Читать книгу The Sea Tower - Hugh Walpole - Страница 5

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Driven by the angry, threatening wind, they found the waiting-room. Christina stopped for a moment at the sight of its bleak ugly unfriendliness.

Joe kissed her.

‘Don’t worry, darling. There’s no one to see. And if there were, it wouldn’t matter. After all, we’re married.’

He held her close against him, and she could feel the hard circle of his watch and the strong deep beat of his heart. The wind tore at her skirts.

They sat down on the bench and stared at a poster of a girl in a bright bathing-dress. She was little better than naked and as brown as an Indian. They both stared like children. A sulky little flame struggled to die in a wedge of sodden-looking coal. There was a torn newspaper inside the grate. A train whistled.

‘Do you think the luggage will be all right?’

‘Of course. I’ve known that porter almost since I was a baby. Cold, darling? Come closer.’

He pressed her to his side. His big hand cupped her breast. He kissed the back of her neck.

‘I love you ... I love you ... I love you.’

She didn’t respond: she sat rigid, staring at the girl in the bathing-dress. She whispered, as though to the girl: ‘Someone may come in.’

‘All right.... Just tell me—I don’t need to know—just tell me....’

She didn’t reply.

‘Come on. Tell me....’

‘You know. You don’t need telling.’

‘No, I don’t—after last night.’ He burst out laughing and jumped to his feet. He began to dance about the waiting-room, making ridiculous steps, humming to himself. He was radiantly happy.

Her serious gaze turned from the poster to her husband. He was over six foot high, black hair, brown face and hands, his mouth large and boyish, his body broad, muscular, everything that the girl in the poster would like.

Christina knew, now that she had been married to him for a week, that his whole body was brown. Her mother said, at the very first, that he was just like an Italian. His family had been, however, English for centuries and centuries: yes, but there had perhaps been foreign blood once. Many ships had been wrecked on that Glebeshire coast. The Fields had lived at Scarlatt in unbroken succession for five hundred years.

Christina thought of these things and then suddenly she smiled: that quick shy smile, sprung in an unexpected moment from her gravity. He looked like a little boy, dancing.

‘Got to dance to keep warm. Come and dance too.’

But she wouldn’t do that.

He sat down on the bench beside her again and once more put his arm around her.

She asked: ‘Do you think they’ll like me?’ (Dozens and dozens of times she had asked this.)

‘Of course. Of course. You’re not frightened, are you?’

She spoke rather hurriedly.

‘Yes, I am. You know I am. I can’t help being shy. You remember the first time you met me you said how shy I was.’

‘No—the second time.’

‘Well, the second time. You said “How shy you are!” and I said it was because I’d lived so much alone with father and mother.’

‘Not forgetting sister Anne.’

‘Oh yes—Anne. I’m glad they’ve got her. They won’t miss me. Sometimes I used to think they didn’t know whether I was there or not.’

‘Your father’s a terrible dreamer.’

‘Yes, he is, and it’s a good thing, because then he isn’t hurt or sorry about anything.’

He took her hand in his.

‘Look here, Chris darling. You’re not to be frightened of anything. I’m there to look after you, aren’t I?’

‘Oh, listen! there are the bells!’

Very faintly from behind the blurred dusty windows came the sweet rocking murmur of the Cathedral bells.

‘Yes. All my life I’ve heard them.’ His voice was grave now. She was looking at him, as often in the last three months she had looked—seeing him again and again as though for the very first time. ‘Twenty years ago, when I was tiny, we’d come in with mother when she had to do a day’s shopping. We’d take that slow train—it isn’t altered, you’ll be in it yourself presently—stop at every little station. We knew them every one by heart—St. Luce, Ferney, Little Goswell, Gorton Sands, Perry Mount. Then there’d be the shopping, lunch at the George, and then a toy each from the Market-Place. Mother would give us anything.’ He laughed. ‘She still would and does!’

‘She’s kind, then!’

‘Kind—I should say so. Of course she likes to have her own way. We let her think she runs the lot of us. That keeps her happy.’

Christina held his hand more tightly.

‘She must have been angry when she’d heard you’d married.’

‘I expect she was for a moment. The very last thing any of them expected. I’m not like Congreve, though—I’ve flirted and that sort of thing. Mother must have expected me to marry one day.’

‘Oh, I do hope she’ll like me!’

‘Like you! She’ll adore you. Everyone will.’

‘Congreve is a funny name for a man.’

