Читать книгу The Black Dog, and Other Stories - A. E. Coppard - Страница 6

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In the afternoon Orianda drove Gerald in the gig back to the station to fetch the baggage.

“Well, what success, Orianda?” he asked as they jogged along.

“It would be perfect but for Lizzie—that was rather a blow. But I should have foreseen her—Lizzies are inevitable. And she is difficult—she weeps. But, O I am glad to be home again. Gerald, I feel I shall not leave it, ever.”

“Yes, Orianda,” he protested, “leave it for me. I’ll give your nostalgia a little time to fade. I think it was a man named Pater said: ‘All life is a wandering to find home.’ You don’t want to omit the wandering?”

“Not if I have found my home again?”

“A home with Lizzie!”

“No, not with Lizzie.” She flicked the horse with the whip. “I shall be too much for Lizzie; Lizzie will resume her wandering. She’s as stupid as a wax widow in a show. Nathaniel is tired of Lizzie, and Lizzie of Nathaniel. The two wretches! But I wish she did not weep.”

Gerald had not observed any signs of tearfulness in Lizzie at the midday dinner; on the contrary, she seemed rather a jolly creature, not that she had spoken much beyond “Yes, ’Thaniel, No, ’Thaniel,” or Gerald, or Orianda, as the case had been. Her use of his Christian name, which had swept him at once into the bosom of the family, shocked him rather pleasantly. But he did not know what had taken place between the two women; perhaps Lizzie had already perceived and tacitly accepted her displacement.

He was wakened next morning by unusual sounds, chatter of magpies in the front trees, and the ching of hammers on a bulk of iron at the smithy. Below his window a brown terrier stood on its barrel barking at a goose. Such common simple things had power to please him, and for a few days everything at “The Black Dog” seemed planned on this scale of novel enjoyment. The old inn itself, the log yard, harvesting, the chatter of the evening topers, even the village Sunday delighted him with its parade of Phyllis and Corydon, though it is true Phyllis wore a pink frock, stockings of faint blue, and walked like a man, while Corydon had a bowler hat and walked like a bear. He helped ’Thaniel with axe, hammer, and plane, but best of all was to serve mugs of beer nightly in the bar and to drop the coins into the drawer of money. The rest of the time he spent with Orianda whom he wooed happily enough, though without establishing any marked progress. They roamed in fields and in copses, lounged in lanes, looking at things and idling deliciously, at last returning home to be fed by Lizzie, whose case somehow hung in the air, faintly deflecting the perfect stream of felicity.

In their favourite glade a rivulet was joined by a number of springs bubbling from a pool of sand and rock. Below it the enlarged stream was dammed into a small lake once used for turning a mill, but now, since the mill was dismantled, covered with arrow heads and lily leaves, surrounded by inclining trees, bushes of rich green growth, terraces of willow herb, whose fairy-like pink steeples Orianda called “codlins and cream,” and catmint with knobs of agreeable odour. A giant hornbeam tree had fallen and lay half buried in the lake. This, and the black poplars whose vacillating leaves underscored the solemn clamour of the outfall, gave to it the very serenity of desolation.

Here they caught sight of the two woodpeckers bathing in the springs, a cock and his hen, who had flown away yaffling, leaving a pretty mottled feather tinged with green floating there. It was endless pleasure to watch each spring bubble upwards from a pouch of sand that spread smoke-like in the water, turning each cone into a midget Vesuvius. A wasp crawled laboriously along a flat rock lying in the pool. It moved weakly, as if, marooned like a mariner upon some unknown isle, it could find no way of escape; only, this isle was no bigger than a dish in an ocean as small as a cartwheel. The wasp seemed to have forgotten that it had wings, it creepingly examined every inch of the rock until it came to a patch of dried dung. Proceeding still as wearily it paused upon a dead leaf until a breeze blew leaf and insect into the water. The wasp was overwhelmed by the rush from the bubbles, but at last it emerged, clutching the woodpecker’s floating feather and dragged itself into safety as a swimmer heaves himself into a boat. In a moment it preened its wings, flew back to the rock, and played at Crusoe again. Orianda picked the feather from the pool.

“What a fool that wasp is,” declared Gerald, “I wonder what it is doing?”

Orianda, placing the feather in his hat, told him it was probably wandering to find home.

One day, brightest of all days, they went to picnic in the marshes, a strange place to choose, all rank with the musty smell of cattle, and populous with grasshoppers that burred below you and millions, quadrillions of flies that buzzed above. But Orianda loved it. The vast area of coarse pasture harboured not a single farmhouse, only a shed here and there marking a particular field, for a thousand shallow brooks flowed like veins from all directions to the arterial river moving through its silent leagues. Small frills of willow curving on the river brink, and elsewhere a temple of lofty elms, offered the only refuge from sun or storm. Store cattle roamed unchecked from field to field, and in the shade of gaunt rascally bushes sheep were nestling. Green reeds and willow herb followed the watercourses with endless efflorescence, beautiful indeed.

In the late afternoon they had come to a spot where they could see their village three or four miles away, but between them lay the inexorable barrier of the river without a bridge. There was a bridge miles away to the right, they had crossed it earlier in the day; and there was another bridge on the left, but that also was miles distant.

