The Wild Bird

by Denise Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

A captivating love story from the 100-million-copy bestselling Queen of Romance, first published in 1931 and now available for the first time in eBook.

Release date: April 24, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 400

Sample

THROUGH the casement windows of Elizabeth Rowe’s studio in Chelsea the faint orange of the sunset struggled to illuminate the canvas on which Elizabeth was daubing an impossible vamp with enormous eyes, wickedly slanting, and a wicked red mouth.

Elizabeth, a slender figure in her blue smock, crouched on the stool before the easel. She smiled at the ludicrous woman she was creating in oils for sheer amusement. She was not seriously at work.

Soon the warm orange of the sunset faded. The long, charming studio with its low ceiling and corner chimney-place filled with pale, mauvish shadows. Elizabeth threw down her brush, yawned, and rose. From a large cushion on the floor a splendid Dalmatian also yawned.

‘Grock,’ said Elizabeth, ‘I’m bored and so are you. Lilian’s late for tea and Guy hasn’t turned up for his quiet half-hour. I’m peeved!’

Grock sat down again and thumped a tail hard on the polished floor. He blinked with lazy golden eyes at his mistress. He would have liked to suggest a walk on this fine April afternoon, but he knew full well that Elizabeth would not leave the studio while there was a chance of Guy coming. Grock was aware that nowadays the man named Guy took first place in Elizabeth’s heart. He was the only person in the world of whom Grock was jealous and with whom he refused to make friends.

Elizabeth walked to a mirror which hung against the wall opposite the window. She took a small comb from her pocket and ran it through her hair, then grimaced at herself.

‘Ugly!’ she said.

The reflected Elizabeth smiled back at her.

She was not ugly. She was small and perhaps too thin. But her eyes, darkly brown, were bright and beautiful. The softness of her lips was a contradiction to the hardness, the resolution of her pointed chin. She was twenty-two and looked about sixteen in her blue overall. Her dark, smooth hair was bobbed and cut in a straight fringe across her forehead.

‘Ugly!’ she repeated to the reflection in the mirror, and turned to the photograph of a girl; a misty, modern impression of a beautiful head and shoulders.

‘There, Grock,’ said Elizabeth, ‘is true beauty. Why wasn’t I born with a face like Lilian’s? And why did Guy fall in love with me?’

Whereupon she smiled again, showing white, even little teeth. The smile made her face extraordinarily attractive. She stooped to caress the Dalmatian’s absurd white head with its round black patches and soft, pinkish nose.

‘You’re the most beautiful thing in the world, Grock,’ she whispered.

Grock sat on his haunches and blinked at her. The subject of beauty was less amusing to him than talks about walks or bones.

Elizabeth lit a cigarette. She strolled up and down the studio, humming. It was time that Guy was here. He had phoned to say he would be with her by tea-time. Lilian, who shared her studio, had just gone out to buy cream buns. She, too, ought to be here at any moment.

For over a year, Elizabeth and Lilian had shared this studio and tiny flat in Elbury Walk, Chelsea. Elizabeth had two hundred a year, which her father had left her, and the money which she made illustrating magazines and doing posters.

Lilian Maxwell had a hundred a year of her own and a ‘flair’ for clothes. She could design and make exquisite things. At the moment she was helping a cousin of hers to run a shop for hats and lingerie in Baker Street. She had been at school with Elizabeth, and, both of them having recently been left alone in the world, it had not taken them long to decide to run this little home together. They were the antithesis of one another, but were excellent friends, and enjoyed their Bohemian life. In funds one moment, ‘broke’ the next.

Guy Arlingham was a writer who had achieved some distinction with his pen. Elizabeth, until she had met him, had been inclined to scoff at romance and deny that she was sentimental. She discovered from the hour that Guy fell in love with her and she with him that she was full of sentiment, even though she could not easily show it. She was passionately in love with him. She believed that he cared deeply for her. They had met at a Chelsea Arts Ball and known each other only a month before Guy asked her to marry him.

Lilian, in Elizabeth’s opinion, had changed since the engagement. She was by nature an amiable, sweet-tempered creature. Lately she had become morose and silent – even sulky. Elizabeth supposed she was miserable because their jolly, intimate life together was soon to end – with her marriage. She was sorry. She loved Lilian. But she loved Guy much more.

