Читать книгу Mignonette - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 8

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She had kept, she hoped, her thoughts inviolate, even from this thoughtful friend, and it was with a pang of dismay that she heard the question, "Have you never met anyone for whom you could care?" which was a genteel way of asking if she had ever considered any man as a possible husband.

She could recall, with mingled shame, delight and regret, several fancies of her early youth, some violent, some slight, that had all withered for lack of an opportunity in which to flourish. But she had been vigilant over her emotions and for years they had been tranquil to melancholy.

Now all her fancies, and even all her hopes, were gathered round Francis Shermandine, whom she had only seen on three occasions, once in the villa house of Mirabile, twice when he had called at the hotel and she and Caroline Atwood had given him tea on the lawn.

"Twice when he had called"—there lay her secret happiness. He had sought her out, shown some interest in her. She could not remember when anyone besides Caroline Atwood had ever done that before, and this was a man, young, intelligent, personable, such as she vaguely felt belonged to a superior order of beings.

The first visit had been one of formal courtesy, but not necessary had he not wished to continue and enlarge the acquaintance. On the second visit, he had brought her a portfolio of his drawings. If he came for a third time she would feel sure that he was interested. She was dismayed by the dreary fall in her spirits when she reflected that he might never come again. Perhaps it was Caroline Atwood's pleasant company that had attracted him. She checked herself—how absurd these reflections were, and how humiliating!

The man's affections might be engaged for all she knew. It was shocking to her pride to know herself so vulnerable, to be made so sharply aware of this invincible need for love, not so much to love as to be loved.

Naturally, she advised her incoherent emotions, she had been loved and loving in a united family.

But this was different, this was a desire to be of importance to someone, not to be, as hitherto she had been, merely useful.

How often she had been interviewed by doctors, nurses, acquaintances, even dependents and tradespeople, who had anxiously discussed or inquired after her father or her mother, both so much more valuable she was made to feel than herself; the man with his position and money, the woman with her married status and invalidism.

She had been merely the unmarried daughter, a go-between the world and her parents.

Humility beat down her spirits. She seemed to have nothing to offer a man like Francis Shermandine. Money he did not need, she was certain that there was nothing vulgar in his nature. And her almost secret, totally unheeded interests in the delights of the mind seemed to her own judgment those of an amateur, almost of a schoolgirl.

Then she shrank even from touching on these reflections. He was almost a stranger, he had offered her no more than agreeable civilities. She likened herself to a thirsty traveler crossing a desert, finding a thin trickle of clear water, and imagining in the partial delirium of his long deprivation that he had found an inexhaustible well.

It would be wiser, she thought wistfully, for me to return to Stone Hall.

To take up again that dull routine would be a punishment for her presumption in allowing herself to consider Francis Shermandine as other than a slight holiday acquaintance. The word "holiday" hung in her distracted mind. I must leave this place, I haven't any right here.

She found a reflection of her mood when she told Sarah Harding to pack her trunks.

"I'm glad, Miss, I feel fair out of things here with everyone enjoying themselves. And it don't seem right to be even thinking of that with the master a few months dead."

"Don't you ever expect to enjoy yourself, Harding?" asked Barbara pensively.

The placid, middle-aged woman was surprised.

"Expect?" she pondered. "I don't know that I do, Miss, or ever have. At least," she amended, "not in this way, holiday-making, picnics and music, and idleness. The master always kept a strict household. I suppose I got used to that."

"Yes, I know. But I might go abroad, Harding."

"Oh, Miss Barbara!"

"Do you think that I am too old, or too young?"

Barbara tried to speak lightly, but she had read her defeat in the old servant's honest exclamation. She had herself spoken in a useless defiance of her conviction that she would never go abroad.

"I don't think that you are the kind of lady," replied Harding. "The master would not have liked it, or the mistress either."

"They are dead."

The vehemence with which she spoke startled Harding, who looked at her as if she had committed an indiscretion.

"One respects the wishes of the dead, Miss."

Barbara was silent. She suddenly thought of her father and Madame Falconet. Denying his daughter everything that would have made her existence more than merely endurable, he had indulged himself in a manner that he himself would have judged as sinful.

But Barbara was pitiful, even in this judgment. She did not believe that her father had gained any happiness from Madame Falconet, only remorse, nor any pleasure from Aimée, whom he could hardly have seen. Very likely this episode had been soon and sternly repented; the announcement in the will had been meant for atonement, perhaps. But Barbara had asked for the clause relating to the two Frenchwomen to be left out of any report of the will. As there were no legacies, no one had a right to demand to see a copy; Edward Lawne's secret was kept, whether he had wished this or not.

Barbara had been generous on his behalf, she had distributed pensions and legacies to all his dependents. The fortune left when all this was done was still too large, Barbara thought, although she did not yet know the full extent of her possessions.

"What do you think I shall do, Harding?" She challenged fate in the person of the placid, rather stupid woman in the servant's mourning, a large brooch of hair from the dead shining on her wide bosom.

"I suppose you will take another lady to live with you until you get married, Miss."

"I do not know of any possible suitors, Harding."

Harding looked uncertain, slightly uneasy.

"There are matrimonial agencies, Harding."

"Oh, Miss Barbara!" Vicarious shame flushed the stout woman's shapeless features. "How can you talk so!"

"I was joking," replied Barbara hastily.

