Читать книгу Gerald Cranston's Lady - Gilbert Frankau - Страница 15

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Studley “Farm” stands high on a grassland terrace. Behind it, ridge and furrow upsweep green to the dark hog’s-back of Studley Wood, on either side of which, barred with the gray of timber fences and the brown of “cuts-and-laids,” flow the pastures of Studley Vale.

Up the stony road to that grassland terrace, Havers, careful for his tires, eased the Clement-Talbot to the pace of a slow-trotting horse. A laborer touched his cap, and Hermione vouchsafed him a feudal smile.

“Gate’s open, m’lady,” he called to them.

They passed the open pasture-gate, and so came to the newly painted main gate of the Farm. That, too, stood open; and beyond it, midway of the short drive which leads to the low double-fronted house, Hermione saw one of her husband’s light coal-lorries. The lorry-man, as the laborer, touched his cap. But this time, answering the salute, her sense of humor got the better of her feudal instincts. “I’ve married a coal-merchant,” she thought suddenly.

The lorry made for the stable archway; her car stopped; Havers sprang from the wheel to assist her alighting; Rennie’s dour, clean-shaven face appeared at the opening door; and a moment later Hermione found herself in the little newly paneled hall, letting Syrett divest her of furs, hat, and hunting-veil, while she warmed her gloved hands before the red fire in the red-tiled hearth.

“I’d like something to eat,” pronounced Hermione.

“I’ll tell Mr. Rennie, your ladyship.”

The gray-haired, aquiline-nosed Syrett, who, both as lady’s-maid and as old retainer of the Rorkton family, had already assumed command of the domestic situation, disappeared kitchenward. Hermione, drawing off her “string” gloves, glanced round the hall. How spick and span the place looked; how rigid, how unhomely in its spick-and-spanness! The very foliage in the vases of the high embrasured window-ledges seemed to have taken on that quality of discipline which—as she already realized—was her new husband’s fetish.

“Luncheon is served, your ladyship,” murmured Rennie.

The dining-room, for all its comfort, offended her taste even more than the hall. Eating her food, she fell to comparing its oak and its cretonne with one of those hotels which ape the “country home.” In that hotel, she, Hermione Cranston, seemed an intruding stranger.

“I am a stranger,” she thought, toying with the unnecessary dessert; “a stranger in a strange land.”

Yet the strange land held its compensations. Lapped thus in the ease of money, one had at least the leisure for introspection; and after a while, as she lit her cigarette from the match that Rennie proffered, the Lady Hermione Cranston took advantage of that leisure, abandoning herself to reverie.

Vaguely, in that reverie, she relived the days and the nights which had followed that bewildering moment when, in the crowded vestry of St. Margaret’s, she had first realized herself Gerald Cranston’s wife. Gerald Cranston’s wife! Then, as now, the realization seemed incredible. Then, as now, nearly all the subsequent incidents of her second marriage-day had been mere blurs of sensation, pictures of unreality.

Yet now, as then, one picture, one sensation—their honeymoon journey to Oakham—was real enough. She could still see the full platform of St. Pancras Station, and the open door of the compartment into which Gerald had followed her; could still see herself, outwardly calm yet inwardly a little fearful, leaning back against the cushion Syrett had arranged for her, as the emptying platform slid away from their sliding windows; could still see, under the gray hat-brim in the opposite corner, the big blue-eyed countenance of the commoner who was her husband. Sharply in her reverie, Hermione remembered scrutinizing that big calm countenance; sharply she remembered her panic lest, by some last horrible mischance, her scrutiny should reveal, in those serious blue eyes, some light of passion akin to that light which she had seen long and long ago in Tony’s.

But neither then nor thereafter had those blue eyes betrayed the light she dreaded. There were elemental passions in this new man of hers, but at least they were controlled passions. And for that, all through those first fastidious honeymoon days, her gratitude had gone out to him.

Nevertheless, even in her gratitude, Hermione could not quite avoid being aware of the tremendous gulf which separated this second marriage from her first. “Water and wine,” she thought; “and the wine a mocker.”

And at that, sitting there alone in the bright, tasteless dining-room, her high, clean-cut features reddened as with shame. Desperately, she strove to put away the memory of Tony Cosgrave, and of all that she had made herself for him in those few crazy leave-days when she had imagined herself his only need. Desperately she strove to banish those visions in which she saw herself surrendering her rose-white girlhood to one whose every kiss had been a lie, whose very hand-clasp had been a betrayal of the confidences she whispered to him.

She had loved—and he had ... cheated. Those lips, which sucked away her maiden sweetness, had been the lips of a liar; those fondling fingers, the fingers of a libertine! Yes—a libertine! Arthur’s father, the man to whom she had surrendered body and soul in utter self-forgetfulness, had cared nothing for her self-surrender. While her eyes were yet weeping for his departure, he had consoled himself—consoled himself with another woman—with the woman whose letter had been found on him when he died.

“Faugh!” thought Hermione.

A coal, dropping from hob to hearth, startled her. Rising to replace it, she felt her hands trembling. She could see, in the mirror over the mantelpiece, that the blood had ebbed from her cheeks. “Fool!” she said to herself. “Fool!”

For what was man’s love but bodily passion transferable at man’s caprice from one female to another? Surely woman’s life should be dedicated to finer, worthier motives than mere self-submission to man’s caprices—to care for her offspring, and care for her home, and care for Beauty, such as the beauty of this green English country-side?

Slowly, on that last thought, the blood flowed back to Hermione’s pale cheeks; slowly, her eyes turning to the country picture beyond the leaded window of the dining-room, she abandoned introspection. Far away on the sloped background of that picture she could see the scarlet of a hunting-coat, and a gray horse trotting carefully along the stony road toward the pasture-gates. For a while, speculating idly as to their identity, she watched horse and rider. Then, suddenly, as the scarlet-clad horseman leaned forward to knock the pasture-gates open with his hunting-whip, she recognized him. “Gordon!” she thought. “Gordon Ibbotsleigh.”

The pasture-gate swung to, and the big gray trotted on for the Farm. It did not seem strange to her, knowing Ibbotsleigh, that he should call thus unceremoniously. On the contrary, it seemed fitting that the man who had introduced her to Gerald should be the first person to break the solitude of their honeymoon-time. Yet, to one who knew Gordon Ibbotsleigh’s slap-dash impetuousness, it did seem strange that he should draw irresolute rein and halt hesitant at the main gate, that he should eye the place as though undecided whether to enter or no.

Finally, however, Ibbotsleigh appeared to make up his mind, for the gray horse breasted open the unlatched gate, and, pushing his way through, began to walk slowly up the drive. Hermione could see, as the pair of them came on, that Gordon’s horse had been hard-ridden. Thorn-pricks blooded its gray belly. Drying foam flecked its long-cheeked hunting-curb. Its head drooped; and its nostrils steamed in the cold air.

But Gordon—though his big spurs, his mahogany-topped boots, his white breeches, and even the red of his coat were dirt-mired—showed never a sign of weariness. The stock round his wiry throat might have been newly tied. The silk hat, perched arrogant above the dandified face—dark-eyed and cleft of chin, black mustache upcurled from thin lips—gleamed as though fresh from the iron on its short scarlet hunting-string. Laughing as she opened the window to wave him welcome, Hermione noted that he had changed the dirtied gloves under his off saddle-flap for the clean white ones on his lean hands.

He acknowledged her welcome with a lift of his hat, pointed his white-thonged whip toward the stable archway, and disappeared. Still laughing at the changed gloves—for Gordon’s dandyism was a byword—Hermione rang the bell and ordered Rennie to set whisky and siphon on the hall table.