Читать книгу The Raft - Coningsby Dawson - Страница 8

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When Barrington called on the Professor next morning, he did not see Jehane. She had stayed in bed for breakfast, to keep out of his way. She did not trust herself to meet him before her parents because of her face—it might tell tales. She was strangely ashamed that anyone should know of her infatuation. And yet she longed to meet him that she might experience afresh the sweet tingling dread lest he should touch her. Ah, if she were sure that he returned her love, what a different Jehane he should discover. …

Though she did not meet him, she espied him the moment he turned into the street. Peering stealthily from behind the curtain, she was glad to notice that he glanced up, as though conscious that her hidden eyes were watching. Listening at the head of the stairs, she heard his voice. She heard him inquire after her, and tried to estimate his disappointment and anxiety when her father answered casually, “The daughter has one of her headaches. … No, nothing much. She may not be down this morning.”

After he had left, she was angry with herself for her cowardice. She ought to have seized her opportunity. Perhaps he was returning at once to London, where he would quickly forget her. She might never see him again.

By a kind of necromancy she tried to arrive at certainty as to whether or no he would marry her. If she could count a hundred before a cart passed a particular lamppost, then he would become her husband. When the cart went too fast for her counting, she skipped numbers and cheated in order to make the test propitious. Sitting in her bedroom, partly dressed, with the brilliant summer sunshine streaming over her, she invented all kinds of similar experiments.

At last she grew impatient of her own company and came downstairs to lunch. Her dreamy mother, who usually noticed nothing, embarrassed her by remarking that her face was flushed as though she were sickening for something. She turned attention from herself by inquiring the result of her father’s interview with Mr. Barrington.

Her father was annoyed because his book had been delayed in publication—quite unwarrantably delayed, he said. She could not get him to state whether Barrington had gone back to London. The conversation developed into an indictment of the innate trickiness of publishers. Mrs. Usk had never been able to reconcile the place she occupied in the world of letters with the smallness of her royalty-statements. It almost made her doubt the financial honesty of some persons. Jehane had listened with angry eyes while these two impractical scholars, comfortably interrupting one another across the table, swelled out the sum of their grievances. Now she took up the cudgels so personally and so passionately in the defense of publishers in general, and Barrington in particular, that she was moved to tears by her eloquence.

Her parents peered at her out of their dim eyes in concerned silence. When the tears had come, they nodded at each other, bleating in chorus, “She is not well. She is flushed. She is certainly sickening for something. She must go to bed. The doctor must be summoned.”

Jehane pushed back her chair. “You’ll do nothing of the kind. I’m quite well.”

After she had made her escape, it was discovered that she had eaten nothing. In a few minutes she reappeared in her out-door attire and announced that she was going to Cassingland.

“But, my dear, you can’t,” her mother protested; “not in your state. You may give it to Nan; it may be catching. And then, think how Mr. Tudor would blame us.”

Jehane tapped with her foot impatiently. “Don’t be silly, mother. I’m going.”

And with that she departed. Only one of the witnesses of this scene conjectured its true cause—Betty, the housemaid, who on more than one occasion had watched these same symptoms develop in herself.

At the stable where her father’s horse was baited Jehane ordered out the dog-cart. She did not know why she was going to Cassingland. Certainly she did not intend to make Nan her confidant—the frenzy of love is contagious. But Nan must know many pages of Barrington’s past, the whole of which was a closed book to her. Without giving away her secret, they might discuss him together.

As she drove along the Woodstock road and turned off into the leafy Oxford lanes, she laid her plans. She would affect to have found him dull company in the journey back from Marston Ferry; she would be surprised that anyone should think him interesting. Then Nan, with her sensitive loyalty to friends, would prove the splendor of his character with facts drawn from her own experience.

Down the road ahead a man was striding in the direction in which she was driving. At the sound of wheels he turned and, standing to one side, raised his hat. Blood flooded her cheeks. Her instinct was to dash by him. She could not endure his attitude of secure comradeship. He must be everything to her at once or nothing. Her eyes fell away from his, yet she longed to return his gaze with frankness.

“I’m in luck. When I called this morning, the Professor told me you were unwell.”

“I’m better.”

