скачать книгу бесплатно
Mrs. Montmorency took Launa home with her in the brougham. They talked about clothes, while Launa remembered the queer dark evening, the half-pretty Indian girl, and heard the wailing sobs of her baby, and then she saw Paul’s face full of anger. Love was there, hatred as well, as he said, “Go away,” to the girl. She shuddered, and he thought her angry – simply angry – good that he could think she felt so slight an emotion. Women are angry every day with their maids, and their dressmakers, and their rivals, and it leaves no impression, not even a wrinkle; there remains no ache whatever, unless it be weariness.
“I love crepon,” she said to Mrs. Montmorency. “It is so soft and graceful.”
Paul Harvey did not go again to “Solitude.” Miss Black lamented his absence loudly. From inquiries she made she learned that he had gone away to the Restigouche with some Englishmen to fish.
Launa took up shorthand as a sedative, and worked with great diligence. But she learned nothing. However, as neither her father nor Miss Black was aware of this, because of their utter ignorance of shorthand, its failure as an attainable subject caused no surprise to them.
Mr. Archer went to New York, and then Launa frequently took long wandering walks – over stretches of rocky country with narrow, gloomy, cuttings full of granite boulders, where there were caves.
One day she went, in her canoe, up a stream, until she reached a chain of lakes where she could paddle on and on – far away into space – where the stillness was maddening yet restful.
The peace of autumn, of approaching death, lay on the woods. The maples, with their gorgeous colouring, shone and flamed in the bright sun; the birches were yellow, almost gold, in the brilliant light; occasionally a leaf fell slowly, it reminded Launa of a ghost of the end; there was dread in the creeping slowness, as of the invincible, powerful march of a quiet enemy. The breeze sprung up gently, it rippled the water, and stirred the tall pine trees slowly with a rhythmic movement, and the sun began to sink. She gazed again and again at the warm rapturous colouring, the triumph of the trees at the end of their summer life, for the leaves have a glorious finish, and then she turned her canoe round and paddled swiftly back to “Solitude.”
Everything there was in confusion; Miss Black had been taken suddenly ill. She was still unconscious, and they had sent for the doctor, who arrived only to tell them she was dead.
Launa did not know her father’s address. Miss Black’s relations were merely cousins, to whom her death and funeral were matters of indifference.
So Launa stayed alone with the dead woman weeping tears of sorrow – some tears were for the loss of companionship, some for the love and never ceasing care. The idea of a funeral was terrible to her; death meant earth and creepy things. At last Mr. Archer got his telegram, and came home.
Launa felt as if the end had come to her. Death, the intruder, had entered into her life; he was a powerful enemy, and hitherto she had only regarded him as a sleeping brother.
Mr. Archer’s grief was not perfunctory, he grieved honestly and really. Miss Black was his friend – if any longing for a nearer and perhaps dearer connection (the dearness thereof is wont to depart when the nearness is an accomplished fact) had ever crossed his mind, it had crossed only and never taken root. The constancy of man is more frequently attributable to circumstances than to everlasting love.
Mr. Archer observed that Launa had grown different – older, more absorbed in something, more sympathetic. Always a child of deep emotions, she had developed into a woman. But because her heart was not navigable to floundering old women, the world near “Solitude” called her cold, unfeeling, and indifferent.
Her father regretted this alteration. She had been a child, but apparently death had stepped in and changed her.
He studied her gravely and with attention. “Solitude” was dreary. Launa’s admirers grew weary of vain visits, of fruitless attempts to see her, and they ceased to come. They said she was in love with an unknown man; they had to account for her refusal to see them, and pique and vanity suggested this solution.
After a long, cold winter, spring was beginning. All life was breaking out again. The world was glad, triumphant, new, and Mr. George Archer’s mind turned to England. Launa must go there for change of scene and air, so they left Canada on the first of May.
