Читать книгу Hans Frost - Hugh Walpole - Страница 10

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Outside in the passage again he looked at his watch--half-past six. He must have stayed there thinking in the library a long time. Slept perhaps? That's what old men were for ever doing, sleeping when they didn't know it. Maybe, just as Alice bounded across the brook or Caesar crossed the Rubicon, so he, on receiving the Manet . . . Anyway he felt devilish queer. Death perhaps. The beginning of an illness, the instant change from a fine, taut body to a trembling, helpless, aching mass of flesh and bones, disintegrated, fading.

He peered down the passage as though he expected to see his own ghost at the end of it. Then, with a little smiling sneer at his own folly, he pinched his arm. Solid firm flesh. He stroked his chin. He was all right. He saw suddenly breaking into the tissue-paper of the passage all the world's old men taking exercises, clad only in their vests, on the floors of their bedrooms, rising slowly on their hams and sinking again. Faces purple, arms mottled, stomachs protruding. At the sight of that disgusting vision he turned tail and sought refuge in the things of the spirit, the Holy Grail, and the last agonizing leap up the dark mountain-side until the summit is grasped! That was better. He had shaken the old lady off his shoulders. Let her weave her spells under the shadow of Gladstone addressing the House of Commons. He defied her.

Eight o'clock dinner. Nearly an hour and a half to bathe and change. Something within him snuggled together at the anticipation of the pleasure. Water, hot as hot, bath salts, softly scented soap, the slow, tranquil, half-sleepy comfort of the relaxing body, thoughts like indifferent, glittering, tail-flicking gold-fish slipping along his brain, silence everywhere, the soft glow of the electric light on the white tiles. There, now that you are seventy, is your principal sensuous pleasure. A warm bath and silence. A warm bath and silence. Better than all the glories of the arts and the tender intimacies of any woman's embrace--now that you are seventy.

He padded along, Martha, sniffing as though she scented the possibilities of a rat, a little ahead of him. His bedroom was on the next floor. Ruth had hers on this one, down the passage beyond the library. He had chosen his because it was almost an attic, the roof sloping a little, and a wonderful view over the Park. The servants' rooms were only just beyond his, and one of the guest-rooms, the guest-room for the quite unimportant guest.

His only discomfort was that he felt sometimes as though he were spying on the servants, on Bigges and Mrs. Carlyon, the cook and the maids. Or that they might think he were. Servants were so odd. You meant them to be just like yourself, they doing their job and you doing yours. No servant and master any more, but only human beings performing services each in his or her own way.

But they wouldn't have it so. They talked among themselves and watered the private gardens of their own private souls, growing their own spiritual cabbages and turnips. Very indignant if you asked them for one of their own special lettuces. Nor would they exchange. Bigges, for instance. What did he know about Bigges? Nothing, except that he was an efficient servant and very unpleasant. He would love to rid himself of Bigges. He would love to say: 'Now, Bigges, you go this very minute.' And Bigges would say: 'Why?' And he would say: 'Because you are so efficient. Because you never make a mistake. Because I hate the neatness of your hair and the breadth of your chest and the way you swing your hams when you walk. Reason enough. Now go.'

But Bigges wouldn't go, because Ruth liked him and thought him an excellent servant, and were Hans to say: 'Bigges must go, because of the way that he swings his hams,' Ruth would think him mad, and also indecent.

He walked slowly upstairs to his room. Yes, something was certainly wrong with him. He had never actively wanted to get rid of Bigges before.

Entering his room he was at once dissatisfied with it. It was too luxurious and comfortable. On the pale cream-coloured walls were four beautiful pictures: a painting of a French street, by Utrillo; a faintly coloured drawing of two long-legged nude women, by Augustus John; a flower piece of peonies, by Bracque; and a blue hill behind dark fields, by Duncan Grant. The carpet was dark wine-purple and very soft. Everything was soft, the bed, the electric light, the deep arm-chair, the dark blue curtains at the window. The only hard thing was the electric horse in the corner, on whose back he took his morning exercises, and even that had a soft seat. Hanging over the foot of the bed was a thick-padded orange dressing-gown and below it two deep brown wool-lined bedroom slippers. Everything was soft.

He took off his coat and waistcoat, his collar and tie. He looked at himself in the glass--funny old man with his bare neck and the grey hairs on his chest curling between the ends of his open shirt. Funny old man nearly dead in this soft electric-lighted room. Nearly dead and nothing to show save a few ill-written child-like books. No warmth anywhere, no real friend, no real wife, no real butler even.

No real life anywhere--only the silly reflection in this looking-glass and the padded dressing-gown waiting to fold itself about his naked body.

He had left his door half open. He turned to close it before he stripped. He heard a sound. He stood by the door listening. Yes, there could be no mistake. Someone, near at hand, was sobbing.

