Читать книгу I Pronounce Them - G. A. Studdert Kennedy - Страница 10

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“Daddy—are you there?”

The Rector was sitting in the garden in the twilight of a sultry airless evening in September. The summer, except for some brilliant weeks in May and June, had been unkind and cold as charity, but was now making a belated and dying effort at amends. The last few days had been burning hot. It was obviously useless, a hopeless struggle against the inevitable, and everything in the garden conveyed the same message, “it is too late.” It fitted in with the mood of the man who lay stretched out in a deckchair smoking. He was as near to melancholy as anyone of his even equable temperament ever comes. The last three months had been an almost perpetual trial. The holiday which he had spent with Robin and Jim in Devonshire had not been a success. In spite of gallant efforts to disguise his misery, Jim had not been his old self, and Robin’s obvious happiness, although neither of them had the heart to damp it, had been a source of secret anxiety to them both. After sending her sleepy, but sumptuously happy, to bed on the night of the Fête, the two men had sat until late in the garden talking. Jim had confided to him his doubts about Peter, and they had come near to an open disagreement on the question. The Rector had tried to put the matter aside lightly, saying he was afraid that his friend was allowing his own bitter experience to distort his view of thing’s, and telling him of the excellent report Canon Craddock had given about his son. Jim was not satisfied, and because he himself was doubtful in his heart as to whether his sorrow was not making him see evil everywhere he had been perhaps a little overemphatic. Some slight irritation had crept into the Rector’s replies. He was, as usual, being goaded into positive decision by his desire to escape unpleasantness. In the end they had agreed not to mention the subject again, and to this agreement Jim had been scrupulously loyal. But the Rector was not nearly as easy in his own mind as he had pretended to be, and, although he had been partly reassured by further conversation with Canon Craddock, and by the tone of Peter’s letters about which Robin had made no secret, the matter had worried him considerably. This and Jim’s wretchedness had marred the perfect happiness of the relationship between these three who meant so much to one another. It was about Jim that he was thinking when Robin called him. The poor old fellow was leaving Ranchester. The divorce proceedings were over. The case had been undefended, and there had been very little publicity, but it had led to such an underground storm of scandal and gossip, that Jim’s life had become unbearable, and he had decided to take up work in a big slum district in East London. The Rector hated his going and stormed against the cruel prurient tongues that wounded in the dark. He knew that members of his own congregation, and people who were pillars of other churches had been foremost in this persecution, and the knowledge sickened him. What was their hollow conventional profession of Christianity worth if, after saying prayers and singing hymns, these wretched pharisees went out to tear a suffering soul to pieces? It made him feel ashamed and degraded. Dirt—dirt—the world seemed full of dirt.

Robin’s voice broke in at this point in his unhappy ruminations.

“Daddy darling, where are you?”

He stood up and called, “Here I am, little girl.”

She had been walking away towards the Deanery gate, but turned at the sound of his voice and came towards him across the lawn.

She walked slowly as though in thought, and held a railway time-table in her hand. Dressed all in white, her beautifully shaped arms slightly tanned with the sun and bare up to the shoulder, she sank down in a chair beside him.

“Phew—isn’t it hot!” she said.

Then after a pause.

“Daddy, I’ve wired for Charlie Roberts to come to Maisie—I had to.”

This was disquieting news. He thought that the problem of Charlie Roberts and Maisie Smith had settled itself, but this would open it all up again, and there would be more gossip. He groaned in spirit.

“It’s cruelty, Daddy,” Robin went on, “Maisie is no better, and she will die if she goes on fretting like this. Doctor Grant told me so, and said we ought to send for Charlie. You promised you would if Maisie really wanted him, didn’t you?”

“Yes, my dear, but I did not want to if I could help it. It only makes it worse for them afterwards.”

Late one night, some weeks after the day of the Fête, the Rector had been called out to baptize a child that was dying in a cottage next door to the one in which Maisie Smith lived with her little girl. It was in a narrow street of filthy old ramshackle houses built on a steep hill leading down to the river. Jim Counihan had been extremely outspoken in the local Press about the crying scandal of these houses, and had made enemies. Some of these were the main centres of the gossip that was driving him from Ranchester. The Rector’s mind was running round this circle of low intrigue as he hurried along by the river which was the shortest way to Bank Street.

When he got close to the end of the street he saw a girl leaning with her back against the wall, and looking up, with tears in her eyes, at a man who was standing opposite her. It was Maisie Smith and the man was Charlie Roberts.

“How could they be so foolish!” he thought angrily, “it is just asking for scandal—and the whole place is buzzing with it already.” He was just going to stop and speak to them when the girl looked at him with such a passionate appeal in her big grey eyes, that he hesitated and then passed on.

