Shadows of Flames Part 8

"Will you come and try my stick, Bobby?" he said. "It makes a splendid horse."

The boy pressed back hard against his mother's knee for an instant, his eyes still on Amaldi's. They continued to look at each other steadily for some seconds. Then Bobby twisted around as he leaned against Sophy, looked up inquiringly into her face, smiled suddenly, showing his little crimped teeth, and, drawing himself erect, walked straight up to Amaldi.

"Oh!" said Sophy on a hushed breath, as when a bird alights near one.

Never before had Bobby gone to a stranger. A feeling of delight came over her. The child was ratifying her own instinct about Amaldi. She looked on with lips parted and eyes softly s.h.i.+ning, while Bobby, leaning now against Amaldi's knee, fingered the dark, smooth stick that made "a splendid horse." But while his small hands wandered over the curved handle, he was gazing not at the stick but into Amaldi's face.

Suddenly he pushed the stick aside.

"Take Bobby," he said.

Amaldi lifted him upon his knee, and the child, putting one hand against the young man's breast, continued gazing up into his eyes. Then he said:

"Stan' up.... Bobby! stan' up."

Amaldi put his hands about the firm little body, and raised it, so that Bobby stood like a tiny Rhodian Apollo, with a foot on either knee of his new friend. For some moments he stayed so, looking down into Amaldi's face with deep consideration. Then, as if having thought everything out to his entire satisfaction, he bent forward, and set the soft, damp ring of his small mouth against the young man's cheek.

"Bobby man!" he announced. And at once burst into the wildest chuckles, hugging Amaldi's head to him with both arms, springing in his grasp like a bewitched india-rubber ball--repeating over and over, "Bobby man!--Bobby man!"

Amaldi clasped him close. His dark face glowed with pleasure. All at once it came back to Sophy afresh that his tragic marriage had been childless. Her heart felt very pitiful towards him.

Here the door opened, and Chesney entered.

Amaldi rose with Bobby still in his arms.

"My husband--Marchese Amaldi," said Sophy.

"How d'ye do?" said Chesney. He was looking at Bobby. Then he turned to Sophy.

"Isn't it rather late for the little chap to be downstairs?" he asked.

"I was going to send him away in a few moments. But he's made such friends with the Marchese. Isn't it odd? Just look at him."

Chesney sank into an armchair, and Amaldi also sat down, keeping the boy in his arms. Bobby had suddenly grown quite still. He remained with his head against Amaldi's breast, his thumb in his mouth, looking fixedly at his father. His blurs of reddish eyebrow were drawn together.

"Little monkey! He's scowling at me----" observed Chesney, with his short laugh. "He's not a filial character--young Robert," he flung out carelessly, as though he might be addressing Amaldi, but he did not look at him; his eyes were fixed on the boy, and he himself was scowling slightly.

Sophy spoke in a low aside, meant only for his ear.

"Now, Cecil; don't excite him, please. He doesn't sleep well when you worry him."

Chesney acted as though he had not heard her. He sat erect, then leaned forward, and with his great hands hanging loose between his knees, said in a firm tone: "Come here, Bobby."

The child did not stir. Then he took his thumb from his mouth.

"No," he said in a clear, distinct little voice. He put back his thumb and began sucking it vigorously, swinging one foot to and fro in a sort of accompaniment.

Sophy knew well this sign in Bobby. It meant flat rebellion and rising temper.

"Cecil...." she murmured. "Cecil...."

He took not the slightest notice of her.

"Charmingly you're brought up, ain't you ... you cheeky little brat,"

said he to his son, in a lazy sort of drawl. Then he barked it at him: "Come here to me when I tell you!"

Again Bobby removed his thumb, and again he said, "No," clearly and firmly.

Chesney got up.

When the child saw this, he relinquished his small arms of mutiny, and flattening himself against Amaldi's breast, clung to him, crying: "No!

No! Teep Bobby--teep Bobby."

