Читать книгу First the Blade - Clemence Dane - Страница 9

Table of Contents

Now the same gust of rain that was disputing with Laura every inch of her downward path, buffeting her face, twisting invisible hands in her hair, and sopping her shoes till she slipped and slithered down the clay-lined runnels of the road, had already more glorious insults to its credit; for it had bespattered unconcernedly, as it soughed past him, the comfortable person as well as the immaculate bicycle of Mr. H. J. Cloud. Henry Justin, no less, who, on this particular October Saturday at half-past four of what should have been a fine afternoon, was a week short of his sixteenth birthday; discreetly placed alike in his form and his house, near enough to the heights to satisfy Mrs. Cloud and his own dignity, yet not near enough to cause him any responsible discomfort; pleased as usual with himself, and more or less tolerant of his world; cycling home from school, to spend the Sunday with his mother.

But the hoyden rain, abetted by her partner the wind, had driven dripping fingers between the collar of Henry Justin and the tanned neck of Henry Justin, with no more emotion than if it had been the neck and collar of the shivering insignificance in the reefer coat a mile or so away up the road: had trailed damply over him and across him, dulling his nickel work and tipping his hat over his eyes, and shrilling on ahead again without even paying him the compliment of waiting for his opinion of her. It was brief. He jumped off his bicycle and, with a thrust-out underlip and a glance at the threatening sky, gave the exclamation which stood with him for acquiescence, dissent, interest, indecision, or (as in this instance) annoyance, the economical exclamation that Laura, in a goaded moment, will refer to as a grunt. But she will withdraw the expression unreservedly as soon as her better self once more supervenes. Which is typical of Laura, of the rebel temper and the Quaker conscience.

But that is to come.

We should be talking of Justin, a hundred yards ahead of us, opening a gate into a field of stubble, disposing himself comfortably beneath a convenient haystack till the rain should be over. To do him justice, Justin would have walked through it contentedly enough, rather enjoying the sluicing downpour, certainly without a thought of his clothes, which were as he liked them, old and shapeless and comfortable; but he would not ride. He was as near an old maid about his possessions as a healthy boy can be, and the idea of exposing his fine new bicycle simply did not occur to him. He had lifted it like a baby across the stones and stubble, and had the absorbed face that his mother loved as he polished its bespattered handlebars with his handkerchief, picked a straw from its chain, and, propping it in the lee of the wind, covered it with his coat, as a premature prince might cover a sleeping beauty with still a week of her hundred years to run. Thereon, climbing to the low shelf above it, he raked together a pillow of hay, settled himself against it with another grunt—contentment this time, for the hay was soft and scented and the corner screened alike from wind and rain—and drew a small book and a large apple from his pocket. Justin never neglected either of his inner men. The apple was a pippin, and the book’s author a discovery of Justin’s. He recommended him to every one. I think his name was Carlyle.

He had been reading for half an hour, more and more slowly, for the haystack-drowse that is not the least of the spells of the Witch of Kent was creeping over him, when his ear was caught by a rustle that might have been a mouse in the wall of the stack, or a sparrow stealing straw, or the leaves of his own book—it had slipped from his fingers—fluttered by the air. He opened his eyes, idly surprised to find that they had been closed, but, seeing nothing but rain-laced sky and sodden field, made no objection to their shutting out that blank prospect again, when the rustle recommenced, punctuated with jumping sounds as of a small dog scrambling on to a forbidden sofa, and finally by a voice, as small and soft and breathless a voice as he had ever heard.

“If you please,” said the voice, “if, if you please—could you tell me the way to the Crystal Palace?”

Justin sat up and stared. Facing him, on the edge of the shelf of hay, hooked to it insecurely by fingers and little digging chin, hung a small peaked countenance, wreathed in drenched elf-locks, with eyes like black diamonds set in rain-washed, wind-whipped cheeks.

Justin was too well-fed to be imaginative. And the creature after all had spoken, had asked him something in good enough English: on its bewildering head it wore the most ordinary child’s sailor cap with a gilt lettering on the ribbon—H.M.S. Indomitable; yet, for a ridiculous instant, its fugitive, bodiless air beguiled him, and he could have believed himself agape before a changeling, a come-by-chance of wind and rain, a fairy nothing, gone with the sky’s first dispelling streak of blue.