The baptism over he set off back. He was full of doubt and anxiety about those two. He was very fond of them both. Charlie was one of his very best boys. A big quiet lad, tall, with a finely featured serious face, black curly hair, and keen deeply set grey eyes he had led an absolutely blameless life so far as the Rector knew, and he knew him well. Before the war his only fear about him had been that he was almost too good. But, on the outbreak of war, Charlie had surprised him by being one of the very first to join up. He had risen to the rank of sergeant and won the D.C.M. for an act of peculiarly reckless gallantry at the Battle of Loos. There was the finest kind of stuff in the man. He was the sort that saints are made of. The Rector was convinced of it. And Maisie was his proper mate: they had always gone together. She was a beautiful girl. In the Bethlehem Tableaux she had for years played the part of the Madonna, and had been perfect in it. Her face had in it a peculiar spirituality. Pale, with the healthy pallor that is perhaps more beautiful than colour, she was tall and slender, yet fully and finely formed woman. In her happy girlhood everyone, man, woman, or child, had been fond of Maisie, but that did not prevent them from tearing her with their tongues now. Acid old maids and untempered mothers at sale of work sewing parties smacked their lips and assured one another that still waters run deep. Good Lord, how sick he was of it all!

He walked on in a brown study, and passed unnoticed the turn that led up, through a gate in the wall, to the Cathedral close and his own house. But he woke up with a start and stood stock still when, after turning a corner, he saw about fifty yards ahead of him just by the lock gates the two who occupied his thoughts. They were standing opposite one another as before. He was going to turn round, walk a little way and wait for them, but, before he did so, he saw the man throw out his arms and the girl went into them as though she were going home—and lay there with her head upon his shoulder. There was an utter tortured misery in the embrace which twisted his soul in pain, as he turned away with the picture in his mind.

He stood for awhile miserable and hesitating. What ought he to do? Presently he heard steps coming rapidly behind him. He turned round, and there was Roberts. The boy’s face was ghastly white, and there were little drops of sweat about his mouth.

“I was just coming to see you, sir,” he said, “I’m going away to-morrow. I have said good-bye to Maisie.” He choked as he uttered her name. “It’s the only thing to do. I can’t stand it—and she can’t stand it any longer. It’s hell for us both.”

The Rector took his arm. “I think you are right, Charlie,” he said gently. “But what on earth made you come out here? Anyone might have seen you, and there is enough gossip around as it is.”

“Well, what could we do?” the boy broke out. “I dare not go into ’er ’ouse, and she cannot come far away because of little Maisie. Oh! damn their tongues—they would cast dirt at an angel.”

The older man sympathized intensely, and the two walked on in silence until they came to the turn into the close.

“You’d better come in, Charlie,” said the Rector.

“No, sir, I know what I’ll do. I’ll catch the 11.30 train to London to-night. I can’t stay ’ere any longer or I shall break. I want you to promise me something and to do something for me.”

He felt in his pocket, and pulled out ten pounds in Treasury notes. “I want you to take this,” he said, “and use it for Maisie if she is ill, or in want. She won’t take anything from me—but she would perhaps from you. And, oh, sir, if she is in danger—or wants me very badly, you’ll let me know, won’t you? Promise me you will. We are not to write to one another—but I will keep in touch with you.”

There were tears smarting behind the Rector’s eyes as he parted with the lad, after promising that he would look after Maisie and would let him know from time to time how she was.

Next morning he told the story to Robin at breakfast. She was full of pity. Her own happiness made her compassion for the unfortunate lovers deep and generous. She went to see Maisie the next night, and found her in the depths of misery. All the splendid mother that there was in this little dancing child’s heart rose up, and as she petted and comforted poor Maisie, the woman in her came more fully to its birth.

“I know it’s wrong, Miss Robin,” the girl sobbed out, “but I love ’im, I love ’im, so, and ’e’s that good.”

“Love is never wrong,” Robin said, with the unconscious wisdom of innocence, “it can’t be wrong. God is love.”

“But I’m a married woman, and I mustn’t love ’im. I mustn’t love nobody but Will, and I can’t love ’im. I never did, that was my sin. I shouldn’t never ’ave married ’im. I don’t know whyever I done it. I was crazy, I think.”

Robin said nothing, but just stroked her head as she knelt at her feet.

“I didn’t know nothing about men,” Maisie went on brokenly. “I never went with no one but Charlie, and ’im that careful of me and always treating me like a lady. Then when ’e came it were all different, all different. I was mad, I’m sure I was mad. Then ’e said I’d ’ave to ’ave ’im, or I’d be disgraced, and I married ’im, and I don’t know where ’e is now, and don’t want to know neither.”

