Beggars on Horseback Part 12

Pity, allied to the intellectual pleasure they took in each other, moved her first, for he was unhappy, and she, too, had the habit of pain. She remembered the first whole day they had taken together; how they climbed up to San Miniato and found a field in which they lay and talked, and how he came back with her to the thirteenth-century palace beside the Arno where she lodged. She had a little room with a painted ceiling, and the infant Bacchus and adoring nymphs disporting themselves in bas-relief on the mantelpiece, a room looking over the brown fluted roofs of Florence; but the great loggia where he and she sat faced the Arno, and they had coffee and cigarettes and watched the swift blue night fall over Florence while the swarm of lights waked broken reflections in the swirling water. On the loggia they exchanged a brief mention of their troubles, both commonplace enough; hers a childhood with parents who perpetually quarrelled, the mother a hard worldly woman who eventually took to drugs, and a father who had at last left for another woman the home which was so unbearable; while Sophia herself had only shaken off the horrors of it and earned her own living, barely enough at that, a few months earlier.

Richard's trouble was his wife, who seemed not unlike Sophia's mother.

He was both too kindly and too weak--for his was one of those temperaments that shrink from any display of unpleasantness--to have mastered her brutally and for good--and strong enough to go on living in the same house with her because, although she made his life a weariness, she was an intensely conventional woman to whom the position of a wife separated from her husband before all the world would have been intolerable. Between him and Sophia the fact that they both knew the terror of not being able to slip out even to post a letter without dreading what they might find on going back, made a bond of sympathy.

Sophia, ignorant as she was, could not be a young, and, for some people, a beautiful woman, without having learned a few stray sc.r.a.ps of wisdom, and one was that when a man began to confide his troubles to her it was as well to see less of him. But Sophia let herself drift, because she liked being with the man so much; and also the fact that he was from her own place, that the relentless G.o.ds had brought him to Florence to meet her, and would, in due course, send them both back to where, henceforth, they would know each other, gave her a curious feeling of being entrapped in some web too powerful to break. She never blamed him or let him blame himself for what inevitably happened.

"Sophia, my sweet," he wrote her in one of the letters she now picked up at random. "I didn't deliberately set to work to make love to you. I knew your beauty inflamed me and your wit delighted me. But when we first met I thought we should just see each other a few times and quarrel and laugh, and I should revel in your looks and no harm done.

And now little Miss Jervis has turned into Sophia, and either I must have Sophia for ever and ever mine, or I ought to have stuck to an elderly uncle line and come away with no tears for her and no self-loathing for me, and no need to lie and shuffle and make her share in the lies and shuffles for the future."

"You'll never do that, dear," thought Sophia, laying the letter down.

"When I have to come back to London we'll meet honestly, or not at all. For there's nothing on earth that's worth living in a sea of lies for. . . ." She remembered how he had asked her if she would come and see his wife, so that he and she might meet on an accepted footing, and how the doubtful taste of the proposition had jarred her. He argued that because they would be honestly "playing the game" by his wife, Sophia need not mind the meeting; his knowledge of women was curiously insensitive and blunt, and he had no conception of how impossible it would be for Sophia to sit quietly and see another woman doing the honours of his house. In this he was not entirely to blame, for Sophia so contrived to hoodwink him that he never quite knew she loved him, certainly never knew the force of her love. He thought of her as a reckless, innocent child stung to lavish giving out of affection and pity, and so, to begin with, she had been. The woman Sophia kept up what had become a pose, not only from the pride of a maiden, but also because some instinct told her that sooner or later he would rather be able to think she had not given more.

For the first few days either of them would have declared that all was well and there was no danger, yet each day marked a distinct step further on, a definite phase pa.s.sed through. Sometimes they wandered about Florence, in the Boboli and the Cascine gardens, or upon the windy heights of Fiesole; sometimes he hired a queer little carriage with swift, bedecked horses, and they drove far out into the country, not getting home till night. The day before the revelation came was one of the most exquisite they spent together, one of which Sophia could still hardly bear to think. Leaving the carriage at a little village, they wandered on foot into a lovely valley, and laughed because he called it "old mastery," pointing out the Turneresque effect of a ruined castle set high amidst a ma.s.s of olives which were being blown pale against it.

