Читать книгу Boundless Water - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 7

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As Francis Ribblestone crossed to the musicians' gallery, it occurred to him that he had never realized either of two facts Mrs. Muschamp had mentioned in connection with Serena Fowkes: "she is not a gentlewoman, and she is from London—"

He had not thought of the girl enough to have seriously considered her birth, nor had ever reflected on her being a stranger to Haslemere; he was vaguely conscious of having treated her as he would have treated one of his own tenants who had grown up on his own land, and to whom he was as great as the King, and far more loved and feared; he was forced to admit to himself that he had dealt with an unknown type with unwarrantable self-assurance. Mrs. Muschamp had mentioned gossip and the word stung—was it possible that this wench from London did not understand the position of Francis Ribblestone?

He went to her side and looked down at her critically with his chin a little raised and his eyes dark.

"Where is your cousin, Miss Fowkes?" he asked. "In the grounds," she answered.

Behind her was the panelled wall divided by slender pilasters between lined pattern carving, and over her hovered the luminous shadow cast by the gallery.

Francis Ribblestone, gazing at her with awakened eyes, noticed how utterly different she was from the woman who had sent him here, how utterly free from adornment of dress, gesture, speech, pose; she sat simply, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes upturned to his; her dress, of too simple a make to be ever strange, yet, even to his eyes, of the fashion of a generation ago, was of stiff white silk, with a tight bodice laced across the bosom with pink, and a close-falling skirt; she wore no gloves nor any jewels; on her feet were square-toed watered-silk shoes tied with little tarnished gold cords; her garments had the faint faded fragrance of clothes long preserved with careful' perfumes; in contrast to the whaleboned and hooped gowns of the other ladies, hers showed her fresh young shape and the lines of her rounded limbs; there was no powder on her opulent hair nor on her radiant face; her beauty was as natural and as obvious as that of the ripe peach on the bough, or the rich gilly-flower clove on the stem.

Francis Ribblestone saw all this, saw too her coarsened, hands looking red on her white skirt, and the way her hair was slipping from the simple dressing on to her shoulders.

"You have had some pleasure to-night?" he asked.

"Yes." Her glowing lips were parted, her eyes glittering even in the shadow; to Sir Francis this was joy in an entertainment that must, to her, be very splendid.

"You like Bleachley Hall?"

"Not so well as the Manor," she answered breathlessly.

He felt this his chance, but would not take it and so become a schoolboy repeating Barnardine's lesson. He was aware that the room, more or less, covertly observed them and that she waited on his words like a slave at her master's feet; he set his lips haughtily and leant against the wall, slowly turning round the square emerald on his thumb.

Even out of the light, his jewels and his satins gleamed; he wore above his black velvet cravat a necklet of rubies that glowed like contained fire, and his paste buttons winked with his movements.

"Have you seen the gardens?" he asked idly.

"Yes. They are very beautiful."

Mrs. Muschamp was wrong, he told himself, and he began to hate the situation—himself for acceding, and Bernardine for suggesting it.

Serena Fowkes drew a broken sigh. "I must thank you vastly, Sir Francis."

"O faith, what have I done?" He smiled, and looking at her saw too much of her soul in her eyes for his own comfort.

She was leaning slightly towards him and her expression was, to him, unfathomable.

"I trust," he said slowly, "that you will come, madam, to a ball at the Manor."

"You—you have balls there?"

"I shall," he assured her easily, "when I am married."

One of her hands stole to the crumpled ribbons at her breast, her whole body seemed to throb. "When you are married?" she repeated.

He explained himself something stiffly.

"I am betrothed this night to Mistress Margaret Cowley."

He was looking at her as he spoke, and he had the instant and horrible impression that he was staring at a dead woman. Lovely youth disappeared; he saw, fronting him, colourless death, arrayed in withered garments. So intense was the impression that he started forward, thinking he beheld a vision, so instantaneous, that he believed his senses deceived him, for the next second she was on her feet, a live, breathing woman.

