LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

she gave the same mysterious little smile, that, while she disdained their passion, yet expressed some faint vibrating response. All men seemed rather alike to her, and she gave a little sigh, half contemptuous of their adoration, half curious about the desire that made them so divinely discontent. Tonight she had determined to choose one of them, for, queen though she was, she must conform to the usage of the world, and besides—besides, the thought of bearing a child of her own made some secret nerve ecstatically ache within her. She must choose…

      Then, even while Oliver was hesitating between the Archduke Francis and Prince Ignatius, he would catch sight of a flower-seller by the fountain in Piccadilly Circus, and straightway he would be in the country of his petit point again, where lambs were white and lakes blue; or the sight of a draped model with a waxwork head would switch him off into a new amorous adventure with a lady in an orangecoloured dress, just like that, and the point of an infinitesimal shoe peeping seductively from below its hem.

      By degrees, this particular figure, standing in royal state alone behind the plate-glass window in Regent Street, began to exercise a controlling influence on his imagination, and he would hurry by the rows of shops which lay on his route without constructing independent romances out of the hints they gave him, and only glancing at them to see what suggestions they supplied as regards Her. He gave her, for instance, the tiara which he had worn when he was queen in his own right; he presented her with some lemon-coloured gloves that reached to her elbow; he bought her daffodils from Piccadilly Circus; and, rather more tentatively, he endowed her with a black hat with Gloire-de-Dijon roses in it; and standing there in front of her, he would hold up to his nose the handkerchief on which he had poured wallflower scent, which he was sure she would use, and inhale a sweetness that really seemed to come from her through the plate-glass window. All other shops which could not contribute to her embellishment became uninteresting again, and once more he would hurry with held breath past the fishmonger, for it was clearly unsuitable to present her with kippers, raw salmon, or even live lobsters. Then, standing a little sideways, not directly in front of her, her eyes met his, and though usually they seemed lost in reverie, occasionally they would meet his own in a way that sent his heart thumping in his throat. Always she wore the same faint, unfathomable smile, reminding him of Leonardo’s “Monna Lisa,” and it seemed to him that the reason for which Nature had brought him into the world was that he should penetrate into the thoughts that set that red mouth so deliciously ajar. It must surely be on his own lips that it would close.… Her loveliness, while she was kind, made the whole world lovely to him, and his whole nature seemed to awake.

      His constant day-long walks about London had wonderfully improved his health; he no longer feared the sun and the wind, and got quite bronzed in complexion. Still more remarkable was, so to speak, the psychical bronzing of his mind, the suntan of virility that overspread it; everything was shot with interest for him, and he even got Alice to show him how to work the lathe. For this was no pining and lovelorn affection; it was quite a hopeful affair, and though, when alone, he might sigh and turn over and back again on his bed, the brilliance and upright carriage of the object of his adoration stung him into a manly robustness. She would not like him to go sighing and sheltering himself about the world.

      It was no wonder that Alice noticed and applauded the change in him.

      “Something has happened to you, Oliver,” she said one night at dinner, while they were cracking walnuts together, for he had aspired to that accomplishment, though it hurt his soft hands very much. “Something has happened to you. I wonder if I can guess what it is?”

      He felt quite secure of the secrecy of his passion, and cracked two walnuts.

      “I’m quite certain you can’t,” he said. “Lord, that did hurt!”

      “Well, I shall do no harm then if I try,” said she. “I believe you’ve fallen in love.”

      The convoluted kernels dropped from Oliver’s fingers.

      “What makes you think that?” he asked.

      “My dear, it’s obvious to a woman’s eyes. I always told you that what you needed was to fall in love. You don’t do wool-work any more; you walk instead of sitting in an easy-chair. Some day, if you go on like this, you will play golf.”

      “Gracious! Am I as bad as that?” exclaimed he, startled into an irony that gave his case away.

      Alice clapped her hands delightedly.

      “Ah! I am right then!” she cried. “My dear, do tell me who she is? Shall I go and call on her? Have I ever seen her?”

      Oliver felt a curious diplomatic pleasure in giving true information which he knew would deceive.

      “Yes; I feel sure you have seen her,” he said, remembering that Alice had her dresses made at the shop where his divinity deified the window. “I can’t say that you know her.”

      “Oh, who is she?” cried Alice. “Is she a girl? Is she a woman? Will she marry you?”

      “No; I don’t suppose so,” said he.

      Alice’s face fell.

      “Is she somebody else’s wife, then?” she asked. “I hope not. But I don’t know that it matters. It is the fact of your having fallen in love which has improved you so immensely. I’ve noticed that an unhappy romance is just as good for people as a humdrum success which ends in christening mugs and perambulators.”

      Oliver got up.

      “You are rather coarse sometimes, dear Alice,” he observed.

      Oliver’s romance and his growing robustness lasted for some few days after Alice had guessed his secret, and then an end came to it more horrible than any that his wildest imaginations could have suggested to him. One day he had seen in a celebrated furrier’s a sable stole that would most delightfully protect his lady’s waxen neck from the inclemencies of a shrewd May morning, and he hurried along, while that was still vivid to his eye, in order to visualize it round her neck. There was a crowd of women in front of her window, and he edged his way in with eyes downcast, as was his wont, so that she might burst splendidly upon him at short range. Then, full of devotion and sable stole, he raised them.

      She was not there. In her place was a bold-faced creature in carmine, with lustful, wicked eyes like the females at Monte Carlo. His healthy outdoor life stood him in good stead at that moment, for he did not swoon or address shrill ejaculations to his Maker. He just staggered back one step, as if he had received a blow in the chest, then rallied his failing forces again.…

      All day he walked from dressmaker to dressmaker, seeking to find her; and when he was too much fatigued to pursue his way on foot any longer, he went to his club, and by the aid of a London directory ascertained the addresses of a couple of dozen more shops farther afield where she might possibly be found. These he visited in a taxi, but without success, and returned home to his flat a quarter of an hour before dinner, where, utterly exhausted, he went to sleep in his chair. Naturally, he dreamed about her, in a vague nightmarish manner, and she seemed to be in trouble.

      He awoke with a start, and for a moment thought that, like Pygmalion, he had brought his Galatea to life, for there she stood in front of him in the dusk. At least, her orange dress stood there.

      “My dear Oliver,” said Alice’s voice, “aren’t you ready for dinner yet? Make me some compliment on my new tea-gown.…”

      After that miserable adventure he resolved to have no more to do with the serious or emotional side of life, and in the words of one of our modern bards “he held it best in living to take all things very lightly.” He had consecrated all the power of his imagination on one great passion, and now his dream was exploded and Alice had got the teagown! Almost worse than that was that the divine orange vesture of his beloved had begun to multiply in a most unseemly manner in the shops of quite inferior dressmakers, and half a dozen times a day he could feel his breath catch in his throat as for a moment he thought he saw in some other window the wraith of her who was for ever lost to him. But while this stung and wounded him, it yet probably helped to cure him, and a few weeks later he was immersed again in the minor joys of life, visiting

Скачать книгу