Presently they came to a stream that stormed down the valley and fell into seven successive pools; deep, still pools, as green as ice, with sunlit bubbles sent driving through them by the impetus of the clear arch of descending water. Beside the largest pool, on a smooth grey slab of rock screened by the over-hanging cliff, they sat and ate their lunch of bread and hard-boiled eggs and wine, and the sun shone on the glossy red-brown hair so cunningly folded about Sophia's head, and shone in the depths of her grey eyes and on her tanned skin. When they had finished she lay a little below him, closing her eyes to feel the blown spray drift against her lids, and she never knew till he told her that his hand had been on her hair the whole time, and never knew till later still that she had been loving him even then. The day pa.s.sed in a perfect harmony of speech and silences, and all the time Sophia was giving--giving peace and mothering and delight, giving the sky and the earth and the very air they breathed. Only some one who has ever made a gift of a day knows the joy that it is--how each golden moment, conscious of its own beauty, hangs poised like a held breath; how the sun and wind and flowers and the upward curves of the supporting earth are all parts of the gift, making the giver a G.o.d who pours out creation for his friend.

The next day they took train to Pisa on a more sophisticated errand, since he had undertaken to make a sketch of the tower for a friend who was "sheeking" some Italian backgrounds. Sophia wandered happily about the town while he did so, and then they met for lunch in the garden of an old inn.

"I'm afraid of to-day," he told her, "because it can't be as perfect as yesterday. Nothing could--that's the worst of a day like that."

"I'll _make_ it as perfect," Sophia replied, and she kept her word. She still had no idea she loved him, she only knew that she wanted to shield and protect him, that she was happy with him and felt the power to make him happy, and that she trusted him utterly. Without realizing it, she tempted him cruelly by her very trust, and that day her calm recklessness of speech, her gaze that meeting his so straight and untroubled, disturbed him so profoundly, were too much for him.

"Take off your glove," he said suddenly.

Sophia's notions of love had been culled from books, and she considered it inseparable from what she termed "thrills." How was she to know that a woman, especially what is called a "nice" woman, can love without the promptings of the pulses? Because she felt no sensuous "thrill" as the tone of command, it never occurred to her to think she could be in love, wherein she was making another common literary mistake--that of thinking that every woman enjoys being mastered. Sophia found her joy in ready compliance with the demands of the beloved, not in arranging set scenes of clashing wills and conciliations. Taking off her glove, she gave him her hand.

"When I say that I want to kiss you now," he said, "it doesn't mean in the way it would have, even a day or two ago. I told you then you affected me . . . but now it would be because I love you."

Sophia's hand moved slightly in his.

"Yes," she said hesitatingly, "in a way--of course. I know you're very fond of me--and all that."

"In _the_ way," he returned, "and I'm not fit to hold your hand. D'you know what the life of an average man is like--especially of a man in my circ.u.mstances?"

"You mean--women?"

"Yes--bought women," he said brutally. "Does it make a lot of difference to you?"

Sophia, refusing to let her mind so much as dwell with any effort of realization on his confession, closed her hand firmly over his.

"It doesn't make any difference. Nothing does. If I could look after you--if you were free to be looked after--you wouldn't have to go to other women any more. I care about you more than about any man I've ever met."

"And I don't care about you more than any woman I've ever met. You're unique and you're you, but I've been in love a good many times. And there's always the big one I've told you about. I feel I've so little left to give, and yet--by G.o.d, Sophia! I _could_ give to you, even battered old I!"

"I'd be such a wife to you," said Sophia proudly, clenching her free hand, "that I should fear no other woman on earth."

"And you wouldn't need to . . . Sophia!" he cried. "How you would give!"

"And we mustn't, either of us," said Sophia, and to soften the speech she bent her head swiftly and kissed the hand she held.

"My dear . . . !" he said huskily, and Sophia led the way out of the garden.

That night, after he had left her at her shabby old palace, he went back to his hotel and sat up, smoking heavily, most of the night. Towards morning, he wrote her a letter--the first in order of those beside her on the seat. She took it up now and read it once again:

