He reached for the hand that lay on the lap rug. It felt like a small, captive bird; a bewildered beat of life. Wordlessly he went on stroking it until at last the slow, hard tears came painfully from between the shuttered lids. Passers-by looked smilingly through the windows of the carriage at the charming spectacle of the pretty girl whose bonneted head lay so gracefully upon his shoulder.
That night Thomas forced her to come to the theatre. He was to do a scene from Othello. Mr. Merry had already announced his intention to play Romeo. Mr. Young’s acceptance had been so belated that there had been no time for a full collaboration of excerpts from their favourite roles as had been suggested in the invitation. As he leaned with seeming nonchalance against the wall of the box he felt a sudden sense of gladness. The audience, packed tightly, tier upon tier, was gradually bearing in upon his sense of the theatre. The old response to it was not dead. He could feel its mounting stimulation. He turned back and saw the shadowy stillness that was Dorene’s face. Was her tragedy greater than his own? His mind evaded the answer. There was no measuring up of each separate tragedy? Or was there? Nothing could compensate this girl for the loss of her sight. And nothing could compensate Thomas for the loss of the love that had been woven into the fabric of his life—its brightest, strongest thread. There rose in the dimness a vision of Sterrin in her bridal loveliness and his breath caught on a quick gasp. Curse John Holohan and his pious pratings that day in New Orleans. Holy vows inagh! Curse John Holohan and his gorilla arms that had pinioned him the day he had thought to dash from New Orleans and across the world to snatch her from the convent. Convent! I’ll hold a thousand crowns that there was never any convent. It was a plot. They suspected how things were. Mr. Maurice O’Carroll had suspected. Cutting down staff inagh! Why hadn’t he cut down on the likes of Pakie Scally, a hanger-on that had no claim on staff status.
‘What is it, Mr. Young?’ Dorene had heard his gasp. He touched her shoulder. ‘Hush! The curtain is going up.’ She moved her head from side to side; obediently seeking the direction of the stage that held no interest for her; and then she heard Mr. Merry’s voice. As she listened she made comparisons; she told herself that Mr. Merry portrayed the form of the drama; but Mr. Young portrayed its soul. She felt another touch on her shoulder. ‘I must go behind now.’
He saw the sudden dismay on her face. ‘Good gracious,’ he said, ‘if you could only see your face!’ And then he could have bitten off his tongue. How was he ever going to remember not to make these kinds of remarks? ‘Immediately I am finished I shall come back here and fetch you. Meantime,’ his fingers pressed her shoulder, ‘you are to be my sternest critic.’ He touched her cheeks.
‘Don’t grieve, Little One,’ he said, ‘I have not given up hope.’
The door closed gently. Her fingers reached up and pressed the cheek that his fingers had caressed.
46
Sterrin was glad the Romeo extracts were finished. The whole scene and setting had recalled too poignantly Young Thomas and those young days at Kilsheelin. She was on thorns for her meeting with Mademoiselle Hautdoire and it was ridiculous to allow the play to upset her now. In fact she had been so eager to meet Mademoiselle that she hadn’t even bothered to enquire about the programme or actors. Actors! There was only one for her! She screwed up the handbill she was given at the entrance and let it fall to the floor. She mustn’t display any emotion in front of her husband. It had been difficult enough to get him to come. He had had his fill of Shakespeare in the past and had seen all the great actors. He only came because he was suspicious of letting her out of his sight. Beside her, an enraptured Aunt Yvette was completely lost in the actor.
The door of the box opened and before Mademoiselle Hautdoire could move inside Sterrin was on her feet and suggesting that they should go in the promenade in the foyer. Her Aunt Yvette started to accompany her but already they were lost among the promenading audience. The bell for the curtain-up had stopped ringing when they returned. Sir Jocelyn was standing outside the open door of their box, his lips thin drawn with anger. His accustomed courtesy towards ladies strained coldly, when he saw their conspiratorial whispering. He disapproved of this Mademoiselle Hautdoire, but before he could vent his anger some announcement that the stage Manager was making brought forth a resounding applause.
