Читать книгу Mignonette - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 6

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The letter had been sent on an impulse. Barbara was soon alarmed at what she had done. She would have recalled her action if she could. She was relieved that it had not committed her to much, but had been tentative, a mere suggestion of a meeting, of a postponement of Aimée's marriage until other possible plans could be discussed, a hint that Aimée might come to visit Stone Hall—"I am sure that could be arranged."

Had not Caroline Atwood reminded her that she was rich and free, she would not have written to Aimée. Had Caroline Atwood been able to go abroad with her, she would not have written. Had she not sensed in this holiday retreat her own youth passing unregarded, she would not have written.

She made a fine issue of it, assuring herself that she acted in deference to her father's unexpressed desire. He had been silent, leaving all to her judgment, but he had certainly expected the generous gesture from her, or so she tried to persuade herself, but after all she knew little of the real nature of that reserved man, who had given her his name, his money, a protected life, a narrow education, and nothing else.

The French girl would answer formally, of course. There was nothing else that she could do, and there would be an end of the matter.

Meanwhile she shyly grasped at daydreams: Aimée responding warmly; Aimée visiting her in Portsmouth; Stone Hall refurnished for her use; young company invited for her entertainment; everything that she had missed herself provided for the loving sister. "It would be an object in life," she thought, then was startled at this unconscious admission that her existence was futile now that no one any longer needed her as a patient nurse, a docile companion, a careful housekeeper.

She wished she could explain her dilemma to the kind common sense of Caroline Atwood, but did not dare to do so. No one must ever know of the existence of Madame Falconet. If the daughter ever came to England some fiction must account for her, but of course, precisely because of this, she would never visit, probably never see Barbara.

The letter had ignored the mother. Barbara had not had the tact or the courage to touch on that, and now she realized that this omission made her friendly overture a mockery. Aimée might indeed refuse to reply to a letter that passed no courtesy to the one parent to whom she felt loyalty and love.

Mr. Bompast had assured Barbara of that—Madame Falconet had made it plain in her letter—"the girl is devoted to her mother, who has told her who her father is and the circumstances of her birth."

Considering this, Barbara was ashamed of her awkwardness, yet how could she, remembering her own mother, as much as mention Madame Falconet?

I wish I had not written. She tied on her hat, and adjusted her black veil, with resigned discontent.

The sunshine was so balmy, all the prospect so inviting, and she was apart from all of it, even the pellucid light fell dully on her lusterless bombazine. As if swallowed into the shadow of her mourning, the unpolished jet of her brooch and deep square bracelet gave no sparkle. She glanced with distaste at the reflection of her finely cut, rather broad features, with the narrow shortsighted eyes, and the hazel-colored hair, dressed in an old fashion by Harding. Pale, without emphasis or meaning, those features looked to her, in the long mirror that showed her full-length figure, like the fashion plate of a lady in full mourning.

Caroline Atwood tapped at her door and entered. Accustomed to chaperon the orphan and the widowed, she was dressed discreetly in gray, but her cheerful face and delicate appointments, her air of breeding and purpose, made her appearance at once self-contained and entertaining.

"We shall be late, Barbara, and as Sir Timothy is to be our cicerone himself—"

"Oh, I wish he were not! We should be done quicker with a servant!"

"Why, Barbara, I would never have asked to go if I had known you thought of the visit as tedious."

"It is not that especially, but merely that I have no heart for anything."

"You must be done with that moping. Come, even to see this place will distract you. Consider, you could build yourself such another if you wished."

Barbara thought of Aimée, or the tender dream to which she had given the name of "Beloved," enshrined in a charming holiday villa like Mirabile, or was it herself as she had been ten years ago that she saw in that quickly dismissed vision?

"It would not interest me," she smiled.

They left the hotel and took the sloping path through the grounds to the Niton road. As they turned along this toward the handsome iron gates that shut off the little fanciful domain of Mirabile, they could see to the right some of the scenery of the Undercliff that visitors to the island termed romantic, and that many considered was being spoiled by the building of genteel pleasure seats.

An ancient landslide had here broken the rock into steep knolls and sunken dells, boulders of naked stone having been tossed over the surface of the precipice that fell directly to the shore, and directly overhung the blue, hazy ocean.

Caroline Atwood stepped a little out of her way to view this gloomy ledge of rock that leaned forward and shadowed the road, and seemed to be the entrance to another region from that of the neat, flowering hotel garden, and one of wild, barren ruin, in bold contrast to the clear weather that tinged sky and sea with so deep and beautiful an azure.

