Читать книгу Ferriby - Marjorie Bown - Страница 8

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Irene Garth did not speak falsely when saying she remained at Ferriby to find things out. There were many that puzzled her—Daphne Estorel in particular.

She was not Jane Skidfell's niece; Irene felt pretty certain on that point. Daphne had been brought up as a gentlewoman more carefully than Irene herself, whose early years had encountered some very hard times and unpleasant expedients. Whence the beautiful name of Daphne Estorel? And why was the relative in Devonshire with whom she had spent much of her time of a grade so different on the face of it to Jane Skidfell? When in Devonshire Daphne was received on an equality with exclusive county gentry.

Money had been spent upon her. Why should Cousin John do this? Irene had asked him, only to be warned off the subject with rough answers. To find out anything from Jane was as hopeless as striking a rock for water.

Irene would have given much to know if Daphne shared the secret that must obviously be; but there was too much enmity, scarcely veiled, between them, though never open warfare.

Irene's slights, and spite that went as far as it dared, fell away useless, blunted by Daphne's inviolable serene disdain. Why she stayed at the Grange, Irene could not fathom. She had discussed it with Paul and found she might as well discourse on the sunshine and the winds—he seemed to take Daphne as much for granted, as little needing explanation, as little within the compass of any explanation he could give. With Paul and Devil Ferriby alike infatuated for her, Irene could snap her fingers at Daphne Estorel as she did at Jane—yet another girl's bright, still presence about the place, another voice as soft as her own, hands as white and natheless far more useful, irked Irene. She hated Daphne. She felt her dead against her, but watch as she might, she could not tell which way the battle lay, nor what Daphne begrudged her, nor for what she silently fought.

Why Irene herself chose to shut her rare beauty away from mankind in this isolated home, she could hardly have told. The laziness, largely, of her voluptuous nature. Curiosity had its share, a vindictive intention to thwart Daphne, and above everything, unrecognized because so pervading, the controlling influence that 'shapes our ends.' Besides, did she not come back every long summer vacation to queen it more and more over 'passion's slaves'? Those early threats as to Irene's future withered as weeds by the wayside before the heat of her charm. It seemed to everyone save Jane Skidfell, and perchance one or two others who were not at hand to witness all, that Devil Ferriby would marry Irene Garth. She lived with everything at her command, good food, good service, a horse to ride, a boat to row, untroubled leisure, money to spend. She was only twenty: time to her was infinite, and she reaped from its golden hours Cousin John's bold homage and Paul's mad and bitter passion, and so the six years had gone. But this summer swung to its zenith big with change.

'Things will have to come to a head between they two soon,' said Jane. She was standing in the dairy watching Daphne skimming cream into a silver pitcher. Jane Skidfell's hard, fine face was dark with the austerity of one who looks on gloomily and prophetically at evil things. Her figure was sternly upright. In her handsome black gown with its touches of spidery fine lace at throat and wrists and on her iron-grey, abundant hair, Mistress Skidfell looked a Personage, and Daphne Estorel might call her aunt well without self-disparagement. But there was no other hint of kin. The dappling shadows from the pear-leaves outside the lattice rested on Daphne's bright, bent head and ivory-pale, still face. She was in a lilac gown with lace thrown fichu-wise about her shoulders.

'Where be Paul Ferriby now?' asked Jane after awhile, Daphne making no reply to her first remark.

'He is in the hay-field, I suppose, aunt.'

'Aye, he eats his bread by the sweat of his brow,' said Jane; 'but I tell thee, Daphne, there'll be trouble. These days past, since that young, wanton lass had her pianny here, storm's been brewin'. Now, I want no Ferriby blood spilt. Devil Ferriby they call him, and they're right. He's bad to the core, but he's the master's son...'

'What do you fear?' asked Daphne in a low voice.

'Bloodshed, and between they two,' answered the old woman grimly.

'Between Paul and John?' Daphne showed no tremor, but she ceased to skim.

'Aye, between Paul and John! They're mad, both on them, for Irene Garth; and the one is the master's son and master here, and the other the man o' the field that holds his own from one se'n-night to the next.'