"Sophia, Sophia," it ran, "I'm in the depths of misery. What have I done to you and what is going to come of it all? When this time is over? When we're back in London and out of lotus land? You know--stolen interviews and weeks without meeting, and that old and awful struggle between the 'game' at home and my inclinations abroad. And I've hardly written so far when I'm feeling better. Dear, what does all that matter? I feel the shadow of that coming gloom on me already, but how glorious the sunshine's been for me! I'm not going to think or worry--yet. What will happen when I'm back in London must happen, but if I had you by me now I shouldn't care a d.a.m.n for that. I feel stupid and stockish. There are such millions of things I want to say to you, Sophia--and they're mostly middle-aged things. That's the worst of it. Warnings I feel I ought to give you about myself and my temper and my terrible ease in giving way to adverse circ.u.mstances. I've told you I'm not big enough or strong enough for you to care for me except as a useful old pal. You'll find me out and hate me. All sorts of ghastly bogies are waiting to jump out at me. They'll get me. But you, dear, you gracious, reckless woman-child, whatever you think of me in the future you can't rob me of to-day and yesterday and all those days, and especially to-day. Things like that are too sacred to write about, almost to think of. And we're deadly honest with each other, that's a great thing. The more I dream of you the more I want you here, now. I simply can't write, I've been nearly as high this afternoon as I shall ever get, perhaps quite--and one has to pay for that. Oh, my dear; please G.o.d, you'll never pay for me! Sophia, you're very dear to me. Richard. You poor child--you glorious woman!"

The next day both fell from their high alt.i.tude. They had driven to a little half-deserted town, a white, dead, staring, crumbling place--a place of blind windows and glaring silences. Both felt a sense of tension, and leaving the carriage they wandered round the walls, and climbing over a broken gap sat down on a gra.s.sy spur of the hillside, with their backs to the terrible little town. As usual, by now, they talked about themselves, chiefly of him, and he told her that though several women had been fond of him as a friend and liked to "mother" him even as she did, no one of them had cared for him in another way or kissed him as a lover kisses. He slipped an arm round her shoulders as he spoke. Sophia was as ignorant as an infant of what kissing like a lover might be, and in a rush of pity and affection she turned her face up towards him.

"Oh, it isn't as if we were going on afterwards like this," she said; "this is just a bit cut out of life for me to give you. It's taking nothing from her, she doesn't want to give you anything. And I want to make this bit as splendid as I can for you."

He felt her shoulder touch his as she leant her warm young body towards him, he saw the glory of her eager eyes and mouth, and he caught her to him, crushing her fiercely. . . . Sophia wondered if this awful kiss were ever going to stop; she had never known there was such a way of kissing--a hard pressure, a sucking of her very soul--and she was filled with horror under it. When he loosed her she turned and buried her face against the wall. For a while they sat in silence, then she saw him kissing her coat, her sleeve, then her head was pressed back against the wall and his mouth came to hers again. She stayed pa.s.sive, dazed. In silence they went to the carriage and drove away, and almost silently they parted. Sophia spent the night in a misery of shame, he spent it in mingled excitement and remorse: fearful lest he had aroused in her a pa.s.sion which would need to be satisfied at the cost of social disaster.

Next day they talked of nothing in particular in a desultory way and did not refer to what had happened until, wandering through one of the wooded mountain slopes beyond Florence, they came on a tiny sportsman's hut with a roof of red-fluted tiles and a huge chimney. Sophia peeped and went in; he followed. Within, the hut was only about five feet square; flame-coloured leaves had drifted in through the open doorway and lay piled on the hearth; on the wall were some names rudely scrawled in charcoal.

"How did you sleep?" he asked suddenly.

"I didn't. I was thinking what I should say to you to-day."

"What was it?"

"Never, never again be like you were yesterday. I didn't know it was like that. It was dreadful. I can't bear it."

He took her hands and held them.

"Never, I promise you. I had an awful night. I didn't know what to think or wish or do. Let's get out of this hut. It's too small."

The rest of the day they spent happily under the trees, and it seemed to her that the sense of rest and peace was stronger than if it had never been broken. Very soon came their last day together. They drove to a deserted castle on a hill, called Castello di Luna, and as they went Sophia turned to him.

"To-day's the last," she said, "and I'm going to make it the most beautiful present of all to you. We'll pretend, like children. We'll pretend there's only to-day in the world, that there are no obligations beyond here and now, that we are happy people--we'll pretend."

He gathered her in his arms and kissed her again and again fiercely, but not with the abandonment which had frightened her before, and her heart turned heavy within her and she knew she loved him. They stayed till evening in the neglected garden of the old castle, left discreetly alone by Lucia and Amadea, the little peasant custodians who lived with a beetle-browed mother and a score of younger children in the tower over the gate. It was Lucia who ventured an opinion as to Sophia's baby, and Sophia emptied her pocket-bottle of lavender water over the little girls' blue-check handkerchiefs and told Richard to give them five _lire_ apiece against the day when they should have babies of their own.

