第77章 SALVATION OF A FORSYTE(7)

When he reached the street, however, the girls had disappeared.He hailed a carriage."Drive!" he called to the man, with a flourish of his stick, and as soon as the wheels had begun to clatter on the stones he leaned back, looking sharply to right and left.He soon had to give up thought of finding them, but made the coachman turn round and round again.All day he drove about, far into the country, and kept urging the driver to use greater speed.He was in a strange state of hurry and elation.Finally, he dined at a little country inn; and this gave the measure of his disturbance--the dinner was atrocious.

Returning late in the evening he found a note written by Traquair.

"Are you in your senses, man?" it asked; "we have no more time to waste idling about here.If you want to rejoin us, come on to Danielli's Hotel, Venice." Swithin chuckled when he read it, and feeling frightfully tired, went to bed and slept like a log.

VI

Three weeks later he was still in Salzburg, no longer at the Goldene Alp, but in rooms over a shop near the Boleskeys'.He had spent a small fortune in the purchase of flowers.Margit would croon over them, but Rozsi, with a sober "Many tanks!" as if they were her right, would look long at herself in the glass, and pin one into her hair.Swithin ceased to wonder; he ceased to wonder at anything they did.One evening he found Boleskey deep in conversation with a pale, dishevelled-looking person.

"Our friend Mr.Forsyte--Count D....," said Boleskey.

Swithin experienced a faint, unavoidable emotion; but looking at the Count's trousers, he thought: 'Doesn't look much like one!' And with an ironic bow to the silent girls, he turned, and took his hat.But when he had reached the bottom of the dark stairs he heard footsteps.

Rozsi came running down, looked out at the door, and put her hands up to her breast as if disappointed; suddenly with a quick glance round she saw him.Swithin caught her arm.She slipped away, and her face seemed to bubble with defiance or laughter; she ran up three steps, stopped, looked at him across her shoulder, and fled on up the stairs.Swithin went out bewildered and annoyed.

'What was she going to say to me?' he kept thinking.During these three weeks he had asked himself all sorts of questions: whether he were being made a fool of; whether she were in love with him; what he was doing there, and sometimes at night, with all his candles burning as if he wanted light, the breeze blowing on him through the window, his cigar, half-smoked, in his hand, he sat, an hour or more, staring at the wall.'Enough of this!' he thought every morning.Twice he packed fully--once he ordered his travelling carriage, but countermanded it the following day.What definitely he hoped, intended, resolved, he could not have said.He was always thinking of Rozsi, he could not read the riddle in her face--she held him in a vice, notwithstanding that everything about her threatened the very fetishes of his existence.And Boleskey! Whenever he looked at him he thought, 'If he were only clean?' and mechanically fingered his own well-tied cravatte.To talk with the fellow, too, was like being forced to look at things which had no place in the light of day.

Freedom, equality, self-sacrifice!

'Why can't he settle down at some business,' he thought, 'instead of all this talk?' Boleskey's sudden diffidences, self-depreciation, fits of despair, irritated him."Morbid beggar!" he would mutter;"thank God I haven't a thin skin." And proud too! Extraordinary!

An impecunious fellow like that! One evening, moreover, Boleskey had returned home drunk.Swithin had hustled him away into his bedroom, helped him to undress, and stayed until he was asleep.'Too much of a good thing!' he thought, 'before his own daughters, too!' It was after this that he ordered his travelling carriage.The other occasion on which he packed was one evening, when not only Boleskey, but Rozsi herself had picked chicken bones with her fingers.

Often in the mornings he would go to the Mirabell Garden to smoke his cigar; there, in stolid contemplation of the statues--rows of half-heroic men carrying off half-distressful females--he would spend an hour pleasantly, his hat tilted to keep the sun off his nose.The day after Rozsi had fled from him on the stairs, he came there as usual.It was a morning of blue sky and sunlight glowing on the old prim garden, on its yew-trees, and serio-comic statues, and walls covered with apricots and plums.When Swithin approached his usual seat, who should be sitting there but Rozsi"Good-morning," he stammered; "you knew this was my seat then?"Rozsi looked at the ground."Yes," she answered.

Swithin felt bewildered."Do you know," he said, "you treat me very funnily?"To his surprise Rozsi put her little soft hand down and touched his;then, without a word, sprang up and rushed away.It took him a minute to recover.There were people present; he did not like to run, but overtook her on the bridge, and slipped her hand beneath his arm.

"You shouldn't have done that," he said; "you shouldn't have run away from me, you know."Rozsi laughed.Swithin withdrew his arm; a desire to shake her seized him.He walked some way before he said, "Will you have the goodness to tell me what you came to that seat for?"Rozsi flashed a look at him."To-morrow is the fete," she answered.

Swithin muttered, "Is that all?"

"If you do not take us, we cannot go."

"Suppose I refuse," he said sullenly, "there are plenty of others."Rozsi bent her head, scurrying along."No," she murmured, "if you do not go--I do not wish."Swithin drew her hand back within his arm.How round and soft it was! He tried to see her face.When she was nearly home he said goodbye, not wishing, for some dark reason, to be seen with her.He watched till she had disappeared; then slowly retraced his steps to the Mirabell Garden.When he came to where she had been sitting, he slowly lighted his cigar, and for a long time after it was smoked out remained there in the silent presence of the statues.

VII