Читать книгу Dimple Hill - Dorothy M. Richardson - Страница 3

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Why pounce upon the cathedral? There it stood, amidst its town, awaiting them, three little people about to join the millions over whom in its long life it had cast its shelter and its spell. In strolling about, they would come upon it, see it from various points of view, gradually wear down the barrier between it and themselves, and presently, either together or alone, venture within its doors. But for Florence and Grace there would be no venturing. Boldly, all eyes, they would march in, and immediately begin to poke about amongst its vitals. Privately she decided for going alone, sloping secretly in and seeing and feeling it, as far as her intermittent scepticism allowed, in the way of the ascetic young man, the sight of whom, sitting in the railway carriage aloof and meditative over his missal, had reminded her that they were bound for a cathedral town.

In that moment, abandoning Florence and Grace and the mood of gay unity in which they had all set out upon the suddenly improvised week, of holiday for them and, for herself, the easily spared extension of her few days’ visit, she had entered the gateway of her six months’ freedom. The task of keeping them entertained lost both its charm and its importance. They became the symbols of all she was leaving, and when, as silently she gazed at the journeying landscape, that group of flaming poppies had darted by, she had commented on them in a phrase addressed to the consciousness of the young man, bringing his eyes across the carriage and, with them, a vision of the cathedral within whose twilit interior lived a stillness akin to that wherein spirits recognize each other, as she and the young man had recognized each other; although, in order that the recognition might take place, she had precipitately assumed a vestment to which she had no right.

But as the tide of her opposition flowed across the breakfast-table towards Florence now withdrawn into silence, and Grace who had made the suggestion and was awaiting agreement, she recognized it for annoyance with their remembered technique in the handling of excursions. Exactly as on this first morning the town’s most prominent feature was rousing them to headlong activity, so on that far-off day whose frustrations could still torment her, they had been moved immediately to toil, through fierce noonday heat, to the church on the high hill, thereby setting at an impossible distance the little valley by the sea that the enchanting toy railway had brought so conveniently near, and whence, serenely, in the cool of the late afternoon, they might have climbed to the church and surveyed its famous brasses with eyes already satisfied.

Because the suggestion had caught her unprepared, just as the charm of the little railway, winding, like an erratic tram-line, at the level of the road, in and out of the scattered hamlets, made way for the charm of the little valley, visible, as they alighted, in the near distance with a sailless windmill on its ridge and, at its feet, the sea not yet hazed by the sun, she had failed not only to state but even to assemble in her own enchanted consciousness the objections to their plan for ruining the day. But when, in the late afternoon, the baked little town still enclosed them and the green valley, unexplored and to be forever regretted, mocked them from afar, it was Florence who had bemoaned their failure to take refuge there with the lunch-basket whose contents had been consumed, in the silence of exhaustion, amongst the roasted tombstones. And Florence, to-day, would offer no resistance to a planless wandering.

But when, in the hope of making it acceptable to both, she groaned, with the force of an annoyance they would not perceive, and with the expansiveness that never failed to arouse their hope of entertainment, a tribute to the length of days ahead, thus identifying her visibly blissful state with the prospect of spending seven days in their company, the figure of Grace on holiday, miraculously seated at breakfast in strange lodgings and yet placidly moored within her accustomed enclosure, became a summary that removed all desire to influence her movements.

There she sat, dutifully pondering her morning’s adventure, radiating the serenity born of her unreflective acceptance of all the orthodoxies, and fostered by a security that supported her belief in the indefinite persistence of her enclosed world. And this it was, just this serene, unquestioning security, so clearly revealed by the unaccustomed surroundings as the basis of her existence, that had made the Banbury Park villa, ever since her suppliant affection had first drawn one hither, so deeply restorative. On countless week-end visits, on Christmas Eves, and at Easter and Whitsun holidays, reaching their remote doorstep with what had seemed the last of one’s strength, one had punctually felt, hearing the tick-tock of footsteps approaching along the tiled passage and seeing the door open upon one or other of them, or upon all three come eagerly out to welcome, the beginnings of renewal and the ability to share, if only for the first evening, as a beatific convalescent, the family relish, rich and racy, of the ritual of daily life and its recurrent rewards that brought, to each moment of the day and into each corner of the rather dark small house, the radiance of festival achieved or imminent.

