Читать книгу Storm in a Teacup - Eden Phillpotts - Страница 8

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On a Saturday afternoon full of sunshine was presented the rich but simple picture of Ashprington village under conditions of autumn. The hamlet lay on a slope under a hillcrest and through it fell steep paths by meadow and orchard past the cottages to Bow Bridge far distant in the vale.

Crowning Ashprington rose the church-tower of uniform grey, battlemented, with a great poplar standing on its right, and a yew tree throwing shadow upon the western porch. Then fell the land abruptly, and the whole foreground was filled with an apple orchard, that rippled to the churchyard walls and spread a rich cloth of scarlet and gold around them.

At this hour the tree-foundered village seemed oppressed and smothered with falling leaves. Its over-abundant timber mastered the place and flung down foliage in such immense masses that the roads and alleys, drinking fountain, little gardens subtending the street and the roofs of the cottages were all choked with them.

But it was a dry and joyous hour, the latter rains had yet to fall and submerge Ashprington in mud and decay. Virginian creeper flamed on the house fronts and dahlias, michaelmas daisies and chrysanthemums still flaunted in the gardens.

Through this cheerful scene came Miss Finch and Medora Dingle with their baskets to pick blackberries. Medora’s home was a stone’s throw from the church and they now crossed the churchyard to enter certain fields beyond it.

The well-kept sward spread level with the arms of the apple trees over the wall, for the ground fell sharply from the graveyard to the orchard below; and now, at the limits of the burial place, cider apples fell on the graves and spattered their mounds and flat surfaces with gold.

Daisy stopped at a tomb and removed a windfall of fruit from the broken marble chips that covered it.

“That’s old Mr. Kellock,” she said. “He wouldn’t like them there, would he—such a thrifty old man as he was.”

“And such a tidy one,” added Medora.

“He was Mr. Jordan’s grandfather and left him all his money I believe,” continued Daisy; but her friend knew more about that matter than she did.

“He hadn’t anything to leave over and above his cottage. That was left to Jordan Kellock and he sold it, not wanting to be troubled with house property. It wasn’t worth much.”

They passed through the shining fruit trees and stopped to admire them; then Medora, since Mr. Kellock had been mentioned, felt she might return to that subject.

“I often wonder what he’ll do,” she said. “You feel that he won’t be content to stop at Dene all his life.”

“Why not?” asked Daisy. “He’s got proper good money and is a big man here.”

“He’d be a big man anywhere,” answered Medora. “It isn’t only a matter of wages with him,” she added. “Of course we know as a vatman he’s one of the best in England, and makes as good paper as there is in the world, I suppose. But he’s got more to him than that, Daisy. He’s not content with being prosperous and well-thought of. He thinks great thoughts and has great ambitions. I dare say the people here don’t see that, for he’s a cut above the most of them.”

“He is,” admitted Daisy. “There’s something, I don’t know what about him; but it makes me uncomfortable with him.”

“That’s just his greatness acting on you,” explained Medora. “I felt like that once too, but he did me the kindness to explain himself.”

“We all know he would have given all he’d got to marry you.”

“Don’t speak about that. At any rate I understand him better than any other woman—or man for that matter. And though it wasn’t to be, I understand him still; and I know he’s out for big things sooner or later. He’ll make a mark in the world of labour some day.”

Daisy looked with admiration at Medora.

“I’m sure I shouldn’t know what to answer if he talked to me about such deep subjects,” she said. “But then you’re married, and you’ve always got a man in the house to help your brain power.”