Then, in the quiet old garden, he and she sat and talked and were silent, and, with her arms round him, she drew his head on to her breast, and they played the dangerous game of saying what they would do when they were married.

"Your baby would be sweet!" he quoted to her. "Would you dare even that for me, Sophia?"

"Would I not?" she breathed.

"Oh, I can't give up hoping it may all become possible!" he cried at last, but she shuddered a little. "Don't," she said, "it's building on a grave."

But her heart ached at the sweetness of the vision. She never felt any temptation to fling her cap over the windmill for him, partly because it is very true that "_Les bonnes femmes n'ont pas ces tentations-la_,"

partly because of the much greater things she wanted to give--a hearth that would always warm him, a pillow that would always rest him, and on the hearth a cradle--and these were things that he could not come at through a back door.

They said good-bye on the loggia in Florence, and that night he left for Leghorn. He wrote to her in the train; and bringing her thoughts back to the present by an effort, Sophia picked up the letter now.

"Sophia, Sophia," she read, "is it only you who pay? My sweet, I hope you will never feel what I felt as I went home. The bare truth is I am a coward and a cad, besides being a fool. I began it, and if I didn't know where it was going to lead to I was a fool to play with fire, and I was a cad to go on. Dear, I'd rather go through years of anything you feel than ten minutes of what I'm feeling. But I've got to stick it henceforth when I'm not buoyed up with your presence. It's been so gorgeous, you've been so heavenly, that I'd do it all again. But now besides the awful want of you there's the clear vision of what I am, and it's hideous. I haven't the pluck or the pa.s.sion to carry you right off before all the world whether you would or no, nor the sense and the honesty and the decency to be just friends with you. Oh, Sophia, I hate myself for it, and hate myself most for being glad, deep down, that I _did_ get what you gave me. I can't find anything solid or honest in me anywhere, except my feeling for you and my joy in our time together, and I've no right to that. This is cruelly unlike what I've preached to you about possessing for ever past joys. I suppose I shall forget my own wickedness and even come to regret that I didn't take more--take _all_ by force or guile--for perhaps, after all, it's better to be a downright brute than a half-and-halfer. If so, shan't I be even more unworthy of all you've given me, you sweet, foolish, lavish child? If you were here now, Sophia, I shouldn't be feeling all this. You'd only have to smile at me and I should get back my pride in having won what I have won.

But without you I seem to see more clearly what I am. My sweet, wouldn't you be happier if you saw me so, too? All I feel now is a desperate need of you, your hands and your hair and your eyes and your mouth and your voice and your wit and your dear mothering. And next month? Secret meetings and concerted lies, and all the rest of the filthy game? And I drag you into it all because I want you and because my affairs make it necessary to do it or part for good. I'm trying to look at it clearly and see all the worst--misunderstandings, preoccupation, work, moods, fears, all the things that are going to prevent a wretched thing like me from being where he wants to be and doing what he could for you. I wish from the bottom of my soul the train would smash up and kill me to-night. Oh, if there were only the past few weeks to consider it would be simple enough. I've had such a time as I've never had before, and you made it. You said you would and you did. You've given me such a time as a woman never gave a man in our circ.u.mstances before. But there's you and the world and the future to consider. It's very small moral satisfaction to me that I didn't deliberately set to work to make love to you. It grew, as you showed me more and more how adorable you were, how gracious and desirable and generous and trusting, you dear nymph of the woods, virgin-mother, friend and lover and comforter. It's no good going on like this, man's a self-deceiving kind of brute, and perhaps before long all the glory of the days of you, you, you, will fit in quite comfortably and the poison of self-hatred cease to hurt. I stop to-morrow night at the Grand Hotel, Livorno. Will you write to me there, sweet? If I could really be sorry for it all I should like myself better. But I can't. I can only hate myself for glorying in what I got by such means. Write to me--I'm frightened and alone.

"RICHARD."

"My sweet," the next letter began, "your letter has come. It's what I knew it would be, so brave and sweet and good that I can only wonder at you all the more. It soothes and heals and cheers me, and once more I am drinking your life-blood and using your youth and splendour to live on. Is there anything you wouldn't do for my comfort? When I fell asleep this morning about dawn I dreamt of you and woke all hot and frightened, because I thought I heard you moaning, a horrible, strangled moan. Did I? Oh, my dear, I hope not. I can't get at the truth all these miles away.