Читать книгу Ships in the Bay! - D. K. Broster - Страница 9

Calling off Bran, who was barking, from a safe distance, at the enormous sow in the yard, Nest started back. The sight of Mrs. Lloyd’s infant grandchild had set her thinking of her own nephew, aged six months, whose presence, with that of his mother, was shortly to enliven the Precentory. It was strange to know oneself an Aunt. Undoubtedly it made one feel very old. On any count, indeed, twenty was a considerable age. One should, said Aunt Pennefather, begin to have serious thoughts at twenty. Yet Nest feared that her thoughts were no more serious than at eighteen, save that with riper years had inevitably come reflections—nay, more, conclusions—on the transitory nature of human affections, both male and female. For certainly last winter she had believed herself deeply in love with a gentleman, a stranger to the neighbourhood, whom she had met at a ball in Haverfordwest, and had even begun to picture herself going into a decline upon his account. There had not, however, been time for this process to take effect, since this infatuation, nourished on air, had lasted but a month, its demise, too, being materially assisted by the fact that young Mr. Perrot of Camrose had then begun to pay her somewhat marked attentions, continually finding, for instance, that business required him to ride eleven miles or so into St. David’s instead of four into Haverfordwest. These attentions Nest enjoyed without in the least making up her mind about their author; then, suddenly, they ceased. So she had good reason, she told herself, to feel that she knew something of life and its impermanence. In her less cheerful moods she sometimes felt also that one so disillusioned should prepare for old age and spinsterhood by learning Latin, or following some intellectual pursuit equally sustaining to the mind. The cultured Aunt Pennefather, although she had married, knew Greek as well.

Reflecting on the advent of Jane and her infant, Nest, before she had gone very far, paused to look over the gate of a hayfield and, tempted by the thought of a short rest upon her homeward way, opened it and went in. The swathes of dried grass and daisies had been roughly piled into haycocks, but these were too high to sit upon without partial demolition, while the grass stubble, as she knew from experience, was apt to prove a prickly seat. However, as she penetrated further, her gaze lit upon a haycock on the further side of the field which seemed to have overbalanced in some way, and towards this pile she bent her steps. “I can leave the field by that further gate,” she told herself, “so that I am not going much out of my way. How sweet the hay smells!”

She reached the haycock in question about the same time as Bran, who had loitered behind for some purpose of his own, and now rushed up panting.

“Lie down, good dog!” adjured his mistress. “It makes me hot to look at you!”

But the good dog did not lie down; far from it. Pricking his ears, he took a good sniff at Nest’s chosen seat and began to bark at it.

Nest involuntarily took a step backwards and clutched her muslin skirts to her. Undoubtedly there was a mouse in the pile of hay. But she was brave; she did not flee, since it could only be a fieldmouse after all, which she did not dread nearly as much as the domestic variety; moreover, there was no other haycock so convenient. But how tiresome of the creature to have chosen this haycock, of all others! “Oh, Bran, pray stop!” she cried, for the animal’s barking was now of an unmitigated frenzy and he was in addition beginning to dance about and to scratch at the pile. “See, I’ll drive the mouse out for you!” And, with great daring, but with due precaution also, still holding her skirts very tightly and keeping as far away as possible, she stretched out her arm and poked the point of her new parasol into the yielding hay.

Yet even as one eating cherry jam from which the stones are thought to have been removed and are not, Miss Meredith received a jarring surprise. The interior of the hay possessed quite different qualities from its exterior; it was by no means yielding; yet whatever lay within had not the stark solidity of stone or wood. She had poked something living . . . something, too, from the feeling of it, much larger than a rabbit or hare—creatures which would moreover have leapt out at a touch, if not before. . . . This, whatever it was, gave no sign, uttered no sound. But the whole neighbourhood resounded with Bran’s passionate barking. And at his mistress’s exclamation and backward movement he, doubtless from an instinct of protection, was stirred to something bolder than mere vociferation, and, making a spring at one end of the pile, he seized a bunch of hay in his mouth and shook it as if it were alive. Then, dropping it, he made a second fierce dash at the same spot as though he had found something better worth attack.

