Читать книгу The Golden Arrow - Mary Webb - Страница 7

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Going to church and chapel in the hills implies much more initiative than it does in the plain, within sound of chiming bells and jangling public opinion. Very early on the hot Sunday of the Oration John was about, milking the cows—Bracken and Wimberry—dressing a sick sheep and placing at the back door his daily votive offering of sticks, water from the cwm and vegetables for his wife’s cooking.

‘Be you going all in the heat, and it blowing up for tempest, father?’ Deborah called from her little window, leaning out in her straight calico nightdress—for no human habitation, not even a bird’s nest, commanded her eyrie.

‘Aye,’ said John; ‘poor Thomas canna wait. I mun go or fail him.’

There is a curious half-superstitious, half-mystic sense in the minds of some country-folk that the dead need sympathy—perhaps almost food and drink—more in the days before burial than in their lives.

‘Is mother going?’ asked Deborah.

‘No. She’s had a call.’

Every one knew that when Mrs. Arden had a call it meant a small, new force in the world; and all knew the impossibility of gauging its importance, feeling that in her hands might lie the fate of a great man—a member of Parliament, perhaps, or even a vicar. So a call meant a hasty packing of homely simples, linen, and perhaps a posy; then she started on foot, or was driven by John with Whitefoot.

‘I’ll come then, father, sooner than let you go alone,’ said Deborah. She combed and pinned up her wing-like hair and took out her best frock—an old-fashioned purple delaine sprinkled with small pink poppies—and slipped it over her head. She was transformed from a pleasant girl into an arresting woman. The deep colour threw up into her grey eyes shifting violet lights, gave her transparent skin an ethereal look, burnished her hair. Dark colours were to her what rainy weather is to hills, bringing out the latent magic and vitality. This morning her dress might have been cut from the hills, their colours were so alike. Always dignified in the unselfconscious manner of those who live in the wilds, Deborah was even queenly to-day in her straight, gathered skirt and the bodice crossed on her breast. She put on an apron and ran down.

‘Mind you put a bit of mint along of the peas, Deb!’ said Mrs. Arden. ‘I’ll be back when I can.’

Deborah saw her off with due solemnity, in her best bonnet and Paisley shawl—rich with Venetian reds, old gold and lavender. Joe and his bowler had disappeared. Some hours later Deborah and her father set out along the green track over the hilltop, past the little wood of tormented larches and pines that sighed in the stillest weather. Here the hill-ponies gathered in the innermost recesses by the spring that came into the open as a small, vivacious brook. They stamped and whisked at the flies, gazing without interest or fear at the other children of the wild; and John looked at them with the infinite compassion that he felt for all the beautiful, pitiful forms of life.

‘What a queer day, father!—as if summat was foreboded,’ said Deborah.

‘Aye, there’s tempest brewing,’ John replied meditatively; ‘so bright as it is!’

‘It’s always bright afore storm, father, isn’t it?’

‘Aye. Why, Deb, how bright and spry you be yourself to-day, dear heart! The young chaps ’ll be all of a pother.’

‘It’s only my old gown.’

‘Aye. But you’m like chapel on Christmas night—lit for marvels.’

The tesselated plain, minute in pattern as an old mosaic, seemed on this fervent day to be half-molten, ready to collapse. The stable hills shook in the heat-haze like a drop-scene just lifting upon reality. The ripening oat-fields, the already mellow wheat seemed like frail wafers prepared for some divine bacchanalia. A broad pool far down among black woods looked thick-golden, like metheglin in a small ebony cup.

As they came to the northerly side of the table-land, Caer Caradoc loomed terrific, gashed with shadow, like a wounded giant gathered for a spring. John dreamed upon it all, leaning on his silken-grey staff of mountain ash.

‘See you, Deb!’ he said in the tranced voice in which he spoke but seldom in a year, at which times his listeners stood silent—at gaze like the sheep before something undiscovered—until he suddenly broke off, turned on his heel, and wheeled manure or dug the garden in silence for the rest of the day. ‘See you, Deb! The Flockmaster goes westering; and the brown water and the blue wind above the cloud, and the kestrels and you and me all go after to the shippen with the starry door. Hear you, Deb, what a noise o’ little leaves clapping in the Far Coppy! ’Tis he, that shakes the bits of leaves and the bits of worlds, and sends love like forkit lightning—him as the stars fall before like white ’ool at sheep-shearing. And all creatures cry out after him, mournful, like the o’er-driven sheep that was used to go by your grandfather’s forge at Caereinion. And he calls ’em—all the white sinners and the stained mighty ones, and even the little blue fishes in the hill streams. “Diadell!” he calls to the hearts of them; and they follow—ne’er a one turns back—going the dark way. But I see far off, as it met be yonder where the dark cloud lifts, I see summat as there’s no words for, as makes it all worth while. There’s a name beyond all names, and I’d lief you kept it in mind in the dark days as ’ll come on you, Deb! For I see ’em coming like hawks from the rocks. And though you be rent like a struck pine, Deb, my lass, mind you of that name and you shall be safe. Mind you of Cariad—for that’s how they name him in the singing Welsh—Cariad, the Flockmaster, the won’erful one!’

He broke off.

‘Deb!’ he said confusedly, touching her arm like a child; ‘I mun bide a bit; I’m all of a tremble and a sweat like a hag-ridden pony.’