Читать книгу The Key - Dora Amy Elles - Страница 7

Table of Contents

He looked back on the evening afterwards and wondered about it. Just how dense had he been? Just where had he failed in the uptake? To what extent had he been oblivious of that faint current stirring beneath a surface calm? To what extent had he been misled? It was very hard to say. The calm upon the surface was complete. For the time there was no more talk of Michael Harsch. Miss Brown dispensed coffee, and then sat down to the piano to play the classical music upon which Miss Fell's taste had been formed. She played extremely well--Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Nothing more modern than that.

Aunt Sophy kept up a desultory flow of conversation, interrupting it to listen to a favourite passage and then going on again. She had changed into stiff black satin, with a velvet ribbon tied in a little bow under her third chin, and a diamond brooch catching a piece of Honiton lace across the billowy expanse of her bosom. As long as he could remember she had dressed like that in the evening. There was something very reassuring about it. Europe might go up in flames and the pillars of the world be shaken, but the Rectory drawing-room, the Rectory customs, Aunt Sophy and the fal-lals, were consolingly permanent. The windows stood open to the warm evening air, and the scent of the garden entered with it. Aunt Sophy's voice came and went through the music.

"Dr Meade is a great loss. Dr Edwards is very nice, but he cannot be expected to take the same interest. He lives at Oak Cottage, and his wife is an invalid. The new Rector has Miss Jones's house. And you will remember the Miss Doncasters. They are still at Pennycott, but Mary Anne is quite an invalid now--she never goes out. There is a Mrs Mottram at the Haven, a widow with a little girl of five--very pretty and nice, but not musical. If it were not for that, I really think--but of course we mustn't gossip, must we?"

"Why mustn't we?" said Garth, laughing.

Miss Sophy bridled.

"Well, my dear, these things get about so. But of course I don't mean anything in the least scandalous--far from it. It would, in fact, be a most delightful match for both of them. And so nice to have a lady in Meadowcroft again. One's next-door neighbour always does seem a little nearer than the others."

He remembered sitting astride the dividing wall under the sweeping branches of a copper beach and pulling Janice Meade up beside him, little and light, to be out of the way when callers came, especially the Miss Doncasters. It seemed a long time ago. He said quickly.

"Who did you say was in Meadowcroft?"

"Oh, Mr Everton. That is who I was talking about. I think he admires Mrs Mottram very much, though it is a pity she is not musical. He has a charming baritone voice, and a wife should be able to play her husband's accompaniments--don't you think so?"

"Has he got a wife?"

She leaned forward to tap his arm reprovingly.

"My dear boy, of course not! I was just telling you how much he admired Mrs Mottram. I happen to know for a fact that he has had tea with her three Sundays running. And it would be such a good thing for her--such a nice man, and a delightful neighbour. He often drops in to sing duets with Miss Brown, or to have his accompaniments played. We have quite a musical circle now. And then he is so active in the village. He gives a prize for the best allotment. They have turned all those fields on the other side of the Bourne into allotments. And he is quite a poultry expert. We are registered with him for eggs, and so is the Rector. I believe he was in business, but he had a breakdown and is obliged to lead an open-air life."

"What is Janice Meade like now she is grown up?"

"Oh, my dear boy, you must meet her."

"What has she turned out like?"

Miss Sophy considered.

"Well, I'm so fond of her--don't you think it is very difficult to describe people when you are fond of them? I don't suppose you would think she was pretty, but"--she brightened--"she has very fine eyes."

Miss Brown, unexpectedly graceful in black lace, sat at the piano and swept the keyboard with a series of flashing runs.

Miss Fell nodded approvingly.

"That is what I call brilliant execution," she said. Then, raising her voice a little, "Pray go on, Medora."

The well-shaped hands were lifted from the keyboard for a moment, then they came down upon it in the full, soft chords of one of Schumann's Night Pieces. The room filled with the sound, deep, mysterious, and intense. Night in a black forest, utterly dark, utterly dim, utterly withdrawn. Only so much light as a dead reflecting moon could lend to make the darkness visible.

After a moment Miss Sophy prattled on again.

"She plays so well, does she not? And quite without music. It is the modern way of course. We used never to be allowed to take our eyes from the book."

Garth said abruptly, "What did you call her?"

"Oh, Medora. So charmingly uncommon."

"I never heard it before. Is it English?" And yet the moment he had spoken he knew that if he had never heard the name, he had seen it somewhere. He thought it was a long time ago.

Miss Sophy looked surprised.

"It is unusual of course, but I like it better than Fedora, which I always think has rather an operatic sound. And then there is Eudora, in that delightful book of Miss Yonge's, The Pillars of the House. It means a happy gift--and I don't know what Medora means, but I am sure she has been a happy gift to me."

From where they sat at the far side of the long drawing-room it was impossible that what they said should reach Miss Brown, yet Garth instinctively lowered his voice.

"She doesn't look at all happy."

Miss Sophy nodded.

"No, my dear boy. But I told you, we have all had a severe shock."

"Is there any particular reason why it should be a severe shock to her?"

"Oh, dear me--I hope not. But they were great friends--their music, you know, and both playing the organ. He used often to drop in here for a few minutes on his way to the church, and sometimes afterwards."

