Читать книгу The Hillman - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 5

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Louise awoke the next morning filled with a curious sense of buoyant expectancy. The sunshine was pouring into the room, brightening up its most somber corners. It lay across the quilt of her bed, and seemed to bring out the perfume of lavender from the pillow on which her head reposed.

Aline, hearing her mistress stir, hastened at once to the bedside.

"Good morning, madame!"

Louise sat up and looked around her, with her hands clasped about her knees.

"Tell me everything, Aline," she said. "Have you my breakfast there? And what time is it?"

"It is half-past nine, madame," Aline replied, "and your breakfast is here. The old imbecile from the kitchen has just brought it up."

Louise looked approvingly at the breakfast tray, with the home-made bread and deep-yellow butter, the brown eggs and clear honey. The smell of the coffee was aromatic. She breathed a little sigh of content.

"How delicious everything looks!" she exclaimed.

"The home-made things are well enough in their way, madame," Aline agreed, "but I have never known a household so strange and disagreeable. That M. Jennings, who calls himself the butler—he is a person unspeakable, a savage!"

Louise's eyes twinkled.

"I don't think they are fond of women in this household, Aline," she remarked. "Tell me, have you seen Charles?"

"Charles has gone to the nearest blacksmith's forge to get something made for the car, madame," Aline replied. "He asked me to say that he was afraid he would not be ready to start before midday."

"That does not matter," Louise declared, as she settled down to her breakfast. "I do not care how long it is before he is ready. I should love to spend a month here!"

Aline held up her hands. She was speechless. Her mistress laughed at her consternation.

"Well," she continued, "there is no fear of their asking us for a month, or for an hour longer than they can help. The elder Mr. Strangewey, it seems, has the strongest objection to our sex. There is not a woman servant in the house, is there?"

"Not one, madame," Aline replied. "I have never been in a household conducted in such a manner. It is like the kitchen of a monastery. The terrible Jennings is speechless. If one addresses him, he only mumbles. The sound of my skirts, or my footstep on the stone floor, makes him shiver. He is worse, one would imagine, than his master."

Louise ate and drank reflectively.

"It is the queerest household one could possibly stumble upon," she remarked. "The young Mr. Strangewey—he seems different, but he falls in with his brother's ways."

Aline glanced at herself in the mirror. She was just out of her mistress's range of vision, and she made a little grimace at her reflection.

"I met him twice this morning in the hall," she remarked. "He wished me good morning the first time. The second time he did not speak. He did not seem to see me."

Louise finished her breakfast and strolled presently to the window. She gave a little sigh of pleasure as she looked out.

"But, Aline," she exclaimed, "how exquisite!"

The maid glanced over her shoulder and went on preparing her mistress's clothes.

"It is as madame finds it," she replied. "For myself, I like the country for fête days and holidays only, and even then I like to find plenty of people there."

Louise heard nothing. She was gazing eagerly out of the casement-window. Immediately below was a grass-grown orchard which stretched upward, at a precipitous angle, toward a belt of freshly plowed field; beyond, a little chain of rocky hills, sheer overhead. The trees were pink and white with blossom; the petals lay about upon the ground like drifted snowflakes. Here and there yellow jonquils were growing among the long grass. A waft of perfume stole into the room through the window which she had opened.

"Fill my bath quickly, Aline," Louise ordered. "I must go out. I want to see whether it is really as beautiful as it looks."

Aline dressed her mistress in silence. It was not until she had finished lacing her shoes that she spoke another word. Then, suddenly, she stopped short in the act of crossing the room. Her eyes had happened to fall upon the emblazoned genealogical record. A little exclamation escaped her. She swung round toward her mistress, and for once there was animation in her face.

"But, madame," she exclaimed, "I have remembered! The name Strangewey—you see it there—it was in our minds all the time that we had seen or heard of it quite lately. Don't you remember—"

"Yes, yes!" Louise interrupted. "I know it reminds me of something, but of what?"

"Yesterday morning," Aline continued, "it was you madame, who read it out while you took your coffee. You spoke of the good fortune of some farmer in the north of England to whom a relative in Australia had left a great fortune—hundreds and thousands of pounds. The name was Strangewey, the same as that. I remember it now."

She pointed once more to the family tree. Louise sat for a moment with parted lips.

"You are quite right, Aline. I remember it all perfectly now. I wonder whether it could possibly be either of these two men!"

Aline shook her head doubtfully.

"It would be unbelievable, madame," she decided. "Could any sane human creatures live here, with no company but the sheep and the cows, if they had money—money to live in the cities, to buy pleasures, to be happy? Unbelievable, madame!"

Louise remained standing before the window. She was watching the blossom-laden boughs of one of the apple trees bending and swaying in the fresh morning breeze—watching the restless shadows which came and went upon the grass beneath.

