Читать книгу The Vintage of Yon Yee - Louise Jordan Miln - Страница 8

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After the last guest had gone home Cotterel stood alone in his garden for some time, thoughtful and deliberating.

It was late. But midnight or after is nothing to a man who has no need to bestir himself in the morning until he likes. And in China most Westerns take on something of Chinese disregard of time.

The night was full of perfume, and full of delicate music.

The birds were abed. No human noise rasped the garden. But breeze-touched tendrils and fronds thrummed lace-fine melody to the honied night, tiny things of fur scuttled across the verbenas, brushing the thick sweetness they softly bruised, fire-flies and larger insects of gossamer wing fanned tender “string” music into the silence as they flew.

And the garden was ravished with the languid breath of rose and lotus, lemon-flowers and heliotrope, of waxen lilies and harp-flowers, of mignonette and passionate carnations, and sweetest of all, the perfume benediction of the pendent, heart-shaped Kwan’s-own-flowers that hung in lovely thousands among their exquisite foliage.

A rich man’s pleasance—moon-flooded, star-jeweled—a place to dream in!

But Cotterel was not dreaming. He was thinking hard.

He rarely dreamed in his sleep. He never had had a daydream in his life.

He had a good work-a-day mind, but profound or intricate thinking was not in its easy scope. He lacked mental agility, but he thought exactly and carefully. A self-indulgent man, and intentionally so, yet he ruled himself. He rarely, if ever, deviated at all from the laws he had made for himself—making them because, after full consideration, he concluded them wise. A self-indulgent man who called himself to strict account about great things and small whenever he believed he deserved it—more often about small things than about great. He rarely concerned himself about great things, they rarely touched him. He set considerable store by the small things. They interested him. About them he was strict with himself—stricter with himself than he was with any one else. Tolerant of most others, he was a severe self-critic. Scrupulous of his clothes and in wearing them, he never had had a valet. He would have loathed having a valet.

Cotterel perhaps was a bigger man than he seemed.

He never had been tested. When one of life’s big things touched him intimately—if one ever did—his reaction to it would show him even less or very much more than he seemed.

Henry Cotterel stood completely still, taking himself to task.

He was not pleased with the host he had been to-night.

He had not divided his time and attentiveness between his many guests with the scrupulous rightness anything less than which smirched hospitality.

He had spent too much time with Betty Monroe. She was the one woman there whom he might, without the least offense, have neglected a little. They were such old friends, and their friendly footing so easy and informal that he well could have treated her with almost brotherly disregard, and given the time so saved to women whom he knew less well, newer and slighter acquaintances. But just because Betty was such good fun he had hung about her when he ought to have been paying his devoirs to others. If he too had been a guest, it would not have mattered. Within wide limits, a guest may please himself, always provided that he does not neglect his hostess—or her daughters. But he had not been a guest. A host must please his guests, and do it fairly; show no favoritism. Cotterel was vexed with himself.

Perhaps he also had given a trifle too much time to Miss Allingham. But he blamed himself less for that. He had met her so recently, he knew her so slightly. It had been very good of them—the father and daughter—to accept his invitation. (Monroe had vouched for him, no doubt. Monroe would.) That graciousness of theirs entitled him, almost enjoined him, to show them special welcome. Still—

He took out his cigarette case.

He’d smoke three before he turned in.

He lit a cigarette carefully. He did most things carefully.

The match bothered him a little when he had blown it out. He disliked litter. Especially he disliked it on anything that was his. The burnt matches of life—literal and figurative—always had been a problem to Henry Cotterel.

He moved across the garden, smoking, still holding the used match. He was as incapable of tossing it into the lotus pond’s pure water as a Chinese would have been. Nor would he throw it under a shrub, in a flower-pot, or on a perfectly groomed path. Bother the match! He could return it to his gunmetal box among its abler fellows—a practise he disliked.

Embarrassed by a burnt match! Betty Monroe would have laughed at him, twitted him. She had called him an “old maid” and a “fuss-pot” more than once.

He sat down on one of his garden’s beautiful carved benches, and put the offending splinter of aspen conspicuously on a dragon’s stone wing where an early garden-servant would see and remove it—or be meritedly reprimanded.

