Читать книгу The Key Above the Door - Maurice Walsh - Страница 7

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THAT sudden swarming banished from my mind the little fog of anger engendered by our petty human squabbles. No lover of bees can be obsessed by any alien passion during the excitement of a swarm. We were within twenty yards of the hive, and the excited bees were in the air all around us, wheeling, whirling, and roaring their joyous swarming song. A stream of them was pouring from the wide, low doorway of the hive and taking the air in dizzy, wide sweeps. The sky above us was a network of darting, curving, zigzag lines, wholly dazzling to the eye, and queerly exciting to the blood.

‘Don’t let us be doing anything foolish, Mr Leng,’ said I; ‘and you’ll excuse me for a little while.’

And for the moment I forgot all about my visitors and their errand. My task, and an urgent one, was to induce the bees to cluster on some convenient bush before they had yet made up their minds to set off for the ancient honey-holes in the ruined stronghold on the Wolf’s Island. I rushed indoors and dashed forth again, bearing a pail of water and my garden syringe. With the latter I sprayed vigorously here and there amongst the darting bees, thus creating the illusion of a shower—and there is nothing a tithe so distasteful to swarming bees. Their instinct at once tells them to cluster protectingly around their beloved queen on the first suitable bush, instead of proceeding directly to distant quarters that may or may not have been decided on. Man’s reason, though more imperfect than the instinct of the insect, is more elastic, and is for ever winning partial victory. Presently I noticed a vortex in the flying swarm, and located its centre above an ancient and lichened gooseberry-bush at the back of the mother-hive and just within the gate of my garden patch. Jetting a final spray into the air, I dropped the syringe, again hurried indoors, and this time brought forth a white table-cloth. Already, on the main stem of the bush, a cluster was forming and growing every instant, and I carefully arranged the cloth on the gnarled and thorny arms, so that, while giving the bees room to cluster, it also shaded them from the fierce sun-glare. Having done this to my satisfaction, I wiped a heated brow and looked around me.

A swarm is marvellously exciting to every healthy and unavaricious lover of bees. The fever in the adventuring insects, the high spirit that is hurtling them forth to found a new state, infects a man uncontrollably. For five minutes or more I had been hopping round and into my little garden, trampling the cabbages, getting tangled in the potato-shaws, leaping over the berry-bushes—and not in any dull silence either. Probably I swore with fluent joviality, shouted picturesque encouragement, gave forth various cries, yells, or raucous bellows, and even ventured a stave or two of song:

There was an old woman tossed up in a blanket seventy times as high as the moon.

Where she was going I couldn’t but ax her, for in her hand she carried a broom.

‘Old ’oman, old ’oman, old ’oman,’ says I,

‘Where are you going up so high?’

‘To sweep the cobwebs off’n the sky,

An’ I will be with ye to-morrow by-’m-by.’

Or perhaps it was:

Brian O’Linn and his wife and wife’s mother, they all went over the bridge together.

The bridge fell down and the mother fell in. ‘She’ll be found at the bottom,’ says Brian O’Linn.

Or maybe it was:

Oh! I do love a lady—she’s fairer than they say.

Her beauty has a secret that haunts me night and day.

Her face is neither fair nor white, nor brooding is her eye,

But I must love that lady until the day I die.

And so my brow needed wiping. And as I wiped it I looked towards the spot where my visitors had been. They were not there any longer. But almost within arm’s-reach, in the gateway of the garden, stood my lady in white, and over her shoulder peeped Davy Thomson. She, too, looked as if her brow needed wiping. Her dark eyes were alive—no longer slumbrous below heavy lashes—there was the faintest colour in her cheeks—faint, but more suggestive than a million flushes—and her lips were a little parted. She was very beautiful.

I craned a head to look over the dry-stone wall towards the road, and the lady spoke. ‘My friends are gone,’ she explained. ‘They have some business at Barnagh station, and I sent them away. They will call for me on their return. I am glad I did not miss this, and would have liked to sing that last song with you. You are not a very good singer, Mr King.’

‘No, ma’am,’ said I agreeably, ‘but I have grand tunes in my head.’

For the first time I liked this lady: for the first time my indifference—or disinterested appreciation—gave way to a distinct liking. ‘Do you know the ways of bees, my lady?’ I asked her.

‘Only that they sting as well as sing,’ she replied. ‘What are they doing under that cloth?’

‘Myself I do not know. The authorities say that they are marshalling forces and awaiting the report of scouts sent out to reconnoitre a new home. ’Tis a guess by the authorities, I suspect.’

‘Are they leaving here, then?’

‘Not if I can help it. I have a snug home of my own for them.’

