Читать книгу Tregarthen's Wife - Fred M. White - Страница 8

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THE four conspirators sat in Naomi's room. Ruth was uneasy, yet defiant, Naomi partly afraid, and with a look of shame that seemed strangely out of place on her frank, beautiful face. Mary and Miriam were calm. The door of the room was open to the cloister, for the night was warm, and the oil lamp cast lances of light upon the carved pillars, worn pavement, and smooth grass beyond. From the outer air, like the boom of a Titanic hive of bees, came the roar of the ground-swell. No light shone from any other cell, and it seemed as if they had the world to themselves. It was the eve of the revolution, and great events were to spring therefrom.

"My dear life," said Naomi. "I don't know when I felt so ashamed of myself."

"You are a darling," said Mary, incontinently and impulsively. "What wrong can you do by telling me the story of the lace?"

Naomi murmured that it was not loyal to Tregarthen. He had interdicted the thing, and she had promised to spin her fairy cobwebs no longer; indeed, the Protector was under the impression that the bobbins and stays, and the quaint old cushions, had been destroyed. He had nearly broken Naomi's heart at the same time; but it was a small matter. Flowers were all very well, but lace meant commerce and competition and the consequent moral degradation of all good and true Islanders.

That Naomi was an artist Tregarthen did not know. He was not aware that her whole heart and soul thrilled and glowed in those slender fingers and expanded in the poetry of her weaving. She had bowed her head uncomplainingly, but something had gone out of her life at the same time. Suppose you took away from Mascagni his music, from Poynter or Alma Tadema their brushes and pigments, and bade them paint no more, you would not harm them less than the autocrat of Tregarthen harmed poor old Naomi. She cared nothing for the lucrative side of her art—it was Ruth who had insisted upon that—she only loved the beauty of it, for this aged woman—ignorant and uneducated—was a Cellini in thread, an Angelo in silk and flax, and Miriam read her like an open book.

"It was a great deprivation to you," Miriam said quietly.

Naomi took the speaker's hand in hers and pressed it convulsively. A deep light was shining in her eyes. Over the bridge of years these two women came together and understood one another, and Mary divined what was passing in their minds.

"Ah, if you only knew!" Naomi murmured. "I loved it. My mother, who taught me the art, said I should make a better worker than herself, and maybe she was right. I began as a child; my fingers itched for the warp and the woof before I could speak plainly. Then I learnt to work without patterns; they came to me as I went along. I never thought about selling the lace, no such idea ever came into my mind. Sometimes one piece would take me as long as three years to complete. Let me show you."

Naomi was speaking fast and excitedly now. There was no fear of Tregarthen before her eyes. Here was an artist who for seventy years had lived neglected, and had at last found a critical and appreciative audience. She did not know that this was the happiest moment of her life, but it was. She did not know that she was going to show these strangers something beyond price, something that money could not buy.

She crossed the flagged floor, and opened an oaken cupboard in the corner. From this she produced a cashmere shawl (there had been wreckers on Tregarthen in the dark ages), and from its folds a small handful of black tangle. Then the tangle was thrown over the table, and covered it with a wonderfully fine silken mesh showing a pattern that might have come from the dainty pencil of Inigo Jones, or Pugin, or some of the great Italian designers. The pattern wandered over the cobweb apparently without beginning or end, and yet the design was perfect with a masterful, definite, dainty purpose.

Mary cried aloud in her delight. She had never seen anything so exquisite before. She poured out on Naomi a thousand extravagant but sincere compliments, she touched the diaphanous fabric as if fearful that it would shrivel up like butterfly down under her fingers.

"You wonderful creature," she said; "you did that yourself?"

"Without a pattern," Naomi replied. Her cheeks were glowing with honest pride, her eyes had grown marvellously young and bright again. "Five years it took me to do that. And Ruth doubts that it would fetch less'n a hundred golden sovereigns at Horton's to Exeter."

Mary caught the square and draped it round her shoulders. It might have been four feet square, but weighed no more than a thistle-down.

"You ridiculous old creature!" she exclaimed. "My dear creator, my very great artist, my original genius, you could not buy this in Paris for two thousand guineas! The art of the lace is lost, even the more antique stuff has no such texture and pattern as this! Naomi, you are an artist! With proper advantages your name would have been a household word in two hemispheres. Good Americans would make pilgrimages to see you. Noble painters, great connoisseurs, crowned heads would delight to do you honour. Your name would have lived in after years, as Benvenuto Cellini's has done. Ask Miriam, ask anybody who knows anything about it."

