The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards

Rupert Hughes

Informations

• Publié par: hefep
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 25
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cup of Fury, by Rupert Hughes This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Cup of Fury A Novel of Cities and Shipyards Author: Rupert Hughes Illustrator: Henry Raleigh Release Date: October 28, 2009 [EBook #30351] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CUP OF FURY *** Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE CUP OF FURY BOOKS BY RUPERT HUGHES THE CUP OF FURY THE UNPARDONABLE SIN WE CAN’T HAVE EVERYTHING IN A LITTLE TOWN THE THIRTEENTH COMMANDMENT CLIPPED WINGS WHAT WILL PEOPLE SAY? THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER EMPTY POCKETS LONG EVER AGO HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK Established 1817 “It would be nice to be married,” Marie Louise reflected, “if one could stay single at the same time.” The CUP OF FURY A Novel of Cities and Shipyards RUPERT HUGHES Author of “WE CAN’T HAVE EVERYTHING” “THE UNPARDONABLE SIN” ETC. BY ILLUSTRATED BY HENRY RALEIGH HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON THE CUP OF FURY Copyright, 1919, by Harper & Brothers Printed in the United States of America Published May, 1919 D-T ILLUSTRATIONS “It would be nice to be married,” Marie Louise reflected, “if one could stay single at the same time.” He tried to swing her to the pommel, but she fought herself free and came to the ground and was almost trampled. “This is the life for me. I’ve been a heroine and a warworker about as long as I can.” “‘It’s beautiful overhead if you’re going that way,’” Davidge quoted. He set out briskly, but Marie Louise hung back. “Aren’t you afraid to push on when you can’t see where you’re going?” she demanded. There was something hallowed and awesome about it all. It had a cathedral majesty. How quaint a custom it is for people who know each other well and see each other in plain clothes every day to get themselves up with meticulous skill in the evening like Christmas parcels for each other’s examination. “So I have already done something more for Germany. That’s splendid. Now tell me what else I can do.” Nicky was too intoxicated with his success to see through her thin disguise. Nobody recognized the lily-like beauty of Miss Webling in the smutty-faced passer-boy crouching at Sutton’s Frontispiece Facing p. 3 75 91 166 235 270 elbow. 282 BOOK I IN LONDON He tried to swing her to the pommel, but she fought herself free and came to the ground and was almost trampled. 3 THE CUP OF FURY CHAPTER I Then the big door swung back as if of itself. Marie Louise had felt that she would scream if she were kept a moment outside. The luxury of simply wishing the gate ajar gave her a fairy-book delight enhanced by the pleasant deference of the footman, whose face seemed to be hung on the door like a Japanese mask. Marie Louise rejoiced in the dull splendor of the hall. The obsolete gorgeousness of the London home had never been in good taste, but had grown as lovable with years as do the gaudy frumperies of a rich old relative. All the good, comfortable shelter of wealth won her blessing now as never before. The stairway had something of the grand manner, too, but it condescended graciously to escort her up to her own room; and there, she knew, was a solitude where she could cry as hard as she wanted to, and therefore usually did not want to. Besides, her mood now was past crying for. She was afraid of the world, afraid of the light. She felt the cave-impulse to steal into a deep nook and cower there till her heart should be replenished with courage automatically, as ponds are fed from above. Marie Louise wanted walls about her, and stillness, and people shut out. She was in one of the moods when the soul longs to gather its faculties together in a family, making one self of all its selves. Marie Louise had known privation and homelessness and the perils they bring a young woman, and now she had riches and a father and mother who were great people in a great land, and who had adopted her into their own hearts, their lives, their name. But to-day she asked nothing more than a deep cranny in a dark cave. She would have said that no human voice or presence could be anything but a torture to her. And yet, when she hurried up the steps, she was suddenly miraculously restored to cheerfulness by the tiny explosion of a child’s laughter instantly quenched. She knew that she was about to be ambushed as usual. She must pretend to be completely surprised once more, and altogether terrified with her perfect regularity. Her soul had been so utterly surprised and terrified in the outer world that this infantile parody was curiously welcome, since nothing keeps the mind in balance on the tight-rope of sanity like the counterweight that comedy furnishes to tragedy, farce to frenzy, and