Читать книгу The Rain-Girl - Herbert George Jenkins - Страница 5

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DINNER will be ready in ten minutes, sir."

The waiter led the way to a small table on the right-hand side of the fireplace, in which burned a large fire surmounted by a log that crackled and spat a cheerful welcome.

"Empty!" remarked Beresford as he looked round the dining-room.

"It's the weather, sir," explained the waiter in an apologetic tone, as he gave a push to the log with his boot; then, after a swift glance round to satisfy himself that everything was as it should be, he withdrew.

Beresford shivered. The day's wetting had chilled him. What a day it had been. "The Two Dragons" was a godsend.

As he warmed himself before the fire, he mentally reviewed the events of the day, and came to the conclusion that there had been only one event, the girl on the gate.

For the past two hours her eyes had entirely eclipsed that absurd little phrase that had so obsessed his mind earlier in the day. It had been a strange day, he mused, a day of greyness: grey sky, ​grey sheets of rain, a grey prospect before him, and then that girl's grey eyes. They had seemed to change everything. They were like grey fire, seeming to blot out the other greys, as the dawn makes the stars to pale.

It was to him a new experience to find a girl monopolising his thoughts. The habit of a life-time had been to place women somewhere between dances and croquet. He had flirted with them in a superficial way, they had amused him; but they had never bulked largely in his life. Tommy Knowles of "the House" had once said that there was little hope for a country composed of men such as Beresford, who placed runs before kisses, and saw more in a dropped goal than a glad eye.

He seemed to have had so little time for girls. There had been games to play, books to read, pictures to see, and such a host of other interests that women had been rather crowded out. Somehow they never seemed to strike an interesting note in conversation. It was invariably about the plays they had seen, the band that was playing, the quality of the floor upon which they were dancing, common friends, or else gush about George Bernard Shaw, or Maeterlinck.

He fell to wondering what Aunt Caroline or the Edward Seymours would have thought of her. They regarded him as mad because he preferred the open road to the Foreign Office; but if they were to see a girl sitting on a gate in the rain, smoking a cigarette with apparent enjoyment, they would in ​all probability question, not only her reason, but her sense of delicacy.

The Rain-Girl (as Beresford mentally called her) obviously possessed character; but why was she tramping alone upon an English high-road, particularly when the heavens were drenching the earth with cold and cheerless rain? It was a queer thing for a girl to do, queer beyond analysis or comprehension. What would she have done had he spoken to her? In all probability have snubbed him; yet surely two strangers might pass the time of day upon the highway, even though they were of opposite sexes.

It had been an absurd sort of day, Beresford decided, and the sooner it were blotted from his memory the better; still he would like to see her again. Then he fell to speculating as to which direction she had taken.

Would dinner never be ready? Again he shivered, in spite of the heat of the fire. He would be all right, he told himself, as soon as he had eaten something. That waiter was a liar. More than a quarter of an hour had elapsed since he had promised dinner in ten minutes. He rang the bell. A few seconds later the door opened.

"Will dinner be long?" he enquired from where he stood facing the fire.

"They tell me it is ready now."

He span round with automatic suddenness, and found himself gazing into the same grey eyes that, ​for the last two hours, seemed to have occupied his thoughts to the exclusion of all else.

"The Rain-Girl!" The words seemed to come involuntarily. Then he added in confusion, "I—er—beg your pardon. I—I thought it was—I had just rung, I——" Then he lapsed into silence and stood staring.

"I quite understand," she said, with a smile of perfect self-possession, as she approached the fire.

Yes; it certainly was the Rain-Girl; but how changed. Her dusky hair, which grew low down on her forehead and temples, was daintily dressed, and she looked very slim and shapely in a simple gown of some nondescript colour between a brown and a grey, which clung in simple folds about her. As she stood holding out her hands to the warmth of the fire, he recovered from his surprise. Obviously the curious happenings of the day were not yet ended.

Deciding that it was embarrassing for two people to stand at the same fire without speaking, Beresford retired to his table just as the waiter entered with the soup. Seeing the Rain-Girl, the waiter hurried across to the table on the other side of the fireplace and withdrew the chair invitingly. She seated herself with a smile of acknowledgment.

