Читать книгу A Man Under Authority - Ethel M. Dell - Страница 10

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“Parson’s just gone up street,” remarked old Sammy Cross from his bench in the porch where he was always put on a sunny day while his daughter Bessie cleaned up in the kitchen.

Sammy was the oldest inhabitant of Rickaby and very proud of the fact. He lived immediately opposite the church where he had lived during the whole of his life, and though so infirm that he could barely crawl on two sticks to his own garden-gate he yet gloried in the fact of his continued existence and chuckled triumphantly when any of his younger contemporaries were carried to their last resting-place in the quiet churchyard opposite.

Whenever the Reverend Bill called to see him he invariably talked cricket—village cricket past and present—with great assiduity if the conversation showed any signs of taking a serious turn. Otherwise, he was content to gossip pleasantly of the doings of his neighbours or inveigh against the shortcomings of Bessie, who was one of those who refused to ‘stand any nonsense’ from anyone.

He always saw everybody’s comings and goings and was generally regarded as an accepted authority upon all village happenings. On that particular May day the sight of the Vicar walking up the street gave him considerable pleasure, as there was a good chance that if he waited long enough he would spy him on his step on his return and come and talk to him. Sammy liked the Vicar on his own account, but anyone to talk to in those days was an event in his waning life, since he could no longer get as far even as the old Blue Boar in search of company. Bessie said it was a good thing too, but Bessie was not possessed of a very sympathetic temperament, and though not, strictly speaking, unkind, she often spoke the truth with unnecessary sharpness. She was wont to describe herself as just a plain woman with no silliness about her.

Old Cross was also the father of Mrs. Henderson’s niece’s husband of “Antipoads” fame, and he was hoping in a gloomy, not very sanguine fashion that his son might step round some time that afternoon and have a pipe with him. There was no one else likely to come his way, and he resigned himself somewhat sleepily to await events.

It was a drowsy day, one of the first of real summer. The white clematis over the porch and the rows of hyacinths that bordered the little flagged path that led to it were full of droning bees. The sounds of scrubbing that came from the kitchen were too distant to interfere with the general peace of that sunny hour, and the rooks that cawed in the churchyard elms but added to it. Old Sammy began to nod, sitting there with his two knobby hands clasped over the top of his knobby stick. His mind drifted slowly towards a sea of oblivion like a boat released from its moorings. His head sank lower and lower till at last it rested upon his arms, and he slept.

It was nearly half an hour later that the rickety little garden-gate squeaked on its hinges and someone entered. The hanging clematis almost concealed the figure of the old man in the porch, and the new-comer was too appreciative of the orderly display of spring-flowers to look beyond them. She advanced slowly, with quiet step, drinking in the fragrance. Her pale face under its shady black hat had a far-off, reminiscent look; her straight brows were slightly drawn.

She reached the porch and slightly started at sight of its occupant. At the same moment Sammy Cross uttered a loud snort and awoke. He also started, and his stick clattered to the ground.

“Devil take the durned thing!” said old Sammy, nearly collapsing himself in a vain effort to recover it.

“Oh, let me!” said the visitor in a voice so musical that Sammy lifted his head to stare, almost as though he suspected himself of seeing a vision.

She stooped and picked up the stick. “Here it is!” pressing it gently against his hand. “I am afraid I startled you. I was so busy admiring your flowers that I didn’t realize there was anyone here.”

“Thank’ee,” said old Cross. “Thank’ee kindly, miss.” He still peered at her with hazy, incredulous eyes. “Don’t go! Set down! Set down!”

“May I?” she said. “How kind!”

She sat down on the narrow bench facing him to his great surprise; for few ever stopped to speak to him in this casual fashion. So few had any time to waste on one to whom time had ceased to matter.

“What a lovely day!” she said. “And how peaceful it is here!”

“Oh, yes, miss, it’s peaceful enough,” said Sammy. He continued to stare at her, wondering confusedly if it could be her hair that glinted so or the light of a mystic halo half-concealed by the black hat.

“I have never known such utter quietness,” she said. “It feels almost like a dream. Have you always lived in Rickaby? What do people do here?”

“Do!” Old Sammy snorted again, this time with contempt. “They don’t do nothing here.”

“But what do they live on?” questioned the visitor.

“What do they live on? Why, they live on each other, to be sure. Parasites, that’s what they are—a durned lot of parasites.” The old man fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a very ancient pipe. “It won’t disturb you if I smoke, miss?” he questioned with most unusual courtesy.

“Oh, not in the least. Pray do!” she said, with a ready graciousness that reached even his somewhat blunted perceptions. “And you have always lived here? Have you never done anything?”

“ ‘Course I ‘ave!” said Sammy; then hastily, as though he feared his roughness might frighten her away. “Yes, miss, yes, I’ve done my share. I were a thatcher, I were. Now it ain’t everyone as can do thatching. It’ll soon be a lost art as you might say. But there’s nothing like it to keep out the summer’s heat and the winter’s cold. But I’ve got beyond it now. Couldn’t get up a ladder now, I couldn’t. Why, I’m the oldest man in Rickaby, I am.”