“If you please,” the creature began again anxiously, and stopped. There was a sound of yielding hay, and before Justin could stretch out a hand it had disappeared with some suddenness. There was a scuffle and a bump, and Justin thought he heard a whimper. He rolled lazily to the edge of the shelf and looked over. The child—he could see now that it was a little girl—was standing below him in the crushed stubble, brushing mournfully with a handful of the treacherous hay at the mud that plastered its wisp of skirt. It had the gallantest air of assuring itself that nothing on earth should induce it to cry; though its eyes, as it lifted them to Justin again, had that shimmering brilliance that only unshed tears can give. But it returned to the charge.

“If you please——” Then, with a sudden alluring solicitude, “It’s only me. I’m not a tramp. Oh, I hope I didn’t frighten you?”

“Well—it was a bit of a shock.” Justin looked amused. “I may get over it.”

“I’m so sorry. It’s fearful meeting tramps, isn’t it?” She had all the Kent child’s horror of its bogey in her voice. “That’s why I was frightened, too. I thought you were one, at first——”

Justin murmured his gratification.

She amended anxiously.

“Oh, only from far off. But even if you were, I had to ask the way. And when I saw the bicycle I knew you couldn’t be. It’s a lovely bicycle.” She regarded it with wistful admiration and, insensibly, Justin thawed, like any other male child between eight and eighty, to the feminine intelligence that appreciated his hobby.

“It’s not bad,” he admitted, stretching out a long arm to twitch modestly at the bicycle’s covering, much as a woman straightens the hat that a man’s glance has told her is becoming. “Humber, you know.”

She nodded eagerly.

“They’re the best, aren’t they? Mother’s is a Swift. She’s going to have a Humber, though, when she comes back. She’s going to teach me to ride, then. She promised. I began, you know, before she went away. I could jump off splendidly as long as there was grass to fall on, but I couldn’t jump on. But Aunt Adela won’t let me practise at all now. I wonder——” her face lit up, “Oh—do you suppose there are bicycles at the Crystal Palace?”

He looked down at her amusedly.

“Why, of course. There’s a track. Races. Awful sport. You ought to get your mother to take you one day, if you’re so keen.”

“Oh, she will,” Laura assured him happily. “She always does what I want. I’ll get her to, directly after tea. Unless——” she glanced up at the heavy sky. “Oh, I oughtn’t to be talking. I must get on. I shall be so dreadfully late. If you’ll just tell me which road to take——” She paused. “I suppose—is it specially your haystack?” she hinted delicately.

“Why?”

“Because, if you didn’t mind—if you’d help me up—it’s so high——”

Justin leant over good-naturedly and held out his hands to her. She caught at them and was swung up with a crow of delight.

“You’re stronger than Mother!”

He threw her gently from him on to the hay.

“Here, don’t splash me all over. You’re as wet as the Thames.” For her dripping hair had whipped across his face.

“Horrid, sergy wet!” She sniffed at herself in delicate disgust.

“Well, and now you’re up, what do you want to do?”

“There’s a cross-roads further on. I saw it from Beech Hill.” She tiptoed. “Yes, there! I couldn’t see from the road. D’you see? Through that tree—level with the nest. Which of them ought I to take?”

“Where to?”

“Why—I told you—the Cœlestial City.”

“The Cœlestial—that’s in the Pilgrim’s Progress! Is it a game?”

“A game!” She was disappointed at such futility in the big, pleasant-faced boy she was beginning to like. “As if——” Then she broke off, enlightened. “Oh, I see—you call it the Crystal Palace, too. So does Nurse. Shall I get there by tea-time, do you think?”

“To the Crystal Palace? You! My good kid! Some one’s been pulling your leg. It’s miles to the Crystal Palace.”

“Oh, no,” she assured him. “It’s only the enchantment that makes it look far. It’s close—it’s quite close, really. I saw it myself from Beech Hill—as bright as bright——”

“Beech Hill!” He regarded the diminutive athlete incredulously. “You walked from Beech Hill today? By yourself? Rot!”

“Oh, yes!” But he could see that his surprise or some thought of her own disquieted her. She jerked herself to her knees from the comfort of the hay. “I think I’ll be getting on now,” she said, with transparent politeness and a sidelong glance at him.

Now Justin was placidly accustomed to take things as they came—rain, haystacks, or nixies interested in Humber bicycles. But as he examined her more closely, it was apparent even to his indifference that, for all her dishevelment, there must somewhere be a nursemaid in search of this particular nixie. Her shyness, rounded by courtesy, was not the mere coltishness of the village child. A vague sense of responsibility mingled in his mind with a good deal of amusement.

