Read Ebook: The Relentless City by Benson E F Edward Frederic

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Ebook has 1421 lines and 73489 words, and 29 pages

ocade, with a mass of pillows on it. Here, the morning after her opening night in New York, she was lying and basking like a cat in the heat, smoking tiny rose-scented Russian cigarettes, and expecting with some anticipation of amusement the arrival of Bertie Keynes. Round her lay piles of press notices, which stripped the American variety of the English language bare of epithets. She was deeply absorbed in these, and immense smiles of amusement from time to time crossed her face. On the floor lay her huge mastiff, which, with the true time-serving spirit, rightly calculated to be thoroughly popular, she had rechristened Teddy Roosevelt. Her great coils of auburn hair were loosely done up, and her face, a full, sensuous oval, was of that brilliant warm-blooded colouring which testified to the authenticity of the smouldering gold of her hair. Lying there in the hot room, brilliant with colour and fragrant with the scent of innumerable flowers , she seemed the embodiment of vitality and serene Paganism. Not even her friends--and they were many--ever accused her of morality, but, on the other hand, all children adored her. That is an item not to be disregarded when the moralist adds up the balance-sheet.

In spite of his excuse of the night before, Bertie Keynes had taken Bilton's advice, and before long he was announced.

'I congratulate you, Dorothy,' he said--'I congratulate you most heartily.'

She sat half up on her couch, and looked at him.

'It's two years since we met last, Bertie,' she said; 'and you--why, you've become a man. You always were a pretty boy, and you don't make a bad-looking man. And I'm vimmy. I used not to be vimmy, did I? But we are all changing as time goes on. Really, I'm very glad to see you again.'

Bertie felt unaccountably relieved at her manner. His relief was of short duration. Dorothy Emsworth arranged her pillows more comfortably, and lit another cigarette.

'I wanted to see you before you left New York,' she said, 'because I am coming down to stay with Mrs. Palmer next Saturday, and we had better know how we stand. So, what are you over here for? Did you come here to get married? And if so, why not?'

She lay back as she spoke, stretching her arms out with a gesture that somehow reminded him of a cat stretching its forelegs and unsheathing the claws of its silent, padded feet. His feeling of relief was ebbing a little.

'Why not, indeed?' he said.

'Dear Bertie, echo-conversation is so tedious,' she said.

'You always used to be rather given to it. So you have come out to get married. That is settled, then. Do ask me to the wedding. The "Voice that Breathed"; wedding march from "Lohengrin"; ring dropping and running down the aisle like a hoop; orange-flowers; tears; sudden unexplained hysterics of the notorious Mrs. Emsworth; deportment of the bride; wedding-cake; puff-puff. And the curtain drops with extreme rapidity. O lor', Teddy R.! what devils we all are, to be sure!'

Bertie's feeling of relief had quite gone, but his nervousness had gone also. He felt he knew the facts now.

'I see,' he said: 'you propose to make trouble. I'm glad you told me.'

'I told you?' she asked, laughing lazily. 'Little vimmy me? I say, I'm brainy too.'

'What do you propose to do?' he asked.

'Well, wait first of all till you are engaged. I say, Bertie, I like teasing you. When you wrinkle your forehead as you are doing now, you look adorable. I don't mean a word I say, you know, any more than you meant a word of that very, very funny letter you once wrote me, which is now,' she said with histrionic utterance, 'one of my most cherished possessions.'

'You told me you had burned it,' said he.

'I know; I meant to burn it, but I couldn't. When I told you I had burnt it, I really meant to have burnt it, and so I didn't tell you a lie, because for all practical purposes it was burned. But then I found I couldn't; it was too funny for words. Really, there are so few humorous things in the world that it would be murder to destroy it. Of course, you didn't mean it. But I can't burn it. It is here somewhere.'

Bertie did not smile. He sat up straight in his chair, and put the tips of his fingers together.

