Читать книгу Dilemmas - A.E.W. Mason - Страница 6

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Narcisse Perdoux was thought throughout that district of Normandy to be a warm man, though none except his creditors ever saw the colour of his money. They, however, were scrupulously paid to the last mite on the day when their bills fell due, the old man fetching the exact sum in discoloured notes and coppers from his room upstairs. There were five in the household, Narcisse himself, a gnarled giant, strong as an ox, with wrinkles on his copper-brown neck like gashes, his wife Angele, a crone before her time, his daughter Clothilde, a plain, hard-featured young woman with a shrill quarrelsome voice, and two sons Charles and Desire. They lived meagrely in the vast smoke-grimed kitchen, like the poorest of peasants, and slaved upon the farm from the dark of the morning to long after nightfall, tasting neither amusement, nor books, nor any grace of life. For they were greedy, with a sort of passion of ill will towards every one of their neighbours. They could never get it out of their heads that they were being robbed. Someone more cunning was always getting the better of them.

But even within the household there was ill will and rancour too. Charles by some freak of nature was a slender good-looking lad, eager for such poor pleasures as came his way. Occasionally he would run up a bill in Caen for a fine suit of clothes and another for a dinner and a bottle of wine enjoyed in company with a girl. On such occasions you would have thought that the whole family was ruined, such shrill lamentations broke from the women, such tirades of abuse from Narcisse and Desire. Charles was the simpleton, the spendthrift; gaol would be the end of him and bankruptcy the lot of the family. Nevertheless, in that primitive society he retained the rights of the first-born, though Desire, a brutish counterpart of his father, watched him with a sullen jealousy and rancour.

Thus it was Charles's privilege to drive in the high gig to Caen with thirty-two pounds in his pocket for the payment of some bills on the afternoon of the Studio Ball. Joan saw him drive off, looking as smart as could be in his best clothes, with his hat cocked on the side of his head and a rapturous smile upon his face, like a schoolboy going home.

"Mind you walk the horse up the hills!" said Narcisse, and "Take care you are back before nine!" screamed Clothilde; and with a flourish of his whip, Charles Perdoux drove off. That was at three o'clock in the afternoon. At one o'clock in the morning, on their return from the studio, Joan said good night to Mary Cole in a whisper, for the house was all quiet and dark, and went into her room. But once in her room, being hot and dusty from the dance, she suddenly felt that she must have some hot water to wash in before she went to bed. There was always a great kettle simmering on the kitchen fire; and what with the early risings and the late retirings of that laborious household, the fire was seldom out.

Joan accordingly crept down the stairs with her can in one hand and her lighted candle in the other. She put the can silently down and gently unlatched the kitchen door. To her amazement the lamp was still burning and about the fire Narcisse, Angele, Clothilde and Desire were grouped. They were sitting bolt upright, quite silent and quite motionless. Joan closed the door again with an unaccountable chill of fear at her heart. There was something dreadfully sinister in the aspect of that silent group. They had the look of a pitiless tribunal.

Not one of them had seen her. She went upstairs to her room, and had hardly closed the door before she heard a horse's hoofs and the creak of wheels. The sounds stopped at the gate of the yard which her window overlooked. She extinguished her candle, and looked out of her window which was open and the blind not lowered. The night was clear and lit by stars. She could see Charles Perdoux lead in the horse, unharness and stable it, and wheel the gig into its shed. He did everything very quietly so that the household might not be aroused. Then he stood in front of the door for a few moments, as if he was afraid, before he raised the latch and went in. Almost at once Joan heard the voice of Narcisse. That too, for a wonder, was very quiet, and it daunted Joan as the loud tones which he used when in a passion could not have done. She pictured to herself the luckless youth creeping towards the stairs and the old man confronting him in the doorway of the kitchen and asking for the reason of his tardiness. The voice died away as the door of the kitchen was closed. There was not after all to be a quarrel then, and Joan, greatly relieved, went to bed and fell asleep.

But very soon afterwards she was awakened by the slamming of a gate. She got out of bed and looked again from her window; she was astonished to see by certain chinks in the wall, that the great barn opposite was lit up. Someone crossed the yard from the gate to the barn door. As he opened it and the light fell upon his face, she saw that it was Desire and that he carried a coil of rope in his hand. She might have thought that the household was just beginning its day's work, but there was a clumsy stealthiness in Desire's movements which alarmed her. He opened one of the great doors only just enough to enable him to slip through and he closed it carefully and noiselessly behind him. As he closed it, terror seized upon Joan and held her a prisoner by the window. Desire came out again into the courtyard and disappeared amongst the shadows. But the light still burned within the barn, and Joan still clung to the window-sill.

But she was not the only one to be uneasy that night in St.-Vire-en-Pre. For she heard the sound of a man running in heavy shoes which rang upon the road. He at all events was making no effort to be secret. The sound of his running grew louder and louder. He stopped at the gate and even then Joan could hear the noise of his breathing. He was panting as though his heart would burst. He pushed open the gate and entered the courtyard. He looked first up at the darkened windows of the house, and only afterwards caught sight of the rays of light streaming out from the barn. Then in his turn he crept across the yard towards it and, as one shaft touched his face, Joan recognized him for Barillier, the village butcher, who lived at the nearest house down the road to the sea.