“Now what are we to do?” asked Orianda. She wore a white muslin frock, a country frock, and a large straw hat with poppies, a country hat. They approached a column of trees. In the soft smooth wind the foliage of the willows was tossed into delicate greys. Orianda said they looked like cockshy heads on spindly necks. She would like to shy at them, but she was tired. “I know what we could do.” Orianda glanced around the landscape, trees, and bushes; the river was narrow, though deep, not more than forty feet across, and had high banks.

“You can swim, Gerald?”

Yes, Gerald could swim rather well.

“Then let’s swim it, Gerald, and carry our own clothes over.”

“Can you swim, Orianda?”

Yes, Orianda could swim rather well.

“All right then,” he said. “I’ll go down here a little way.”

“O, don’t go far, I don’t want you to go far away, Gerald,” and she added softly, “my dear.”

“No, I won’t go far,” he said, and sat down behind a bush a hundred yards away. Here he undressed, flung his shoes one after the other across the river, and swimming on his back carried his clothes over in two journeys. As he sat drying in the sunlight he heard a shout from Orianda. He peeped out and saw her sporting in the stream quite close below him. She swam with a graceful overarm stroke that tossed a spray of drops behind her and launched her body as easily as a fish’s. Her hair was bound in a handkerchief. She waved a hand to him. “You’ve done it! Bravo! What courage! Wait for me. Lovely.” She turned away like an eel, and at every two or three strokes she spat into the air a gay little fountain of water. How extraordinary she was. Gerald wished he had not hurried. By and by he slipped into the water again and swam upstream. He could not see her.

“Have you finished?” he cried.

“I have finished, yes.” Her voice was close above his head. She was lying in the grass, her face propped between her palms, smiling down at him. He could see bare arms and shoulders.

“Got your clothes across?”

“Of course.”

“All dry?”

She nodded.

“How many journeys? I made two.”

“Two,” said Orianda briefly.

“You’re all right then.” He wafted a kiss, swam back, and dressed slowly. Then as she did not appear he wandered along to her humming a discreet and very audible hum as he went. When he came upon her she still lay upon the grass most scantily clothed.

“I beg your pardon,” he said hastily, and full of surprise and modesty walked away. The unembarrassed girl called after him: “Drying my hair.”

“All right”—he did not turn round—“no hurry.”

But what sensations assailed him. They aroused in his decent gentlemanly mind not exactly a tumult, but a flux of emotions, impressions, and qualms; doubtful emotions, incredible impressions, and torturing qualms. That alluring picture of Orianda, her errant father, the abandoned Lizzie! Had the water perhaps heated his mind though it had cooled his body? He felt he would have to urge her, drag her if need be, from this “Black Dog.” The setting was fair enough and she was fair, but lovely as she was not even she could escape the brush of its vulgarity, its plebeian pressure.

And if all this has, or seems to have, nothing, or little enough to do with the drying of Orianda’s hair, it is because the Honourable Gerald was accustomed to walk from grossness with an averted mind.

“Orianda,” said he, when she rejoined him, “when are you going to give it up. You cannot stay here ... with Lizzie ... can you?”

“Why not?” she asked, sharply tossing back her hair. “I stayed with my mother, you know.”

“That was different from this. I don’t know how, but it must have been.”

She took his arm. “Yes, it was. Lizzie I hate, and poor stupid father loves her as much as he loves his axe or his handsaw. I hate her meekness, too. She has taken the heart out of everything. I must get her away.”

“I see your need, Orianda, but what can you do?”

“I shall lie to her, lie like a libertine. And I shall tell her that my mother is coming home at once. No Lizzie could face that.”

He was silent. Poor Lizzie did not know that there was now no Mrs. Crabbe.

“You don’t like my trick, do you?” Orianda shook his arm caressingly.

“It hasn’t any particular grandeur about it, you know.”

“Pooh! You shouldn’t waste grandeur on clearing up a mess. This is a very dirty Eden.”

“No, all’s fair, I suppose.”

“But it isn’t war, you dear, if that’s what you mean. I’m only doing for them what they are naturally loth to do for themselves.” She pronounced the word “loth” as if it rimed with moth.

“Lizzie,” he said, “I’m sure about Lizzie. I’ll swear there is still some fondness in her funny little heart.”

“It isn’t love, though; she’s just sentimental in her puffy kind of way. My dear Honourable, you don’t know what love is.” He hated her to use his title, for there was then always a breath of scorn in her tone. Just at odd times she seemed to be—not vulgar, that was unthinkable—she seemed to display a contempt for good breeding. He asked with a stiff smile “What is love?”

“For me,” said Orianda, fumbling for a definition, “for me it is a compound of anticipation and gratitude. When either of these two ingredients is absent love is dead.”

Gerald shook his head, laughing. “It sounds like a malignant bolus that I shouldn’t like to take. I feel that love is just self-sacrifice. Apart from the taste of the thing or the price of the thing, why and for what this anticipation, this gratitude?

