Kitabı oku: «Vision House», sayfa 14

"What do I say?" she answered Mothereen. "I say 'Yes,' of course. I'm – delighted! Can't we all help to make up their beds, and bring in washstands and things?"

They all did help. And everyone lent Cath and Bill something – "for luck." Garth contributed pyjamas for his friend. Mothereen kept a supply of new toothbrushes of all sizes and qualities. Cath squeaked with joy over the "nighty" Marise offered.

Then at last came the moment for bidding each other "sleep well! – sweet dreams!" The door of Cath and Bill's bedroom shut. Mothereen followed Marise into her quarters adjoining, kissed and complimented her, and called Garth, who was looking at a picture of himself in his first British uniform, enlarged to enormous size in crayon, framed in gilt and hung up in the hall.

"Marise has sent her maid to bed," Mothereen explained. "She was tired after the journey – a train headache. I thought I could undo this lovely wreath for her, but I can't. Will you try?"

Garth tried. He'd never touched the girl's hair before. Its ripples were so soft – so soft! He had not known that a woman's hair could feel so divine as that. For an instant he was afraid that a certain unsteadiness of his fingers would make him awkward. But he almost prayed that it might not, and the prayer – if it was a prayer – had its answer. He happened to be particularly deft. The emerald laurel wreath yielded its secret to him, and without disturbing one of those wonderful golden waves, he laid the glittering thing on the table.

"Well, I'll say good night, then, me dear ones," said Mothereen. "It's made me as happy as a bird, sure it has, to see your happiness. The Lord is good to us all, He who brought Johnny back, safe and sound, out o' the Furnace. His blessin' on ye both this night!"

Then she was gone.

Her words had brought a sense of peace into the room, as if a white dove had flown in.

CHAPTER XXX
THE VIGIL LIGHT

"I'll go and rouse up one of the hotels," said Garth.

"But you're in evening dress," Marise reminded him. "You can't come back like that in the morning. Besides, what would the people think?"

"Hang the people!" Garth replied.

"One can't – unfortunately."

"Well, here's a better plan. I'll sit outside in the garden court. I can come in – if you'll let me – before there's any chance of being seen."

Marise shivered. "It would be cold!"

"Pooh!" said Garth. "It's never really cold here. Don't forget it wasn't exactly a picnic, those years in France. I don't think I shall ever mind cold again."

"Anyhow, I should feel a brute sleeping calmly here, with you sitting on a hard bench out of doors. I may not be a very nice person," Marise criticised herself, "but I'm not a thorough-paced pig. We must think of some other possible arrangement."

"There's only one other possible arrangement. And you'd not consider that possible."

"What is it?" rather breathlessly.

"For you to make yourself comfortable behind a barricade of those two useful screens in your bedroom, while I sit up in an armchair – or spread myself out on this sofa."

"I do consider that possible," said Marise, "now I know what kind of a man you are. That's what we'll do! I'll slip on a dressing-gown and curl up on top of the bed under an eiderdown. And early in the morning the one that's awake will call the other. It's quite simple – and you see I'm not so disagreeable as you thought."

"Have I ever given you cause to believe I thought you disagreeable?"

"Dear me, yes! Whole heaps of times! Not that it matters."

"I suppose it wouldn't matter to you. But it does matter to me, 'what kind of a man' you 'now know' me to be. Have you been studying me? I hadn't noticed it. But if you have, I'd be interested to hear what conclusions you've come to. Do you mind telling me?"

"Oh, my conclusions mostly concern your state of mind regarding me!" said Marise.

"What, according to you, is it?"

"Dislike," she replied promptly.

"That's a strong word!" Garth blurted out. They were standing in the middle of the room, eyeing each other as might a pair of duellists obliged to fight over some technical dispute. "Have I been so brutal to you as all that?"

"You haven't been brutal lately. You were —dreadfully– at first."

"H'm! You weren't exactly angelic to me."

"There's nothing very angelic in the – in the affair."

"What, precisely, do you mean by 'the affair'?"

"The – er – bargain."

"I thought I'd convinced you that the 'bargain' had collapsed."

"Well, our – marriage, then, if you like that better. I've wondered every minute what you did marry me for, if it wasn't money. And sometimes I think it couldn't have been, because you seem to have plenty of your own. Still – "

"Some men with plenty could do with more. Is that what you'd say?"

"I'm not sure what I'd say – about you."

"I suppose you think that a million dollars would always be worth having. I'm sure your mother would think that."

"The question is, not what we'd think, but what you thought – when you married me."

Garth looked at her for a moment in silence, as if weighing his answer, wondering whether to stick to his fixed plan of remoteness, or risk "giving himself away."