She was evidently not inclined to be sociable, Beresford decided. Surely two people dining alone in the same inn might exchange a few common-places; but she seemed determined to discourage any attempt towards friendliness. All through the ​soup Beresford chafed at British insular prejudice. What good had the war done if it had not broken down this foolish barrier? Here were two people alone in an inn-parlour, yet they were doomed to dine at separate tables. He was piqued, too, at the girl's obvious indifference to his presence, a fact of which he had assured himself by surreptitious glances in her direction.

As the meal progressed, he became more and more incensed at her supremely unreasonable attitude. What right had she to consign him to a dull and tedious dinner? Surely the day had been a miserable enough affair without this totally unnecessary insistence of mid-Victorian prejudice and the segregation of the sexes. It was absurd, provincial, suburban, parochial, in fact it was most damnably irritating, he decided.

What would she do when the meal was over? Draw up to the fire, go to the smoking-room, or clear off to bed? Could he not do something to precipitate a crisis? But what? If he were a woman he might faint; but he could not call to mind ever having read of a hero of romance who fainted, even for the purpose of making the heroine's acquaintance. He might choke, be seized with a convulsion, develop signs of insanity. What would she do then, this self-possessed young woman? Ring for the waiter most likely.

Gradually there became engendered in his mind a dull resentment at her attitude of splendid isolation. She evidently preferred solitude, enjoyed it ​in fact. He would indulge her by going to the smoking-room as soon as he had finished. In spite of this decision, he continued to watch her covertly, noticing how little she ate. He himself was eating practically nothing; he had no appetite. Had they both caught a chill? What was the waiter thinking as he took away plates containing food little more than tasted? It was like a Charles Dana Gibson picture, but for the absence of the little cupid with an arrow fitted to his bow.

It was ridiculous.

Beresford pushed back his chair with some ostentation and walked towards the door. She had spoiled the soup, rendered insipid the fish and made detestably unpalatable the joint—in short she had spoiled everything. He would take coffee in the smoking-room, there was a large fire there and—it was strange how thoroughly chilled he was. Yes, he would clear out, perhaps she would breakfast early in the morning and take her departure before he was down. At the door he turned slightly to get a glimpse of her table. No, she had not even looked up.

He closed the door and, walking across to the smoking-room, threw himself into a comfortable chair by the roaring fire, rang for coffee and proceeded to light his pipe and smoke the Rain-Girl out of his thoughts.

Presently the waiter entered with the coffee, as Beresford judged by the click of crockery. The man placed a table in front of the fire on ​Beresford'sford's left; then, putting upon it the tray, he quietly withdrew.

Yes, coffee would be good on a night like this, Beresford decided as he turned to the tray, where, to his surprise, he found two cups.

"What the——" then he suddenly realised that his late companion at dinner, who was not a companion at all, was probably also taking coffee in the smoking-room. Here was a fine point of etiquette, he decided. There was nothing for it but to wait. He was curious to see if this linking together of their coffees would cause her to unbend. Fate was taking a hand in the affair.

It was obviously impossible to pour out his own coffee and leave her the remainder. Should he ring for the waiter? No, the coffee should act as master of the ceremonies and bridge the gulf between them. Placing the coffee-pot and the milk-jug on the hearth, he waited, substituting a cigarette for his briar, lest its rich, juicy note might prove unmusical to feminine ears. For ten minutes he waited. Had the waiter merely made a mistake in bringing two cups instead of one? Possibly at this very moment she was enjoying her coffee in the dining-room. After all perhaps there was only enough for one. Leaning forward, he picked up the coffee-pot, lifted the lid and peered in. It was full.

As he raised his eyes from the contemplation of the contents of the coffee-pot, it was to meet those of the Rain-Girl gazing quizzically down at him. ​He started back, nearly dropping the coffee-pot, and managed to scramble to his feet, coffee-pot in hand, conscious that he had flushed as if caught in some illicit act. This girl certainly had a curious habit of appearing at odd and dramatic moments.

"I was looking to see if it was coffee for one or coffee for two," he explained.

She looked at him gravely, obviously a little puzzled; then, catching sight of the two cups upon the tray, she smiled.

"How stupid of him," she said, "and you've waited?" Her eyebrows were lifted in interrogation.

"I was just investigating," said Beresford, feeling more at ease now that he was able to explain. "It was a sort of game. If there was enough only for one, I would ignore the second cup; if for two, I would wait."

She smiled again and sank into the chair on the opposite side of the fire, holding out her hands to the blaze.