It was a quarter to five and Elizabeth could not make out why she was not back; and why Guy, who had telephoned to say he would be here at four, had not arrived.

However, she did not worry. Having combed her sleek black head to her satisfaction, she put on the electric kettle. Lilian would be here at any moment. The gate-legged table by the fireplace was already laid for three.

Elizabeth dragged her easel and the vamp to one side and made some pretence to tidy up the studio. But she was not very tidy by nature, and loved the confusion of the room. The whole flat was beautiful and original. She hated the idea of leaving it even for Guy’s much more magnificent flat in Victoria.

The two girls had saved for months to buy bits and pieces for the studio. There were two fine rugs on the floor; a low divan piled with cushions; an old oak dresser with pewter plates and some beautiful china. Some black and white sketches and two exquisite water-colours by a famous modern painter furnished the walls.

Elizabeth liked music. The portable gramophone and heap of records on the floor belonged to her. She avoided what she called ‘high-brow stuff’ and kept to light music. Most of the records were dance tunes. They often danced in the evening in the studio.

Lilian’s uncle and guardian, who was a broker in Bombay, had sent her the lovely orange Bokhara silk which made the curtains framing the square-paned windows. And to Lilian belonged most of the decorative, multi-coloured cushions.

Elizabeth wandered to the windows and looked out at Elbury Walk. It was grey and misty in the April twilight. She loved Chelsea at this hour. It was mysterious and beautiful.

She wanted Guy to come. Hers was a complex nature. She appeared, on the surface, self-possessed and cool. She found it difficult to express herself or her feelings – but inwardly she was passionate, almost painfully sensitive, and full of sensibility.

She wanted Guy this evening more than she had ever wanted him. It seemed to her that the clasp of his arms and the warmth of his kisses were the most thrilling things in the world. Yet if he had been here beside her at the moment she could not have voiced these feelings. When she was most deeply moved she grew dumb.

Guy, who was excitable and showed it, often said:

‘Why don’t you tell me you love me? Go ahead. Tell me how much you care for me, little Lizbeth.’

‘Little Lizbeth’ was his name for her … that and ‘Funny-one’. She supposed she was funny; must seem difficult to voluble, temperamental people like Guy. …

But she could only answer him by saying:

‘I can’t tell you. I just do care … that’s all!’

The studio door opened. Elizabeth turned. It might be Guy … or Lilian. But it was a woman in hospital nurse’s uniform who entered the room.

‘Miss Rowe, could you slip upstairs to Sir James for a moment? He is asking for you,’ she said. ‘Your front door was open, so I took the liberty of creeping in.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I’ll come. But I can’t stay. I’m expecting Miss Maxwell back at any moment, and another visitor.’

‘Well, even five minutes will do the poor old chap good,’ said the nurse. ‘You know how he loves you, Miss Rowe.’

Elizabeth nodded. She walked with the woman up to the flat above her studio. Sir James Willington was fond of her with the friendliness of a very old man … and he was dying. The doctors gave him a very few more days of life.

Elizabeth knew little of the old man’s private affairs. He was a solitary eccentric being who had spent many years and much time and money on the poor in the East End of London. It was only since the summer that he had occupied the furnished flat upstairs. He seemed to prefer the seclusion and comparative poverty of it – for it was a mere attic, badly furnished by an impecunious artist – to his own home. The nurse said he was ‘queer’. Elizabeth found him quite sane and liked his clear, broad outlook upon life. He had made no friends in the building or district other than herself. He seemed to like her. Every day he sent for her. He wanted her to sit by him, talk to him. She was touched by the pathos of his lonely philanthropic life and its still more pathetic close.

Today she found him a little more frail; more pathetic than usual. He was too ill to read. He seemed absorbed in his own thoughts. When Elizabeth in her blue smock, her face flushed from the exertion of running upstairs, appeared in the doorway of his bedroom a smile of pleasure spread over his face.

‘How good of you, child,’ he said. ‘You are always kind to an old man.’