The moon was blazing now. Almost it paled the stars. Hundreds of fire-flies sparkled above the flowers, danced above the fragrant bushes.

They bred down in the melon patch beyond the honeysuckle trellis. And many of them Cotterel had bought from the itinerant insect-sellers; buying them to augment the night-time beauty of his garden and courtyards.

The green roofs of his long sprawling house looked deep silver in the moonlight, the bridge over there—one of the little red bridges from which he had named the place—looked pearly pink.

What a place! How it satisfied him! How near it was to perfection!

What the devil did Betty see wrong with it?

She’d been pulling his leg. Must have been! But, no, bother the girl, she had meant it!

Ask Trench! Not he. Mustn’t ask Mr. Allingham! Why not? And why had Betty cared so? She had cared.

Perhaps he’d ask Miss Allingham if she saw anything wrong with “Red Bridges.”

To him this place of his looked faultless. Look at the crinkled sweep of those perfect roofs! The delightful windows! There were no such windows in Europe. Could the courtyards in any old Spanish palace shame these of his? Had Italy a garden as lovely as this? And he had made this in a year. What would it be in ten years? Those hills up there, with the pagodas and shrines and memorial stones and arches, a turquoise sky by day, a blue velvet sky at night all stars, and most of the time a great big moon; look at it now! And all the rest of it. Could you beat it in Greece—Athens with the Acropolis behind it white and pink in the sunrise? You could not—not anywhere.

It was indescribable, and he wasn’t much good at describing. But this was jolly good. Betty talked through her hat.

And the house inside was as right as all this was out here.

Perhaps she thought there were too many bridges. That Chinese “garden-artist” chap had hinted there were. But, “Whose place is it anyway?” or politer words to that effect, he had rejoined, and the “artist” chap had bowed and shut up.

Cotterel was proud of his red lacquer bridges. No two were alike, no two were within sight of each other. A mother couldn’t have been prouder of bouncing triplets than this Englishman was of his seven red bridges. The “garden-artist” had advised and designed the first one. Cotterel had liked it so much that he had insisted upon having the other six.

He had been warned that the brilliant lacquer was not permanently weatherproof. The finer the lacquer, the greater care it needs. It could be renewed, Cotterel had replied. “Go ahead,” was his ultimatum. They had gone ahead. And the red bridges—all seven of them—glowed like jewels, and so pleased Cotterel that he named his pretty domain after them.

One spanned a corner of a lake. One spanned a carpet of foam-splashed flowers at a waterfall’s base. One crossed a rivulet in front of the blue-tiled temple that Cotterel had had built for a smoking room. One crossed a sunken path that divided a willow-softened slope from a stretch of plum-trees. They all were beautiful and all beautifully placed.

That one would have been more beautiful than seven, Cotterel the Occidental could not see.

He crushed out the stump of his cigarette, laid it neatly beside the burnt match, lit a second cigarette and put another used match beside the first. If litter there must be, it was best to concentrate it. And the larger this small pile was, the surer it would be to catch a gardener’s eye.

Burnt matches and cigarette stumps! Cotterel puckered his mouth a little at the problem of them. What was the solution? A fellow couldn’t carry a little brocade bag on his arm, or saunter about his garden at midnight, wearing an ash-tray on his wrist watch.

The man sighed gloatingly with his pleasure as he looked about him.

He loved his homes. He loved making them. The little place in Spain, the low long house of white marble beside an Italian lake, and now this, his flat in London, the cottage—seventeen rooms and six acres—in Dorset; he delighted in them all: womanless homes he had made himself where and as it had pleased him.

He intended to keep them womanless.

Henry Cotterel believed in matrimony—for others. He intended not to marry. He had weighed it carefully, and had decided against it cordially. He had no entanglement, he never had had one. He never had had a “disappointment.” Frankly, he did not anticipate one, if he ever changed his mind, suddenly shed his disinclination for marriage. But he felt sure that he’d not change his mind.

He liked many women. A few women he liked very much. He enjoyed knowing companionable, stimulating and beautiful women. But he was convinced that he would enjoy life more without a wife than with a wife—even an ideal one. He knew—for Cotterel was level-headed—that there was not, never had been, and never would be, an ideal wife. He did not believe in the ideal, except as an abstraction.