The sudden reality of the sound breaking on the empty unreality both of his room and himself startled him profoundly. Who was it? One of the maids perhaps. But no, not at this hour.

He thought then of the guest-room. The guest-room! Could there be anyone there?

He remembered then that he had heard something--Ruth had told him--something about a niece. The daughter of her sister, an orphan. He had been told weeks ago; he had scarcely noticed. Could this be she? But no. Modern girls didn't cry. Tears were no weapon in their armoury.

But the sobbing went on, broken, half checked, desperately unhappy. He could not endure it. He went hastily back into the room, slipped on the dressing-gown, went down the passage.

Yes, it was from the guest-room; the door had not been completely closed. He pushed it softly open and looked in.

Lying on her face on the bed, her head in her arms, was a girl. She lay there almost without movement.

He could not spy upon her. At once he said:

'Hullo! Anything the matter?'

She sprang up and kneeling on the bed turned to him a face childish, stained with tears and flushed with surprise.

She sprang off the bed and, standing like a young animal at bay, said fiercely:

'What is it? . . . I thought the door was closed.'

'Well, it wasn't. . . .' Then he added, smiling, 'I beg your pardon for coming in.'

She had hated to be caught. She looked at him with hostility. Then she blew her nose on a very small and, as he could see, very damp handkerchief.

'You're Uncle Hans?'

'Yes,' he said.

'I'm Nathalie Swan, and I was crying because I was homesick. I never did anything so silly before in my life and I never will again.'

'Oh, there's no harm in crying,' Hans said. 'I often wish that I could. It's a great relief. One always feels better after it. Men aren't supposed to--I'm sure I don't know why. But I like women to. It shows they're human.'

She gave her nose a final blow.

'I haven't been away from home before. I went to the High School in Polchester. This house is so big and silent. But it was dreadfully silly of me. . . . How do you do?'

She came towards him, her hand outstretched. They shook hands.

'I suppose it isn't very proper,' he said, 'to come into a lady's room in a dressing-gown, but it's my seventieth birthday and after seventy one may do anything.'

'Yes, I know it is,' she answered. 'I read about it in the paper.'

'Well then, because I'm seventy, and because I'm your uncle, and because you're my guest, I may go further. Tell me what I can do to make you happy and comfortable.'

'You've done everything,' she answered timidly, 'by our meeting. I saw your picture in the hall when I arrived, but I felt somehow as though that was as far as I was going to get.'

'When did you arrive?'

'Late this afternoon.'

He was going to say something about his wife. He checked himself.

'But how foolish to think that you weren't going to get further than that very indifferent picture. We're under the same roof. We'll be meeting every day.'

Her eyes shone with pleasure. 'Oh, shall we?'

'But of course--Why shouldn't we?'

'You're a great man. And you won't have time----'

He shook his head impatiently. 'What nonsense! In the first place there aren't any great men. In the second I've all the time in the world. I've nothing to do.'

'Writing books must take a great deal of time.'

'I don't expect I shall ever write another. There are far too many in the world already. If you can stop my writing them I shall be deeply grateful.'

'Other people won't. They'd murder me.'

She was sitting on the bed. She looked tired and dishevelled.

'Dinner's at eight,' he said.

'I'm not coming down to-night,' she answered. 'There's a grand dinner-party because of your birthday. And I'm going to have what I like better than anything in the world--dinner in bed.'

He was about to speak. Again he checked himself.

'Perhaps that's best to-night. You must be tired. But it isn't a grand dinner-party, only a stupid one, where no one will say what they mean.'

'It would be awful if they did, wouldn't it,' she answered him. 'I don't mean at your dinner-party especially, but always. Mrs. Proudie has a brother who comes to stay sometimes and he always says exactly what he means. The results are frightful.'

'Mrs. Proudie?'

'The Proudies are the people I've been living with. They have been so wonderfully kind to me--always. I think that is why I was crying. They spoilt me. I couldn't help thinking of them. I love them terribly.'

'We'll try and be kind too,' he said. 'It will do us all good here.'

She was brightening. He saw how young she was by the way that the colour was stealing back into her face and all her form returning, her curly bobbed hair resuming its order although she had not touched it, the traces of the tears vanishing from her cheeks although, after the first surprise, she had not wiped them, faint rose like soft reflected light shadowing the face under the dark eyes and the dark hair.

She was adorably young. She might be his beloved grandchild.

'You might be my grandchild,' he said, not knowing why he said it.

'I could easily, couldn't I?' she answered, smiling with all her body.

He saw that she was adoring him, gazing at him as though in five minutes from now he would be wrenched from her sight never to be seen again.

