Читать книгу The 'Piping Times' - John Jeffery Farnol - Страница 15

Table of Contents

WESTWARD they rambled, on and about the great road, this ancient highway leading through an ever-changing countryside, over bowery heath, misty plain and desolate moor; past sleepy hamlet, drowsy village, busy market-town and stately city; climbing verdant hills whence the leisured traveller may behold something of this “jewel of earth” that so many have loved, lived, fought and died for; a green and bowery country of lush meadow and shadowy wood, lit by sparkling rill or winding stream. Here and there, rising grey and dreamlike amid the green, peeps shattered ruin of hoary castle, or gracious span of broken arch still beautiful in decay, to tell with dumb though plaintive eloquence of ancient glories wrought by skilled and loving hands long since forever stilled, themselves to mingle with the earth they loved and the white dust of this immemorial road. This historic track that through the ages has known the tread of innumerable travellers going East to the Great City, or West past the awesome mystery called Stonehenge, to the sacred shrine at Glastonbury,—pilgrims all who reached their journey’s end long and long ago.

Tom’s mind was busied with some such thoughts when, upon a certain bright morning not too uncomfortably early and after adequate breakfast (pink ham rashers decked in glory of golden-yolked eggs), he and Mark turned South into a wilder country of rolling moorland, a desolate solitude void of trees and seemingly of humanity, for upon the few roads that traversed rounded hills and down-sweeping dales, of wayfarers he saw none. A vast solitude, yet haunted by vague memories of a forgotten people whose imperishable handiwork persists in rugged monoliths up-starting from the heath, with hut-circles and rude earthworks crowning these solitary hills.

“So this,” said Tom, pausing to mop perspiring brow and look around upon this immensity, “so this is Cornwall!”

“This,” sighed Mark, also mopping, “this is Bodmin Moor, and a dismal weariness in such heat! Far better to have hired a carriage or horses.”

“Yes, by Jove!” quoth Tom, “you’re right as usual, old fellow! But I wanted to have a look at these dolmen things and what-nots. However, let’s sit down and wait.”

“For what, Tom?”

“Anything on wheels.”

“My dear fellow, we may wait all day!”

“Then, my dear chap, let’s wait sitting, and long enough to smoke a pensive, soothing pipe.”

“Good idea!” said Mark. So down they sat, and thus at their ease, filled, lighted and puffed in deep and silent content, like the now familiar friends they were.

“Mark, my dear old horse,” said Tom, after some while, “I think it only right to inform you that I know ... I mean to say ... all about you and Aunt Serena, bless her loveliness!”

“And I knew you knew. She told me, of course, and I’ve been wondering what you would think about it?”

“I’ve been thinking and wishing joy abounding, Mark, old fellow, to both of you, and soon, I hope!”

“Hope?” repeated Mark, biting hard upon his pipe-stem. “Tom, I’ve hoped for twenty-odd years ... a goodish while out of our three score and ten! And ... I’m forty-two!”

“And she, Mark, though a splendid woman, is still freshly sweet as a girl, youth dances in her eyes.”

“Except when tears dim them, Tom!”

“She was always my boyish comforter, Mark. Nature surely meant her for a wife and mother.”

“And I was scarcely more than boy when I married. It was in the days of my direst need.... I was desperately ill ... she nursed me back to life and hope, so ... I married her. She was gentle and good until her affliction came ... since when she has been ... worse than dead! A hopeless case ... a homicidal maniac, Tom ... and still she lives!”

Here ensued a puffing through long and mournful silence broken at last by Mark saying:

“See—away yonder!”

“Dust!” said Tom, sitting up.

“Something on wheels!” nodded Mark, “which is rather wonderful, hereabout, I may tell you.”

“And ... yes, by George, driven by a woman, which is even more wonderful!”

“Yet deusedly awkward, Tom. We can hardly stop a woman in such desolation.”

“However,” said Tom, rising, “I’ll do my best.”

So, having tapped out and pocketed his pipe, Tom watched the approach of this vehicle, a heavy, country dogcart, drawn by a tall, shaggy horse and driven by a woman who, seeing one man signalling to her with lifted arm and another crouched beside the road, now seized the heavy whip in ready hand, either as weapon or to urge her animal to faster gait; but, coming nearer, she did neither, instead she reined to slower pace, though sitting so very upright and alert, that Tom bared his tall head with its thatch of pale curls and so stood waiting.

A woman this, neither tall nor short, young of face and form, though the wind-blown tress of hair beneath the small, close bonnet gleamed and shone like silver.

Responsive to the supplication of Tom’s lifted hand, she reined up her shaggy horse, viewing these two men with eyes long, wide-set and heavy-lashed beneath low sweep of dark brows, eyes whose velvety, midnight blackness contrasted vividly with her silvery hair; she glanced at Mark, she gazed down on Tom, his plain-featured, good-tempered face, his big-boned, powerful frame, his well-opened, honest grey eyes.

Now meeting this so feminine, searching gaze, Tom smiled, and in this moment showed so magically transfigured that this woman leaned down towards him, opened her lips as if to speak, yet uttered no word; wherefore Tom spoke instead:

“Do please forgive my venturing to stop you and in such lonely place ... I hope I didn’t frighten you?” He broke off, aware of the strange, deep intensity of her widening gaze.

“No,” she answered in voice low and richly sweet, “I am not easily frightened. Please, why did you ... stop me?”

“To ask very humbly if you would be so kind as to give two rather wayworn fellows a lift across the moor. My name is Wade, Tom Wade, and this is my friend, Mark Timkins. Now pray will you be so kind and ... venturesome?”