And, in a sense, he had, for, to Nest’s equal amazement and terror, a human hand and wrist darted forth from the hay and, catching Bran by the collar, succeeded in holding him off, while at the same instant a violent earthquake movement convulsed the whole heap. Next moment the hay was falling back on all sides from about the figure of a disreputable young man who, wrestling with the infuriated dog, was endeavouring to get from his semi-supine position to his feet.

“Bran! Bran!” cried his distracted mistress. “Bran, come a way! Oh dear, oh dear, what shall I do?” For whether the individual emerging from the hay after the manner of Venus Anadyomene from another element were a haymaker of retiring tastes, or a bad character of some kind, she did not desire the growling and writhing Bran to rouse him to complete wrath by taking a piece out of his person.

“Bran!” Desperate, Nest advanced, and with difficulty seizing the dog by his collar, tugged hard. Thus, her effort coinciding by luck with a vigorous thrust on the man’s part, she did succeed in pulling Bran away; and, more from fright than from any other motive, began to belabour him with the treasured sunshade, while the man, leaping to his feet the moment he was free of his assailant, disappeared like a flash round the nearest haycock.

“You naughty dog!” exclaimed Nest, trembling all over. She beat him again, her tepid blows awakening no protest. “How dare you—when I was calling you off!” Bran, panting, rolled over on to his back and gave an exhibition of the most abject and foolish contrition. With shaking fingers Nest fastened to his collar the leash which she had fortunately brought with her, stood a moment to recover some of her composure, and then started to walk quickly over the stubble towards the gate which she had already observed and which she knew must give on to a little lane leading back to the road. All thoughts of sitting awhile in the hayfield had now left her; her one desire was to get out of an enclosure where every haycock might, for aught she knew, be instinct with—what? Of what sort was the apparition with hay in his hair who had struggled with Bran and vanished so quickly? She could not imagine; all that she had had time to receive was an impression of youth, dark-haired, dark-chinned, of odd, shabby clothes with hay adhering to them, and of hurry. But the man could not merely have gone to sleep there and the haycock then have collapsed on top of him; he had been too thoroughly concealed for that. And people did not conceal themselves, especially in such an unusual way, unless there was a reason for it . . . and the reason was always a disgraceful one. Besides, he had been alarmed at discovery . . . or perhaps alarmed at Bran . . . or both. Thank Heaven, indeed, that he had run off as he had! But what an adventure! What would Papa say? And Aunt Pennefather, who alternated very inconsistently between disapproving of her niece’s freedom of movement and denouncing in her mild, poetical way, the shackles imposed through immemorial ages upon the female sex?

Nest came through the little gate, from the scent of the hayfield to that of the lady’s bedstraw and honeysuckle of the narrow lane, and she had closed the gate behind her before she became aware of a masculine figure. It was he, the man from the haycock, standing a little to her left on the opposite side of the lane, against the high bank of flowers, looking at her!

The young lady’s heart thumped sickeningly; she backed by instinct against the gate behind her. Bran growled and tugged at the leash; but its loop was round his mistress’s wrist. Afterwards Nest wondered exceedingly why she had neither screamed nor run down the lane, which, since this alarming figure was on the further side of her, she could at least have tried to do.

The man, however, seemed to realise that she was frightened, for he remained motionless, save that he pulled his forelock as a gesture of respect, while Nest stared with alarmed eyes at him and his attire—at his coarse check shirt, open at the throat, his white flannel waistcoat bound with black tape—he appeared to have no coat—his wide, short trousers of faded blue fustian, with six inches or so of bare ankle between them and his shabby brass-buckled shoes; and most of all she noticed the menacing-looking sheath knife which hung from his worn leather belt.

