Читать книгу The Golden Arrow - Mary Webb - Страница 9

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Deborah and her father returned through the hill gate, going by tracks that ran above steep cwms where threads of water made a small song and the sheep clung half-way up like white flies; past the high springs where water soaked out among the mimulus to feed the rivers of the plain; up slopes of trackless hills, through wet wimberries; across the great plateaux—purple in the rainy light—that stretched in confused vistas on every side, familiar to John as air to a swallow. They passed the small, white signpost that rose from the midst of the westward table-land, as others rose from various lost points in the vast expanses—shepherds’ signposts, pointing vaguely down vague ways, sometimes directing people dispassionately between two paths, as if it mattered little which they chose. This one was called the Flockmaster’s signpost, and stood in gallant isolation within a kind of large crater, so that when you had read—‘Slepe’—‘Wood’s End’—and passed on, it immediately disappeared like a ship behind the horizon. At times the sheep crowded round it with stampings and jostling of woolly shoulders; the ponies rubbed against it; cuckoos in the wild game of mating would alight on it with an excited gobble and flash away again. Legend said that somewhere here, long since, the cuckoos met in circle before uttering a note in any field or coppy, to allot the beats for the season. It was told with apologetic laughter by the grandmother of a hill-commoner that on a May night with a low moon you might see from the Little Wood—lone on a ridge—the grey, gleaming ring as from a stone thrown into water. Before the shadows stretched themselves for dawn you might be aware of the clap of wings; might watch the long tails steer to the four winds; might hear from orchards at the valley gates the first warm, linked notes that meant summer.

They walked in silence. John was quite unaware, now that his rare moment of vision had passed, of Deborah’s psychic existence. He was subject to the poet’s reaction, and he had no idea that anything had occurred except a storm which might damage the wheat. They came to the slopes of short grass from which the round yellow hearts-ease was disappearing like a currency withdrawn—as the old mintage of painless and raptureless peace was disappearing from Deborah’s being. At the first gate of John’s sheepwalk the land slid away suddenly and revealed in terrific masses on the murky west the long, mammothlike shape of Diafol Mountain.

‘There’ll be more thunder,’ said John; ‘it’s brewing yonder, it’ll be round afore dawn.’

‘It’s raining over the Devil’s Chair now,’ said Deborah.

On the highest point of the bare, opposite ridge, now curtained in driving storm-cloud, towered in gigantic aloofness a mass of quartzite, blackened and hardened by uncountable ages. In the plain this pile of rock and the rise on which it stood above the rest of the hilltops would have constituted a hill in itself. The scattered rocks, the ragged holly-brakes on the lower slopes were like small carved lions beside the black marble steps of a stupendous throne. Nothing ever altered its look. Dawn quickened over it in pearl and emerald; summer sent the armies of heather to its very foot; snow rested there as doves nest in cliffs. It remained inviolable, taciturn, evil. It glowered darkly on the dawn; it came through the snow like jagged bones through flesh; before its hardness even the venturesome cranberries were discouraged. For miles around, in the plains, the valleys, the mountain dwellings it was feared. It drew the thunder, people said. Storms broke round it suddenly out of a clear sky; it seemed almost as if it created storm. No one cared to cross the range near it after dark—when the black grouse laughed sardonically and the cry of a passing curlew shivered like broken glass. The sheep that inhabited these hills would, so the shepherds said, cluster suddenly and stampede for no reason, if they had grazed too near it in the night. So the throne stood—black, massive, untenanted, yet with a well-worn air. It had the look of a chair from which the occupant has just risen, to which he will shortly return. It was understood that only when vacant could the throne be seen. Whenever rain or driving sleet or mist made a grey shechinah there people said, ‘There’s harm brewing.’ ‘He’s in his chair.’ Not that they talked of it much; they simply felt it, as sheep feel the coming of snow.

‘Aye!’ said John, looking across the hammock-like valley; ‘there’s more to come. We’d best keep the cows in to-night, Deb, safe at whome out of the storm.’

