An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition (93 page)

Stella was in tears by that time. It took a lot to make Stella cry, but Chrissie had accused her of ingratitude and cruelty, of deception and lying and even of stealing by her stupidity about the money which might have brought them security from starvation.

‘Oh, don’t go on so, Chrissie dear,’ Stella begged at length. I’m sorry, and I’ve said I’m sorry. If I hadn’t been so stupid I wouldn’t have told you that I’d spoken to
Mademoiselle Fântóme
or said anything about giving the money back to the Rajah.’

‘Tell me! Of course you’d tell me!’ Chrissie said. ‘The day that you can keep anything to yourself I shall fall down dead with surprise. If I wasn’t here to look after you, you’d starve within a week – if someone didn’t shut you up in a lunatic asylum first. What success you’ve had has been due to me and me only, and don’t you forget it.’

‘I never do, Chrissie,’ Stella said miserably. ‘Please don’t be so cross with me.’

But Chrissie could not be placated and when finally the agony of her aching head sent her to her bedroom, her shrill voice was still upbraiding Stella as she went upstairs.

She sighed now and nuzzled her cheek a little deeper against the soft pillow. Thank goodness her headache was gone. She had felt as if it would split her brain in half. She wondered how long she had been asleep, and found that without moving she could read the hands of the clock which stood on the mantelpiece.

It was nearly five o’clock. She must have slept for over two and a half hours. Well, she felt better for it, strong enough to instil some sense into Stella before the evening, when she would see the Rajah.

The idiocy of the girl was unbelievable. All that money hers for the asking and she couldn’t even frame the words! She had always been the same, Chrissie thought angrily. She had never been able to exploit her good looks and the opportunities they had brought her.

She remembered the fuss there had been over Stella’s first admirer – the first man who had ever offered her his protection. Stella – the silly little fool – had made a terrible to do.

There was no doubt that the gentleman was elderly and inclined to drink too much, but what did that matter when he was so rich? Chrissie recalled the scenes she had had with Stella before she could get her to do what she wanted.

She was only seventeen at the time, outstandingly pretty with a dewy, youthful freshness which she was to lose very quickly. But her head had been packed full of fantastic notions about falling in love and rubbish of that sort. Chrissie had made her see sense, hammered it into her as it were. What a job it had been! She could hear Stella crying now,

‘I can’t! I can’t! He’s so old and horrid!’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’ Chrissie enquired harshly.

Finally she had won and Stella had given in. For nearly a year they had lived in comfort in a smart little house off Regent’s Park. There was a hired carriage to take Stella to the Theatre, a maid to wait on them. Then like all the other men who were to follow him Stella’s protector grew bored.

‘Why can’t you be amusing?’ Chrissie demanded. ‘Make him laugh! Talk to him!’

‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ Stella complained. ‘We don’t like the same things and his stories always make me yawn.’

Chrissie could remember hitting Stella after that. It was not the first time by any means, nor the last. There was little satisfaction in it, for Stella only cried and said she was sorry.

Tears made her look so unattractive that Chrissie was afraid to evoke them too often in case she lost her job at the Theatre.

The whole thing was heart breaking, Chrissie thought now. If only she could have had Stella’s opportunities, if only she could have had Stella’s face and Stella’s figure. At the thought she turned her face for a moment deeper into the pillow, her thin fingers clutching and crumpling the silk bedspread.

It wasn’t fair that some women should have so much and others nothing. She remembered once overhearing two chorus girls talking about Stella and herself. They had been standing in a dark corner at the back of the stage awaiting their call at a rehearsal and had not noticed her lurking near them in the shadows.

‘You have to hand it to Stella, she’s a good sport,’ one said.

‘Yes, when she gets the chance, but that sister of hers is as mean-fisted as hell,’ the other replied.

‘Oh, her! Don’t speak to me of that monkey-faced lump of misery! She fair gives me the creeps!’

Chrissie had bitten her lips until they bled to prevent herself saying what she thought of them. At the same time, as always when she overheard some insulting reference to her appearance, she felt sick with a heart-burning resentment which would rankle for days.

She couldn’t help what she looked like, could she? She didn’t make herself! She hated those who affronted her with a rabid savagery which made her more unpleasant than usual to the pretty, thoughtless creatures with whom Stella shared a dressing room.