‘Yes—that was father. He used to read a lot in those days when we were babies. Congreve and Wycherley and all sorts of old boys.’

‘Doesn’t he read any more now?’

‘He thinks he does, but I’m afraid he’s frightfully lazy. Mother and I have spoiled him. I look after the place, and mother looks after the house.’

‘And Congreve paints?’

‘Yes—awful pictures I think they are.’

‘Does he ever sell them?’

‘He used to try to. He even had a show in London once. He doesn’t bother any more. As long as there’s a place to sleep and food to eat he’s all right.’

‘And then there’s your aunt.’

‘Aunt Matty. Yes, she helps mother. And then there’s the Captain.’

‘Captain Green?’

‘Yes—the Captain. We never call him anything else. As soon as you see him he’ll tell you he’s leaving next week. But he never does. He just hangs around.’

‘Everyone seems very lazy.’

‘Yes. I suppose they are. I never noticed it till I went up to London. Three months is the longest I’ve ever been away from home.’

None of this was new to her. She had asked about them all again and again. Only now, with every minute they were growing closer. An hour in the little train and they’d all be! She had feared the dentist in just this way as, her hand in her mother’s, her knees faltering, she had advanced up that threatening street, a hot, dry, heart-hammering panic and a relief that at last the long-dreaded climax was upon her!

How foolish though to feel this about Joe’s family, for Joe would be with her, always at her side: and, after all, it would not be for ever! Later, after a month or two, they would have a home of their own! This led her to say:

‘If you manage the place and the others are all lazy, what will they do when we go away to live by ourselves?’

He kissed her.

‘They’ll just have to get along somehow.’ Then he added: ‘I haven’t a profession, you know. I’ve always looked after the place and been too busy to learn anything else.’

There was a silence. Then she said:

‘Do you mean we’ll be living with your people for ever?’

‘Of course not. If I can look after Scarlatt—and I do it jolly well, I can tell you—I can look after somewhere else. Besides, father’s got plenty of money. He’ll help me when the time comes.’

‘Where do you think we’ll go to?’ She did not as a rule ask questions, but now, as though something told her that this was the last hour of their intimacy together, she was compelled.

‘We’ll go wherever you say.’

‘I think Wiltshire would be fun.’

He laughed.

‘Why Wiltshire?’

‘We’ve got a sketch in the drawing-room of Stonehenge. You’ve seen it. The Downs look so wide—as though nothing stopped them.’

‘You wait till you see the sea. You’ve never really seen it.’

‘No. Only Brighton once with mother.’

Why was she asking questions to which she already knew the answers? Only this about Wiltshire she had not said before. It was perhaps this grimy, cold, shut-in room that made her long for those cloud-shadowed Downs, those timeless stones!

The door opened. A porter, the wind howling around him, stood there.

‘Train’s ready, Mr. Field. I’ve put your luggage in. Train’s up there on the right.’

They walked along, hand in hand. The wind drove right down the platform as though it were rushing on some urgent mission. She saw the lights of Polchester blinking below her. It seemed that they didn’t like her. Then, out of a sky mottled with evening cloud like the tumbled wings of huge birds, the Cathedral bells rang the hour. There was no one on the platform: from the melancholy stranded train a few country faces looked out. There was a truck standing there with two calves, huddled together, head to rump, under netting.

In the chill, silent, little carriage they sat close together and, when the train at length started, at once Christina began, hurriedly, as though she had no time to spare.

‘Joe—we’ve been married a week and it’s been like heaven. I never dreamt that anything could be so wonderful. But now I’m frightened. I feel as though it’s all going to change.’

Joe turned to look at her. Yes, she was like a frightened child, her brow wrinkled, her mouth a little open. Her beauty, he thought triumphantly, no one in the whole world could deny: he never read poetry, but from somewhere he remembered some words. He had thought of them the first moment that he had seen her, standing up in front of the fire in her parents’ old-fashioned drawing-room, so tall, slender and fair. ‘Our girl white as snow, the one speckless lily since the world began.’

He had longed, at that very first instant, to put his hand through that gold hair, to clasp and protect that slim child’s body. Her fairness was not chill, for, when she smiled, all her face lit with pleasure and friendliness. Her eyes were clear as flowers touched with the sun. Had you told him before that eyes could be like flowers he would have laughed at your affectation, but now he knew that it could be so. Her body was a child’s body, firm and sweet and strong, but in this last week it had become a woman’s body, her boy’s head, with the curls crisp at the back of her neck, lying, in utter trust, in the hollow of his strong shoulder, his hand between her breasts.