Enjoyment was his aim, his consistent pursuit, and, he believed, his right. He was convinced that he would enjoy his life more and longer unencumbered, unthwarted by a wife. He believed that he’d not alter that decision. For he was convinced that he entirely fulfilled Socrates’ difficult command—believed that he knew himself.

Cotterel was not offensively selfish. If he rarely went out of his way in search of a kindness to do, he even more rarely evaded any chance to do one that came his way. He was kind by instinct and on principle. He considered himself richly blessed—as he was—with wealth, health and commonsense. And believed that it was only decent of him to share, now and then, here and there. At thirty-two he never had done any one a wrong, never had been mean or vindictive. Critical, he was not apt to imagine flaws, and when he saw them was more apt to be reticent than to comment or report. His name rarely went on to a subscription list; when it did, only for moderate sums. He liked to slip twenty-pound notes into hospital boxes, if he felt sure that the hospital was a good one, larger notes sometimes, or a wad of tens, twenties and fives. He gave a good deal, and did a great deal of good. He enjoyed doing it, he very much more enjoyed no one else’s knowing or suspecting that he did. He would not give to a beggar—in rags or in a coronet. But he was quick and lavish to relieve need that did not ask or seek.

He traveled and made himself “homes” to his much liking: his two passions. He could afford to indulge them. He saw no reason why he should not indulge them—and himself, he saw several why he should.

Unlike most travelers who jog about fairly comfortably, do a conscientious amount of sightseeing, but never explore, Henry Cotterel lived while he traveled.

Globe-trotting and sightseeing were not for him. He thought them both “peasant” and cheap; vulgar things that made you perspire and rubbed you up against garrulous bores and other undesirables.

When something he knew of a place—a fact or rumor—or sometimes only its name—attracted him, he went to it. And it made not the slightest difference to him whether the momentary Mecca were thirty miles away or thirty thousand. But if he could not reach there without roughing it unduly, he did not go. He liked the best—bed, breakfast, clothes, service. He preferred to travel luxuriously. He was not in the least ostentatious. He cared very little for the opinion of others; he cared a great deal for his own.

His good manners were not starched and were quite without frill. His conscience and his bearing were easy.

He was debonair.

Mecca reached—his Mecca of the moment—Cotterel did not explore it at once or feverishly. He sat down and let the place “get” him, if it could; let it “soak in.” If it disappointed him, he moved on leisurely. If Mecca “caught him”—it often did—he stayed there, settled into the place and lived there, made it his home, for weeks or months or a year—even longer once or twice.

This place with its seven red bridges, its prancing pottery “animals” guarding it on the edges of its curled roofs, its ordered tumble of flowers, its great soapstone “lanterns”—only three, its pretty waters—silken pools and little cascades of foam, its odorous hibiscus and its palm-like giant ferns, its miniature army of sleek, blue-clad Chinese servants, its very beautiful carved outer wall and painted gates, was the third “home” he had made for himself in alien lands.

Something of a dilettante, or at least leaning that way, Cotterel was no Miss Nancy—not a trace of it. He was physically brave; quiet about it, as all true bravery is. He was no mean athlete.

Brave in the bigger, more difficult ways? That had not been solved. And only time could tell—if it ever did. The test was yet to come—if it came.

He knew that his mind was ordinary—and didn’t care. His education at public school had been the not unusual scramble and dodge, except in sports. His two pleasant ’Varsity years had dwindled out without a degree, although mathematics had rather attracted him. No tutor ever had thought him dull, or scholastically worth prodding.

“Quite a nice boy who wouldn’t work except at play; and had no need to.” He invariably had done badly at examinations—and didn’t care. They did not interest him in the least. He thought and called them “bosh.” (Great teachers have agreed with him there.) But life sets examinations that are far from “bosh.” How would the rich, self-indulgent, ill-prepared man pass one of them?

But no one ever had thought Henry Cotterel dull.

He held to convention. He respected good form. The “done” thing stood well in his regard.

There was much inconsistency in Henry Cotterel. Often the most interesting people are full of inconsistencies.

It never had occurred to Cotterel that he was interesting, and few others ever had thought him so. If he were, it was unexpressed as yet. Life might show him so sooner or later.