The Bond/Part 3/Chapter 6
VI
TERESA'S pleasure was not to be spoiled. Crayven's grave mood only added to the wild gaiety of her own, which lasted all the way home. She drank from a mountain stream and sprang up, declaring that the draught was more intoxicating than champagne. She sang, running down the steep descent ahead of Crayven. Once she stopped to fasten up the loosened knot of her hair, and enquired with an elfish look:
"Do I remind you of anybody now?"
"You are like her," he answered coolly.
"And what was her name—you haven't told me."
"Rosamond."
"Rosamond! I have always liked that name so much—'Rose of the world'"
She stopped, gazing at him with a sudden softness, a sudden feeling for his romance.
"Was she beautiful enough for that name?" she asked.
"Beautiful—yes, she had beauty—but there was a grace about her—everything she did was right, somehow. The way in which she finally rejected me was a model of its kind. She was a thorough artist."
His tone was mildly reminiscent, his look anything but romantic or sentimental. Teresa's sympathy was checked, and she walked on more soberly.
That night she was dining at Nina's house, with some of the French colony. She arrived a little early and went up to Nina's room. Nina was dressing with her usual rapidity; she never spent more than twenty minutes on a toilette. To-night she had not even given herself time to have her hair done by the Italian maid. Nonchalantly pinning on a coil of false hair, she said over her shoulder to Teresa:
"You must be tired from your day's expedition."
"Not a bit—I haven't felt so well for years. That air up there puts life into one, I've never known anything so wonderful! It's a pity you don't walk, Nina—you've no idea how delicious this country is," Teresa answered happily, contemplating her own long black figure in a mirror. She was wearing a gauze dress that she especially liked, and she had a charming colour from her day on the heights.
"Would you take me as third on your walks?" asked Nina, satirically.
"Of course—why not?"
"Don't be hypocritical—you wouldn't. But do you think you ought to go off like this, alone, every day? People notice it."
"People? What people?" said Teresa, disdainfully.
"Well, for example, Miss Melton stopped in here at six o'clock for tea, and said she had seen you coming down through the wood, with your hands full of flowers, your hat hanging on your back, singing, she said, like a dryad, or something of that sort. You can hear her saying it."
"What do I care what a sharp old maid says? What do I care about any of these people? They've nothing to do but gossip. I don't care one single"
"I know you don't—but perhaps you Well, I've told you, anyway, what's being said."
"You have. Let us drop the topic."
Teresa serenely gave a last touch to her hair, and went downstairs, the colour in her cheeks slightly heightened.
She had been quite aware, before this, that Nina disapproved her walks with Crayven. Ernesto, too, had been for the first time sulky and cool to her. He had spent the last week at Montreux, but now he was back, and lie met her in the drawing-room with a smiling compliment to her appearance.
"You look radiant—your long country walks do agree with you," he remarked, kissing the tips of her fingers in his most feline manner.
"Why are you trying to be disagreeable?" asked Teresa with a direct glance at him. "Do you really want me to dislike you?"
Ernesto shrugged his shoulders.
"It isn't for me to choose. You do dislike me, or at least you don't like me, which is the same thing, or worse. You threw me over in a minute when this dear friend appeared. Certainly, I am hurt."
His deep, impenetrable eyes rested upon her sentimentally, with something of mockery in their soft gaze. Teresa looked back at him curiously, wondering what his mind really was like, and feeling tolerably sure that it was a sink of iniquity. Or, rather, after all, he was a thorough Italian—what else could one expect him to think? … The worst was, that Nina would think as he did.
Next day Ronald was ill. The child had strayed into a patch of currant bushes and gorged himself, and his carefully guarded digestion had succumbed to the sudden shock; he was prostrated with fever. Teresa stayed beside him all day, banishing the nurse, to whom she had given a furious scolding. In the afternoon Ronald wanted to be amused, and tiring finally of the clay animals which Teresa was modelling for him, he demanded "the Man." This was his name for Crayven, for whom he had had, at first, a great liking. Crayven had given him a number of toys, and played with him delightfully, showing a genuine interest and pleasure in the child. But of late this had fallen off somewhat, and Teresa had more than one compunctious memory of Ronald's small, lonely figure and wistful glance as he besought her to come and sail his boats or "play horse," but was left behind while she went off with Crayven. His fondness for "the Man" had visibly cooled, and Teresa wondered what vague perception might be stirring in his mind. Ronald knew more than he could or would say, she was sure of that; this characteristic of childhood he had in unusual measure, being naturally reflective and reserved. Teresa now, as she poured out her tenderness for him, loving every lock of his dishevelled bronze hair, every movement of his dimpled brown hands, resolved to be much more with him in future. She blamed herself for leaving him so much to the nurse, whom she knew he did not especially like.
At his reiterated demand she sent a note to Crayven, who came over at once.
"I thought you might have been walking to-day—it's such wonderful weather," she said as she took him to Ronald's room.