Here Davy Thomson spoke up. ‘I maun help you hive the wee beasties, Mr King,’ he said. ‘Miss de Burc micht like to ken fu it’s dune. Rin ye in for the auld rusky, an’ I’ll gie the clout a sprinkle or twa meantime.’

‘Thank you, Davy,’ I said.—‘You must not be afraid of a sting, Miss de Burc. Swarming bees rarely sting. If one gets into your hair, the unchivalrous rogue might not respect its beauty, but you are reasonably safe while wearing that panama.’

‘I will take the risk,’ she said, ignoring the half-compliment.

With Davy’s deft assistance I persuaded the swarm to move up into a straw skep—or rusky, as he called it—placed on the arms of the bush above the cluster. And from that we gingerly moved it to the near-by floorboard of the frame hive that was to be the home of the new colony. During the different operations the lady moved about interestedly and without fear—a fair test for any lady—and, no bee venturing the insidious net of her hair, I had no opportunity of feeling its soft and glamorous texture, or of admiring at very close quarters the column of her neck and the colour of it.

While the work was going on we talked of bees and the little we knew about them, and when the work was done we sat for a little space on the rude bench by my cottage wall in the pleasant warmth of early afternoon, and talked of other things, our eyes wandering lazily across the sun-hazed expanse of loch to the shimmering roll of moors that lifted up and up into the blunt head of Aitnoch Hill.

‘Sit ye doon, Davy,’ I invited the old man, who had been diffident in resting his sturdy legs in the presence of a lady of caste. ‘I am greatly obliged to you for bringing back my hazel staff; I would be sorry to lose it.’

Davy glanced across me at the lady, and there was discomfort in his eye.

‘It is all right, Davy,’ she said with understanding. ‘I caught this dangerous criminal all by myself yesterday. We seem to be accomplices after the fact.’

‘Fine I kent the staff, Mr King,’ said Davy, hiding his surprise, ‘an’ a gey pity it was that I didna notice it looped on tae yon salmon until we had thae lads grippit.’

‘It was only a ploy on our part, Davy,’ I said, putting a hand on his knee. ‘We were foolish, but we meant no harm, and I promise you it will not happen again.’

‘I ken fine ye dinna mak’ a practice o’ yon, Mr King. Man, I am gey sorry it happened at a’, for it will gang further nor this, an’ the end o’t will be a visit from the Lady o’ Clunas an’ a tongue-lashing for baith o’s. Mr Leng is a very angry man the day, an’ is no’ easy persuadit in that mood.’

‘He certainly was outrageously angry,’ said the lady.

‘I gathered as much, and I grant that he has some excuse. All the same, madam, it is angrier still he would be if I had my way, and ’tis twice as angry he would be if your friend, Mr Murray, had let my friend, the Irishman, deal with him yesterday on the Leonach side.’

‘I think you are mistaken there,’ said my lady quietly. ‘You do not know Ted—Mr Leng. He is immensely strong, and very famous as an amateur boxer. Your Irishman—or——’

‘Or myself,’ said I, noting her pause.

‘Yes, or yourself,’ she nodded, ‘or anyone I know, would be little in his hands.’

I could not say anything to that, but her words reminded me that this lady, who was not of our camp, deserved gratitude, and the show of it for what she had done—or rather not done—the previous day.

‘Madam,’ said I, ‘considering that your friends are not mine, I owe you a good deal, and more besides, for not betraying—that is the wrong word—for not disclosing to your friends the doubtful situation you found me in yesterday. For a long time I mistrusted you, madam, and my discussion with yon bonny man was rather difficult; but once you seated yourself in yon old canvas chair I knew you were no enemy. Your magnanimity has made the situation very much easier, and I am indeed grateful. You were infinitely the best sportsman of the lot of us.’

The little tinge of colour that meant so much was again in her face. I think that she was pleased.

‘You flatter me,’ she said. ‘I am afraid it was not sportsmanship that kept me silent, but a feminine dislike for the whole episode. In parts it was abominable, and I decided to have no part in it.’

‘Your instinct was right, and that was everything.’

‘There is one thing that still puzzles me,’ she went on, falling into her favourite attitude, hands joined in her lap, head leaning a little forward, and eyes focused on a thrust-out shoe-toe, ‘and it is that, as much as your swarm, that made me stay behind my friends to-day. I could not, and I cannot even now, understand why you remained hidden yesterday while your friends fought. It is queer how that has puzzled and disturbed me. I would like to think—I suppose it is for the sake of my own conscience—that you had some purpose, some essential purpose in view.’