"That is just your point of view, Aline," she murmured; "but happiness—well, you would not understand. They are strange men, these two. The young one is different now, but as he grows older he will be like his brother. He will live a very simple and honorable life. He will be—what is it they call it?—a county magistrate, chairman of many things, a judge at agricultural shows. When he dies, he will be buried up in that windy little churchyard, and people will come from a long way off to say how good he was. My hat, quickly, Aline! If I am not in that orchard in five minutes I shall be miserable!"

Louise found her way without difficulty across a cobbled yard, through a postern gate set in a red-brick wall, into the orchard. Very slowly, and with her head turned upward toward the trees, she made her way toward the boundary wall. Once, with a little exclamation of pleasure, she drew down a bough of the soft, cool blossom and pressed it against her cheek. She stopped for a moment or two to examine the contents of a row of chicken-coops, and at every few steps she turned around to face the breeze which came sweeping across the moorland from the other side of the house.

Arrived at the farther end of the orchard, she came to a gate, against which she rested for a moment, leaning her arms upon the topmost bar. Before her was the little belt of plowed earth, the fresh, pungent odor of which was a new thing to her; a little way to the right, the rolling moorland, starred with clumps of gorse; in front, across the field on the other side of the gray stone wall, the rock-strewn hills. The sky—unusually blue it seemed to her, and dotted all over with little masses of fleecy, white clouds—seemed somehow lower and nearer; or was she, perhaps higher up?

She lingered there, absolutely bewildered by the rapid growth in her brain and senses of what surely must be some newly kindled faculty of appreciation. There was a beauty in the world which she had not felt before.

She turned her head almost lazily at the sound of a man's voice. A team of horses, straining at a plow, were coming round the bend of the field, and by their side, talking to the laborer who guided them, was John Strangewey. She watched him as he came into sight up the steep rise. Against the empty background, he seemed to lose nothing of the size and strength that had impressed her on the previous night. He was bareheaded, and she noticed for the first time that his closely cropped fair hair was inclined to curl a little near the ears.

He walked in step with the plowman by his side, but without any of the laborer's mechanical plod—with a spring in his footsteps, indeed, as if his life and thoughts were full of joyous things. He was wearing black-and-white tweed clothes, a little shabby but well-fitting; breeches and gaiters; thick boots, plentifully caked now with mud. He was pointing with his stick along the furrow, so absorbed in the instructions he was giving that he was almost opposite the gate before he was aware of her presence. He promptly abandoned his task and approached her.

"Good morning!" he called out.

She waved her hand.

"Good morning!"

"You have slept well?" he asked.

"Better, I think, than ever before in my life," she answered. "Differently, at any rate. And such an awakening!"

He looked at her, a little puzzled. The glow upon her face and the sunlight upon her brown hair kept him silent. He was content to look at her and wonder.

"Tell me," she demanded impetuously, "is this a little corner of fairy-land that you have found? Does the sun always shine like this? Does the earth always smell as sweetly, and are your trees always in blossom? Does your wind always taste as if God had breathed the elixir of life into it?"

He turned around to follow the sweep of her eyes. Something of the same glow seemed to rest for a moment upon his face.

"It is good," he said, "to find what you love so much appreciated by some one else."

They stood together in a silence almost curiously protracted. Then the plowman passed again with his team of horses, and John called out some instructions to him. She followed him down to earth.

"Tell me, Mr. Strangewey," she inquired, "where are your farm-buildings?"

"Come and I will show you," he answered, opening the gate to let her through. "Keep close to the hedge until we come to the end of the plow; and then—but no, I won't anticipate. This way!"

She walked by his side, conscious every now and then of his frankly admiring eyes as he looked down at her. She herself felt all the joy of a woman of the world imbibing a new experience. She did not even glance toward the dismantled motor in the barn which they passed.

"I am glad," he remarked presently, "that you look upon us more charitably than your maid."

"Aline is a good girl," Louise said, smiling, "but hot-water taps and electric lights are more to her than sunshine and hills. Do you know," she went on, "I feel like a child being led through an undiscovered country, a land of real adventures. Which way are we going, and what are we going to see? Tell me, please!"

"Wait," he begged. "It is just a queer little corner among the hills, that is all."

They reached the end of the plowed field, and, passing through a gate, turned abruptly to the left and began to climb a narrow path which bordered the boundary wall, and which became steeper every moment. As they ascended, the orchard and the long, low house on the other side seemed to lie almost at their feet. The road and the open moorland beyond, stretching to the encircling hills, came more clearly into sight with every backward glance. Louise paused at last, breathless.

"I must sit down," she insisted. "It is too beautiful to hurry over."

"It is only a few steps farther," he told her, holding out his hand; "just to where the path winds its way round the hill there. But perhaps you are tired?"

"On the contrary," she assured him, "I never felt so vigorous in my life. All the exercise I take, as a rule, is in Kensington Gardens; and look!" She pointed downward to her absurd little shoes, and held out her hand, "You will have to help me," she pleaded.

The last few steps were, indeed, almost precipitous. Fragments of rock, protruding through the grass and bushes, served as steps. John moved on a little ahead and pulled her easily up. Even the slight tightening of his fingers seemed to raise her from her feet. She looked at him wonderingly.