“Hi! Stop a minute!” he called. “You! H.M.S. Indomitable!”

“My name,” she flashed at him, “is Laura.”

“And mine,” he countered, with a twinkle, “is Justin.”

She gave him a wicked child’s grin.

“Good-bye, Mr. Justin——” and whipped her legs over the side of the stack.

But Justin could be quick when he chose. His long arm shot out and caught her by her loose child’s belt. She wriggled in his grip like a snared rabbit.

“Steady! You’d have walloped right into my bicycle if you’d jumped then,” he reproached her.

“It wasn’t that! You didn’t stop me for that! You guessed! I saw you guess!” She faced him quivering, defiant.

“Oh, you are running away then,” he chuckled. “Thought so!”

She turned on him like a leaping flame.

“You’re going to stop me? Oh, and I thought you were nice. Oh, you’re not going to tell? You couldn’t be such a sneak!”

He flushed a little in spite of his sixteen dignified years. She was quick to see it. Her tone altered. She appeased him hurriedly.

“Oh, but truly it’s all right. I promise you. Aunt Adela will be angry, of course, like Mrs. Christian—but Mother won’t mind. Mother lives there, you see. I’m almost certain she’s expecting me. They’re bound to have opera glasses there, like the Shepherds——”

“The Shepherds?”

“Oh, you know!” She stamped a muddy foot impatiently. “They lent them to Christian and Hopeful to see the City through—from the Hill called Clear. But one can see better still from Beech Hill. I almost saw Mother. She’s sure to be watching for me over the walls. And I’m so late. I’m so late. Oh, do tell me the way and let me get on. If you hadn’t seen your mother for months and months and months——” Her mouth trembled.

“All right! All right! Keep your hair on! Nobody’s going to stop you.” He was surprised to find himself so concerned with her concern. “But you can’t go anywhere in this rain,” he told her. “You’d be drowned. You’re half drowned already. It’s getting worse and worse. You wait till it’s over and I’ll see if I can’t give you a lift on my step.”

“Oh, would you?” Her eyes adored him. “Oh, could you? Shouldn’t I be too heavy?”

“But you’d never get to the Palace tonight, you know,” he warned her. “It’s five miles to the next station.”

“Oh, I mustn’t go by train. It wouldn’t be safe. They all walk in the Pilgrim’s Progress. Indeed, I don’t know whether it’s safe to sit here so long. The hay’s making me awfully sleepy. You know what the Shepherds said, Beware that ye sleep not—and beware——Oh!” She pulled herself suddenly to her knees, examining him with eyes of suspicion.

“What’s up?” he demanded.

“It’s all right. Your face isn’t black.” She sank back relieved from the inspection. “I only wondered for a dreadful minute if you were the Flatterer.” She smiled at him. “One has to be so careful,” she apologized, “on Enchanted Ground.”

He pulled at his ear.

“You seem to be up in Bunyan. I don’t understand this game. Look here—why don’t you squat down and tell me all about it? I won’t give you away.”

“Won’t you?” She eyed him wistfully. Her eyes, like any dog’s, said, “Can I trust you?” and his, though he did not know it, told her that she might. With that long look she probed and accepted him, never, I think, through all their tangled future to doubt him again. Exasperation she might feel, and weariness, and once a very exaltation of contempt; but never doubt—never any doubt at all that within the limitations of his nature, he was honest and kind.

And, with belief in him, the film of secretiveness that had formed over her mind, that was not natural to her, that was but a consequence of her situation, was wiped away like mist from a window-pane. She did not realize that she had been longing for a confidant, but she did curl herself, without more ado, as close as she could wriggle to this likeable fellow-creature, and began to talk to him at a rate that would have astonished Aunt Adela. But then Justin did not interrupt her account of her own pilgrim’s progress to tell her that her stockings were muddy. And so he heard, sleepily, with his eyes on the steady slant of the rain, and most of his thoughts far enough away from Laura, all about Mother, and the twins, and Gran’papa, and the City of Gold, and what Nurse’s mother had said, and what Laura would do when she got there—a long, long tale, that reached him in some shape as the Mouse’s tale reached Alice. He was left with a vague notion that Laura was a rum little kid, also that the mother must be rather a charming person. He supposed, when the rain stopped, he should have to see the child back to her home.... Yet it was a bit of a shame to get her into trouble.... Queer, that she shouldn’t be living with her mother.... He wondered what was behind it all.... And what was the mother doing at the Palace?... He thought that only the attendants had quarters there....