'And yet they are both Ferribys,' struck in Daphne.

'Aye, and both her cousins. But the telling of that tale is done with I There's a man come now who is no cousin.'

'You mean Mr. Gisberne?' Daphne set down the ewer, a splendid old piece engraved with the Ferriby arms, its silver-gilt lining glowing pinky golden from the cream within.

'Aye,' said Jane, turning to leave the dairy, but with keen eyes darting into every spot and cranny; 'this Muster Gisberne will bring things to a head. The wench is winning him, too, into her toils...'

'I don't think so,' said Daphne quietly.

Jane eyed her keenly. Daphne, carrying the silver ewer, followed her to the door. 'Wait one moment, aunt,' she said. 'You fear trouble, you say. Why do you not speak to Paul?'

Jane shook her head. 'That is not for me, my lass.'

'You spoke once—'

'Aye,' interrupted Jane. 'I've spoken once, twice, thrice. Three times have I put it to him to go away; three times have I bid him not shame his Ferriby blood, but get out of t' way of that false wench's wantonness. I've offered him the money. I've pointed him to t' open door in Devonsheer with friends of thine, but he's bound hand and foot in t' passion for that lass. I maun speak no more.'

'Then what will you do?' said Daphne.

''Tis in the hands of God,' answered Jane sternly. 'To-night I speak to the master.'

'To John?' Daphne did not start, but her face showed a sudden glow as of flame upspringing behind transparent ivory.

'Aye. He shall send Paul out of t' place and shut the gates of Ferriby on him for ever.'

'But do you think that fair, Aunt Jane? Do you think that will stop ill-feeling or the risk of bloodshed?'

'Aye, needs must it—if Paul Ferriby be at the other ends of t' earth.'

Daphne's grave, bright eyes searched the old woman's face. 'Paul at the far ends of the earth!' she echoed in a strange voice. 'How will you get him there?'

Jane gave her an answering, searching glance. 'I have thee in trust,' she said enigmatically, 'and Devil Ferriby is the master's son—my master, the man I served and the man I—' She broke off with a grim setting together of the thin, withering lips over the unuttered word. 'But what is Irene Garth to me?' she went on, lifting the latch. 'What is Paul? Irene Garth will never marry t' master's son. That's plain to me. Then, shall Paul hang? And shall there be Ferriby blood on the floors for the sake of one who makes folly with 'em both? Let un go. Let the two lads part, and let her be the means to it.'

She passed on down the long passage, its runnel, full of clear water, purling past to encircle the great stone dairy and then flow limpid into a moss-lined trough beside the pear-tree roots.

Daphne followed slowly, the silver ewer in her white hands.

In the kitchen they entered there were a couple of buxom countryside wenches bustling between the huge oven and the white-scoured table. Baking was going on, the air filled with the tantalizing odour of oven bottoms and rich cakes. Apart from the finer cakes stood the vast array of pies and various baked meats to serve the harvesters and kitchen hands. There were flitches of bacon, and jars of jam brought from the store-room, ham ready to sizzle, oatcakes flung over the string line to dry, and in white osier baskets loaves of bread so different to loaves of bread that Sophy Bassett, on her arrival at the Grange six months ago, straight from Church Street, Paddington, did not know them by name. But this same Sophy Basset had rapidly overcome the drawback of first ignorances. In smart cap and gown she ruled the yokels in and out the back regions of Ferriby, and Jane Skidfell trusted her in much, even to the superintendence of the baking. Daphne Estorel's fair hands made the cakes and finer dainties; Jane still mixed and kneaded for bread and pies; Irene turned her lovely nose up at all domestic arts.

'T' bakin' seems to ha' turned out well, lass,' said Jane.

Sophy turned her bright, shrewd, sharply pretty face.

'You're right, mum,' she said. 'Miss Daphne's ('Dephne,' Sophy made it) cheese-cakes in partickler. Oh lor, miss, that reminds me: Mr. John, he's just been in. "Tell Miss Dephne, Sophy," says he, "as there's been an accident in the hay field."' She started forward to catch the cream ewer, for it seemed as if Miss Daphne would let it fall.