"It is very striking!" exclaimed Miss Atwood. "So luxuriant a villa placed near so wild a prospect, and with so wide a view over the ocean! The house is quite hidden by groves, and the gardens are richly designed. See, the gates are open."

The ladies entered the grounds of Mirabile, on which taste and money had been liberally expended. All the shrubs and plants that flourished in this soft climate expanded early leaves and blossoms, protected by the high stone walls and the noble clusters of pines, all that remained of the former house and grounds that had been destroyed to give place to Mirabile.

The villa mansion soon appeared before them, at the end of a trim carriage road, with groups of fine beech trees either side the gray stone frontage elegantly adorned with Corinthian pilasters.

A precise terrace stretched either side of the porticoed door, and there Sir Timothy Boys waited for the ladies with a courtesy touched by eagerness.

Barbara thought at once, with a pang of surprise, Why, he is lonely also.

As she greeted him she observed that he was younger than she had remembered him to be; a man who could scarcely be termed elderly, but who might be taken as being in the prime of life. This was largely owing to his erect and graceful bearing, and his healthful look; his hair that had been reddish was still abundant, of an ashy rust color, his complexion florid, his features aquiline.

He thanked the two ladies for their visit that, he declared gratefully, broke the monotony of his days on the island, "where I know few people," he said, "nor indeed am I much fitted for a social life since the death of my wife for whom this villa was designed."

"It makes a charming memorial to Lady Boys," said Miss Atwood cheerfully, and entering the hall she added, easily and prettily, clever and civil comments on the pictures, statues, and tapestry that adorned the small but sumptuous vestibule.

Barbara thought, How sad even a place like this is when one is alone—it is as dreary as Stone Hall. He is still grieving for his wife. I wish I had not come.

"It is rather too luxurious for a holiday retreat," remarked Sir Timothy, opening the door of a round drawing room with green-watered satin on the walls and Spanish furniture in ebony and mother-of-pearl, "but my wife amused herself with the appointments and the collections."

Barbara agreed that it was very rich, handsomely proportioned, and well arranged, and Miss Atwood made some critical observations on the two opulent portraits by Anthony Van Dyck that hung either side of the yellow alabaster mantelpiece, an ancestor and ancestress of the late Lady Boys, "and she much resembled him," Sir Timothy remarked, glancing at the painted cavalier, a youth with soft, fair features.

So they proceeded through the villa mansion that had many features, both commodious and curious, and which was embellished with many treasures of virtue.

But Barbara took no pleasure in any of it; she saw only a home built for a dying woman, one that had never been lived in. She wanted to escape into the sunshine, to return to the trim and modest hotel that was so much more in keeping with the English scene than the exotic splendors of Mirabile.

Sir Timothy conducted them to an upper room where there was, he promised, a superb view over the uplands and beech woods at the back of the villa estate.

This room was arranged as a studio or workshop, and seated at a table covered with drawings and books was a young man who resembled Sir Timothy in coloring and figure.

"My nephew, Francis Shermandine."

Miss Atwood was easy over the introduction, but Barbara, who had supposed the house empty save for servants, was embarrassed. The room and the young man were different from anything she had seen in the villa mansion. It was like walking into a picture.

Francis Shermandine also seemed surprised. He put his papers aside with a hurried hand and colored slightly as he rose. His expression was thoughtful and his eyes brilliant. He soon recovered complete composure and expressed a civil welcome.

"We have so few visitors," he smiled, as if in excuse of his flurried spirits.

Barbara smiled also, she felt now not only that she entered a picture, but another life. She moved forward into a pulsing shaft of sunlight and felt warmed to the heart.

"My nephew is an architect," explained Sir Timothy with pride, and Barbara knew that there was a close attachment between the two men. Her pleased glance fell on the drawings, and in the flowing pencil lines she recognized dream vistas, perspectives and palaces.

"We disturb you in order to see the view," said Miss Atwood, and Francis Shermandine stood aside to allow them to gaze through the large window. They saw sunny uplands, deep glades, the misted sheen of young golden leaves of beech and oak, the uncertain purple of the distance and the tender azure of the summer sky, set off in the foreground by the villa garden with the clusters of rich flowers planted with a care disguised as idle grace beneath blossoming shrubs. Across this scene, and they appeared incongruous, flew sea birds in strong flight, flashing pearl-colored pinions in the radiant air.

Miss Atwood realized that she was being asked to admire cunning landscape gardening, and her praise was discriminate as she discussed charming aspects of the scene with the man who had planned it for the delight of a dead woman.