So complete on each occasion was the transference from weariness and lonely responsibility to surroundedness and irresponsible ease, that with the resounding slam of the little front door, accompanied by the metallic, evocative rattle of its empty letter-box, her daily life became a past upon which no future opened. To return, towards the end of the visit, and to offer, seen afar in clear focus, with its tints refreshed and its features newly attractive, in the midst of some too-prolonged excursion amidst incidents brought forth for her inspection from where they lay recorded in terms she could not accept, as if in answer to her need for escape from a stereotyped universe, a sudden incredible refuge.

So that her response, when the eagerly mingled voices died away and the enclosed Sunday twilight vibrated with the demand for it, radiated joy whose source remained unsuspected; and the small shock of her voice, bringing into the room the present whence she had been looking into their past, abruptly restored to them the sense of their surroundings and of the rapidly fading light, calling for movement and for the zestful introduction of the evening portion of the long, shared day. But in the moment before the globes of patterned, tinted gas-light drove the afternoon into the past, the dim radiance from outdoors, since now she was seeing it from the centre to which she had returned, no longer filtered in upon endurance but signalled, bringing joy, from its own vast distances; and when she and Grace were left alone, all that she had told in response to gently eager questioning, was lit, for herself as well as for Grace, by an unquenchable radiance.

No one else, sitting there at the table, could embody so long a stretch of the past. All the years from Wordsworth House days onwards lay embalmed in the treasure-house of Grace’s faithful memory. Inseparable, too, from the sight of her, a visible background of dissolving views freed from their anchorage in space and time, was Grace’s home, in the stateliest of whose upper rooms the whole of one’s life, as known to oneself, was stored up.

Other guest-rooms, in houses sheltering a ceaseless conflict of ideas, so that nothing within them seemed quite real and no one currently alive, reverberated, when one reached them at the end of swiftly passing evenings, with various kinds of sound and fury or with the echoes of a keyed-up gaiety to be continued on the morrow. So that whatever was contemplated in the upstairs solitude, whether the world at large or one’s own life within it, looked both dreary and meaningless.

But in the stately, old-fashioned spare room at Banbury Park, itself a retreat from the superficially dynamic world of external change and new ideas, even down to the way it owed its deep refreshingness to continuous zestful housewifery and the gleam on its furniture to methodical hand-polishing, one had seen one’s life from afar, whether with quiet or with fevered mind, as part of a continuous reality whose challenge came, directly, to oneself and whose hidden meaning, just because at times it was so unbearably disturbing, was secure and was what at other times made each distant detail suddenly miraculous. From no other spare room could she have seen the world as it had opened before her in that first moment of realized freedom. With no other companions could she have remained, throughout the days preceding this setting forth, with all her surface being sound asleep and her essential self looking forth upon its own, so long withheld and now at last accessible.

Sitting there unchanged, the always gentle recipient of her being, Grace innocently reproached her for ever having felt that the descent upon Banbury Park would be a ludicrously humiliating end to the weeks of anticipation during which her departure had remained, alluringly featureless, upon the horizon. The eager invitation, taking her by surprise in the midst of her preparations, had reminded her of the necessity of selecting a destination. But long before her shopping was finished and the glossy new cabin-trunk and hat-box, incredible symbols of freedom, were beginning to fill up, she had realized that in no other spot on earth could she so deeply savour the bouquet of her release. Arriving on their doorstep late at night, she had been too weary to feel the bliss of escape. But when in the morning, as she stood, ready to go downstairs, before the wide mirror in which hitherto had been reflected her image entangled with a thousand undetachable associations, she saw only her solitary self, there had come that all-transfiguring moment during which in the depth of her being she had parted company with that self, masquerading under various guises, with whom she had gone about ever since leaving home, and joined company with the self she had known long ago.

The little rose-buds of the Limoges ware on the dressing-table came vividly to life, for ever memorable. Strong and cool, with a strength that welled up unobstructed from the roots of her being, and a coolness that was one with the morning freshness of the little garden towards which the Limoges roses had turned her eyes, she had swung to the tips of her toes, as if to come level with the being within her outrunning all her faculties to greet the illimitable life ahead. And as she went downstairs, the thought returned that had so often beaten gladly to and fro while her release was delayed from day to day by the need to leave everything in order and the timid new secretary more or less launched upon her hazardous career: it was still only July. Never, since childhood, had she known freedom in July.

