Читать книгу Through Welsh Doorways - Jeannette Augustus Marks - Страница 11

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Pedr Evans dived into the contents of a box of picture post-cards; from the shop counter all that could be seen of him was the back of broad shoulders, two inches of sturdy neck, well-shaped ears, and a thatch of brown hair. The box, which was large and placed on a shelf behind the counter, gave evidences to the person who could peek over the counter and around Pedr of being in an alarming state of disorder. Apparently the man fumbling among the cards intended to rearrange them; at least some line of the figure suggested that this was the impression he wished to convey. But it was as if he were running his hands through sand, for the post-cards slipped from his fingers and fell in even greater confusion. A woman who had entered the shop-door looked at his back a second—she had caught a rim of the face as it had turned quickly away—smiled, lifted her eyebrows, and stuck her tongue into one heavily tinted cheek.

“’Ts, ’ts,” she hissed, behind her teeth.

Pedr wheeled about; in turning he caught the corner of his box of post-cards, and over they went upon the floor.

“Well, indeed, Catrin Griffiths,” he said, with an attempt at composure.

“Aye, it’s me,” she answered airily. “Ffi! Playin’ cards, Pedr Evans? Um-m, what would Nelw Parry be sayin’?”

Pedr coloured and shifted his weight.

“No, puttin’ the stock in order,” he objected.

“Yes? Well, an’ playin’ you didn’t see me? Yes?”

Catrin patted the puffs of yellow hair that projected from under her pink hat, and, placing a finger on her lips, smiled insinuatingly at Pedr. It was evident as she stood before him that she considered herself alluring, a charming embodiment of the world and the flesh and the devil. Of that world, it was rumoured, Pedr Evans knew something; at least he had made excursions into it; he had been to Liverpool, nay, he had been even farther, for he had been to London. London! The word chimed as merrily in Catrin’s ears as coronation bells. London! Pedr Evans had been to London, and the magic word had been in more mouths than Catrin’s. There was never a question asked in Conway, climbing by degrees to the wise men of the village and still failing an answer, but people would say, “Aye, well, indeed, we dunno, but Pedr Evans he’s been to London, an’ he’ll know, whatever.”

Catrin Griffiths had seen him mount the London coach, and she had seen him return. And, by a method of reasoning wholly her own, she had concluded that he would appreciate her, for she, Catrin Griffiths, had seen something of that world, too; she had seen highly-coloured prints of Piccadilly, the ’busses with gay people atop and fine ladies in their carriages clad in cloaks and furs and furbelows, throats and wrists bejewelled in a marvellous fashion, and such fine gentlemen driving the carriages; and, what is more, she had spelled painfully through the English, in which her tongue was stiff, of a beautiful romance, “Lady Nain’s Escape.” Catrin considered her worldly schooling of coloured pictures, a novel, and advertisements, the best, and with an occasional shilling sent to Liverpool she had literally applied this tuition to her face and figure. She realised, however, that there were still worlds for her to conquer, and a far enchanted land called Drawing Room into which she had not as yet had even a lithographic peep. Because she longed for greater nearness to this kingdom, therefore she longed for Pedr. As she stood before him, her pink hat on her yellow hair, her painted face thick with chalk, her lips a glossy carmine, her throat embedded in fluffs of cheap tulle, her figure stuffed into an ancient dress of white serge, she was wondering how it would be possible for any man to resist her.

But the man whom she ogled blushed; he looked furtively towards the windows, and at the door at the back of the shop, and it was plain to be seen that he felt himself caught in a trap between his counter and the shelf. He seemed ashamed, ashamed to look at her.

“Well, Catrin,” he said, without lifting his eyes, “what can I do for you to-day?”

“Dear anwyl, it’s most slipped my mind—um-m—well, I’ll be havin’ sixpence worth of writin’ paper.”

“Aye, smooth, I suppose?” he asked, taking it from the shelf.

“No, I think I’ll take it rough, for that’s the style now, whatever.”

“Oh! very well.”

“Been takin’ photographs lately, Pedr?”

“Not many.”

“I’m thinkin’ you’ll be goin’ down Caerhun way some day soon,” she continued, her pink face wrinkling with mingled mirth and devilry; “it’s very pretty there, good for an artist like you.”

Pedr folded in the ends of the parcel and said nothing.

“Aye,” she went on, “an’ there’s an old church there, with a bell-tower that looks over the wall like an eye. It don’t wink, Pedr, but I’m thinkin’, indeed, it could tell a good deal, if it had a mind to. It’s next to the church the Parrys used to live.”

Pedr, tying the parcel and snapping the string, maintained his silence.

“It’s there old Parry used to be drunk as a faucet; aye, an’, Pedr,” she whispered, “I could be tellin’ you somethin’ else. Nelw Parry——”

“Tut!” said Pedr angrily; “here’s your parcel, Catrin Griffiths. You’ll have to be excusin’ me this morning, for I’m busy.”

“Pooh, busy!” and Catrin laughed shrilly; “you’re always busy when there’s a mention of Nelw Parry. Well, ask Nelw herself what it is she can tell you that you don’t know. Perhaps you’ll be wantin’ to know before you marry her.”