They were not deliberately unkind to Chrissie, and had she been good tempered and friendly, they would soon have accepted her as one of themselves. But she was always on the defensive, ready to take offence long before anyone had slighted or provoked her, and the ordinarily happy-go-lucky men and women of the theatre sensed her enmity and instinctively disliked her. She was like an ill treated dog who has learnt to snarl at everyone, both friend and foe.

Sometimes Stella would argue with her when they were alone together.

‘Why are you so nasty about everyone, Chrissie?’

‘Why shouldn’t I be? They’re nasty enough about me when they get the chance.’

‘How do you know?’ Stella asked. ‘You frighten people when you snap their heads off, and it makes them snap back. They would be nice, if you’d let them.’

‘I don’t want their niceness,’ Chrissie cried savagely. ‘I want to be left alone.’

But it wasn’t true! Like everyone else she wanted friends. She wanted to be liked and – loved. Yes, loved, fêted and courted by men as Stella was!

At times she hated Stella with a primitive, burning hatred because men desired her. Chrissie would watch their eyes as they rested on Stella’s warm, glowing prettiness. She would see the smouldering passion, the rising flame of desire and she would know a sudden frightening response within herself.

Then they would catch sight of her watching them, or perhaps the very ferment of her emotions would draw their attention. Chrissie would wait for their expressions to alter.

Disgust would replace desire, they would be both repelled and revolted. Only occasionally was there pity in their regard, and that, Chrissie felt, was harder to bear than anything else.

Was it any wonder after such incidents that Stella found her irritability and asperity hard to bear? Was it surprising that at night Chrissie often wished to die so that her body might rot unseen in the darkness of the earth?

She had, however, the bitter, perverted satisfaction of knowing that Stella’s beauty would have brought her nothing without her own brain to exploit it. There was a satisfaction, if a vicarious one, in forcing Stella to do as she wanted, in controlling her as one might a puppet, in using her mercilessly in the pursuit of money.

Money! Chrissie had decided long ago that was the only thing worth having in life. Money could buy comfort, luxury, security and the envy of less fortunate persons. Money, she told herself, was infinitely more desirable than love or friendship. Money was a salve and a balm for everything, even for the torment of a frustrated, stunted womanhood.

Every penny Stella brought her was to Chrissie the elixir of life. It was also her revenge on Stella for being pretty and desirable. If she suffered to obtain it, all the better. Why should things be easy because she had a pretty face and a well-formed body?

A face out of the past confronted Chrissie with a leer. She remembered Lord Wrotham whom Stella had hated. He was a notorious blackguard, but rich and powerful. Stella tried to avoid him for he was a by word in the theatrical world. One evening he sent her a bouquet of orchids and an invitation asking her to have supper with him after the show. Stella shuddered and thrust the flowers away from her.

‘I’ve not sunk so low that I have to take a meal off him,’ she said firmly. ‘Send a message, Chrissie, and say I’m otherwise engaged.’

Chrissie made no reply, but when the next act started, she wrote Lord Wrotham a note of acceptance and signed it with Stella’s name.

Stella was hopeless, though, Chrissie sighed. One could never teach her common sense. She had to be instructed on every point as if she were a child or an imbecile. Her behaviour with the Rajah was a case in point. Chrissie felt her gall rising again at the thought of the thousand francs Stella had wasted last night. A thousand francs! In England it would keep them for a month or two.

She heard the handle of the door turn softly and raised her head.

‘Who’s there?’ she asked.

The door opened wider and Stella came into the room.

‘Are you awake, Chrissie?’

‘You can see I am,’ Chrissie replied sullenly.

‘I wanted to speak with you for a moment.’

Then draw the blinds,’ Chrissie commanded, ‘It’s time I got up anyway.’

Obediently Stella crossed to the window and after several fumblings drew up the Venetian blinds. The windows of Chrissie’s bedroom looked over the garden at the side of the Villa, and from her bed Chrissie could see the soft green branches of the olive and palm trees and beyond them the sharp sides of the mountain climbing skywards.

