Читать книгу John Harding 2-Book Gothic Collection - John Harding - Страница 20

Next day I took my precious photograph up to my tower, where I could gaze at it and talk to it without fear of discovery. And that was what I was doing a couple of days later when, purely by chance, I upglanced and familiared a lanky figure struggling through the snowdrifts along the drive. I overjoyed, for it had been a fortnight since I’d last seen him and I longed to tell him my great news.

But no sooner did I meet him at the front door than I hopedashed. He could but brief me a visit, he had not even time to skate, indeed had come to collect his skates, for he would need them in New York. ‘They’re shipping me back,’ he announced. ‘The doc says I’m better now and they’re putting me back in school for the last week before the holidays.’

I fetched my coat and his skates and we awkwarded down the drive together. I packed a rueful snowball and threw it at him, catching him in the face, causing him to cry out, and I gladded to have hurt him. ‘I am so lonely,’ I said. ‘You have no idea what it is like. And you rush off so blithely, you have not even time to hear my news and see what I have to show you.’

‘I’ll be back next year when the family come for the summer again. The time will soon pass. And Giles will be back for the Christmas holidays any day now.’

He reached into his pocket, pulled out a piece of paper and thrust it into my hand. Then, without another word, he turned and trudged off through the snow. I watched him until the last moment, when he made the turn into the main road and disappeared. Then I unfolded the paper he had given me and read:

I cannot speak, I cannot talk

For I am sent back to New York

But all of me will not go hence

My heart remains here with Florence

It was such a terrible poem that as I folded up the paper again I could not help but stifle a sob.

Theo had been right that at least I had the return of Giles to look forward to and I lonelied away the days, scarce able to read, my whole being an impatience of waiting. And at last the day came when John harnessed Bluebird to the trap and we set off to the railroad station, he and Mrs Grouse and I, to meet my darling brother. We stood by the track as the great iron dragon clanged and screeched to a halt beside us and belched out a cloud of steam that enveloped both it and us and then the fog of it began to clear and before us, on the platform, stood Giles, peering through the mist. We came together in a flingery of arms and a great huggery of kisses. My brother could not keep still but jumped up and down and danced from one foot to the other and gabbled an incomprehensible of nonsense. It was only when we were in the trap, leaving the town, in silence save for Bluebird’s steady clip-clop, that I understood what Giles was so excited about.

‘I’m not to go back, Flo, I’m not to go back!’

Mrs Grouse doubtfulled me one from behind his back. ‘Well, no, not for a while, Master Giles. Not until after Christmas, anyway.’

He rounded on her. ‘No, Mrs Grouse, you don’t understand. Not ever!’

It was true. When we reached Blithe, Giles opened his trunk and produced a letter. Of course, as I was not able to read, Mrs Grouse did not show it to me, nor did she read it aloud, except for one or two phrases, ‘a too timid and fragile disposition for the hurly-burly of a lively boys’ school’, ‘not sufficiently mature or academically advanced’, ‘one or two incidents which, although trivial in themselves, give cause for concern, given his somewhat vulnerable nature’, ‘suggest tutoring at home would be more appropriate for the time being, possibly with the gentler nature of a female instructor’. I had no need to see the whole thing, but gisted it from this. It obvioused that Giles’s simple nature had led to him being bullied. It was easier to remove him than deal with the bullies, and that was what the school had done.

Mrs Grouse all-concerned as she folded the letter and tucked it into her pocket. I slipped my hand into Giles’s and gave it a squeeze. I near cheered aloud. It was such wonderful news. My little brother was safe and sound and I would not lonely any more. All would be as it had always been.

Mrs Grouse bit her lip. ‘I shall have to write your uncle about this. He will have to engage someone, a governess, I guess.’ She looked up and seeing us smiling at her, beamed one herself. ‘But not now. I won’t write yet. It will need a lot of careful thought, a letter to your uncle, for I have strict instructions not to bother him, and I have not time this side of Christmas. Let’s get Christmas out of the way and I’ll write him then.’

Well, as you may imagine, we had a fine old time. I had asked Mrs Grouse to buy skates for Giles as his present and on Christmas morning we took to the ice and had a jollity of falling over and pulling one another over and generally returning to a time when we were small. As I watched Giles so happy and carefree upon the lake, so sweet that he laughed even when he was hurt, I thought how I would never again let him into the world where he would be evilled and tortured, but would utmost me to keep him always here by my side at Blithe, where I could protect him from all the bad things beyond.

I thought to show him the photograph of my mother, but then I knew that it would not do, eagering to though I was, because then I would have to explain about his own mother. The shocking vandalism that had been carried out on her image must never come to his attention. What would anyway be the use of showing him pictures of his mother without her face? What would he feel but that the desecration of her was a cruel attack upon himself? So I tonguebit and own-counselled. I would let nothing spoil our new happiness.

But, of course, something did. Or rather someone. A month later Miss Whitaker arrived.

Now, the least said about Whitaker, the better, at least in her first incarnation. She was a silly young woman who stood and besotted before the portrait of my uncle on the stairs and twittered about how handsome he was and how when he interviewed her he had seemed quite taken with her and had all but given her the post of Giles’s governess before she had spoke a word. I saw through this straightway; it obvioused our uncle, who had no time for us at all, could not be bothered to question the stupid woman, but wanted to not-more-ado the matter. It doubtlessed she was the only person he saw for the post, for anyone else must have been preferred.

Suffice it to say, I did not see the icy heart of this creature then or things might have worked out different. All I awared was that she neglected Giles, in whom she had less interest than in brushing her hair and mirroring her looks; I innocented her true nature and when she tragicked upon the lake I near drowned myself in a lake of my own tears, it so upset me. I thought her merely foolish and I guilted I had so despised her almost as much as I guilted that I did not save her, even though it impossibled me to do so, and kept thinking ‘if only I had this’ and ‘if only I had that’, even though all these things would nothing have availed. I reproached me, too, for the bad thoughts that were in my head when she went to her watery grave, for it was the very day after she unlibraried me and I had spoke the words over and over in my heart, ‘I wish she would die, I wish she would die’, but never meant them, and when my wish was granted I near died of grief myself that I could no way call them back.