Читать книгу Halfway House - Maurice Hewlett - Страница 11

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The beam of a lantern enveloped her and her gossamered surroundings; presently it blazed full upon her, discovered her flushed and reproachful face, curtained in hair. She saw a tall person, bareheaded, in what seemed to be white clothes, and, by a chance ray, that he was sallow, black-haired, smiling, and had black eyes. A young man! She had no fears left; she was on her own ground again.

“What under the sky are you doing here?” he said. She almost laughed.

“I’m caught in a hare-wire. It hurts very much.”

“It would, you know. Let me look.” He knelt beside her, and then his quick fingers searched for the wire. As they touched hers she felt them cool and nervous. “I’ve got it. I say! it’s nearly through your stocking. No wonder you cried—but now you know why a hare cries. Quiet now—I’ll have it off in a minute.” He dived for a knife, talking all the time. “I dare say you think that I set that wire for a hare, and caught you. You’re quite wrong. I don’t kill hares, and I don’t eat ’em; too nearly related to us, I believe. One minute more—” and he nipped the wire. “There—you are free. You can leap and you can run. Perhaps you’d care to tell me why you battle in these brakes, tearing your frock to ribbons and scratching your eyes out, when you might walk that road like a Christian lady. Just as you please—why, good Lord, you’ve got a bike! It beats cock-fighting. But don’t tell me unless you care to; perhaps it’s a secret.”

She stiffened her shoulders for the fray. “I wish to tell you because I’m ashamed of myself now. Of course, it’s not a secret. I have punctured my bicycle, and have to walk home—three miles more. And I saw your light in front of me, and was frightened.”

His eyes were as bright as her own, but much more mischievous. “Frightened?” he said. “What, of the light?”

“No, no, of course not. But some one must have lit it.”

“Do you mean to say that you were frightened of me? The most harmless creature on God’s earth?”

She laughed. “How could I know how harmless you were? I thought you were gipsies.”

“I couldn’t be gipsies. Perhaps I am a gipsy—I’m not sure that I know what I am. My father might, poor man—and he’s an alderman. That light, let me tell you, was going to cook my supper; and now it shall cook yours, if you’ll have some.”

An invitation suggested in that way can only have one answer from a young woman. “No, thank you. I must go on if I can. It’s dreadfully late.” He reflected.

“It’s late, but it’s not dreadful at all. These summer nights are made to live in. Look at the moon on those misty bushes! Nothing lovelier can be dreamed of by poets than the hours from now to dawn. Sightseers always go for daylight—and in July everything’s blotted up in sap green. There’s no drawing in July—I say, you might get up, don’t you think?”

“Yes, I might.” She tried, and sat down again with a wry face. “It hurts awfully.” He had watched the performance.

“I guessed it would. Well, look here. I’ll help you.” He put out his two hands, met hers, and pulled her gently up by the wrists. “Lean on my shoulder—lean as hard as you like.” So she did, because she must.

She limped by his side through the brake, and he talked on. It seemed to her afterwards that she had never heard so much talk in her life. Singular talk too—as if to himself—no hint of her in it—no affected gallantry or solicitude—no consciousness of her presence, not even of her contact; and yet, when she stumbled and clung to his shoulder, he took her round the waist and supported her whole weight with his arm, and so held her until he had her safely by his fire.

He made her sit down upon his rug, took off her shoe and told her to take her stocking off while he got a rag. She obeyed without question, and presently had her ankle in a bandage, which smelt aromatic and stung her, but gave strength and was pleasant. She was very grateful, and entirely at her ease. “I think I’m glad that I was afraid of you,” she told him. “Do you know that I’ve never been so taken care of in my life?” He was putting her shoe on at the moment, pulling tight the laces. “I don’t believe you,” he said. “You are the sort that was made to be taken care of—abominably feminine. The odds are that you’ll put my picture out of my head for at least three days—so I shall have to stop here until it comes back again.”

“Then I’m very sorry—” she began, but stopped, as if puzzled.

“You need not be. I shall be perfectly happy. And it will give you a chance of biking out here to report yourself.”

Was this an invitation? Did he—? No; it was never done in that tone.

“I shall certainly come,” she said. “Perhaps you’ll show me the picture. Are you an artist?”

He nodded, busy preparing a dish for the fire, a little silver dish, into which he was breaking eggs. “I’m going to make an omelette; you are to eat half of it. I’m an artist in omelettes, I do believe. Yes, I’m a sort of artist; a bad one, you know. But we’re all bad unless we’re the best of all—and there’s only one best. However, it’s all the same. You have your fun.”

“But—” She was looking about her with animation—“But where do you—? I mean, do you—?”

He chuckled, but mostly with his black eyes. “I know what you mean. Everybody asks the same questions, and breaks them off at the same point. I’ll tell you. I live here, at this moment. I do travel in that cart—and this is my tent—and that ghost over there is my white horse—and hulloa! you’ve woken Bingo.” A lithe grey dog came delicately forward into the light, with lowly head and lowly wagging tail. He was like a terrier, with hound’s ears, soft and sleek and silver grey. He sniffed at Mary’s dress and feet, sneezed over the bandage, and, edging up, put a cool nose against her neck, and then a warm tongue.

