Читать книгу Storm in a Teacup - Eden Phillpotts - Страница 5

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From Dene a mighty hill climbs southward to Cornworthy village. “The Corkscrew” it is called, and men merciful to their beasts choose a longer and more gradual ascent. But not a few of the workers engaged at the paper mill tramped this zig-zag steep six days out of every seven, and among these Lydia Trivett, the mother of Medora, could boast twenty years of regular perambulation. Only on rare occasions, when “Corkscrew” was coated with ice, did she take the long detour by the little lake above the works.

She had lived at Ashprington until her husband died; then she and her daughter came to live with her brother, Thomas Dolbear, of Priory Farm. He was a bachelor then; but at forty he wedded; and now Medora had her own home, while her mother still dwelt with Mr. Dolbear, his wife, Mary, and their increasing family.

Lydia was a little brisk woman of fifty—the mistress of the rag house at the mills. She was still comely and trim, for hard work agreed with her. A very feminine air marked her, and Medora had won her good looks from her mother, though not her affectation, for Mrs. Trivett was a straightforward and unassuming soul. She had much to pride herself upon, but never claimed credit in any direction.

Priory Farm stood under a great slope of orchard and meadow, upon the crown of which the priory ruins ascended. The farm was at the bottom of a hill, and immediately opposite climbed the solitary street of Cornworthy village capped by the church. The church and the old Cistercean ruin looked across the dip in the land at each other.

Now, on Sunday afternoon, Lydia, at the garden gate of her brother’s house, started off six children to Sunday school. Five were girls and one was a boy. They ranged from twelve years old to three; while at home a two year old baby—another girl—remained with her mother. Mary Dolbear expected her tenth child during the coming spring. Two had died in infancy. She was an inert, genial mass of a woman, who lived only for her children and the business of maternity. Her husband worshipped her and they increased and multiplied proudly. Their house, but for Lydia’s sleepless ministrations, would have been a pigstye. They were indifferent to dirt and chose to make all things subservient to the demands of their children.

“The cradle rules the world, so enough said,” was Tom Dolbear’s argument when people protested at the chaos in which he lived. He was a stout man with a fat, boyish face, scanty, sandy hair and a narrow forehead, always wrinkled by reason of the weakness of his eyes. He had a smile like a baby and was indeed a very childish man; but he knew his business and made his farm suffice for his family needs.

In this house Lydia’s own room was an oasis in a wilderness. There one found calm, order, cleanliness, distinction. She trusted nobody in it but herself and always locked the door when she left for work.

It was regarded as a sacred room, for both Mary and her husband reverenced Lydia and blessed the Providence that had sent her to them. They treated her with the greatest respect, always gave way to her and recognised very acutely the vital force she represented in the inert and sprawling domesticity of their establishment. Once, when an idea was whispered that Tom’s sister might leave him, Mary fell absolutely ill and refused to eat and drink until she changed her mind and promised to stay.

To do them justice they never took Lydia for granted. Their gratitude flowed in a steady stream. They gave her all credit and all admiration, and went their philoprogenitive way with light hearts.

Now Mrs. Trivett watched her nieces and nephew march together in their Sunday best along the way to Sunday school. Then she was about to shut the wicket and return up the garden path, when a man appeared on the high road and a fellow worker at the Mill accosted her.

Nicholas Pinhey was a finisher; that is to say the paper passed through his hands last before it left the works. With the multifarious processes of its creation he had nothing to do; but every finished sheet and stack of sheets touched his fingers before it entered the world, and he was well skilled in the exacting duties of his own department.

He was a thin, prim bachelor of sixty—a man of nice habits and finicking mind. There was much of the old maid in him, too, and he gossiped inordinately, but never unkindly. He knew the life history, family interests and private ambitions of everybody in the Mill. He smelt mystery where none existed and much feared the modern movements and threats of labour. Especially was he doubtful of Jordan Kellock and regarded him as a dangerous and too progressive spirit.

His interest in other people’s affairs now appeared; for he had come to see Lydia; he had climbed “The Corkscrew” on Sunday from most altruistic motives.

“The better the day the better the deed,” he said. “I’ve walked over for a cup of tea and a talk, because a little bird’s told me something I don’t much like, Mrs. Trivett, and it concerns you in a manner of speaking.”

“You always keep to the point, Mr. Pinhey; and I dare say I know what the point is for that matter. Come in. We can talk very well, because we shall be alone in a minute.”

Nicholas followed her into the parlour, a room of good size on the left hand side of the entrance. They surprised Mrs. Dolbear nodding beside the fire. She liked Mr. Pinhey, but she was glad of the excuse to leave them and retire to her own room.

