Читать книгу First the Blade - Clemence Dane - Страница 10

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Do you remember Topaz? Do you remember that ball of pride and red fur with the inscrutable eyes and erect tail and no heart at all as far as I was concerned?

Do you remember her slow, insolent porte, her airs of caste? How she lapped milk, delicately, dubiously, to oblige you, not herself? How she would sit in the fireside circle o’ nights, her paws doubled under her, discreet, unobtrusive, yet so obviously a visitor, that she made Father, who is a family man, feel uncomfortable? How she would edge in graceful reproof from the uninvited, stroking hand? With what silent savagery she fought you if you took her on your knee?

No cat to whom I have belonged has ever treated me as Topaz did; at best—with resignation as having a nice taste in eiderdowns on a rainy night; at worst—ignoring me as subtly as she ignored the fluttered but inaccessible canary. Yet I did my best for her, always brushed her, never washed her, obeyed barefooted, in the chillest hours, her peremptory mew. Not that she was consciously ungrateful. I think she knew that I meant well. But she never permitted me for an instant to imagine that I understood her—I, who flatter myself that I appreciate poor pussy more than most!

And then the house next door was taken at last, by a ramshackle, elastic family with a studio, who hung out their washing in the front garden as well as the back. We did not call upon them. But Topaz did. Call? She adopted them!

She, who would not be handled, patted even, I have seen, her claws full of bark, hauled from a tree by her tail and carried limply, head downwards, under the arm of the youngest son; or rolling on her back in the gravel, ecstatically appreciative of Mrs. Next Door’s thimble under her ear. She sat about on their shoulders, their laps, wherever she could get: caught their mice, drank their skim milk, allowed them to wash her in one bath with the terrier pup. Why? Heaven knows! She liked them. They were her sort. Yet I am sure we were a much nicer family than the people next door.

She never quite forgot us: was even, as if in apology, a shade more friendly than before. For a long time, indeed, she paid a daily call of courtesy, sitting a dignified half-hour on what had been her chair, before retiring again to her spiritual home; but one always felt that she did it as a matter of duty. And when the Next Doors moved on, her visits ceased. We missed her, just a little, and made half-hearted inquiries, but there it ended. The Next Doors must have taken her with them. At any rate we never set eyes on Topaz again.

All this I tell you because I am sure that what I feel about Topaz is what Aunt Adela felt about Laura and the Clouds. Laura, you see, adopted the Clouds. From the day when Justin carried her home to his mother, to the end at least of this story, she was theirs, body and soul, clinging to them, shyly, unobtrusively, yet with the delicate tenacity of a white rose-bush adopting a south wall.

Aunt Adela did not, could not, object. Aunt Adela, who lived wholeheartedly for her neighbours and their more intimate affairs, Aunt Adela, who liked to be asked to tête-à-tête tea, or to meet her hostess’s dearest friends, had never overcome a certain aloofness that distinguished Mrs. Cloud and made her a desirable acquaintance. Aunt Adela’s snobbery was harmless enough. To do her justice, money meant nothing to her, poor as she was; but she had her weakness for what she called “the best people.” And Mrs. Cloud, with her gentle interest in your affairs, and her placid and implacable reserve about her own, Mrs. Cloud, with her son at college and her husband on the church wall, and a bishop burgeoning in the family tree, Mrs. Cloud belonged, Aunt Adela felt in her bones, to the very best people.

Aunt Adela, then, was flattered at Mrs. Cloud’s approval of Aunt Adela’s niece, put no difficulties in Laura’s way, and, after a time, grew tired of questioning her as to how she got on with Mrs. Cloud, how she employed the regularly lengthening hours she spent at the Priory. Yet, under her acquiescence, and without any special affection for Laura, she resented Laura’s stubborn preference for Mrs. Cloud in exactly the fashion that I resented the defection of Topaz. Why couldn’t Laura be contented at home? After all, they must be a nicer family than the Clouds—even than the Clouds!

Gran’papa, by the way, made no comment at all, shared neither Aunt Adela’s voluble approval—“and Mrs. Cloud has such an Influence”—nor her secret acerbity. Possibly he was uninterested—possibly he was not left out in the cold. Laura knew her way to Gran’papa’s room. And Gran’papa, between his care of his granddaughter’s grammar and his correction of her pronunciation and enunciation—he was never satisfied with either—may yet have had time to be thrilled by the news that Mrs. Cloud had sent Justin a hamper, that Laura had helped her to pack it and had dug up her own radish from her own garden to put in, because Mrs. Cloud had said that Justin simply loved—liked, Gran’papa—Justin simply liked radishes! and had Gran’papa read The Tiger of Mysore—Henty? It was Justin’s book, only one of the covers was gone, and Mrs. Cloud had said that Justin had said she might have it. She would lend it to Gran’papa if he liked. A perfectly ripping—a most extremely interesting book.