puerility to solemnity. The children called her “Auntie,” but they were not hers except through the adoption of a love that had to claim some kinship. They looked like her children, though––so much so, indeed, that strangers thought that she was their young mother. But it was because she looked like their mother, who had died, that the American girl was a member of this British household, inheriting some of its wealth and much of its perilous destiny. She had been ambuscaded in the street to-day by demons not of faery, but of fact, that had leaped out at her from nowhere. It solaced her somehow to burlesque the terror that had whelmed her, and, now that she was assailed by ruthless thugs of five and seven years, the shrieks she had not dared to release in the street she gave forth with vigor, as two nightgowned tots flung themselves at her with milk-curdling cries of: “Boo-ooh!” Holding up pink fat hands for pistols, they snapped their thumbs at her and said: “Bang! Bang!” And she emitted most amusing squeals of anguish and staggered back, stammering: 4 “Oh, p-p-please, Mr. Robbobber and Miss Burgurgular, take my l-l-life but spare my m-m-money.” She had been so genuinely scared before that she marred the sacred text now, and the First Murderer, who had all the conservative instincts of childhood, had to correct her misquotation of the sacred formula: “No, no, Auntie. Say, ‘Take my money but spare my life!’ Now we dot to do it all over.” “I beg your pardon humbly,” she said, and went back to be ambushed again. This time the boy had an inspiration. To murder and robbery he would add scalping. But Marie Louise was tired. She had had enough of fright, real or feigned, and refused to be scalped. Besides, she had been to the hairdresser’s, and she explained that she really could not afford to be scalped. The boy was bitterly disappointed, and he grew furious when the untimely maid came for him and for his ruthless sister and demanded that they come to bed at once or be reported. As the warriors were dragged off to shameful captivity, Marie Louise, watching them, was suddenly shocked by the thought of how early in life humanity begins to revel in slaughter. The most innocent babes must be taught not to torture animals. Cruelty comes with them like a caul, or a habit brought in from a previous existence. They always almost murder their mothers and sometimes quite slay them when they are born. Their first pastimes are killing games, playing dead, stories of witches, cannibalistic ogres. The American Indian is the international nursery pet because of his traditional fiendishness. It seemed inconsistent, but it was historically natural that the boy interrupted in his massacre of his beloved aunt should hang back to squall that he would say his prayers only to her. Marie Louise glanced at her watch. She had barely time to dress for dinner, but the children had to be obeyed. She made one weak protest. “Fräulein hears your prayers.” “But she’s wented out.” “Well, I’ll hear them, then.” “Dot to tell us fairy-’tory, too,” said the girl. “All right, one fairy-’tory––” She went to the nursery, and the cherubs swarmed up to her lap demanding “somefin bluggy.” Invention failed her completely. She hunted through her memory among the Grimms’ fairy-tales. She could recall nothing that seemed sweet and guileless enough for these two lambs. All that she could think of seemed to be made up of ghoulish plots; of children being mistreated by harsh stepmothers; of their being turned over to peasants to slay; of their being changed into animals or birds; of their being seized by wolves, or by giants that drank blood and crunched children’s bones as if they were reed birds; of hags that cut them up into bits or thrust them into ovens and cooked them for gingerbread. It occurred to her that all the German fairy-stories 6 5 were murderously cruel. She felt a revulsion against each of the legends. But her mind could not find substitutes. After a period of that fearful ordeal when children tyrannize for romances that will not come, her mind grew mutinous and balked. She confessed her poverty of ideas. The girl, Bettina, sulked; the boy screamed: “Aw, botheration! We might as well say our prayers and go to bed.” In the least pious of moods they dropped from her knees to their own and put their clasped hands across her lap. They became in a way hallowed by their attitude, and the world seemed good to her again as she looked down at the two children, beautiful as only children can be, innocent of wile, of hardship and of crime, safe at home and praying to their heavenly Father from whose presence they had so recently come. But as she brooded over them motherly and took strength from them as mothers do, she thought of other children in other countries orphaned in swarms, starving in multitudes, waiting for food like flocks of lambs in the blizzard of the war. She thought still more vividly of children flung i