She shook hands with the visitor, who hoped she found herself as well as could be expected.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I take these things from whence they come. I feel no fear except in one particular.”

“I won’t believe it,” he declared. “You’ve got the courage to fight lions and the faith to move mountains. We all know that. If the women in general would come to the business of the next generation with your fearless nature, we might hear less about the decrease of the population.”

“It’s not my part I trouble about; it’s the Lord’s,” explained Mrs. Dolbear. “If I have another girl, it’ll break Tom’s heart. Six maids and one boy is the record so far, though of the two we’ve buried, one was a boy. And such is my perfect trust in myself, if I could choose what I want from the Almighty at this moment, it would be two men children.”

“Magnificent!” said Mr. Pinhey.

“I take Lydia to witness I speak no more than the truth,” replied the matron. “But these things are out of our keeping, though Tom read in a paper some time since a remarkable verdict, that if a woman with child ate enough green stuff, she might count on a boy.”

“That’s a painful subject,” said Lydia, “and you’d better not talk about it, Polly.”

“It was painful at the time,” admitted Mrs. Dolbear, “because Tom’s one of they hopeful men, who will always jump at a new thing like a trout jumps at a fly. And what was the result? From the moment he hit on that cussed paper, he fed me more like a cow than a creature with a soul. ’Twas green stuff morning, noon and night—lettuce and spinach—which I hate any time—and broccoli and turnip tops and spring onions and cauliflower and Lord knows what mess till I rebelled and defied the man. I didn’t lose my temper; but I said, calm and slow, ‘Tom,’ I said, ‘if you don’t want me to be brought to a bed of cabbage next September, stop it. God’s my judge,’ I said, ‘I won’t let down another herb of the field. I want red meat,’ I told him, ‘or else I won’t be responsible.’ He argued for it, but I had my way and Lydia upheld me.”

“And what was the result in the family line if I may venture to ask?” inquired Mr. Pinhey.

“The result in the family line was Jane Ethel,” answered Mrs. Dolbear; “and where is Jane Ethel now, Lydia?”

“In her little grave,” answered Mrs. Trivett.

Her sister-in-law immediately began to weep.

“Don’t you cry, my dear, it wasn’t your fault. The poor baby was born with death in her eyes, as I always said.”

Mrs. Dolbear sighed and moved ponderously across the room. She was short and broad with a touzled head of golden hair and a colourless face. But her smile was beautiful and her teeth perfect.

“I dare say you’ll want to talk before tea,” she suggested; “and I’ll go and have a bit of a sleep. I always say, ‘where there’s sleep, there’s hope.’ And I want more than most people, and I can take it any time in the twenty-four hours of the clock.”

She waddled away and Mrs. Trivett explained.

“Polly’s a proper wonder for sleep. It’s grown into a habit. She’ll call out for a nap at the most unseasonable moments. She’ll curl up anywhere and go off. We shan’t see her again till supper I shouldn’t wonder. Sit you down and tell me what you come for.”

“The work you must do in this house!” said Mr. Pinhey.

“I like work and this is my home.”

“A home I suppose, but not what I should call an abiding place,” hazarded the man.

“I don’t want no abiding place, because we know, if we’re Christians, that there’s no abiding place this side of the grave.”

“You take it in your usual high spirit. And now—you’ll forgive me if I’m personal, Mrs. Trivett. You know the man that speaks.”

“You want to better something I’m sure, else you wouldn’t be here.”

“It is just as you say: I want to better something. We bachelors look out on life from our lonely towers, so to say, and we get a bird’s eye view of the people; and if we see a thing not all it might be, ’tis our duty in my opinion to try and set it right. And to be quite frank and in all friendship, I’m very much afraid your Medora and her husband ain’t heart and soul together as they should be. If I’m wrong, then thank God and enough said. But am I wrong?”

Mrs. Trivett considered some moments before answering. Then she replied:

“No, Nicholas Pinhey, you’re not wrong, and I wish I could say you were. You have seen what’s true; but I wouldn’t say the mischief was deep yet. It may be in our power to nip it in the bud.”

“You grant it’s true, and that excuses me for touching it. I know my manners I hope, and to anybody else I wouldn’t have come; but you’re different, and if I can prevail upon you to handle Medora, I shall feel I have done all I can do, or have a right to do. In these delicate cases, the thing is to know where the fault lies. And most times it’s with the man, no doubt.”

“I don’t know about that. It isn’t this time anyway.”

Mr. Pinhey was astonished.

“Would you mean to say you see your own daughter unfavourable?” he asked.

