Читать книгу I Pronounce Them - G. A. Studdert Kennedy - Страница 6

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The morning of her father’s interview with Jim Counihan had been a memorable one for Robin Peterson, too. Born artist as she was, her natural means of artistic expression was dancing. Everything, as she said, went to her feet. Emotion of any kind, joyous or sad, she wanted to dance it out. The one ambition of her life was to be a great dancer. Already she realized that Art is a hard mistress, and that she must work if she was to be anything but a decent amateur, and she worked hard. She was fortunate in having a real artist to help her. Miss Grayson had run a dancing class in Ranchester for many years, and was no mere hack teacher, but one to whom her Art was life. Robin Peterson was her glory, far and away the most talented and promising pupil she had ever taught, and the two were fast friends. Every morning now that she had left school Robin went to her dancing. Punctually as the Cathedral clock struck the quarter after nine she would come out of the Rectory gate. Her punctuality lately had been remarkable, and was not, it must be confessed, altogether due to virtuous resolve or artistic zeal. Peter Craddock, old Canon Craddock’s son, had observed that she came out then, and he nearly always managed to be starting out at that time in his little two-seater sporting car, and would offer Robin a lift. Neither of them acknowledged that there was any arrangement between them. Sometimes Peter had to get down to the works early, and then he could not wait. When this happened he would swear softly to himself as he drove off without her, and Robin would be conscious that the morning was rather a dull morning, even though the sun were shining.

Peter Craddock had been an airman in the war, and was now with the Bristol Aeroplane Company, who had sent him down to Ranchester to supervise the production of some parts which an engineering firm in the town were making for them. He was twenty-nine years of age, tall, dark, good looking, and to outsiders perfectly charming when he liked. At home he had always been a source of some anxiety. He was an only child and his parents idolized and spoiled him. He assumed that the world was made to provide him with what he wanted, and up to now it had served him pretty well. He had both brains and courage, and had found life an easy nut to crack. Although tradition and upbringing had provided him with a standard of honour rather higher than that of some of his friends, there had been incidents in his life which he would not have cared to discuss with his father. But then the old man was out of date, and was a parson, and for that double reason did not really count for much. He was a great New Testament scholar, but that, of course, has no possible bearing upon real life. Peter was not really vicious. Many men would have been proud to have reached his age with as clean a record. He had not kept altogether straight in France, but that was wartime madness. There had been an affair with a married woman at Bristol, but it went no further than a few mad expeditions into the country, some hectic kisses, and sad farewells. Anyhow, she had gone off with another fellow over a year ago, and he did not wonder, her husband was a brute. The world would have been quite satisfied with Peter even had it known his secrets, and Peter was more than satisfied with himself. He did not think of himself as being in love with Robin. She was only a child, but rather a wonderful child. There were finer possibilities in his nature and to them she appealed. She stood to him for all that was cleanest and best in life. Since he had become conscious of her, which was about three weeks after he had come back home on this job, he had taken to going to his Communion again in the Cathedral at eight o’clock on Sunday morning. Nor was this altogether because he knew that Robin would be there, and not in the least because he wanted to impress her with his Church-going. It was, as far as it went, a real revival in him of what was best. Somehow it was easier to keep straight at home. The atmosphere caught him, and he followed, as he always did, the line of least resistance.

He was happier than he had been for a long time, and was not finding Ranchester the dull hole he had feared that it would be. His parents were delighted. They assumed that the restlessness of war was working off and that he was settling down. Old Canon Craddock gave special thanks to God in his private prayers when Peter appeared at Communion for the third time running, and he now looked forward on a Saturday night to hearing him say, after bidding him good night in the study, “Well, I’ll trickle off to bed, Dad, you might give me a knock in the morning. I think I’ll go to Church.”

On this particular morning all had gone well. Robin came out of the gate and there, opposite the Craddocks’, was the Riley two-seater with its red splash-boards and silver body shining in the sun, and Peter, tinkering at the engine with a skill and earnestness partly real, for he loved an engine as a saint loves his soul, and partly designed to kill time. He heard the gate, and turned round, wiping the oil off his fingers with a cloth.

“Hullo! little girl,” he said, “want a lift?”

“Yes, Peter, I’d love it,” said Robin. “I want to be in time this morning. There’s this dance at the Fête next Wednesday. I’m practising like mad, and Miss Grayson’s tearing her hair over it.”

“We’ll have you there in a jiff,” he said; “hop in while I crank up. The starter’s on strike this morning.”

Robin liked the air of mastery with which he steered the car through the old gate of the Cathedral close. She liked the feel and the smell of his brown tweeds beside her, the watchful look in his eyes as he drove, and the ease with which he threaded his way through the traffic in the narrow High Street. She wondered how he looked when he was flying. It must be grand to fly, she thought, almost as good as a really good dance. I would be a flying man if I were a man. All this was fleeting through her mind, rather as a series of sensations making up a happy feeling which fitted in with the sunshine, than as a connected train of thought. She did not know she was thinking about Peter, she was just conscious of him; he was part of the sunshine and of life, and she was happy. She had been very happy lately, happier than she had ever been since her mother died.