Now why should not Laura have imparted these and kindred matters to Aunt Adela—questioning, quiveringly interested Aunt Adela? When Papa was so unsympathetic with children.... The twins, for instance.... The twins had no link with him at all beyond the weekly threepennies.... Aunt Adela could not make it out. Or, for that matter, what dear Mrs. Cloud saw in Laura....

Little enough, I should think, at first, save Justin’s vouchsafed interest. Justin, who was so absorbed by things that he seldom had time for people, had not forgotten Laura, had actually inquired after the child, twice, in letters, had carried her off, dumb with delight, on his next Sunday at home, to spend the afternoon in his den. Justin had talked: Mrs. Cloud had heard the rumble of his deep voice all the afternoon. Mrs. Cloud had a smile and a thanksgiving for her good son, tender as a girl to acknowledged pain or need.

Yet, to me, it seems nevertheless certain that Laura had, from the first, the trick of keeping him amused. From the first, too, she must have had her shepherding way with him and his belongings; for Mrs. Cloud, announcing tea, hardly recognized Justin’s den—Justin’s housemaid-proof den. Laura would appear to have tidied it. At any rate, however they had passed their afternoon, they came down to dripping cake and muffins at last, hungry and very well-pleased with each other.

Justin told his mother that Laura was a ripping little kid.

What Laura told the Memory who still came to her in the night-time, who knows? Yet that that yearning shadow was eased, appeased, by what it heard, I do believe; because, as the months sped, its anxious visits lessened and grew rare, until, at last, it came no more to a Laura grown happy again.

Justin, of course, was seldom at home, but you can see, with his open and unusual approval working upon Mrs. Cloud’s already aroused motherliness, how swift and steady would be her notice of Laura. It was in her nature to be kind, pitiful, easy. Her cheerful heart was like her cheerful house, with window-wide rooms, white and golden and domestic, filled with sunshine and flowers, with firelight and singing birds and kittens that never grew up. She had room in both for a child’s voice and a child’s ways, the more, perhaps, since the reserve her son shared would not, though she were lonely with Justin away, let her say easily to a stranger, “Come in—be at home!” But a child she could welcome.

Laura, on her side, had no hesitations whatever. Driven by the needs of her nature, shy Laura, timid, tentative Laura, could, like any starved sparrow, be insistent upon Mrs. Cloud’s threshold, cheeping hopefully till she was accorded entry-right, her crumbs, and a corner in the warm. Once in, once accepted, she was quiet. Too quiet ... thought Mrs. Cloud, yet a good little soul.... She was dazed, I dare say, in those first months, by her better fortune: was still eyeing life with meek vigilance, as a dog eyes you when you have stumbled on its paw. Also, though she clung to Justin’s mother, she had no special spontaneous affection for Mrs. Cloud, as Mrs. Cloud who was ready enough to pet her, soon realized. Grateful she was, but elusive too, cold, evading kisses, unresponsive when you took her on your knee, limply angular against a motherly breast. It was not Mrs. Cloud who had picked her up out of a haystack—out of a hell....

But, received discreetly as one representing a federate state, allowed to hunch by the hour (but on an individual footstool) at Mrs. Cloud’s feet, hugging her own knees, elaborating her own views of life and enquiring with luring, alluring interest into those of her hostess, Laura could be singularly companionable in an elderly and impersonal fashion that made Justin laugh and chaff them both when he caught them at their gossiping, but which had the undoubted effect of making Mrs. Cloud confidential.

‘Confidential’ is a strange word to link with Mrs. Cloud, who did not, originally because she would not (but ‘would’ had long ago hardened into ‘could’) expand or respond to any one save Justin: and how often, how intimately even to him, had she spoken of what lay closest to her heart? closer, more desperately dear than Justin, even than Justin; for women will always wonder how far the God-appointed seed consoles for Abel dead and Cain a fugitive. What should Justin know, beyond their names, of the two little girls who died, and of the first-born, John, the legendary brother, so like and so unlike himself, John Cloud the ne’er-do-weel, swallowed up years since by the continent that gives new lamps for old?