"How strong you are!"

"A matter of weight," he answered, smiling. "You are like a feather. You walk as lightly as the fairies who come out on midsummer night's eve and dance in circles around the gorse-bushes there."

"Is it the home of the fairies you are taking me to?" she asked. "If you have discovered that, no wonder you find us ordinary women outside your lives!"

He laughed.

"There are no fairies where we are going," he assured her.

They were on a rough-made road now, which turned abruptly to the right a few yards ahead, skirting the side of a deep gorge. They took a few steps further, and Louise stopped short with a cry of wonder.

Around the abrupt corner an entirely new perspective was revealed—a little hamlet, built on a shoulder of the mountains; and on the right, below a steep descent, a wide and sunny valley. It was like a tiny world of its own, hidden in the bosom of the hills. There was a long line of farm-buildings, built of gray stone and roofed with red tiles; there were fifteen or twenty stacks; a quaint, white-washed house of considerable size, almost covered on the southward side with creepers; a row of cottages, and a gray-walled enclosure—stretching with its white tombstones to the very brink of the descent—in the midst of which was an ancient church, in ruins at the further end, partly rebuilt with the stones of the hillside.

Louise looked around her, silent with wonder. A couple of sheep-dogs had rushed out from the farmhouse and were fawning around her companion. In the background a gray-bearded shepherd, with Scottish plaid thrown over his shoulder, raised his hat.

"It isn't real, is it?" she asked, clinging for a moment to John Strangewey's arm.

He patted one of the dogs and smiled down at her.

"Why not? William Elwick there is a very real shepherd, I can assure you. He has sat on these hills for the last sixty-eight years."

She looked at the old man almost with awe.

"It is like the Bible!" she murmured. "Fancy the sunrises he must have seen, and the sunsets! The coming and the fading of the stars, the spring days, the music of the winds in these hollow places, booming to him in the night-time! I want to talk to him. May I?"

He shook his head. The old man was already shambling off.

"Better not," he advised. "You would be disappointed, for William has the family weakness—he cannot bear the sight of a woman. You see, he is pretending now that there is something wrong with the hill flock. You asked where the land was that we tilled. Now look down. Hold my arm if you feel giddy."

She followed the wave of his ash stick. The valley sheer below them, and the lower hills, on both sides, were parceled out into fields, enclosed within stone walls, reminding her, from the height at which they stood, of nothing so much as the quilt upon her bed.

"That's where all our pasture is," he told her, "and our arable land. We grow a great deal of corn in the dip there. All the rest of the hillside, and the moorlands, of course, are fit for nothing but grazing; but there are eleven hundred acres down there from which we can raise almost anything we choose."

Her eyes swept this strange tract of country backward and forward. She saw the men like specks in the fields, the cows grazing in the pasture like toy animals. Then she turned and looked at the neat row of stacks and the square of farm-buildings.

"I am trying hard to realize that you are a farmer and that this is your life," she said.

He swung open the wooden gate of the churchyard, by which they were standing. There was a row of graves on either side of the prim path.

"Suppose," he suggested, "you tell me about yourself now—about your own life."

The hills parted suddenly as she stood there looking southward. Through the chasm she seemed to see very clearly the things beyond. Her own life, her own world, spread itself out—a world of easy triumphs, of throbbing emotions always swiftly ministered to, always leaving the same dull sensation of discontent; a world in which the pathways were broad and smooth, but in which the end seemed always the same; a world of receding beauties and mocking desires. The faces of her friends were there—men and women, brilliant, her intellectual compeers, a little tired, offering always the same gifts, the same homage.

"My life, and the world in which I live, seem far away just now," she said quietly. "I think that it is doing me good to have a rest from them. Go on talking to me about yourself, please."

He smiled. He was just a little disappointed.

"We shall very soon reach the end of all that I have to tell you," he remarked. "Still, if there is anything you would like to know—"

"Who were these men and women who have lived and died here?" she interrupted, with a little wave of her hand toward the graves.

"All our own people," he told her; "laborers, shepherds, tenant-farmers, domestic servants. Our clergyman comes from the village on the other side of that hill. He rides here every Sunday on a pony which we have to provide for him."

She studied the names upon the tombstones, spelling them out slowly.

"The married people," he went on, "are buried on the south side; the single ones and children are nearer the wall. Tell me," he asked, after a moment's hesitation, "are you married or single?"

She gave a little start. The abruptness of the question, the keen, steadfast gaze of his compelling eyes, seemed for a moment to paralyze both her nerves and her voice. Again the hills rolled open, but this time it was her own life only that she saw, her own life, and one man's face which she seemed to see looking at her from some immeasurable distance, waiting, yet drawing her closer toward him, closer and closer till their hands met.

She was terrified at this unexpected tumult of emotion. It was as if some one had suddenly drawn away one of the stones from the foundation of her life. She found herself repeating the words on the tombstone facing her: