Читать книгу First the Blade - Clemence Dane - Страница 6

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If you had asked Laura what heaven was like, she would have answered, almost involuntarily—“‘A bald head,’” and Wilfred and James would have tumbled over each other in their anxiety to join in the chorus—“‘Because it is a bright and shining place where there is no parting,’” and to watch the effect upon you of that dazzling joke.

But after the twins came to live at Brackenhurst, Laura laid a taboo upon it. One might joke with Mother, but to joke about her, about anything connected with her, was sacrilege. Heaven, the twins were once and for all to understand, was not in the least like a bald head. It was in the Bible, a very beautiful place, a sort of hospital, and Mother was staying there just now to get well, and if Wilfred or James ever mentioned that riddle again, Laura would tell Jesus about it when she said her prayers, and Jesus would tell Mother, and Mother would not bring them one little bit of chocolate when she came back. (You see, she was learning already how to manage her men-folk.) The twins were impressed and obedient; yet the phrase, more illuminating than all Aunt Adela’s theology, stuck in their minds, and as no child attempts to imagine an abstraction, Laura’s bright and shining heaven lived on in hers as a pile of summer clouds lined with pink and silver, on which Mother lay as on a bed, with her beautiful long plaits disordered and her arm flung out weakly.

In haymaking time, when Laura was tired of cocking hay for the twins to pull down again, and the lemonade and bread-and-dripping had vanished, and the jolly sun, like Bacchus on a barrel, sat astride the midday sky, the indefatigable twins would trot away on their private business that was not unconnected with forbidden strawberry beds, and Laura, lying on her back in the uncut hay, would stare up through the sorrel and the toddling grass, and the tall daisies, and watch the slow clouds coming up like ships over the edge of the world, and screw up her eyes till there were little white crowsfeet in the tan, to peer the better at each dazzling brightness that might be heaven itself for all she knew. Sometimes the cloud line was broken by a wisp of vapour, and then Laura tried to be sure that it was her mother’s thin hand waving to her from over the edge of heaven. But she was never quite sure.

Generally the clouds—it was a summer of northerly winds—came sailing up over a slope whose crest of beeches, a mile away, flanked Green Gates and the road; so that when she discovered The Pilgrim’s Progress, and a drifting cloud-heaven had become a stationary Cœlestial City, it was behind Beech Hill that it lay, and towards Beech Hill that, suddenly grown acquiescent in the matter of walks and picnics, she would urge the nurse and the perambulator: and it was on the sky-line beyond Beech Hill that she and Christian did at last, one autumn day, see it shining. For though she poured over the unfamiliar print till her eyes ached, it was autumn before she had mastered the book and her instructions, and could prepare for her own private expedition.

It was Christian’s fault: he simply wouldn’t be hurried. Stumbling along beside him over the difficult words, she was out of patience twenty times a day with his credulous, open-mouthed simplicity. He was no better than Wilfred and James who always believed every word that the coachman told them, or the gardener’s boy, or the chattering, black-eyed Frenchmen who came to the yard on Saturdays to sell onions. She had no patience with them or with conversational Christian, wasting his time and losing his way. Did he think that she, Laura, would have been taken in like that, over and over again, by Vain Confidence and Flatterer and Mr. Worldly Wiseman? Why, the very names were enough to put even the twins on their guard, and Christian was grown-up! Byways Meadow—there she acknowledged that she too might have strayed: she hankered after little cross-country paths herself, though Nurse and Aunt Adela always insisted on the dull, dusty, put-on-your-gloves high-road; but she would never have pounded off to Sinai, or stood by the hour arguing and disputing and contradicting about unintelligible things like Carnal Cogitations and The Carcase of Religion, long before she had got to heaven and found Mother.

But though Christian would go his own gait, and skipping was unsafe because the adventure were tucked away among the arguments like strawberries in a bed of leaves, he did at last bring her past the Enchanted Ground (disappointingly unproductive of fairies) to the Land of Beulah and a clear view of the Cœlestial City itself.

Absorbed Laura, curled-up by Gran’papa’s fire on that clear October morning, reading of the Reflexion of the sun on the City (for the City was of pure gold) and dutifully looking up Rev. xxi. 28, had just stumbled upon a more marvellous heaven than even Bunyan drew, when the nursemaid, as it always happened, pounced upon her and brushed her and buttoned her and gloved her and stuck a hat upon her and hurried her off for a walk, too dazed to protest, with her head full of rivers of life and fruit trees and gates that were one pearl (like Mother’s ring) and strange, intoxicating, unpronounceable names—the third, chalcedony, and the seventh, chrysolite, and the eighth, beryl. She was far too absorbed to notice the way they went, and Wilfred and James were pelting each other with fallen leaves, and Nurse was leaning panting against the perambulator, before she realized that they had climbed the long Beech Hill Road that Nurse disliked because it was steep and lonely, but which, as the highest point of the highest village in a hilly county, did certainly satisfy Aunt Adela’s belief in fresh air.

