Читать книгу Ferriby - Marjorie Bown - Страница 7

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The living-room at Ferriby was low and raftered, and had kept its old-fashioned furniture.

A living-room close to the kitchen, common to the use of any member of the family, it had for all that and furniture a hundred years old, gradually come to be looked upon as Irene Garth's apartment in particular.

When she returned from her school-days in London she had chosen to like it, and that was enough.

She liked it, she said, because she had society in it, and under that Miss Garth disguised several recommendations to its use too paltry to be recognized by any mind not akin to her own.

The window of the room, a casemented lattice, occupying the whole length of the outer wall, had a deep sill, and under the sill was a dais raised by a foot or so from the floor.

Here on this dais were a lounge and work-table and a basket chair, incongruous against the panelling, and showing signs of rougher wear than Irene's use could have given.

Devil Ferriby sat there.

Kneeling on the broad, low window-sill of the open casements, Irene could look over a small flower-garden. It was shut in by a hand-depth of brickwork, showing, above a hedge of yew, the angle of one of the red walls of the outer court; but turn to the left and there was a path leading from a side door to the side road that took away to Droitlet and the shore. Turn your gaze below, there was a narrow box-edged walk that, skirting window and kitchen wall, led through the yards into the grazing meadow and the home fields.

Upstairs in the great room where Irene slept, Daphne Estorel's twin to it across a landing, the sea was in the view and the changing lights of far stretches; but Irene preferred to see who passed from the yards, or who by chance came to the side door.

Cousin Ferriby did for one, cantering past into the stables with a flashing look at the casement, then returning to stride in on her through the narrow entry, gaitered, whip in hand, splashed often from head to foot.

But Irene liked this. She liked Devil Ferriby's bold ways. It was delightful to coquet with him to the very edge of his brutalities and his fierce strength, and see him pull himself up, and steady his passions to the leash, barely to the leash.

The vicinity of the kitchen Irene could have done without, but Jane Skidfell was little in those vast quarters now. Since Daphne Estorel had returned to the Grange to spend there the greater part of her time, Jane had assumed an added state. She made no pretence of altering her tongue or her ways, but she dressed in black without shawl or apron; a piece of fine lace was turned over the neck-band and fastened with a massive mourning brooch of gold, its rim touch ing her withered throat. Her cap was of lace, and over her spare shoulders on Sundays and high occasions a gold chain rested.

'I am t' housekeeper,' she would say, 'and no servant. And when Daphne Estorel is in t' hoose thee'll remember, Irene Garth, she stands here as well as thee dost—ay, an' better.'

Irene treated Jane to a curled lip and silence to her face, or outspoken disdain and slight behind her back.

Cousin John gave her her own way, and he was the master. In the corner of the living-room where she chose to spend her time stood a bureau black with age, its dropping handles of brass shaped like fuchsias. Here Devil Ferriby, opening the flap from a great bunch of keys that never left his person, would sit to his accounts, and Irene loved then to use her power and distract him.

In the wall near which the bureau stood were two latched doors, one into the entry ending in the side door and the garden, the other opening steeply on a flight of stairs up which Irene could fly light-footed to the floors above, or steal down from her room and out into the garden and no one the wiser—should she wish it. For these reasons Irene found the old-fashioned, low-ceilinged living-room desirous. The meals that it had been wont to serve there were laid instead in what had been the—'still-room' of the Grange in days gone by. This was a large and pleasant apartment, very sunny, opening through wide glass doors upon all that was left of a once fair pleasaunce. The lavender bushes from which ancient dames of Ferriby had distilled waters, still grew there, grey and gnarled, and beds of herbs were there and a broken wall by a half-buried sundial where peacocks had strutted. The place spoke of old grandeur, and, for all the sunshine that it stored, was perhaps too sad.

In this room Daphne Estorel spent a good many hours, and it pleased Irene that she should be the one whom the maid-servant must disturb when meal-times came.

There was a dining-hall, grand and galleried, in the great house; but John Ferriby would have no style, no attempt at it.

Jane Skidfell still saved as she pleased, but Ferriby spent, grudgingly, though freely, upon Irene. On matters outside his own interest he spent not a farthing; only where money was an investment he used it well, and the estate of the Grange flourished.

It was a swooning day in July. The casements of Irene's room were all wide open upon a glitter of sunshine and geraniums.

Over Ferriby and its gardens and great yards hung the drowse of a summer afternoon, of the in-between hours, when everybody is about his business, and doors stand open upon empty spaces, and sunlight scarcely moving across tidied floors. Irene seemed the only one alive in the lower rooms, but in her apartment there was considerable animation. Three burly men had just deposited upon the dais a dwarf piano in ebony and gold, and now stood mopping their brows and surveying their handiwork with a too obvious air of seemingly thinking of nothing else.