‘Aye,’ said Deborah heavily, like one recovering from an anæsthetic; ‘safe at whome out of the storm!’

Far along the green path they saw the round form of Mrs. Arden bouncing like a ball; and they could hear the faint, tinny clamour of the tea-tray. Away behind them, against the white sky, they saw the loitering figures of Joe and Lily.

‘I thought you’d got struck!’ shrieked Mrs. Arden as she approached. She had been in the house for half an hour, and loneliness was torture to her, as to all gregarious natures whose way lies in hill-country.

‘Both doing well,’ she announced triumphantly; ‘only most a pity the poor child’s the very spit and image of his father! They’re saying down at Slepe as the berry-higgler’s coming Friday. I thought to go picking to-morrow, Deb, if so be you’ll come. There’s a power of folk coming, greedy as rooks in the fowl yard. We’d best be early if we want ’em.’

‘Why, mother! What a pother you be in!’ said John.

‘All right, I’ll come, mother,’ Deborah murmured, cheering up like a wet bee in sunshine under the reassuring influence of the commonplace. This atmosphere Mrs. Arden took with her, as a snail takes its shell; through its homely magic she combated the power of sickness and pain and black terror in many a stuffy little bedroom.

‘The kettle’s boiling and I’ve milked,’ she announced, ‘and all’s done, only to scald the tea! And what was the new chap like?’

‘No great shakes,’ said John.

Deborah went upstairs to take off her best dress.

‘What ails our Deb?’ Mrs. Arden continued.

‘Nought as I know to.’

‘What’s the chap like to look at?’

‘What chap?’

‘Why, the preacher! Who else? Don’t I know the rest of them back-’erts?’

‘Well, he’s a likely lad enough.’

‘But to look at?’

‘Long in the straw,’ said John slowly, ‘and a yellow head, like a bit of good wheat. And his tongue’s hung on in the middle, as Eli said.’

‘Oh!’ remarked Mrs. Arden comprehensively.

‘Where’s our Joe?’ she added.

John winked.

‘Bringing his girl along.’

‘Well!’ said Patty, ‘Lily’s a tidy girl enough, I’ve nought agen her—barring Eli.’

‘Talk of the devil!’ said a sardonic voice at the door. ‘Where’s my devoted darter?’

‘Coming along, Eli.’

‘A good hiding! That’s what she wants, to take the Owd ’un out of her. But I’m too kind to her,’ said Eli. ‘Left the milk in the pails, she did, out in the sun. Never so much as put it in the dairy. Left it to sour.’

‘Laws me!’ murmured Patty economically.

‘Well, well! We’re only young once,’ said John.

‘I’ll learn her to be young!’ Eli shouted savagely. ‘Trapesing along of your Joe and bedizening herself like the whore of Babylon.’

‘Now, Eli!’

‘And as if that’s not enough there’s my new shed, as cost me five and thirty shillings, struck!’

‘You don’t say! Anything killed?’

‘There wasn’t nothing in it, or there would have been.’

‘Well, well! And you one of the saved an’ all!’ John’s voice had a dash of irony in it, although he did not doubt Eli’s state of grace.

‘It inna me’ said Eli, ‘it’s the girl. It’s a sign from the Lord that she mun be chastened. God’s will be done!’ he added piously, fixing a scarifying gaze on the truant Lily as she came in.

‘What about them six quarts of milk you left to sour?’ he asked.

‘There, there!’ said Mrs. Arden; ‘dunna miscall a girl before her chap, Eli.’

Lily, flushed, terrified of Eli’s bitter and silent rage, had spirit enough to look at Joe witheringly and remark —

‘He’s not my chap. He’s a great gauby.’

‘Laws me!’ said John helplessly. ‘Mother, I thought you said —?’

‘Hush your noise!’ snapped Mrs. Arden.

Deborah, softly laying away the gown that had clothed her during an experience for which she found no name, heard angry tones in the usually quiet kitchen, harshness in the Sunday peace.

‘Is that you, Lil?’ she called.

‘Yes. Oh, Deb!’ said Lily, coming up breathless and raging; ‘isn’t Joe a great gomeril?’