Stella stood for a moment looking out, then she turned towards her sister. She was wearing a dress of green tarlatan trimmed with a vivid green and red plaid which was matched by the quills in her hat of chip straw. Chrissie thought she had never seen her look more elegant or for that matter prettier. There were no longer any traces of tears on her face, her eyes were shining and her lips were smiling. But as the eyes of the two women met, the radiance vanished from Stella’s face and her expression became serious.

‘Are you going out?’ Chrissie asked.

‘Yes,’ Stella replied. ‘That’s what I came to tell you.’

Well, try and be a bit more sensible than you were last night,’ Chrissie remarked. ‘Get the Rajah to take you to the shops.’

‘I’m not going with the Rajah,’ Stella said, her voice very low.

If you expect me to go with you now, you’re mistaken,’ Chrissie said. ‘You’ve upset me enough for today. I’m going to have a cup of tea if I have to go down to the kitchen myself and make it.’

‘I wasn’t going to ask you to come with me,’ Stella said. ‘I – I’m going with someone else.’

Something in her voice and bearing suddenly struck Chrissie as peculiar. She sat up in bed.

‘What’s all this about?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘What are you trying to tell me?’

Stella took a deep breath.

‘I’m leaving, Chrissie! I am going away from here.’

‘Away?’ Chrissie said the word slowly, then quickly like a shot from a gun she followed it with other questions, ‘Where are you going? Who with? What’s all this?’

Stella’s face was very white, but her voice was steady.

‘I’m going to be married, Chrissie. At once, as soon as it can possibly be arranged. I’m sorry, but he won’t let you come with me.’

‘Married? To whom? Who are you talking about?’

‘It – it’s François.’

‘François!’

Chrissie only whispered the word. For a moment she was almost speechless.

‘Yes, François,’ Stella said, and now suddenly her voice was light. ‘He loves me, and I love him. It’s the most wonderful thing that has ever happened. He told me so two days ago and asked me to marry him, but I wouldn’t give him an answer. Then after lunch today he found me crying and made me promise I’d marry him right away. Oh, Chrissie, I am so happy, so terribly happy.’

‘How dare you say that to me!’ Chrissie’s face was as grey as ashes.

‘I was afraid you’d be angry, Chrissie, but you must try and forgive me. It’s hard, I know, that I can’t ask you to my wedding or to my new home, but François won’t have it. He’s been saving for a long time so that he could buy a restaurant.

He has one in mind and he hopes that within a few months we shall be settled there. Chrissie, he wants me by myself. It’s difficult to say this to you, but I must tell you the truth – he doesn’t think that you have a good influence on me. It’s absurd, of course, and I’ve told him so, but he won’t listen. He says that I’ve got to choose between you and him. And oh, Chrissie, horrid though it is of me, I love him so much that I can’t give him up.’

‘You’re mad!’ Chrissie ejaculated at last, the words coming in a stifled fashion from between her pale lips.

‘You’ve told me that so often that I’d begun to believe it, but François says I’m not mad. He says it’s just that I’m not suited to the type of life I’ve been leading. He’s right, too, Chrissie, for I always hated it – you know I have.

‘I want a home of my own. I shan’t be lazy when I have that. I’ll work for François, work to keep his house nice and help him in his restaurant. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him – nothing in the whole world.’

‘Obviously, if you are so besotted as to think you can throw up the Rajah and all his money for one of his servants – this common cook of whom you know nothing.’

‘I know that François wants to marry me,’ Stella said with a strangely effective dignity. ‘You mustn’t say unkind things about him, Chrissie, for he wants to do what he can for you. I know that you’ll be angry at my leaving you, but François has promised that he’ll send you some money every month. I have forgotten how much he said, but it is about two pounds a week in English money.

‘You can manage on that, Chrissie, even if you don’t get any work. We’ve had less than that for both of us many a time, and besides, I want you to have all the jewellery the Rajah has given me and all the money you’ve saved. He’ll think I’ve taken it with me, so he’s not likely to ask for it back. You keep it, Chrissie, it’ll take you back to London, and if you send me your address, François will post you the money every month. He’s promised me that.’

‘You’ve got everything arranged, haven’t you?’ Chrissie snarled. ‘Well, you're not going! Make no mistake about that, my girl, you’re not going.’