"Do you remember any of the things I said to you the first day we met?" he asked at last.

"Yes, I remember you thought – then – you lo – you admired me a good deal. But you were a different man that day from what you were afterwards."

"You're right! I was. A different man. The word you broke off just now was the one word for what I felt. Only it didn't express half. I loved you with all there was of me. I adored and worshipped you. But – I don't believe you've ever been in love yourself except on the surface, or I'd ask you how much you think love can stand, and live?"

Marise felt the blood pour up to her cheeks and tingle in the tips of her ears. So it was true that he didn't love her now! The thought hurt her vanity. She hated to believe that a man who'd loved her once could unlove her in a few days or weeks. But it annoyed her very much to flush. She wished to look entirely unmoved. Instead, she wanted to cry.

"Please do tell me once for all why you married me if it wasn't either for love or money!" she said crossly, with a quiver in her voice.

"When one makes a bold move on the chessboard – the chessboard of life – there are often several motives," Garth replied. "Sometimes it's to save the queen from being taken by an enemy piece. Perhaps that was my principal motive, who can tell? – I don't know just what piece to compare with Severance, though with a card it would be easy. He's not a knight. Nor yet a bishop. We might call him a castle. I hear he's got one – which needs a bit of doing up before it would suit a queen."

"You married me only to keep Tony Severance from getting me?"

"That might have had something to do with it."

"Not for the million?"

"I leave you to guess that, from what you say you know of me."

"And not because you wanted me yourself?"

"I don't get much good from having you, do I?"

"Then it was like the dog in the manger."

Garth shrugged his shoulders. "Let it go at that for to-night, anyhow. We must talk more softly if we don't wish to keep Bill and Cath awake in the next room."

This warning was a dash of cold water!

"We won't talk at all," half whispered Marise. "If you'll arrange the screens for me, I'll rest on the bed."

There were two large, four-leaved screens in the room, one in a corner behind a sofa, keeping off a window draught, one in front of the door. Placed as Garth placed them, they formed a room within a room, hiding the bed from view. Marise stepped behind this "barricade," as Garth had called it, contrived with great difficulty to unfasten a complicated family of tiny hooks, wriggled out of her sparkling dress and into a robe de chambre, turned off the light of an electric candelabrum, turned on that of a green-shaded bedside lamp, and lay down under a silk quilt.

From Garth's part of the room she heard no sound, except when several electric lights were switched off, and Marise imagined him uncomfortably folded up on the sofa which was far too small for what she called "an out-size" of man.

It was dark in the room save for her bedside lamp, the shade of which drank most of the light. So dim was it, so still was it, that after a while Marise grew drowsy.

She hadn't meant to sleep at all, but she realised that Nature was too strong for her. Besides, what did it matter? Garth was probably asleep too – and there were hours before dawn.

The girl ceased to resist the soft pressure as of fingers on her eyelids. They drooped, closed, and – she slept. By and by she dreamed. She dreamed most vividly of Zélie Marks, as she had dreamed once or twice before.

She – Marise – was in this house of Mothereen's; in this very room, though Garth was not with her. He existed, but he had gone out – or away. Marise had taken off the jewels he had given her, and was laying them on a table. They were beautiful! It was a pity not to keep them for her own! Suddenly there was a knock at the door, and without waiting for permission Zélie Marks burst in.

"I've come for the jewels," she announced, in a hateful voice, looking at Marise with angry, wicked eyes.

"They're not yours, and you're not to have them," said Marise in the dream. She spoke with courage; but suddenly she was afraid of Zélie. She knew that the girl meant to do her harm. Some dreadful thing was going to happen. But her voice was gone. She could not cry out. She couldn't even speak. It was impossible to move. She felt like a bird fascinated by a snake. The dream had become a nightmare.

Zélie saw her helplessness. The big black eyes became more and more evil. The girl advanced slowly, yet with set purpose. Without removing her stare from Marise's face, she picked up the rope of pearls.

"As you won't give these to me, though Jack wants me to have everything of his, I'm going to make you swallow them," she said in a low voice, cold as the tinkle of ice.

Marise strove with all her might to cry out, "No – no!" but could not. She tried to turn and dart away before Zélie could touch her, but she was immovable as the pillar of salt that had been Lot's wife.

Zélie took a handful of pearls and began stuffing them into Marise's mouth. It was suffocation! Marise wrenched herself free of the frozen spell and uttered a shriek.

It waked her; and at the same time she was conscious of another sound – a sound which brought back to her brain a whirling vision of things as they really were.