'And don't look like Gallio,' remarked Mrs. Emsworth.

'Look here, Dorothy,' he said, 'you can make things rather unpleasant for me, if you choose. Now, why do you choose? You know perfectly well that at one time the world said things about you and me; you also know perfectly well that--well, that there was no truth in them. You encouraged me to fall madly in love with you because--I don't know why. I thought you liked me, anyhow. Then there appeared somebody else. I wrote you a letter expressing my illimitable adoration. That was all--all. You have got that letter. Is not what I have said true?'

'What do you mean?'

'Well, if you choose to write a very fervent letter to a very improper person, people will say--it is no use denying it--they will say What a fine day it is, but hot.'

Bertie got up.

'That is all I have to say,' he said.

'People are so ill-natured,' said Mrs. Emsworth.

The catlike laziness had left her, though her attitude was the same; instead of looking sensuously lazy, she looked very alert.

'Good-bye, then,' said Bertie; 'we meet next week at Long Island.'

'Yes; it will be very pleasant,' said she.

He left the room without more words, and for five minutes she remained where she was. But slowly, as she lay there, the enjoyment and the purring content faded completely out of her face. Then it grew hard and sad; eventually, with a long-drawn sigh, half sob, she got up and called to her dog. He rose limb by massive limb, and laid his head on her lap.

She fondled the great dog's head a moment, then got up suddenly, and drew the blind down to shut out the glare of the sun, which was beginning to lay a hot yellow patch on the floor.

'He thought that,' she said to herself--'he really thought that.'

She walked up and down the room for a moment or two, then went to a table on which stood her despatch-box, opened it, and looked through a pile of letters that lay inside. One of these she took out and read through. At moments it seemed to amuse her, at moments her smile was struck from her face. When she had finished reading it, she paused a few seconds with it in her hands, as if weighing it. Then, with a sudden gesture of impatience, she tore it in half, and threw the pieces into the grate. Then, with the quick relief of a decision made and acted upon, she whistled to her dog, and went into her bedroom to make her toilet. Resplendency was part of her programme, and with the consciousness of a busy hour before her, she told her butler--Bilton's liberal interpretation of her requirements had included a manservant--that if Mr. Harold Bilton called, he was to be asked to wait.

'Lor'm!' said Parkinson.

'Quite so. And there was a very fascinating young man called Y. He wanted to marry her, and wrote to say so. But meantime another man called Z also wanted to--to marry her. So she said "Yes," because he gave her a great deal of money. But she kept Y's proposal--I don't know why, except because it was so funny. And so now I suppose she is Mrs. Z. That's all.'

'Lor'm!' said Parkinson. 'Will you wear your shiffong and lace dress?'

'Yes, shiffong. Parkinson, supposing I suddenly burst into tears, what would you think?'

'I should think you wasn't quite well'm.'

'Quite right; also there isn't time.'

Mrs. Emsworth had not been gone more than ten minutes or so before Bilton was shown up. He appeared to be in a particularly well-satisfied humour this morning, and as he moved about the room, noting with his quick eye the stamp of femininity which Mrs. Emsworth had already impressed into the garnishing of the place, he whistled softly to himself. In his hand he carried a small jewel-case with her initials in gold upon the top. As always, in the relaxed mood the true man came to the surface; for a man is most truly himself, not at great moments of emergency or when a sudden call is made on him, but when his ambitions for the time being are gratified, when he is pleased with himself and his circumstances--above all, when he is alone. Thus, though just now the hard eagerness of his face was a little softened, yet its alertness hardly dozed; and though he had made, he felt sure, a great success in bringing Dorothy Emsworth to America, he hardly allowed himself even this momentary pause of achievement, but had called this morning to talk over with her the details of a protracted tour through the principal cities of the States. True son of his country, he realized that to pause spelled to be left behind.