Irene, in a blue muslin gown, a bright note of colour against the red Hue of the geraniums, surveyed the operations with triumphant satisfaction. This was Cousin Ferriby's last concession.

'I am afraid it was very heavy,' she said, glancing from the piano to the men.

Her smile was indescribably and indiscriminately charming. The foreman touched his forehead.

'More awk'ard than heavy, miss. 'Tis the way with these little lady piannys—bound to be awk'ard, though not, as you may say, heavy.'

'Lady piano!' Irene laughed.

'An' me an' my mates have taken care this little lady shouldna' think as 'twasn't gentlemen a-handlin' of her,' went on the man, with a covered wink at the others.

His tone was respectful enough, but when Irene Garth talked to a man she lowered barriers. She laughed again at the foreman's wit, threw up the lid, and ran her white, ringed fingers lightly over the keys.

'Perfect,' she said.

'Like the weather, miss,' spoke up a second fellow with an open grin—' leastways, when you're not drivin' pianny carts in the sun.'

Irene dropped her hands and looked at the men with pretty puzzled brows. They looked back at her admiringly.

'Of course,' she said, smiling; 'that is just what you have been doing—driving six miles in the blazing sun! I am so sorry Mr. Ferriby is not here...Would you like some tea?'

Coquetry was as natural to Irene as the breath she drew—she would flirt with a plough-boy. It was life to her to watch her beauty and her charm strike fire in everyone—to watch for that moment when something leapt into the eyes of every man who gazed on her, and then spring away from the encounter and hope in her heart that still another would carry a mark of her branding.

The foreman laughed and glanced at his companions.

'Well, thank you kindly, miss, a glass of beer...'

'Of course—how stupid of me! Only how you men can prefer it to tea—' She moved towards the door into the kitchen, and, half-way, looked back over her shoulder as if she was charming Devil Ferriby himself, not three aproned workmen. 'Beer for all of you?' she smiled.

The men grinned in chorus.

'Well,' said one spokesman, 'since you're so passin' kind, miss, if so be there's a drop o' whisky handy—'

'Whisky!' Irene opened her lovely eyes. 'The stuff you take with soda-water?'

'No soda-water, thank you, miss—nothin' so heady.'

Irene nodded, and opened the door commanding the kitchen. 'Sophy!' she called. The men coming off the dais nudged each other and grinned, twirling their caps. 'Sophy!' called Irene impatiently. The bright silence answered, then in a moment a light footfall brought—Daphne Estorel.

In an instant the grin left the men's faces; they straightened themselves, and stood a little shamefaced.

It was Daphne Estorel again appearing vision-wise. About Daphne at two-and-twenty were still to the full the grace and brightness that had made her to Irene, years ago that memorable day in the buttery, appear as something and someone of another world. The gold of Daphne's hair was as pure and pale now as then, the face unchanged, lily-pale, with grave, rose-pink lips, and the grave blue eyes looked into Irene's with the same steady candour and the same challenge. Yet Irene Garth's beauty left Daphne Estorel's unseen—not her influence unfelt, but her beauty unseen. In that Irene was pre-eminent. She drew back frigidly.

'I was calling for Sophy,' she said in her well-bred accents.

'Sophy has taken the place of someone at the milking to-day,' said Daphne. 'There is no one here. Did you want anything?' She glanced at the three men.

'I did, but it's out of the question to trouble you,' answered Irene unpleasantly. 'I wanted some refreshment for these men. They've brought my piano all the way from Petsham in this heat.'

'A glass of ale, miss,' struck in the foreman in an altered tone, directed to Daphne, 'if it's handy, miss. The young lady needn't trouble.'

'It is so vexatious that Cousin John should be away...'

'He is seldom here in the daytime,' said Daphne; 'it need make no difference. Scarside is outside. He will give them anything they want. Will you come this way, please?'

The men followed a trifle sheepishly, taking no further notice of the young lady in blue, deferring to Daphne Estorel as everyone did defer, even Devil Ferriby. But Irene snapped her fingers at it. She made no bid for respect and obeisances. Let Daphne Estorel tread her saintly heights and wear her golden halo! Irene preferred to come into a personal contact with her fellows, to see and feel her power. Devil Ferriby would not swear in Daphne's presence: he did in Irene's. Irene cared nothing for the distinction. It was she who could flush Cousin John's cheek. It was when her beauty and her wiles urged him too far that he strangled the fierce oaths on his lips as he turned savagely on his heel. This was the tribute Irene Garth found savour in.

She had grown into great beauty. Everything about her was lavish, warm, voluptuous. Figures of speech for her were truths. Her red-brown hair was a wealth, her skin like milk and roses, her eyes 'violets steeped in dew,' her shoulders and arms curved in the lines 'no painter ever drew,' and the soft whiteness of her throat alone was temptation.