This tragic story came out in jerks with broken sobs between.

“I can’t ’elp loving Charlie, ’e’s that good.”

“Of course you can’t,” said Robin. “I shouldn’t try.”

“But I must—I must—it’s all wrong.”

“Love can’t be wrong,” Robin replied; “it is the most beautiful thing in the world.”

“But there is something what’s wrong,” Maisie said, sitting up with a frightened look in her eyes. “There’s something what drives girls mad, Miss Robin, so they don’t rightly know what they’re doing. I ain’t the only one. That’s what ’appened to Bessie Potter, too—’er as died when she ’ad ’er baby last week. It was a married man with ’er. She told me when she was dying. O God, why should men be so cruel!”

Robin had heard about Bessie, but had not thought much about it, and did not want to think about it now. She tried to turn Maisie’s thoughts to other things, asked about little Maisie, and went up to the bedroom to see her asleep. After an hour or so she left the mother calmer and more resigned, promising to come again soon. The two became great friends. Robin had a dancing class for children in the parish, and she got Maisie, who was a beautiful dancer, to help her on Tuesday evenings. Sometimes, too, she would slip up to the Rectory in the evening and do sewing work for Robin, helping to make the children’s costumes.

But, in spite of all her efforts, the girl fretted silently but continually, and seemed to grow thinner and frailer. At last one Tuesday night, just after they had come back from Devonshire, a small boy brought round a message that Mrs. Smith could not come to class as she was ill in bed. Robin dismissed the children and hurried round to the cottage. She found Maisie lying in bed with a high temperature and delirious. She had thrown all the clothes off her and was panting for breath, and Robin was shocked to see how thin, almost emaciated, she had become. In her delirium she kept on calling out to Charlie and begging him to keep her husband away. First she crooned over Charlie, comforting him as a mother comforts a child, then she suddenly shrieked out, “O God, I can’t bear it! ’E’s like a beast. Don’t let ’im ’it me! Don’t let ’im ’it me.” She struggled to sit up, holding up one arm as though to shield her face, and then fell back upon the pillow with a moan. Robin sent at once for the doctor, who declared it was double pneumonia. For days she lay between life and death, but she survived the crisis and came back. After that, however, she seemed to stand still. It was as though she did not wish to get better. She never mentioned Charlie when she was awake and conscious. She had promised and was too plucky to give in, but, in her sleep and her delirium, his name was often on her lips. Robin asked her father to send for him several times, but he kept putting it off until at last in real alarm she took the law into her own hands and wired. Now the fat was in the fire, the bewildered Rector thought to himself. He dreaded a revival of the scandal, and the pain that must result from these two coming together again.

“It’s a shame,” Robin said with indignation in her shining eyes. “Why can’t Maisie get rid of that brute and marry Charlie? She’ll never be well or happy till she does. The man has gone off and left her, and he must be a perfect beast, anyway.”

“Divorce is very expensive. I believe there are ways of getting it more cheaply, but it is a long, tedious business. The working people very rarely use it, anyway; they do not go farther than legal separation as a rule. But in any case, my dear, both Maisie and Charlie are convinced Christians and Divorce is impossible for them.”

“But Daddy, it’s all wrong,” Robin broke out. “She loves him so dearly that she just frets herself to fiddle strings. She can’t live without him, and love can’t be wrong, it can’t be wrong, not true love like theirs.”

“But she is a married woman, my dear.”

“That’s just it. It was a beastly marriage. That was the real wrong. Maisie was crazy when she married him. She told me she was—and he—oh, he must be a fiend——” She grew hot all over as she remembered some things poor Maisie had said in her delirium. She did not know, but guessed at the horror of degradation that lay behind them. “Anyway, I’ve sent for him, Daddy—I wired this afternoon. I’ve looked up the trains and he ought to be here by the last train at half-past nine to-night. I promised I would go down to Maisie last thing to see if he had come.”

“I’ll go down with you, dear,” her father said. They stood up and he put his arm round her. “I’m glad you wired. After all I did promise.”

“Yes, and I am really anxious about her.”

The Rector turned her face up to his, and looking down at her said, “You must not take it so much to heart, darling. I hate to see you looking unhappy.”

Tears came into her eyes—but she laughed them away.

“I’m all right, darling Daddy,” she said—“but,” she sighed, “I do wish people would not be so cruel to each other. Everything seems to have gone wrong lately, doesn’t it?”

They walked towards the house together.

“I’ve got one or two letters to write, but I’ll be ready about ten and we’ll go down together.”

Robin went to her den and sat down to write a letter to Peter in reply to one she had received that day. He appeared to be very happy. He was confident that his invention would be a success, and full of plans for perfecting it still further. She could not keep the trouble that was on her mind out of her letters to him. She wanted to tell him, and was soon writing rapidly.