"It is very civil in Miss Cowley," she said in an ordinary tone. "Why did you cry out, Sir Francis?"

"Did I cry out?" he answered, bewildered.

"Yes," she said. "Yes."

He did not dare mention his dreadful delusion of a cold, dead creature; he smiled, but he was pallid; the violins began above their heads; he was satisfied that he had been right and Bernardine wrong, for there was no emotion in the features of Serena Fowkes.

"I am sorry," he said courteously, "that Holt of Langley's came not."

"Yes," she answered. "Yes."

"You will give me leave now? I am engaged for this dance—later may I present you to Mistress Muschamp?"

She answered the same.

"Yes—yes."

He bowed to her and moved away; she never lifted her eyes to follow him, but turned sharply to the nearest door and left the room.

She found herself on the great staircase with the heavy paintings reaching to the corniced ceiling, the gilt and iron railing, the marble stairs, all cold and splendid; she descended steadily and came to the entrance-hall, deserted now, with a fine fire burning and thrice a dozen candles lighting it. Without hesitation she caught up her plain blue cloak, that which she always wore to church, from a chair where it lay with some others and flung it over her shoulders, then pulled open the heavy front door and ran down the broad steps that gleamed pale in the moonlight.

Here to the front of the house was no one, the terraces and lights were at the back; a number of coaches stood unattended, the horses being stabled and the servants within.

Serena Fowkes passed through them and straight along the drive that led to the gates of Bleachley Park.

The moon filled a cold remote sky with argent fire, and the air felt keen and pure as snow-water; the breath of it struck all warmth out of the body of Serena Fowkes as she came out through the wide-open gilt and iron gates; she passed on to the vast heath, which was broken only by a rough sandy road.

This she followed, without hesitation, the mansion among its trees behind, and before her the expanse of heather and furze rolling into obscurity beneath the awful canopy of the midnight sky.

Her shoes, preserved unchanged during her lifetime, were now in a few moments mere shreds of silk and kid on bruised feet; her long dress caught and tore on the furze spikes; her hair was shaken in disordered tresses down over the blue cloak; she paused for none of this but hurried on, like one on a desperate and perilous errand.

Only when she reached a fork in the path did she pause bewildered and look wildly about her for some indication of her way.

To her right was a group of tall pines, their boughs a bluish colour in the universal silver light, their shadows long and black across the heather.

In the aching stillness, the dreadful solitude, Serena Fowkes stood still and wrung her hands together with a wordless gesture of agony.

A little wind seemed to rise out of the ground, and the heather bells shook with a dry sound.

From behind the sombre trunks of the trees appeared the figure of an old woman in hood and shawl.

Serena stared at her.

"Which is the way to Haslemere?" she asked, drawing her cloak together.

The stranger returned her look and laughed feebly. "This is different from your coming to Bleachley!" she cried. "You went to the great ball in madam's carriage, with servants before you and behind, and you return barefoot across the heath and ask your 'way of the poor gipsy!"

Serena knew her for the old woman who had been gathering whortleberries on the edge of Boundless Copse the day she had watched Francis Ribblestone ride back from Muschamp Hall. "What dost thou know of me, thou old witch?" she demanded wildly.

The other's face was obscure in the shadow of the pines.

"You are not the same as she who rode up to Bleachley Hall a few hours ago."

"No," said Serena. "I need no gipsy to tell me that—I know my own fortunes now..."

"Yet I could tell you something—you stand in the only wedding dress you will ever wear—and you have left behind you all the music and dancing you will ever know—"

Serena smiled terribly.

"I am not afraid of you nor your prophecies," she answered. "Let me on my way to Haslemere."

The woman pointed down the path beyond the pines.

"I will say this, mistress," she said; "you are to have a fairer fortune than will befall Francis Ribblestone!"

Serena snatched at her arm.

"What do you know of him?"

With a knotted hand the old woman pointed up to the heavens and marked out with a smile a brilliant star, full of yellow light, a twisted train of vapour behind it, that hung over Haslemere.

