Читать книгу Ferriby - Marjorie Bown - Страница 10

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That night, between ten and eleven, a late hour for the Grange, Ferriby sat smoking alone beside the black oak bureau. The flap was down, and on it stood a single candle burning. The flame did little more than pick out John Ferriby's head and face. The night was intensely warm, and held its own light; the dark without was scarcely more than a thick dusk. All the casements of the long window stood wide open. The piano was in plain outline, the uncovered keys faintly gleaming. Every sign of the little feast was gone, but Ferriby was looking towards the spot where the table had stood, and his thoughts were busy with it.

It was a strange thing for him, Devil Ferriby, to have been sitting down like that with a couple of girls and a stranger! He didn't know why he'd done it—as if Gisberne had been a new parson or some Devonshire 'swell' on a visit to Daphne. He had none of Daphne's fancies. Ferriby did not go below the surface nor seek in his acquaintance for the characteristics of a gentleman, but he rather wondered he should be attracted by Gisberne, and feel the desire to have him about him. That the desire and the attraction were much the same thing as prompted him when he bought a horse or tolerated a dog across his feet did not occur to him. He made no similes. Gisberne did not seem to be assuming anything, and as for soullessness, much Devil Ferriby thought of the soul! What he had noticed during the lavish meal and the hour's desultory talk and entertainment following was that Irene Garth 'had thrown herself at the fellow's head.' And the young witch had flouted him into the bargain, announcing with that air of hers that she had bidden Paul come in to tea. Well, the sulky ruffian had known better—he had not 'come in to tea.' But my lady had better take care—she had better take care how she set him and that upstart beggar too far by the ears.

The door from the kitchen quarters opened gently, and John looked round sharply, half startled.

'Is it thou, John Ferriby?' said Mistress Skidfell's voice.

'Hello!' answered Ferriby, not over-pleased at the intrusion. He was waiting—not for Jane Skidfell.

'I've come to speak to thee awhile,' said Jane, advancing into the candle-light and showing herself fully dressed, the filmy lace still on her grey hair, her figure stern and forbidding as ever. Jane Skidfell had been finely handsome once in some girlhood not so far off by reason of years as by change of nature. 'Put out the light,' she said. 'I can say what has to be said in t' dark, and that wench, Irene Garth, is not in t' house yet. We can see her the better wi'out t' candle if she comes creepin' to t' window to listen.'

Ferriby snuffed out the candle, laughed, and rattled the silver tongs into the tray again. 'What's up now?' he demanded. He paid Jane scant outward respect. It never entered his head to disobey her.

'This: I'll have no bloodshed in this house.' She spoke, and sat down in one of the chairs carved for backs rigid as hers. Ferriby was a few feet away in his seat by the bureau—nothing between them.

'Oh, that's an old scare, Jane,' he answered. 'It was always my father's notion he'd be murdered, and his father's before him. Who's to shed blood? You've been having dreams again.'

'I have. Strange dreams of thee. I have had one this afternoon...Thee'lt get rid of thy Cousin Paul.'

'Do you think he means to murder me?' Ferriby laughed dryly.

'I said no word o' murder,' answered Jane. 'I spoke of the shedding of blood. It may be thine spilt or his; it may be but a blow or it may be death, but it's threatening. He and thee are like two young bulls in the one herd. Thee'lt get rid of Paul.'

'How?' asked Ferriby, after a silence. 'Do you think turning him out of the Grange will alter things? How far would he go, think you? Do I never stir beyond the gates? Can't we meet at Droitlet or Petsham or—ten miles off? I'm not sure that I wouldn't rather keep the young devil under my own eyes here.' And Ferriby took out his pouch and began to fill his pipe.

'But thee shalt not,' said Jane across the dark. 'He shall take himself off to the far ends of f earth.' Ferriby interjected a scornful laugh.—' I say he shall,' the old servant's voice rose, 'and it's Irene Garth who'll set him on his way.'

'Irene! Not she! She'd love to see us at each other's throats.'

'Dost thee care for the wench?' asked Jane sternly.

Ferriby laughed, and struck a vesta sharply. As the light flared up he looked across and met Jane's keen, searching, withered eyes. He laughed again.

'I don't quite see myself looking on while she marries someone else,' he said shortly.

'Dost thee mean to marry her thysen?'

'I don't know.' Ferriby spoke impatiently. 'She's all right here, isn't she—my cousin? You're in the place, and Daphne...She's a young witch. Marry her...she might have something to say about it; but if it isn't Cousin John it shan't be Cousin Paul!'

