Читать книгу The Happy Warrior - A. S. M. Hutchinson - Страница 8

He spoke quite easily, never realising the intensity of her feelings. "Oh, it's no untold wealth," he laughed. "You mustn't think that."

She said after a little space, "Richer than we are, though?" and added, comforting herself with an old truism, "What's poverty to one is wealth to another."

"Oh, richer than we are. Good lord, yes, I hope so. I'm thinking of years ago, anyway. Things may have changed. I'm telling you of when I was a kid."

She gave a little sigh of relief and she made a little laugh at the mood she had permitted to beset her—that sigh we give and that laugh we make when we shake ourselves from vague fears, or open our eyes from disturbing dreams. Folly to be fearful! Life is a biggish field; easy to give those fears the slip! The day is here, night ridiculous! She laughed and turned smiling to her husband and proposed they should go in. "I've got an extra special little dinner for you—to celebrate," she told him.

He pressed her arm against his side. "And I've got an extra special little appetite for it," he said. "Makes me feel fearfully fit to see you so happy."

"Well, I am," she replied, and sighed her content and said again "I am!"

IV

The night ridiculous! But when night came it caught her unstrung, too excited for immediate sleep, and visited her with vague resentments, with vague but chilly fears. They came gradually. Long, long she lay awake, visioning the gleaming future. Her Rollo trod it with her—its golden paths, limitless of delights—her little son rejoicing into manhood as he walked them. She was intensely devoted to her baby Rollo, born two years before. Marriage had disappointed her; from its outset, directly she began to realise Maurice, she accounted herself robbed of all it ought to have given her. Motherhood had recompensed her; from Rollo's birth she had begun to dream dreams for him. Now! She got out of bed and went to his cradle and bent above him, most happily, most adoringly, as he slept. It was there and so occupied that the first vague, unreasonable fear came to disturb her night. It was gone as soon as it had come, and it had neither shape nor meaning. Yet its discomfort made her frown. She had frowned in the midst of happiness when Maurice was telling her of Burdon traditions, and the repetition of the action returned her mind to what had occupied it then.

At once resentments began to stir. She found herself resentful of Jane Lady Burdon, as drawn by Maurice; of the tenantry at Burdon Old Manor, who were regarded as a trust—a greedy, expensive trust on his showing; nay, of the Old Manor itself, if saturated in traditions such as he described. Why resentful? At first she could not say, and worried. Then the reason came to her. It was the feeling that this old lady, not proud but having pride, a ridiculous distinction, this old lady, these tenantry, those traditions would resent her. Resent her? She could not get away from the thought, and it irritated her and tired her. Yes, and rob her, and that irritated and tired her the more. She began to desire sleep and could not sleep for these resentments. Resent her? Rob her? She grew angry that she could not sleep, and then suddenly calmed herself by deliberately setting herself to see how grotesque such thoughts were. After all, what could they do, even suppose they desired her hurt? It came to her, with a grim sense of the humour of it, that their own motto was against them. "I hold!" It was she who held!

"I hold!" The old motto did its new mistress its first service. It charmed her, at last, to sleep. Immediately, as it seemed to her, she passed into dreams of her amazing happiness; and in their midst the motto rose against her. In their midst the vague fear that had troubled her while she bent over her Rollo—but vague no longer—became definite and horrible. She was taunted, she was terrified by some force that told her it was all untrue; that tortured her she was befooled and did not hold and should never hold the amazement she fancied hers. Terrified and struggling, "I hold!" she cried. It became the delirium of her sleep. Again and again "I hold! I hold!" and always from that force the answer, quiet but most terribly assured: "No, you do not! Nay, I hold!" Horror and panic overcame her. She was so nearly awake that she tried to awake but could not. "I hold! I hold!" "No, you do not. Nay, I hold!" There was no escape, no escape. … When at last her fevered brain broke out of sleep, she awoke to hear her own voice cry it aloud in agony: "I hold!" and shaking, unnerved, thanked God for young morning stealing about the room, and none and nothing to rebuke or contradict that waking cry.