She remembered the screens, and why they were there.

Garth had bounded up from some resting-place and had knocked over a chair. He must think, either that she was in extremis, or else that she had cried out as an excuse to bring him to her. She saw one of the two screens sway, as if Garth had struck against it inadvertently. Then, hastily she closed her eyes. He must be made to realise that she had truly screamed in her sleep, and that there was no horrid coquettish trick.

Marise lay quite still, so that she hardly breathed; and Garth's steps made scarce a sound; yet she knew that he had come round the screens and was looking at her.

After the things he had said, she was wild to know what that look was like. If she could see his face at that moment, when she'd just given him a fright, she would know without any possible doubt whether he'd spoken the plain truth in hinting (he hadn't exactly said!) that he didn't love her because she had tried him too far. But she couldn't see his face without opening her eyes; and if she opened her eyes he'd know she was awake. He'd suspect that she had screamed on purpose.

The girl tried to breathe with long, gentle sighs, hardly moving her breast, as she did when she played the part of a sleeper on the stage. It was easy enough there; but she couldn't be a good actress after all, because she was unable to control her breath now. Her heart was beating fast, and her bosom rose and fell in jerks.

A long time seemed to pass. Was Garth standing there gazing down at her still, or had he tiptoed away? Marise simply had to know! Surely she could just peep from under those celebrated eyelashes of hers for half a second, without his catching her in the act, if he were there?

The lashes flickered, and were still again. But Marise had seen. Garth was there. He was looking down at her. Yet all her subtleties had been vain. She couldn't read his face. It was as inscrutable as that of the Sphinx, which she knew only from photographs. Presently she heard a slight, almost indefinable sound, and peeping again, saw Garth in the act of disappearing behind a leaf of the taller screen. Had he caught that tell-tale flicker, or not?

Garth went back to his darkened corner of the room, but his brain felt as it had been brilliantly lit up, with a hundred electric candles suddenly turned on in it. They dazzled him. But he composed himself outwardly and lay down again on the crampingly short sofa.

He had taken off collar, tie, coat and waistcoat, slipping on instead a futurist dressing-gown which a haughty salesman in a smart shop had forced upon him as "the thing." Zélie would probably have approved it. In any case, it would have graced a Russian ballet.

Minutes, hours perhaps, passed before he felt even somnolent. But the ring of light on the ceiling above Marise's concealed lamp, resembling a faint, round moon in a twilight sky, hypnotised him. At last sleep caught him like a wrestler, and downed him for a moment. In a flash came a dream. He thought that Marise had cried out again. Then he waked, in another flash, and knew that it was not true. Vividly he saw her face, as it had been in that last glimpse he had stolen; sweet as a rose; lips apart, long lashes shadowing the cheeks; then – a flicker; and he saw the bosom that had been shaken all through the silent scene with heart-beats too quick for those of a sleeper.

With this photograph upon his retina, he deliberately rolled off the sofa, and fell with a bump on the floor.

Crash! went a screen.

Marise was beside him.

"Are you dead?" she gasped.

"No. Only asleep," he answered with a yawn.

CHAPTER XXXI
THE ALBUM

The next day Garth received a telegram urging him to come at once to the Grand Canyon. He was needed because of some work at Vision House which had been stopped for his decision.

Marise believed that he had had the message sent to himself, and was grateful, for his departure relieved the situation. Later, she thought differently; but at the time she was pleased with the man. She even gave him a little appreciative squeeze of the hand when they said good-bye.

Garth was to be gone two days. He would then return, travelling at night, and after a few hours with Mothereen would take his wife and her maid away. Considering the circumstances, this was as good an arrangement as could have been hoped for by Marise. His absence, however, did leave the house very dull! Whether one liked Jack Garth or not, even if one hated him, his was a personality that made itself missed.

Of course, it was very unpleasant that she had to go and live in his house. In his rough-hewn fashion, he'd been rather decent in some ways, not abusing the man's power he had over her as a woman; still, Marise told herself that she thanked Heaven to be rid of him. She must not appear too joyous, however, or Mothereen would be shocked. So realistic was the girl's air of sadness (helped by a prospect of heavy boredom), that the dear woman attempted the task of cheering her up.

"Would ye like me to show ye an album of photos I have of himself as a boy and a growin' lad?" Mothereen wanted to know. "He was never much on bein' took, after he grew up. But I've kept all his letters he wrote me from the Front. They're great, and ye can have the run of 'em, me pet. But first we'll go through the album together, don't ye think?"

Marise said that she would be delighted. And she must have had a more angelic nature than she'd supposed, because the thought of the ordeal left her unruffled.