‘Now perhaps we may have the pleasure of listening to the play,’ he said as the door closed. Sterrin laid down her glasses. She wasn’t interested in the play or the performers. She was more concerned with what the little ex-Comtesse had whispered to her. It had been worth the fight she had had to make to get there. Suddenly she leaned forward. That voice! Great God, if she went on imagining things like this she would go mad. That quality of tenderness and melody! How it throbbed with passion. She groped for her opera glasses but could not find them. Heedless of appearance she leaned right over the ledge. In the dim light the black make-up masked the features she scanned. But the commanding figure, the movements, graceful and correct, they belonged to only one man!
He seemed to be speaking direct to her. The very words were meant for her.
It gives me wonder great as my content
To see you here before me: O my soul’s joy!
If after every tempest come such calmness,
May the winds blow, till they have waken’d death
He stopped suddenly. Now he was looking towards another box, directing his voice there. Near it a white face loomed out, loomed in a mist the way it had when he was rehearsing the play that had cost Dorene her sight. But this was no misty vision. This was her face. She was here! For the first time in his stage life he forgot his lines. His mind was completely blank to everything except that face, like Desdemona’s. ‘...that whiter skin of hers than snow and smooth as monumental alabaster.’ That was not the line he wanted!
Dorene clenched her hands. What has happened? She had never known him to forget his lines. He had seemed to be speaking towards her. Had the sight of her suggested that awful night when she had broken down and forgotten her own lines? The prompter’s whisper was quite audible ‘...and let the labouring bark climb hills of sea Olympus-high...’ Dorene mouthed the words and willed them across the footlights. Suddenly Thomas made a quick turn and strode across to the prompter. He took his line and moved to the stage centre.
‘Messieurs and Mesdames,’ he cried with a beaming smile and outstretched hands. ‘I crave mille pardons. Your delightful city has bewitched me. This wonderful audience has beguiled my senses. If you were to drag me forth and hang me from the highest lantern I could not for the life of me recall that—labouring bark.’
The audience went wild with delight. Waves of clapping and ‘bravos’ rose to the roof. Dorene unclenched her hands and let out her breath.
‘Mountebank,’ gritted Sir Jocelyn Devine. He was certain that he had been duped into coming. There had been no talk of any actor but Merry and he had not been sufficiently interested in the programme to find out. Sterrin laughed aloud. Out through the storm of applause her clear voice penetrated to his hearing, ‘Bravo, Young Thomas!’ she cried. She leaned out of the box, completely oblivious of the audience. Her husband reached out a restraining hand. For a moment he had a crazy impression that she might be capable of jumping down on to the stage. Thomas, too, fought a crazy impulse. He wanted to raise himself on to her box and take her in his arms. Instead he raised his fingers to his lips. The perfection of his teeth flashed whitely up at her through the dark-stained features. Opera glasses were levelled towards her. Sir Jocelyn stood up but the house had gone silent. Thomas had plunged into his role. Dorene’s hands were clenching again. His acting had taken on another dimension. Its majesty and grandeur were pouring forth in a wild metre that was past her understanding.
‘I’ll tear her all to pieces!’ The cry burst from the heart-wounded Othello in such a power of exquisite agony that Dorene put her hands to her lips to check a cry. Sterrin clenched the plush ledge. Passion undreamed of was surging through her. It poured
out from her to meet the torrent of passion that tore across the stage in a mighty flood. A woman screamed. Sir Jocelyn rose and flung his chair backwards. He had been tricked. They were all in it. The ex-Comtesse Thiery, Sterrin’s aunt. She had manoeuvred this pretending that it was Merry whom she wished to see.
‘This must be stopped,’ he said thickly. ‘It is an outrage! The fellow is indecent and so are you! No decent woman would look like—like...’ He had never been at a loss in his life. The sight of her entranced face, parted lips, eyes moist in a rhapsody of love, was beyond his endurance. ‘I’ll have him horsewhipped... I’ll...’
Sterrin came out of her trance and turned to her husband. ‘You will have him horsewhipped,’ she taunted. ‘Horsewhipped and then transported! Him!’ She swept her arm towards the stage where Thomas, transcendental in his own power, had made the Moor his own. The Othello evoked by her presence had borne down all the barriers and was sweeping before him all love and reason and mercy. In a stage box Mr. Merry turned to an American newspaperman. ‘Bear witness,’ he intoned solemnly, ‘I shall never again act Othello. Never shall I hazard a comparison with THAT!’
