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Read Ebook: The Azure Rose: A Novel by Kauffman Reginald Wright
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Ebook has 1413 lines and 51919 words, and 29 pages
He bent to the knob, his hand just brushing hers, which was quickly withdrawn. He pulled: the door would not give. He took the knob in both hands and raised it: no success. He bore all his weight down upon the knob: the door remained shut.
He looked up at her attempting the smile of apology, but her eyes, as soon as they encountered his, were raised to a calm regard of the panel above his head. Cartaret's gaze returned to the door and, presently, encountered the old deadlatch that antedated his tenancy and that he had never once used: it was a deadlatch of a type antiquated even in the Latin Quarter, tough and enduring; years ago it had been pushed back and held open by a small catch; the knob whereby it was originally worked from inside the room had been broken off; and now the catch had slipped, the spring-bolt had shot home and, the knob being broken, the girl and Cartaret were as much prisoners in the room as if the lock had been on the other side of the door.
The American broke into a nervous laugh.
"What now?" asked the girl, her eyes hard.
"We're caught," said Cartaret.
She could only repeat the word:
"Caught?"
"Yes. I'm sorry. It was my stupidity; I suppose I jolted the door rather hard when I bumped into it, doing that tango just now. Anyhow, this old lock's sprung into action and we're fastened in."
The girl looked at him sharply. A difficult red climbed her cheeks.
"Open that door," she ordered.
"Open that door instantly."
"But I tell you I can't. Don't you see?" He pointed to the offending deadlatch. In embarrassed sentences, he explained the situation.
She did not appear to listen. She had the air of one who has prejudged a case.
"You are trying to keep me in this room," she said.
Her tone was steady, and her eyes were brave; but it was evident that she quite believed her statement.
Cartaret colored in his turn.
"Nonsense," said he.
"Then open the door."
"I tell you the lock has slipped."
"If that is so, use your key."
"Thank you," she said. "I shall remain where I am." She had put her hand among the lace over her breast; now the hand, withdrawn, held an unsheathed knife. "And if you come one step nearer to me," she calmly concluded, "I will kill you."
It was the sole dream-touch needed to perfect his sense of the entire episode's unreality. In his poor room, a princess that he had never seen before--that, surely, he was not seeing now!--some royal figure out of a lost Hellenic tragedy; her breast visibly cumbered by the heavy air of modern Paris, her wonderful eyes burning with the cold fire of resolution, she told him that she would kill him if he approached her. And she would do it; she would kill him with less compunction than she would feel in crushing an offending moth!
Cartaret had instinctively jumped at the first flash of the weapon. Now his laughter returned. A vision could not be impeded by a sprung lock.
"But you're not here," he said.
She did not shift by so much as a hairbreadth her position of defense, yet, ever so slightly, her eyes widened.
"And I'm not, either," he persisted. "Don't you see? Things like this don't happen. One of us is asleep and dreaming--and I must be that one."
Plainly she did not follow him, but his laughter had been so boyishly innocent as to make her patently doubtful of her own assumption. He crowded that advantage.
"You at least place yourself in a strange position," the girl interrupted, though the hand that held the knife was lowered to her side.
"But if you really doubt me," he continued, "and don't want to wait until I pick this lock, let me call from the window and get somebody in the street to send up the concierge."
"The street?" She evidently did not like this idea. "No, not the street. Why do you not ring for him?"
Cartaret's gesture included the four walls of the room:
"There's no bell."
Still a little suspicious of him, her blue eyes scanned the room to confirm his statement.
"Then why not call him from the window in the back?"
"Because his quarters are at the front of the house, and he wouldn't hear."
"Would no one hear?"
"There's nobody in the garden at this time of day. You had really better let me call to the first person that goes along the street. Somebody is always going along, you know."
He made two strides toward the front window.
"Come back!"
He turned to find her with her face scarlet. She had raised the knife.
"Break the lock," she said.
"But that will take time."
"Break the lock."
"All right; only why don't you want me to call for help?"
Cartaret divined that this was eminently a time for silence: she was alive, she was real, and she was human. He opened a drawer in the table, dived under the divan, plunged behind a curtain in one corner, and at last found a shaky hammer and a nicked chisel with which he returned to the locked door.
"I'm not much of a carpenter," he said, by way of preparatory apology.
The girl said nothing.
He was angry at himself for having appeared to such heavy disadvantage. Consequently, he was unsteady. His first blow missed. His strength turned to mere violence, and he showered futile blows upon the butt of the chisel. Then a misdirected blow hit the thumb of his left hand. He swore softly and, having sworn, heard her laugh.
He looked up: the knife had disappeared. He was pleased at the change to merriment that her face discovered; but, as he looked, he realized that her mirth was launched against his efforts, and he was pleased no longer. His rage directed itself from him to her.
"I'm sorry you don't approve," he said sulkily. "For my part, I am quite willing to stop, I assure you."
If an imperious person may be said to have tossed her head, then it should here be said that this imperious person now tossed hers.
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