Читать книгу Where Three Roads Meet - Ethel M. Dell - Страница 5

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It was the twentieth anniversary of Molly’s birthday—a June day of most entrancing beauty—and she sat on the lower step of a stile that led into a deep green wood that was decked with coral patches of campion, and watched over a small round boy of two who sprawled in infant slumber at her feet. Only a few yards away a nightingale was pouring liquid music into the leafy glade—flute-like, elusive as the pipes of Pan—an invisible singer with the gift of a ventriloquist.

It was such music as had awakened her heart to wildest rapture three years ago, but to-day, though something within her stirred with a vague pain in response, she was not even listening to the tender, love-inspired notes. They floated past her almost unheeded. She was hearing something very different, something which had nothing to do with the splendour of June in a Kentish woodland, something which was more like a throbbing in the air than sound, something which now and then sent a swift shudder through her light frame.

Only twenty—and already a widow of nearly three years’ standing! Only twenty, and stricken to the very soul of her by that far, far rumble that was throbbing rather than sound!

The baby boy slept and heard it not; the bird sang its pure and heaven-sent song in utter disregard; but far away the earth rocked and the tremors spread like waves from the heart of the tempest. Many miles distant, the guns were roaring like giant fiends let loose, and in the fairy beauty of the June evening the still air pulsed with the message of Death. And the girl who was just twenty gripped her thin brown hands together round her knees to still the quiver of anguish that from time to time assailed her. Life was so terrible when there was time to think.

Rollo did not often fall asleep during the day-time. It was only when it was hot and sultry that his usually abounding energy ever flagged. She stooped to whisk away a fly from his rosy cheek, and looking down upon his relaxed form some of the tension went out of her own. He was so lovely in repose, perfectly shaped, like a tiny woodland faun, she told herself; and though the burning blue eyes were shut, the beauty of the black thick lashes against the apricot-shaded skin made up for their invisibility. She thought him the most exquisite thing that she had ever looked upon, not realizing that had she retained her own youthful plumpness he would have been an almost exact replica of herself.

Her eyes were blue also, but their colour was of a still bluebell intensity rather than the fire of molten spirit which was Rollo’s. Her features were straight and fair save for the warm browning of the June sun, but they were sharpened out of all childish roundness, the nose was thin, the mouth somewhat anxious; the delicate chin, very dainty in its poise, was more pointed than the chin of a girl of twenty should have been. Her brown neck was thin also, and the collar-bones stood up in strong relief. Her whole personality seemed to betoken an amount of nervous strain which was pathetic in one so young. For she still retained the look of youth—youth that had been cheated, youth that had lost its spring.

Sitting there, all a-quiver with the muttering of that hell in her ears, she looked like a lost fairy waiting on the edge of the wood for some guardian sprite to take her by the hand and give her refuge in its depths. She was indeed in sore need of refuge, but the sleeping child at her feet was the barrier that kept her where she was. The far-off thunder behind her and the green sweet glade before were mingled in the one great ache that possessed her spirit. She would fain have taken advantage of the boy’s slumber to marshal and compose her thoughts, but the pain was too present and too overwhelming. She could not crush out memory—that poignant, disturbing essence of the soul. She could not annihilate the past with those booming guns as a perpetual background, and give herself to a steady contemplation of the future. Neither could she blot out the haunting sweetness of that springtime wood that tugged perpetually at her very heartstrings.

It was impossible. A great sigh broke from her, and she stooped again over the chubby body of her little son, trying—as she had tried many myriads of times before—to stifle the heavy pain within her with the sight and touch of the beloved being who, while greatly complicating the issues thereof, alone made life worth living.

But for Rollo, she would have been across the sea in that war-tortured country where the guns were roaring, working with the zeal that smothers heartbreak to ease the sufferings of the men who stood as a living wall between England and the foe. But for Rollo, the gaping wound within her might by now almost have begun to close, lulled into some sort of dormancy by the perpetual urge of self-forgetting activity. But for Rollo, she could have hewn her own way, independent and untrammelled, and the problem which now confronted her—the ghastly problem which must be dealt with however persistently her bewildered brain might shirk the task—would never have arisen.