'An accident,' she echoed faintly.

'Oh lor, miss, I didn't mean to frighten you. Only to one of they machines. But you wasn't to wait tea, Mr. John said. If Mr. Gisberne came and Mr. John was kept, you was just to go on without 'im.'

'I have such a horror of accidents,' said Daphne, still faintly. Glancing up, she met Jane Skidfell's keen old eyes reading her, sifting her, knowing her. Sometimes to Daphne Jane was terrible as a figure of Fate, and she shrank from her.

'Thee hast the key of the silver closet,' said Mistress Skidfell. 'All is in order—thee'lt want me no longer.' And she went her way from the kitchen to the room above, where, for nearly fifty years now, she had spent hard-earned rests, and slept the sleep of toil. Leisure had come to Jane Skidfell these later years, but her austerity had strengthened. With keen, unwearying zest she still guarded the money and stores of—' t' master's son,' though her thrift was a large thing, embracing plenty, an art of wide thoroughness, incapable of meanness; and she reaped what she had sown in long hours of secure retirement, when she brooded alone with her Bible. In these hours in the old servant's mind concentration of thought became almost a trance, and single interest gifted her to the point of seeing visions.

'Has Mr. Paul been in to his tea?' asked Daphne, when Jane had gone.

'Lor, miss, no! He don't trouble about no tea these days.' Sophy put on a fine air of understanding what haying-time meant. 'They're short-handed, too, I heerd Scarside say. Want me to come and ly the cloth now, miss?' added Sophy smartly.

'No; I will do all that,' said Daphne, and, taking up the silver ewer again, she went slowly away by one of the many doors that kept the whole Grange in communication with the mighty kitchen—its heart and centre of life.

Sophy looked after Miss Daphne's bright, softly moving figure, and into the sharp Cockney face, expressing till this moment absolutely nothing save cheerful alacrity, came a knowing look.

Very knowing it was, with a hint of superior commiseration in it, and just a little speculation—only a very little. Sophy Bassett might not recognize a home-baked loaf of bread, but she had not been six weeks at Ferriby before she grasped what puzzled even Irene Garth. Much that might blind Irene did not hinder Sophy's vision. She knew 'right enough' why 'Miss Daphne' stayed at the Grange.

Through the cool, hushed house Daphne went her way. Some of the rooms were almost bare of furniture, in others modern and costly pieces bought and brought here by John Ferriby's mother in her brief reign stood about, shrouded in brown holland. And yet how the old house kept its air! Had it not its wainscotings and panelled ceilings? In the deserted dining-hall was the stained-glass window set up by Mary Ferriby 'To the glory of God and in great thankfulness of heart that His Majesty lying here two nights in the time of the late rebellion, did escape without hurt or hindrance. Praise be to God. 1660.'

In the wide gallery above the centre stairs so seldom used was a long line of portraits, going back to Tudor days—none there of Devil Ferriby's father, Cornelius, nor of his grandfather. To all the finer rooms were carved mantels and perfect doors in perfect walls—and all these things and many more, ignored by John Ferriby, and left to Jane Skidfell's heed, made a glory that could smile at emptiness and that needed nothing of style to uphold it, or modern bolstering. Daphne Estorel loved the Grange better than anyone who dwelt within it. Its serene loneliness was akin to her. She knew not whose child she was, nor how she came to be here. A shadow of something forlorn seemed to rest upon her life, yet mated with a high courage that would not know defeat; and she found sympathy with both forlornness and courage in the beautiful old rooms and spaces.

In her soul Daphne persuaded herself at times she, too, was a Ferriby, or else came at least from a race as old, and perhaps of higher strain, for Devil Ferriby mocked at state and scoffed at lineage; and Irene cared nothing save to boast she was a 'gentle,' and Paul had sold his birthright. But when Daphne Estorel opened the silver closet, as she did now, she was wont to thrill at its proud trophies of a nobler past. She could picture to herself Ferriby when those embossed tankards, duller now than lead, twinkled in the hands of the cavaliers as they toasted their King. With the aid of the ornaments that lay there forgotten, and the old discarded plate, Daphne would live again through many a gallant bright moment of history, in which the men and women of Ferriby had played a part, and, with the thrill of it still in her young and ardent blood, she would turn with love and sympathy to the old house that had lost it past recall.

