Читать книгу The Honourable Jim - Baroness Orczy - Страница 7

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Barbara Frances—or Babs as she was called by her doting father—felt that her wedding day was going to be the most miserable day she had ever spent in the whole course of her life. She woke up feeling wretched; for a few hours she had forgotten all about everything, for she had slept as soundly as ever she had done, but when she woke the whole thing came back to her with such forceful reality that she just sat up in bed and cried, hoping that nurse was still asleep and would not see her crying.

She was only thirteen—poor little Babs—and she hated the idea of being married. She liked Jim well enough when he was in one of his good moods, for then he would ask her to go roaming about with him in the woods and he would show her where the butcher-bird had his larder or where the tiny owl-fledglings had just opened their funny, big round eyes. In those days Jim was quite wonderful, he knew every bird-note, and always could put his hand on a nest. But at other times he would be sulky and silent—not speak for hours—and when he did open his mouth it would be to quote poetry, which either he had learned by heart or else declared—which Babs never believed—that he himself had written.

Then he had no notion of play, called hide-and-seek silly and vowed that girls bored him, because they had voices like shrikes which they used whenever a mouse or a spider or some other harmless little creature came in sight. He was also given to laughing at Babs over her love affair with Tubal, a matter about which Babs’ thirteen-year-old dignity was highly sensitive, and he had once told her in the course of wordy warfare between them over the merits and demerits of Tubal as a man and a swain, that when she was Mistress Fiennes she would have to honour and obey her husband, and if he insisted that she should give up her intercourse with Tubal, who was not even a gentleman by the way, why, then she would have to obey, because all wives had to swear before God that they would obey their husbands in all things. And at the idea of obeying any one Babs’ whole soul rose in revolt. She had never done it in all her life. Left motherless almost as soon as she was born, then transferred to the loving care of an adopted father, who idolised her, Babs had ruled as a veritable little queen both at Stoke Lark and at Broughton Castle, where she was a constant little visitor. Everywhere her will had been law, and with the exception of Jim Fiennes she counted on twisting any and every man round her little finger. How then could she think of obeying that one exception to her golden rule? She could not. As for giving up Tubal, who loved her, she told Jim quite plainly that she would sooner die; whereat Jim laughed and became more odious than ever. And now the dawn had actually broken on this the last day of her sovereignty, of her independence, the last morning that she would be called Mistress Barbara Brent. After twelve o’clock to-day she would be Mistress Fiennes! How horrible!

Now was it not a shame to spend this last glorious morning in bed, just when the wild roses were thickest in the hedgerows beyond the pond and the meadowsweet was fragrant by the water’s edge? Just when the blackbird set up a singing and a whistling that was nearly deafening, and Dina, the little black and white spaniel, was yapping away for dear life down below?

A minute later Barbara was out of bed and clamorously demanding to be dressed.

“Impossible, Mistress Barbara!” nurse protested. “It is but six o’clock, and when I dress you anon, ’twill be in your wedding gown.”

“I will be dressed at this very instant and minute,” the little tyrant of Stoke Lark declared, “and in my blue woollen gown and leather shoes, so that I can go and have a last romp in the garden with Dina.”

Of course Babs had her way—she always had—and half an hour later she was running down the steps from terrace to terrace and then straight across the park, with Dina paddling at her heels.

Just on the other side of the boundary walls that enclosed the park there was a cottage; thatched and creeper-clad, with a garden around it all ablaze just now with wallflowers and forget-me-not. There was a low palisade around the garden, the gate of which was on the latch. Babs stood awhile beside the gate; then, stooping, she picked up a handful of gravel and threw it against one of the windows of the cottage, the one just above the porch.

