Читать книгу Angels' Shoes and other stories - Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall - Страница 5

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“William writes that he is home from Italy, Helena; that he is married to Lucia Vasotti, and that he begs us to send the child to Great House on a visit, so that it may be less lonely for Lucia—a stranger in a strange land, as he justly observes.”

“And likely to remain so. Most unsuitable.”

“Hush, Helena, we must not be harsh. We will send the child, but only for a short time.”

Launce was that child, and that was the first word he had of Lucia Vasotti—her name, linked with “unsuitable.” It must have been blown to him on some wind of chance, because he was up in the dove-house at the time with three Ribston pippins and The Bride of Lammermoor. The flutter of homely wings was in his ears, the sharp fresh apple-scent on his lips, Lucia was maddening on the sunlit page before him, and “Lucia” was blown past him on the keen spring air. Until he died, that name was to him as the call of remembered music far away. Then old Pansy came and hauled him down the ladder in a hurry to be measured for two new shirts.

Launce was the only child at that time in the family, and he was used to being handed round a large circle of grown-ups for the comfort of this or that member thereof, like a foot-warmer. He remembered his Uncle William as a tall, dark man, incredibly supplied with shillings and generous of the same. Great House he did not know, but he was a child of steadfast mind. He went off very calmly, well shawled and muffled, with a small black box and two white mice in a cage. It was a day’s journey, of which he remembered little, save that the willow catkins were out and the southward-fronting gorse in bloom along the windy coast. He reached Great House just as a wild sunset was faring above the sea.

The house stood high for that level land, surrounded with a great sweep of terraces and plantations. It was built upon a fair and gracious plan, but the bitter sea and the north-east had taken their toll of it. The gardens were starved with sand, and the trees shorn off at wind-mark as with a sword. The buildings too were grey and wind-bitten, but now they swam in a strange red light. On the terrace above the beach a lady paced up and down, wrapped in a red cloak. And she moved like a moving flame in a still mist of fire.

“That is Unsuitable Lucia,” said Launce. He turned along the terrace path where the sea-shells gritted with the gravel, the mouse-cage tied up in a blue handkerchief in one hand, and his cap in the other, rehearsing the little speech that Aunt Helena had taught him last Sunday with his collect. As a result he was not very clear whether his “honoured aunt and the warm welcome that ever awaited dear William’s bride, however unexpected,” held a prominent position in the Church Service, or whether he must remind this Lucia that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves, but need to be kept both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls. However, he had no time for either, for the lady saw him, and stood, holding out her hands.

“Are you Launce?”

The child went up to her; he could see that her eyes and hair would have been very dark without the red-gold light that shone in them as fire shines through smoke. Then she moved quickly and kissed him, and the vision was blotted in the folds of her red cloak, through which he saw the world as in a flame. “Are you Launce? I am your new Aunt Lucia, but you must call me Lucy, for I am English now. I shall love you, you little brown, long-nosed boy. Will you love me?”

But how could the boy answer, drowned in his first vision of what a face might be.

She laughed a little, and sent a long, ringing call up to the house—“William, O William, here is our nephew come.” And then there was Uncle William, jumping out of the window of the gun-room and running down the terraces, and saying. By Gad, now, was that big boy little Launce, and how glad he was to see him, and Mrs. Annerley had tea ready in her room. But first he’d better give the mice to Simmons.

“I’d rather have them in my room, if Aunt Lucia does not mind. They are not very mousy.”

“Afraid you’ll be lonely in the night, eh?”

“No, Uncle Will; I’m afraid they will be lonely, they are sensitive mice.”

And Lucia laughed. “Why should I mind, William, the pretty little living things in the house? There are so few of them.” She glanced at the house with a faint shiver. The sea had suddenly taken the sun, and they moved like grey ghosts in a ghostly garden. Only on Lucia’s face the light seemed to linger.

Uncle Will patted her hand as he had patted Launce. “Well, come along, laddie. You must be hungry, and Mrs. Annerley has slain the fatted calf. But go into the gun-room first. There’s someone there you see more often than you do me.”

“Who?”

“Your godfather.”