Medora, secretly nettled at the preposterous suggestion of Ned enlarging her mental outlook, turned to the blackberries and felt a helpless disappointment that even her friend should guess so little of her difficulties and troubles. For now she began day by day to weave round herself and her married life a hollow and false tissue of imaginary tribulations and trials supposed to be sprung from her union with Edward Dingle. Medora set about a sort of histrionics inspired by nothing but her own vague unrest and her own amazing ignorance of reality. Even to herself she could not explain this futile experiment in emotions, yet she persisted and presently, finding certain of her circle were deceived, and even hearing words of pity on a woman’s lips, she deluded herself as to the truth of her gathering misfortunes and assured her conscience that the disaster came from without and not within. For at first, in the perpetration of this stupid pose, conscience pricked before Ned’s puzzled eyes; but presently, when a silly woman told Medora that she was a martyr, this nonsense of her own brewing seemed indeed the bitter drink life had set to her lips. She echoed and amplified the notion of martyrdom. It was just what she wanted to excuse her own folly to herself. From accepting the idea, she soon began to credit it. To win the full flavour of the make-believe this was necessary. Then developed the spectacle of a masquerading woman, herself creating the atmosphere in which she desired her world to see her suffer and shine.

As all who acquire a taste for martyrdom, Medora proved amazingly ingenious in plaiting the scourges and selecting the members of the inquisition from her own household. She had reached a preliminary stage in this weak-minded pastime and enjoyed it exceedingly. Ned was much mystified; but the attitude of Ned mattered little. Her real object and the goal of the game lay far beyond Ned. Whereunto all this would lead, Medora did not know; and she told herself that she did not care.

The day was to add a considerable scene to her unfolding drama, though Mrs. Dingle did not guess it when she set out. She had no premonition of the interesting adventure that awaited her when presently she drifted, by hedgerows and lanes, somewhat westward of Ashprington, upon the high road to Totnes.

They were filling their baskets, and for a time Medora had forgotten all about herself and was taking a healthy interest in Daisy’s suspicions concerning a young man who worked at Dene Mill, when a bicycle bell warned them and there flashed along upon his way home, Jordan Kellock.

He stopped and they showed him their blackberries and invited him to help himself. Then, together they walked homeward and Medora became concerned to part from Daisy if possible. An opportunity occurred ere long and when the elder pointed out that Miss Finch would gain half a mile by a short cut, her friend took the hint.

“My basket’s heavy and you’ve got company, so I’ll go this way home,” said Daisy with great tact. Then she bade them good-bye and descended a steep lane to Bow Bridge.

Immediately she had gone, Medora’s manner changed from cheerfulness to a more pensive mien.

“Sometimes it’s so hard to pretend you’re happy,” she explained.

“I’m sorry you’ve got to pretend,” he answered.

He had fought awhile against any sort of secret understanding with Medora, but something of the kind now existed, though Jordan could not have explained how it had come about. It seemed not unnatural, however, because he knew the woman so well and felt so supremely interested in her happiness. He believed, in his youthful inexperience, that he might be able to help both Ned and Medora by virtue of his brains and good sense; and he imagined that his championship of Medora, so to call it, emanated entirely from his own will to right and justice. Had anybody hinted to him that Medora was amusing herself with this very delicate material, he must have refused to believe it. He believed in her good faith as he believed in the stars, and he trusted himself completely for a man above the power of temptation. Indeed, as yet he had felt none.

To-day, however, the young woman went further than she had ventured to go.

“I can talk to you, Jordan, and I often thank God I can,” she said, “because there’s nobody else on earth—not one who understands me like you do.”

Not in the ear of him who really understands her does a woman ever confess to be understood; but the listener quite agreed with Medora and believed the truth of what she asserted.

“If thought and true friendship could make me understand, then I do,” he answered. “Ned’s such a real good chap at heart that—”

“He’s not,” she said positively. “To my bitter grief I know he’s not. Like you, I thought so, and I made myself go on thinking so, for loyalty; but it’s no good pretending that any more. He’s deceived you as he has me. He’s not good hearted, for all his laughter and noise, else he wouldn’t persecute me.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I’m not going into details,” declared Medora, quite aware that there were no details to go into; “but he’s that rough and harsh. Loses his temper if you look at him. He wasn’t like you, and showed me everything about himself when we were courting. He hid the things that matter, and if I’d known then half, or a quarter, of what I know now, I wouldn’t have taken him, Jordan.”

“Don’t say that,” he begged again.

“I’ve got to say it. And I’ll say more. It’s a relief to speak where your honesty is known, and no false meaning is put to your words. I’ll say this, that I made a dreadful mistake, and every year that goes over my head will show it clearer. I can bear it, of course. We women are built to suffer and keep our mouths shut. It’s only men that run about with their troubles. Yes, I can bear it, Jordan, and I shall bear it to my grave; but it’s hard for a girl of my age to look ahead through all the years of her life and see nothing but dust and ashes. And though I’m brave enough to face it, I’m too frank and open-natured to hide it, and the bitter thing is that people guess that I’m not happy.”

“Don’t put it as strongly as that, Medora. Don’t actually say you’re an unhappy woman.”

“You’re either happy, or else you’re not—at any rate, when you’re young,” she said. “I see the old get into a sort of frozen condition sooner or later, when they’re neither one nor the other, being sunk to a kind of state like a turnip in ground; but the young are different. They feel. Why, Daisy, only a few minutes ago, saw my mind was troubled, though I tried ever so to hide it. You know people know it.”

“I won’t deny that. Everybody’s more or less sorry. But between husband and wife, of course, no wise man or woman ventures to come.”

“Yes, they do,” she answered. “My own mother for one. Kindness made alive to everybody else no doubt, but not to me. She doesn’t blame my husband anyway, so she must blame me, I suppose.”

“I wouldn’t say that. It may be no matter for blame—just the point of view. The great thing is to get at a person’s point of view, Medora.”

“And don’t I try? Don’t I interest myself in Ned? I’ve got a brain, Jordan.”

“I know that very well.”

“And I can’t help seeing only too bitter clear, that my husband’s not interested in anything that wants brains to it. He’s all for sport and talk and pleasure. I like to think about interesting subjects—human nature and progress, and the future of labour, and so on. And if I try to talk about anything that really matters, he just yawns and starts on shooting birds and football. For the less brains a person has got, the more they want to be chattering. I’ve married a boy in fact, when I thought I’d married a man; and my charge against Ned is that he hid the truth of himself from me, and made me think he was interested in what interested me, when he was not.”

She had mentioned the subjects which she knew attracted Jordan. It was indeed his wearisome insistence on such things that had made her turn of old to the less intelligent and more ingenuous Dingle. In reality she had no mind for abstractions or social problems.

“As we grow older, we naturally go for the subjects that matter,” said Kellock. “I’ve always wanted to leave the world better than I found it, you know, Medora.”

“And so you will—you’re built to do it,” declared she. “And I shall watch you do it, Jordan. And though I’ve lost it all, I shall see some other woman at your right hand helping you to make a name in the world. And I shall envy her—yes, I shall. I can say that to you, because I can trust you never to repeat it.”

“You shake me up to the roots of my being when you talk like this,” he assured her. “Oh, my God, Medora, it seems a cruel sort of thing that just at the critical time, and before it was too late, you couldn’t have seen and felt what you see and feel now. It was bad enough then. You’ll never know or guess what I felt when you had to say ‘no’ to me. But I had one thing to keep me going then—the certainty you were too clever to make a mistake. I said to myself a million times: ‘She knows best; she knows that Dingle will make her a happier woman than I could.’ But now—now—when you say what you’ve said. Where am I now?”

They talked in this emotional strain for ten minutes, and she wove with native art a web of which both warp and woof were absurdly unreal. Her nature was such that in a task of this sort she succeeded consummately. By a thousand little touches—sighs, looks, and shakes or droops of the head—she contributed to her comedy. She abounded in suggestions. Her eyes fell, her sentences were left unfinished. Then came heroic touches, and a brave straight glance with resolution to take up the staggering weight of her cross and bear it worthily to the end.

Medora was charming, and in her subconscious soul she knew that her performance carried conviction in every word and gesture. She revelled in her acting, and rejoiced in the effect it occasioned on the listener. Long ago, Kellock had set her, as she guessed, as a lovely fly in amber, never to change, though now for ever out of his reach. He had accepted his loss, but he continued to regard her as his perfect woman, and she cherished the fact as a great possession. Perhaps, had it been otherwise, she had not entered upon her present perilous adventure; but she knew that Jordan Kellock was a knight of weak causes, and one who always fought for the oppressed, when in his power to do so; and now she had created a phantom of oppression, which his bent of mind and attitude to herself prevented him from recognising as largely unreal.

Kellock was young; he had loved Medora in the full measure of a reserved nature, and to-day she deluded him to the limit of his possibilities. Her complete triumph indeed almost frightened her. For a few moments he became as earnestly concerned as on the great occasion when he had asked her to marry him. Then she calmed the man down, and told him that he must not waste his time on her troubles.

“It’s selfish of me to tell you these things—perhaps it’s wrong,” she said, truly enough; but he would not grant that. His emotion was intense; his pain genuine. Her intuition told her that here was a man who might err—if ever he erred—in just such a situation as she was creating. She was surprised to find the ease with which it was possible to rouse him, and felt this discovery enough for that day. She grew elated, but uneasy at the unexpected power she possessed. Her sense of humour even spoke in a still, small voice, for humour she had.

Chance helped her to end the scene, and, a hundred yards from home, Ned himself appeared with his gun over his shoulder and a hare in his hand.

Dingle was in cheerful spirits.

“A proper afternoon I’ve had,” he said. “Ernest Trood asked me to go out shooting along with him and some friends, and we’ve enjoyed sport, I promise you. A rare mixed bag. We began in the bottom above the Mill, and got a woodcock first go off, and then we worked up and had a brace and a half of partridges, a brace of pheasants, and a hare, and eight rabbits. I knew what you’d like, Medora, and I took a partridge, and the hare for my lot. I shot them, and four rabbits and one of the pheasants.”

“What a chap for killing you are,” said Jordan, while Ned dragged a partridge from his pocket and handed it to his wife.

Nobody loved nice things better than she, but she took the bird pensively and stroked its grey and russet feathers.

“Poor little bird, your troubles are ended,” she said. Then she assumed a cheerful air, which struck Jordan as unspeakably pathetic.

“I’ve been busy, too. Look at my blackberries.”

Ned praised the blackberries, and in his usual impulsive fashion offered Kellock the hare; but Jordan declined it.

“Thrown away upon me,” he said.

“Come and help us to eat it one night then,” suggested Dingle, and Medora echoed his wish.

“I’m sure you’re very kind. I’ll come up to supper any evening, if you mean it.”

Then he mounted his bicycle and rode off down the hill.

“He came along from Totnes, while Daisy and I were picking blackberries, and he stopped and would carry my basket for me,” she explained.

“He looked a bit down in the mouth, didn’t he?”

“He was. He’s such a man to feel other people’s troubles.”

“Whose? Not yours, I should hope?”

She laughed.

“Good powers, no! I’m not one to tell my troubles—you know that, or ought to. I’m a proud woman, whatever you may be. It isn’t personal things, but general questions that bother him. Poverty and want and injustice, and all that. I cheered him up, and tried to make him forget.”

“He’ll do better to leave such subjects alone,” said Dingle. “The woes of the world in general ain’t his job; and if he tries to make them his job, he may find it won’t pay him to do so.”

“That’s your pettifogging opinion; but if every man in good employment was as selfish as you, the poor might remain poor for ever,” she answered.

“Well, don’t you be a fool, anyway, there’s a dear. You’ve got to look after me, not the poor in general. And nobody can look after me better than you, when you please. It’s a choice between beer and tea this minute, so choose which I’m to have.”

“Tea,” she said. “If you can be patient for a little.”

They went in together, and he was pleased to find Medora amiable and willing, though ignorant that her good temper sprang not from his inspiration.