Amaldi was very pale. Sophy stepped in front of Chesney. She tried to take Bobby in her arms, but nervous dread made him refuse, and he clung like a burr to Amaldi, hiding his face in his neck, clutching with his little hands.

"_Cecil_----" said Sophy again, for he had actually laid his hand on her arm as though to put her from his way.

Amaldi felt in an impossible nightmare. An icy rage congealed him. And suddenly, over the boy's head, the eyes of the two men met. Strange to say, Amaldi's were absolutely expressionless. Something in their still, blank look checked Chesney. He stood a second undetermined, then gave that self-conscious, embarra.s.sed laugh that Sophy knew so well. It was over, then. That especial laugh always meant yielding on Cecil's part.

She turned again to Bobby, her lip quivering in spite of her will.

"Come, darling.... Come to mother...." she whispered.

Suddenly the boy let her take him. He was trembling all over, but scorned to cry.

Amaldi murmured a few formalities and left. With Bobby close in her arms, Sophy went quickly past her husband out of the room. He made no effort to detain her.

VII

It was very hard to get Bobby to sleep that night. At last, however, he wearily subsided against Sophy's breast and, thumb in mouth, demanded "All a gees." This meant the old nursery song of "All the pretty little horses." Obediently she began to sing in her rich contralto that was like the flutes and viols of love, tempered to the inanity of the nursery rhyme. But though she sang and sang, it was after seven o'clock before the boy fell fast asleep. She dressed hurriedly for dinner, slipping into a tea-gown of dull orange that Cecil particularly liked.

She had made up her mind to talk to him about his att.i.tude towards Bobby. She wished it to be as quiet a talk as possible, so she put on the orange tea-gown to please him, and set in her hair some tiny, orange lilies that had been sent down from Dynehurst that morning. He liked her to wear flowers in her hair. But though she made these preparations, she was quite determined to face anything in the matter of having "her say out" about his relations with the boy. She had long realised, in silence, that there was a strong antagonism between father and son. It seemed terrible, but she knew that such things were. It had been the same between Cecil and his own father. But she would not have the child terrorised and herself treated with indignity because of Cecil's moods.

No; not even his illness could make her put up with that. And she thought, with a hot wave of pain and shame, of the scene that Amaldi had just witnessed.

Chesney came in to dinner, rather late and very much excited. He began rattling politics to her. The d.a.m.ned government was going under. He'd give it two more years. Then, by Jove! he was going to cut in and give his Radicalism a fling! The Conservatives were pretty well played out; they'd been in just four years too long, confound 'em! 'Twas Kitty O'Shea had saved the Union for 'em, and none of those rotters in office.

As a clever Irish Unionist had said, they ought to raise statues to Kitty O'Shea all over Ulster--and so on and so on.

Sophy listened pleasantly, putting in a word every now and then to show that she was really attentive. She was thinking all the time how pale his face was, and how dark and excited his eyes. This last was all the more noticeable, as of late his eyes had been so dull and faded looking.

Now the pupils almost covered the iris. And she noticed, too, that, though he helped himself freely from every dish, he ate scarcely anything. This made her apprehensive. He was so much more apt to be irritable when he did not eat. Then he suddenly ordered a pint of champagne.

"Will you have some, too?" he asked her. "But you don't like it, do you?"

"Sometimes--when I'm thirsty. Not to-night."

"And just send another pint up to my room, Parkson. I shall read late to-night," he added, as an explanation to Sophy.

In the drawing-room after dinner he was very restless, roaming to and fro, smoking those great cigarettes, one after the other. He kept glancing at the clock. Sophy had drawn on a pair of long gardening-gloves and was peeling the stems of some roses. The butler had placed a great trayful of them on a low table before her, and as she peeled the long, thorn-armed stems, she arranged the roses in a crystal vase. They kept for days longer when stripped of their outer rind in this way. The tranquil monotony of her movements seemed to get on Chesney's nerves.