“For the moment of passion, of course. Honour thy moments of passion and keep them holy. But O, Gerald Loughlin,” she added mockingly, “this you cannot understand, for you are not a lover; you are not, no, you are not even a good swimmer.” Her mockery was adorable, but baffling.

“I do not understand you,” he said. Now why in the whole world of images should she refer to his swimming? He was a good swimmer. He was silent for a long time and then again he began to speak of marriage, urging her to give up her project and leave Lizzie in her simple peace.

Then, not for the first time, she burst into a strange perverse intensity that may have been love but might have been rage, that was toned like scorn and yet must have been a jest.

“Lovely Gerald, you must never marry, Gerald, you are too good for marriage. All the best women are already married, yes, they are—to all the worst men.” There was an infinite slow caress in her tone but she went on rapidly. “So I shall never marry you, how should I marry a kind man, a good man? I am a barbarian, and want a barbarian lover, to crush and scarify me, but you are so tender and I am so crude. When your soft eyes look on me they look on a volcano.”

“I have never known anything half as lovely,” he broke in.

Her sudden emotion, though controlled, was unconcealed and she turned away from him.

“My love is a gentleman, but with him I should feel like a wild bee in a canary cage.”

“What are you saying!” cried Gerald, putting his arms around her. “Orianda!”

“O yes, we do love in a mezzotinted kind of way. You could do anything with me short of making me marry you, anything, Gerald.” She repeated it tenderly. “Anything. But short of marrying me I could make you do nothing.” She turned from him again for a moment or two. Then she took his arm and as they walked on she shook it and said chaffingly, “And what a timid swimmer my Gerald is.”

But he was dead silent. That flux of sensations in his mind had taken another twist, fiery and exquisite. Like rich clouds they shaped themselves in the sky of his mind, fancy’s bright towers with shining pinnacles.

Lizzie welcomed them home. Had they enjoyed themselves—yes, the day had been fine—and so they had enjoyed themselves—well, well, that was right. But throughout the evening Orianda hid herself from him, so he wandered almost distracted about the village until in a garth he saw some men struggling with a cow. Ropes were twisted around its horns and legs. It was flung to the earth. No countryman ever speaks to an animal without blaspheming it, although if he be engaged in some solitary work and inspired to music, he invariably sings a hymn in a voice that seems to have some vague association with wood pulp. So they all blasphemed and shouted. One man, with sore eyes, dressed in a coat of blue fustian and brown cord trousers, hung to the end of a rope at an angle of forty-five degrees. His posture suggested that he was trying to pull the head off the cow. Two other men had taken turns of other rope around some stout posts, and one stood by with a handsaw.

“What are you going to do?” asked Gerald.

“Its harns be bent, yeu see,” said the man with the saw, “they be going into its head. ’Twill blind or madden the beast.”

So they blasphemed the cow, and sawed off its crumpled horns.

When Gerald went back to the inn Orianda was still absent. He sat down but he could not rest. He could never rest now until he had won her promise. That lovely image in the river spat fountains of scornful fire at him. “Do not leave me, Gerald,” she had said. He would never leave her, he would never leave her. But the men talking in the inn scattered his flying fiery thoughts. They discoursed with a vacuity whose very endlessness was transcendent. Good God! Was there ever a living person more magnificently inane than old Tottel, the registrar. He would have inspired a stork to protest. Of course, a man of his age should not have worn a cap, a small one especially; Tottel himself was small, and it made him look rumpled. He was bandy: his intellect was bandy too.

“Yes,” Mr. Tottel was saying, “it’s very interesting to see interesting things, no matter if it’s man, woman, or a object. The most interesting man as I ever met in my life I met on my honeymoon. Years ago. He made a lifelong study of railways, that man, knew ’em from Alpha to ... to ... what is it?”

“Abednego,” said someone.

“Yes, the trunk lines, the fares, the routs, the junctions of anywheres in England or Scotland or Ireland or Wales. London, too, the Underground. I tested him, every station in correct order from South Kensington to King’s Cross. A strange thing! Nothing to do with railways in ’imself, it was just his ’obby. Was a Baptist minister, really, but still a most interesting man.”

Loughlin could stand it no longer, he hurried away into the garden. He could not find her. Into the kitchen—she was not there. He sat down excited and impatient, but he must wait for her, he wanted to know, to know at once. How divinely she could swim! What was it he wanted to know? He tried to read a book there, a ragged dusty volume about the polar regions. He learned that when a baby whale is born it weighs at least a ton. How horrible!

He rushed out into the fields full of extravagant melancholy and stupid distraction. That! All that was to be her life here! This was your rustic beauty, idiots and railways, boors who could choke an ox and chop off its horns—maddening doubts, maddening doubts—foul-smelling rooms, darkness, indecency. She held him at arm’s length still, but she was dovelike, and he was grappled to her soul with hoops of steel, yes, indeed.

But soon this extravagance was allayed. Dim loneliness came imperceivably into the fields and he turned back. The birds piped oddly; some wind was caressing the higher foliage, turning it all one way, the way home. Telegraph poles ahead looked like half-used pencils; the small cross on the steeple glittered with a sharp and shapely permanence.

When he came to the inn Orianda was gone to bed.