"Where ever did you hear of such things?" wondered Harding.

Barbara knew that she was humiliated by the mere remark, her code had been deeply outraged. Everything was permissible in covert matchmaking, but an overt bargain in matrimony was an utter disgrace.

Barbara replied, "Oh, Miss Atwood heard something about it from a friend in Paris—they do have such arrangements there."

"Nasty foreigners," remarked Harding shortly, as if offended. "I'm sure I should never have thought that ladies—English ladies—would have ever thought of anything so shocking."

"I did not. I do not even know if there are any in England," Barbara smiled. She noted that the problem of where she was to find a husband had been evaded by Sarah Harding, who must be well aware that no possible suitor had for years come to Stone Hall.

But the confidential servant, belying her own stupidity, remarked, "There is that Mr. Shermandine, he's been here twice."

Barbara, taken by surprise, retorted sharply.

"That is really shocking, far more so than mentioning matrimonial agencies. How can you, Harding? You must never speak of gentlemen in that manner."

"Why, that's all right, Miss. I thought you might be looking round—though, of course, it would be a long time yet, with mourning. But you would want to be settled."

"A mere acquaintance," protested Barbara. "He may have come to see Miss Atwood, she is very attractive."

"But not the marrying sort, Miss, and I thought Mr. Shermandine looked at you."

Barbara turned to the window to hide her face; the sea and sky were one azure, shot with gold.

"When ever did you see us, Harding?"

"I was passing along the verandah, Miss, and gave just a glance."

"And a glance told you so much?"

"Mr. Shermandine was looking at you," repeated Harding, obstinately. "And I thought to myself—"

"You had no right to think so."

"Well, Miss, I suppose not," replied the servant meekly. "And I am sure I beg your pardon."

"You have no cause for that either, I am being ridiculous." Barbara turned quickly to the large hair trunk that Harding was laboriously sorting out, piling the clothes on the bed. "There, take those cambric petticoats with the lace. I shall never want them again."

"All those, Miss?" Harding exclaimed incredulously. Barbara was a generous mistress, but the petticoats were expensive and almost new.

"Yes, I cannot wear them with mourning."

Barbara went downstairs into the sparkling air. She had scarcely cast her glance around than she saw Francis Shermandine coming between the myrtle, the sunlight reddish on his bare head. He held a small book that he waved at her as if he had long been a friend. It was the happiest moment of her life. She moved toward him and greeted him without conscious volition. He asked her if she would care to visit Niton Church with him. It was such a short distance away that she had been there to the Sunday services, but she accepted at once.

"It is familiar to you, of course," said Francis Shermandine, "but if you are interested in architecture, I might show you some unusual features, and in the Wolverton ruins nearby."

She would have gone anywhere with him, but it was not an affectation for her to protest she liked the expedition for its own sake. Her knowledge was self-taught and random, her taste was untrained, but she was sensitive to beauty and strangeness, to the associations that gathered round ancient buildings, to the memories they evoked.

They entered the light carriage, with the clean linen curtains tied back, and drove along the Niton road while Francis Shermandine showed his companion the book he carried, a guide to the island, with some fine plates of Quarr Abbey, the Priory of Austin Canons, and Mountjoy's Tower, at Carisbrook Castle.

Barbara was animated into giving a confidence.

"I can make such drawings as those, Mr. Shermandine. I take care—they are better than the usual schoolgirl's attempts."

"Why, you never told me."

"I have only seen you three times," she spoke in wonder, as much as in explanation.

"It seems much oftener," he remarked. "Pray show me some of your work."

"I should be ashamed to do so."

The village lay in a hollow; on the heights grew fine trees, the cliffs were higher than Niton and hid the sea. Through the village ran a clear stream. The church was ancient and to Barbara seemed to have some profound and majestic meaning.

On the south side, where the carriage drew up, was a cross of roughhewn stone, and wide steps leading to another scooped-out block, a primitive font. A small child was seated on these steps, tying with a faded blue ribbon bunches of wild speckled and purple orchis. As Barbara and Francis approached she went shyly away, leaving some of her limp flowers on the warm stone.

Barbara picked them up. She could not endure to see flowers wither, especially today when she felt so happy. She was conscious of her need to be tender to everything. Her happiness increased when her companion said: "They will soon revive in water; we can get a vase at the inn."

Never before had she met this delicate treatment. She had grown to be ashamed of what she felt was her weakness, her morbid horror of suffering and distress in others. She tried to hide her foolishness by saying: "Oh, they are only wild flowers."

"But they are beautiful and you dislike to see them fade."

The breezes from the unseen ocean fanned her face, she had turned back her veil. She had wished that she need not have worn it just for today.

He showed her what interested him in the ancient church and she saw this through his eyes, and regarded it keenly, as of deep importance. He told her that this church and others in Hampshire had been exchanged by a desperate king for the plate of a famous college at Oxford, and this circumstance fascinated her; the gold and silver vessels had long since been melted down and the church remained, but little changed after more than two hundred years.

They wandered to the Wolverton ruins, and stood within the walls on a circle of fresh grass, daisies, red sorrel, and yellow dandelions.

They paused here, Francis Shermandine with his fingers between the pages of the guidebook, Barbara Lawne with the drooping orchis in her hand.

She had no power over herself, the moment dominated her, warm feeling surged over her entire being, she was conscious only of the wish to be loved.