As they slowed down for a lorry passing a big Drapery store at the Cross, a pretty girl who was polishing the brass outside the window, smiled at Robin and nodded her head.

“Who’s that?” said Peter, struck by the beauty of a really lovely face.

“Oh, I am so sorry for her, poor girl. Her name is Maisie, Maisie Smith,” Robin said. “She used to be Maisie Thomas, but she married a soldier just at the end of the war, and he turned out a perfect brute, used to drink and beat her, and was so cruel to their little girl. He’s gone away now and she lives by herself and works at that shop.”

“Hard luck that,” Peter said.

“Yes, and the worst of it is that the boy she really loved and who loves her is dying to help her, and of course he can’t. He’s a server at daddy’s church, and such a dear. Maisie used to be much the prettiest girl in our parish, and Charlie Roberts just worshipped her.”

“What made her marry the other fellow?” asked Peter.

“I never could think,” said Robin, “nor can daddy. He was wounded in the war and Maisie met him up at the Old Hall Hospital. She was a maid there, and she seemed to go mad on him all at once. When she came to ask daddy to marry them all in a hurry, he asked her about Charlie, but she said she never could marry anyone now but this Will Smith. Of course he married them, but it turned out all wrong.”

“Pity she can’t get rid of him and marry the other fellow,” said Peter, half to himself and half to Robin. “Divorce laws in this country are all wrong.”

Robin heard him, but this was strange ground to her, and she said nothing more. She did not really want to talk about poor Maisie and her troubles, the morning was too lovely, and the sun too bright.

She had never thought about the Divorce laws.

She had read things in the papers, and seen pictures of women who had been divorced with expansive smiles, or trying to hide their faces from the camera. But of course people who got into the papers were not like ordinary people that one met every day. There was some awful trouble between Phyllis and Uncle Jim. That was beastly, and poor Uncle Jim looked so ill and miserable. She did not associate that with Divorce as yet. It was just a quarrel or something wretched. She half wished now that she had said nothing about Maisie. She had only done it because she was still a little shy of Peter, and had to talk about something. They were coming near to the Studio where Miss Grayson held her classes, and it had been a lovely drive after all, and she was happy.

“Here we are, little girl,” said Peter, putting out his hand with a splendid sweep and swinging round a corner. “Not been long about it, have we?”

“No, it’s not half-past yet,” answered Robin, jumping out and looking at a little gold wristlet watch that had belonged to her mother. “You have been quick, Peter, and I have enjoyed it. Thank you ever so much.”

But somehow Peter did not seem to be in a hurry that morning. He did not touch his hat, and start to turn the car round in the firm, beautiful curves that were one of Robin’s half-conscious morning joys. All fine graceful motions were a joy to her dancing soul. He just sat there smiling at her, as much as to say “Isn’t it jolly—aren’t you jolly, and I jolly, and isn’t it good to be alive!” She agreed with him; every fibre of her body and soul, in their mysterious and indivisible unity, agreed with him. She put her two hands on the door of the car which she had just closed, and did a kind of little dance. Peter and the sunshine had got into her feet.

“I have enjoyed it,” she said again, smiling. “She is a beauty,” and she patted the car as if it were alive.

“Not bad, is she?” said Peter, and then looked away. He looked back again in a moment. “I’ll be coming back this way about half-past twelve. I suppose I couldn’t take you home, could I?”

Robin coloured with pleasure. That was one of the jolly things about her, Peter thought. It was not a blush exactly. It was something alloverish. She just shone.

“I should love you to, Peter,” she said. “I generally come out about twelve, though, and I don’t want to keep dad waiting. Still, we have an awful lot to do this morning really, and I may be a bit late. You might just call round and see, if it’s no trouble. If I’m not here at half-past, don’t wait, will you?”

She half knew that she would be late out and he wholly knew that he would come early, but they had never made any arrangement before, and both instinctively wanted to preserve the fiction of their casual meetings. There was a kind of deliciously certain uncertainty about them which was too good to lose.

“It’s not a bit of trouble. I love having you, little girl. You make the car go better. I’ll come a bit early if I can. Good-bye, till then.”

The car swung round with an extra thrill, he waved his hand, and disappeared round the corner.

The morning went like lightning. The “Dance of the Golden Moth” was Miss Grayson’s own conception. It had come to birth in her mind after reading some lines of poetry in a magazine.

Thought is the final mockery,

A chance by-product of the brain,

As blank, as purposeless and vain,

As all the rest of this mad scheme of things.

Its shining wings

Bear mortals to their death,

As, after witless wandering flight,

The moth is burned up in the light

That, through the darkness,

Lured him to his doom.

The poem itself had been on the Resurrection and had ended on a triumphant note:

If Jesus died,

Nought but the winter and the gloom

Remain.

But Jesus lives! Then full and fair

Shout and sing ye golden flowers,

Drifting clouds and dancing showers,

Silver moons that wax and wane,

Resurrexit! Resurrexit!

God’s green spring is true again.

