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Read Ebook: Tom Pinder Foundling: A Story of the Holmfirth Flood by Sykes D F E

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Ebook has 1488 lines and 85866 words, and 30 pages

He grinned it at her, gloating on the expression of her face. She went pale again, then crimson. Her eyebrows flickered passionately.

"I am going," she said, in a still voice.

Then she felt his fingers go softly round her arm.

"Sit down by me," he said, drawing her delicately downward by the arm he held. Her dignity kept her from resisting. She was drawn down among the deep cushions beside him. The warmth that his great body had left on them struck her bare arms and shoulders, giving her a feeling of repulsion. As she sat there, armed within against him, she could not escape from breathing his breath, his face was so close to hers. Its odour of mingled wines, cognac, cigarette smoke, sickened her. The strong, sooty smell of cloth from the arm against her own added a new pang, for this smell of London cloth, which was so distinct to her foreign sense, had been once associated with the fascination of love.

Now he leaned his face forward and looked into her eyes, and she noticed with that inward shrivelling how strange his were--so much paler than they used to be--curiously glassy--the pupils mere specks of black in the centre of the greenish iris.

"What's the use of posing to me?" he said, with a sort of blandness.

"Posing to you?"

"Yes--quite so. Doing the 'chastest icicle on Dian's Temple.' You forget--don't you? I've seen the hidden fire."

Sophy said nothing. The blood started to her cheek again as under a whip.

He moistened his lips in that slow way, and smiled.

"Haven't I? Eh?"

She turned him a very quiet, haughty profile.

"I don't pretend to understand your moods, Cecil."

"You shall share this present one."

"I think not."

"I think--'yes.'"

He flung his arm suddenly around her, drawing her close.

"Look here," he said; and, taking his hand from the pages of the book where it had been resting, he lifted the volume toward her. As her eyes lowered themselves to the book, his fastened upon her face. The next moment she had sprung up, thrusting him from her. The book lay sprawled on the floor between them. It was a very rare volume of morbidly licentious engravings, repulsive, abominable.

She was livid with scorn and loathing. Her breast heaved. She felt the scalding of furious tears against her eyelids. She could not speak; and with that bracelet of his big, soft fingers about her wrist, he held her, laughing silently, convulsed with laughter.

But in Sophy there sprang to life something that was as dangerous as anything in him.

She said, whispering: "You'll be sorry all your life if you don't take your hand from me."

The light eyes wavered. Then he flung back her hand.

"Damme if you're worth the candle!" he said.

She turned and began walking quietly away from him.

This seemed quite to frenzy him.

He leaped over the fallen book and came at her like a bull, his head lowered. He took her by both shoulders.

"Look here!" he said. "What do you mean by wearing those pearls of Gerald's all the time?"

Sophy looked at him whitely. She smiled.

"They were given me to wear, I believe."

"He's in love with you--with his brother's wife! But I'll not have his baubles on your neck, nor antlers on my own head. Off with them!"

She stood frozenly. Her dark eyes poured scorn upon him. He made a snatch at the necklace--another. She stood quite motionless, while the great, angry hands snatched at her throat. His last clutch broke the string. The pearls rained down, some into her bosom, the greater part upon the polished floor. He stood heavily, gazing at the little white drops, as they rolled over the dark wood of the parquet.

While he gazed as if hypnotised, Sophy went swiftly out into the hall. She closed the door behind her. Her voice roused him, saying: "Mr. Chesney isn't feeling well enough to go out to-night. I shall go alone. Is the cab there?"

He heard the butler's voice answering.

She knew that he would not make a scene before the servants. Changing quickly to another mood, he glanced at the closed, door, grinning at her astuteness. Then carefully he gathered up the fallen pearls and dropped them into his pocket.

Filling a liqueur glass with cognac from the table which the butler had already arranged for the evening, he slouched back to the sofa and lifted the fallen volume. The brandy calmed him still further. He sat there for two hours sipping the cognac, moistening his lips slowly every now and then, poring over the licentious pictures.

In the hansom, glad to be alone, Sophy sat with her arms tight against her breast as though she would keep something in her from bursting. She felt singing from head to foot like a twanged bowstring. She sat gazing at the rhythmic play of the horse's glossy quarters, and the soft blur of the May night. There had been a slight shower. The pavements were sleek and dark. There was a smell of soot and wet young leaves in the air, as of town and country oddly mingled in a kiss.

As this idea occurred to her, she made a movement of irritation. Kisses! Why should she think of kisses? They were nature's most banal lures--nauseous. And moodily, her eyes still black from the spread pupils, she recalled Cecil's first kiss and what it had meant to her. Something golden, vague, wonderful, fulfilling, yet promising more--more than fulfilment--an opening of new desires, new aspirations, future fulfilments more splendid still. He had been a great lover. A line flashed to her. It sparkled through her mind, searing and cynical:

As wolves love lambs--so lovers love their loves.

He was wolf, now--she, lamb. Ah, well; no! He was mistaken--she was jaguar, leopard, catamount , anything but lamb. She could feel her fangs growing. They were no longer little milk-teeth at which he laughed. Some day--if he continued to treat her in this way--some day she would strike and strike with them--deep into some vital part of that which still lived and which had once been love. Yes; it would be better to drag a corpse between them than this fierce, bloated, soulless body that had once been inhabited by love.

A waft of perfume from the rose-geraniums in the window-boxes of a house near which they were passing overcame her with homesickness.

She saw the lawn at "Sweet-Waters," the ring of old acacia trees, the little round, green wooden tables in their midst, covered with pots of mignonette and rose-geranium--herself and Charlotte swinging in the hammocks near-by--the peep of blue mountains through the hedge of box. Oh! to feel Charlotte's arms around her!

She pinched the back of her hand sharply, feeling the tears start. Virginia was far away, like her childhood, like her dead mother, like all the other simple, lovely things that had made life joyous.

How strange it seemed to think that the old, familiar life was going on there just the same! She had given her big chestnut, Hal, to Charlotte, when she married Cecil. Charlotte wrote that she rode him every day. Oh, for a ride through the Virginian fields and woods! Oh, to hear the soft jargon of the darkies--to have if only twenty-four hours of the old, free, simple life!

The cab stopped before a house in Bruton Street. This was London. Perhaps there was no Virginia. Perhaps she had only dreamed it.

When she found that her hostess had not yet come down, she was startled.

"Am I too early? Isn't dinner at eight?" she asked the butler.

"At half-past eight, madam."

"Never mind. I will go up to Mrs. Arundel's room."

She went upstairs and knocked at Olive's door.

"Who is it?" said a sweet, slight voice.

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