“I’m glad. I’ve been blaming myself for not taking sufficient care of you.”

Had he chosen, he could have crushed her to him then; she was made so happy that she would not have protested. But how was he to judge this from the proud, almost sullen face that watched him from the dog-cart?

He looked up at her cheerfully. “Bound for the same place, aren’t we? I’m tired of pounding along by myself; if you don’t mind, I’ll jump in and let you drive me.”

She nodded ever so slightly and he swung himself up. “Going to Nan’s?”

“To Cassingland,” he assented. “I want to see for myself the lady in her tower. D’you know, I can’t get that out of my head—all that you told me about girls.”

“Really.”

She spoke indifferently and flicked the horse with the whip, so that it started forward with a jerk.

“You’re not very curious. You don’t ask me why I can’t forget.”

“Why?”

“Because, with other conditions, it’s equally true of men.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“You will when I’ve told you. To get on nowadays a fellow’s got to work day and night.”

“You’re ambitious?”

“Of course I am. I want to have power. I’ve not had a real holiday for years. Of course I’ve money, which you say girls don’t have; but I’ve responsibilities. I know nothing of women—I’ve had no time to learn. That’s why I’m so grateful to you for yesterday. With me it’s just work, work, work to win a position, so that one day some woman may be happy. So you see, I have my tower as well as Nan, where I’m doomed to spin my web of fancy.”

“But men choose their own towers—build them for themselves.”

“Don’t you believe it. Some few may, but so do some few girls. I wanted to go to Oxford and to write books and to be a scholar, instead of which I publish other men’s scribblings and do my best to sell ’em.”

“I never thought … I mean I thought all men … But you’re strong: if any man could have chosen, you would have done it. Tell me about yourself.”

And he told her—his dreams, anxieties, small triumphs, and incessant round of daily duties. He was very fine and gentle, speaking with touching eagerness, as though confession were a privilege which he rarely allowed himself. Yet Jehane was not content; she knew that in love the instinct for confession is coupled with the instinct for secretiveness. When she touched him, he was not disturbed as she was; his voice did not quiver—he did not change color. She told herself that men were the masters, so that even in love they showed no distrust of themselves. But the explanation was not convincing.

They were nearing Cassingland. Ambushed in trees, rising out of somnolent lowlands, the thin, tall spire of a church sunned itself. Like toys, tumbled from a sack, about which grass had grown up, cottages lay scattered throughout the meadows. As they came in sight of the triangular green, with the tidy rectory standing, high-walled, on its edge, their conversation faltered.

He offered her his hand to help her out. She held back for a second, then took it with ashamed suddenness. He raised his eyes to hers with a boy’s enthusiasm.

“Miss Usk, it’s awfully decent of you to have listened to me.”

“It’s you who’ve been decent. You make everything so easy. You seem … seem to understand.”

He was puzzled. “I’ve done nothing but talk at unpardonable length about myself. As for making things easy, it’s you—you’re so rippingly sensible.”

She winced. No man falls in love with a woman for her sanity. It was as though he had called her middle-aged or robust. She wanted to appeal to him as weak and clinging. When people are in love they are far from sensible; she knew that she was anything but sensible at present. If he had told her she was capricious and charming, she would have shown him a face exultant.

Nan came tripping to the gate. “This is jolly—both of you together!”

Her coming was inappropriate; for the next few months all her appearances were to prove ill-timed so far as Jehane was concerned. And yet, what was to be done? Professor Usk’s house was too subdued in its atmosphere to be congenial. Moreover, the Professor invariably monopolized a man who was his guest—especially when the man was a publisher. Then again, Jehane was painfully aware that she was awkward in the presence of her parents, and did not create her best impression. So she did not encourage Barrington to call on her in Oxford. Naturally she turned to Cassingland, where you had the wide free country, and no one suspected or watched you because you were friendly with a man. Cassingland furnished an excuse for both of them: Nan was her friend; Mr. Tudor had been his tutor. Mr. Tudor, with his honest, farmer-like appearance and frayed clericals, lent an air of propriety to proceedings. And Nan—she helped the propriety; but she never knew when she was not wanted. She spoke of Barrington as Billy. She took his arm and snuggled against him with a naive air of mischief, leading him to all the spots along the river, in the garden and scattered through the fields, which years ago had formed their playground. Jehane resented her innocent air of belonging to him. So, very frequently when Barrington came down from London and she drifted out, as if by accident, to the rectory, she wore the mask of reserve and sullenness, and did not show to best advantage.