“Are you indeed?” Her voice expressed warm sympathy. “I wonder how old you are.”

Old Cross shook his head as though the matter were one for a higher intelligence than his. “That I can’t tell you, miss. You must ask parson. He knows. He can tell you a lot about me, he can. He’s got all the parish records.” He began to chuckle. “There ain’t much parson don’t know. A regular nailer, he is. I knows a bit about him too, you see, because my son’s wife is his housekeeper’s niece.”

“Oh, I see,” said the visitor. “And so you all know a little about each other.”

“There ain’t much in this durned village that I don’t know,” said Sammy. “They say lookers-on see most of the game, and I’m a looker-on, I am. Do you know that dratted lad from Beech Mount up the hill yonder what comes tearing through the place in his motor-car as if the devil had kicked him?”

“Do you mean young Mr. Rivers?” said the visitor, faintly smiling.

“The same,” said Sammy Cross. “Well, I’ve got my eye on him, the young varmint, and he’d better not cross my path or there’ll be trouble.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said.

He peered at her again. “What have you got to be sorry about?”

She explained in her gentle way. “I am Mrs. Rivers,—his mother.”

“What?” said Sammy. His gaze became almost fierce. “You—you!” He stuck his pipe in his mouth aggressively. “I don’t believe it!”

She laughed a little. “It is true, all the same. He is my son. I am sorry he drives too fast. I am afraid he is rather reckless.”

“Reckless!” said Sammy. “He’ll drive himself to perdition one of these fine days. But ‘ow come you to have a son that age, ma’am? He’s not one of your own for sure?”

“Yes, he is my very own.” A faint thrill sounded in her quiet voice. “My very own, and all I have.”

Sammy gave a grunt that could scarcely have been described as flattering, and proceeded to change the subject. “And so you’re the lady at Beech Mount. Now that’s a place I know something about. I thatched it in Admiral Thesiger’s time; it must be forty year ago. It’s a nice place, but a bit too foreign-looking for my liking. It were him as made that Italian garden along the side of the cliff.”

“Ah! And the grotto with the fountain,—I am very fond of that,” said Mrs. Rivers.

Old Sammy grunted again. “Yes, I daresay it’s all right for foreigners, but I don’t hold with such myself. I likes things just plain and simple, I does.”

“I am not a foreigner,” said Mrs. Rivers. “But I like beautiful things even though they may not be English. I think Beech Mount is charming, all of it. You must come up and see it again some day.”

“Me?” said Sammy. “Why, bless you, ma’am, I could never get as far as that. I be much too old.”

“I will get my son Gaspard to fetch you in the car,” she said. “You will like that—if he goes very slowly.”

Old Sammy’s dim eyes shone. “I’ll come right enough,” he declared. “But you needn’t tell him to go too slow, ma’am. I’d like to go fast for once in my life, I would that.”

He broke into a chuckle, and at that moment his daughter Bessie came to the door to see who was with him—an interruption which he found far from welcome.

“You get on with your work!” he said roughly. “We don’t want you cackling round.”

But the visitor rose in her quiet gracious way. “Indeed,” she said, “it is your daughter I really came in to see. Good afternoon, Miss Cross! I am Mrs. Rivers from Beech Mount. I heard that you have eggs to sell, and I have come to ask if I may buy some.”

Bessie Cross gazed for a moment as if uncertain as to whether to receive the request in a friendly spirit or otherwise, then half-grudgingly she smiled. “It depends how many you want, ma’am,” she said. “I’ve got a few you can have, maybe a dozen.”

“Well, go and get ’em, go and get ’em!” said old Sammy. “It’s the eggs she wants, not you. Go and get ’em, and pick out the biggest, d’ye hear?”

Bessie gave him a brief glance that passed him over rather than saw him. “Maybe you’ll step inside and I’ll see what I’ve got,” she said.

“That is very kind of you,” said Mrs. Rivers. “I’m afraid you are busy.”

“Not too busy to attend to business,” said Bessie, leading the way within. “There’s some as can waste the whole day before they begin, but I’m not one of ’em. I’m just going round to collect the eggs now. Will you set down in the parlour, or come too?”

“I’ll come too if I may,” said Mrs. Rivers, and never guessed that in making this decision she won Bessie’s somewhat dour heart.

They went out to the well-ordered garden at the back and searched the dilapidated old fowl-house for eggs, and when they returned—how it had come about Bessie could never have told—they were on terms of intimacy. And yet no time had been wasted in the process. There had been complete understanding between them, and Mrs. Rivers had gone her way; neither hurrying nor lingering—a woman who knew that which is given to so few to know, how to come and when to go.

And even old Sammy was content for awhile, because she had promised to come again.