He roused himself.

“Your mother lives at the Crystal Palace, did you say?” He propped himself on his elbows, nibbling a straw and frowning meditatively at Laura, who sat, hugging her knees, hunched like a witch against the wall of the stack. “Oh, no! She’s only staying there—till she gets well.”

“Then where do you live?”

“Oh, I live with Mother. But I’m staying with Gran’papa.”

“Yes, but where?”

“I told you,” she reminded him reproachfully, “at Brackenhurst. Behind Beech Hill.”

“Brackenhurst! I didn’t know you said Brackenhurst. Why, I live at Brackenhurst,” he informed her.

“Oh! Then I’ll see you again.” There was most flattering satisfaction in her voice.

He continued, unheeding—

“Funny I haven’t run across you before now. Of course—you only came in May. And we were at the Lakes all the hols. What did you say was your grandfather’s name?”

“Gran’papa. Gran’papa Valentine.”

“Not old Valentine of Green Gates? Oh, then you’re one of the new grandchildren! Of course. Oh, I know all about you now. But I thought—didn’t some one say——?” Before he realized that he must check himself he had blurted out his perplexity. “But I thought your mother was dead.” Then, horrified at himself—“that is—I mean to say—of course it can’t be the same——” and so stopped helplessly.

She made no reply: gave no sign at all that she had even heard him: only leant motionless against the wall of hay as if some heavy, invisible blow had pinned her there. And he, pitying her, swearing at himself for his inadvertence, sat uncomfortably through the silence that had fallen upon them, fidgeting with his pockets, wishing that he could think of something to say to her.

He began at last, tentatively, ingratiatingly—

“I say, Laura! I say——”

She lifted her head and looked at him, searchingly, as one looks at the last link in a chain, in a chain of circumstantial evidence that began far away with medicine and little white shawls; with black sashes and a whispering nurse, and the visit to Gran’papa Valentine. She fingered those links, one by one, recognizing, testing them, and so arrived at last at the big, worried boy sitting by her in the hay.

“Mother is dead,” she said to him, in a voice that was entirely unemotional. She was confirming his statement, not questioning it.

“Oh, you know—perhaps—I daresay I muddled names—made a mistake,” he suggested, because he could not help it. And knew well enough that he had made none.

“Buried?”

“Oh, well—surely you must understand——” He was distressed. He did not know how to phrase his answers.

“There was poor Ben——” Her voice quivered. He could not know that she was re-living a memory, stumbling once more, as she played in the long grass behind the chicken-run, upon her little old dog who had been missing for two long days. She remembered her delight, and then her sudden terror, and the gardener, coming with his big spade. Mother had been within call. Mother had allayed that grief. Yet Laura had never quite forgotten the poor stiffened body and the tiny swarming ants.

And now Mother....

She was taken with a fit of shuddering. The dry-eyed sobs that a child should not know shook her pitilessly.

Justin, wishing desperately that he had his own infallible mother at hand to whom to surrender a situation that was beyond him, did his kindly best.

“It’s all right, you know,” he found himself assuring her earnestly. “It’s really all right. I know—I know—it’s most beastly luck. But it’s all right——”

He broke off. He might have been the monotonous rain for all the notice she took of him.

He began afresh—

“Laura,” then, with an effort, “dear old thing—I say, you know, you must pull yourself together.” He put his hand on her arm, drawing away her fingers from her face.

She yielded indifferently, letting him do as he pleased.

He had an inspiration.

“It’s all right, you know, about the Cœlestial City. She is there, and you’ll get there some day, don’t you worry—only it isn’t the Crystal Palace. You’ll have to wait. But you’ll get there some day.”

She lifted heavy eyes.

“When?”

“Oh—I don’t know. When you’re old.”

“As old as you?”

“Oh, older than that—seventy or eighty.”

“Years?”

He nodded.

“It’s seventy days to Christmas. That’s not even one year.” Her voice trailed into hopelessness.

But at least she had spoken. Justin was pleased with his resourcefulness. He tried again.

“You know, when you’re grown-up the days go quicker. Oh, yes—they simply whiz. Honest! You’ll see.”

“Shall I?” She edged a little nearer to him.

“Why, each time you go to bed you’re a day nearer.” He pulled out his watch. “Talking of bed—do you know it’s half-past five? What’s your bed-time?”