She stripped off her gloves, dreamily accepting her goodluck, and leaving the nurse to spread rugs beneath the little wooden seat, and unwrap the biscuits and the bottle of milk, she wandered off aimlessly through the sun-splashed grove, her thoughts still caught like flies in a web of make-believe, yet aware and enjoying with all her sensitive little soul the gallantry of the autumn morning.

It was perfect day. Its colours shone through the clear air like pebbles freshened in water, and away upon the sky-line the threadlike roads and midget trees were as cleanly defined as the great trunks of the beeches themselves, that stood, brown and naked and stately, like a troop of tall savages, against the brilliant sky. Overhead the jolly wind that lived on the hill-top and never went to sleep, was hard at work as usual, scattering the clouds in every direction, like a bad dog frightening sheep, tugging and tearing at the beech boughs, and sending down the last of the leaves in golden gusts into the deep pits at the roots of the trees, that were half filled already by generations of leaves, and were as safe and soft to jump into as a feather-bed. Laura, forced into a trot and then a run, was caught up at last in a sudden scamper of twigs and dust and stray leaves, and whirled along till she felt as if she were flying, and clutched at a trail of bramble to steady herself and get her breath; but the peremptory wind would have no lagging, and, catching at her little round hat, lifted it off her head and trundled it along in front of her like a schoolboy dribbling a football, till they were clear of the trees, when it turned tail in its sudden whimsical way, leaving the hat upon the ground and Laura panting beside it.

For some slow, pleasant minutes she lay still, listening to the footsteps of the wind and her own heart-beats, with her cheek pressed close to the thymy earth, still besprinkled, late as it was, with milk-wort and rest-harrow and yellow sparks of tormentil, that glimmered like flung match-ends in fuel that was a clump of spent brown heather. The bright, thin sunshine settled lightly upon her like a gossamer scarf or a baby’s breath upon your cheek before it kisses you. Through shut eyes she enjoyed the spacious peace of the hill-top, and the delicate warmth seemed a physical expression of the sensation of well-being that was stealing over her, a sensation that, in the old days, had been but another word for her mother’s presence. The wind, raging again in the beech-grove, was a turbulent giant guarding the entrance to enchanted lands: its far-away fury heightened the impression of expectant silence. Through her pleasant drowsiness she had an odd feeling that something, something important, was about to happen.

Lazily she sat up and looked about her.

She had never before strayed further than their shadows’ length from the beeches: the low-banked trench, where the twins played ‘King of the Castle’ and the sheep huddled against the rain, had fenced off adventure. But today she and the wind had cleared it in a flying leap and had run out to the very edge of the wide level table-land that had bounded her view, and before her lay unknown valleys and ridges, valleys and ridges, rolling away to the sky-line like waves of the sea.

And on the sky-line itself, trembling between earth and heaven as if it were a great diamond swinging on a silver chain, hung a glancing, shimmering translucency in the shape of a house—a castle—a king’s pavilion—with a central arch that glistered like a high priest’s breast-plate, and twin towers reflecting the sun in glints and rays and flashes of white and golden light.

For a long minute Laura sat motionless, staring—staring. Then her heart began to beat so wildly that she felt the thud of it as a sharp pain, and her cold little fingers dug and clutched at the soft turf. She could hardly breathe: she was choking, drowning in the flood of joy that swirled over her like waters set free. She sat, white and sick with ecstasy, her eyes devouring the miracle, while in her ears remembered phrases pealed like wedding bells.

The Reflexion of the Sun upon the City....

... and the city was of pure gold, like unto pure glass....

... a bright and shining place, where there is no parting....

Her light was like unto a stone most precious, as it were a jasper stone, clear as crystal....

The uncounted minutes tiptoed past.

She spoke at last, in a little whispering voice—

“I’ve found it,” said Laura. “It’s here. It was here all the time. And Mother——”

She counted the easy ridges that seemed so clear and near, traced, with a finger that quivered, the merry white road playing bo-peep in and out of the woods.

“They’re the Delectable Mountains,” said Laura. “Of course, the Delectable Mountains and the Cœlestial City. And I can get there by tea-time. If I run—if I don’t stop once—oh, Mother, I can get to you by tea-time.”