Читать книгу Captain Nicholas - Hugh Walpole - Страница 13

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About a fortnight after Nicholas’s arrival Fanny woke one morning burdened with a sense of distress. As always when one wakes to an immediate awareness of misfortune, time must pass before the actual cause is realized. And now she lay, looking at the soft morning light that moved like water on the ceiling, and wondered wherein her unhappiness lay.

But was it unhappiness? Rather it was discomfort, vague, nebulous, hovering about her heart as the dim shadowed early sunlight hovered on the ceiling. Something was not quite right. She thought first, as on waking she always did, of Charles and the children. So far as she knew, all was well with them. Charles, the sheet drawn up to his ear, slept warmly beside her. They were such old-fashioned people that they still slept in the same bed as they had done throughout their married life. She listened to his soft, sibilant breathing, looked at his ruffled hair and one hand clenched on the outside of the bed. Yes, there was nothing the matter with Charles.

Everyone in the house was well—well and, as far as she knew, happy. The house itself was happy. As she often did she went imaginatively through it, visiting the rooms, caressing with her mind the dearly loved furniture. It stood about her—warm, comfortable, loving. In the hall the painting of her father, stout, rubicund, sitting in his room, Cæsar, the dog that he loved best of all his dogs, at his feet. The dining room now would just be catching the first light, the silver on the sideboard faintly gleaming, the antlers over the fireplace, the large white marble clock that had ticked so ferociously all night keeping guard over the room while everyone slept; the drawing room with the lacquer screen and the Bonington and the Persian rug with the dark purple flowers, the great set of ivory chessmen, the Castles on horseback, the Knights with their lances, the Bishops in their mitres—the famous set which had been passed down through the family generation after generation....

And then the bedrooms. Romney sleeping, she was sure, with the bedclothes flung off him; Nell snuggled up like a bird in a nest; Edward with his head crooked in his arm—yes, all was well with the house and everyone in it. Well, then, what was wrong? She sighed and instinctively, without knowing it, put out her hand and felt Charles’s stout arm beneath the bedclothes as though for protection. She was well herself. She had slept the night through without dreams. She was ready for all the tasks and pleasures of the day. Well, then, what?

Was it the general state of the world which she had, like so many others, for so long disregarded? Was it now forcing itself upon her, all these poor men unemployed through no fault of their own? America not understanding England. England not understanding America. Germany and France still hating one another, that terrible Russia, greedy Japan, and, only yesterday, Janet telling her about her cousin in Newcastle who had been out of work for a year, with three beautiful little children—“and him ready to work at anything if he could only find it.” Yes, it was partly that, perhaps, although what could Fanny do about it, knowing so little about politics and having to believe what the newspapers told her, although they were most unreliable as everyone knew? She felt in her heart an ache of sympathy for all the world. It seemed wrong that they—her family—should all be so happy and comfortable and safe when there were so many in such distress. Safe? Were they safe? It was then that sharp actual fear attacked her. Somewhere there was danger—danger to herself, to those whom she so passionately loved. Danger? But where was there danger? Not here, not in this house. The light broadened through the room. The clock on the mantelpiece struck seven. Great shafts of light stroked the carpet, and beyond the window she could hear the sparrows chirping.

Charles turned. He muttered. He stretched his arms. He raised his head and yawned.

“Hullo, old lady, what time is it?”

He took her in his arms and kissed her. She lay against his chest, her heart beating on his. She pinched his cheek, brushed back his hair from his forehead.

“It’s just struck seven and it’s a lovely morning.”

“Oh, Lord! Good—another hour’s sleep.”

He lay back, one arm stretched over his head, breathing deeply, happily, his pyjama jacket open. But he did not turn over and sleep again. Her hand had found his, and he knew from her pressure that something distressed her.

“What is it? Anything the matter?”

He put out his arm, and she rested her head inside it, lying close against him. He rubbed his eyes with his free hand and yawned again.

“What are you awake for?” he asked. “Been having dreams?”

“No—I’ve slept beautifully.”

“Well, then, what about a little more?”

“Yes, of course. You turn over and go to sleep.”

But he was so sensitive to her, knew so well her moods and joys and fears that he could not mistake her apprehension.

“No, there’s something the matter. What is it?”

“Nothing. Only—I’ve been awake and thinking.”

“Thinking? That’s a bad thing at this hour of the morning.”

She murmured:

“Everything’s all right, isn’t it?”

“Of course everything’s all right. What shouldn’t be?”

She kissed him again. Her hand rested against his cheek.

“I wish Romney hadn’t told that story last night,” she suddenly broke out.

“What story?” Charles asked sleepily.

“That one about the hotel and the old lady.”

“Oh, that one!” He sat up, yawning ferociously, stretching his arms. “There was nothing in that.”

“No, I know.” She hesitated. “Only he wouldn’t have told it a year ago—not among all of us, I mean.”

He lay down again, drawing her close to him.