‘But whatever put it into his head?’ asked Deborah.

‘Oh, he asked me to go to Lammas Fair along of him,’ Lily explained carelessly, ‘and I thought you ought to have a bit of a randy too, so I said to Joe to get the preacher to keep you company.’

‘While you went along of Joe?’

‘Yes. Well, Joe is a softie! Saying I wanted the chap!’

‘Saying I wanted him!’ Deborah added, ‘and I not so much as set eyes on him.’ She found herself crimson.

‘How you do feel the heat, Deb!’ Lily’s voice was rather spiteful. ‘Now I never colour up, not if it’s ever so. Being slimmer than you, I suppose. But the way he ups and says it! And the girls from Long Acre drinking it all in like brandy-cherries. And that fat Lucy!’ Lily began to giggle. ‘And Joe so pleased with himself—smiling all o’er! It took me all the way back to learn him what a softie he was.’

‘Poor Joe,’ said Deborah.

‘Lilian,’ Eli’s voice came raspingly from below. ‘What saith the Book of the tiring of hair and putting on of apparel?’

Lily knew what the rasp and the text meant, and she trembled. Any bush in the rain.

‘Joe,’ she said, running down and smiling on that crushed and sullen youth; ‘would you like to come along a bit of the way?’

Joe considered whether Lily with Eli attached was enough to sacrifice his hurt pride for.

‘No, I wunna,’ he said flatly. He had meant so well! He was quite sure that he had done well. What the tantrum was about he had no idea. Deborah seemed angry with him also, for some of the conversation had floated down. He was obstinately determined to be dignified. It was not surprising that he could not understand what he had done, for his crime in Deborah’s eyes was that a strange man had made her feel ‘hot all o’er,’ and in Lily’s that the said stranger had not fallen in love with her.

From the dresser the bird cups presided over the scene, each one a little aslant as it hung by the handle, like a speaker leaning to his audience.

‘Well, good-night both,’ said John, as the ill-matched couple went out; ‘and God be with you,’ he added, as if he felt a need for some extra blessing.

‘And with this house, leastways this small cottage,’ said Eli, with the acidity of raw sloes.

‘Goodness gracious heart alive!’ cried Mrs. Arden, sitting down in a heap on the creaking sofa. ‘What’s come o’er the folk? Why, you make more ado, every man-jack except father here, of going to meeting for an hour than Jane Cadwallader made of bearing a man child! Dunna fret, Joe! She’ll be all right to-morrow-day. And Deb!’ she raised her voice and put a twist on it so that it might negotiate the crooked stairs, ‘what’s come to you comes to all, and if it didna, you’d fret.’

Father and son looked at each other, mystified by the subtleties of femininity.

‘Well,’ said John, ‘I’m going to look the sheep and see what the storm’s done for me. Coming, Joe? Coming, Rover?’

They tramped over the wimberries, just losing their first startlingly bright green. John pondered.

‘If I was you, Joe lad, I’d go a bit of a walk round Bitterley to-night. I dunna like Eli’s look! and she’s a little small thing—tongue or no tongue.’

‘Oh, aye!’ said Joe awkwardly; ‘I thought to go. Be that one of the last lot of lambs, dad?’

An hour or two later, having criticized every sheep findable by Rover, they returned. John went in, grateful for the rosy firelight on the tiles, for evenings are chill here even in July. Joe stood lost in thought. Why should he go? Sullenness came over him. But her pretty arms, her little ways, and Eli mad with her—and she had asked him so pleadingly! Yes, he’d go! All in a moment he felt a need of haste, wanted to be there at once. It was a good way to Bitterley—through the Far Leasowes along Hilltop Road, down Deadman’s Lane and over Bitterley Hill. He ran to the stable, bridled Whitefoot, sprang on bareback and was away with a rattle of stones amid a flying crowd of sheep before the rest of the family got to the door. He galloped furiously over the rough tracks with a heavy feeling that he could not understand, a sense that he must hasten more than he had ever done in his life.