‘I had, madam. And I should be all the more grateful that, doubting my spirit, you still remained silent. How shall I explain to you? My friends of yesterday happen to be unknown to Davy here or to any of the others. As long as they remained unknown there was a chance for them. My appearance on the scene would kill that chance. As long as they remained silent I felt that I—on the wings, as it were—could get them out of the scrape. And I did, you know. You see, my lady, I was and am very anxious that the affair should not become public, for if it goes as far as the sheriff’s court, my two young friends will suffer disaster in their profession, apart from any legal penalty. That is what moved me all of yesterday, and it moved me strongly, though it sounds haltingly in the telling. I cannot put it plainer than that.’

‘I think I understand,’ she said, after a little pause; and, turning to Davy, ‘You and I, Davy, must still fill the ignoble rôle of accomplices after the fact.’

‘I’ll haud a still tongue, Miss de Burc,’ said Davy.

With some curiosity, I noticed in myself a desire to stand well with this lady. Never before had I noticed a desire similar. She sat within a yard of me, and a faint perfume of ozone and something more intangible reached me, and, no doubt, stirred something from its dormancy in my tough old recesses. I glanced sideways at the clean-cut, still, almost austere profile, with the eyes half-hooded by heavy black lashes, and I found myself wondering what thoughts moved below that very adequate mask.

We were silent for quite a space, each in some lazy haze of aimless reverie or speculation—a silence without embarrassment, and, to me, oddly companionable. Then my lady roused herself and rose to her feet.

‘Is it time to be on the top o’ the road, Miss?’ said Davy, following suit.

‘I think I will stroll along the shore-road and meet my friends,’ she proposed.

‘My lady,’ I said, on my feet also, ‘do not be thinking I lack hospitality. It is but poor refreshment my old hovel can offer, and none of it fit for the tender palate of the South, but I offer what I have, all the same.’

‘That sounds like a dare,’ she laughed; ‘but I will not be so rude as to ask for your bill of fare.’

‘ ’Tis too early for tea,’ I said, ‘and not late enough for coffee. Wine I have none, and my whisky is some hefty, while those good men, McVitie & Price, have neglected me this week. Still, I possess a goat Suzanne—a nimble lady—who yields a milk whiter than curd and compounded of heather, honey, juniper, and a small spice of goat. New potatoes there be also, and an honest table-salt. New potatoes boiled in spring water, dipped gently in salt, and washed down with goat’s milk: that dish I offer and none other.’

‘That dish I have not tasted,’ she said, falling into my way of speech. ‘I should like to try it.’

‘ ’Tis a fine wholesome diet,’ put in Davy. ‘I will lift a two-three shaws for you, Mr King.’

While Davy lifted the new potatoes the lady and I went to where Suzanne was tethered at the rear of the house—tethered so that she could reach the heather on one side, the short hill herbage on the other, with a juniper bush near by for relish. Suzanne was not a long-pedigreed Nubian lady, nor a Salzburger, nor yet an Anatolian aristocrat, but a plain Scottish nanny-goat of pre-Pictish origin, dingy white in colour, with down-curving horns, a beard, biscuit-tinted, and no manners. She greeted us with a lively bleat, a jaunty sideward dance, and a sort of rearing spar on her hind-legs, head down and horns at the attack.

‘Dear me! She looks dangerous,’ said my lady doubtfully, coming to an abrupt halt.

‘A perfect terror,’ I agreed. ‘Watch how brave I am.’

I went forward in a fighting crouch, side-stepping craftily, chin tucked in, and, the tin milking-pail advanced as a weapon and a shield, patted the rearing Suzanne on the nose, scratched between her horns, threw an arm over her back, and in a trice the white lances of milk were hissing in the pail, while the dangerous Suzanne stood sleepily still and flicked an ear against a horn.

My lady’s laugh rang out behind us. ‘You and your goat!’ she cried, and came boldly at my shoulder and rubbed gently the broad, grizzled forehead of Suzanne.

It might well be that we made a rather good and homely picture, a scene out of old Greece—or even farther East—in spite of my old homespuns and her fashionably-cut attire. The goat is beyond doubt a classic animal, and, like enough, Suzanne’s ancestors came out of the East before the Milesians. And, as already said, there was something robe-like in the white dress of the lady. It was a very modern dress too, short in the skirt, and showing a thoroughbred pair of ankles. It was the figure below the dress that gave it the classic note: the length of limb faintly defined, the flattish round body, the high-set bust gently swelling, the neck set well back on splendid shoulders, the slightly forward poise of head, and the whole lazy, lissome, relaxed length of her—and the quiet. When I have said all there is to say I must come back to the serene yet sombre quietude of that lady. She was as quiet as fate, and as unafraid of what fate had brought her as any goddess in old Greece.

When we returned to the front of the cottage Davy was washing the beautiful pink Early Rose potatoes.

