Читать книгу Charmian, Lady Vibart - John Jeffery Farnol - Страница 5

Table of Contents

The Norns, those fateful sisters threading ever the warp and weft of human destiny, so contrived that Charmian’s carriage, the barouche, should snap the pole in the beauteous neighbourhood of Tenterden, that right pleasant, wide-streeted village. Here then, their vehicle halting for repairs, she and Miss Janet descended before the goodly hospice yclept The White Lion and were ushered therein to cosy chamber by a small, pale, worried-looking man whose troubled eyes, even while he took their order for refreshment, roved in agitated manner, and who seemed to be listening for other and more dreadful sound.

“Yon man’s sick, or—afeart o’ something!” quoth Miss Janet loosing her bonnet-strings.

“He certainly had an odd expression, Janet.”

“M’dear he was like an aspen—a’ of a quiver and quake!”

“The poor man is undoubtedly in some trouble,” my lady agreed. “Let us enquire,” and she rang the bell, answered after some delay by the same harassed-seeming person.

“Pray are you the landlord?” Charmian enquired in her most gracious manner.

“Yes, madam,” he answered, glancing apprehensively from door to ceiling.

“You appear to be in some trouble, some distress. Can we help you?”

“Thank you, madam, no ... no, I——” He checked suddenly and remained staring ceilingwards with horrified eyes as from the chamber immediately above came the roar of bibulous voices upraised in song.

“Is—that your trouble?” enquired Charmian.

“No, madam,—yes,—that is——”

“Yes—oh, yes, Lady!” cried a tearful voice and in upon them ran a woman, her comely, middle-aged face haggard and tear-stained. “Up there, my lady!” she sobbed, pointing frantically above her head, “wild gentlemen from London ... they’ve took my maid—my poor darter ... they’ve got my Pen and they’re a-making of her drunk! Oh, madam, they mean wickedness and no one to stay ’em. Mr. Joyce here have done his best——”

Charmian arose and with her Miss Janet, who, though she wore no militant-clashing chatelaine, glared ceilingwards with grey eyes that held a look of vengeful steel as she followed Charmian out of the room and up the stair.

Reaching a door whence this riotous chorus proceeded, Charmian flung it wide and stepped into a room hazy with the reek of tobacco-smoke.

At her sudden appearance the clamorous singing quavered to silence, to a breathless hush wherein stood Charmian, her stately form and beautiful, high-bred features eloquent of disdain and abhorrence. Very slowly and with an almost painful deliberation she surveyed the three silenced revellers, each in turn, their flushed faces and disordered attire; lastly she turned and looked again where at head of the littered table sat a tall, dark man who held a faintly-struggling girl upon his knee; and with her scornful gaze on this man Charmian spoke to the half-tipsy girl:

“My poor child, come with me.”

“My pretty witch,” laughed the dark man, “sit where you are and show Madam Spoilsport how you can kiss.”

“Odious animal!” exclaimed Charmian advancing, serenely resolute. “Debased wretch, had I a whip you should feel it!” and she swept towards them with such majestic wrath that the girl whimpered and the man started afoot.

“Madam,” said he thickly, teeth bared in smiling ferocity, “such unmeasured terms I do not permit from man or woman. Stand back then or——” His fierce voice was drowned in the crash of breaking glass and Miss Janet, flourishing a jagged bottle-neck, spoke in her turn.

“Sae muckle as lift a hond an’ I’ll cut the dastard face off ye!”

“Why ... what ... what the devil——” stammered the tall, dark man recoiling. Quoth Charmian imperiously:

“Brutal sot, loose that girl!”

“B’God,” cried the man in paroxysm of fury, “I’ll not endure your tongue——”

“You will, Frayne,” said a drawling, sleepy voice; “you will endure what you deserve ... as I shall!” So saying, from high-backed settle beside the hearth, rose a fourth reveller; slight of form was he and very youthful seeming at a glance, for his hair clustered in golden curls, his cheeks, though a little pale, were smooth, but his firm-lipped mouth showed grim and his blue eyes looked between their long lashes with a dreadful weariness that gave innocence the lie direct,—thus mouth and eyes were in sharp and utter contrast with the youthful rest of him.

At sight of Charmian he started, flushed boyishly, then, opening his lacklustre eyes, curled his lips in smile of age-old, cynical weariness and bowed:

“Dear Lady Vibart,” he murmured, “very unexpected pleasure! I hope I see you in all health. I trust Sir Peter is well and our Richard blooming.”

“Iford!” she exclaimed. “Viscount, you—here. Think shame of your vicious company and yourself.”

“Dear lady, I do, believe me,” he answered, still smiling. “I despise my company utterly, and myself quite heartily—as usual. Frayne is generally a beast when the bowl is trolled. I allude to Sir Nicholas—but perhaps I had better not present him ... under the circumstances....”

