Читать книгу The Spectral Bride - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 6

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Mrs. Fenton made, with due deliberation, her visit to Kitty Herle. The milliner was a prim and smart little woman who ran a brisk business with the wives and daughters of the upper tradespeople, the wives and daughters of those men who had retired from nondescript professions, who might by a stretch of courtesy be called on the fringe of the gentry.

She received Mrs. Fenton very pleasantly. That lady was not among her customers and not, as she would have said herself, 'her style,' since her bonnets were of the plainest and always too well worn to have retained any elegance even if they had originally possessed any. But there seemed promise both of future business and future subject for gossip in Miss Adelaide.

"Miss Herle, you made a bonnet for my daughter," stated Mrs. Fenton, as she glanced with a slowly awakening curiosity round the show-room. On polished stands were displayed what the milliner termed 'Parisian models'; pinned to the ribbons was the print or drawing from which they had been copied from some modish French magazine.

"Yes, I hope it suits her, I hope you like it. I would have wished to see the pelisse that it was designed to go with," the little woman spoke slyly, with her head on one side.

"My daughter hasn't got a pelisse or a mantle fit to be worn with that bonnet. It's just a luxury, an extravagance, I suppose you'd call it, a present. I daresay you think my daughter shouldn't be taking presents from men."

The milliner's eyes glittered.

"That wouldn't be my affair," she replied primly. "I understood Miss Adelaide to say that the bonnet was a gift from the gentleman to whom she was engaged to be married, that it was all to be a secret until she came of age."

"That's so," agreed Mrs. Fenton, "but I thought I'd let you know that I was aware how matters stood and that I approved. My husband's an invalid, as everyone in Mullenbridge well knows, and I have to take these duties upon my own hands."

The little milliner turned up her lip and flicked with expert fingers at one of the muslin roses off a large hat of white stiff straw that hung near.

"The price of the bonnet," she remarked, "is five guineas. I can't give the gentleman very long credit, you know. Of course, it's a trifle for a man in his position, but when you next see him you might tell him—well, just that—that I can't give very long credit."

Something seemed wrong here to Mrs. Fenton, there was a touch of vulgarity, surely, about this commercial transaction... it seemed to jar on this mysterious romance.

"Why don't you tell him yourself?" she asked bluntly.

"Oh, I shouldn't care to write like that," retorted the other woman. "I've never seen him, you know. He didn't come here, it was just Miss Adedaile, alone. She said he'd pay, and if I'd oblige her by letting her take the bonnet away at once I should have all her custom after she was married. I'm only in a small way, though I'm sure I've got talent above the ladies of Mullenbridge, if you will forgive me, Mrs. Fenton. If you know about the pink bonnet, I suppose it's all right."

"It's quite all right."

"You've seen him then?"

"Why, yes, I've seen him, and Carrie's seen him."

"And everything's arranged, quite properly? Excuse my curiosity and don't think I'm prying, but of course I'm very excited and pleased at the young lady's good fortune."

"She didn't tell you his name, I hope. That was to be a secret."

"No, she didn't tell me his name," admitted the milliner. "But I suppose one's allowed to guess."

The baffled mother rose, her natural shrewdness that had been rusted by long inactivity was not equal to this combat. Was the little milliner lying, like she was lying herself? Had Adelaide's lover really once stood in this smart little parlour, admired the models and chosen the stiff pink satin bonnet for his beloved's head? It was not very likely, too many people would have known, gossip would have been started... No, the girl had come alone and contrived to get the piece of finery by saying that this mysterious, unseen, unnamed lover would pay for it; Adelaide certainly had a way with her. Yet it was a stupid piece of recklessness, for it was impossible for her to wear the bonnet in Mullenbridge, even if she had suitable clothes it would attract far too much attention; but then Adelaide seemed determined to attract attention...

"Well," said Mrs. Fenton, with a clumsy slyness, "I just thought I'd come and tell you it was all right. And as for your money—well, I'll tell him next time I see him. Everything will be open quite soon. One has to wait a little, prudence and discretion, you know."

"His parents, I suppose?" the little milliner had her head on one side again and was tapping her front teeth with her rounded shining nails. Mrs. Fenton remembered what her daughter had said... her instructions.

"No. His grandfather, his guardian, lawyers, you understand—"

"Oh, ho!" Kitty Herle's eyes sparkled and the blood, to Mrs. Fenton's astonishment, burnt in her cheeks. "Then my fortune is made, and I shall have a wonderful client, after all!"