‘Now, my lady,’ I said, ‘I will invite you into my parlour and you will admire the splendours of this my castle. It is an ancient house, not one day younger than the ruins of the Wolf’s stronghold out there in the water, and it has outlasted that stronghold as a habitation for man a matter of three hundred years. It is but thirty feet in length and half that in width, and the walls of unhewn, mortarless gray stone slope a little inwards. It squats crouchingly on the breast of the hill, prepared to lean a stubborn shoulder to any wind that blows, and its squash hat of good rye-thatch is pulled well over its eyes, which are small, as you see, and no cleaner than they might be. This porch, now, is a modern contrivance and a pure luxury, but it prevents the strong air of the hills from blowing the peats off the hearth on windy days. Now, my lady, we open this inner door, and I usher you into the guest-chamber and the living-room—and the sleeping-room also, though you notice nothing in the nature of a brass bed or an oaken tester; that humble roll in the corner is a hammock which I sling from this hook to yon one, and wherein I pound my ear for ten hours at a stretch. Do you like my room, madam?’

‘It is a Spartan room,’ said my lady.

‘A room of sybaritic luxury rather, O dweller in palaces! Look well, now. Instead of an earthen floor we have reasonably clean white boards with a skin or two; instead of a hole in the roof we have a chimney of stone and an open hearth of brick; for creepie-stools we have basket-chairs, and cushioned at that; and note you my dresser of blue delf, my white-wood table, my writing-desk below the window, and the swinging-lamp to throw light over my left shoulder, and my shelves of books—Swinburne, and James Stephens, and Conrad, and Anatole France, and Shaw, and all the Mike Scanlons besides.’

‘It is a very splendid room indeed,’ admitted my lady. ‘One would never be lonely in this room.’

There was an odd note in her voice as she said that—‘One would never be lonely in this room’—a note of longing and some inexpressible regret or despair that somewhere touched a chord in me: a deep, heavy chord that boomed like a drum in high tragedy.

‘No,’ I agreed subduedly, ‘one should not be lonely in this room.’ And I said very little more until the white deal was covered with a whiter cloth, and plates, cutlery, and glasses were arranged. By that time the potatoes were boiled, strained, and poured into an old blue ashet in mid-table, where they steamed to the black rafters.

‘Draw in about, my people,’ I invited, ‘and do ye as I do. I was a barbarian with this rare vegetable until painfully instructed by an Irishman, who held that it was unspeakable to touch the outside of a potato with the fingers. You take it so on your fork and peel it with serious method. This being a new one, and Davy having scrubbed away cuticle, epidermis, and true skin, only a touch here and there is necessary by way of ritual. Then we cut it in two or in four according to one’s orificial ability, and we dip it gently in honest common salt—and so good-bye—and, with a hand towards our white wine, we will down with popes, priests, presbyterians, princes, potentates, and powers who know not this dish. How like ye it?’

The lady laughed a rippling low laugh. ‘I was watching you with open mouth,’ she said. ‘Now I will try.’

She enjoyed that meal, and, of course, Davy did. Not being bred with any country prejudices she had no objection to goat, and the slightly bitter tang of the milk pleased her. And, indeed, the delicate flavour of new potatoes, combined with the savour of salt and the tang of goat’s milk, is well worth the appreciation of unspoiled palates. It was a new and not-to-be-forgotten flavour for this lady from the South.

‘I am glad I accepted your entertainment, Mr King,’ she thanked me.

‘I am glad too, madam. It is welcome you always will be to the best I have.’

She smiled a little, and I went on admiring the deft and graceful fingers of her manipulating a hot potato.

We had but finished our repast when the blare of a klaxon-horn came up to us from the road, and our party came to an end. I saw my guests as far as the car, where my lady gave me her hand frankly, but it was a gloved hand, and all I could tell was that it grasped my rough one with firmness.

Murray vacated his seat by Leng, who was driving, and the lady glided into it gracefully.

‘Did you enjoy the swarm?’ Murray asked her. ‘Where are your stings?’

‘No stings, slings, or arrows to-day,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Mr King entertained us as his name implies.’

Murray gave me a cordial hand. ‘I am very glad to have met you,’ he said, and preceded Davy into the back seat.

Leng said no word at all. His high-caste face was moulded into some high indifference, but all the same he looked at me with a calculating eye. He gave me a short nod, touched the accelerator, and I was left alone in the dusty road, shoulders hunched, hands in pockets, and eyes downcast and contemplative.

‘That lady,’ I mused, ‘is a beautiful lady, and a quiet one. She did not say much on this day of much talk, and what she said was said simply and in no foreign tongue. I talked a good deal myself, and twice she laughed. Her voice is a deep voice and a deliberate one, and it has the little vibrant tremor of voices that are used effectively and sparingly. I would like to hear her speak often, but I would not like her often to say: “One would never be lonely in this room.” There was a bleak, toneless something in the way she said that. Ah! Well, well!’