There had been nothing as yet in his life to approach in ecstasy those long hours when they had lain, enfolded together, without speaking—and beyond the window there had rumbled the first trams of the early morning. Now again they would lie so, but in his beloved home, and it would not be the trams but the sibilant whisper and stealthy withdrawal of the sea, the sudden turn and splash of the wave on the rocks below the Tower.

Then, looking at her, he realized that his mother would not like Christina to be so tall. His mother disliked tall women.

‘Of course you feel frightened, darling. I know I should be in your place. But there’s nothing whatever to be frightened of.’

‘Perhaps there isn’t. But, Joe ... I want you to remember one thing. I’ve hardly ever been away from home before. I’ve only really met father’s and mother’s friends, except the girls at school and they don’t count. Perhaps,’ and she smiled, ‘if I’d met more men I wouldn’t have fallen in love with you.’

‘Oh yes you would. We were destined for one another.’

‘All lovers think that.’

‘Ah, we’re not like other lovers.’

‘All lovers think that too.’

She was serious again.

‘I want you to understand one thing. It isn’t easy for me to say.’

‘What is it, sweetheart?’

‘You’re always complaining that I can’t say pretty things. Well, I can’t. But now—just because I feel as though I shan’t get another chance—I want you to remember this.’

‘Remember what?’

‘Remember this moment. In the train going to Scarlatt for the first time. Whatever happens afterwards, whatever people may say or do, I love you for ever and ever. Joe, I do, I do. I can never change. Nothing can alter it. I know it. Whatever you are, whatever other people make you, even though you hate me, I’ll love you for ever and ever.’

‘Hate you!’ Joe threw his head back and laughed. He tried to kiss her but she would not let him.

‘No. This is serious. I don’t know much about life yet, but I do know that men aren’t like women. Love isn’t to them what it is to women. Women only want one man and when they’ve got him they want nothing else. That isn’t what I’ve read in silly novels or people have told me. I feel it in myself. And so if you change or get tired of me I shan’t change.’ She paused a moment, then added: ‘Of course if you tired of me I wouldn’t hang on to you. I wouldn’t keep you if you wanted to go. I might be ashamed of you or despise you, but I’d always love you.’

‘Darling, you’re trembling.’

He caught her into his arms and held her as though he were defying all the world.

In his arms she felt safer, but not very safe. It was dark because now, at the beginning of October, they had changed from summer-time. She always hated it when that change arrived, for with that turning of the clock-hand, light and heat seemed to slip away from the world. So now it was dark beyond the windows and, to the beating of Joe’s heart, with eyes half-closed, she could see pictures.

She touched his neck and he laid his cheek against her hand. How comforting that warmth and strength of the fleshly contact of two lovers! But she had heard a girl tell once how ‘You wake up in the morning and it’s all gone. You don’t want him to touch you any more. The very idea gives you goose-flesh, if you know what I mean.’ Then what was Love? Its very essence seemed to reside in this gentle, almost casual touch of cheek and hand. But—when that was gone? What remained? How had she been so sure that she would love Joe for ever, as she had just said? She knew, she knew! She had known from the first instant, when, half asleep, half reading some novel, she had sprung to her feet at the sound of the opening door and the voice of the maid saying, ‘Mr. Atcherley to see Mrs. Foran, Miss Christina,’ and behind fat, rosy-faced, stupid Tom Atcherley there had been this stranger—tall, dark, handsome like an actor in a play. He had not been like an actor for long! In ten minutes he had become someone human, a boy who was bashful when he made a call. Not bashful with her, though. Almost at once he was telling her about his home in Glebeshire, right on the sea with the Tower five hundred years old, and how the sea dashes up to the very windows. Soon he was telling her about himself, how he’d come to London for three months’ instruction in farm planning and building—some very modern course. It had been his mother, he said, who suggested it. He had spoken of his mother almost as though he were still a little boy.

They had told one another afterwards that they had fallen in love at that very first meeting. A week later he had proposed to her and she at once accepted him. Her father and mother had dreamily received him, as though they had known him always. Only her sister Anne had objected. Anne didn’t like men in any case, but especially she didn’t like Joe Field. He was too good-looking for her and too sure of himself. Did Christina realize, she asked, what living with Joe’s family would mean?

‘It’s only just at first,’ Christina had answered.

‘Just at first! That’s what they always say. He hasn’t got a profession, has he?’

