke to the man as steadily as she could.

“Is there—any answer?”

He hesitated. “I don’t think so, but I can wait if you like.” He stepped through a doorway and sat down gingerly upon a chair which Claire pointed out to him.

A joyful tattoo beating against her ribs, Claire ran down the long vaulted corridor and knocked upon the door of Mme. Petrovskey’s study.

A deep voice boomed permission to enter. Claire burst into the room almost violently.

“It’s a letter from Alexis, Aunt. Do please read it and tell me what he says!”

“Give it to me!”

A large woman, seated at a roll-top desk, revolved round in her chair, took the letter without a word and started to read it.

Hands clasped tightly together, Claire watched her eagerly. It was one of those bland, non-committal faces, full and inclined to be weather-beaten, which are often called motherly because they top a large motherly body, and have the smooth expressionless surface of a rag doll. But Claire knew the face very well indeed, had studied it since childhood, so that the minutest pinching of the puckered lips, the slightest increase in color, spoke volumes. And the letter was evidently disturbing indeed, judging from the mottled purple on her aunt’s cheeks, the angry clutch of the broad fingers upon the crumpled sheets.

As Mme. Petrovskey turned the last page she laid the letter deliberately upon the desk, and turned her back upon Claire.

“Well,” faltered the girl. “Is Alexis all right and is—is he coming back soon? Shall I tell the chauffeur to wait for your answer?”

“There is no answer!”

The voice was harsh and self-contained. For the first time she looked at Claire, who shrank beneath the stare of the small glassy eyes.

“What are you doing in here?” she asked, pinching her lips. “Where you know you are not permitted, you and your dog?” she added with a contemptuous glare, at the microscopic Griffon.

Claire stooped and gathered Bébé up in her arms.

“The—the letter, it is from Alexis!” she stammered. “Please—please read it to me, Aunt!” She trembled visibly at her own boldness.

Her evident fear irritated Mme. Petrovskey.

“Yes, it is from Alexis,” she replied glacially, “but there is no message in it for you.” She revolved once more in her chair, and commenced to write again fast and furiously.

A low cry of despair and rage escaped Claire.

“You are cruel,” she cried chokingly. “I have a right to know! Am I not his wife!”

The revolving chair remained immovable. Mme. Petrovskey bent a purple face over her writing.

“He says he is better, but is taking a further rest-cure, and doesn’t wish us to know his address. He will communicate with us later,” she replied in suppressed and uneven tones, her obstinate back still turned upon the girl.

Claire gasped with relief.

“Then when he is better, he will come back?” she insisted in a firmer voice.

Mme. Petrovskey threw her pen from her in a violent gesture. The face she turned upon her niece was pale and convulsed.

“He is never coming back!” she cried with suppressed fury. “He is going to manage his own life after this. He says now that he cannot play the violin any more, he is free to live as he likes!”

She rose to her feet, shadowing the stricken girl with her enormous bulk. Her face stared stonily in front of her.

“This is what it has come to,” she muttered. “This is his gratitude for a lifetime of devotion and sacrifice. I have worked myself to the bone that his genius might have every chance to develop. Now he throws me aside, as if I were an outgrown toy, and tells me he is going to manage his own life. He who couldn’t even make out a check for himself or remember his own address!”

Paralyzed with misery, Claire watched her aunt in a stupor of surprise. This was the first time she had ever known her to reveal any emotion stronger than contempt or a cold sort of anger. And the sight was shattering. Gathering herself together through sheer force of will, she helped her aunt back into the chair and patted the large veined hand timidly.

“He can’t mean it,” she murmured. “He has been like this before, you know. He really couldn’t leave you. Why, he’d be helpless all alone, and without his music.” She choked back a sob. Alexis without his violin would be like another man bereft of all five senses. “No, no, he’ll come back,” she faltered pluckily. “Not for me. He doesn’t need me, but for you, his mother.”

Mme. Petrovskey looked up into the piteous little face with a sort of hard compassion.

“Poor Claire,” she said more gently than she had spoken to her for years, “I sacrificed you for nothing, didn’t I?”

A slow blush spread over the girl’s transparent features. She raised her head.

“It was no sacrifice,” she whispered. “It was my joy, my glory. I—I have always loved him so!”

Then suddenly her eyes flashed.

“If only we could write to him. If only we could get hold of him and tell him how broken you are. It was cruel of him not to leave us his address. Do you think we might inveigle it out of the chauffeur? What do you think, Aunt?”

“That would be a confession of failure,” answered the older woman. “Besides, you may be sure he was bound to secrecy. Now, leave me, Claire. I must be alone. I want to think. Take your dog and go out in the park. It will do you good. Perhaps, who knows, things aren’t as hopeless as they look?”

With a sudden return of her imperious manner, she waved Claire away. Heavy with dread, the girl put down Bébé, fastened the leash on to his bright collar and left the room.

The strange chauffeur was still waiting by the hall door. He seemed her only hope now. She approached him with trembling knees.

“If—if you will tell me where Mr. Petrovskey is I will make it worth your while,” she said with a pathetic assumption of firmness.

He stood up as she spoke. His nice blue eyes evaded hers apologetically.

“I’m sorry, miss, but my orders were not to say anything. If there is no answer I must be going.” He fidgeted, one hand on the door-knob.

“Very well,” she turned away to hide trembling lips. “There is no answer. You may go.”

“Very well, miss.”

He opened the door and going out into the hall, rang for the elevator. She looked after him hopelessly. Then a sudden idea flashed like a ray of lightning into the black confusion of her mind. She followed him out into the hall quickly.

“Wait a minute, I am going too.”

He stood aside, as she entered the elevator in front of him.

They emerged into the pretentious entrance-hall and Claire, still preceding him with Bébé in her arms went out into the sun-lit street.

Hand to his cap, the chauffeur jumped nimbly into a large Cadillac by the curb and drove away. Claire looked after him with an air of frightened triumph. A small pad in her hand, she had hastily scrawled down the license number.