Then she ran away. Nor did she halt until she came to the ornamental lake which was in the lower garden, in full view of the big house. Then she paused and looked at the house; not with a view to admiring its magnificent proportions and architectural beauties which were very great, but merely to glance—with an obviously contemptuous expression—at the windows of Jim’s room. He and his brothers and my lord Saye and Sele and her ladyship, and several other guests, including Babs’ own father and brothers, had arrived the day before at Stoke Lark, and Babs knew that Jim had the small corner room in the left wing, the one with the narrow pointed windows, the casement of which was wide open. Just for the space of a few seconds Babs hesitated. Jim could be very useful on occasions, for he always knew just where the missel thrush had built her nest, or how many fledglings the grey tit had hatched out. In that way he was more useful than Tubal, who preferred to fish for tadpoles and who was apt to break the eggs whenever he found a nest.

But Tubal was worth two of Jim as a playmate, for, though Tubal was older than Jim by a whole year, he was Babs’ slave and he would dance to her piping just like a great overgrown bear. Why didn’t Tubal come? She had called him by throwing the gravel against his windowpane. Babs wanted a playmate on this fine morning, the last she would enjoy before she became a wife; after that the days of play would be over. Somehow the thought of Jim had spoiled the morning. Babs felt out of tune with everything now—the whistling of the blackbird irritated her, Dina was tiresome and the wild roses out of reach. She sat down distinctly morose and peevish on the trunk of the old willow tree that overhung the pond, and she was just settling down to a good cry when suddenly there was Tubal, hot and breathless, having jumped into his clothes and run as fast as he could all the way from the cottage. His black hair was all tousled, and no doubt that he had not even stopped to wash his face, but Babs liked him all the better for the haste with which he had come when she called. He knelt down in the dewy grass beside her and put his arms around her shoulders. “Babs!” he murmured and she could see that he was crying. “Babs, darling! I shall surely die!”

Babs, being thirteen years old, felt thrilled at this heroic declaration. She knew quite well what Tubal meant when he said that he would die. Tubal was in love with her—so deeply in love that after to-day when she would be married to Jim he would not care to go on living. Babs felt very grown up and very important, conscious of her beauty, which had wrought such havoc in the poor lad’s heart. She felt like the princess in all the fairy tales that had ever been invented.

Tubal was the son of Master Longshankes, a yeoman farmer who lived at Shutford, a fine Manor House on my Lord Saye and Sele’s estate; therefore as Jim was wont to repeat so often and so spitefully, Tubal was not a gentleman. But his learning was wonderful and his gratitude to Lord Saye and Sele positively touching. My lord, in truth, had been passing kind to Tubal, for Tubal’s mother had been Lord Saye and Sele’s devoted nurse through a long and painful illness—indeed the physician had declared at the time that it was her devotion that had saved his life. Be that as it may, my lord requited that devotion by unremitting kindness to Tubal. He sent him to Reading grammar school and kept him there for nigh on six years, and Tubal being diligent and clever became a learned and accomplished scholar, versed in Latin and in music—ay! even in theology.

But no amount of learning or education could turn the son of Master Longshankes into a gentleman, and, that being so, he never, never could have aspired to the hand of the gentle heiress of Stoke Lark. But that made his love all the more romantic, since the poets have always sung the praises of hopeless passion. Whenever Babs went to Broughton Castle, Tubal lived only for her, for her entertainment, for her will and pleasure. He did not care how much he was ridiculed, or snubbed, or chided, and he took Jim Fiennes’ sarcastic jibes with the heroism of a martyr.

Babs loved him as much as she feared Jim—she did fear Jim a little—and when the day of her wedding was fixed she insisted that Tubal should come to Stoke Lark and see the last of her—since after she was married she might never be allowed to see him again, and to love Tubal once she was married to Jim Fiennes would be committing adultery and incurring the wrath of God. So Tubal was allowed to come to Stoke Lark for the wedding, and he lodged in the house of Master Topcoat, who was bailiff to Squire Brent and lived in the creeper-clad cottage outside the gates of the park, and at Babs’ call he had come out without stopping to wash his face in order to bid the lady of his dreams an eternal farewell. Soon Babs too was crying and swearing that whatever happened—adultery or no—her heart would always remain true to Tubal and she would always hate Jim Fiennes and never, never—she swore it most solemnly—would she allow him to kiss her.

And all the while Dina, with her ears flapping and her silky hair blown about by the breeze, was pretending to catch flies.