But this afternoon Daphne took down the silver that she needed without any fanciful dallying with what was dead and gone. Sense of life and pain in herself were to-day too keen. From the silver closet she went on to the huge black press where the finer household linens were stored, and then back through the kitchen to Irene's room.

Mr. Gisberne was coming to tea, and, to suit Irene's whim, they were to sit down here.

Gisberne was a musician, it seemed, and there was to be music; and since Cousin John was absurd, and would not keep proper servants, and throw open the dining-hall and the ladies' bower, Irene declared it was in her room the new-comer should receive his first impressions. That there was too much of Daphne Estorel's atmosphere in the old 'still-room'—the lavender-room, as they called it now—was the truth of it, only Irene and the truth of things were separate quantities.

At Ferriby, leading its own life, thirty years behind the fashions of great towns, and, by all that was left of former greatness, mightily indifferent to them, an invitation to tea was a welcome to intimacy, a gallant occasion of brave hospitality.

Daphne spread a fine cloth worked with a delicate cross-stitch by the hands of the Earl's daughter two generations ago, and then from the baskets she had filled she took the silver pieces rubbed by her own hands this morning, and arranged them with the best rose-sprigged china. It made an imposing show, though, had Daphne been in some moods, the quick tears might have sprung to her eyes as she looked on what was and thought of what might have been.

But there was abundance to impress a stranger, and Daphne's white hands arranged with grace. Irene had no skill in even setting flowers in a vase; she had tossed that office to Daphne when she rode off that morning to the shore to bathe and loaf by the sea. Daphne, with regard to that line of red geraniums, had chosen bouquets of white and green, but in the centre of the table she had set blue lupins in a tall, clear glass.

'Lor', miss, it do look a picter!' said Sophy, entering, and she moved forward on tiptoe as if she were coming in late to church. 'And shall you wait for Mr. John, miss? The tea-cakes is jest done to a turn.'

'We must wait for someone,' said Daphne, smiling at her. 'And when Miss Garth comes she will have to change her dress. There is no hurry, Sophy. Be sure the water does not boil till I tell you to fill the urn. And remember how I showed you to change the plates. Don't get flustered, and be careful not to sniff, though you are almost quite cured of that. You look very nice. If you are as quick in the parlour as you are in everything else, you will be a very valuable servant, Sophy. And you have filled out so since you came. You are quite pretty. I am glad to look at you.'

Sophy drooped abashed. She stole from the room again, shutting the door upon Miss Daphne with a sense of shame. The little Cockney girl preferred Miss 'Rene. If she could look as Miss 'Rene looked when she took her her early cup of tea, and found her a vision of beauty that Sophy's limited memories could only liken to a pantomime fairy or a mermaid; if she could only get some young man to glower at her and to turn and watch her as Mr. John and that Mr. Paul glowered after Miss 'Rene, Sophy thought she could die happy. To have clothes like Miss 'Rene, to wear them as she did, and have such a face and ways—-Sophy Bassett could conceive of nothing more to envy.

Miss Daphne did not appeal to her nearly so much. She had never seen her with hair unbound or arms and shoulders bare. To Sophy's mind Daphne was always dressed, always composed, low-toned and gravely bright, always caring for household things. 'And to be in 'love with Mr. Paul!' Sophie pitied her with a half contempt. 'As if Miss Daphne had a chanst against Miss 'Rene.'

Yet Miss Daphne's words of praise were so sweet that Sophy felt ashamed to take them, as if some bright presence she had passed and passed and gazed upon slightingly had stooped, and, passing a hand over her hair, given her a sensation from another world.

Daphne looked slowly round the room, a room hateful to her—hateful I

There was nothing more to do; everything left to her to control was in the perfection of order and elegance. She would not sit down in the chairs Irene used; she passed through the stone-flagged entry, cool to chilliness even that hot afternoon, and into the little bit of garden beyond.