Launa and Paul had never met since the memorable day he had shot the horse. Mr. Archer casually mentioned that Paul was in Montreal. Launa had a burning desire to hear tidings of him, but she repressed it; she pushed it back, back, back in her mind, far away into those cupboards everyone has, and keeps locked and sealed always, by sheer force of will.
CHAPTER V
The long streak of smoke from the steamer’s funnel lay black on the calm sea; the strong throb of the engines sounded like the measure of a waltz to Launa. She sat on deck every day after the first woe of sea-sickness was over, and felt utterly and completely miserable. She wanted to go back again, for the ache of unconquered pain remained in her heart. She gave herself a little shake and tried to make herself agreeable to a young man who was returning to England to be married. He told her happily that the engines were playing the “Wedding March”; to her it was a hateful discord, with the refrain of a waltz to which she had danced with Paul. The young man hummed Mendelssohn, and she heard Paul’s voice, and fancied his kisses on the warm cheek of the squaw.
“When I am married I would rather have the ‘Dead March in Saul’ played than that,” said Launa at last.
The triumphant whistler gazed incredulously at her. He found her irresponsive, so he left her alone, and went to get a whisky and soda. No doubt the poor girl was feeling sick. She would not argue about anticipation and realisation, or time and love. She seemed so cold. He could imagine her sailing on through life alone. She evidently did not care for men; anyhow she did not encourage him.
Launa was occupied with her thoughts. She was trying to seal up her life as if it were a book and could be put away. The long, uneventful days were good for reflection, but they were trying and full of remorse and regret.
“I am young,” she said to herself; “only nineteen, and I will forget,” said her mind, “and I wish for Paul,” said her heart, which was like the ship’s engines – an essential part of movement and life.
“Hearts,” she said to the young man with anticipations, when he returned, “are only necessary to one’s being as the engines are to a steamer.”
She considered herself very wise.
“You are so young,” he answered, wondering why she should mention her heart.
Just then Mr. Archer appeared at the companion door to breathe the air. He was writing a paper on the intestines of salmon and grayling. The young man turned to him and said:
“Miss Archer compares our hearts to the engines.”
“A very good way,” murmured the father.
The young man left them and went to play poker; they were an unsuitable pair. Mr. Archer came over to Launa, who turned quickly to him.
“Father, I heard you talking to Mrs. Montmorency that day on the Lethe– about Mr. Harvey – was it true?”
Mr. Archer frowned.
“What did you hear?”
“Something about – a squaw and a child.”
“It was quite true about the squaw and the child,” he answered slowly.
“Ah!” she exclaimed with a little gasp. “Then a man can think of two women at the same time.”
Then he turned and looked at her.
“Men are very brutal.”
“You said he was thinking of marriage?”
“He is.”
She turned her face away from him, for his kind, penetrating look hurt her, and just then she needed him to be cross to her.
“Why do you ask me these questions, child?”
“Because it seemed so strange to me – I could not understand him.”
“Merely strange and not brutal? Nothing to you? Well, you hardly knew him, Launa.”
“Nothing to me,” she repeated, and her father returned to his writing.
The young man with anticipations saw his departure, and hastened to talk to Launa. He was singularly anxious to realise the pleasure of Miss Archer’s society; she was quite original.
“You look pale,” he said, with solicitude.
“Do I?”
“And worried. As if someone were dead.”
“Some one is dead.”
“Relations of yours? Cheer up. Wait until you get to London.”
“And then?”
“Then? Oh, you can have a good time. You can have the best of good times in London – the very best – and forget everything disagreeable, too. I give you my word, it is just like morphia. When I am in a hole, and feel down on my luck, I go to town.”
“Is that the fog? I think I should not like the after effect of morphia.”
“Fog?” he asked. “No, it isn’t fog, and yet it is fog, too; it deadens the brain. When someone threw me over, you bet I felt bad. I went up to town and forgot for a week. I did, really.”
“A week! It lost its effect in a week, so quickly?”
“Well, she wrote then and forgave me, and I hadn’t done anything wrong; she flirted. But she took me back, and I just licked her boots.”