Outside, Sterrin for the first time in her life had to fight her way through a crowd. She was completely cut off from the carriage. In vain her husband’s voice behind her called to the lackeys who stood on its backboard to forge a path for them.
‘Tell those people to move their carriage from my path,’ he stormed.
One of the lackeys forged his way to them. ‘They are jammed in, your Honour’s Sir. They are gentlemen from the American newspapers waiting to see the great actor.’
‘Gentlemen! Newspaper fellows. Since when did they become gentlemen?’ Sir Jocelyn was beside himself. ‘What is the world coming to? A gentleman’s carriage held up by a play-actor.’
But all the world was held up for the play-actor. The din of voices, the clip-clop of hooves, the carriages with crests on their panels, the coachmen with cockades in their high silk hats, the footmen in buckskin breeches, the gentlemen in opera cloaks, the ladies with bosoms bare beneath enclustering jewels; they were all here, thought Sterrin as she gained the carriage unaided, because of her father’s knife boy! My knife boy. And he is waiting for me!
The surge in her body made her light-headed. She leaned back and closed her eyes; and thought of what Mademoiselle Hautdoire had whispered to her in the box. This annulment business involved dreadful disclosures about intimacy. Worse; disclosures about lack of intimacy. She squeezed her eyes tight. It would be unbearable; but I’ll go through with it. A long, hard fight, Gabrielle had said. I’ll fight; hard and long. And at the end there would be Young Thomas! I’ll go on waiting, he had said.
A burst of clapping made her open her eyes. Young Thomas was squeezing through the throng; coming this way! She half rose in her seat; then she saw the girl on his arm. Not the conventional linking with an escort, but clinging with the close-held intimacy of a caress. And Thomas was looking down into the girl’s face; smiling gently. Sterrin had forgotten; had never started to remember that Thomas could smile like that at anyone else in the whole world, it was the tender, pitying smile that had comforted her across her father’s grave. Suddenly he put his arm around the girl and drew her towards the carriage. Sterrin’s heart gave a great lurch. She was standing fully upright now. Behind her, her husband’s voice was angrily urging her to sit down.
The blood was draining from Sterrin’s heart! She watched Thomas tuck the lap rug round the girl and suddenly into her brain burst the cry that had burst from Othello.
‘I’ll tear her all to pieces!’ Her fingers bent and tensed into claws. She pressed them against her sides to keep them from stretching towards the presumptuous interloper. The dreams she had woven about him, in childhood, in girlhood. A background of lost grandeur. She had dreamed him up when he had left her to fight his way across the bridge that would lead him back to her world; a splendid return with fame and fortune. And when she had believed him in prison, her dreams had opened the gates a hundred times in wild escape. Never for one half moment had it occurred to her that any other woman would dare to penetrate the gossamer that had enmeshed her own Young Thomas, the knife boy, with his—Miss Sterrin!
Primitive rage swept through her. She did not know the words that had flashed into her brain, had reached her lips. Behind her, her horrified husband and aunt heard her clearly say, ‘I’ll tear her all to pieces.’
Sir Jocelyn snatched the long whip from the coachman and brought it down savagely across the flanks of the nearest pair. The horses plunged and the startled leaders reared up, bringing with them the two grooms who were holding their heads.
The landau scraped Thomas’s carriage with a loud scrunch as it passed. He reached out to steady himself and saw her; saw the quick look of her disdain before she turned away. He was close enough to touch her, but not close enough to see the trembling of her underlip, her hands, her knees; all her body trembling with the tenseness of defence. All he saw was a white face, chin high, eyes direct, deigning him no faintest hint of recognition.
‘Mo bheal asthore. My life’s love,’ he whispered.
‘What did you say, Mr. Young?’ It was Dorene asking.
‘I said,’ he answered and her new sensitivity caught the dullness and the coldness in his voice, ‘that I ought to have stuck to cleaning knives.’
As his carriage forced through the dense traffic he did not notice that the Paris haut monde was acclaiming the erstwhile knife boy as enthusiastically as it had acclaimed its Emperor a week before.