Naomi laughed, with the tears in her voice. The praise was music to her, as praise from the critic of understanding ever is to the artist. Matthew Arnold might have conveyed what Mary conveyed more subtly, but the homage of the ordinary to the great achievement Naomi properly understood.

"I am glad you like it," she said. "Keep the shawl, my dear, and welcome."

Mary sank speechless into a chair. She had to finger the lace about her shoulders to feel that the whole thing was not some delirious delicious kind of dream. And what could you do with a dear, absurd old creature like this? Mary's eyes were full of tears, that hung like crystals on her purple ashes. There had been the pain and joy and delight of conception and delivery—the mingled anguish and pleasure that goes with the production of good things—and she was only too pleased to see it pass into the hands of beauty and appreciation. She turned to Miriam doubtfully.

"What shall I do?" she asked.

"Keep it," said Miriam. "Some of these dark nights an American heiress will be missing from the deck of an Atlantic liner, and subsequently the delightfully personal young men on the New York press will be chronicling the fact in cold print that 'Miriam Murch is home again looking yellower and plainer than ever, and wearing a lace shawl that will make Fifth Avenue dudines sit up and purr.' Naomi, you have given our Mary a priceless gift."

"She looks like a picture in it," Naomi pleaded, with the air of one who asks a favour. "Let her keep it. I—I can make another."

"I dare say," Miriam said. "But when you are gone, who can do as well?"

Ruth looked up swiftly, defiantly. She had been honestly admiring Mary's soft fair beauty. Her own dark loveliness flashed gloriously by the side of it. Not till then had Miriam noticed her long slender fingers.

"I can," the girl cried. "Don't make any mistake about that. I'm not so cunning at it as Naomi, but I shall be in time. Let me show you."

From the old oaken cupboard she produced the pillow and bobbins and everything necessary for lace-making. A half-finished design was on the pillow. Directly the fascinated spectators saw those long fingers flashing and tossing amongst the bobbins they knew that the wandering art was safe here. The pillow was a large affair, a ponderous wooden block, but Ruth lifted it with ease.

"How strong you are!" Mary murmured.

"All the women are strong here," Ruth said indifferently. "That is because of the life we lead. But see here, Mary Blenkiron. This pattern came from one of the Spanish galleons wrecked here after the defeat of the Armada. Two were saved—the wife and daughter of Captain Don Jose del Amanda. It was they who taught Tregarthen how to make this lace, and the daughter grew up and married one Ambrose Pengelly, who was an ancestor of mine. That is why I am dark, and that is also why I am rebellious and quarrelsome, and lacking in proper respect, Tregarthen says. But Tregarthen cannot rob me of my art, and cannot prevent my helping the island next time trouble comes, and I will tell him so."

She stood up there Cassandra-like, defiant. She might have been the good genius of the island fighting for light and freedom. She made a wonderful picture as she stood there in the gleam of the lamplight.

"Not so loud," Naomi said fearfully. "If Tregarthen should hear you!"

A shadow fell athwart the open door and cut off the lances of light that played upon the brown stone cloister. Outside the booming of the sea seemed to rise higher.

"He has heard you," Tregarthen's voice said.

He stepped into the room, big, strong, majestic, with anger burning in his eye. He looked so regal, so masterful. And yet Miriam, who could read men, saw that the mouth was as the mouth of a dreamer often is—a little weak and irresolute. Most women would have been pleased to call this man master. With a little cry Naomi laid her white hands on the pillow as a mother might protect a child from danger.

"Don't be angry with me," she cried. "Don't be angry, Tregarthen."

Mary came forward swiftly. Her head was thrown back, her eyes were shining. This spoilt child of fortune had no mind to be treated like a schoolboy caught in an apple raid. Who was Tregarthen that he should lord it like this?

"Be not afraid, good people," she said, in her clear high-pitched tones. "There is nothing in the least to be afraid of. Naomi and Ruth have been showing me a specimen of their lacework, and instructing me how it is to be made. The piece I am wearing now is worth two thousand pounds. If you were not so blind and headstrong you would cultivate the gifts of your people and set them beyond the reach of want for ever."

