Читать книгу The Meadows of the Moon - James Hilton - Страница 3
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At twilight a train from London deposited a man and a little girl at Patchley station. The man was grey-haired, though tall and of soldierly bearing, and the little girl was so tired that she could hardly drag one foot after the other. In the station-yard a pair-horse landau waited, and the coachman, as soon as he saw the couple, stepped down from his perch, touched his cap, and said: “Excuse me, sir, but are you Mr. Cordeiro?”
The other answered him in perfect English, but with a slight foreign accent. “That is my name. You are from Sky Peals, I presume?”
“Yes, sir. Will you kindly step inside?”
The stranger picked up the little girl in his arms and clambered into the landau. The coachman jerked the reins, and the horses clattered noisily through the narrow and tortuous Patchley High Street, putting on extra pace when at last they reached the open road through the countryside. Meanwhile, the twilight sank into darkness, and night had completely fallen when the horses stopped at a cottage set back from the road and adjoining a pair of huge and elaborate wrought-iron gates.
Here the coachman dismounted. “The house is a short walk through the meadows, sir,” he said, pointing through the intricate pattern of the gate.
Mr. Cordeiro seemed puzzled. “But surely—” he began, as if inclined to protest, and then he said quietly: “Cannot you drive us right up to the house? I and my grand-daughter have come a long journey, and we are both very tired.”
“Sorry, sir—sorry indeed—but this is as far as there’s any road. There’s only a footpath through the meadows. The lodge-keeper will show you the way.”
And at this point the lodge-keeper appeared out of his house and began to unfasten the massive gates. Mr. Cordeiro said no more, but helped the child out of the landau and followed the keeper in silence into the meadows beyond.
The night was pitch-black, with neither starlight nor moonlight, for with sunset had come thick banks of cloud that covered the whole sky. Only a dimly reddish tint over the western horizon showed where London lay. The walk was uphill, and Mr. Cordeiro carried the girl in his arms, until after a short distance the keeper, a finely-built young fellow, asked if he should carry “little missy” himself. The other agreed, remarking upon the length and steepness of the walk.
“That’s so,” answered the keeper. “It’s full ten minutes up to the house, and a long ten minutes in winter time and bad weather. It was old Mr. Savage that wouldn’t have any road built—he was so proud of these meadows he wanted everybody coming up to the house to have to walk through ’em. When he was gettin’ old, I had to wheel him all along of here in a Bath chair. Every day, that was, and any weather....”
“There ought to be a road,” said Mr. Cordeiro vaguely.
“Some of us hope there will be, sir,” replied the other, “when the estate comes into younger hands. But Mrs. Savage isn’t one to have things altered.”
He broke off, as if aware that he had said enough. The rest of the walk was in silence.
2
Fifteen minutes later Mr. Cordeiro was standing in the library of Sky Peals, with his back to the huge empty fire-grate and his eyes employed in quiet, methodical observation. The girl was lying curled up in one of the leather-backed armchairs, fast asleep. All around the long and spacious room were shelves of volumes—several thousands of them, and more than half in a uniform binding of dark brown leather. In a further corner browsed a sleek grand piano, and in another there stood a vast mahogany pedestal-desk littered with papers. There were no pictures in the room except one over the fire-place of a fierce-looking side-whiskered man with black and sparkling eyes. A gilt tablet proclaimed him to be “John Savage.”
A door opened at the far end of the room, and a woman entered, dressed as for dinner. She was, Mr. Cordeiro estimated, in her early thirties, and he was surprised, for he had expected somebody rather older. As she came beneath the sombre glow of the chandelier he noticed that she was very beautiful, with the hard clear English beauty that was so different from the types more familiar to him.
“Mrs. Savage?” he exclaimed.
She nodded. “And you are Mr. Cordeiro?” She offered her hand, and with a courtly gesture he bent over it and touched the tips of her fingers with his lips. She had expected him to shake hands merely, and the unlooked-for gallantry surprised her.
“I was wondering what time you would arrive,” she said quietly, conquering her slight confusion. Then she saw the child. She stepped towards the chair, and then, observing the child to be asleep, checked herself. “Fran, I suppose?” she whispered, softly.
Mr. Cordeiro nodded. “Yes.... She is very tired after the journey. We landed in Glasgow early this morning and have been travelling all the while since.”
Mrs. Savage stepped to the wall by the side of the fire-place and touched a bell. “If she is so tired she shall go to bed immediately. It will be best for her. Michael is already in bed, but my elder son—John—stays up to dinner now—he is just ten years old.... By the way, you will join us at dinner?”
“If you will excuse my clothes, I will be delighted.”
“Oh, there will only be the three of us. We have very little company. It is a pity you cannot stay for a few days, but I suppose you are far too busy, as you said in your letter.”
“I am afraid so. I am due in Paris to-morrow evening.”
“Yes ... yes....”
She seemed hardly to be listening to him; her eyes were on the sleeping child. And at that moment the child stirred and moved her face so that the light fell upon it.
“She is pretty,” said Mr. Cordeiro, softly.
Not till the child turned her head sleepily back again did Mrs. Savage answer. Then she said slowly, and with curious intensity of utterance: “I—I—had no idea—she could be—so—so—like her father.”