“You must know the right of a thing if you want to do any good,” declared Lydia. “Half the failure to right wrong so far as I can see, is owing to a muddled view of what the wrong is. I’ve hung back about this till I could see it clear, and I won’t say I do see it clear yet.”

“I speak as a bachelor,” repeated Mr. Pinhey, “and therefore with reserve and caution. And if you—the mother of one of the parties—don’t feel you can safely take a hand, it certainly isn’t for anybody else to try.”

“As a matter of fact, I was going to do something this very day. My daughter’s coming to tea and I mean to ask her what the matter is. She’s not prone to be exactly straight, is Medora, but seeing I want nothing but her good, I hope she’ll be frank with me.”

The man felt mildly surprised to hear a mother criticise her daughter so frankly.

“I thought a child could do no wrong in its parents’ eyes,” he said.

“Depends on the parent, Mr. Pinhey. If you want to help your child, ’tis no use beginning by taking that line. If we can do wrong, as God knows we can, so can our children, and it’s a vain sort of love to suppose they’re perfect. Medora’s got a great many good qualities, but, like other pretty girls, she’s handicapped here and there. A right down pretty girl don’t know she’s born most times, because everybody in trousers bows down before her and helps to shut reality out of her life.”

“It’s the same with money,” surmised Nicholas. “Let a young person have money and they look at the world through tinted glasses. The truth’s hidden from them, and some such go to their graves and never know truth, while others, owing to chance, lose the stuff that stands between them and reality and have a very painful wakening. But as to beauty—you was a woman to the full as fair as your girl—yet look how you weathered the storm.”

“No,” answered Lydia, “I never had Medora’s looks. In her case life’s been too smooth and easy if anything. She had a comfortable home with Tom here after her father died; and then came along a choice of two good men to wed her and the admiration of a dozen others. She was in two minds between Kellock and Dingle for a while; but her luck held and she took the right one.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Yes—for Medora. That’s not to say that Jordan Kellock isn’t a cleverer chap than my son-in-law. Of course he is. He’s got more mind and more sight. He has ideas about labour and a great gift of determination; and he’s ambitious. He’ll go a long way further than Ned. But against that you can set Ned’s unshakable good temper and light heart. It’s grander for a man to have a heavy heart than a light, when he looks out at the world; but they heavy-hearted, earnest men, who want to help to set life right, call for a different fashion of wife from Medora. If such men wed, they should seek women in their own pattern—the earnest—deadly earnest sort—who don’t think of themselves, or their clothes, or their looks, or their comforts. They should find their helpmates in a kind of female that’s rare still, though they grow commoner. And Medora ain’t that sort, and if she’d took Kellock she’d have been no great use to him and he’d have been no lasting use to her.”

“Dear me!” murmured Mr. Pinhey, “how you look into things.”

“Ned’s all right,” continued Mrs. Trivett. “He’s all right, for Medora; and she ought to be all right for him. He loves her with all his heart and, in a word, she doesn’t know her luck. That’s what I must try and show her if I can. It’s just a sort of general discontent about nothing in particular. You can’t have it both ways. Ned’s easy and likes a bit of fun. He’s a good workman—in fact above the average, or he wouldn’t be where he is. As a beaterman you won’t find his better in any paper mill; but it ends there. He does his work and he’s reached his limit. And away from work, he’s just a schoolboy from his task. He’s light hearted and ought to be happy; and if she is not, he’ll worry a great deal. But he won’t know what’s the matter, any more than Medora herself.”

Mr. Pinhey’s conventional mind proceeded in its natural groove.

“To say it delicately, perhaps if a child was to come along it would smooth out the crumpled rose-leaves,” he suggested.

“You might think so; but it isn’t that. They both agree there. They don’t like children and don’t want them.”

“Well, I should be the last to blame them, I’m sure. It may not be true to nature, but it’s true to truth, that the young married couples ain’t so keen about families as they used to be.”

“Nature’s at odds with a good deal we do,” answered Lydia. “Time was when a quiver full of young ones seemed good to the people. But education has changed all that. There’s selfishness in shirking a family no doubt; but there’s also sense. And the better the education grows, the shorter the families will.”

They talked on until Medora herself arrived and the children came back from Sunday school. Then Mrs. Trivett and a maid prepared the tea and Mr. Pinhey, against his inclination, shared the meal. He noticed that Medora was kind to the little ones, but not enthusiastic about them. His own instincts made him shrink before so much happy and hungry youth feeding heartily. The children scattered crumbs and seemed to create an atmosphere of jam and a general stickiness around them. They also made a great deal of noise.

Their mother did not appear and when Nicholas asked for their father, the eldest daughter told him that Mr. Dolbear was gone out for the day with his dogs and a ferret.

He whispered under his breath, “Ferreting on the Sabbath!”