Beresford stood looking down at her, the coffee-pot still in his hand.

She seemed entirely to have forgotten his presence. She certainly was a most amazing creature, he decided; but that was no reason why he should be done out of his coffee.

"Do you take it black or with milk?" he enquired in a matter-of-fact tone.

"I'm so sorry," she cried, looking at him with a start, "I—I——"

​He smiled down at her and proceeded to fill the cups. "Did you say black?"

"Please."

Lifting the tray and turning round he found her eyes fixed upon him. With a smile of thanks she took a cup and dropped into it two lumps of sugar. She was still regarding him with serious eyes.

"Didn't you pass me on the road this afternoon?" she asked as he resumed his seat.

"With reluctance, yes."

"With reluctance?" she repeated.

"I wanted to know why you were sitting on a gate on such a day, apparently enjoying it and, frankly, I've been wondering about it ever since. May I smoke?" he concluded.

She smiled her permission as, opening a bag that hung from her wrist, she drew out a cigarette-case. "But why shouldn't any one want to sit on a gate in the rain?" she queried as he held a match to her cigarette.

"I don't know," he confessed, "except that no one seems to enjoy the rain just for the rain's sake."

"That's true," she said dreamily. "I love the rain, and I'm sorry for it."

"Sorry for it?"

"Yes," she replied, "so few people find pleasure in the rain. I've never heard any one speak well of it in this country. Farmers do sometimes, but——" she paused.

"There's generally either too much or too little," he suggested.

​She nodded brightly. "In some countries the rain is looked upon almost as a god."

"I suppose it's a matter of whether it gives you vegetables or rheumatism," he said as he lighted a second cigarette.

She looked up quickly; then, with a little gurgling laugh, she nodded.

"In any case I like to sit and listen to it," she said, "and I love tramping in the rain."

Beresford regarded her curiously. What a queer sort of girl and what eyes, they were wonderful. Behind their limpid and serious greyness there lurked a something that puzzled him. They held wonderful possibilities.

"Personally I think less of the rain than of my own comfort," he confessed.

"Auntie always says that I'm a little mad," she said with the air of one desiring to be just. "Sometimes she omits the 'little.'"

"That's rather like my Aunt Caroline," he said, "she holds the same view about me. She calls me a fool. It amounts to the same thing. Directness is her strong point."

"I suppose we all appear a little mad to our friends," said the Rain-Girl with a smile.

"Aunt Caroline's not a friend, she's a relative," he hastened to explain.

The girl smiled as she gazed at the spiral of smoke rising from her cigarette.

"I'm always a little sorry for outraged relatives," she said.

​"I'm not," with decision. "Because they've got no tails to wag themselves, they object to our wagging ours."

"But hasn't the last four years changed all that?" she asked.

"You can walk down Piccadilly during the Season in a cap and a soft collar," conceded Beresford, "but that scarcely implies emancipation."

"I don't agree with you," she said smilingly.

"But a change en masse doesn't imply the growth of individuality," he persisted. "If all the potatoes in the world suddenly took it into their heads to become red, or all the cabbages blue, we should merely remark the change and promptly become accustomed to it."

"I see what you mean," she said, and he noticed a slight twitching at the corners of her mouth. "You mean that I'm a red potato, or a blue cabbage."

He laughed. This girl was singularly easy to talk to.

"I'm afraid I'm something of a red potato myself," he confessed. "It's only a few days ago that my aunt told me so. She expressed it differently; but no doubt that was what she meant."

"Oh; but I have to bleach again in a few days," she said. "Within a week I have to meet auntie in London, and then I shall become afraid of the rain because of my frocks and hats." She made a moue of disgust; then, catching Beresford's eye, she laughed.

​"Do you live in London?" he asked, grasping at this chance of finding out something about her.

"We're going there for the Season," she said, "to a hotel of all places."

"May I ask which?" inquired Beresford, seizing this opportunity with avidity. "I know most of them," he added lamely.

"The Ritz-Carlton." She shuddered.

"I've always heard it quite well-spoken of," he said with mock seriousness.

"Ugh!" she grimaced. "I so dislike all that; but auntie insists."

"She is conventional?" he suggested.

"As conventional as the suburbs. I'm supposed to be with friends in Yorkshire now," she added with the smile of a mischievous child. "If she could see me here, she would take to her bed with an attack of nerves. Poor auntie! Sometimes I am quite sorry for her," and again the little gurgling laugh belied her words.