Miss Grayson had never been able to make up her mind how to end the dance. Should she dance the whole poem or only part of it? Ought it to end in the tragedy of Death or with the triumph of the Resurrection? For some time it had been a tragedy, and she had never even hinted to Robin of any other possibility. Round a table, with a flower-pot on it to represent the dazzling light of life, the little golden moth, with her soul in her feet, had danced to her death morning after morning. Nearer and nearer she came, as though caught up into an ecstasy by the sheer glory of light, until she sank down, with her wings of golden drapery wrapped close about her, and lay still.

Then she would jump to her feet with a shining face and say, “Will that do, Miss Grayson?”

It never would do, of course, for Miss Grayson was an artist, but it grew better and better. Then one day, struck by the joy in Robin’s face when she jumped up from her death, she let out the fact that the poem really ended with the Resurrection, and quoted the lines. She was, in her own mind, convinced that it was better to keep the note of sombre tragedy, and end with that little huddled figure lying still in the burning light, but, from the first, Robin was for the Resurrection. She was wild with enthusiasm for it.

“O may I Resurrect, Miss Grayson? Please let me Resurrect. It would just make it perfect. Let me do it all over again now and Resurrect at the end.”

Miss Grayson hesitated for awhile, but at last gave in with a smile at her enthusiasm.

“Well, you can try it, my dear,” she said.

Robin stood for a moment considering, one hand to her lips and one foot pointed to the ground.

“How do you Resurrect, Miss Grayson?”

A shadow came over to the older woman’s face.

“I’ll leave that to you, dear,” she said. “I’m not sure how I should do it, and perhaps I’m too old to learn.”

Robin threw herself into it. In some subtle way the consciousness of the coming Resurrection changed the dance of death, the approach to the light was purer ecstasy, the unconsciousness of the cruelty of life more complete. For a little longer than usual she lay still, then slowly raised her head, and with an unfolding of her lithe little body that spoke in every line of a delicious awakening stood up, and with arms outstretched, as her golden wings came back to her, held up her laughing face to the light, like a child waiting for a kiss. It was beautifully done for a first attempt. Miss Grayson saw the possibilities of it, and was really pleased.

“Then can I Resurrect at the Fête?” Robin said. “I love it, it makes it perfect. Of course I loved it before, it was so deliciously sad, but really inside me I always wanted to Resurrect, though I never thought of dancing it.”

“Well, we’ll see,” Miss Grayson said.

On this morning, what with Peter and the sunshine, Robin was all Resurrection and no death. The dance had been much elaborated, and they went through it together again and again, and, when the time came to go, Robin kept the willing Miss Grayson discussing suitable music, methods of Resurrection, and other important matters until she heard the Cathedral clock strike the quarter. Then she hurriedly took up her hat and little leather case with her shoes and wings in it, and ran downstairs. Peter and the car had been there for a good ten minutes.

“I do hope you haven’t been waiting long,” Robin said breathlessly. “I had no idea it was so late.”

This was almost true because she had tried to forget the time, and it is wonderful what a happy girl can forget when she is reluctant to remember.

“No, only a minute or two,” said Peter, which was also true, for even a long watch seems short when it is past and the light has come. The wonder of little Robin had been dawning on Peter’s mind that morning more brightly than before. He was very near to being in love.

“We must hurry,” said Robin, “daddy will be waiting, and he does so hate waiting for lunch, poor dear.”

The engine was already humming and, as they started off together, she began to tell him about the dance.

“I think it’s much better to Resurrect, don’t you, Peter?” she said.

“Well, I don’t want you to die just yet anyway, little Robin,” he replied.

“Nor do I——” She laughed and made a little movement with her hands as though she were taking the whole world into her arms, and then said radiantly, “I do love life.”

“I don’t think you ought ever to grow up either,” Peter remarked with a glance at her after a happy silence, during which he made a series of perfectly barbaric and abominable noises to clear a lorry out of the road.

“Oh! I’d like to grow a bit bigger,” she said, “my legs aren’t long enough.” She looked down, more in sorrow than in anger, at the beautifully shaped but offending members in their silk stockings stretched out luxuriously before her. It was a real trouble to her this matter of her legs, which were too short for perfect dancing. She had often talked about it to her father, and she made the sorrowful observation now with an evident sincerity that made Peter chuckle. He glanced sideways at the legs, and felt, rather than thought, how jolly they were.

“Well, I think you are just all right as you are. You ought to be put into a glass case and preserved like that for ever and ever.”

“Like a mummy—that would be dull,” she said with a comic little grimace.

They drew nearer together in spirit as they laughed over the nonsense of a mummified Robin. Presently they passed through the gate of the close and drew up with a flourish at the Rectory. For a moment they sat still, then Robin gave a little sigh that said what all the poets in the world have tried to say, and known that they have failed.

Peter took her hand in his and gave it a squeeze.

“You really are a darling little girl, aren’t you?” he said.

She did not return the squeeze, but jumped out, a shining, happy Robin, with a joy song in her face. She banged the door and turned to him, and, looking like an April morning trying to be serious, said:

“I’m not really. I’m horrid inside sometimes. You don’t know me yet. Good-bye, Peter. I must fly.”

It was from that heaven of cloudless youth that she had burst in upon the two men with the wreck of a world between them.