"Did you see him the night he--died?" For the life of him he couldn't help that little pause.

Miss Sophy shook her head.

"Oh, no--he went straight to the church. But then he often did that. You know it is really a very fine instrument, and since we have had electricity in the village it is not necessary to have anyone to blow. So tiresome, I used to think. I remember Tommy Entwhistle used to make the most horrible faces over it, and your grandfather put in Rose Stevens instead. It was considered a great innovation, but of course girls are much steadier than boys."

Garth laughed and said,

"Oh, much! Who is sexton now?"

"Old Bush died a couple of years ago, but he had not really been up to the work for a long time. Frederick used to help him, and of course he got the post."

"He hasn't been called up?"

"Oh, no--he must be nearly fifty. He was all through the last war, you know. I used to wonder how old Bush felt about it, because though of course the children were born over here, he and his wife were both Germans, and they never thought about being naturalized--people in their position didn't--but they started spelling their name the English way almost at once."

Something like a mild electric shock set the palms of his hands tingling.

"I'd forgotten," he said.

"I do not suppose you ever knew, my dear. But the name was Busch, with an sch--Adolf Busch. And of course Adolf sounds terrible now, but there wasn't anything worse about it than any other German name then. Still, your grandfather advised his writing it Adolphus in the English way, and he christened all the children himself with proper English names. The two elder boys were killed in the last war. Frederick was the third, and when he was seventeen he was second footman to Sir James Talbot at Wrestinglea. Well, a very curious thing happened not very long before the war broke out--he was approached by German agents. You know, all sorts of people used to come down to Wrestinglea--soldiers, politicians, newspaper men. And they wanted him to listen to what was said whilst he was waiting at table and write it down for them. They offered him quite a lot of money, but of course he said no. He came and told your grandfather all about it, and your grandfather told me. I remember what impressed him so much was the fact that the German Foreign Office should have kept track of a humble family like this. They must have been in England for quite twenty-five years, but the Wilhelmstrasse knew where to find them, and knew that Frederick was in service in a house where he could pick up just the kind of news they wanted. I remember your grandfather walking up and down the room and saying that it disclosed a very alarming state of affairs."

"He wasn't far wrong, was he? Well, well--and Frederick is sexton. I must look him up. Let me see--he married one of the Pincott girls, didn't he?"

Miss Sophy began at once to tell him all about the Pincotts. As there were a round dozen of them, it took some time.

At ten o'clock they went to bed, Miss Brown informing him that he could have a bath, but that he must be careful not to take more than five inches of water. Again that absurd resentment flared. But he had the bath, and getting into bed, fell immediately and rather unexpectedly into a dreamless sleep.

He awoke some time later with a start. The moon was up. The two windows, which had been empty and dark when he had drawn the curtains back before getting into bed, now framed a silvered landscape. The night air was so warm as to give the impression that it was the light that was warming it. He got up and stood at the nearer window, looking out. There was nothing that could be called a breeze--only that warm air just moving against his cheek. Below him the lawn and Miss Sophy's border lay under the moon. To the right the churchyard wall rose grey behind the flowers until it melted into the shadow of great trees--copper beech, green beech, and chestnut. The shadow deepened away to the left. More trees, with the moon throwing a black image of each on the blanched grass. Lilacs, a tall red thorn, a cedar nearly as old as the church, a single heavy elm--he could still name every tree, though with the light behind them they showed only in silhouette, all detail lost.

He had stood there for perhaps ten minutes, when he saw that something was moving in the shadow--something, or someone. It moved where the shade was deepest. Only the fact that it moved made it visible. But there was no point at which the shadow extended to the house. The moment was bound to come when there would be an alternative of retreat or emergence. Garth watched with a good deal of interest to see which it would be.

The moment arrived, and he saw Miss Medora Brown cross the barrier and stand quite plainly revealed. She wore the long black dress she had worn at dinner, covering her to the feet, to the wrists. Over her head she had tied a black lace scarf, the ends brought round to cover her to the chin. Only her hands showed white in the drowning light--her hands, and her lifted face.

Instinctively Garth drew back, and then stood wondering whether his own movement might not have given him away as hers had done.

She stood for a moment, and then walked quickly and noiselessly forward until she was lost from view. He had by now no need to watch her. He knew very well that she would come in, as he had so often done himself, by the glass door of his grandfather's study. Only there was a trick with that door. If your hand wasn't perfectly steady, if there was the least interruption in the slow, smooth pressure which opened it, it creaked on you. He knew now that Miss Brown's hand had not been steady, and that it was this creak which had woken him. He listened for it, and heard it again. Wherever she had been, she had been quick about it. She couldn't have been out of the house for more than a quarter of an hour. Well, the show was over and she was back.

He got into bed and lay down. Just as his head touched the pillow, there zigzagged into his mind the recollection of where he had come across the name of Medora.

In a poem--in the title of a poem. One of those long-winded tales in verse which had been the fashion when the nineteenth century was young. He hadn't the slightest idea what it was about, or who it was by, but he could see the title as plainly as he had ever seen anything in his life:

"Conrad and Medora"

He jerked up on an elbow and whistled softly. Whether Medora was English or not, there was no doubt at all about Conrad. Conrad was German.