And yet Rollo was her whole world now, and slipping to her knees beside him she gathered him passionately close, cooing softly into his ear to soothe his frowning murmur at being disturbed. It was better to provoke a complaint from him than to continue to listen in immobility to the dumb rolling of those terrible guns.

The nightingale sang on, spreading the illusion of peace in a war-racked world, and the girl who knelt at the edge of the charmed wood heard its rhapsody with a kind of quailing amazement. There was something almost awful in its unconscious sweetness. She wondered if any man hanging from a gallows at a cross-roads had ever heard the singing of a bird close by ere his soul had escaped from his agonized body. Beauty and destruction dwelling side by side—love and death forever mingled!

She hid her face against her baby’s soft round body and prayed a broken prayer. “O God, deliver us—from evil! O God,—deliver us—deliver us!” ...

A long time passed before she looked up—not until the nightingale, grown tired, had dropped into silence.

Her face when she did so was strangely composed; it even had a fateful look. There was a baby’s chair on wheels on the other side of the stile. With the child in her arms, she got to her feet and climbed carefully over.

He was very sleepy and complained again as she did so, but she hushed him tenderly and laid him for a moment in the grass while she returned for the rug. This she spread in the chair, arranging it as far as possible to accommodate his relaxed figure. It was growing late, and she told herself reproachfully that he ought to have been put to bed long ago. Just because it was her birthday she had come to this enchanted wood, and it had been foolish as well as selfish of her to have done so. For the place was haunted by ghosts of the past.

It was here—it was here—only deep in the green shade of the trees—that Ronald Fordringham had first thrown his eager arms about her and held her against his breast. The memory of that first overwhelming kiss went through her like a stab, transfixing her heart. It was sheer anguish, yet she clung to it with closed eyes for a few moments.

“Roy!” she whispered. “Roy! My Roy!”

Then again the shuddering vibration in the air that was scarcely sound came to her. She set her lips resolutely and looked up.

A shadow had fallen over the quiet woodland. The nightingale had ceased to sing, and all was still. Only the throbbing of the guns remained.

She drew a long, hard breath and, stooping, lifted little Rollo from the grass. He opened his eyes as she did so, and, smiling, stroked her face. Something in the action pierced her composure, catching her unawares. She gave a quick sob, but in a moment, seeing his round face begin to crumple, she turned it into a laugh, shaky but determined.

“Little darling! And you’re so tired!” she said. “We’ll go home quick—quick—and you shall have your lovely milk and biscuits and go to bed.”

She settled him in the chair, softly kissing him, and laughing again when he tried to clasp his fat arms round her neck.

“Mum—Mum—Mum!” he crooned.

“We must go home, Rollo,” she said, and strapped him in with tender care. “What will poor Granddad say?”

Rollo had no suggestions to make on this point, but, having now quite recovered from his drowsiness, he said a great deal in a language of his own about nothing in particular. He could be very talkative when the spirit moved him, and his mother’s smiling encouragement always spurred him to fresh effort. She was ever an appreciative listener.

The hay was lying in the fields through which they returned. They had some distance to traverse, but there were no more stiles to negotiate, and dark clouds had rolled up to obscure the sun, so that the heat, though still oppressive, was less intense.

Molly moved quickly, as if hastening to leave the haunted wood far behind her, and the elasticity of youth was in her gait if the fire of it no longer quickened her veins. A lovely warm flush bloomed on her sun-tanned face. She gave soft crowing answers to her baby boy in response to his unintelligible speech. They had almost developed a language of their own with which he at least was hugely content.

It took nearly half an hour of quick walking to reach the road that led to the village, but it was a relief to be moving after the emptiness and pain of that strange birthday-treat of hers.