Launce went to the gun-room with a happy face, and greeted his godfather with a nod, as one boy greets another. Mr. Geoffrey Launcelot was sitting on the table, apparently busy in admiring his own legs, very effective in new gaiters. He went straight to the point, as was his custom. “How’s the brown rabbit?”

“Well, sir, thank you, and has seven little ones. I’ve given two to Bill’s boy.”

“That’s right. Always give away what you don’t want yourself. How’s Foxy?”

“He’s well too.”

“And what do you think of your new aunt?”

Launce stood gazing at him above the mouse-cage. He opened his lips to speak, but the vision came on him again, and something beat in his heart and choked his throat like the flutter of prisoned wings. He stood stammering, and felt with amazement his own cheeks grown wet with tears.

Mr. Launcelot handed him a handkerchief with an unmoved face. “Boy,” said he, “I’m sometimes damnably afraid you’re going to be a poet.”

Launce steadied his nerves with Mrs. Annerley’s veal pie. He slept in a little gaunt room looking out over the gardens. Downstairs there was music—Lucia’s laughter, the piano. Uncle Will’s hunting songs, and then young Geoffrey’s tenor, high and wild as a bugle, ringing through the hollow corridors.

He fell asleep to the unaccustomed music, and he awoke to music—the bleak music of the wind and the sea.

He was late for breakfast, but Geoffrey was even later, strolling in imperturbably after the eggs, his curly hair still sleek from the sea.

“To-day,” Uncle Will announced, “we’re going to unpack wedding presents.”

Unpack—a happy word. Launce awoke from a dream of Lucia’s morning face behind the urn.

“Well, boy?”

“I have a new knife, sir. If I might cut the strings—?”

“Come into the hall. They are all there. And you shall cut all the strings.”

The grey old hall was littered with packages and cases and straw; the wind shook the curtains, and drove along the floor a fine dust that was not dust of the earth, but sand of the sea. Launce was sent for Lucia’s red cloak, a happy errand. And when he came back they had knocked a wooden case apart and stood above the swathed contents, waiting with a smile for the offices of the new knife.

There were many strings to be cut, but at last the packing and the sackcloth fell away. And Launce cried out suddenly and was silent. He felt again that flutter as of wings in his heart.

Yesterday he had looked his first on beauty living and mortal. Now he looked his first on beauty dead and all but immortal.

A boy was there, sleeping in the honey-coloured marble that seemed to have drunk its fill of some long-remembered sun. So soft, so warm, so golden-grey it shone in the dusk of the hall, that Launce cried out again to touch it and find it cold. The boy lay with his head thrown back on his arm. Vine-leaves, broken now, were falling from his hand, clinging to his curls, and vine-leaves lay where his little goat-hooves had crushed them ere he slept. His face was neither good nor evil, only beautiful. And his happy sleep seemed so light a thing that a laugh, a song, the touch of a bird’s wing or the shadow of a falling leaf must serve to break it, and awaken him to some unknown life apart from evil and from good, the rising and setting of whose days and nights was beauty.

“Well, my lady,” cried Uncle Will in his big voice, “you know where that comes from, hey?”

With one of her swallow-swift movements, Lucia stooped above it. “The villa,” she murmured, “the gardens, the laughing sea, and the sun—” She laid her cheek suddenly to the smooth, cold cheek of the sleeping faun. “I kiss you, O beautiful, for the sea and the sun—for Italy—”

“You are an odd kitten, Lucia,” said Uncle Will, “and you have some dust on your cheek. Let me wipe it off for you. And don’t forget to tell Mrs. Annerley about those sweetbreads.”

To Launce—and another—it seemed the little faun should have smiled and wakened beneath that kiss of hers.

Launce wrote home that evening:

“My dear Aunt Helena, I am very Well. The mice are very Well. Uncle William is very Well, and will write when he can gain Leisure. Aunt Lucia is very well. I am glad to be here to prevent her from being Lonely. My dear Godfather is here too, to prevent her from being Lonely. He sends his Compliments, and did not tell me how to spell it. He has new Gaiters. He has a new Horse, which he calls Monseigneur. I do my Latin daily, and am, my dear Aunt, your loving and dewtiful Nephew, Launce. My dear Aunt. She is bewtiful.”