47
A pile of invitations arrived for Thomas at his hotel; great names bade him to their salons. He had fought through to her world! Or had he? ‘Don’t get carried away, my lad! You are just a successful mountebank, a novelty for parading!’
He glanced idly at one with more writing than the rest. It announced that the Comtesse de Souvestre had reverted to her former name of Mademoiselle Hautdoire. She must be one of the wealthy Hautdoire family, a Frenchified version of the O’Dwyers who had come to France with the Wild Geese. A hurried scribble beneath the invitation said that the writer had a very special and urgent reason for asking Mr. Young to come to her soirée.
Mr. Young held the invitation between finger and thumb. This must be from the piece who, rumour had it, had performed a race on her hands—in her underwear—with some other piece of gilded decadence, before the Emperor. ‘A very special and urgent reason,’ he mimicked. The same special and urgent ennui that prompted her tasteless clowning at Court. He threw the card aside.
He pounced upon an envelope with an American stamp addressed in Kitty’s handwriting. Dear, steadfast Kitty! No alternating heights and drops in her friendship. It had endured through distance and hardships and prosperity from the morning that he had served Mass at her runaway marriage.
She wrote to say that at last she had traced the woman for whom Thomas had searched, the one who had left him with Mrs. Mansfield of Kilsheelin.
‘I’ll give you her name and whereabouts when you return,’ she wrote. ‘Mark and I would like to talk to you here first.’ Dammit! Why hadn’t she written down the address and let him go there at once? The surge of excitement receded. He knew why; as Kitty knew; that the disclosures would prove unpalatable! It was what he had always dreaded; underneath all his fanciful dreaming! He scraped back the chair and jumped to his feet. Whatever it was, he must know. There was still time to book a passage on that boat that had just beaten all records and reached France in fifteen days.
He had gone some yards down the boulevard when he bethought himself of Dorene. ‘Blast...!’ Why must he involve himself in her misfortunes? He remembered the brown eyes he had helped to make sightless. He turned back. He couldn’t take her back to America without giving her the opportunity of consulting that Swiss specialist who had been suggested by the Paris doctor.
*
Sir Jocelyn realised at last that he was wasting his breath. Since his wedding night débâc
le he placed great value on his breath. The dreadful accusations, reproaches, insults that he had vented on his bride all the way from the theatre had brought gasps and sometimes yelps from Aunt Yvette; but they had no effect upon Sterrin. He might as well not have been there. They would leave Paris, he decided. They would go to Switzerland—away from the crowds and from the theatre.
Sterrin was alone; alone as never before. All her remembered life she had been one of two, and the heart of each had been in the bosom of the other. Nothing had altered that; not separation; not prison; not the solemnity of the convent; not even the sacred vow of marriage itself. All the hazards of life and nature, the elements, storm, the ocean, were possible; but not this, another woman, the most elemental of all; blind, assured fool that I have been, the most likely!
She was in her bedroom now, the maid fussing at the fastenings of her gown.
‘Leave me!’
‘But, milady—’
‘Leave me, I tell you.’ She fumbled and tore at the new-fangled hooks and eyes, her unaccustomed fingers dragging out pieces of silk and gauze with the steel contrivances. She flung the gown across the bed and flung herself after it.
From the communicating door her husband watched her anguish liberate itself in shuddering sobs. Displays of emotion bored him. He associated them with discarded mistresses; but this was a revelation! This still, cold girl, sensitive and proud, child of an ancient aristocracy, abnegating herself in an agony of betrayed love. For a bumptious hind, a kitchen boy who had elevated himself into a posturing play-actor! Suddenly he felt that he would barter all his treasures to evoke one breath of love’s emotion from this unpossessed treasure. The scenes he had envisioned when he had secured this treasure! His villa on the Adriatic, Sterrin in filmy lace pouring his coffee on its vine-clad loggia; grand salons in London and Paris; impressive entrances with Sterrin by his side, a jewelled flame drawing all eyes, enslaving all hearts but belonging to him. And here was the reality. Sterrin, prostrate from degradation, turning his marriage bed like his bridal bed into a bier.
The Big Wind Page 54