“I mustn’t go again,” she told herself, as she opened the last gate that led out on to the highway. “I won’t—ever—go again.” But somehow it hurt her to say it, as though it had been a disloyalty to Ronald—that dearly loved and adoring lover who would never come to her again.

Out on the road the journey became both physically and spiritually easier. There was no traffic, and she was able to increase her pace. Rollo ought to have been in his bath nearly an hour ago. No wonder he had become sleepy in the wood! She would be busy now for the rest of the evening, and she was glad. She would be more glad still when her birthday was past. She was getting too old for birthdays, she decided. The ordinary humdrum days were much easier to cope with.

So, with Rollo’s funny broken chatter in her ears, she came at length within sight of the first cottage of Little Bradholt—her native village. It was a picturesque spot—typical of the English by-ways. Practically all its houses were ancient, and it had a green with a pond in the middle. There were also two yew-trees of great antiquity which once might have helped to point the way of pilgrims to the saintly shrine of Canterbury; for these yew-trees were continued at uneven intervals beyond the park gates of Aubreystone Castle where the lords of the manor had reigned from time immemorial, possessing and governing Little Bradholt in a long line of succession which claimed direct descent from a baron who had arrived with William the Conqueror.

Molly had always regarded the Aubreystone family with a certain amount of awe. They had always done their duty unfailingly by the village which they owned. It was a model place in every respect. Old Lady Aubreystone was a terrible person, firm of lip and strong of will. No one ever smiled in her presence without her permission. She had known many sorrows, but they had left no apparent mark upon her. Her husband had been killed years before in the hunting-field. People believed that she had been deeply attached to him, but they had no means of knowing it. She had borne him four sons, of whom one only—the present Lord Aubreystone—remained. He was the youngest of them. The two above him had been killed, one in France and one at sea, and his eldest brother and immediate predecessor, with his wife, had fallen victims to one of those mysterious diseases manifesting themselves in England at that time which were commonly regarded as having their origin in the trenches and battlefields of Europe. They had died childless. Lord Aubreystone himself at the age of thirty-eight was unmarried, and for the first time almost in history the fate of the family succession hung in the balance. He also was in the Army and had seen Staff service in Egypt, but—it was whispered, through desperate efforts on his mother’s part—he was now employed in a responsible position at the War Office, and likely to remain there until the War was over.

If indomitable human will could be held as a deciding factor in the destiny of any single being at that time, then this youngest son, who had never expected to enter upon any sort of heritage, was safe until such time as he should marry and beget a son. His mother had never greatly cared for him before, but now her whole soul was centred upon the achievement of this end. It had become almost an obsession with her, and nothing else counted in the whole of her existence. He was the only thing left in a world of complete desolation, and if she entertained but slight affection for the man himself, her whole being was wrapped up in the accomplishment of her end, and he was the only means remaining.

Besides her four sons, she had given birth to three daughters, the eldest of whom—the Honourable Caroline—had never married, and, at the age of fifty-six, was her mother’s right hand, or perhaps it would be fairer to describe her as an auxiliary, had such been required. The two younger daughters had married, possibly to escape the stringency of the maternal rule. But Caroline was understood to scorn all men, and only to her mother did she accord any sort of deference. Treading in her father’s footsteps, she led a sporting life, following the hounds every season with unfailing regularity and very often leading the field. In many ways she closely resembled Lady Aubreystone, being hard of feature and gruff of speech, and they were generally regarded as a redoubtable pair. But in Molly’s opinion the daughter was almost more formidable than the mother, and she often marvelled that two people of such pronounced character could continue to live together. But if they ever quarrelled, it was behind closed doors, and not even the servants of Aubreystone Castle knew it. Lady Aubreystone often made very crushing remarks to this single daughter of hers, but she never provoked any reply in the hearing of anyone else beyond a somewhat raucous and sarcastic laugh. Caroline had never been beloved by her mother on account of her sex, but she was by no means downtrodden on that account. In fact, some people were uncharitable enough to say that she was merely biding her time till old age should incapacitate the tyrant of the family. There was no doubt that so long as Caroline lived, a tyrant in the house of Aubreystone would not be lacking.