But watch Mrs. Cloud’s face (or, if you love her a little, do not watch) when Brackenhurst stirs its tea, and doubles up its thin bread-and-butter, and talks, with its air of bewildered but unshakable patronage, of America.

The grocer, bankrupt since Brackenhurst’s invasion by the smart, blue-painted Co-operative Stores (margarine given in with every pound of butter) poor Pringleson the grocer is doing very well out there. Has built a house and sent home for Mrs. Pringleson.

“Ah, well—one knows how they want men!” says Brackenhurst sagely. “Actually pay emigrants to come. Or is that New Zealand? And that girl from the ‘Plough’!” Brackenhurst coughs. “Yes, doing splendidly! Ah, well, they want servants so out there, you see! An absolute famine! Put up with anything—anything! Extraordinary! No caps! Bicycles provided! Evenings out! And wages! Incredible!”

Brackenhurst, with an eye on its own dragooned and aproned treasure, hesitates between envy of a land that can afford such wages and concede such privileges, and a preference for its own England of modest incomes and attendant uniforms. And volunteers news of a nephew’s friend who was in the rush of ’ninety-six, an eulogy of Ella Wheeler Wilcox and a recipe for American rarebit, and so to Mrs. Beeton and home waters again.

But we watch the two bright spots of colour fade again in Mrs. Cloud’s cheeks, and her hand relax that held so tightly the arm of the chair, while with the other she lifts her tea-cup and drinks, a little thirstily, and are glad that Brackenhurst is less observant than you or I should be, of its dear Mrs. Cloud.

And yet, incredible as it may seem, it was not long before Laura knew all about John, and Lettice, and little Mary-Rosalind. The big fat family albums, with their stamped, stuffed leathern covers and biblical clasps, were not to be kept from Laura, reverent yet intrigued: and once fairly open on Mrs. Cloud’s lap at a little girl in pantalettes and an urchin that Laura at first glance had mistaken for Justin, there would be stories.

Laura would ground-bait artfully.

“Was Justin ever naughty when he was little, Mrs. Cloud?”

Mrs. Cloud would affect forgetfulness.

“Oh, not more than other children, I suppose. Aren’t your little brothers ever naughty?”

Laura would consider.

“Oh, yes. Silly naughty. But not exciting. Not like Justin when he threw the porridge at Miss Beamish.” Her eyes gleamed admiration. “And that day, you know, at the photographer’s—when he was so cross. The picture’s here.”

“That was John,” said Mrs. Cloud quickly.

“Oh??” Laura could put a good deal into her exclamations. “Oh???”

The knitting needles would slacken for long minutes, till at last, with a click and a gleam, caught from the fire or from Mrs. Cloud’s eyes, hands and voice would pick up the thread.

“I’m afraid he was a bad boy, too. I remember——”

Then Laura would give a sigh of achievement and settle down to listen.

But besides the stories, the interminable stories that a child loves, of other little boys and girls, there was endless amusement in the grown-ups, the drooping ladies and Mr. Mantalini gentlemen, the family groups with pig-tailed children, the crinolines and the bustles, the whiskers and the ringlets, and the pork-pie hats of all the aunts and uncles and cousins and grandfathers and great-grandmothers of Justin. It was very interesting: and she learned to refer to them with an air of intimate recollection that staggered Justin one day, when, sprawling by the fire with a college friend and The Scarlet Pimpernel, he told a story, quite a good story, of an émigré who had married a great-aunt or other of his own.

A voice from the window-seat at once reproached him.

“Not your great-aunt, Justin, your mother’s great-aunt, and it was her great-aunt Jane Eleanor, not her great-aunt Emily.”

Justin jumped.

Laura—as usual she was lying flat, her chin in her fists, her heels in the air—turned a page. She was no longer concerned. She had done her duty, and the Arabian Nights was more than absorbing.

“Oh, it was, was it?” said Justin. And then, recovering, “Shut up, Laura. It’s not your Aunt Emily!”

She lifted eyes clouded with her story.

“Eleanor—not Emily,” she corrected patiently. “Great-aunt Emily married Great-uncle Michael, and it’s their little boy you were so like when you were little. All except the nose.”

The friend chuckled.

“Where did you get all this from?” demanded Justin, overborne by the evidence.

“I don’t know—your mother told me,” said Laura vaguely. Then, without a change of tone—“Justin, would you have married Haiatalnefous, as well as the Princess of China if you’d been Camaralzaman?”

“Certainly not,” said Justin virtuously, and the friend went off into a sudden fit of laughter.

“Because I don’t think it was fair,” said Laura with intense conviction.