He laughed again, and the bowl of his pipe glowed suddenly and fiercely.

'Aye, aye,' answered Jane strongly, 'and what's he saying in his heart?—"If it isn't Cousin Paul it shan't be Cousin John." Now, thee'll listen to me, John Ferriby. Irene Garth is not worth an honest woman's thoughts. I doubt if thee'lt marry her. As for her mind in t' matter, a Ferriby has ever done as he thought with t' woman he chose, and thou art no exception. But this Paul is a Ferriby, too, mind thee, and he loves wi' a cleaner heart than thou dost. I like t' lad. I'd ha' saved him from this mysen, but he wouldna' listen, an' he'll never listen to aught save the wench hersen. Now, to Irene Garth I'll not demean mysen to speak—she cares for neither of thee. But thee shalt speak to her, John Ferriby, and now, when she comes in from her wanton idlings.'

'She's not alone,' interrupted Ferriby. 'The Ibimays are with her.'

'Thou'lt speak to her when she comes in,' said Jane, unheeding. 'I have forebodings. I will have no harm happen to thee. Thou art t' master's son.' Her voice softened and trembled. 'Irene Garth is t' one to make Paul go, and she shall.'

'Play Delilah with him, eh?' said Ferriby. As a child, Jane had read the Bible to him and spared not.

'Aye.' The old woman rose, looking ghostly to Ferriby, standing there facing him upright in the dark. 'Now, keep back thy sneers as to the right and wrong of it, and keep back thy boast that thou canst snap thy fingers at Paul Ferriby. Thou canst not. He is as fine a man—he has a cleaner soul—but thou art t' master's son. I give fair warning, John: Irene Garth shall use hersen to part the twain of ye, or I set her with my own hands out upon t' road, and Paul may follow her—'

And without any greeting or word to end it, like the phantom visitant she almost seemed, Jane turned, and Ferriby could only be sure she was gone by the click of the latch softly falling into place.

He instantly rose, lit the candle again, and glanced at the time. Twenty to eleven. Irene could not be long now. He moved to the window, and sat down there. Jane's visit for once had chimed with his mood. All his life had used him to her stern, unloving exhortations. Expressions, startling in another, came naturally from Jane, and with the same effect and impersonal bearing as pulpit denunciation; but to-night Ferriby's feelings were in tune with the words, and gave them full value.

There was no need for Jane Skidfell to fill out her sentences for Devil Ferriby. She threatened to turn Irene out of doors, and Ferriby believed she had the power, with all that the use of that power involved in showing him up as being master of Ferriby Grange-yes, under her.

What Jane's power actually was John did not know. Lawyer Winch held the secret, no one else. But well John knew his father Cornelius had had a crooked mind; the bad strain was in him and his father before him. Devil Ferriby had no particular mind to pry into his father's vagaries. He was content to take the mastership and the money and leave Jane her mystery and her own way. But he believed in her hidden power. Jane Skidfell and her grim talk had been handed on to him by his father almost as a superstition. Another superstition was this very fear of bloodshed. Ferriby knew it by heart. He had mocked, scoffed, laughed at it, and seen his father, haunted by it, die in his bed of a silly fever after a hunting chill! But tonight he was depressed. Things took form. Hitherto Irene had been coming and going, half a child; now she was here 'for good,' here to live, here to abide till her destiny be settled. It had grown plain that issues would not longer be kept indefinitely in abeyance.

He hated Paul—he would have swept him from his sight long ago, only somehow the whelp kept out of his way, and was useful, and had struck a fool's bargain to serve seven years with him for hire.

'Seven years! He was thinking of Jacob serving for Rachel,' thought Ferriby with a sneer of sudden illumination, his mind stirred to Biblical recollections by the flavour of Jane's talk. 'Well, he'll find himself "left." I suppose he'd better go. I suppose I'd better put Irene up to it. She'll lend herself to that sort of thing fast enough, the young jade...Marry her! Humph! I don't know...' Another face rose in Ferriby's mind—not Irene's—a face dark almost as his own, with passionate, entreating eyes...He moved uneasily. Pshaw! Irene was his cousin; he was fond of her, he petted her. Ah! there she was...His heart gave a leap, spite of himself. A slim figure, beautiful even through the dusk, had stolen up on silent footsteps to the gate. And the dusk seemed to grow perfumed round her, and the light air to blow with sudden warmth. The light figure seemed to see at once the outline at the casement. It stopped, affrighted.

'Cousin John, is it you?' came a whisper after the startled pause.

'Who else should it be?' said Ferriby. 'What do you mean by being out so late?'

And he rose to meet her as she entered.