Mrs. Fenton hardly knew what the milliner meant, but acquiesced with a smile and a half-curtsy and returned heavily with a musing air to her home.

This stood in one of the cheaper but pleasanter suburbs of the town, on the verge of the country, in a small garden, similar houses being on either side, beyond the lane ran into fields. At the back was a churchyard on a slope that was crowned by the church of St. Jude. It was a peaceful scene Mrs. Fenton saw as she came home, the weather was still bleak and dull, but there was some azure showing behind the wisps of yellow-grey pearl-coloured vapour in the sky and late blossoms were showing at last on the laburnum, hawthorn, and apple trees in the gardens. Susan was pegging out the clothes in the small paddock at the back of the house. Two elderly, quiet, and amiable women who lived in one of the neighbouring houses, Miss Priscilla Groom and Miss Dorothy Groom, were peering among their gooseberry bushes for the first trace of the hard green fruit.

Mrs. Fenton nodded to them and went along her own neat brick path; she glanced instinctively up at the window of her bedroom; like everyone who has the care of an invalid, this burden was constantly before her mind. He might, one day when she came home, be dead. Well, it was not so to-day, or the blinds would have been down. How strange it would be if, after all these years, she should one day find him a corpse. The thought of inescapable death for herself and for all she knew came on her with a sharp stab of unexpectedness.

Caroline came down the garden to meet her; the girl looked fresh and pretty in her sprigged cotton gown. She smiled at the two elderly women who were so carefully and anxiously lifting the leaves of the thorny bushes.

"There won't be so much fruit this year, the frosts are late," remarked Carrie as she took her mother's arm and walked with her into the parlour with an air of cool importance.

"Why, what is it, Carrie? What's happened?"

"Oh, he came. I must tell you. He was with Adelaide in the parlour—for twenty minutes, I should think. He said he was going to buy her a pianoforte and come round and sing and play with her. Won't that be pleasant?"

"Carrie, you're lying!" Mrs. Fenton pushed the girl away from her, into the parlour, went in and sat down in her rocking-chair. "You're lying, Carrie! There's been no man here. It's—well, I don't believe it."

"Oh, don't you! And why shouldn't you, pray? Well, what did Miss Herle tell you, Mother?"

"It's all right, everything's all right, Carrie. Everything that Adelaide said is true."

"Well, then, why don't you believe that what I say is true, and that he came here now?"

"Who is he then?" asked Mrs. Fenton doggedly.

Carrie simpered and hunched her plump shoulders.

"Adelaide called him Basil. He was a young, handsome, and very smart gentleman, and oh, so agreeable to me. He was very sorry that you were absent. He's calling again to be presented to you."

"I should have met him," said Mrs. Fenton. "I should have met him in the lane."

"No, you wouldn't," said Carrie, "he came over the path through the churchyard."

"Miss Priscilla and Miss Dorothy would have seen him."

"No, they wouldn't. They've been in the house and only came out just a moment ago, after he'd gone."

"Then there's Mr. and Mrs. Fry, next door—the other side."

"Oh, they may have seen him, or may not, I don't know. You can go up and down the lane if you like, Mother, and ask everybody, even to the urchins in the road, if they've seen a handsome young man, coming here. But that would seem rather disgraceful, don't you think?"

"It seems more disgraceful that young men should come here and I know nothing of it—to be made a fool of like this!"

"But you said it was all right to the milliner, that Adelaide had told the truth there. Why shouldn't I be telling the truth now?"

Mrs. Fenton was silent, she had not thought out her plans. "Where's Adelaide?" she asked stubbornly. "I won't have your father bothered with this."

"Oh, Adelaide's told him."

"Told your father?"

"Yes. She wants him to consent to their betrothal. I think she took him up a paper to sign, or a letter to show."

"I won't have your father disturbed."

"It doesn't disturb him. Father said he likes him, said he was glad his little girl was going to get married, and he hoped I'll be the next."

Mrs. Fenton rose; as she was leaving the room she asked sharply: "Why are you wearing the paste that your Aunt Martha gave, Adelaide?"

"Oh, it's a present for my birthday."

"But your birthday's two months off."

"I know. But she promised it me, and I begged that I might have it now and wear it."

"Well, you're not to wear it. It looks foolish on a sprigged cotton. Where did it come from? I didn't see it when you were running out to meet me just now."

"I hadn't got it on, I didn't want those silly old women to say anything about it. I had it inside my frock. I pulled it out just now to look at it. Why shouldn't I? Adelaide had the pink stones in her dress, this necklet is different. It came from my sister, and she had it from her aunt, and I suppose it's all quite genteel and proper, isn't it, Mamma?"