‘He manages estates.’

‘Manages estates! If he’s managed his father’s estate well they won’t let him go. And if he hasn’t he won’t be able to manage anyone else’s.’

It hadn’t mattered what Anne said. She thought men disgusting and told Joe so. How Joe laughed!

‘If everyone thought as you do the world would come to an end!’

‘An awful pity that would be!’ Anne retorted.

Her friend, Miss Pitcairn, came and inspected Joe. Miss Pitcairn was dressed just like a man, with a stiff white collar and brass buttons to her waistcoat. She liked Joe and was glad that Christina was going to be married. She had been jealous of Anne’s love for Christina. Now she would have Anne all to herself. She clapped Joe on the back.

‘Treat her well, old fellow,’ she said. ‘She’s worth it.’ But she really meant, although she didn’t say it: don’t bring her back to her family again.

They had a very quiet little wedding. The night preceding, Anne held Christina in her arms and cried over her. Christina, who was kind-hearted, bore this patiently but disliked it. When Anne was sentimental she seemed to be acting against nature.

Two days before their departure for Scarlatt, Christina received this letter from Mrs. Field.

Dear Daughter—We eagerly await you and long to make you feel that you are now one of the family. From the picture Joe sent us I know that he is a very lucky man.

Your expectant,

Elizabeth Field.

A strange letter—something old-fashioned, something regal too. She imagined Mrs. Field as a tall, vastly commanding woman.

She murmured into Joe’s waistcoat: ‘You’ve never shown me a photograph of your mother.’

‘No,’ said Joe. ‘You’ll see her soon enough.’

Christina, as though she were seeing her now, sat up, straightened her hat, patted her curls, took out the dark-blue vanity bag, examined herself seriously in the little mirror, applied some powder, sighed and said:

‘I see your mother as very tall and commanding.’

‘Why?’

‘After that letter she wrote me.’

‘As a matter of fact she’s short and plump.’

They didn’t talk for a while. There was a small dust of constraint between them.

‘You must let her know,’ Christina said at last, ‘that I’m not at my best at first. I shan’t be for a week or two. I can hear them all saying to one another: “Whatever he saw in her.” ’

Joe took her vanity bag from her.

‘Look at me, Christina.’

She looked at him.

‘Do you love me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you trust me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you think I would let any harm or unhappiness come to you ever?’

She smiled, her whole face lighting up.

‘Not if you could prevent it.’

‘Very well, then. Don’t talk nonsense.’

But she realized that she was now, in very truth, most terribly frightened. She had not been able to see the names of the stations as the train stopped. They were as usual abominably lit and this little line shared with its bigger brothers and sisters the British determination that no name of any station shall ever be visible to the eye of any anxious traveller. She did not, therefore, know where they were, but they must be dangerously close.

She saw them all standing there in a group awaiting them: Mrs. Field, Mr. Field, the Captain, Aunt Matty, brother Congreve—waiting as judges wait, grudging from the very first that their beloved Joe had given himself to a stranger, determined not to like her or receive her as one of themselves. Why had not this all seemed to her terrible in London? It had in fact not seemed terrible at all but rather an exciting and original adventure in Joe’s company. She was trembling. Her feet were cold stones, her head a burning fire. And she did what she always did when her shy integrity was invaded: she put on her armour—her armour of pride, of silence, of remoteness.

Joe looked at her.

‘Darling, what’s the matter? You’re like a statue of Joan of Arc.’

But she did not smile.

‘Say something to me. This is a great moment for me—coming home with my bride.’

‘Whom they are prepared to detest!’

‘No. No. You’ll find them charming. They are kind, warm-hearted....’

The train stopped with a little bump.

Joe said: ‘We are there!’

In the road outside the station a car was waiting, but Christina had no eyes or ears for it. She stood transfixed, her eyes up, staring into a sky in which stars, it seemed, were being wildly blown about, while thin white scraps of cloud rose and fell. The wind was roaring in her ears, but it was not the wind that she heard. It was the sea. The sea was pounding and crashing, as she fancied, at her very feet. Surely only a yard away it rang a gong like a diabolical angel, commanding her, trying to force her will, while into her nostrils every scent of freshness and power was blowing; the aftermath of rain, the wet decay of autumn leaves, the sharp salt pungency of the sea, a wistful scent like that of some broken flower.