'My father and mother were killed in a carriage accident when I was very young,' she went on, very serious again, not seeing him now, only her father and mother. 'So that I've never had any real relations. The times I missed having them most were always in the summer when we went to Buquay. Everyone was part of a family. So was I, of course. The Proudies were the same to me as to their own children--only, of course, I knew the difference.'

He saw her as a very little girl, her dress pinned up round her waist, in striped little bathing drawers, with a bucket and spade. Very serious. In the bucket, floating in sandy sea water, were an amorphous jelly-fish and a pale yellow starfish.

She was looking for shells. Very seriously. And in his nostrils was the tang of the fresh biting salt, and glittering fragments of sand stuck to his hands, and there was sand inside his canvas shoes. Boom, boom went the waves. There was some surf to-day, a bright sunshining breeze, and gulls were clustered over some glorious fragment there where the wet sand shone in reflected light. Behind them the lodgings stood, and in front of each window, heavy and wet, hung towels and bathing costumes. She was looking for shells. She found several beauties and brought them to him to look at. One was indeed lovely, faintly rose and fading to cream at the edges of the rim. He looked from the shell to her round chubby serious face; on her cheeks were glistening fragments of sand, and coiled round her spade like the spoils of a hunter's chase a clinging fragment of red-gold seaweed.

'Yes. That's a beauty . . .' he said. 'Don't you lose it.'

'Don't I lose what?' she asked, looking across at him from the bed where she was again sitting.

'I was thinking of you as a little girl on the seashore looking for shells. I was with you. You showed me a beauty.'

'I wish you had been,' she answered. 'I'd have brought you all my spoils.'

'A jelly-fish, a starfish, a piece of golden seaweed . . .' he thought, looking back to his own childhood, so long, so very long ago.

'The seaside I knew when I was young wasn't so romantic. A place called Seascale in Cumberland. It's a fashionable watering-place now, I believe. Then it was nothing but a row or two of houses and a long wet beach. It was my first sea, though, and it was marvellous in my eyes. We stayed in a village called Gosforth three miles inland. I was about eighteen and I used to bicycle over--one of those bicycles, you know, with a seat as high as the stars and a huge wheel in front and a little one behind. I went over every Thursday, because just above the beach at Seascale was a little stationer's shop with bottles of sweets, balls of string, buckets and spades. And they sold a weekly called, I think, the Weekly Telegraph, or some such name. It was printed on rough yellow-looking paper, and it had rough smudgy pictures and--the most marvellous serial stories in the world. Stories like Miss Braddon's and Mrs. Henry Wood's--and a page of correspondence at the end. I was in touch with all the world through that paper. And I would buy rock cakes and toffee and my Weekly Telegraph, then go and bathe, and then sit on the sand eating my toffee and reading my serial . . .

'Now isn't that odd? I've never told anyone before about those times. And now they're all around me. I can hear the long wave curling over, dragging back the sand, and the sea-gulls calling, and I can feel the rough paper under my hand. . . .'

'And have you never gone back?' she asked.

'No, never. I'd be afraid to go.'

She caught her breath in a little gasp. 'Now if we never have another talk it will be worth while having come to London just for this one.'

He discovered that he was excited. 'You've made me a present--a jelly-fish, a starfish, a rosy shell and a piece of seaweed. Now what shall I give you?'

'Nothing--except that we'll talk sometimes.'

He shook his head. 'My dear, you'll soon get very tired of me. I'm an old, old man. Martha's the only one who can stand my company for long.'

'Martha? Who's Martha?'

'My dog. She knows me precisely and has no illusions.'

'Who else is there in the house?'

'My secretary, Miss Caparis; the cook, Mrs. Carlyon; the maids, Bigges, whom you know--and your grandmother.'

'Oh, what's she like? I've never seen her.'

'You won't see her often. She's an invalid.'

'I am sorry. Does she suffer terribly?'

'Not so much as you might imagine. No. You won't see her very often. She stays in her room.'

Then the girl's voice sank into a whisper.

'What shall I do if Aunt Ruth doesn't like me?'

'Of course she'll like you.'

'No, but if she doesn't.'

'Well--what then?'

'You see, I can't go back to the Proudies. At least I'm determined not to. They've been so good to me for so long. Of course they'd have me back, but it wouldn't be right. They're not well off, and although they say that it doesn't make any difference my being there, of course it does. I eat such a lot.'

'There's plenty of food in this house.'

'Yes, but I must find a job. I'm sure that I could learn typing and shorthand in no time. I must look around.'

She said this in a very grown-up fashion.

'You mustn't look around yet anyway. You'll be a splendid companion for my wife.'

'Do you think so? I know so little. I'll seem to her terribly stupid.'

