Читать книгу Moss Rose - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 8

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The little kitchen was cheerful, the large grate had been newly blackened, there were sprigs of holly behind the pictures of Her Majesty and the Duke of Wellington, a stiff bough of evergreen had been thrust behind the dark print of The Last Judgment. There was a white twill cloth on the table and plenty of food remains, kidney pies, cold ham, cakes, Dorset butter, Dr. Kitchener's Zest, Harvey's Relish, bottles of stout, of sherry and of port. Molly, the Irish servant, was looking after Tommy, a pallid boy of ten years old who was wearing a blue paper cap and hugging a wooden horse painted with large black spots. Mrs. Bulke was making tea from a huge sooty kettle for a few of her lodgers who declared themselves "off the drink," being already crying drunk and supporting themselves against the table while they exchanged reminiscences of some lost or imagined gentility when Christmas Eve had been "different." The company was completed by a very old woman who kept a cast clothes shop of the better sort and who found many clients among the ladies of No. 12. Wrapped in a pale Andalusian shawl, still exquisite in texture even though long since discarded by some fastidious lady's maid, Mrs. MacKinnon sipped her port quietly and contributed nothing to the merriment which Mrs. Bulke sustained with lively talk, with winks, with snatches of song, and at all of which Molly, joggling the boy on her knee, laughed inordinately.

With ready kindness the landlady pushed Belle into the shiny horse-hair chair by the grate.

"If your feet ain't wet, dearie. And you late! Such a night! Daisy said she was going to fetch you—why didn't you go with her?"

"I didn't wish to—I was tired."

"You'll do yourself no good moping. Fill Mrs. Mac's glass, Molly. There ain't so many good people in the world that one can afford to miss 'em."

"Not in these hard times," croaked the old woman, extending a dirty gnarled hand holding her empty tumbler, tapping her forehead with a finger of the other.

"Isn't Tommy up very late?" shuddered Belle, crouching over the red coals showing behind the bars to which hung fragments of half-burnt orange peel and sausage skin.

"Bless 'is heart! It's a party, ain't it? And he's enjoying his little self, ain't he?"

Fanny Bulke smiled round good-humouredly on her guests; she was a handsome woman with a hard-grained red in her cheeks, a dark down on her upper lip, a coil of brassy gold hair round her head. She had been in a circus in her youth, a trick rider until she broke her hip-bone, and there was something strong and bold about her, as if she was used to handling a whip. Her second-hand dress of puce cloth, garnished with torn braid and rows of buttons with gaps in their ranks, and the heavy folds of thick cloth, gave an almost monstrous air to her massive figure. She seemed to loom, to swell, to fill the room, there was a certain menace even in her limp.

"Can't you give us a tune, Belle? Can't you play and sing to us a bit? That 'Moss Rose' now, that you danced in so nicely."

"I don't think I'm going to dance in it any more; if they keep it for the pantomime, they'll give it to Minnie Palmer."

Mrs. Bulke was always loud in sympathy, in condemnation, too.

"You ought to make more of yourself, you don't take any trouble; there's some burnt cork on your face still and not a bit of rouge."

"Well, you find me past everything, no doubt," said Belle, crouching over the grate and peering into the ashes which were mingled with egg-shells and apple parings. "And I do too, I think."

"I wouldn't go so far as to say that, dearie." Mrs. Bulke lowered her powerful voice. "But you seem to make no effort, not generally speaking. Why, you're not so old—and with a bit of trouble you might take heart again."

Belle glanced over her shoulder with a smile so bitter and ironical that even Mrs. Bulke became a little downcast and sighed, smoothing the waist of the puce frock. But she was not silenced.

"There's Florrie and May," she whispered, jerking her gawdy head towards the two women at the table. "They're a bit older than you, aren't they? They don't take much trouble with themselves, do they?"

"No, I've often wondered why you keep them on or how they pay their rent and buy their food."

Mrs. Bulke winked, and they gave a drunken grin.

"You might 'ave guessed. They find me new lodgers. They go to the stations and the coach-stops, and if there's any nice fresh young girl as doesn't know where to go, Florrie and May make up to her and tell her of No. 12 and the cosy place it is."

"Oh!" whispered Belle; she stared down at her hands, opening and shutting them, examining them as if she had never seen them before.

"They brought Jenny here."

"Jenny who went to Paris? I remember how she cried, poor little dear."

"Well," smiled Mrs. Bulke, "we all cried once, I dare say, and I don't suppose she's crying now, do you, dearie? What I was thinking was, if you're out of luck, or they don't keep you on at the 'ails—why, you might go out with Florrie and May sometimes. You're genteel, Belle, a lady born, like. And there are some as wouldn't come for the others who'd listen to you."

"Who would they be?"

"Young, silly girls as come from good homes who want a bit of fun, but who'd be scared of Florrie—and May's not too careful with her talk."

Belle rose suddenly; she lurched forward and it seemed as if she were about to fall.

"Eh, dearie, you take a cup of tea, good and strong—it's the drink on an empty stomach."

"I haven't touched a drop of your stuff."

"But you had some on the way, I know you did, now then? Come now, a cup of tea."

"Nothing like it," nodded Mrs. MacKinnon, "nothing like it," she repeated with a shrill giggle, stroking Maggie Tealeaves the cat.

Belle moved to the piano with the stained and faded, pleated red silk front that stood in the corner, and sank on to the rubbed leather music-stool. It had been left behind by a lodger who had stayed a year at No. 12, then gone out one day and never come back.

"That's right," smiled Mrs. Bulke. "Now, Tommy, pet, you listen to the pretty tune. La, la"—she hummed to herself.

Belle had her back to them all so that no one could see the distortions of her face. As her fingers ran over the stained keys, some of which were mute and some jangled, she stared at the picture of The Last Judgment under the fly-spotted glass that hung before her and above the piano, half-shadowed by that stiff bough of green yew. Such riven heavens, such split rocks, such cascades of fire, such giving up of the quick and the dead to the terrors of eternity! Did the painter think that grandiose scene could frighten anyone, those clean, cool angels, that wide expanse of pure black sky, even those darkling pits—could they alarm one who had not the courage to slit her throat? One who had just been asked to wheedle young, pretty, fresh girls to No. 12?

Belle played on the broken piano.

"She's got a good figure," mused Mrs. Bulke to herself, looking at the neat shape on the fat stool. "And with a nice pair of stays—I don't know why she don't do better."

They listened to the music, all but Tommy, whose wizened, dirty face had fallen against Molly's slatternly bosom in uneasy sleep and wheezy, heavy breathing.

Belle began to sing; she had a low pleasing voice, true and clear.

The five women were impressed, not pleased; the song was sad, remote, you couldn't beat time to it; when Belle finished abruptly Florrie sniffed with relief.

"What's the name of that?" asked old Mrs. MacKinnon shakily and cautiously.

"'The Wanderer to the Moon'—it ought to be sung by a man."

"I don't think it ought to be sung at all," complained May. "Makes you think of a hymn."

"When did you last hear a hymn?" Belle swung round on the stool.

"Oh, I don't know," muttered the sleepy fat woman, taken aback. "Hark! there's the door!" cried Mrs. Bulke with a smart vivacity that silenced the others. "Daisy at last, and she ain't alone, neither. No," added the landlady, pulling the door open and listening up the basement stairs—"She's brought a gentleman home."