"That is no fixed planet," she muttered excitedly; "it is the evil star of the Ribblestones, and to-night, to-night it is at its zenith."

The young face, ghastly fair, the old face, dark and expressionless, were upturned in the moonlight, gazing at the pulsing orb that, for all the moonlight, was distinct in the heavens. The girl's mantle fell apart over her dead white gown and her hair hung down over her throat and bosom.

"Such as I have no star," she said. "We go unheralded to our own bitter hell—"

She moved away, and turned her set countenance towards Haslemere.

The woman pulled out from her mantle a packet of papers and a long scroll on which black figures showed fantastically.

"Wait," she cried shrilly, "wait while I show you how I have cast the stars for Francis Ribblestone—here is his horoscope—"

But Serena Fowkes did not turn her head. It seemed as if she did not even hear; with hasty step and painful breath she hastened over sand, stones, through the hard, bent bushes and across spaces of stiff, dry grass, until she reached the high road, which lay desolate and bare as the heath beneath the chilly heavens.

For one second she paused to take her bearings, then discerned the blunt tower of Haslemere Chapel to her right, and turned towards it, regardless of fear, of cold, of her bleeding feet. She took a devious way and came out on the road below the churchyard as the clock struck two: from here every step of the way was familiar; a few moments across the lonely fields brought her to the back of Haslemere High Street and her own house.

She came round the corner of it, crept into the shadow of the yew, and lifted the latch of the door that had been left open for her, and closed it; her cloak fell from her in the narrow hall and she did not pause to pick it up; under the crack of the back-room door fell a long line of light; she seized the button, opened the door, and stepped across the threshold of the lit chamber.

Two great candles stood on the centre table and there was another on the mantelpiece; they threw a ragged light on an old man writing with a long quill, and a multitude of books.

Volumes covered the table, the floor, the window-seat, the shelves on the walls, and the room was full of the smell of parchment and leather; from the warped beams hung little bunches of dried herbs, a poor fire burnt in the hearth and a square of dull cloth was fastened over the window.

The owner of the room was a pallid, long-jawed, white-haired man of over seventy, wrapped in a soiled red dressing gown; he looked up from his writing with startled terror in his face as he saw Serena.

The girl closed the door and flung herself against it, her eyes, wide and malevolent, on her grandfather.

"So you have come home?" he stammered. "Where is Patience?"

"I know not."

He rubbed his hands together, trembling.

"What doth this mean? Why are you in this rig?"

"Oh, you!" choked Serena. "You!"

She tossed her hands out as if to curse him, and he stared foolishly at her torn dress and fallen hair.

"Why do you disturb me?" he asked peevishly. "I was writing my refutation of Galen—"

Serena sprang to the table and pointed with a passionate sweep of her arm to the piled-up tomes.

"There is a vast deal of knowledge here, is there not?" she cried fiercely. "But you never got enough wisdom from them to save me!"

His face flushed, and he rose from his chair. "Wench, what is the matter with you?" he asked harshly. "Where is Patience, I say?"

He looked at the torn hem of her dress and her tattered shoes.

"You are tired like a gipsy; have you walked?"

"Stay your questioning," said Serena. "God and Francis Ribblestone have made a fool of me!"

In a second the old man was taut with interest. "Francis Ribblestone?"

"He told me to-night that he was to marry Margaret Cowley...a stiff, colourless girl...and he never even noticed that I was pretty...my eyes are opened...your schooling bath led me to this...answer me to my face how you justify yourself of all the lies you have taught me!"

Her violent passion left her grandfather helpless; he hardly understood her complaint.

"Serena, Serena," he answered weakly. "Do not talk like that. See, here is my dedication to Sir Francis—"

He foolishly held out a sheet of paper, and she dashed it out of his hand.

"Leave off babbling of your writings!" she cried. "Do you not understand that I am talking of my life?"

"Your life?" he stammered.

She crossed to the fire and fell, suddenly slack with weariness, across the rude chair there.

"Oh, Gracious God!" she cried. "I have had my death-wound to-night!"

Old Fowkes began to realize what her wild talk meant.