"No—I thought perhaps you'd go out after tea for a stroll."
"I can't, I'm afraid. Ronald can't bear the sight of his nurse, now he's ill. I must stay with him."
Ronald greeted Crayven with a faint smile, and listened indifferently to remarks about his health and the advisability of letting currants alone in future. Then he said:
"Want to see the tick-tick."
Crayven took out his repeater and rang the hour, opened the case and showed the wheels. Ronald devoted ten minutes to a grave consideration of the watch, then said: "Show us the knife."
Crayven produced a bunch of gold trinkets attached to a chain; a cigarette- and match-case, a cigar-cutter, a pencil, and penknife. These occupied Ronald for some twenty minutes.
"Have you got the dog?" he enquired next.
Crayven fetched his walking-stick, the top of which was admirably carved into an animal-head, and laid it on the bed, saying:
"I brought this for you to keep, old fellow. It's yours now."
Ronald clutched the stick with an expression of such joy that Teresa had not the heart to protest, and smiled radiantly at Crayven, whose dark eyes softened oddly as he looked at the child and then up at Teresa.
"Now sing," said Ronald.
With a look at Teresa, Crayven said apologetically:
"Well, old man, perhaps your mother would rather I didn't. It makes a good deal of noise in a room"
"Sing!" said Ronald, and his face contracted with a menace of tears.
"Oh, do, if you don't mind," urged Teresa hastily.
Crayven, with a deprecating smile, threw back his head and gave the Moslem call to prayer, in a clear, ringing, echoing falsetto, an astonishing volume of sound, penetrating, strange, dying away in a long melancholy high note. Ronald's face lit up with a look of perfect satisfaction; throwing out a toy elephant, which had occupied the post of honour in his bed, and putting the walking-stick in its place, he lay back on his pillow, languidly content.
"Aunt Teresa, can I come in?" said a small, sharp voice at the door.
It was Ernestine, befrilled and beplumed, bringing a bunch of flowers for Ronald.
"Oh, poor little fellow," she murmured, bending coquettishly over the bed to kiss him.
Ronald repulsed her vigorously and would have none of the flowers. Ernestine had once slapped him, and his dignified little personality had never forgiven the affront. He now began to cry with fatigue, and both the visitors had to go. Crayven said, as he took Teresa's hand:
"This is good-bye for a day or so, I'm sorry to say. I've had a telegram from Adela—she arrives to-night at Montreux for a few days. She's motoring about. I'm going down by the night post. … I wonder if you and your sister and sister-in-law and Count Pepoli would come down for a day and lunch or dine with her?"
"I'll find out and telegraph you, or telephone," said Teresa.
He gave her his hotel address, and, with a melancholy look, and a long pressure of the hand, departed.
The meeting was arranged for two days later. Crayven had included Edith in his invitation, though he was ordinarily barely courteous to her. He disliked her, and her sad, melting smiles had impressed him in exactly the opposite way to that designed. He was, of course, not informed of her present circumstances, and therefore her attitude of the pathetic victim was lost upon him. It did not occur to Nina that Edith would want to go and lunch at Montreux. She had played the invalid ever since her nervous attack; appeared not to be able to walk more than a few steps from the house; and declared that because of Egisto's continued silence and his returning her letters unopened, she could not sleep a moment without the aid of drugs. Therefore, Nina was surprised and discomfited when Edith announced her intention of going with the others.
"I can't see how she can want to meet people—strangers—just now, can you?" she said to Teresa. "And I don't want to take her. There's a party of them—we don't know whom we may meet—and it will look as though we'd definitely taken her side, if anything comes out—and I believe that's what she wants. Egisto would be furious if he knew we were taking her about like that. Ernesto doesn't want her to go. And it's foolish from her own point of view—her only chance is in keeping quiet. I told her that, and she cried, and said we treated her as if she were a criminal, in disgrace. Well, so she is."
"The world is hard on women," said Teresa, after a pause. "Poor thing."
"You mean I'm hard on her? But I"
"No, I don't mean you, I mean society in general."
"Well, a woman can't be a fool, you know, without paying for it. We are held more strictly to account than men, if that's what you mean—but we all know it and know it must be so. I wish you'd talk to her, Teresa. She thinks I'm down on her, and Ernesto won't say a word. She'll take it from you—she likes you."
"Does she? I can't see why," said Teresa, reluctantly.
"Well, she does. Do make her see reason, there's a good soul. I'm fairly bothered out of my life. If she insists on going, I shall telegraph that the whole thing is off."
Teresa did not want the whole thing to be off, and, moved partly by this feeling and partly by pity for Nina, she went up to Edith's room. It was midday, but Edith was not yet up. The room smelt of perfumes and cigarettes and the windows were shut, as there was a fog outside. Edith lay in bed reading the Confessions of St. Augustine, with her hair in curl papers.