3
They dined sombrely in the panelled room that was somehow mellow with age and memory. Mr. Cordeiro was introduced to the boy John, and noted with approval his quiet, forceful courtesy. There was something, after all, in the English bringing-up, something that, perhaps, no other nation quite achieved—some subtle paradox of deferential independence. As a student of racial characteristics, Mr. Cordeiro found himself interested in John.
But after dinner John shook hands and disappeared, leaving his mother to talk with the stranger alone. She led the latter into the library again, and offered him port and cigars. “If you don’t feel too tired to tell me,” she said, “I should like to know a few details.... Your letter was very short.”
He sipped his wine and nodded gravely. “I thought perhaps you might read about it in the English newspapers.... We were travelling down the coast from Guayaquil and ran into a storm. The boat was old and nearly worn-out—it simply crumpled under the heavy seas. There was hardly time to get out any of the small boats.... Fran and her mother were in the first one that could be launched. I never believed they would be rescued—the seas were so high. Peter and I stood in the saloon, waiting for the boat to heel over and finish us. It was then that he mentioned you. He said—‘If by any chance you and Fran should be saved out of the four of us, take her to—’ and then he gave me your name and address. He wrote it out on part of a cigarette-packet.”
“He was quite calm?”
“Yes—the calmest on board. Some of the others were screaming like devils.... Then an officer came into the saloon and told us to get into one of the boats. We went on deck, and all I remember is being wedged and jostled in a dreadful crowd and finally put into a boat. I tried to keep with Peter, but I couldn’t. I fancy he edged out of the crowd and went back to the saloon.”
“When at last we were picked up I found my daughter and Fran again. But my daughter caught a chill from the exposure and died before we reached Callao. Thus—” he shrugged his shoulders slightly—“the contingency that Peter foreshadowed had arisen, and so——”
She said, calmly and almost conventionally: “It was very good of you to come.”
He shook his head. “Not at all. As it happened, I had to make a business journey to Europe about this time. And besides, after the tragedy I was—rather—relieved—to know what to do with—with Fran. I live a lonely life—especially now—and—and—well—Ecuador is no place for a young English girl.”
“English—on one side.” It was as if she were uttering her thoughts.
“And Peruvian-Spanish on the other,” he rejoined, with a slight smile. “An excellent combination, I assure you.”
She filled up his glass and he saw then that her hand was trembling. Suddenly she said: “Mr. Cordeiro, have you any idea—any idea at all—why your son-in-law asked you to bring—Fran—to me?”
“You and he had been great friends at one time—that was all I assumed.”
“But didn’t you wonder?”
He gave her a smile almost oriental in its imperturbability. “What one wonders, Mrs. Savage, is not always what one dares to ask.”
“Did Peter know that my husband was dead?”
He shrugged his shoulders again. “That I cannot say. We had no time to discuss matters. Peter was not—communicative....” He went on, more easily: “I am overjoyed to think that Fran will live here in your beautiful English home. Of course there will be money enough to pay for everything—I shall arrange all that.... I am not a poor man.... It is hard to leave her, but for her—for her—it is so much the best, is it not?” He waved his hand vaguely across the room. “I must look forward to seeing my grand-daughter again in perhaps four—five—or six—years—when I visit Europe again.”
She said, as if reckoning it out to herself: “Fran will be twelve then. And John will be quite a young man.... Just think....”
But he did not think. Or perhaps to him there was nothing to think of. And after a very short and desultory conversation he was reminding her of his train at Patchley.
She rose and pressed the bell. “You must not miss your train, although it is a pity you could not have stayed.... The landau will be waiting for you at the lodge, but don’t forget that it is a few minutes’ walk from here.”
“Through your meadows,” he remarked. “Your meadows which everyone must pass.”
Her reply startled him by its sudden wistfulness. “How did you know that? Who told you? Was it Peter?”
“No ... only the man at the lodge who showed me the way.”
In the hall, as he stooped again over her proffered hand, she said: “Fran had better take your name, Mr. Cordeiro. It will make everything—simpler. Fran Cordeiro ... you understand——”
“I understand perfectly,” he interrupted.
She looked at him then—the last time, as a matter of fact, that she ever looked at him, and she wondered if the signal achievement of his life had really been to understand perfectly, or only to pretend that he did.
The servant was waiting to conduct him to the lodge, and with a final bow he left her and went away.
4
And meanwhile Fran slept. Her room was in the corner tower, facing the east and next to the nursery, and when she woke up in the morning the sunlight was pouring in like a great flood, making her blink her dark brown eyes bewilderedly as she gazed round on the unfamiliar scene. Then Miss Grimshaw, Michael’s governess, came in to dress her and administer a preliminary glass of hot milk. And as Fran took the glass into her hands Miss Grimshaw exclaimed, in a voice like the bark of a very small dog: “What do you say?”
Fran, tired and astonished in the presence of so much concentrated strangeness, stared dumbly. “Come, come,” reiterated Miss Grimshaw, barking more shrilly,—“WHAT DO YOU SAY?” And Fran, after profound and exhaustive self-examination, replied, softly: “I say what I like.”
Not till the dressing and admonitions were over was she permitted to stand by the sun-bathed window and look down. Then at last she saw the meadows as she would never afterwards forget them—rolling uphill and downhill into the farthest distance, spattered with daisies and buttercups, and mightily ablaze with the sunlight of a perfect June morning.