After tea he took leave and returned home. Then Medora and her mother went into the orchard with the children, and Mrs. Trivett, wasting no words, asked her daughter what was vexing her.

“Say as much or as little as you please, my dear—nothing if I can’t help you. But perhaps I can. It looks as though everybody but Ned sees there’s something on your mind. Can’t you tell me what it is—or better still, tell him?”

Medora flushed.

“There’s nothing the matter that can be helped,” she said. “Ned can’t help being himself, I suppose, and if anybody’s talking, they ought to be ashamed. It’s a cowardly, mean thing.”

“It’s not cowardly, or mean to want to put a wrong right and make people better content. But nobody wants to interfere between husband and wife, and the people are very fond of you both as you well know. You say ‘Ned can’t help being himself.’ Begin there, then. You’ve been married a year now and you didn’t marry in haste either. He was what he is before you took him. He hasn’t changed.”

“I didn’t think he was such a fool, if you must know,” said Medora.

“What d’you mean by a fool?”

“Simple—like a dog. There’s nothing to Ned. Other men have character and secrets and a bit up their sleeve. They count, and people know they ain’t seeing the inside of them. Ned’s got no inside. He’s a boy. I thought I’d married a man and I’ve married a great boy. I’m only telling you this, mind. I’m a good wife enough; but I’m not a brainless one and I can’t help comparing my husband to other men.”

“You always compare everything you’ve got to what others have got,” answered Lydia. “When you was a tiny child, you’d love your toys till you saw the toys of other children. Then you’d grow discontent. At school, if you took a prize, it was poisoned, because some other girl had got a prettier book than you; and everybody else’s garden was nicer than ours; and everybody else had better furniture in their houses and better pictures on their walls and better clothes on their backs. And now it’s your husband that isn’t in it with other people’s husbands. Perhaps you’ll tell me, Medora, what husbands round about can beat Ned for sense and cheerfulness and an easy mind and the other things that go to make a home comfortable.”

“Everybody isn’t married,” answered Medora. “I don’t look round and compare Ned to other husbands. I’ve got something better to do. But I can’t help seeing with all his good nature and the rest of it that he’s a slight man—not a sort for woman to repose upon as something with quicker wits—stronger, more masterful than herself.”

“Like who?” asked Mrs. Trivett.

“Well—I’m only speaking to you, mother—take yesterday. Jordan Kellock asked us to go for a row in the gamekeeper’s boat and see the river—me and Ned. And we went; and how could I help seeing that Jordan had the brains? Nothing he said, for he’s a good friend and above smallness; but while Ned chattered and laughed and made a noise, there was Jordan, pleasant and all that; but you felt behind was strength of character and a mind working and thinking more than it said; while my husband was saying more than he thinks. And I hate to hear him chatter and then, when he’s challenged, climb down and say he sees he was wrong.”

“You’ve got to take the rough with the smooth in human nature, Medora. And it’s a bit staggering to hear you mention Kellock, of all men, seeing the circumstances. If you feel like that, why didn’t you take Kellock when you could?”

Medora’s reply caused her mother consternation.

“God knows why I didn’t,” she said.

The elder gave a little gasp and did not answer.

“It’s wrong when you have to correct your husband in front of another man,” continued Medora; “but I’ve got my self respect I believe—so far—and I won’t let Ned say foolish things before people and let others think I’m agreeing with him. And if I’ve spoken sharp when men or women at the works heard me, Ned’s got himself to thank for it. Anyway Jordan knows I’m not without brains, and I’m not going to pretend I am. I laughed at Ned in the boat yesterday, and he said after that he didn’t mind my laughing at him, but he wouldn’t have it before people.”

Mrs. Trivett left the main issue as a subject too big for the moment.

“You ought not to laugh at him before Mr. Kellock,” she said; “because he’s one of them serious-minded men who don’t understand laughter. I’ve seen a man say things in a light mood that had no sting in them really, yet one of the humourless sort, listening, didn’t see it was said for fun, and reported it after and made trouble. Kellock’s a solemn man and would misread it if you scored off Ned, or said some flashy thing that meant nought in truth. You know what I mean.”

They had strolled to the top of the orchard now, where the children were playing in the Priory ruin. And here at dusk they parted.

“We’ll leave it till we can have another talk,” said Lydia; “seemingly there’s more to talk about than I thought. Be patient as well as proud, Medora. And don’t feel so troubled about Ned that you haven’t got no spare time to look into your own heart and see if you’re satisfied with yourself. Because very often in my experience, when we’re seeing misfortune and blaming other people, if we look at home, we’ll find the source of the trouble lies with ourselves and not them.”