"I've had an awful night," she said pathetically. "Nina knows I oughtn't to have any sort of disturbance, and yet she made a scene yesterday about my going down to Montreux. Don't you think it's unkind of her to try to shut me up, as though I were insane or something?" And her chin quivered piteously.
"All the same, you mustn't go," said Teresa calmly.
"Why not? Are you, too, against me?"
"You must do as Nina wishes, else she won't help you—and you need her. And if your husband heard of your going about like that, he wouldn't believe much in your—well, it wouldn't make him feel more kindly toward you, would it, now?"
"It isn't from lack of feeling I wanted to go. Heaven knows I feel things enough—too much. That's just it."
"Yes, I know, but I assure you, you mustn't do it. You mustn't offend Nina."
Edith looked sullen, and after a pause cried passionately:
"Shall I ever again be able to do anything I choose—or shall I be somebody's slave all my life? Oh, what a fool, what a fool I have been—to let people get me into their power this way!"
And she began to weep again with rage and nervous misery, crumpling up the St. Augustine under her feverish, flabby body.
Teresa felt a shudder of pitying repulsion. How was it possible that anyone could so utterly go to pieces morally, could so sink to be, as Edith herself had said, the slave of other people? Weakness made one a slave, true—but not necessarily as Nina meant when she pointed her moral with Edith. Edith had been a fool—but she might have done whatever she had done, and not have been a fool. To love was not folly—it was only folly to be trivial.
••••••
Two days later Teresa drove down with the Pepolis, and without Edith, reluctant to leave Ronald for a whole day, though he was now quite recovered, but unable to resist her curiosity to see Crayven's wife. It was hot in the plain, coming down out of the freshness of the mountain heights; and the little town of Montreux glittered meretriciously in imitation smartness, crowded in between the hills and the swimming turquoise-blue of the lake. The luncheon-party had the same air of smartness, the misfortune of which was that it, too, had a factitious air. Adela Crayven and her friends were all of the same tone—a tone maintained as artificially as were their looks. They all had the air of existing on stimulants, of one sort or another, and of dreading a single lapse from briskness.
Adela was a woman who suggested forty years by the very elaboration of her youthful get- up; beautifully dressed, wonderfully cared-for, breathing a luxury which could never forget itself for a moment. She was tall and blonde, and her porcelain-blue eyes had a look of knowing the price of everything, and of being quite determined to have the worth of her money. She greeted Teresa without effusion, with a certain frank, amused curiosity; much in the same way she seemed to regard her husband, but without the curiosity.
Ernesto was in his element and happy, discussing the frivolous menu and flirting to right and left; Nina was out of it. Teresa, placed between Crayven and the other man of the party, a bald young man with a drooping blonde moustache and an eye as knowing as Adela's, but more languid, felt a keener liking, a keener sympathy, for Crayven. They two, after all, belonged to the same world—a world which ignored Adela's, as she ignored theirs. She was thoroughly glad to have seen Crayven's wife, to have this additional light on him, and to feel that he had wanted her to have it. The marriage itself was a mystery to her. Adela apparently had the money. Why had she married Crayven? Why had he been willing to marry her?
Teresa was quite aware that her own position in the company was that of "Crayven's flame." Adela, no doubt, had heralded her in that capacity to her friends. She could see it in the eyes of the other two women—mother and daughter, with a puzzlingly equal quality of jaded youth. She knew that Crayven's plan for the summer had been altered because of her, and undoubtedly Adela knew it, too. Possibly he had been expected to join the motoring-party. That seemed unlikely, yet a few words of Adela's indicated it. Nothing, at any rate, was farther from his idea at present, as he plainly showed.
The luncheon prolonged itself in liqueurs and cigarettes till after three o'clock. Ernesto arranged that they should all meet again for tea, to the music of the band. Then he was to dine with Adela, who was obviously pleased with him; but Nina and Teresa started at six on their drive back up the mountain. Crayven said, as he put them into the carriage:
"They're all off to-morrow, thank heaven. I shall come up by the late post."
Next morning came a telephone message from Ernesto to Nina, ordering clothes to be sent down to him by special messenger. He was going off for a fortnight in the motor. Nina sent the clothes, and came to pour out her woes to Teresa. "When he knows that we came up here only to have a cheap summer, and that it's absolutely necessary for us to economise! Heaven knows what he won't spend now—expensive hotels and cards and Did you see how that woman looked at him? She just put out her hand and gathered him in—and he, of course—anybody can make a fool of Ernesto! I must say, Teresa, I think your Mr. Crayven would do well to go and look after his wife, instead of"
"Poor man," said Teresa feelingly. "It's quite evident now why he lives in the desert, isn't it?"
But Nina's sense of injury, though its expression died away inarticulately, remained. Teresa felt that she was blamed because Ernesto had gone off in the motor, whereas the real reason undoubtedly was that his domestic situation was uncomfortable and boring.