She was gloriously excited, she who had never known the sea. She wanted to follow the pull at her body and run. It was dark but yet there was light in the air: light of the wind-blown stars and the pale thin clouds. There was a moon somewhere, and, although she knew they were not there, she could see the towering waves crashing through the trees, and the broken starry glitter of the moonlight on that invisible sea.

Joe’s touch was on her arm.

‘Come, darling. The car’s waiting.’

She sat very close to him now.

‘How far is it?’

‘About ten miles.’

She was summoning all her reserves. She would not be frightened. She would not allow them to think that she was afraid of their behaviour. She did not care what they said, nor how they looked. Oh, but she did, oh, but she did!

This first impression was so dreadfully important. If she did not impress them at once she would never impress them. She realized then that Joe also was nervous. She could not say how she knew except that they were so spiritually close. He was afraid for her sake but also for his own. He did not want them to think that he had made a mistake.

Almost furiously she said:

‘You’re afraid of what they’ll think of me!’

‘Of course I’m not.’

‘It doesn’t matter what they think of me. If they don’t like me we can just go away—can’t we?’

‘Yes. Of course.’

She was not satisfied with his answer. She was almost crazy with nervousness.

‘You promise me?’

‘Promise you what, darling?’

‘That we’ll go away if they don’t like me.’

He said jokingly:

‘It’s my home, you know.’

‘Yes, of course—I’m very silly.’

And she was. Her older self within her told her that she was behaving like a baby. This was the way to bore a husband! Had she not told herself over and over again that she would behave like a mature woman, be subtle, wise, adroit? Was she being subtle and adroit? Most certainly not.

She put out her hand and rested it on his warm firm thigh for confidence. He laid his hand on hers. His voice was trembling as he said:

‘Just about here, in another minute or two, we are almost on the sand. The road skirts it. If I open the window a second you’ll hear the sea.’

Hear it! It broke into the car like a tornado, splashing its thunder all over them. There was a wonderful rush of sea-smell, and a freshness that was like a new world, that had never been tested before, blowing itself into existence.

He closed the window.

‘Up to ten years ago there used to be a bridge here. Hundreds of years old. A great-uncle of mine coming back drunk one night drove his horse over the bridge when the tide was up and was drowned. We’re nearly there. Oh, it’s wonderful to be home again. Why, I’ve been away three months!’

‘It’s more to you than anywhere.’

‘Yes. There’s no place on earth like it!’

The car stopped. They rolled in through some gates. Almost at once there was a tall door with an arch over it, lighted windows, and as the door opened she smelt dank rhododendrons and heard the sea again.

She was standing in the hall behind Joe. It was dimly lit. She saw a stone staircase and a large plaster cast of St. George slaying the Dragon. Somewhere a dog was yapping.

‘How are you, Simpson? Everything all right?’

‘Yes, sir. Thank you.’

‘This is my wife, Simpson.’

‘How d’you do, ma’am?’

‘I’m very well, thank you.’

Christina looked at a severe uniformed woman with a face of a moral self-satisfied horse. From the very beginning she disliked Simpson.

‘Is my mother in?’

‘Yes, sir. In the drawing-room, sir.’

His voice was joyful.

‘Oh, we’ll go along then.’ He ran forward, calling: ‘Mother! Mother—where are you?’

Christina followed him. Inside the drawing-room she stopped. It was all that she could do not to cry out. The long room was beautiful: faded, even shabby, but beautiful. The deep-rose curtains, the soft wine-coloured carpet, the wallpaper of dove colour—all were shabby. Between the gilt frames of the pictures there were, once and again, little tears in the paper. The two big armchairs, one on each side of the fireplace, covered with heavy rose damask, were worn on the arms. There were tall lacquer screens, a long bookcase filled with old tattered volumes; three tall white vases filled with chrysanthemums. Everything was old: even the flowers seemed ancient. But the effect of the room, softly lit, was beautiful, colours dim and deep, rose and faded purple and dusky gold.

In the middle of the room was standing Queen Victoria. Well, wasn’t it? So absurdly like in the black silk dress with the white ruffles, a large brooch on her bosom, her soft grey hair parted in the middle, her round pug-like face, the little soft boneless hands.

Joe’s arms were round her.

‘Dear darling mother! How are you? Have you missed me?’

She detached herself. He turned eagerly.

‘This is Christina, mother.’

She felt the soft firm lips on hers, and the sweetest, kindest voice in the world said:

‘Welcome, my dear. We all welcome you.’

She was held back by those short strong arms. She was examined. Then Mrs. Field said:

‘Why, how beautiful you are, my dear! ... And how tall!’