She had retained her girlish capacity of making grimaces and not spoiling her perfect features. As Daphne disappeared with the men she indulged in one, well aimed if unseen, and returned to the piano. A piano! In Ferriby Grange...bought and paid for by Devil Ferriby for his cousin, Irene Garth!...Jane Skidfell knew of it in silence. 'He'll not marry the wench,' she said to herself in those long hours when she sat pondering, unseeingly, through the horn glasses on her nose, upon the Bible open on her knee—'he'll not marry her. 'Tis nought of her destiny nor his. Leave 'em alone.'

Irene could play well. In her education she had pleased herself, carrying her way with Cousin John as she did in everything. She could play and sing; she could touch the guitar and dance; she could swim and ride; she could smoke a cigarette with Spanish grace; and wear a costume and recite tragically or comically, and both well.

'Mr. Mummer,' as John contemptuously called him, had been her father, and Irene had a good deal of his art.

But she had no thought of the stage. Her dreams, hazy still of some golden wordless future, included nothing of effort on her own part beyond the subjugation of men.

She sat down to her piano and began to play. Made for caresses, everything about Irene was soft with warmth and languor in it. In that dark-set room, in her blue gown against the red geraniums, playing softly, smiling as she played, she was excuse enough, even silent, for any man's infatuation; speaking, moving, wooing, she had a dozen added charms. A woman planned indeed.

She played a waltz, 'The Thousand and One Nights,' with its wild, wicked tune. A young man coming along the box-edged path beneath the window paused startled, and then sank against the wall beside the open casement, and his sun-reddened, work-hardened hands fell clenched to his sides. Irene saw him instantly, but she went on playing.

It would seem at sight it was one of the farm labourers whom the cymbal-like measure had arrested. His dress was rough and his coat hung over his arm; his shirt of coarse blue calico had neither cuffs nor collar. He could not help it, for he had given no thought to the fact that the blue suited his tanned throat and face and his dark hair that tumbled over his forehead from under a straw hat thrust back picturesquely, as any labourer can be picturesque. Tall and finely made, the young man's figure slouched, and the hands were coarsened and broadened. Handsome beyond a doubt, over the whole appearance distaste and sullenness lowered, puckering the stormy brows and blunting the finer lines. From brow to chin ran a thread-like scar, the mark of the lash of Devil Ferriby's whip six years ago.

Irene stopped playing. She glanced towards the kitchen door; it was shut.

'Paul,' she said softly, 'Paul.'

He did not move, yet he stirred through all his frame at the sound of her voice. She rose and went to the sill, and, kneeling there, looked out and down.

Paul Ferriby, this—Paul Ferriby...Irene smiled and touched his shoulder caressingly...so might Circe have smiled and touched one of the encased souls she had transformed.

'Cross, Paul?' she murmured.

He looked up at her slowly. 'Is that something more of Ferriby's giving?'

'You mean the piano? Of course.' Irene laughed. 'When Cousin John promises me a thing, I have it. Why should I do without a piano? To make Cousin John pay and pay and pay is the only way to get even with him. He has done us out of money, I am sure.'

Paul's answer was a sullen sound; then he moved, so suddenly and sharply she started back.

'Curse Ferriby and his money!' he said. He fixed her with his grey eyes; the dark brows might scowl, the eyes adored. 'Are you beginning it with that fellow Gisberne, too?' he said.

'That fellow Gisberne.' Irene laughed softly, 'Pray, who is he?' She curled her fingers softly about the young man's brow. 'Don't frown so, Paul; it spoils your beauty, and you're really awfully handsome, you know.'

He grew still under the light caress.

'Oh,' he broke out in a moment like a sick man who feels his delirium soothed, 'don't let this go on, Irene! You're true to me, eh? Come away. Marry me as you've promised. Give me a chance to get out of this before it is too late.'

'Too late.' She smiled, still playing with his thick locks. 'You talk as if you were forty.'

Paul caught her wrist. 'Why will you stay here under this roof? When you came back for good you promised me...'

'Now, don't be unreasonable...'

'Unreasonable! Look at me; look what I am!'

'It's a shame,' she murmured. 'You work like a labourer.'

'I am one. How else was I to stay here eating his bread? Oh, look here, Irene! Are you sure you do care? You keep me dangling on, and my heart's sick with it, and now that fellow Gisberne's going to hang round too...'

'Who is that fellow Gisberne?' she interrupted. 'I have not even seen him.'

'You passed him in the lane yesterday. He turned and looked after you.'

'Oh.' Irene's expression changed by the slightest. 'Is that who it was? But you are such a dear old stupid. You can scarcely call that hanging round-meeting a stranger in a lane.'