"I'm afraid you have convicted yourself," he said. "If you had the courage of your convictions, you would go tramping and let the world know it."

"No," she said; "it isn't that; but during the last four or five years I've given auntie such a series of shocks, that she really must have time to recover. First I went as a V.A.D., then I drove a Red Cross car in France and—well, now I must give way to her a little and become a hypocrite."

"No doubt that is where you got your ideas readjusted."

​"Readjusted?" she repeated, looking at him interrogatingly.

"In France," he said. "We all had time to think out there."

She nodded understandingly.

"I suppose it was being pitchforked clean out of our environment," continued Beresford, "and making hay with class distinctions. I went out from the Foreign Office. For some weeks I was a private; it was a revelation."

"Yes," she said dreamily, "I suppose we all felt it."

"You see out there the navvy for the first time in his life asked himself why he was a navvy."

"And the man from the Foreign Office why he was a man from the Foreign Office," she suggested.

"Yes," he smiled, "and I doubt if either was successful in framing a satisfactory answer. Everything was one vast note of interrogation. A new riddle had been propounded to us."

"And you came back looking for an Œdipus."

"Yes," he assented. "I on the open road, others in the workshop and office. The politician knows nothing about reconstruction, because he can view it only from the material standpoint."

She nodded her head brightly in agreement. "No one seems to understand. Everything's so mixed up."

"I suppose it's because until the war no one ever had a chance of finding out anything about any but his own class. Over there the labourer found the ​lord a sport, and the lord found the labourer a man just like himself. Oh, it's going to be what a little cockney in my section would have called 'an 'ades of a beano.'"

Beresford shovelled some more coal on the fire. He seemed unable to get the chill out of his limbs.

"And you," she asked, "are you tramping for long?"

"For ever I hope."

"For ever! That's rather a long time, isn't it?" she questioned.

Beresford then told her something of his determination to cut adrift from town life and its drudgery, and to see what the open road had to offer. He told her of the protests of his relatives; of the general conviction that he had become mentally unhinged, probably due to shell-shock. How every one had endeavoured to dissuade him from the folly upon which he was about to embark. He told her that in the disposal of his effects he felt rather like a schoolboy destroying his kit.

"But your books?" she said. "What did you do with them?"

"Ah! there you've put your finger on the weak spot," laughed Beresford. "I had meant to give away a few and sell the rest; but somehow I couldn't do it, so I had them done up in cases and stored away. I paid two years' storage in advance."

She nodded approval and understanding.

"You will see that I'm really a very weak character after all."

​"And you will be walking month after month," she said dreamily, "with no thought of the London Season, or Scotland, or wintering in Egypt. I wish I were you," she added.

"But surely you could break away if you wished it?"

"It's not so easy for a girl," she replied, "and—and—oh, there are so many considerations. No," she added with a sigh of resignation, "I must be content with occasional lapses, and I don't really know that I'm a true vagabond," she said a little regretfully, "I always have to carry a comfortable frock with me," glancing down at herself, then looking up at him with a quizzical little smile. "That is in itself a sign of weakness, isn't it?"

"Only if you persist in labels," he replied. "You are dreadfully conventional."

"I!" she cried in surprise.

"Yes; you will insist on classifying every one according to appearances and accepted ideas."

"I don't understand," she said with a puzzled expression.

"Your idea of a vagabond is that of one who washes seldom, changes even seldomer, and spends the evening in hob-nailed boots by the inn fireside."

"I suppose you are right," she said laughing. "It's very difficult to get away from labels."

"Do you believe that Nature discourages eccentricity?"

"I—I'm afraid I've never thought about it," she said after a short pause. "Why?"

​"Because that ridiculous phrase has been running in my head all day," he replied, shivering again slightly. "I wonder if the rain came as a rebuke to me for throwing over everything."

She nodded, signifying that she understood.

"It's rather queer," he went on, "but I had never thought of possible drawbacks to bucolic freedom."

"You do now, though," she suggested with a mischievous upward glance through her lashes that thrilled him.

"I seem to believe in nothing else now," he added. "I don't possess your veneration for the rain, I prefer skylarks. Besides," he went on, "I like to lie on my back in a field and forget."