“Oh, what a darling!” she cried softly, and made much of him.

“He’s a Bedlington,” said his owner, above the sizzling eggs, “a beauty and a devil. He likes you evidently—and reasonably. He won’t curl up like that on every lady’s skirts, I assure you. Don’t talk though, or I can’t beat up this thing. Talk to Bingo; he’s my friend.”

This friendly, cool-tempered young man was, she thought, very odd to look at—long in the body and thin in the leg. He was quite new to her experience. Gentlefolk she knew, and other folk, her own, and all the infinite gradations between—county, clergy, professional, retired military, down to commercial and even lower. This was a gentleman certainly—and yet—well, there was Mr. Duplessis, for instance, with whom you were never to forget that he was a gentleman and you were village. Mr. Duplessis was very easy, until you were easy too—then he got stiff directly, and back you must go. But this strange gentleman didn’t seem to notice such things; he seemed too full of what he was thinking about, or doing—and if he looked at you by chance, as often as not he didn’t seem to see you; and when you looked at him, he never noticed it at all. She adjudged him “foreign,” and to be sure, he had a narrow, foreign face, very swarthy, with a pair of piercing black eyes, a baffling smile, and quick, sudden ways of turning both against you, as if he had that moment found you out, and was amused. At other times, as she came to learn, those eyes of his could be fathomless and vacant, could stare through you as if you were a winter hedge. His hair was jet-black, and straight, and his moustache followed his mouth and curled up when he smiled. She had never seen a man so deft with his fingers or so light and springy on his feet. Those long, eager fingers—she could still feel them at her ankle and marvel at their strength and gentleness as they sought about and plucked free the biting wire. His dress too was extraordinary—a long white sweater with a rolling collar, a pair of flannel trousers; no socks, but sandals on his feet. Long and bony feet they were, beautifully made, she said. Whatever he was or was not, certainly he was kind and interesting; and perhaps the most baffling quality about him was his effect upon herself—that she was entirely at home in his company, and had no care to know what he thought about her.

He served her with omelette hot and poured her out a glass of pale wine, which smelt like flowers, and was stronger, she found, than it seemed. A picnic at midnight! It was great fun! She glanced at her host, and was answered by a gleam. He was enjoying it, too. “Do you know what I’m going to do next?” he asked her, breaking the first silence he had kept since the encounter. “I shall catch that absorbed ghost, which is really a horse, and take you your three miles in my cart. Before that I shall mend your puncture for you.”

She wouldn’t allow that. “Please, not. I can mend it quite well to-morrow, and won’t have you spoil your supper. I have had mine, you must remember and if I am to have another, I insist upon your company.” He laughed “All right,” and fell to again.

Perhaps her wine made her talkative; but I think that she had leisure of mind to be interested. At any rate, she volleyed him a string of questions about himself, at all of which he laughed—but she found out mostly what she wanted to know. As thus—That cart contained his whole worldly property. “It’s my house, or my bed, or both; it’s my carriage and pair, my bank, studio, library, forcing-house, potting-shed, bath-room, bed-room, as I choose it. When it’s wet I can be dry in there; when it’s fine, I leave it alone. It’s all I have, and it’s more than enough. I’ve pared it down to the irreducible minimum, and yield now to one man only—the tramp. Him I believe to be the wisest son of man, for he has nothing at all. Now, you know, the less you have of your own, the more you have of everybody’s. The whole world is the tramp’s; but it can’t be mine, because of that shell on wheels. I am as the snail to the hare—but what are you, pray, and the rest of your shackled generation? …

“There’s a tent in that cart, which will go up in ten minutes—anywhere. And the materials of my trades are there—I’ve several. I scratch poetry—and paint in water-colours—and ain’t bad at tinkering.” At this she gazed with all her eyes; but he assured her, “I’ll mend you a kettle as soon as your bike. I learnt sawdering from a drunken old Welshman under the shadow of Plinlimmon. He died in my arms presently, and left me his tools as well as his carcase. … You need not be shocked. I do it because I like it—I don’t say that I should be ruined, mind you, if I gave it up … but one can’t paint against the mood, still less write. …

“I’ve done this sort of thing—and gardening (I’m a bit of a gardener, too)—for nine years or more, and shall never do anything else. Why should I? I’m perfectly happy, quite harmless, and (I do believe) useful in my small way. I could maintain that, I think, before a judge and jury.”

He had no need, certainly, to maintain it at length before his present hearer, who was very ready to believe him; but he seemed to feel in the vein to justify himself.

“You see, I’m self-sufficient. I renounced my patrimony on deliberation, and support myself and a little bit over. Tinkering don’t go far, I own—sometimes I do it for love, too. But I sell a picture now and then to a confiding poor devil who only asks to buy ’em, and do very well. I destroy most of ’em, because they don’t come off; if I had the nerve to sell those I should have more money for plants.”

She stopped him here. “Plants!” she said, puzzled, “but——”