Barrington, for his part, was always equal in his temper—too equal for Jehane. With Nan he was gay and frivolous; to her he was grave and deferential. She wished he would display more ardor and less caution. If it had been in her nature, she would have made the running; she was pained by his unvarying respect.

All summer love’s shadow had rested on her. It was September now; the harvest lay cut in the fields ready to be carried. Nan had sent Jehane a message that morning that Barrington was expected; so here she was once more at the rectory, spending the week-end.

They had gone up to bed, leaving the men to smoke; suddenly Nan put on her dress, saying that she heard her father calling. Jehane prepared for bed slowly; by the time she was ready to slip between the sheets Nan had not returned. She blew out the candle; the room was instantly suffused with liquid moonlight and velvet shadow. In the darkness, as often happens, her senses became sharpened—she heard a multitude of sounds. Somewhere near the church, probably from the tower, an owl was hooting. In the distance a dog barked. She could hear the wash of the river among its rushes, and the padding of a footstep on the lawn. Romance in her was stirred.

Going to the window, she leant out; she was greeted by the strong fragrance of roses. Sheaves, standing in rows throughout the fields, looked like a sleeping camp. Trees, save where mists thumbed them, were etched distinctly against the indigo horizon. The white disc of the moon, like a paper lantern, hung balanced between the edges of two clouds. Its light, streaming down the sky, was like milk poured across black marble. Nature seemed to have blinded her eyes and to hold her breath.

Across the lawn from the open study window, a shaft of gold slanted, making the darkness on either side intense by contrast. As Jehane listened, she heard what seemed a panting close to the wall beneath her. She leant further out and discerned a blur of white. She was about to speak when the red glow of a cigar, thrown down among the bushes, warned her.

“At last! You’ve never given me a chance to be alone with you. I’ve wanted you all summer, little Nan.”

His arms were round her. As he stooped above her, her face was blotted out … He was speaking again.

“Your father saw it. That’s why he called you. … If I’d had to wait much longer, I should have asked you before her. Why—why would you never let us be alone together?”

Nan’s voice came muffled beneath his kisses. “Because, Billy darling, I wanted to play fair.”

“Fair?”

An answer followed, so softly whispered that it did not carry—a surprised exclamation from the man.

Jehane had tiptoed from the window.

With her black hair tumbled about her, her hands pressed against her mouth, she lay sobbing. The night had lost its magic. …

Nan entered the room stealthily. She glanced toward the bed. Thinking Jehane was sleeping, she did not light the candle, but commenced to fumble at her fastenings, undressing in the dark. A sob refused to be stifled any longer. Nan paused in her undressing and stood tense; then ran and bent above the bed. Seizing Jehane by the shoulders, she tried to turn her face toward her.

“Oh, Janey, I did, I did play fair. I told you every time he was coming. … Say you’ll still be friends.”

But Jehane said nothing.

Next morning she greeted Barrington with her accustomed mixture of proud restraint and sullenness. “We’ve been expecting this all summer. We wondered when it would happen. I hope you’ll be very happy.”

After that she came less frequently to Cassingland. The lovers had long walks, uninterrupted, unaccompanied. Once he told Nan, “I can’t believe it, Pepperminta. I’m sure you were mistaken.”

“But I wasn’t.” She shook her curly head sadly.

They rarely mentioned Jehane. They knew that she was troubled; but they knew of no way in which to help.

At Christmas, when snow lay on the ground, they were married.

Nan, who had never feared spinsterhood greatly, had escaped from it. Jehane retired to the isolation which she sometimes called her tower, and at other times her raft. She often told herself savagely that, had it not been for her shyness in instancing Nan instead of herself on that journey down from Marston Ferry, she might have been the bride at that wedding. Secretly, she was bitter about it; outwardly, she kept up her friendship—otherwise she would have seen no more of Barrington.