'Oh, you'll soon pick up the London jargon. You'll find out who are the writers and painters, and then in two months when they all change you'll change too, almost without knowing it. It's in the air. My wife has a bookcase downstairs with the newest writers, French and English--only the very latest. Study that for half an hour and you'll be all right. Now I must go or I shall be late for the birthday party.'

They looked at one another. He wanted to go across to her and kiss her. He did not. He said, 'See you later,' and vanished.

He lay in his bath thinking about her. He was still excited--as though he had been given some wonderful, unexpected present--but because in his life he had always found that things were less good than they ought to be, so now he refused to consider this affair.

He would expect nothing. He would demand nothing. He knew nothing about her. She was very young. She thought him wonderful. He detested anyone who thought him wonderful.

He considered his round pink belly, his ugly toes, his bumpy knees. Anyone who thought him wonderful was a fool.

He lay luxuriously despising himself and with himself all the universe. Ridiculous, preposterous, noisy, aimless, imbecile universe. And after despising it, he loved it and felt deeply tender towards it. Touching, aspiring, courageous, enterprising, adventurous universe. He looked at his body and gave it a pat on the back, because here he was at seventy and hardly an ache. He considered then its ugliness, its absurd protuberances, its rag-tag and bobtail odds and ends. He pinched his thigh and, holding his nose, dropped his head under the water. There was a great roaring in his ears. He rose again. He kicked his legs like a baby in the water. He sat up and soaped his face. He felt clean, wrapped about with beautiful odours. He was content.

Standing on the bath-mat rubbing himself he thought again about this child. What had his wife invited her here for? The answer came at once, as though whispered in his ear by a dark enemy. To increase her own glory.

For an instant his heart seemed to stop beating. What was he about? What had happened to him? He had never been disloyal to his wife before. This was disloyalty, nay worse, treason. How ridiculous! How could the coming of this child increase Ruth's glory?

She wants to show off, you know--to have someone to show off to. She always wants that. No, no, she does not! He flung down the towel and rushed naked into the bedroom. He saw himself in the long glass, a ridiculous naked old man, betraying and traducing his dear wife, who had done everything for him.

Then, very quietly, slipping on his vest, he said out loud: 'It's true. I know it's true.'

He felt again a great tenderness for Ruth. He wanted to put his arm around her and protect her against a hostile, critical world. Then he saw her as she would be to-night in her beautiful clothes, her head high, afraid of nothing and nobody. How absurd that he, clad only in his shirt, his hair on end, should want to protect this glorious creature. She needed no protection. That was the trouble. She had never needed any.

But this child needed protection. Poor little thing, flung helpless into this hard London world, with no friends, no parents, and her ridiculous confidence in himself. He would have to change that, show her that he was of no use as a protector, that he was too old, too selfish, too lazy. Much too selfish!

At the mere suggestion that he must change his habits, his comforts, his indulgences, his heart shivered. He at seventy! What was the value of being seventy if you were not safe at last, safe from emotions, duties, new influences? Of course he was safe. He drove his studs fiercely into his shirt. He slipped on his silk socks, his trousers.

He went to the glass to brush his hair.

He loved to brush his hair. It was wonderful that at seventy he should still have such stiff, strong hair, and so much of it.

But she was charming. What a child she had been as he had first seen her stretched on her bed crying! How adorably she had trusted him, confidence shining from her eyes; how quickly, when she had seen that it was he, she had been happy, as though all that she wanted was that he should be there.

And he was sure that she would not invade his privacy nor trespass on his daily life. She would have great tact and discretion. A word from him would always be enough. And how pleasant to have someone to whom he could show things, his books, the Manet, his favourite things in London, like the Aquarium at the Zoo, the odds and ends in the London Museum, the pictures at Dulwich, the Caledonian Market and the rooms at Hampton Court. She would be excited and interested, but not too much so. She had, he fancied, a little irony, and she would be grateful without being sentimental. . . .

There was a knock on the door. Bigges was there.

'The guests have arrived, sir.' Damn the guests!

'All right.' He frowned at Bigges. He would love one day to pull Bigges' hair and see what he would do.

'Bigges, suppose I don't come down to dinner?'

'Are you unwell, sir?'

'Not in the least. But it's my seventieth birthday. I ought to be able to do what I like to-day.'

'Yes, sir. Of course, sir.'

'I would like to have dinner in bed, and read a bad novel.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Don't you ever feel that way yourself?'

Bigges coughed, but didn't answer.

'No, I see that you don't. You keep me in my place.'

Bigges coughed again.

'All right, I'll be down in a minute.' Silly fool. If you threw Bigges out from the top floor, when he bumped on the pavement he would rise immaculate, unhurt, every hair in its place.

He sighed. He must take the greatest care or he would be rude to someone to-night. He must take the greatest care or his seventieth birthday would be marked by a scandal. In the passage Martha awaited him. They went down in solemn state together.