“I . . . I won’t touch you miss!” he said rather hoarsely. “I only wanted to thank you for calling your dog off me.”

“I thought . . .” began Nest, but her breath fluttered so much that she did not complete the sentence; nor indeed was she quite sure what she had meant the end of it to be. If anything, it was the expression of a hope that he had gone completely. Certainly she would have infinitely preferred that to his lingering to thank her!

“I wasn’t doing any harm, miss,” went on the young man humbly. “I be come to these parts hoping to find work—on a farm, maybe.”

“But surely,” began Nest, a little reassured by his still remaining at a distance, and also by a certain gentleness in his voice, which, though it held some kind of a country accent that she did not recognise, yet did not sound entirely uneducated, “surely you are not likely to find work——” (“by hiding under a haycock” was on her lips, but she dared not quite bring out the words. After all, if she angered him he might still attack her.)

Something like a smile came round the mouth which was left revealed by the four days’ or so of dark growth on the upper lip and chin. “I can guess what you was goin’ to say, miss! I do—does—want work none the less. ’Tis hay harvest, and there be farms about here, and the hay scarce cut as yet.”

“Some of the farmers here might indeed be glad of an extra labourer,” said Miss Meredith, considering the prospective applicant. He was undoubtedly young, and probably strong, though there was a gaunt look about his ill-shaven face.

“Thank you, miss. I will go and try my luck, then . . . I suppose you couldn’t oblige me with the names of one or two likely farms?”

“But . . . I don’t know anything about you,” answered Nest doubtfully. It took some courage to say it. However, she always had Bran.

But the shabby young man did not seem to resent the statement of this undeniable truth. “No, miss, you don’t,” he agreed and, bending his head a little, started to finger a flaunting yellow toadflax in the bank beside him. “But some farmer, belike, would take me on for a time without a recommendation.”

“But where do you come from—you are not of these parts, surely?” asked Nest in a puzzled and still more dubious tone.

He did not answer, but began to rip off the laughing mouths of the toadflax, and it was something about his attitude, with head bent . . . Why, the boat this morning at Porthstinian . . . the bow oar . . . yes, even that white flannel waistcoat! It came back to her; and as if to confirm her recognition she now saw, tucked into his belt, a blue cap with a tassel.

“Why, I know where you come from!” she exclaimed, before she could weigh the advisability of her words, “—from the Dutch prize! You are one of the men who came ashore for water this morning!”

At that the privateersman raised his head and looked sharply at her and then up and down the little lane. Nest’s heart jumped again with a recrudescence of alarm. “But I can always make Bran bark at him,” she thought. Indeed it was obvious that Bran was ready at any moment to renew this exercise, not having ceased for a moment to strain at the leash and to keep a lowering eye upon the stranger.

The latter however made no movement in the least threatening. “You’ll not tell anyone that, will you, miss?” he asked, and his tone was imploring, not a doubt of it. “ ’Tis true; you did see me in the boat this morning—but I can trust you, can’t I, you being a lady? And, miss, can you tell me, has she sailed, the Vrijheid?”

“Is that the Dutch prize? Yes, she left some time ago, so they told me at Rhosson farmhouse.”

“Thank God for that!” said the young man under his breath.

“Then you have run away from her?” asked Nest with more of disapproval than of interest in her voice.

“Yes, miss. That is to say, from the privateer as took her.”

“But why?”

“I . . .” He looked down and hesitated. “I could not stand the life on board; ’twas too hard.”

“Then why did you join a privateer?” inquired Miss Meredith a little scornfully. Never having experienced hardships herself, she yet considered that the other sex should look upon them, at least in time of war, as a privilege. Moreover, the Liverpool privateers shed a kind of vicarious glory upon the Welsh coast.

“I did not join one, miss,” replied the runaway to this, “I was pressed—kidnapped, you might say.”

“Perhaps then you are not really a sailor at all?”

“No more I am, miss.”