She looked along the box-edged path to the gate into the stackyard. Of this only a section was visible—the ground, golden with dragged straw and painted with a big shadow from a half-seen rick. Into the shadow round the rick suddenly stepped Paul; at the same instant, seeing Daphne, he stopped abruptly and then came forward, slowly fixing his eyes upon her, but giving neither smile nor greeting, yet his face changed. He was in the coloured shirt and the rough clothes he always wore. As has been said: that he looked the handsomer for them was no fault of his, for it was plain here was a young man who took his good looks rather more than most as a matter bearing very little on the question of existence. But handsome he was, with that indication of self-containment, that suggestion of 'something reserved for someone—'that is the mark of true virility and its chief attraction. As Daphne looked at him she turned dizzy with the pain of it. From head to foot Paul bore the marks of his bondage.

'You?' he said, reaching her; 'it's hot, isn't it?'

'Very hot. Were you coming in to tea?'

'Tea!' He laughed shortly. 'No; I wasn't exactly thinking of tea.' He leant against the worn stone of the doorway, in the arch of which Daphne stood. There was no need for his smothered glance towards the casement to tell why he was there, nor for further telling than Daphne's presence here that Irene was not in the room. He stood silently sullen, lowering. Far more than Irene Garth's lavish beauty did Daphne's still bright presence show up how far below that first estate of his frank boyhood Paul Ferriby had dropped.

Daphne could not bear to look at him, and he kept silence, making no excuses, a truant from work, here doggedly to see Irene, to encounter Ferriby—anything. In Daphne's heart in that pause something suddenly went out, as a candle, flickering bravely to the last, will suddenly drop into darkness. It was hope...

Daphne was twenty-two. From the first moment her eyes had met Irene Garth's six years ago she had silently disputed with her the possession of Paul Ferriby; at first, merely in the antagonism of a fine nature with a low one, but latterly, with all her woman's soul and flesh and blood.

And she had strangely hoped that in her silence she was drawing him, that silently she had a hold, thwarting Irene, and keeping him, at least, upon his feet. To-day, now, as he stood beside her, the warm quiet seemed to pulsate with Jane Skidfell's grim threats, and she glanced round into Paul's brooding face and suddenly knew him lost to her. Hope went out, and Daphne, under the pang and woe of it, stifled a cry.

There came a sound of horses' hoofs and laughing voices. The two were startled from their abstraction.

'Paul,' said Daphne with the new firmness of that sudden blankness in her soul, 'Mr. Gisberne is coming...'

'I know.' Paul's brows were scowling, his rough hands clenched.

Daphne put her hand on his arm; she had not touched him for long, long, long...' Sit down with us,' she said. 'I mean, at this meal...at tea...Oh, assert yourself—sit down with us—Mr. Gisberne's equal, Paul, for pity's sake—'

Paul turned his eyes on Daphne's face. He did not seem surprised at her intensity. He took everything that came with Daphne Estorel as he took the sun and winds, veiled or shining, cold or soft, the same, and nothing to wonder at.

'I'll not sit down at Ferriby's table,' he said hoarsely. 'I eat the bread I earn, and there's an end of it.'

'Paul, I entreat you. Take this moment when a stranger is coming. Sit down a Ferriby...'

'And be thrown from the place to-morrow?'

'Yes, that is what I mean. It is coming to that.'

'Aye.' Paul laughed, looking away from her down the lane, where in another moment the riders would come into sight behind the elms.

'Then meet it as John Ferriby's equal—a Ferriby and a gentleman...Assert yourself first. Sit down to-night, a Ferriby, a gentleman, whom he dare not strike—again—'

Paul glanced at her strangely, then away, 'I've sold my birthright,' he muttered. 'If he does anything of that sort I suppose I shall kill him—but I'm not going to leave Ferriby till—' The pleasant champing of the bits and bridle-chains was now close by, and men's voices and Irene's charming laugh. From behind the elm-clump she came first into sight, the bright chestnut she rode stepping daintily. Devil Ferriby was beside her stirrup, and the other side of her the new-comer, Mr. Robert Gisberne, finely mounted and sitting his horse well.