“But suppose she had not taken you back?”
“Then I should have lived and forgotten her; I’m hanged if I wouldn’t,” he said, with energy. “Life does it.”
“Life? – you mean time.”
“I mean living it down.”
“But suppose you could not forget? Suppose you were so fond that you thought of her always?”
“I would forget. I mean – Well, I couldn’t, you know,” he said, and laughed. “Now I’ve got her, you see, and don’t need to try. I do not mind telling you – you seem so interested, and are so sympathetic to-day – that I only forgot her when it was noisy and all that. But when I was alone and quiet – at night, you know – I was miserable. You have nothing like that to worry you, Miss Archer? It is very kind of you to take so much interest in my trouble. You won’t think of your relations when you get to town. Are they in Canada?”
“Yes.”
“And one died – a girl, I suppose? And the others want to interfere with you; they want you to be dull because they are? Relations always do that. Now, I have an aunt – she’s a caution; she thinks I ought not to marry. But I would not stand that. Have you any aunts in town?”
“No. My father has a cousin; Mrs. Carden is her name.”
“She won’t bother you, I expect. You are lucky. Your father adores you. You have plenty of money, and are young. My Aunt Maria is a – Oh, the very deuce.”
Here he launched forth into anecdotes of his relations, and Launa murmured a polite accompaniment to his reminiscences until the bell rang for dinner.
“We’ll meet after dinner, won’t we, and finish our talk? It’s very jolly,” he said. “You have such a nice voice, too.”
“You have done me a great deal of good,” she answered. “Time is all one wants.”
“And life, amusement, and love,” he added softly, with a glance at her, which, considering the state of his feelings for another lady, was unnecessarily kind.
“Leave out love,” she answered. “I am hungry.”
On deck after dinner when he looked for her she was not to be seen, so he concluded she was tired and had gone to bed, wherefore he played poker.
But Launa was not tired. She had hidden from him. His talks about his Aunt Maria had no interest for her, except when she regarded them as a narcotic, and then his musings were soothing. That evening she wanted to think and to be alone.
Her father had insisted on her drinking champagne at dinner. Mr. Archer said a voyage was exhausting, and he looked weary. He had not recovered from the surprise which his daughter’s questions had produced. Were they caused merely by curiosity – the curiosity of an ignorant girl – or by interest? Curiosity is merely an inheritance from Eve; interest is the first instinct towards a man when a woman loves him or is going to love him.
“Launa must drink champagne to-night,” he decided. “And soon we shall be in London. But why did she ask those curious questions?”
Launa took some cushions and rugs and went forward behind the boats. The steamer was surging on, the wind was rising, and the waves were breaking below with big white heads of foam. She began to think; she drew a picture of it all for herself in her mind and called herself a fool. Suppose Paul were there on the steamer, suppose he came to her with love in his eyes, and he were hers for the time – and that was it, that was what hurt – for the time, perhaps only for a time. Would she be willing to take him at the price of another woman’s shame? And to know and to remember what was between her and him, like a bar, or a hand – the warm soft hand of a woman! No, it was over. She would shut up the book. Paul was dead, her Paul, the Paul she loved – she would think of him as she did of her dead mother – sometimes. But her mother was with the angels, and Paul was alive. She shivered a little; it was cold and damp, and the swirl of the waves as the steamer rushed through them was cruel.
She resolved to begin again, to rub out the writing of the first episode of life – such a new book to her – and to make the page ready for London and fresh impressions.
When the Archers arrived in London they took a flat near the Thames Embankment, and Launa revelled in new clothes, music, and horses. Her father soon had many friends. His wee world was exciting itself about the question of bones of fish, and he flung himself with ardour into the controversy.
After some days of continual absence on his part, and loneliness on Launa’s, she went to him and said: —
“I want to know some women. I love nice women. Don’t you know some?”
He looked surprised.