“But, even if you are not a sailor by profession,” remonstrated the (for once) warlike young lady, “you must surely feel how glorious it is to fight our enemies the French . . . and now the Dutch too . . . and to keep the seas clear for British commerce? Or perhaps you did not have to fight, but only to . . . to work the pumps or sails or something of the sort,” she concluded rather vaguely.

This time the ex-privateersman’s teeth, white and even, showed in a grin, and advancing for the first time (while Bran growled) he pulled up the loose check sleeve from his left arm, and drew Nest’s attention to a puckered red mark, nearly a foot long, on the outside of the forearm—the scar of a recently healed wound. “I had that from a French cutlass when we fought the French brig, of heavier guns than ours, off Ushant in May,” he said, and went off into a description of this action of which Nest could understand but few details, partly because she was so much surprised to see how the narrator’s eyes were sparkling, how the humility had evaporated from his manner, and—though she did not realise this till afterwards—almost every trace of country accent from his voice. This deserter must positively have enjoyed the admittedly bloody fight in which he had been wounded! Why then had he run away from the—what was it called—the Fair Penitent?

“But will not the captain of the privateer be very angry when he finds that you never returned to the prize?” she asked.

“He won’t know till he gets back to Liverpool. But I had to risk . . . what would happen to me if the rest of the boat’s crew found me . . . and what will still happen if anyone . . . splits on me,” he added in no cheerful tone.

“And what will that be?”

He did not reply.

“That was why you hid in the hay, then! . . . Did they look for you, the others?”

“Yes. I think they came into the field. If they had had a dog with them, as you had . . .” He shrugged his shoulders. “That was soon after I had given them the slip. Thank God that they have sailed . . . unless you mean to give me up to a magistrate, miss? If you don’t no one else will. Only those men who were at the landing-place this morning could know me again, and I shall keep away from there.” He looked at her with unconcealed anxiety in his grey eyes. Underneath everything he was, as Nest had by now recognised, not really rough of aspect, and even good-looking; the eyes in question, for instance, had lashes as long as her own.

But the phrase “a good-looking scamp” had come prickling into her mind. He was doubtless hoping to work upon her because of his looks and because she was a woman! Nest felt very experienced and disillusioned as she came to this conclusion. She gave a jerk at Bran’s leash, that warrior now showing after all a tendency to relax his vigilance and go to sleep.

“I see no real reason why I should not inform the authorities,” she said, with all the decision of a matron; but before she had had time to add, as she meant to do, “I do not say that I shall,” the deserter, with a short, sardonic laugh, had broken in.

“Will you undertake to come to Liverpool, then, and see me flogged or keelhauled, or both?” His tone was suddenly and curiously that of one speaking to a man, and to an equal, not to a superior. “I don’t suppose you have ever seen either process. I have; and I assure you that you would not enjoy witnessing them!”

Brutal, brutal words! Nest turned pale and shrank back once more against her gate.

“I am sorry,” said the young man curtly. “But you see, madam, that you do not like the notion. I suggest, then, that you do not take upon yourself the responsibility of procuring me five hundred lashes or so. However, if you really intend going to a justice of the peace about me, at least I need not wait for the consequences. I must look for work in some other district; and I will therefore bid you good day before you can lay your information.”

Bewildered as well as outraged—because he had so completely changed since the beginning of the interview—Nest would have let him pass without further parley, glad indeed to be relieved from the strain of this extraordinary encounter. But not so Bran, the intelligent and warmhearted. For some time he had been sitting quite quietly (until, just now, his mistress had jerked the leash), though with his eyes fixed upon the stranger; but his opinion of him was not really changed. Individuals unlawfully concealed in haycocks, who caused his mistress (and himself) alarm, and were the occasion of his being chastised for doing his plain duty, were not going to slink away like that, as long as there was a tooth in a faithful dog’s jaws, and the chance that that mistress, who had just reminded him of his duty, now had the end of his tether in her hand and not round her wrist. . . . Yes, better late than never! As the objectionable man passed, Bran launched himself like a knight in the lists, his leash flying loose behind him, got in a soul-satisfying bite through the fustian trousers somewhere in the region of the knee; was flung off; came on again, filled with the wine of battle; was caught by the throat by hands a great deal stronger than Miss Meredith’s; was choked . . . choked more . . . was down on his back in the dust, struggling, suffocating. . . .