Mothereen brought the volume in question – bound in purple morocco – and a ribbon-tied bundle of letters to the girl's sitting-room. Then, with a beaming countenance, she settled herself on the sofa and opened the album on her lap. She had evidently no suspicion that she was being patronised good-naturedly by "Johnny's" wife. Indeed, she fully believed that the girl was impatiently waiting a treat.

"Come and sit down beside me, Mavourneen," she said. "That's right! Now we're cosy. See, this cute little photo at the beginnin' was Johnny when I had him first. Ye know the story, don't ye?"

"No-o," confessed Marise. She could easily have given an evasive answer; but suddenly she was conscious that she wished to know the story. "Maj – he – never told me."

"Never told ye!" echoed Mothereen. "Never told ye aught about the father he's so proud of, and all the rest? Why, if it had not been for that father of his, I don't suppose he'd have gone to the war like a shot, the way he did."

"Will you tell me – unless you think he'd rather you didn't?" asked Marise, gazing at the badly-taken photograph of a handsome, fearless-eyed child of five or six, in funny little trousers.

"Sure, there's no reason why he should mind. The boy has nothing to blush for. It's all the contrary!" said Mothereen. "And I will tell ye. It's right ye should hear what the gossoon fought his way up from to where he stands now. Ye've heard, at the least, that the father was English?"

"I think I did hear him tell someone – not me – that his father was a Yorkshireman," Marise remembered.

"He was that, and a gentleman besides, an officer in the British Army. His name was the same as the child's – John Garth. It was an American girl he'd married, a girl from out West here. She went over to England as a kind of a nursery governess with a family of rich folks, and there was a row – a flare-up of some sort. The folks left her behind when they came home, and the girl got engaged to sing with a little concert party, tourin' the provinces. It was in Yorkshire Captain Garth saw her, and fell in love. He was always inventin' something or other, was my Johnny's dad: like father like son, and when the one child born to the pair of 'em was a toddler, the Captain had an accident with some explosive stuff he was workin' at. The poor young man's right arm was blown off, and his eyes were hurt. That meant he must leave the army, and as he wasn't wounded in the service of his country, not a red cent of pension did he get! The poor girl wife was expectin' a second child, but the shock she got by the accident brought on her trouble before its time, and she and the baby died together.

"It was nip and tuck that the Captain didn't die too. But he pulled through somehow, and there was the boy to think of. When it turned out that Government would do nothin', the poor man had a notion to come to this side of the world – his dead wife's country. She'd always been tellin' him, it seems, that those inventions of his, that the British War Office turned up its nose at, might make his fortune in the States.

"Well, he took the little money he had left, and thought to try his luck. But he was pretty well done for, poor man, and a big storm there was, crossin', just about put the finishin' touch; for he broke his leg aboard ship."

"Were you on the ship?" Marise asked.

"Not me! 'Twas many a year since I was on board a ship," said Mothereen. "Me and my man – Pat was his name – we had our honeymoon in the steerage. 'Twas out to the West we came, near to where we are now, which is why me heart is in the West always. But troubles fell on Pat in business, and a friend of his invited him to join in a new scheme, back East in New York. The fellow'd been left a house there, off Third Avenue, and with Pat to help in the expense of a start, furnishin', advertisin' and the like, accordin' to him, they could coin money takin' boarders. It sounded all right on paper, and so it might have been in practice, maybe, with Pat to manage and me to cook, if half the boarders hadn't slipped off without settlin' their bills. But that's what they did, the spalpeens. And if troubles had been black out West, they was black and blue in N'York! This was the time when Captain Garth came limpin' in out of hospital, with his boy hangin' onto his hand. He'd seen our advertisement in a paper, offerin' cheap board. The man looked like death – and he didn't look like pay. But sure, me heart opened to the pair of 'em at first sight! Ses I to meself, 'If I was to have a child, I'd want one the pattern o' that.'"

"What happened then?" Marise wanted to know, when Mothereen paused for her thoughts to rush back to the past.

"Just the things ye might suppose! We none of us had any luck. There was no more doin' for the inventions in the States than there'd been in England. The Captain left the child in my charge, and went to Washington. There he hung about the place till the last of his money was frittered away, and nothin' to show for it. But my, didn't that boy grow into me heart, those days when he was like me own? Four years old he was, and to look at him or hear him talk, you'd have said six! There came along a big wave of 'flu, the end of that hard winter, and my Pat and Captain Garth was both laid low with the sickness. Pat took it from the Captain, nursin' him – and within a week of each other they was dead. That's how me Johnny boy got to be me son."