As his manner was, Bilton did not sit down, but kept walking about, as if not to be caught idle either in mind or body. As in many of his countrymen, the habit of perpetually being ready and eager to snap up an opportunity had become a second nature to him, so that it was far more an effort to him to rest than to work. Working was as natural to him as breathing; to cease to work required the same sort of effort as to hold the breath. To him in his profession as impresario any movement, any glimpse at a room or a picture, could perhaps suggest what in the fertile alchemy of his mind might be transformed into a 'tip,' and he looked with special attention at two Watteau prints which hung on the walls; for in the second piece which Mrs. Emsworth was to produce under his direction a certain scene was laid in the gardens at Versailles, and the note of artificial naturalness had to be struck in the scenery as Watteau and no one else had struck it. Big trees cut formally and square in their lower branches, but with the topmost boughs left unpollarded; fountain in the centre, quite so, and a glimpse, just a glimpse, of the terrace of the palace with the two bronze fountains beneath the trees.

He stood a moment before the fireplace with eyes half closed, conjuring up the scene, and in particular seeing it with his mind's eye as a setting to that incomparable woman in whom, professionally, at this juncture, he was so deeply interested, to whom he was so managerially devoted, but of whom in other respects he was so profoundly weary. For a year he had been wildly in love with her, for another year he had slowly cooled towards her, and now it required all his steadiness of head and incessantly watchful will not to betray his tedium. Also in years he was now, though still only half way through the thirties, old enough in mind to wish to settle down. His capabilities for passionate attachments were a little cooling, and, with a cynical amusement at himself, he was beginning to realize that married domesticity, even as morals taught, was, though for other reasons, the placid river-bed into which the babbling mountain-streams of youth must eventually empty themselves. Rather bathos, perhaps, but he realized fully that everyone gets in life what they themselves bring to it. The only limitations imposed on a man are those which his own nature makes.

But these unedifying moralities did not occupy him long. They were the background to his thoughts, just as the terrace of Versailles was the background for the picture he was forming. In the foreground of the picture stood Mrs. Emsworth; on the terrace stood another figure, Sybil Massington.

He had let his cigar go out as he revolved these things in front of the two Watteau pictures, and then rose to drop it in the fireplace. A letter in an envelope torn once in half lay there, and he stooped and picked it up, laid the two pieces side by side on the table, and read it through. Then he put the pieces in his pocket, and, with that praiseworthy attention to detail which throughout his life had contributed so largely to his success, he took from the table a sheet of paper, folded it inside an envelope, tore it in half, and replaced the pieces in the grate where he had found the others. The whole thing was quickly and naturally done; it was merely one among a thousand million other cases in which his mind was ready to take advantage of any possible opportunity that Fate might cast in his way. The torn letter might conceivably at some future date be useful to him. Therefore he kept it. It is no use to guard against certainties--such was his gospel--for certainties in this life are so few as to be practically negligible. But he who guarded against contingencies and provided for possibilities was the winner in the long-run.

This done, he dismissed the matter from his mind, and, in order not to let the moments pass without seed, sketched out in some detail the plan of the stage as suggested by the two Watteau prints. He was deep in this when Mrs. Emsworth entered. The 'shiffong' suited her admirably.

'You have been waiting,' she said; 'I am sorry for keeping you. Oh, Harold, they love me over here; they just love me!'

His part was at his finger-tips.

'That doesn't seem to me in the least remarkable,' he said. 'You are a success; no one can be more. I want to be allowed to commemorate it.' And he handed her the jewel-case.

He was no niggard when business was involved; his business now was to keep her in a good temper, and the opal and diamond brooch he had chosen at Tiffany's was really admirable. Even Mrs. Palmer might have found it brought consolation to a wounded spirit.

'That is dear of you, Harold,' she said; 'I adore opals. Is it really for me? Thank you ever so much. It goes on now. Is it rather big for the morning? I think it is. A reason the more for wearing it.'

She pinned it into her dress, and sat down.

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