'It's what it will be.' Paul's face darkened. 'He is coming to live in Droitlet.' He caught her hand closer and straightened his big, slouching frame. 'Oh...' he breathed a strong word, 'do you care, Irene?'

'For you?'

'For me.'

She felt him tremble. How she loved it—to rouse them, these men; to see the heart-beat, the flush; to hear the stumbling words. She glanced a moment over her shoulder to acquaint herself that no one was there, then she bent down till her cheek touched his hair.

'I care for you very much,' she murmured; 'you know I do. What a big, strong fellow you've grown. You could stand up to Cousin John now if it came to it, couldn't you? Do you remember the first time you did? A shame it should have marked your handsome face—but it hasn't spoilt it, you dear.'

And she touched his cheek with her lips like the flicker of a flower, then caught herself back softly, laughing, keeping him off, telling him someone would come, he mustn't be so silly.

The flush faded in Paul's face. 'That scar was for you,' he said hoarsely.

'Oh, you said not at the time, you remember!' laughed Irene.

'It was for you. And, look here, there are worse scars on me than that—on my heart and on my soul.' He pressed nearer to the window, catching her hands again. 'I'm a clod! After six years I'm still here, still turning that fellow's soil, still taking his bread.'

'Don't be savage now.'

'Savage! Wasn't my father a Ferriby? And yet here I am, my birthright sold to a fellow who disgraces the name. I hate him, I curse and loathe him; and yet look at me—here I still am.' His lips were white, his dark face full of passion; it pleased her eyes framed in the open window, the red of the geraniums giving the whole picture a true Spanish touch.

'And it's my fault, you mean?' she said.

'Fault! No—not if you are dealing fairly with me. It's for your sake I've stayed, because you asked me to, because you came and went, and because I couldn't live without the sight of you. And what have you always said? "Some day I will go away with you—I will be no one's wife if I am not yours."'

Irene broke off a geranium spray silently, her eyes down-bent as if in thought. He stared at her.

'How could I stay,' he whispered, 'and accept favours from him—charity? I've stayed like this for pay—a labourer! And now, you're ashamed of me.'

'Oh, Paul...' She began to draw the flower spray through the buttonhole of his loose shirt.

'I tell you,' he went on, unheeding her touch, but vibrating to it, as well she knew, 'it's cost me more than you'll ever understand. I say, Irene, you won't break my heart into the bargain, will you? I can't share the same roof with Ferriby much longer...I can't lead this life. Are you true to me? You smile on Ferriby—'

'Oh,' she interrupted, 'when will you understand that I like Cousin Ferriby no more than you do? If I had not cared about you, Paul, do you think I should have come back when I'd finished school? There were fifty other things I could have done. But before I leave Ferriby Grange I mean to know the truth of things. There is some trickery somewhere about uncle's will, and Jane Skidfell knows there was—'

'Hang their cursed money!' broke from Paul. 'Are you true to me?'

But Irene sprang away from the window. She motioned to him—one of her girlhood's tricks—that someone was coming, and, dropping on the piano-stool, played chords at random.

Paul, with a savage sound, turned from the casement, and came in through the entry.

As he crossed the threshold of the room by the one door. Devil Ferriby strode in by the other.

Six years had changed John Ferriby. He stands there as changed as Paul, and for the worse even more decidedly, because in a worse way.

His hair, the same tint as Paul's, is grizzled; his face, dark-hued and tanned, is marked and lined by dissipation; but the free, bold air sits him as easily, and his dress is smart and jaunty. Smacking a silver-topped crop against his gaitered leg, he stood and stared at the spray of red in the 'hired man's' blue shirt.

In the lapel of Devil Ferriby's own well-fitting grey coat there blazed a crimson rose.

Irene dropped her hands from the piano.

'Helloa,' said Ferriby, roughly, taking no notice of her, 'what are you doing here?'

Paul came up to within touch of him, and stood and gave him look for look.

Then he passed on in silence, but with the latch of the door in his fingers, he gave a glance back at Ferriby, who had swung on his heel towards him.

'Did you speak—to me?' he said. Irene sprang forwards.

'I've had about enough of you!' cried Ferriby, still heeding only Paul, and he advanced threateningly.

Irene shuddered, as she always had, with selfish, physical revulsion at the thought of a blow, the sight of blood. She ran between the two, ran up to Paul, let him see her eyes, let him feel the touch of her fingers on his wrist, and so, pulling open the unlatched door, pushed him gently through; then, closing it, leaned against it, listened a moment to hear that Paul was gone, then laughed into Devil Ferriby's face.

'Never mind that great bear,' she said. 'Don't you want me to thank you for the new piano. Cousin John?'