"I don't know what's right and proper," muttered Mrs. Fenton, "but I'll find out."

She went heavily upstairs, opened the door of her chamber and saw what she had expected—Adelaide sitting beside the sick man's bed. Mrs. Fenton's slow but practised glance went round the room—everything in order, neat and clean. She and Susan saw to that, not only out of love of good housewifery, which was inherent in her nature and her upbringing, but because routine, cleanliness, and discipline made some objects in her life that otherwise was, or had been until lately, objectless.

Adelaide wore her white gown with green ribbons lacing on the bodice, which became her, Mrs. Fenton knew, very well. She had recently bought another green ribbon that did not quite match the other and had tied it in her hair; she had a letter in her hands and the pale, uncertain sunlight fell through the window on to her figure, that was stolidly graceful, as if she was something massive and permanent.

The sick man was propped on his pillows, and on his face, distorted by palsy, was an expression of pain now relieved by a gleam of interest in the bright young figure that sat at his side.

The curtains that Mrs. Fenton and Susan had made of coarse white cotton lined with a yellow of a tea-rose colour were drawn away from the end of the bed, and pulled back on the tester. The patchwork quilt, elegantly and skilfully worked by Susan and Mrs. Fenton, was tautly and neatly in place. A grey shawl of a honeycomb pattern was over the invalid's shoulders.

A faint sparkle of recognition came into his dull and sunken eyes as his wife came round the bed.

"What are you reading to your father, Adelaide?" she asked, softly. "What are you disturbing him with?"

"It's a letter from Basil. Basil's been here, Carrie saw him."

"Carrie said she saw him," corrected Mrs. Fenton, in such a low tone that even Adelaide hardly heard her. "You know I'm not going to have any trouble in your father's room, I'll talk to you downstairs."

"Father likes to hear of it," protested the girl in smooth, suave tones. "It pleases Father to know that one of his daughters is going to be settled, and well settled, too. Doesn't it, Father?"

She folded the letter up and placed it in her bosom. Where she's got those pink stones, I suppose, thought her mother. Mr. Fenton stretched out his hand with a convulsive and uncertain movement.

"Has he had his supper?" asked his wife.

"Oh, yes, Susan came up and did everything." The girl spoke with a vague disinterest that came over her like a cloud every time that anything but her own immediate concerns were referred to or brought before her absorption.

"Did you bring your Basil up to see him?" asked the mother.

"Yes." Adelaide looked on the ground. "Basil came and stood at the door and Father smiled at him. They understood one another very well. But I didn't want to fatigue Father by a conversation, so Basil bowed and went away again. Carrie was there, too, she will tell you so."

"Come downstairs, I want to speak to you."

Mrs. Fenton pulled the bell-rope of tightly-woven bands of coloured wool, then mechanically shook the sick man's down cushions into shape and drew his shawl closer on his withered breast, and touching her daughter on the arm drew her away to the door.

Susan was there already, she had come out of her room at the sound of the tinkle of the bell. She moved quietly to her accustomed place beside the bed of the man she had helped to nurse for twenty years. She knew what to do and how to do it, she and mistress understood each other very well, though they never exchanged compliments.

"What did the milliner tell you?" asked Adelaide, on the stairway.

Before Mrs. Fenton could answer Carrie had replied, standing at the door of the parlour.

"Oh, Mother said that Miss Herle said everything was all right. She won't believe me when I told her that Basil was here, and declared that you ought to have a pianoforte and that he would come and play and sing on it. Now why won't you believe that, Mother?"

"But of course she will," said Adelaide. "She'll believe anything you tell her, won't you, Mother? You know that Carrie's a truthful girl. You promised that you wouldn't doubt her, didn't you, Mother?"

"Yes," agreed Lucy Fenton sullenly. "I suppose so—as you say—"

She had already decided, without much hope of success, to try to find out something from her husband and from Susan.

But the first was in one of his most lifeless moods; he stared at the yellow lining of the home-made curtains, without any response to the cautious questions that she presently put to him, when she fed him his sweet gruel.

With the timid, elderly maidservant she dared to be more direct.

"Did you see the gentleman who came here this afternoon, Susan?"

"I was upstairs, ma'am, doing the mending, the girls make a deal of darning—"

"The young ladies," corrected Mrs. Fenton, though she knew that the 'ma'am^' was a concession from poor humble Susan. "So you saw no one?"

"No, ma'am—Miss Adelaide sent me upstairs and said she'd set the tea."