And with a flounce Catrin Griffiths betook herself out of the shop.

Pedr with his back to the counter was the same as Pedr with his face to the shop-door; however, he did not seem the same. The back suggested middle age, but the face was the face of a boy in its expression, with something perennially young about it: it may have been innocence or untouched pride or something that looked from his eyes as if they had been those of a mere girl. Indeed, except for a conscious awkwardness of hand and a certain steadfast, almost impassive look about the mouth, he might have recited an awdl or been a bard. Howbeit, he could neither play a harp nor recite an ode. And because he kept only a stationer’s shop, which contained a fine medley of inferior post-cards scattered everywhere, piles of newspapers, books, shelves of letter-paper, trinkets of rustic and plebeian sort, it would not be safe to conclude that he was no more than a thoroughly commonplace man. Because he spent his leisure from the shop in taking pictures of the country he loved, it would not be wise to decide that he was therefore a poor, mediocre thing who had not brains enough to make even a very wretched artist; who was, in short, a mere factotum to higher ability.

Pedr’s shop, which lay on a steep winding cobblestone street next to the Cambrian Pill Depôt, five doors down from Plas Mawr and twenty doors up from the Castle Gate, was tenanted by dreams as fair and holy in service, although they never found their way into the world except by means of sensitised paper or by an occasional expression in Pedr’s eye or tremble of his impassive lips—this shop was tenanted by dreams as fair as any which had ever waited upon accepted painter or poet. They had a habit of tiptoeing about unseen, so that the usual customer who entered Pedr’s door would not have felt their presence. Nelw Parry had come to know them well, but before Catrin Griffiths they vanished away. The lovely colour of dawn itself was not gobbled up faster by the smoke of trade than these entities disappeared at the sound of Catrin Griffiths’ heels upon the street. In fact the tiny beings were troubled by the presence of even post-cards, for, dream-like, they wished to give all they had, if need be, to the hearts which could be seen beating through the hands that held them, and these cards lying upon the floor, these flaunting things of many colours, were commerce; things, they thought, which were to steal something from men. Over the counter, from which a few minutes ago he had recoiled, Pedr Evans had often leaned, many invisible eyes smiling upon him, taking from some old folio pictures which had caught the very lustre of the sky; or the mingled shadow and iridescence of a hillside, mysteriously suggestive of the sea; or some flow and subsidence of light itself. Like any other mortal, poor Pedr had to live, and that is why he was obliged to keep a shop next to the Cambrian Pill Depôt. If he had been an artist, the world might willingly have forgotten that he had to live at all and paid him just nothing for his work. But it was not the necessity of existence which made him lean upon the counter, showing a picture another man never would have had the wit to take. To Pedr something beautiful was always worth a plate, so he had many pictures no one bought, and he was not often given a chance to show.

Later in the day, after his encounter with Catrin Griffiths, Pedr was with Nelw Parry in the sitting-room of the Raven Temperance, drinking tea. Nelw’s house, from the outside, was a quaint, stuccoed building with a quantity of chimney-pots sticking up into the sky, neat steps and a brass sill at the front door, a painted sign “Raven Temperance,” and printed cards at the windows, one bearing a cyclist’s wheel decorated with mercurial wings, the other the gratifying word, “Refreshments.” Within the room were two people, both middle-aged, drinking tea—a commonplace enough scene the casual observer would have said; however, at that moment these two people, even if they were doing nothing more romantic than talking quietly together, lifting their teacups once in a while and looking at each other a good deal, were very much like good children in a fairy tale. It may have been merely a trick of the light due to the low casement windows, that the room seemed more peaceful than most rooms in Conway; the subdued light touched the soft green walls gently, reaching for the top of the walls as if it were some enchanted region, to enter which it must climb. Indeed, it was an enchanted region, for there a shining silver river ran in and out, in and out, among alleys of green trees. In and out, in and out, it ran noiselessly, and yet it seemed to Pedr, as to some strangers who entered the little room for refreshments, to sing a song heard before—just when, just how, was another question. Some visitors who had been in that room once came again to sit, often bodily weary, while their eyes travelled to that border of the shining river, and the mistress of the “Raven” waited upon them tranquilly, placing the tea-service before them, and, it may be, adjusting a wrap about a stranger’s shoulders as delicately as if she were adding to the comfort of some happy fancy, some ideal, some dream, that a burdened touch might shatter. Grateful, there were tired travellers glad to come and go phantom-like, putting down their silver gently, in a room where reality seemed the greatest phantom of all.

To Pedr it was better than the best picture he had ever taken—better than the best because the thought of taking it would have seemed like desecration. He looked at Nelw, as he did every few seconds, alternately, over his teacup and then without that barrier to his gaze. Coils of dark hair made the shapely head heavy on the slender neck, as if the weight of that abundant beauty were great. It was wonderful hair, making in its shadowy depth a shade for the white, sensitive face, quiet as the reverie of her eyes. In a land where comely hair blessed poor and rich alike with its wealth, Nelw Parry’s was even lovelier than that of her neighbours. It had one peculiarity, however, which her neighbours did not admire but which to Pedr—perhaps to something untutored in Pedr—was dear. Around the edges of its abundance little curls escaped.

