A Study in Shadows by William Locke

Author:William Locke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pronoun

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CHAPTER IX.—VARIOUS ELEMENTS HAVE THEIR SAY.

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IT WAS A SULTRY NIGHT. Not a breath of air was stirring. They had escaped from the crowd on the quays and were being rowed about the lake in a little boat gaily hung with Chinese lanterns. The glare fell on their faces, confusing their view, and making all dark objects around them invisible. Their eyes caught nothing but a phantasmagoria of coloured lights. The water swarmed with them. Scores of similarly illuminated craft darted hither and thither, crossed and recrossed each other on all sides, with the dazzling effect of myriads of fireflies. All around, fixed amid the moving lights, blazed the lamps on quays, bridges and jetties. Now and then, through a momentary vista, could be seen the gas devices on the fronts of the great hotels on the Quai du Mont Blanc. Now and then, too, they neared the looming hull of the great steamer, a mass of festoons of coloured lamps. The strains of the band on board broke through the roar of many voices, with a strange effect, and died away in the general hubbub as the steamer moved slowly off.

“I am glad I came,” said Katherine. “It was nice of you to think of this boat. It is fresher on the water.”

She was happy; he was by her side. The little canopy of lanterns above their heads seemed to draw them together, isolate them from the outer world. The lights whirled around her as in a dream. Raine too, for all his man’s lesser emotional impressibility, felt a slight exaltation, a continuance of the strange sense of the unreality of things. As the moments passed, this common mood grew in intensity.

They spoke of the incident of the dinner-table, but like other things it seemed to lose perspective. Meanwhile the old wizened boatman, apparently far away in the bows, rowed stolidly round and round within the basin formed by the quays and jetties.

“It is a mad story,” said Katherine. “Almost fantastic. What object had he? Was he a fiend, or a coward, or what?”

“Both,” said Raine. “With a soft sentimental heart. A fiend that is half a fool is ever the blackest of fiends. He is irresponsible for his own hell.”

“Are all men like that who make life a hell for women?”

“In a way. Men are blind to the consequences of their own actions. Apply the truism specially. Or else they see only their own paths before them. Sometimes men seem ‘a little brood.’ I often wonder how women can love them.”

“Do you? Would you include yourself?”

“Yes. I suppose so.”

“Do you think you could ever be cruel to a woman?”

“I could never lie to her, if you mean that. The woman who loves me will find me straight, however much of an inferior brute I might be otherwise.”

“Don’t,” said Katherine. “You frighten me—the suggestion—”

“But you asked me whether I could be cruel.”

“A woman’s thoughts and speech are never so intense as a man’s. You throw a lurid light on my words and I shrink from them.

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