Tregarthen started angrily. This was not at all the way to address a monarch on his own soil, and in face of his own people. But Mary was angry, and the right of free speech is the most cherished of American institutions. Tregarthen would have been loth to own it, but he never admired a woman more than he admired Mary at this moment.

"I have heard those stock arguments over and over again. I could sell my island and retire in comfort any time. With your western contempt for things established, it would be hopeless to make you understand. Be good enough to hand that lace to me. The rest will be destroyed to-morrow."

Mary paused in the reply that was intended to overwhelm Tregarthen once and for all time. The Great Secret trembled on her lips, but she remembered it in time, and all the passion died out of her heart. She would give this man his chance—she would give him every opportunity of coming to reason. She would spare him now, much for the same reason that Father Mackworth spared Charles Ravenshoe.

"You will do nothing of the kind," she said, with dignity. "I have a claim on these things, for I have purchased them. And if you destroy them by force I will bring an action against you in the English Law Courts. I shall prove that you have deprived me of a valuable discovery, and I shall sue you for £10,000. It will cost you double that sum from first to last, and where will your precious island be then? You will have to sell it, and your people will fight you in their new prosperity. Do you understand, Tregarthen?"

A shaft of common sense had touched him, for he smiled uneasily. There was a good deal of force in what Mary said, and a just monarch should ever be an upholder of the sacred rights of property. As he moved back Ruth came forward and threw herself at his feet. She caught his right hand to her lips, she burst out into wild and passionate speech.

"Give it back to us, Tregarthen," she cried. "Give it back to us, because we love it, and because it puts the bread into our mouths. Don't be hard, Tregarthen. Remember what happened two years ago. And the red light was on Tintagel as the sun went down; so help me Heaven."

Nothing could have been finer, or more intense and dramatic. Ruth had utterly abandoned herself to the feelings of the moment. She was a queen pleading on her knees for the lives of her people. Under the bronze of Tregarthen's face a red flush was creeping. Gently, yet masterfully, he raised Ruth.

"You must not kneel to me," he said. "You are forgetting. And if the red light was on Tintagel, the Lord's will be done."

He bent his head as if an unheard prayer had passed from his heart to the gate of his lips, then the mingled look of obstinacy and fanaticism that Mary had noticed before came over his face. He looked big and strong enough to ward off any disaster, and yet Mary felt that strength to be illusory. In an odd way she contrasted him in her mind with a fine piece of china, a handsome painted vase as yet unfused and hardened in the fire. Once through the furnace, there was the making of a man here.

Ruth turned away hopelessly. Her passion had spent its force as a wave beats itself out against the rocks. The promised land was in sight, the pilot aboard, and yet the captain deliberately swung his prow from the haven. Tregarthen turned to go, but Mary followed him. She came up to him, Miriam behind her, just as he passed beyond the shadow of the Sanctuary.

"You are bent upon this mad thing?" she asked.

"You are bent also on keeping the lace and the patterns?"

"Of course. Why destroy that which is priceless? Some day you will listen to reason—oh yes, you will, though you shake your head. What is the meaning of this red light on Tintagel?"

"The sign of a frost, sometimes severe, sometimes slight. If it comes badly all the flowers will be destroyed. In any case the flowers on the uplands must go."

"That is where the Lees' and the Hawkens' and the Braunds' cottages are. If their flowers are destroyed, what becomes of them?"

"They will retire for a time into the Sanctuary, of course."

"And yet you can prevent this? You have only to hold out your hand, and the tragedy will depart from the island for ever. You are the most wicked and selfish man I ever met in my life."

"I will not argue with you," Tregarthen retorted. "And I will not have any more of that lace manufactured in the island. You are not to return it to Naomi."

"I will not return those patterns till you ask me to do so."

"And that will be never."

Mary looked towards the sheaves of stars piled high in the bending dome, and she smiled. But Tregarthen could not see that.

"I will not return them," she repeated demurely, "till you ask me to do so."

She turned away as Tregarthen strode homeward, with a feeling that he had got the better of the argument.

"I shall have to conquer that girl," he told himself.

Meanwhile the others made their way back to the cells. Miriam was smiling demurely.

"There is a man who will have to be conquered," she said. "He imagines in his blind conceit and ignorance that he has got the best of our Mary. That exalted monarch does not know our Mary and the power she wields. It will be a pleasant surprise for him when it comes."

Mary smiled in reply, but dreamily.

"Do you know," she admitted, "I like Tregarthen. I fancy that I could become very fond of that man."