All this Molly knew and appreciated to the full with a somewhat quailing apprehension. Her thoughts dwelt upon it as she wheeled little Rollo past the village green towards her father’s tumbledown abode next door to the village inn. But though she quailed, she braced herself with resolution to meet the future which somehow—for Rollo’s sake—seemed inevitable. Her vigil in the wood was over, and Ronald—her lover—was gone from her. Hope was long since dead within her so far as he was concerned. Rollo alone was left. And for him there could be no future at all unless she embraced the destiny held out to her.

For Lord Aubreystone, urged by his mother, had at last begun to look around him for a wife, and—to Molly’s vast amazement—he had decided that she was the only one who could occupy that high position to his satisfaction and to the comfortable fulfilment of his ambition to perpetuate the succession.

That his choice should have fallen upon her seemed to be mainly due to the fact that she alone was always to be found in the same place and available when wanted. All other women were occupied in some national work that called them in all directions. Molly only—so it seemed—had home duties to occupy her, a house to run, a father to care for, a baby to tend. She was always on the spot whenever he had time to spare to visit his ancestral home, and at first idly, but now seriously, his fancy had been caught. She seemed somehow to be planted there in readiness for his requirements, the very thing he needed; too gentle and unsophisticated to clash in any way with his redoubtable mother and sister—probably quite useless from a hostess point of view, but who wanted hostesses in these hard days of war? And doubtless, being young, she would prove adaptable and easy to train if ever the necessity should arise. Caroline could teach her. Caroline knew everything; even if his mother should fail, which in itself was almost unthinkable. He fully recognized that something ought to be done towards providing an heir, and this girl was already the mother of a bouncing baby-boy, whom he would have given a good deal to have called his own. Of course her father was a drawback—a man who had never been a success in life, trained for a schoolmaster, but without the ability to teach, and now stricken with heart-disease. But his days were so obviously numbered that he was hardly worthy of consideration.

Molly was the thing that mattered and upon which he had set his heart. Matrimony had never appealed to him before. A fourth son, without prospects, could hardly expect to please himself in such matters; but now that matrimony was practically forced upon him, and with Molly Fordringham all ready to his hand, so to speak, he was quite prepared to approach the matter in a proper spirit, prepared even to adopt her son and educate him as he hoped to educate his own.

It was this—and this alone—which held any attraction for Molly. Her husband had possessed genius, or so she imagined, but his career had been cut off at its very beginning, and when he had met his fate in the trenches he had been merely a private in the British Army. Her father was even now living on the little he had been able to save and when that was gone, there would be only her widow’s pension left. She might work. She was willing to work; but she could never hope to make enough to give Rollo a fair start in life. And Rollo too had genius. She was certain of it. His astuteness and inventive powers often astonished her even at this stage. He would make his mark some day, but if she threw away this one great chance he would be hopelessly handicapped by poverty.

She had no right to throw it away. She owed it to him—and even in a sense to Ronald—that greatly beloved one who had never even known of his son’s coming—to enlarge the scope of his opportunities to the utmost limit.

Ivor was not deeply in love with her. She had sensed that already, she to whom love meant so much. So, if she brought herself to accept him, she would be doing him no wrong. For she knew within herself that she could never love again. Soul and body shrank together from the prospect of re-marriage—true union it could never be. But for that very reason she would be giving more than she received. To her personally it would be as the burnt offering of her very self. To Ivor—Lord Aubreystone—it would be quite possibly the most enjoyable episode of his life, and probably the accomplishment of what had become the main ambition of himself as well as of his mother.

No, he would not be a loser. She would play an honest game with him, even though she did violence to every instinct of her being. He was coming to her to-night for her answer, from his castle on the hill to her humble dwelling-place in the little village below. And she felt—albeit with a shrinking perception—that she knew already what that answer was going to be—though something closely imprisoned within her was crying out wildly through its confining bars that it was wrong—wrong—wholly and most horribly wrong.