Читать книгу The Small Dark Man (Maurice Walsh) (Literary Thoughts Edition) - Maurice Walsh - Страница 17

II

The old wicker-chair creaked and a stocking-suspender snapped. Frances Mary knew that she should lave that foot, and she felt that she must. Already she was forming opinions about this man. He disliked her, and there was no harm in him. Gentle he was, and tenacious too, for he would persist in the face of odds—and suffer. A pity Vivian had gripped him so relentlessly—a wrathful young god in his invincible strength. There was really no need for such violence, though the little man’s wicked tongue well hid his harmlessness. Wonder what he said out there to Vivian? She knew that too—exactly. But why had Vivian not stayed? There was no need to go—or stay either. . . .

Poor Frances Mary! A gentle, wicked-tongued, harmless, small man! And she simply could not imagine gorilla shoulders yielding cunningly to the unwitting strength of her invincible young god and catapulting with enough explosive force to break both arms, and a neck with luck.

Hugh returned with the kettle full and the basin quarter-full of cold burn water. He laid the basin at her feet and fitted the kettle amongst the peats with the spout away from the smoke. “A grand night outside,” he said conversationally.

“A grand night for walking down the glen,” she said gently. “When are you going?”

“When God lets me,” he told her, his voice coming from a mile down.

The unexpected reply always brings silence. Frances Mary leant an elbow on the frayed arm of the chair, rested her temple on her finger-tips, and looked sideways and up at him so intent on watching the flames lick round the belly of the kettle. A few minutes before and she had no desire to be in the least friendly with this man; now it was he who evinced no desire for friendliness. That was putting a “dare” up to her. Well, she could bide her time and say nothing. She could be very quiet, this girl; and, being quiet, she had a charm that was not obtrusive, yet had power. She looked at him and wondered in what valleys his thoughts ran as he gazed at the fire. Queer valleys where his thoughts ran and stilled!

A drift of steam came from the spout of the kettle. “It is hot enough,” said Hugh Forbes in his throat. Without pause or thought he pulled off his fine velour hat and, using it as a holder, whipped the kettle off the fire. “Mind your feet, Frances Mary.” And boys! it was a lovely name as he said it.

She looked down, and he did not see her smile. Frances Mary! But of course he would know her name, though that was the first time it had been spoken that night in that room.

He poured into the basin some of the hot water, and felt the temperature with the twiddle of a little finger. “Warm enough for a beginning,” he murmured, laid the kettle within reach of her hand, and straightened up. “You will bathe that heel now,” he told her, “and after a piece add a small drop more of the hot water, and then a drop more—until it is as hot as you can bear. And then wrap that wisp of silk round the sore place and slip the stocking over it. If you’re not able to do all that, I’ll help you.”

“Thanks. I’ll manage.”

Praised be the saints for that! He, Hugh Forbes, did not want to have anything at all to do with a woman’s feet. They were strangely disturbing things. No doubt the toes of that foot there would be pressed close together, but the instep would be arched and devastatingly white, and a thin delicate blue vein would reach over to the terrible curve of an ankle. And the smoothness of it: smoother than velvet, cooler than linen, and—“Hotter than the hob o’ hell,” said Hugh Forbes gloomily, and turned to the door. He went out from the hearty, ruddy, unsafe glow of the peat fire into the colder but not safer light of the moon.

The moon was well up now, and the mountains over there were no longer a ragged black silhouette. The black was purple and the purple pearl, and away in the south, high up on the shoulder of Ben a Mhuic, a bank of snow glistened white and aloof. He stood on the brink of the burn that ran gurgling down the brae to the Abhain Ban and let his eyes wander over mountain and sky and finally come to rest on the river below him where silver streaks ran and vanished with the current.

As he stood thus, watching the roily glisten of the moonlight on the water, there came to his ears the sound of a long-drawn breath out of the hills—from near or far he could not say, but it made his neck hairs tingle. He faced round, head forward, shoulders hunched, feet planted. There it was again, back there in the lift behind the house—a long-drawn breath that filled the hills, a little laboured, and with something sibilant in it. Resolutely he walked up the burn towards it, and at once it stopped. He waited a full minute, but the hush of empty night was again supreme, drawn out thin and tense like a fine wire. “Stay in your own place,” ordered the bass of his voice.

Frances Mary had heard that breathing sound too. It could be heard in a tomb. “What was it?” she asked him quietly, as he appeared in the doorway.

“A deer, a hawk, an owl, and the hills turning over in their sleep.”

“A white owl, probably.”

“Whatever it was, it won’t hurt you.” Perhaps the you was slightly accented.

“Oh! I’m not afraid.”

“I am, like hell.” But he did not tell of what he was afraid. He did not know—something elemental that underlay life.

He came to her side and saw the bottom of the pan shining through the water. “Woman!” he boomed, “did you bathe your foot at all?”

“I did; and made the water hot as . . . Look!” she thrust out the foot quickly and withdrew it again, but he saw where the silk bandage bulked under the stocking at the ankle.

“Are you feeling better now?”

“Splendid, thank you.”

He took the basin outside the door and poured the water from shoulder-level on the grey grass, and the vanishing curve gleamed in the moonlight. “Let a rose grow there,” his voice rumbled, “or a dandelion—or a thistle.” He dropped the basin and went round to the back of the bothy.