“Don’t kill him, O, don’t kill him!” cried the terrified Nest, the tears running down her face, for every moment she expected to see the sheath knife come out. “I’ll do anything . . . help you in every way . . . give money . . . only don’t kill him! I did not set him on, indeed I did not!”

Kneeling on one knee, pinning down his now feebly writhing assailant, the assailed lifted an angry face with set teeth and dark brows drawn together. He was going to strangle Bran! . . . Next moment, with a half-contemptuous exclamation, he had loosed him and got to his feet.

Bran too got up, very shakily, and going, with his tail tucked in, to the bank on his mistress’s side of the lane, was sick; after which he shivered violently and lay down, all the knight-errantry squeezed out of him. The distracted Nest bent over him, half scolding, half petting, till, bethinking herself of Bran’s victim, she turned round and saw that he was engaged in tying a not over-clean red cotton handkerchief round his right trouser leg, just below the knee.

She drew a long breath. “Has he bitten you badly?”

“It feels like it,” responded the young man grimly. “I will take a look at it presently and wash the place. I hope I haven’t hurt the dog overmuch; I don’t blame him, on the whole.”

This magnanimity nearly reduced Miss Meredith to tears again. “Oh, I cannot tell you how sorry I am! And you must have the bite attended to at once! It might be dangerous . . . though of course my dog is not in the least mad. Will you . . . will you come to the Precentory—I am Miss Meredith, the Precentor’s daughter—and——”

“To the Precentory—I?” he interrupted with a laugh half scornful and half amused. “A runaway sailor at a Precentory! No, I’ll go to some farm——”

“There’s Rhosson, just back there; and Mrs. Lloyd is very kind.”

He shook his head. “No, too near the landing-place. But I will find another farm, never fear, miss; and get taken on for the hay harvest, too, with luck.”

Nest began to fumble in the little reticule at her waist. “You must allow me, please . . .” For “Miss” had come back into the conversation, and the country accent; and the young man must be poor, she thought, since he had been pressed for a common sailor. It was merely imagination which seemed, just now, to have given her a glimpse of something different.

But if it was embarrassing to intend bestowing money upon him, it was much more so to find that the intention must go unfulfilled, for she had not a penny with her. Very flushed, she desisted from the search, and said awkwardly instead: “Will you not tell me your name . . .” and stopped because he looked amused; then added quickly, “You may be quite easy; I am not going to a magistrate, after—this.”

The runaway at that smiled fully; and when he smiled he was good-looking, scamp or no. “Mark Thompson, that’s my name.” Then he glanced at Bran, still lying dejectedly close to the bank. “I’ll let you be going on first this time, miss, I reckon—not that I bear your dog any grudge; he’s a good-plucked one for sure.”

Nest murmured appreciation of this generous attitude. “And you will go to a farm, and have the wound washed as soon as possible,” she adjured. “Perhaps indeed it ought to be cauterised.”

“Thank you, miss. Perhaps it ought.”

She pulled Bran to his feet. “And I hope that you will succeed in finding work.”

“Thank you kindly, miss.” Once more the forelock was touched; and next moment the Leghorn hat and the high-waisted pink muslin dress were going away down the narrow lane and disappearing into the wider one which met it. Their owner did not look back. The ex-privateersman waited another moment, then, compressing his lips, he leant up against the flowery bank, untied the red handkerchief, rolled up the leg of his loose trousers, and looked at the blood running down his calf from the blue and lacerated wound which was the memento of his meeting with Miss Nest Meredith, the Precentor’s daughter.