“Nelw,” he said, glancing at her wistfully, “they’re prettier than ever.”

She brushed the curls back and looked at him with reproach, as if something she was thinking about, or something of which they had been talking, had been rudely disturbed. As an actual matter of fact they had been saying nothing for two or three minutes, indulging the speechlessness of those who know their way even by day to another land. But Pedr was aware what sort of answer any remark about Nelw’s hair always fetched, so he changed the subject.

“Dearie, Catrin Griffiths was in the shop this mornin’.”

“What was she wantin’?”

“I dunno; she bought sixpence worth of writin’ paper,” replied Pedr, regarding Nelw with the air of a man who would like to say more. He was wondering how much she guessed of Catrin’s angling.

A shadow of annoyance passed over Nelw’s face.

“Dearie,” he continued, encouraged by her expression, “I can’t like her, whatever; she’s—she’s not nice.”

“Well, indeed, she’s smart,” answered Nelw gently.

“Tut! smart in those things she wears? She looks more than frowsy to me; an’—an’ she’s always coming into my shop.”

“Poor thing!” murmured Nelw, her face tender with pity.

Pedr observed her wonderingly. What prompted this compassion in Nelw? What made her understand weakness without being disgusted or repelled by its ugliness? Other women were not like her in this respect. And just behind this yielding lovableness that yearned over the mistakes of others, that reached out to Pedr as one athirst for the necessity of life, that clung to Pedr for strength, for protection, like a child afraid of the dark, what was this sense he had, of an obstinate reticence which seemed the very resiliency of her mysterious nature? Certainly she had had a bitter life. Then, like a viper into its nest, what Catrin Griffiths had said darted into Pedr’s mind. Was there something he did not know, that he ought to know? With the acuteness of the man who can detect the shadow of even a folded leaf, he searched Nelw’s face. Why when she needed him, when she was alone, when she was fretted by the difficulties of her solitary life, why did she always put off their marriage? Baffled, irritated, he spoke sharply.

“Poor thing, nothin’! It’s a pound head an’ a ha’penny tail with Catrin Griffiths.”

Nelw gasped.

“A pound head an’ a ha’penny tail, I say,” he continued roughly, “Aye, an’ the time is comin’, comin’ soon, when she’ll get herself into trouble, flauntin’ around with those frocks on, all decked out, an’ all her false seemin’, her face painted and powdered, an’ her hair dyed. The deceitful thing!”

“Och, Pedr, don’t!”

But Pedr, excited beyond self-control by the workings of his imagination, could not stop. The blanching face before him was no more than a cipher, it expressed nothing to him.

“Tut! that I will. An’ what is it Catrin Griffiths knows an’ I don’t? Yes?”

There was a cry of “Pedr!” Nelw shivered, her eyes widened and stared at him. It was so still in that room that the flutter of the draught sucking the smoke up the chimney could be heard. Pedr sat motionless in his chair, the reality of what he had done yet to reach him. Nelw moved, and in an instant he was beside her.

“Dearie, dearie, what have I done?”

“Och, nothin’—nothin’ at all,” she answered, her face twitching helplessly.

“But I did; och, I was beside myself; I didn’t know what I was sayin’!” Pedr paused, he looked at her longingly: “Nelw, little lamb, is it somethin’ I ought to know?”

“It’s nothin’, nothin’ at all,” she replied, her eyes still staring at him, her hands lying open upon her lap, palms up. And there she sat and sighed and sighed, refusing to answer any of Pedr’s questions; and, every once in a while, moaning, “Not him, dear God, och! not him!”

At dusk every day, and every day in the year except Sunday, and year after year, the servant had brought the lights into Pedr Evans’s stationery shop, and, setting them down, had gone back into the kitchen. This evening, as she went into the room, scarcely knowing whether her master was in or not, everything had been so noiseless, she started, for there he sat, his head in his hands. Except for a slight disturbance when Pedr entered his shop, which it is probable no other human ear would have heard, there had not been a sound, until Betsan came in. Nelw’s “Nothin’, nothin’ at all” had been going around and around in his mind like a turn-buckle tightening up his thoughts, till it seemed to him they would snap. Then it would be, “What has she done? what has she done?” He had known her, in her sensitiveness, to exaggerate; she had confided to him some of the incidents of her childhood, which would have been taken quietly enough by other children. But he was unable to reason away the horror that looked out from her face to-day. And he, Pedr Evans, had asked the question that had brought that expression! A question suggested by a woman of whom even to think in the same moment was to dishonour Nelw. He wondered what it was that crawled into a man’s mind and made him to do a thing like that?

Betsan had barely closed the door into the kitchen, when, like the vision of the woman who tempted St. Anthony, Catrin Griffiths stood before him, the shrewd ogling eyes looking at him out of the painted face. The question, the answer to which was of more concern to him than anything else on earth, surged back upon him and stifled him and beat in his temples and his ears till it seemed as if he could not breathe.