"So Francis Ribblestone is not going to marry you?"

Serena clenched her hands in her lap.

"You," she said in a hoarse, cruel voice, "deceived me—you taught me I could have what I chose—you never told me that gentlemen do not marry such as I. I believed you...and you let me talk, and Patience and you yourself talked...and let me boast. What am I now? A laughing-stock. You let me love him. What am I now? A broken-hearted woman."

So far he allowed her accusation to run on, then roused himself to interrupt.

"It is not I who am a fool, but Francis Ribblestone who is a villain!" he cried. "Child, you have been wronged—"

"By you, by you!" cried Serena. "You who should have known—"

The old man turned at that.

"Was this my business or yours? Maybe you made mistakes. You had your chance; blame not me that you lost it. I, too, have my complaint: you are on my hands still, a useless wench who cannot use her advantages—"

"Yes, cast that up at me," she responded bitterly. "I must become used to scorn."

Samuel Fowkes looked at her with watery eyes; his lip trembled.

"Nay, I did not mean to be harsh—poor wench, and your feet are bleeding."

"You are too old to understand," she muttered. "Let me be."

He stooped to pick up the crumpled sheets of his dedication. A steady, deep wrath entered his veins; he began to grasp the significance for himself of this news, to realize how many fond hopes for his book he had based on the delusion that Francis Ribblestone would eventually marry his grandchild; but still he did not see himself as a fool; the girl was beautiful enough to wed with a lord, and the behaviour of Sir Francis had been an outrage.

"How dare he?" he cried, the idea working in his brain. "To follow you about like a coward, to set people talking, and then flout you—could he have done it if you had been on his estate?—would he have done it had you any but an old man to protect you?"

She swung round in her chair.

"He knew," she said with feverish lips, "he knew that I cared—he must have known, that is why he told me—what would a great lady have done? Every one in the room was looking at us—he had danced with me twice—grandfather, I shall not take this so tamely; promise me you will never speak to him again, nor to this woman he is to marry—I suppose they are laughing at me. Ah, curse her silly face—laughing!" With a clumsy gesture she cast her hands before her eyes, then dashed them down. "I do not know what I am saying—I think I shall never be at peace again—I wish that I was lying dead at the feet of Francis Ribblestone—that he might notice me!"

Helpless and wrathful, the old man stared at her grief, occasionally glancing round at his disordered books as if he hoped to gain some support from these musty companions of his cramped life; he took off his horn spectacles, replaced them, and again removed them; if he cared for anything in the world beyond his ancient books and his medley of confused writings, it was his son's child.

Consolation never occurred to him; he saw simply, and saw now utter tragedy, beyond help, but perhaps not beyond vengeance.

"Damn Francis Ribblestone," he said unsteadily. "Why did he not keep away?"

He sat down heavily in his worn chair.

"And my book," he muttered; "he and his friends might have taken a hundred copies...a hundred copies...I worked on that dedication a fortnight too, Serena; it should have been worth fifty guineas."

"My loss is more than that," she answered with grim quiet.

"But a fortnight's work!" he complained foolishly, "and his patronage!"

Serena made her way between the piles of chafed calf volumes on which the white dust lay, and took the flaring, long-wicked candle in its pewter stick from the untidy mantel-shelf.

In the red light of it her face showed distorted and robbed of all its youth and softness; her lips were strained and her eyes bloodshot; she looked at the old man as if she did not see him.

"Serena!" he stammered. "Serena! Speak to me, my wench!"

The slow, painful tears ran down his dry cheeks; but she passed him unheeding.

"Serena! I will publish him in Haslemere for a villain...I...do not look at me like that...I always tried to do the best by you...but perhaps I have thought too much of the books..."

For a moment she gazed at him over her shoulder, then went out silently and let the door fall-to behind her.

Fresh tears stung the old man's cheeks; he stared at the half-written page of crabbed Latin.

"It might have been—two—hundred—copies—" he muttered.

The silence was broken by the sound of Serena's bolt shooting harshly into the staples.