‘It is not kindness. I thoroughly enjoy my talks with you, Sir James,’ said Elizabeth. ‘How are you?’

‘Not too good,’ he said. ‘I haven’t very much longer, Elizabeth. Sit down – just for a moment.’

She obeyed. He looked like some portrait she had seen of a Catholic Pope; frail and shrunken. His eyes were full of kindliness. She often wondered what history lay behind the old baronet; why he lived here alone and without the luxuries he might so easily afford; why he had never married; had no family and few friends to visit him. This afternoon, for the first time since their acquaintanceship, he enlightened her on this subject.

‘Elizabeth,’ he said. His voice was very tired. ‘You have been the one, the only friend I have had for years. I like you, child. I admire your intelligence. I have found endless pleasure in talking to you – seeing through your young eyes. You are a modern. Well! Why not? I don’t mind your short skirts, your cigarettes, your cocktails, your unconventionality. With it all you are a good child, a fine little woman, Elizabeth. Today I have been thinking a great deal of you. You are going to be married. I pray God this man, Guy Arlingham, will be worthy of you.’

‘Too good for me,’ she said instantly. ‘Guy is wonderful, Sir James.’

‘Even a good man can never be quite so wonderful as a good woman,’ said the old baronet. ‘You do not give love easily, Elizabeth. I know you. I have studied you, my child. Well, make sure you have given that fine heart of yours to the right man.’

‘I am sure of it,’ she said.

The old man sighed.

‘Once I thought as you thought,’ he said. ‘Shall I tell you my story? I have never spoken of it to any living soul since … it happened. But now I am a dying man and you are my little friend. I would like to tell you.’

‘Please do,’ she said.

‘Once,’ he said, ‘I was young … impulsive … spirited … like yourself. Does it seem possible? And I loved. I had never cared for any woman before. Her name was Gladys. She was a beautiful thing – fair – as fair as you are dark, Elizabeth. I believed in her, trusted her implicity. I swore to do great things for her. I gave her my whole heart and soul. Then, on the very night before our wedding, at a dance, I found her in the arms of a man whom I disliked and mistrusted. They were lovers. It was a bitter shock. Gladys had seemed a kind of angel to me. She married that man. I resolved from that hour to put my faith and love in no other living soul – to devote my riches to those who were poor and who suffered. That is my history in a nutshell. That is why I have been a recluse for such years. My home in Sussex is full of historic interest. A lovely Tudor house. It is called “Memories”. But I have never lived in it for longer than a week or two at a time. It has been in the hands of my housekeeper and my estate-agent, Archer Hewitson. I had meant to take Gladys there as my wife. From the moment of my disillusionment I wanted to see a little of it as possible …’

He paused for breath, then continued:

‘I have told you about Gladys only to prove to you, child, that the being one loves and trusts absolutely is apt to betray one’s faith. Don’t love your Guy too much. You might get hurt, dear.’

Elizabeth leaned forward and took one of the old man’s hands in hers.

‘Sir James, I am terribly sorry you had such a rotten experience,’ she said. ‘But honestly, don’t worry. I mean, Guy is devoted to me.’

‘He ought to be,’ said Sir James. ‘God forgive him if he fails you. Until I met you, Elizabeth, I made no friends, save among the poor in the slums where I knew I could find sincerity. But you’re sincere. You have fine truthful eyes. Yet Gladys had beautiful eyes …’ He broke off, sighing painfully. ‘Who can tell … who can guarantee to pick the Jewel of truth from the rubbish-heap of lies and deceit. …’

Elizabeth kept silence. The poor old man was rambling a bit. Poor Sir James! So the disloyalty of the woman he had loved in his youth was responsible for his hermit’s life. It was very sad.

His gloom seemed suddenly to communicate itself to her. She excused herself from his bedside. She felt sure that Guy would be down in her studio now. And she wanted him. This ache and need for his arms and lips had been strong upon her all day. She wanted him all the more in this hour. Her cheerful spirit had been damped by the old man’s melancholy.

She promised to visit him in the morning.

As she left the dim bedroom she heard him muttering to himself.