“There is your cousin, Lavinia Carden; she lives in town. I will take you to see her. Her husband is dead; poor man, he never was happy. He yearned for the country and for pigs – Lavinia only appreciated bacon, and would not live out of Bayswater. A month at the seaside was all poor Carden got in the way of country.”
“I shall not like her.”
“She will give you good advice, Launa,” he said, laughing. “You don’t like that.”
Mrs. Carden lived in a semi-detached house, beyond Bayswater, far from the region of the fashionable, in the heart of cheap villadom, where twelve pennies had to make a little over a shilling. Endeavouring to save a farthing on one’s rolls or one’s fire-lighters is an absorbing occupation, and it seems to have most interest for those to whom it is immaterial whether they do save their farthing or not. Mrs. Carden had one son. When he was at home she saw what she considered life – an occasional visit to the theatre, or a dull dinner party, both reached with due propriety in a four-wheeler.
Mrs. Carden was a selfish woman, with a firm belief in her own opinions, and her own importance; anyone who contradicted her or disagreed with her was at once a detestable person. Her affection for her son was expressed in long letters, and the frequent use of “dearest.” But her love was variable, and when he was at home he disturbed her breakfasts, while her nights were made feverish by his late hours, which kept the hall gas a-light until sometimes past twelve o’clock. Her servants assumed a more frivolous demeanour on his arrival, and it seemed to her that while their caps were coquettishly crooked and smart, her stiff house became sometimes slightly untidy.
Charlie Carden was in a line regiment stationed at Malta, with one hundred and fifty pounds a year besides his pay. His mother wondered why he never became dashing, or soldier-like, or anything of a hero, with a sprinkling from the pepper-pot of wickedness – to possess this is the bounden duty of every man when he puts on a red coat or a sword. Carden remained dull, and his mother almost despised him; he was not even selfish, nor did he bully her.
George Archer and Lavinia Carden were second cousins, she was the only relation left whom he had known as a boy. His recollections of her were hazy. In these she figured as a muslin-fichued, sandy-haired girl, in whose face piety and cruelty struggled for mastery; now she parted her hair deliberately in the middle, and indulged in them both. In her youth she had regarded George as a possible husband, and, not loving him, had forgotten him, therefore when reminded of his existence she felt angry with him. Was it not his fault that she had married a man whose only inclinations were to have a farmyard, against which she had had to struggle all her life?
The day before the Archers went to 52 Lancaster Road a note was sent to Lavinia to prepare her for their visit. Mrs. Carden therefore left off her cap for the afternoon, braving the smile of her parlourmaid with the fortitude of a widow who has given up hope of a second marriage, and who suddenly finds the wonderful idea returning with unwonted sweetness – brought back to her by the visit of a man who was long ago considered a possibility. His fondness for a walk from church on Sunday evenings with her had more than proclaimed this fact. She forgot he had a daughter, and that it was five and twenty years since they had met.
The outside of Lavinia’s house was grey. Inside her drawing-room suggested the past and dust, which was constantly being removed; its mark was on the carpet, the walls and the furniture. Only the red blinds shed a little cheerful light, which the drab curtains chastened and subdued.
Mrs. Carden began by relating reminiscences of the family, and then pitied George Archer for his long residence among Colonists. He explained that his residence was quite voluntary, and that he regarded it as the happiest period of his life.
“Did you think my father was obliged to live in Canada whether he liked it or not?” asked Launa; “that he was suffering an unwilling exile?”
“Not exactly that,” said Mrs. Carden. “Where are you staying?”
When she heard of the flat, and contemplated Launa’s boots and dress, she murmured to herself, “Money.”
“George, sometimes when you are busy I should be so glad to take care of Launa; I would take her to – ” She paused. Where could she take Launa? “We might go to the Zoo.”
“Thank you very much,” said Launa politely. She did not press Mrs. Carden to name the day for this expedition; she was not favourably impressed by her relative.
“You will come and dine with us, Mrs. Carden,” said Launa.
“Call me Lavinia,” said Mrs. Carden.
“Come any evening next week; which one will suit you?” asked Mr. Archer.
