Читать книгу The Coil of Carne - John Oxenham - Страница 6

A woman trudged heavily along the firm damp sand just below the bristling tangle of high-water mark, in the direction of Carne. She wore a long cloak, and bent her head and humped her shoulders over a small bundle which she hugged tight to her breast.

She had hoped to reach the big house before it was dark. But a north-east gale was blowing, and it caught up the loose tops of the sand-hills and carried them in streaming clouds along the flats and made walking difficult. The drift rose no higher than her waist; but if she stood for a moment to rest, the flying particles immediately set to work to transform her into a pillar of sand. If she had stumbled and been unable to rise, the sweeping sand would have covered her out of sight in five minutes.

The flats stretched out before her like an empty desert that had no end. The black sky above seemed very close by reason of the wrack of clouds boiling down into the west. Where the sun had set there was still a wan gleam of yellow light. It seemed to the woman, when she glanced round now and again through her narrowed lids to make sure of her whereabouts, as if the sky was slowly closing down on her like the lid of a great black box. On her right hand the sand-hills loomed white and ghostly, and were filled with the whistle of the gale in the wire-grass and the hiss of the flying sand.

Far away on her left, the sea chafed and growled behind its banks.

Her progress was very slow, but she bent doggedly to the gale, stopped now and again and leaned bodily against it, then drew her feet out of the clogs the sand had piled round them and pushed slowly on again. At last she became aware, by instinct or by the instant's break in the roar of the wind on her right, that she had reached her journey's end. She turned up over the crackling tangle, crossed the ankle-deep dry sand of the upper beach, and stopped for breath under the lee of the great house of Carne.

It was all as dark as the grave, but she knew her way, and after a moment's rest she passed round the house to the back. Here in a room on the ground floor a light shone through a window. The window had neither curtain nor shutter, but was protected by stout iron bars. The sill was piled high with drifted sand.

The sight of the light dissipated a fear which had been in the woman's heart, but which she had crushed resolutely out of sight. At the same time it set her heart beating tumultuously, partly in the rebound from its fear and partly in anticipation of the ungracious welcome she looked for. She stood for a moment in the storm outside and looked at the tranquil gleam. Then she slipped under a stone porch, which opened towards the south-west, and knocked on the door. The door opened cautiously on the chain at last, six inches or so, and a section of an old woman's head appeared in the slit and asked gruffly:

"Who's it?"

"It's me, mother--Nance!"

The door slammed suddenly to, as though to deny her admittance. But she heard the trembling fingers inside fumbling with the chain. They got it unsnecked at last, and the door swung open again. The woman with the burden stepped inside and shut out the drifting sand.

The room was a stone-flagged kitchen; but the light of the candle, and the cheery glow of a coal fire, and the homeliness of the white-scrubbed table and dresser, and the great oak linen-press, mellowed its asperities. After the cold north-easter, and the sweeping sand and the darkness, it was like heaven to the traveller, and she sank down on a rush-bottomed chair with a sigh of relief.

"So tha's come whoam at last," was the welcome that greeted her, in a voice that was over-harsh lest it should tremble and break. The old woman's eyes shone like black beads under her white mutch. She sniffed angrily, and dashed her hand across her face as though to assist her sight. She spoke the patois of the district. Beyond the understanding of any but natives even now, it was still more difficult then. It would be a sorry task to attempt to reproduce it.

"Aye, I've come home."

"And brought thy shame with thee!"

"Shame?" said the other quickly. "What shame? He married me, and this is his boy." And as she straightened up, the cloak fell apart and disclosed the child. She spoke boldly, but her eyes and her face were not so brave as her speech.

"Married ye?" said the old woman, with a grim laugh that was half sob and half anger. "I know better. The likes o' him doesna marry the likes o' you."

Holding the sleeping child in her one arm, the girl fumbled in her bodice and plucked out a paper.

"There's my lines," she said angrily.

The old woman made no attempt to read it, but shook her head again, and said bitterly:

"The likes o' him doesna marry the likes o' you, my lass."

"He married me as soon as we got to London."

But the old woman only shook her head, and asked, in the tone of one using an irrefutable argument:

"Where is he?"

At that the girl shook her head also; but she was saved further reply by the baby yawning and stretching and opening his eyes, which fastened vacantly on the old woman's as she bent over to look at him in spite of herself.

"You might ha' killed him and yoreself coming on so soon," she said gruffly.

"I wanted to get here before he came," said the girl, with a choke, "but I couldna manage it. I were took at Runcorn, seven days ago."

"An' yo' walked from there! It's a wonner yo're alive. Well, well, it's a bad job, but I suppose we mun mak' best o' it. Yo're clemmed!"

"Ay, I am, and so is he. I've not had much to give him, and he makes a rare noise when he doesn't get what he wants."

The baby screwed up his face and proved his powers. His mother rocked him to and fro, and the old woman set herself to getting them food. She set on the fire a pannikin of goats' milk diluted with water to her own ideas, and placed bread and cheese and butter on the table. The girl reached for the food and began to eat ravenously. The old woman dipped her finger into the pannikin and put it into the child's mouth. It sucked vigorously and stopped crying. She drew it out of the girl's arms and began to feed it slowly with a spoon.

"If he married yo', why did he leave yo' like this?" she asked presently, as she dropped tiny drops of food into the baby's mouth and watched it swallow and strain up after the spoon for more.