‘Hearts never break … no, so the poets say … they do not break … they only sting and ache … and the best song of all is the one that says, “Give crowns and pounds and guineas, but not your heart away”.’

Elizabeth went down to her flat. The front door was still open. She walked into the tiny hall shivering a little with depression and the sudden chill of the April dusk. She wanted Guy and the cheery warmth of the studio.

She heard voices and her eyes brightened. Guy had come. Lilian, too. That was Lilian’s rich voice. She was full of richness and colour, with her contralto voice and Titian hair and full tall figure.

The studio door was ajar. Elizabeth advanced with a smile and a gay word on her lips. But the smile and the welcoming word died. She stood still, hands in the pockets of her smock. Her face grew suddenly scarlet.

Guy and Lilian were in the studio obviously under the impression that they were alone and unobserved. The man stood with his back to the tall chimney-piece. He was leaning slightly against it. The girl was in his arms.

Just for one petrifying instant Elizabeth saw her fiancé and her best friend through a haze … a kind of red mist … red with primitive anger and jealousy … and the bottom was knocked from her world.

The haze passed. She saw the couple clearly. They were lovers.

Even in the bitterness of that moment she thought vaguely what a handsome couple they made. Guy Arlingham was a tall man of the Saxon type; fair, ruddy, blue-eyed. He was always debonair and carefully groomed. An electric light had been turned on just behind him, and threw up the gold tints in his hair. Elizabeth had loved that gold head of Guy’s with the artist’s pride as well as the woman’s passion.

Lilian was a match for him … lovely Lilian with her flame-coloured mass of hair which she had never bobbed and was plaited about her head. Her long white throat was tilted backwards, her lips raised with abandon to his. And now Elizabeth knew why her friend had changed, had sulked, had avoided her. She loved Guy. Guy loved her. He was saying so.

‘It’s the very dickens, darling. I don’t know what to do. I know I made a mistake about Elizabeth. But she’s such a dear I don’t want to hurt her – let her down – yet I do love you – with a most terrible love, Lilian. It’s driving me mad.’

‘And I love you, Guy,’ said Lilian in her deep voice. ‘And it’s driving me mad.’

For an agonising moment Elizabeth watched and listened and then was afraid that Guy was going to kiss Lilian. That was more than she could bear.

She rushed into the studio noisily, like an awkward school-boy anxious to avert a disaster, and said:

‘Oh, don’t … don’t either of you go mad. There’s no need … no need at all, you know!’

GUY and Lilian drew apart. They were startled by Elizabeth’s sudden noisy entrance into the studio. Lilian, her face scarlet, moved to the other side of the mantelpiece. She gripped it with her hand, and leaned her head on the curve of her arm.

The man put a hand up to his neck, straightened his tie, coughed, and glanced at Elizabeth uneasily.

It was very painful to Elizabeth, who loved candour beyond all things. Guy’s look was so furtive. The fact that these two for whom she had cared so deeply, and whom she had trusted, had been lovers behind her back, hurt her as much as the loss of Guy. It humiliated her. She had given him her whole affection, believing that he wanted it. And all the time he had wanted Lilian. Yet only a day ago he had asked the same old question: ‘How much do you love me, little Lizabeth?’ She supposed that he had asked it out of guilt or curiosity, but not tenderness. It was horrible.

She dug her hands in the pockets of her smock and looked at the floor. She heard her own voice as from a distance; a strange, thin voice:

‘Don’t let’s go off the deep end about this. Let’s talk it all over quietly – please.’

Arlingham cleared his throat.

‘Elizabeth – good God – I – look here –’

‘Oh, Elizabeth, what can I say to you?’ broke in Lilian, turning to her friend. ‘You must think me an absolute rotter. I’m so sorry. I couldn’t help loving Guy. I tried to fight it – we both did –’

Elizabeth clenched her hands until the nails hurt her palms. She was quite white. She was suffering horribly. It would have made it so much easier if she could have burst into tears and said a lot of words like these two could say; ‘Oh, God,’ and ‘Oh, my God,’ and make a great show of grief; of regret. But she wasn’t built like that. She had never been like that. The more she was hurt the more reticent she became. It was as though pain drove from her the faculty of. . .