He peered between the great leaves of the door and with a loud cry dragged them open. They were wide, high doors reaching upwards to the edge of the roof-tiles. They clattered back against the walls, and the interior of the barn was exposed to Joan's eyes, brightly lit by a hissing petrol lamp, like a scene of a theatre. Joan was paralysed by horror. For Charles Perdoux was jerking and dangling from a rope thrown over a crossbeam, whilst the family stood below and watched him. Their shadows were thrown upon the walls in monstrous and misshapen exaggerations; whilst by some freak of the lamp's position, the shadow of the dangling figure showed like that of a little doll. At the clatter of the doors, Narcisse turned and with a bellow of rage ran at Barillier.

"What are you doing here, in my barn?" he cried roughly.

Barillier cowered back against the wall.

"I was afraid," he stammered. "I was afraid."

The tremendous fact stood out that Barillier was a coward. Narcisse with his primitive cunning took his immediate profit of it. His voice lost all its truculence, and dropped to a whine: "So are we all afraid. Poor people, what will become of us? Here is my unfortunate boy Charles! He gambles away thirty-two pounds"—and even at that moment he could hardly mention the sum without a snarl of rage—"in Caen and then in despair hangs himself! What disgrace! What misery!"

"Hangs himself?" repeated Barillier, startled even out of his cowardice. "But it's my rope! Desire woke me up to borrow it...in the middle of the night! That's what frightened me—" and he broke off with a great cry which rang out into the night and trembled away over the empty country. "He is alive! I saw his lips move!"

Joan from her window had seen that too, and the loud cry of Barillier drowned a moan from her. Barillier snatched a great clasp-knife from his pocket and ran, as he opened it, towards the boy dangling in the noose. Narcisse seized his arm and stopped him.

"What are you doing?" he exclaimed with amazement in his voice. "You can't cut a good rope like that! It's quite new. You are mad."

Narcisse stared from under his great eyebrows at the butcher, as though he gazed upon a lunatic; and in a hurry to spare his eyes such an outrage, began himself to untie the end of the rope from the foot of one of the roof pillars. "Such a rope!" he said. "It will be of use on the farm. It is clear, my friend Barillier, that you are a rich man."

And then Clothilde spoke. She and her mother had drawn apart and had been sitting side by side upon an old packing-case with no more emotion than a couple of wax figures might have shown. Her voice rose hard and rancorous, whilst Barillier held up in his arms the inert figure of Charles Perdoux.

"Yes, no doubt Barillier can afford to lose thirty-two pounds in an afternoon, just like that," and she snapped her fingers. "But we poor people, when that happens, we have to do something."

"Hold your tongue, Clothilde," Narcisse growled with an angry glance of warning, as he let the rope go. He went to Barillier's side and, loosening the noose, slipped it off the lad's head.

"Now give him to me," he said, and he took Charles Perdoux into his strong arms as if he weighed no more than the shadow of the doll upon the wall.

"He wants air," said Narcisse, and turning his back upon Barillier he carried the boy towards the open doors, but he almost knocked against Desire who, alarmed by the noise, had run back to the barn to see how things were getting on. Desire recoiled with a look of stupefaction from his father. He looked round the barn, at Barillier, at his mother, at Clothilde; and in a grating voice which seemed to hold all the venom in the world, he cried:

"You have taken him down—you cowards!"

But Narcisse spoke to him in an undertone and he drew aside. Narcisse sat down upon a truss of hay in the wide doorway with his face to the courtyard and his back to the petrol lamp, and laid Charles across his knees.

"It is of no use," he said. "Go home, Barillier! It is of no use. The boy's dead. Go home and hold your tongue."

Barillier, now that his one audacity had been accomplished, was shaking with fear like a man in a fever.

"Yes, yes! But what will you say, Perdoux, to-day? Where will they find Charles?"

"They will find him hanging in the barn," Narcisse interrupted. "We shall find him. He is dead, Barillier. Go home!" And he repeated with a harsh menace in his voice: "And hold your tongue!"

Barillier, the coward, went, without another word.

Desire escorted him to the gate and this time he locked it when Barillier had passed out. He stood listening whilst the heavy shoes which had rung so loudly and quickly on the road a few minutes ago, now dragged away, the footsteps of a man without heart or decision. Desire came back to the barn.

"He has gone, the fool. But we must be quick. We shall have the morning on us before we know it."

And then Narcisse leaned forward. The lad struggled ever so slightly on his knees.

"Good God!" cried Narcisse. "The dirty pig wants to come to life again."

Clothilde at the back added with a savage laugh:

"He would! After robbing us!" And Joan saw the immense corded hands of Narcisse move and move horribly.

His back was towards the barn and the lamp was behind him. Joan could only see that his arms were moving, but she had not a doubt what his fingers were doing. They were upon the lad's throat. And his struggles ceased.

The old woman, Angele, from beginning to end, had not said one word.