“We’re old-fashioned, you and I. The things we wouldn’t have done when we were young—well, what I mean is, times are changed.”

“Yes, I know.”

But that wasn’t what she meant. She lay against him, thinking. She suddenly realized how glad she was that she had got Charles. In these strange, shifting days it meant everything to have someone with you on whom you could entirely rely, someone who would never deceive you, who belonged to the whole world of trust and fidelity and honour.

So many husbands in these days deceived their wives, and although she was determined to be broad-minded and generous, to condemn no one, to move, as well as she was able, with the times, yet if she had not Charles, how difficult, how lonely sometimes, life would be!

She turned and kissed him.

“Charles, don’t think me silly, but you don’t know what it is to me sometimes to feel so sure of you. Everything else is changing. The children are growing up, and sometimes I think I’m losing them, but you—I can trust you in everything—you never fail me——”

Rather surprisingly he moved away a little.

“You mustn’t trust anybody, Fanny,” he said.

“Not trust——?” She sat up. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing. Only we all have our queer times.”

“You don’t. You never change. It wouldn’t be you if you did.” She went on: “I suppose Nicholas will get a job soon.”

“A job? What sort of a job?”

“That’s what he’s here for, isn’t it? He’s so clever. He could do anything.”

“Yes, well, it isn’t so easy to get a job these days—not for a man of his age.”

“Oh, but he must. He can’t stay here for ever doing nothing. Of course, it’s lovely his being here. He brightens everything up. But he’ll have to get something. What will he live on?”

“Yes; as a matter of fact I lent him fifty pounds the other day.”

She turned towards him, startled.

“Oh, did you? That was good of you. That was just like you. But you shouldn’t. That wasn’t right of Nicholas.”

“Oh, he’ll pay it back in a week or two—when his money comes from Paris. He’s got a lot there, he tells me. But it’s tied up in some way.”

He took her hand in his.

“Don’t you worry, old lady. I won’t let Nicholas rob me.”

“No, of course not. Nicholas is all right. It’s only that he takes everything lightly. He’s so irresponsible. He was always the same, even when he was a little boy.” She added: “You didn’t like him when he came. You like him better now, don’t you?”

“Yes, I must say I do. He’s not a bad chap. He makes you laugh.”

She lay there and thought about it. She must take care not to be a killjoy, not to seem old to them all. She did not seem to herself to be old, but she supposed that she could never be rid altogether of her upbringing.

But then, in the silence that followed, Charles lying on his back, quietly dropping off to sleep again, the light pouring into the room like water, she was attacked by one of those moments of acute loneliness that come to all of us and to no one of us more than to him or her who is dearly loved. It is as though a voice, certain and timeless, whispered to us: “You shall not live by bread alone,” and at once we are aware of a consciousness far truer, far severer than the material one. Our daily values are seen suddenly to be false. We are helpless without our own naked courage, our most intimate relationships with others are shadows, and the long journey ahead of us has no familiar landmark, no companionships, and is inevitable in its ruthlessness. At such a moment of perception we can either deny the reality of our experience or accept the conditions. All our later history may depend on the choice we make, although afterward we find other excuses for the consequences....

But Fanny’s loneliness seemed to her now a new loneliness. Suppose that everything were taken from her—Charles, the children, the house. Suppose that it were true, the thing the little woman had said in Bordon’s that lovely spring evening—“It’s too good to last? The world is disintegrating. No one can hold together any more; nothing is stable, and the family love and devotion that they had had for so long, was that to shiver into pieces with the rest? How did she know any longer what Romney and Nell and even Edward were thinking and doing? Perhaps now they pretended to love her because it was their duty, because they did not wish to hurt her. She had told Charles that she could trust him, but could she? How did she know what he was like when he was away in that strange man-world of his? She saw them all meeting, these men, and they became at once strange animals with horns and hoofs, their heads close together mocking at women, wanting them only for certain needs, and then, as soon as their needs were satisfied, trotting off, moving herdlike across the open plain, their heads up, sniffing the free air, happy at their release....

She had been so deeply absorbed by the family that she had made no women friends. You could not call Mrs. Frobisher a friend, nor Millie Westcott (kind and good-hearted though she was), nor Rose Lane. And if Charles went and the children ... She was beginning to tremble. She was in an absurd state. What had caused this? Who had caused it? It was as though she knew that on the other side of the bedroom door a dark figure was standing, his head forward, listening.... The long mirror on the dressing table, slanting forward, caught the chairs, the carpet in a silver glaze. All was unreal in that world. And behind the mirror there was another world, and behind that another. Who was safe?

“At least I have Edward,” she thought. “He is there.” But no. He, too, was moving into a world away from her, talking with his companions of things that she did not understand, listening to stories that he would not wish her to hear. Edward whom, so little a time ago, she had suckled at her breast, his tiny hands moving up to her cheeks, and his eyes, wondering, absorbed, altogether trustful, searching her face. Now he, too, was going.

Charles woke up again.

“Time to get up,” he said.