‘All right, Grace,’ she said, no longer feeling them jailers about to march her methodically round and round a prison yard, but rather embodiments of the past, prolongers of the anticipation of the ocean of beatitude wherein, at the end of this short week, she would be ready to plunge; alone. ‘You shall go and examine the inside of the cathedral and I will stand about outside, and stare.’

Florence’s accepting giggle reminded her how easily the two of them could be kept entertained and how, while day by day they were occupied with their objects of interest, she would be able to wander, near at hand, alone. It took her eyes across the table, at that moment richly irradiated by a shaft of sunlight, town sunlight, densely golden, to meet those of Florence and find there the penetrating gaze she had so often encountered in turning suddenly toward her from the midst of some lively to and fro of narrative and response at the Banbury Park dinner-table. But to-day, instead of sinking back into her dark eyes the moment Florence knew it to be observed, it remained, transforming the occasion, making it as deep and as interminable as itself.

‘I could spend a year staring,’ she quoted automatically, and for a moment took refuge in Kenneth Street, years ago, with Mag and Jan, in whose presence the words had first been put together. Returning from this vain flight, she found Florence’s gaze, veiled now by a scorn so lively as to lift a corner of her delicate mouth, still fixed upon her. ‘Couldn’t you?’ she demanded, unable to banish from the insincerely ingratiating tone the tremor of self-consciousness.

‘I’ve never thought about it,’ said Florence. Huskily, with dropped eyelids, and cheeks flooded with scarlet: shame, of self-betrayal, or for one’s attempt to escape a challenge.

‘I’m never going to think any more,’ said Miriam, and felt the words become true as she spoke them, and saw in the far distance the sunlit scene, approaching. But between her and her bourne, obstinately barring the way, stood the figure of Florence, the one figure, of all those set intimately near her in the past, from whom she had been held away by a barrier she had no desire to shift. Incredulously inquiring of the form seated across the way, ensconced as if forever, or at least until its challenge should have been met, in a strange room grown suddenly, leeringly familiar, Miriam found the eyes once more upon her, unchanged, as if they had never left her face.

‘You never worry about anything, do you, Miriam?’ Florence’s judgment, accumulated during the years and at last, and only because, for the first time, one was not her guest, coming easefully forth; to remain, unless now it could be dislodged or in some way transformed, a marginal note, set by a disinterested observer forever against one’s own version of one’s record at Banbury Park. Stung into defence, Miriam turned from Florence’s disturbingly half-true picture of herself as a fickle, insincere, easy-going creature evading all issues, to that of the kind of young woman Florence would approve: mature, calculating, making terms with circumstance, planning to outwit it, playing for security. Facing back to Florence’s demand for worry, she hit out:

‘There’s nothing, really, to worry about. I mean to worry about completely, or we should all be mad.’

Florence was pulled up, puzzled. A little ashamed of her attack, a little frightened and ready to believe one’s profanity accountable by something she did not understand and ought, perhaps, to respect.

‘Well, let’s go, Miriam darling. It’s past ten, already.’

Stretching her arms, punching, with closed fists, right and left into the unresisting air, she let Grace’s phrase, for her so meaningless with its accent on the passage of time, go to and fro in her mind, erasing the features of the strange collision with an unknown Florence.

‘Come along, my sweet,’ murmured Grace, at her side now, urgent and responsible.

‘Had we any napkin rings?’ she inquired, to gain a moment for greeting, in solitude whatever lay ahead of this week of small comings and goings.

‘Here’s yours, Miriam.’ Florence spoke hurriedly and was handing the veined and shiny bone ring with grave, eager glance, as if it were valuable property she delighted to find and restore. ‘Ought we to take umbrellas?’ On the last word her voice was again husky, but this time with the huskiness of her irritable breathing apparatus, stirred by mirth unsure of itself but ready, if encouraged, to break forth into the asthmatic laughter that would fill her eyes with tears.

‘Is Florence quite insane?’ demanded Miriam, glaring into space and listening, her guilty heart throbbing its tribute to a Florence content to be puzzled, willing to withdraw her condemnation and credit it to her own insufficiency, for the laughter belonging to the ancient jest brought forth as a peace-offering.