For a long moment she made no answer, her gaze now on the far distance, like one striving to recall some vague memory or listening for some scarcely remembered sound ... Turning at last and thus becoming aware of Tom’s wondering gaze, her smooth, sun-tanned cheek showed a richer glow as she nodded, saying:

“Oh, of coursel The trap is rather loaded, I’ve been marketing, but if your friend can make room for himself at the back, you ... may sit here ... beside me.”

Uttering mingled expressions of gratitude, up they swung, and, at touch of whip, the shaggy horse set off at a lumbering trot. Now as she drove and with no tree or hedge to shield her from the scorching sun, this plainly clad, weather-bronzed country woman who talked like a lady, began to ply Tom with questions, though her dark, strange eyes seldom glanced towards him.

“Wade, did you say?”

“Yes, madam, Wade—Tom, and very gratefully at your service.”

“From London?”

“No, Sussex, though I am often in London.”

“Are you familiar with Cornwall?”

“Not in the least, and what I have seen of it so far, I find disappointing.”

“Oh, really? Yet it is generally thought to be a beautiful county.”

“But surely not hereabouts?”

“This is Bodmin Moor, and reputed to be haunted.”

“I can well believe it!” Tom nodded. “A howling desolation where ghosts by the million might howl and flit, especially at night!”

“Yet ... I love it,” she murmured.

“Then I humbly beg its pardon,” said Tom; “more especially if you happen to be Cornish.”

“Indeed I am, and by long ancestry. And you, I suppose, were born in great, proud, pitiless London?”

“Oh no!” Tom replied, wondering at the sudden bitterness of this softly-pleasant voice. “No, strangely enough, I was born in Cornwall, too, at a place named Trevore.”

The shaggy horse swerved suddenly, tossed up his great head and snorted indignantly to the sudden sharp jerk of his bit.

“What happened?” Tom enquired, glancing about for some explanation of this equine behaviour and seeing none.

“A stumble, I think. Stand up, Robin—do!”

“Odd!” murmured Tom.

“Very!” said Robin’s driver, flicking him to faster gait, only to rein him in again. “Robin is usually such a steady going old thing. So you don’t know ... by the way, Mr. Wade, I am Mrs. Penhallo ... and so you, never having been in Cornwall to remember ... you are quite unfamiliar with your birthplace ... Trevore?”

“No, but I shall be. Yes, I shall know it very well and soon.”

“Oh ... really?”

“Yes, I am on my way there now.”

“Then I’m afraid you will find it more woeful ... more desolate than this great lonely moor.”

“Yes, I understand it is pretty much of a ruin.”

“How do you know, if you have never been there, Mr. Wade?”

“I have my father’s word for it.”

“Oh!” she murmured. “He should know, of course.”

“Mrs. Penhallo. I’m wondering if you happen to know it also?”

“Yes, quite well. I live at Merrion, a village close by.”

“By George, how strangely fortunate.”

“Fortunate?” she enquired, gently.

“I mean to say for me, of course.”

“How, please, Mr. Wade?”

“Well, because if you would be so very good you might drive me there now.”

“Oh, but I couldn’t! It is much too far ... a whole day’s journey! Besides, I shall not reach there to-day or to-morrow.”

“I see!” replied Tom. “Then please tell me about the poor, old house, just how badly it needs me to care for it after all these years of neglect. Is it completely ruined?”

And after driving some distance, she answered:

“No, not completely—not yet.”

“Good!” exclaimed Tom, heartily.

“How shall you ... care for it, and ... why?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I’m pretty keen on carpentry and what not, a bit of a dab with tools and so on. So I mean to labour on the old place for the fun of it, make it live and bloom again.”

“Merely for the ... fun of it?”

“Well, not exactly, no,—what I mean to say is absolutely not! No, I’m doing it for my mother’s saks ... in memory of her, as it were.”

Plod of hoofs, rumble of wheels, creak of this old vehicle and no other sound, while Tom mused upon how best to begin upon his forthcoming labour, the tools and materials he would need; while Mark nodded slumbrous on the seat behind him, and the woman beside him gave all her attention to bony old Robin. At last Tom roused to the soft voice so near him:

“Then, is she ... your mother ... dead?”

“I hope not!” said Tom. “She merely happens to be ... away. ... And yonder are trees at last and a village. So this is the end of Bodmin Moor at last?”

“Oh yes, this is the end of the moor. And yonder, at those cross-roads, I must leave you, Mr. Wade. Your friend is asleep, I think.”

“So he is, and here are the cross-roads. Hi, wake up, Mark, old man! Well now, good-bye, Mrs. Penhallo, our grateful thanks!”

“Mr. Wade, I was ... very glad to help you. Good-bye!”

“Perhaps,” said Tom, looking up at her, hat in hand, “perhaps we shall meet again at Merrion?”

“Perhaps!” she answered, and Tom was struck again by the soft, rich sweetness of her voice.

“Do you sing?” he enquired, on impulse.

“I ... used to.” So saying, she nodded, touched Robin with the whip and drove away.

“An odd, queerish sort of person,” said Tom, pausing to look after her. “Something strange there, old boy.”

“Eh ... ah ... where?” yawned Mark.

“Our lady Jehu.”

“Oh, was she?”

“Well, wasn’t she? Didn’t you notice?”

“How should I, we were sitting back to back, besides, I fancy I almost fell asleep ... this hot sun.”

“Which reminds me,” quoth Tom, “that I am deliciously thirsty, and yonder, very proper to the purpose, a little ale-house! Come, let us assuage.”