It was after ten when she heard her father calling. The Cathedral clock was striking the quarter as they passed out of the back gate, and went down towards the river. Great clouds had rolled up, and there was thunder in the air.

She slipped her arm through her father’s and they walked in silence. Neither of them wanted to talk. As they drew near to Bank Street end, Robin said:

“We’ll just go straight in—there will be no one to open the door.”

They stepped into the front room which was bare but beautifully clean.

“You’d better go upstairs first, dear,” said the Rector.

As she got to the door she heard Maisie’s voice saying: “You won’t never go away from me again, Charlie, I can’t bear it, I’ll die if you do. You won’t, will you?”

A man’s voice answered, “Never again, Maisie, dear, never again.”

Robin knocked and then opened the door. Charlie was sitting on the side of the bed with Maisie in his arms. Her head was resting on his shoulder, and there was a look on her face that Robin had not seen for months, she was young again.

He made a motion to get up as Robin came in, but the girl clung to him and he sat down again.

“Oh, Miss Robin, thank you a thousand times for sending for ’im,” she said with trembling lips. “I don’t mind what ’appens now—I feels different already.”

“That’s right,” Robin answered brightly, “you look ever so much better, dear. Daddy’s downstairs,” she said, smiling at Charlie; “perhaps you would like to go down and see him, while I make Maisie comfortable for the night.”

The man had felt ill-at-ease, but the natural way in which this shining-faced child assumed that it was all quite as it ought to be reassured him.

“Yes, I’d like to see him very much,” he said.

“But you’ll come back, won’t you, boy?” Maisie cried, holding up her face for a kiss. “You’ll come back to say good night?”

“Of course I will—and I’ll come round first thing in the morning.”

Charlie went downstairs. He found the Rector sitting on the table in the middle of the room, and staring at a photograph of a Christmas party taken some years before in which Maisie and Charlie stood side by side. The boy did not know how his parson friend would take this new situation and was shy and awkward.

“How is she now?” the Rector asked as they shook hands.

“Better, sir, but oh God, she’s that thin,” his voice trembled.

“Well, she’s had a high temperature for a good while. It pulls you down, you know. Where are you stopping for the night, Charles? You’d better come along to the Rectory.”

Charley stiffened. He was not going to have his friend under any false impressions. It had to come out, and it had better come now.

“I’m never going to leave Maisie no more,” he said defiantly. “She’s my girl, and I’m going to keep ’er.”

The Rector expected this. He said nothing, but took out his pipe and began to fill it. There was silence, and they could hear Robin’s voice upstairs talking to Maisie.

At last he said:

“Well, old chap, it’s no good discussing that now. Anyhow, you had better come up home. I don’t suppose Mrs. Cruickshanks can have you, she’s got another lodger now.”

“There ain’t any good discussing it any time,” Charlie answered doggedly. “I’ve been turning it over and over these last three months, and my mind’s made up. If you don’t want me knowing that, I can’t come, and must get in where I can.”

The Rector held out his hand. “I’m not that sort, Charlie,” he said, “you know I’m not.”

“Yes, but I ’ad to tell you.”

Robin had come downstairs and was standing framed in the doorway as the men shook hands.

“Maisie wants you—she’s all quite comfy now,” she said.

Charlie looked from her to her father, and from her father back to her again.

“I reckon you two is about the best friends any man ever ’ad,” he said huskily.

“Yes, aren’t we a nice pair?” she said, going over to her father and taking his arm. “Daddy is the nicest person in the whole world, isn’t he, Charlie? And I can’t help catching some of it—can I? Run up to Maisie—and don’t hurry down. Daddy and I can wait a bit.”

He thanked them with his eyes and went upstairs.

Robin turned to face her father, and putting her two hands on his shoulders, said:

“Oh dear, what are they to do—they are all bound up in one another?”

He was silent. He was a poor parson, he told himself. These two ought not to be together, and Robin ought not to be here—and it was all a muddle. “Good Lord, I wonder what Christ would do under these circumstances,” he thought.

“Charlie’s coming home with us, anyhow,” he remarked. “You can shake a bed up for him in the spare room and we can talk it out to-morrow.”

She nodded and they said no more. Presently Charlie came downstairs. He was all cut up, but keeping hold on himself.

“Come along, Charlie,” said the Rector, “you’ll want a bite of supper.”

“Are you sure you wants me to come after what I told you?” asked Charlie, looking him straight in the face.

“Of course I do, man, come on.”

They called up a last good night to Maisie, closed the door behind them, and went down the street together. A stout evil-looking woman standing with her bare arms folded across her enormous breasts, looked after them and muttered to herself.