“No, Iford, I do not suffer beasts ... except on four legs. As for yourself, if you have a spark of manhood remaining, help me to conduct this poor, fuddled girl to her distracted mother.”

Without a word, Viscount Iford crossed the room and, striking away Sir Nicholas Frayne’s detaining hand, set his arm about the now weeping girl and led her downstairs to the wild embrace of her frantic mother who, having her child safe in her bosom, slapped, kissed and hurried her away, pouring benedictions upon the head of “her good, kind, brave ladyship.”

“Umph-humph!” quoth Miss Janet, placing the broken bottle-neck carefully on the mantelshelf out of harm’s way and stabbing upward with long forefinger. “The Gaddarene swine were no’ sich loathly beasties as yon!”

“And you, Iford!” demanded my lady. “Pray what have you to say?”

“Firstly, madam, that I heartily agree with Miss Janet that there are worse creatures than swine, and secondly to assure you that the girl, poor little fool, had only her own vanity to thank, and that she was in no real danger. You see, I was not asleep and——”

“You?” exclaimed my lady with look and tone of such blasting contempt that his pale cheeks flushed with a slow and painful colour. “Iford, it disgusts me now to remember that I used to kiss away your childish tears, cherish your boyish hurts and sorrows ... oh it is hard to believe you can possibly be the adored son of your sweet, gentle mother.”

Viscount Iford turned to stare out of the window and, with his face thus averted, answered very softly but in tone of such murderous hate that both ladies eyed him appalled.

“Remember, madam, I also had and have ... a father! He is my excuse for what I am and may become. Had my sweet mother only lived, or ... had he but died too, it is just possible I might now be more worthy her love ... yes, despite him it is just possible. ... Ah—my father! This right noble earl! This so gallant gentleman that ... killed her ... inch by inch ... hour by hour. When I think of my mother, so gentle, so helpless ... and all he made her suffer ... the bitter tears, her long agony ... I marvel how and why I have not killed him,—as I may yet——”

“Iford—oh, hush! He is your father!”

“Madam, I prefer to know him as—the Noble Earl. ... To strike him dead would, I think, be an act of filial piety to my loved mother’s sweet memory.”

Here he turned and, beholding their looks of horror, laughed a little wildly; and striding to the door, flung it wide, then bowed to them, hand on heart.

“Ladies,” said he with a flourish, “I have the honour to wish you good-bye and a pleasant journey.”

But in the act of departure he paused and looking on their faces, once so kindly familiar, he spoke with warm, youthful impulse:

“Dear Lady Vibart and you, Miss Janet, whatever the dark future may hold for me I would beg you both to believe that I love that small, gentle saint my mother as much or more in death as in life ... and remembering this, I would have you think of me as kindly as you can ... whatever be the end of me. Good-bye.”

“Wait!” said Charmian, her rich tones suddenly very gentle. “Where are you going, Iford?”

“Most possibly to the devil,” he answered, lips curled in their cynical smile, “treading dutifully in the steps of my sire the Noble Earl ... force of heredity ... no influence strong enough to restrain me or counteract my—parental curse.”

“Suppose I ask you to go with me to Cambourne,—to stay awhile, what would you say, Valentine?”

“Ah, my lady, when you name me so and look at me so sweetly kind,—almost like my own mother,—I would die for you!” He said it with such breathless eagerness and his eyes aglow with such light that she could not but believe him and, so believing, reached him her hand.

“Oh, Valentine,” she murmured, “I could love you again for your sweet mother’s sake and might do for your own.... Come with Janet and me to Cambourne.”

The young Viscount looked down at this shapely white hand lying between his own, then stooped his yellow head, kissing it very fervently.

“Such tender friendship will be my comfort,” he murmured, “and you so dear that I will not trouble you with myself dogged as I am by such parental curse—that right noble the Earl of Abbeymere.”

“Ah, wilful boy!” she exclaimed, “you exaggerate, of course, and must go your own way. But for the old days of innocence when you and my Richard were happy children together, and because of what might still be, I pray God keep you ever in His loving care, Valentine.”

“Madam,” he breathed, “oh, my lady.” Then, cynicism and dignity alike forgotten, he stumbled blindly from the room, closing the door behind him.

“Aweel,” quoth Miss Janet, “the puir laddie was a wee fou’ o’ course, and wi’ sic wild gallimanfry o’ killing and death ... and his ain father! Hoot-toot, ’twas fair awfu’! And yet, m’dearie, he looks verra young, verra delicate and no’ sae muckle changed frae the sonsy wee bairn we kenned him yince. ’Tis sad, bitter young soul, yon!”

“And dangerous, too, I think, Janet,—dangerous, and far more deadly than his wicked father.”