Barbara stood silent by Francis Shermandine. She was more conscious of his designs spread on the table than of the prospect beyond the window. Some of these had an oriental extravagance and showed gigantic flights of steps leading to gateways into clouds that swirled into fringed canopies. Others were minutely precise drawings of plants where the marking of the petals were delicate and distinct as the lines on maps.

The room was bare, save for easels and portfolios, the walls light Barbara could not shake off the sensation of having intruded into someone else's life. It was one she had never felt before.

"You are accustomed to these views on the island, Miss Lawne," the young man suggested, as if excusing her from conventional compliments.

"No, nothing like this. I am staying at the Sandyrock Hotel that is closed in by cliffs at the back and slopes to the road in front."

"It is your first visit?"

"No, but I never stayed long—my mother was an invalid, my father an occupied man."

"I am sorry you are in mourning, Miss Lawne."

"For my father, Mr. Shermandine. Both my parents are dead."

"Mine also. I have two sisters, one is in India, the other in Portugal." It was as if he offered her his isolation in exchange for her own. Although they spoke of death, she felt no sorrow in the room.

Looking at him intently, though sidelong, she found his countenance kind and sensitive. A great longing to be the object of someone's affection—she did not yet think of his affection—possessed her. Her eyelids trembled and she turned away, crushing the ends of her thrown back veil on her bosom.

"I think," remarked Francis Shermandine, "we make too doleful a matter of death, with so much parade of sorrow that must so soon be merely formal."

"I feel," she replied, "that my heavy black clothes are an offense, in particular here, where young bridal couples and children come for light enjoyment."

"I think of you, Miss Lawne—how oppressive mourning must be to your spirits."

"They have never been high," she admitted. Then Sir Timothy claimed her attention for a clump of Algerian vines, and asked if the soft purple of the rainbow flowers, whose flags grew by a shallow blue pool, did not set off effectively the dark foliage and the flesh pink buds of the camellia.

Barbara felt that this graceful triviality disguised a deep feeling and, always timid and sensitive, she feared that their host was already weary of a visit that at first had been a novelty and now longed to be alone with the dreams with which she believed he filled Mirabile. And she felt a touch of shame for her own undefined pleasure that had moved her when she first entered this sun-filled room.

But Caroline Atwood, so well trained to social subtleties as never to make a false move, was already offering excuses and leave taking.

Refreshment was suggested and refused; they left the bright upper chamber and Barbara looked back over her shoulder to see Francis Shermandine returning to his fantastical drawings.

As they passed through the ornate drawing-room, she noticed the tea equipage ready, the Dresden porcelain amongst the old, plain silver, the Chinese bowl of golden luster filled with lilac primroses. She felt shut out. Surely the meals at Stone Hall, though lavish and well appointed, had never had this air of delicate taste and charming intimacy.

"I wish that we could have stayed," she said as soon as they were beyond the gates again.

"I did not think that we could have done so on a first visit," returned Caroline Atwood, comfortably. "But you can see them again, if you wish to do so."

"Do you know anything about them?"

"Oh yes, I have heard a great deal, that was why I wanted to see the villa."

"You contriving creature!" cried Barbara, half-smiling, half-vexed.

"Why, you don't suppose that I should have allowed my curiosity to encourage useless acquaintances for you? Though the villa is very well and tastefully arranged."

They paused on the Niton road, to look out toward the unruffled sea and the purple Hampshire hills.

"They are men of distinction and not cumbered by relations," remarked Caroline Atwood. "Sir Timothy is tolerably wealthy—plumbago and coal mines in the north, where he has a vast old mansion he never visits; a place in Wiltshire and a town house; political ambitions once, but too fastidious for public life; a dilettante in art and horticulture."

"I liked him," said Barbara. "I wish we had known more of such people. But he is bereaved, and lonely."

"And that, as it were, tarnishes his attractiveness? So I noticed. I understand that his marriage was not a love match, but that his wife, whimsical and exacting, became his sole occupation. There were two children who died of cholera."

Neither of the ladies, returning along the path by the walls of the Mirabile estate, spoke of Francis Shermandine.

The afternoon was taking on a richer, deeper golden hue; lawns and beaches were emptying of the holiday-makers, the white-sailed ships were slowly tacking for port, taking advantage of a sudden side wind; there seemed a deep pause of content in an idle day.

"We will have our tea on the verandah," said Caroline Atwood, "then I must write some more letters in time for the evening post."

The last word startled Barbara into a sudden remembrance. She had forgotten she had written to Aimée Falconet, had even forgotten that girl's existence.