"He was ordered away with his regiment. He left me money and said he'd send more. But he never did. I made it last as long's I could, but it runs away in London. I couldna bear the idea of--of it up there, an' I got wild at him not coming. I tried to find him, and then I set off to walk here. I got a lift on a wagon now and again. But when I got to Runcorn I could go no further. There a a woman there was good to me. Maybe I'd ha' died but for her. Maybe it'd ha' been best if I had. But,"--she said doggedly--"he married me all the same."

The old woman shook her head hopelessly, but said nothing. The baby was falling asleep on her knee. Presently she carried him carefully into the next room and left him on the bed there.

"I nursed him on my knee," she said when she came back, "before you came. If I'd known he'd take you from me I'd ha' choked him where he lay."

The girl felt and looked the better for her meal. She nodded her head slowly, and said again, "All the same he married me." Her persistent harping on that one string--which to her mother was a broken string--angered the old woman.

"Tchah!" she said, like the snapping of a dog, and was about to say a great deal more when a peremptory knocking on the door choked the words in her throat. Her startled eyes turned accusingly on the girl; what faint touch of colour her face had held fled from it, and her lips parted twice in questioning which found no voice. Her whole attitude implied the fear that there was something more behind the girl's story than had been told and that now it was upon them.

The knocking continued, louder and still more peremptory.

The girl strode to the door, loosed the chain and drew back the bolts, and flung it open. A tall man, muffled in a travelling-cloak, strode in with an imprecation, and dusted the sand out of his eyes with a silk handkerchief.

"Nice doings when a man cannot get into his own house," he began. Then, as his blinking eyes fell on the girl's face, he stopped short and said, "The deuce!" and pinched his chin between his thumb and forefinger. He stood regarding her in momentary perplexity, and then went on dusting himself, with his eyes still on her.

He was a man past middle age, but straight and vigorous still. His clean-shaven face, in spite of the stubble of three days' rapid travel on it, and the deep lines of hard living, was undeniably handsome--keen dark eyes, straight nose, level brows, firm hard mouth. An upright furrow in the forehead, and a sloping groove at each corner of the mouth, gave a look of rigid intensity to the face and the impression that its owner was engaged in a business distasteful to him.

"Ah, Mrs. Lee," he said, as his eyes passed from the girl at last and rested on the old woman.

"Yes, Sir Denzil." And Mrs. Lee attempted a curtsey.

"A word in your ear, mistress." And he spoke rapidly to her in low tones, his eyes roving over to the girl now and again, and the old woman's face stiffening as he spoke.

"And now bustle, both of you," he concluded. "Fires first, then something to eat, the other things afterwards. I will bring her ladyship in."

He went to the door, and the old woman turned to her daughter and said grimly:

"There's a lady with him. Yo' mun help wi' the fires."

She closed the door leading to the bedroom where the baby lay sleeping soundly, and then set doggedly about her duties. The two women had left the room carrying armfuls of firing when Sir Denzil came back leading Lady Susan by the hand, muffled like himself in a big travelling-cloak. He drew a chair to the fire, and she sank into it. He left her there and went out again, and as the door opened the rattle of harness on chilling horses came through.

Lady Susan bent shivering over the fire and spread her hands towards it, groping for its cheer like a blind woman. Her face was white and drawn. Her eyes were sunk in dark wells of hopelessness, her lips were pinched in tight repression. Any beauty that might have been hers had left her; only her misery and weariness remained. Her whole attitude expressed extremest suffering both of mind and body.

A piping cry came from the next room, and she straightened up suddenly and looked about her like a startled deer. Then she rose quickly and picked up the candle and answered the call.

The child had cried out in his sleep, and as she stood over him, with the candle uplifted, a strange softening came over her face. Her left hand stole up to her side and pressed it as though to still a pain. A spasmodic smile crumpled the little face as she watched. Then it smoothed out and the child settled to sleep again. Lady Susan went slowly back to her seat before the fire, and almost immediately Sir Denzil came in again, dusting himself from the sand more vigorously than ever.

"How do you feel now, my dear?" he asked.

"Sick to death," she said quietly.

"You will feel better after a night's rest. The journey has been a trying one. Old Mrs. Lee will make you comfortable here, and I will return the moment I am sure of Denzil's safety. You agree with the necessity for my going?"

"Quite."

"Every moment may be of importance. But the moment he is safe I will hurry back to see to your welfare here. I shall lie at Warrington to-night, and I will tell the doctor at Wynsloe to come over first thing in the morning to see how you are going on. Ah, Mrs. Lee, you are ready for us?"

"Ay. The oak parlour is ready, sir. I'll get you what I con to eat, but you'll have to put up wi' short farin' to-night, sin' you didna let me know you were coming. To-morrow----"

"What you can to-night as quickly as possible. Lady Susan is tired out, and I return as soon as I have eaten. See that the post-boy gets something too."

"Yo're non stopping?" asked the old woman in surprise.

"No, no, I told you so," he said, with the irritation of a tired man. "Come, my dear!" and he offered his arm to Lady Susan, and led her slowly away down the stone passage to a small room in the west front, where the rush of the storm was barely heard.

An hour later Sir Denzil was whirling back before the gale on his way to London, as fast as two tired horses and a none too amiable post-boy could carry him. His usual serene self-complacency was disturbed by many anxieties, and he carried not a little bitterness, on his own account, at the untowardness of the circumstances which had dragged him from the ordered courses of his life and sent him posting down into the wilderness, without even the assistance of his man, upon whom he depended for the minutest details of his bodily comfort.

"A most damnable misfortune!" he allowed himself, now that he was alone, and he added some further unprofitable moments to an already tolerably heavy account in cursing every separate person connected with the matter, including a dead man and the man who killed him, and an unborn babe and the mother who lay shivering at thought of its coming.