Shadows of Flames Part 78

"Oh, cut it out, Mater," she said amiably. "I hooked Roderick Random and Boccaccio when I was twelve--but you needn't worry. They made me sick--what I could understand of them. Yes, Mater--I've naturally got what they call a 'clean mind'--nastiness never would attract me. But this is a new age beginning, and a new sort of girl is beginning, too, and she wants to know what's what about everything, and-- I'm _her_!"

she wound up defiantly.

Mrs. Loring had put up her _face-a-main_, and earnestly regarded the girl's face during this speech. She had again that sensation of watching an interesting tempest from safe decks.

"I shall send you to school in France this winter," said Mrs. Horton grimly. "If you're so bent on acquiring knowledge it shall be given to you in ordered doses."

"All right, Mater!" said Belinda. Then she flung her racquet viciously on the steps, and groaned, thrusting her hands in the thick, red-brown cl.u.s.ters on either side of her face:

"French schools or not, Morry is a d.a.m.n fool!" said she.

Then Mrs. Horton rose in all the severity of step-motherhood.

"You shall go to bed this instant!" said she, pointing. "You shall have only soup for dinner. You shall not leave these grounds for a week. Nor play tennis--nor go sailing."

"I couldn't very well go sailing in the grounds," said Belinda, with inextinguishable pertness. But she rose, and went upstairs to bed as the maternal finger indicated, making hideous, gargoylish faces all the way, which she did not dare turn to deliver.

And once, alone in her bedroom, having slammed the door so that the cottage jarred with it, she flung herself face down upon the floor, and sobbed furiously. With one clenched hand she beat the matting near her head. She strangled with this violent sobbing. Her whole body heaved with it.

"O G.o.d ... punish him!" choked Belinda. "O G.o.d ... help me to get even with him some day ... somehow...."

She rose after a half-hour of this frantic weeping; and, hiccoughing with spent grief, like a pa.s.sionate child, went and unlocked a little drawer. She took out a photograph of Morris. Under it was written in her black, loopy handwriting, "My Hero and my Love." She gazed a moment at his face, all distorted and magnified by her tears; then she deliberately spat upon it, tore it in pieces, and ground them under her heel. "I hate you.... I hate you.... Beast!... Pig!... Liar!" choked the little fury. All at once, down she flopped, her skirt making a "cheese"

about her, and gathered the desecrated morsels to her lips.

"Oh ... oh...." she moaned. "My heart is broken ... it's broken...."

Balling the fragments in her fist, and still seated on the floor, she shook her fist with the rags of love in it, at the empty air.

"I'll get even with you, Morry...." she said between her teeth, as though he were present in person. "I'll get even with you ... if I have to wait till _I'm_ thirty!... Oh, _I_ know you!... You dared to kiss me ... _like that_...." Her face flamed at the memory. "And then ... in less than a year ... oh!... But if you tired of _me_ ... after just _one_ kiss ... you'll tire of _her_ ... after some hundreds.... _Then_, Mr. Morry...." Her beautiful face was quite savage--a woman's jealous face under the childish mop of hair--"then _I'll_ be waiting! In two years I'll be eighteen.... I'll give you just two years ... then _my_ innings begin...."

Belinda knew well that she was beautiful. She had known it supremely when she tempted Morris to kiss her--for she had tempted him--but then she loved him wildly. She was morally a little Oriental--with all her pa.s.sions at white heat though she was but a schoolgirl. She had thought that his kiss meant that he loved her in like wise. He had been sorry the moment the kiss was over. But then--she had really tempted him beyond endurance, and he had always thought she had the most kissable mouth in the world. Besides, just at that psychological moment he happened to be bored to desperation. He had been spending the two weeks at Nahant that his mother always exacted from him in the summer. It was the only thing that she ever did exact from him, but they always seemed interminable. Then had come Belinda, tempting him with her pa.s.sionate, sparkling eyes, and the desireful red fruit of her mouth ... fruit cleft for kisses....

He had hurried away the next day. He was honestly ashamed of that sensual kiss laid on a school-girl's lips. She was only fifteen then. He raged at himself and at her, too. "Kitten Cleopatra," he called her in his thought. "Amorous little devil-- Jove! I pity her husband...."

For he never realised for an instant that the girl was really in love with him.

XIII

When Lady Wychcote received Sophy's letter, she was breakfasting at Dynehurst, alone with Gerald. She went very red under her light, morning rouge, then pale. After some bitter remarks, through which her son sat in silence, she said:

"I shall send for James Surtees." Mr. Surtees was the family solicitor.

"I am sure that as the probable heir we have some legal control over the boy, in a case like this."

Gerald rose decidedly.

"I shouldn't use it if I had it," he said.

His mother rose, too.

"_I_ should," she said curtly.

They were standing face to face. Gerald's eyes wavered first. He looked out of window over the rolling green of the Park to where the smoke from the mining town blurred the pale horizon. Then he looked back at his mother again. It was a gentle but bold look for him.

"I wouldn't if I were you, mother," he said gravely.

"No. There are many things that you leave undone, which would be done if _you_ were _I_," she said in a harsh voice, turning away. "I shall write to Surtees this afternoon."

But Lady Wychcote did not find her interview with Mr. Surtees very consoling. He replied to her most pressing questions by quoting from that Guardianship of Infants Act, which seemed to her to have been pa.s.sed chiefly for her annoyance. The meticulous legal phraseology of the quoted sentences so got on her nerves that it was all she could do to refrain from being rude to the solicitor. Mr. Surtees read from slips that he had brought with him in reply to her urgent letter, asking whether in such an instance as this the Court might not be willing to appoint her as co-guardian with her grandson's mother. ".... When no guardian has been appointed by the father, or if the guardian or guardians appointed by the father is or are dead, or refuses or refuse to act, the Court may, if it shall think fit, from time to time appoint a guardian or guardians to act jointly with the mother."

"Well ... and in such a case as this?... where my grandson will grow up with an American step-father?" she had asked eagerly.

"But your ladyship told me that Mrs. Chesney agreed to have her son educated in England?"

"Yes," she admitted impatiently; "but suppose that she should change her mind?"

"I think that we should have to await that event."

"But my...." (Lady Wychcote had almost said "my good man" in her extreme irritation.) "But my dear Mr. Surtees, who can tell _what_ influence this ... this American step-father may have on the child--even in a year?"

"I venture to suggest that your ladyship is over-apprehensive," said Mr.

Surtees. "From my personal acquaintance with Mrs. Chesney, I feel a.s.sured that she will allow no one to influence her son in any way that could be harmful. But," he continued, "if by any unfortunate chance ...

er ... difficulties of ... of this kind should occur--the Court will generally act in the way that it considers most beneficial for the interest and welfare of the infant."

"Then, in case the mother's guardianship proved to be unsatisfactory, the Court _would_ interfere?"

"I think there is no doubt about that."

With this, for the present, Lady Wychcote had to be content.

In the meantime Sophy's second wedding-day was drawing near. Mrs. Loring was to come to Sweet-Waters for the marriage, but there were to be no other guests. She arrived two days before. Every one liked her. And Bobby approved of her. "I like Mr. Loring's _muvvah_...." he told Sophy.

His tone implied deep reticences on the subject of Mrs. Loring's son.

That evening, as Sophy bent over his crib to kiss him good-night, he held her face down to his and said:

"Muvvah, do you love Mr. Loring more than me?"

Sophy dropped to her knees and caught him in her arms.

"No, darling! No, _no_! I love you both--not one better than the other."

Bobby clung fast to her. Then he whispered:

"S'posin' you had to choose 'right hand--lef' hand'?"