"You were a saint to adopt him, when his father caused your husband's death," said Marise.

"Saint, is it? Wait till ye hear the rest of the story, and know what it was the boy did for me. Not much more than a baby he was, but with twice the understandin' of many a grown-up man I've met. He saw the way things were for me, with his wise little eyes, and he made up his mind to help when the time came.

"I had to give up the house, I couldn't hold on. I sold up my bits of things, and took one room for the two of us, Johnny and me. I got some sewin' to do, but 'twas in a neighbourhood of poor folk, and there wasn't enough comin' in to keep bread in our mouths. What do you think that baby did then, darlin'? I'm sure this is the part of the story he'd never be tellin' ye!"

"I can't imagine," said Marise.

"How he saved a few cents I've never rightly known, for he was mum about it. What I think is, he must have begged till he had a half-dozen nickels or dimes. Then he bought newspapers, and sold 'em in the streets. From the first minute he was a success, and it's not hard to see why. He was in a different class from the poor dirty brats in the same business. And if ye'll believe it, me girl, there was times when the child kept the two of us on what he earned. From that day we never looked back. He put spirit into me, and the heart to work. Now, I'll turn over a page in the album, and show you our boy at the age of ten. What d'ye think of him?"

"He doesn't look like a seller of newspapers," said Marise.

"No more he wasn't, by then. He and I had gone into the molasses candy business. We made the candy ourselves; and if I do say it, there wasn't its equal in New York. Johnny would have the stuff wrapped up in pretty little packets of coloured paper tied with gold string, and I tell you, it went like smoke! At night, Johnny attended a school, and picked up knowledge as a chicken picks up corn.

"Now, here he is in the album again at fifteen. We had the Mooney Molasses Candies – three sorts – for sale in a lot of shops, and we'd a little flat of our own, and money in the bank. Isn't he a fine fellow to look at there? The makings of a man! 'Twas when he was fifteen that he began to study the notebooks his father had left, and to turn his thoughts to inventions of his own. The first thing was an oyster-opener. The second was a fastener to keep shoe-strings from untying. Then there was a big leap, and at eighteen he'd patented a toy pistol that fired six shots, and no danger in one of 'em! That was what began to bring real money in; and Johnny said, 'Mothereen' (he'd called me that name from the first), 'the next step is goin' to take us out West to the place that you love!' So it did! 'Twas that high-speed bullet of his which won him the notice of the War Office. It won him ten thousand dollars, too; and on the strength of it he brought me back to the town where Pat and I settled first, in the happy old days. But little did I dream even then of the destiny ahead of the boy! I was lovin' him too much, and rememberin' the child he'd been, to realise that by me side a real genius was growin' up. I might o' done, though, if I'd kept me eyes open, the way he studied and worked, worked and studied, readin' the classics and learnin' languages and mathematics the while he'd be faggin' out some new invention. But Johnny was never the boy to brag or talk about himself. He was always queer in spots, sort of broodin', you'd almost say sulky, unless you knew him, and a temper, too; though never with me. Then came his discovery of how to make motor spirit out of coke. That finished buildin' this house we're in, and bought his land at Grand Canyon. I mean it did all that in the first few months. Soon afterwards the dollars poured on us by thousands – yes, tens of thousands! You sure heard of the trench motor-tool for diggin', I know, because 'twas in all the English papers after the war had broken out, and Johnny was at the Front. There was all that about his Victoria Cross at the same time, or was it a bit before? You can tell me, I guess?"

"It must have been before. I never knew why he was decorated," Marise said.

"He wouldn't tell you when ye asked?" cried Mothereen, as certain as she was of life that the girl had asked – yes, begged and prayed!

"He never did tell."

"Well, ye shall read the newspaper paragraphs yerself – American papers, mind ye! – for he never sent me the English ones, and I got what I got through his friends. I've columns cut out. And with them there's the praise of the trench machine, and the new kind of steel – Radium steel, he calls it – that they say will make him a millionaire in a year or two."

"A millionaire!" echoed Marise. "I thought he was poor!"

"Poor! Ye thought that – yet ye married him – you, who could get anyone ye liked, from Princes of the Blood down to Cotton Kings! You darlin'! Well, ye'll have yer reward. The boy is not poor. He's rich – what anybody would call rich."

"Then why – " Marise burst out, and stopped herself. If she hadn't bitten back the words, they would have tumbled out: "Why did he marry me?"

She felt very small in spirit and mean of soul compared with humble Mothereen, whose faith and loyalty had bridged the dark years with gold.

Why had a man brought up by Mothereen wanted to play the dummy hand in this ridiculous game of marriage?