“I don’t know.” She leaned against him with the prompt abandonment of a child discovering its own fatigue.

“Not far off, anyway! I’ve got to get you home, young woman.”

“Aunt Adela will be angry.” But her tone was merely speculative. Laura was stone to Aunt Adela’s worst punishments now.

Justin considered. The steadiness of the rain, long overdue, was prophetic. No chance of its lifting this week-end. No escape, for all his wasted hour, for Justin’s bicycle. Justin’s bicycle must submit to a soaking, with Justin and Laura on its back. It had, going by the road that avoided Laura’s hill-tops, a seven-mile run before it, to reach even Justin’s end of Brackenhurst. Justin, as he slipped off the damp haystack and resumed his sopping coat, thought that he and his bicycle would have done their duty and something over if they escorted Laura thus far. She could be sent on to Green Gates in the pony-trap, if his mother did not insist, as he shrewdly suspected she would when she heard the whole story, on keeping the child over-night, to be coddled against colds and heartache.

He was not wrong. Mrs. Cloud, once satisfied that no bones had been broken and that he would take a hot bath and drink a hot posset as soon as they could be prepared, was ready enough to follow him to the hall where Laura, numbed with cold and wet and the long ride on Justin’s cross-bar, sat in a heap where he had left her, like a small trapped animal: and after a glance, Mrs. Cloud, all soft hair and soft eyes and soft voice, had forgotten even Justin. A groom had been despatched to Green Gates indeed; but Laura, warmed and bathed and fed, was settled for the night in a fire-lit room, in the bed that Justin had outgrown, and that his mother had not brought herself to give away.

Mrs. Cloud, as the dinner-bell rang, had a motherly good-night, with tuckings-up and the tenderest of kisses for Laura. But Laura lay passive, unresponsive, on the pillow that was scarcely whiter than her face, staring up at Mrs. Cloud with wide, dark eyes.

“What is it, Laura?” Mrs. Cloud smiled down at her.

She murmured something beneath her breath, as a scared child will.

“What is it? Do you want anything?” Mrs. Cloud bent down, her face close to the unwinking eyes.

“I want——” In a whisper Laura made known her need. “I want the big boy.”

Mrs. Cloud shook her head.

“Not now. You must go to sleep now. You shall see Justin tomorrow.”

“I want——”

“Justin’s having his dinner. He’s so hungry—so tired from his long ride. He had to carry you, too, you know. You don’t want to call poor Justin upstairs in the middle of his dinner, do you?”

“No. Oh, no.” Then, with concern—“Poor, tired Justin!”

She lay quiet.

But when Justin, on his way to his own night’s rest, put his head round the door to see, on Mrs. Cloud’s behalf, “if that child was all right,” he found her lying as his mother had left her, still with those wide, unwinking eyes of a watchful dog fixed upon the door.

“Hullo, old thing! Awake still? Want to say good-night?”

She nodded dumbly.

He crossed the room, and stood looking down at her.

“Comfortable?”

She nodded again.

“Sleepy?”

She shook her head.

“Oh, nonsense, you must go to sleep. Look here—you be a good girl and go to sleep and tomorrow I’ll give you a lesson on Mother’s old bicycle. Like that?”

She said nothing. He fidgeted. He was at the end of his consolations.

“Well—good-night now.” He turned to go.

Her hand shot out and caught his arm.

“Is it quite true?”

“What?”

“About Mother?”

“’Fraid so.” He moved uneasily, afraid, boylike, of her tears. But she did not cry.

“Are you sure? Are you sure?”

He nodded.

She turned from him with a sharp movement, so that he could see no more than the outline of her cheek.

He stood beside her patiently for a time, but she did not move, and he wondered at last if drowsiness were doing for her all that he could not. With slow precaution he began to edge away his arm. Instantly her grasp tightened.

“Oh, I say—you must go to sleep, you know,” he admonished her.

She turned again, lifting herself on her pillow. Her eyes devoured his face.

“Will you really teach me tomorrow?”

“Of course I will. I’ll give you lessons. We’ll soon have you riding all over the place.”

“But you’re going away.”

“I come home every week.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Honest?”

“Honest. Good-night, old thing.” He hesitated. Then, his pity for her conquering his schoolboy code, he bent down and pecked awkwardly at her cheek.

Instantly he was drawn close, was half choked by little passionate, clinging arms.

“I’ll love you. Oh, I’ll love you!” cried Laura desperately.