"I know," she said eagerly, "I've often wanted to live in a caravan, then you get everything. The night sounds must be so wonderful."

"You cannot be a vagabond if you carry your house with you," he objected.

"Just as much as those who use other people's houses—the inns," she retorted. "I suppose it's really impossible to be a vagabond other than at heart."

"It's impossible unless you can glory in dirt and personal uncleanliness."

"What a horrible idea. Surely there can be clean vagabonds."

"What opportunity has a tramp to wash? There are only the streams and the rivers, with the chance of getting run in for disturbing the trout or polluting the water. Besides, without soap you cannot ​wash properly, and I've never heard of a vagabond who carried a cake of soap with him."

"I do," she laughed, then after a few moments' pause she added, "You reason and analyse too much for the open road. I being a woman accept all, and glory in my inconsistencies."

"And incidentally get as many baths, hot or cold, as you want."

She nodded.

"No," he continued, "the nomadic habit gets you dubbed a dangerous lunatic. I suppose I'm a dangerous lunatic, because I cannot find content in a dinner, a dance, or a crush, with a month's holiday in the summer and, as my cousin would put it, working like a fountain from ten till four."

"But does it really matter what we do, provided we can justify it to ourselves?" She looked up at him eagerly.

"Would not the Philistines regard that as a dangerous philosophy?"

"I don't think I should ever want to run away from things," she said dreamily; "that is monastic. It has always seemed to me a much greater achievement to live your own life in the midst of uncongenial or unsympathetic surroundings."

"You don't know Aunt Caroline and the Foreign Office," said Beresford grimly.

"Oh! but," said the girl, "my auntie's just as conventional as can be. You see," she continued seriously, "to be an idealist you must be unconscious of being one. Do you understand what I mean?"

​"You suggest that it may become a pose."

"Yes," she said, nodding her head eagerly. "You might sacrifice the ideals to the idealism. It's like religion that teaches you to find God in a church, whereas you should be able to:—

Raise the stone and find me there,

Cleave the wood and there am I.

I so dislike cults and societies," she added inconsequently.

"You make me feel as if I were being lectured."

"I'm so sorry," she said hastily. "I didn't mean——"

"Please go on, I think I like it."

"But we are wandering from vagabondage," she smiled. "Don't you think that Thoreau and Jefferies were vagabonds?"

"Frankly I don't," he said with decision. "They were sentimentalists. The nearest to perfect vagabonds that I can recall among writers are Walt Whitman and George Borrow. Whitman is alleged to have had all the characteristics of the vagabond. Have not controversies raged about his personal cleanliness? As for Borrow, he could outwit a Jew or a gipsy."

"And cheat a girl's love for him," she suggested.

"Love and vagabondage are contradictions."

"Contradictions!" she cried, opening her eyes wide. "I don't agree with you," she added with decision.

​"A vagabond has only one mistress, Nature," said Beresford quietly.

"Then I'm not a vagabond," she said.

"The wood and the glade have only one music for the vagabond, the pipes of Pan," he continued. "You would introduce the guitar."

"I should do nothing of the sort," she cried indignantly. "As a matter of fact I used to play the concertina."

"The what?"

"The concertina," she repeated demurely with downcast eyes.

Beresford stared at her in astonishment, not quite sure whether or no she were serious.

"You see," she said, "I couldn't play anything else, and sometimes I wanted to remind myself of—of——" she broke off.

"You could have sung?" he suggested.

"Of course I could," she said quietly, "but you've never heard me sing, and now I must be going to bed," she said. "Perhaps——" she hesitated for a fraction of a second. "Perhaps I shall see you at breakfast."

"Thanks so much," he said eagerly. "I shall be up early," and in his mind he had come to the determination that his way should be her way if she would permit it.

"Good night," she said as she rose, and with a friendly smile walked towards the door.

"Good night, au revoir," he said meaningly, as ​he opened the door and she passed out with a nod and a smile.

"A concertina!" muttered Beresford, as he returned to his chair, "and what eyes."

He rang the bell, and when the waiter entered, ordered a double brandy. He felt chilled to the bone in spite of the fire. When the waiter returned he drank the brandy neat, shivering again violently.

"Oh, hang it!" he muttered angrily. "I'll go to bed."

Surely there never was so fantastic an ending to so fantastic a day. Wooing Pan with a concertina!

"She's mad," he muttered, "mad as a spinning dervish."