Читать книгу Delight - Mazo de la Roche - Страница 13

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May passed the day in a waking dream. Before her, as she dusted banisters, polished looking-glasses, and slid her mop over linoleums, floated the round face of Albert. The cast in his left eye gave the face an elusive, almost sinister appearance. He seemed to be looking two ways at once, accusingly at her with one eye, shiftily away from her with the other. She saw this face in shining doorknobs, in mirrors, in the puddles on the linoleum. She felt that if she did not see the real face soon she would go mad. Yet she worked on doggedly. Mrs. Jessop was pleased with her. She liked her better than Delight, whom she suspected of being “worth watching.”

It was eight o’clock before she was able to go to her bedroom. Mrs. Bye was in her room next door putting Queenie to bed. May could hear the child’s little voice piping—

“Ow I ay ee ow oo peep

Paya Lor’ my ho oo heep.”

She heard Mrs. Bye say: “Now, Lovey, hop straight in and go bye-bye.”

She could picture Queenie hopping on to her mattress on the floor in the corner of the room next the stovepipe. For a moment the vision of Albert was gone, she breathed more easily. Then it danced before her again in the lamplight and her heart began to pound in her throat. Hastily she pulled off her working dress and put on a blue one of cheap silk, with a velvet girdle and a lace collar fastened by a gilt bar pin on which two little gilt birds perched, one of Albert’s presents. She put on high-heeled shoes that hurt her, and back-combed the hair about her ears till it framed her frightened face like a fabulous halo.

She turned out the light and crept down the backstairs. The kitchen was empty save for old Davy who was poring over the pages of “The Family Herald,” moving his grey unshaven lips as he read some tale of high life. The other girls were in the scullery. Annie and Pearl were wrestling like two boys while Delight sat perched on a table clapping her hands and singing an old Somerset Fair song she had from her Granny.

May stole into the dining-room, and passed from there into the narrow cupboard behind the bar. It was pitch-dark there except for the golden square of the frosted window. The business of the evening was in full swing on the other side of the glass. May soon found the little transparent spot scratched by the nail of some other curious girl. She must have been a tall girl, for it was necessary for May to stand on her toes to see through it. It flashed through her mind that perhaps Delight had been up to her tricks already....

May put her eye to the spot. She could not see very much at first, for a man had moved almost directly in front, and his hand, curving about a glass, rose before her anxious eyes like some symbol of a quest. It was a dark supple hand, and on it gleamed a diamond ring. Whoever he was he imbibed his drink slowly. The hand would rise, remaining but long enough for a sip. May watched the fall of the amber liquid in the glass, as a skipper watches the barometer in stressful weather. A steady jargon of voices came to her stabbed by sudden gusts of laughter....

Suddenly the man moved. Now he was gone and the length of the bar stretched before her. It was almost full of men. Her eyes flew from one face to another in search of Albert. If only they had stood quite still, but they moved to make way for newcomers. Charley tottered in and out carrying trays to the private rooms, twice Bastien passed before her vision in his white apron, his head forward, his teeth gleaming, a corkscrew in his hand. With the constant dissolving and resetting of the picture before her, and her strained position, her head began to ache and her eyes to burn, but she never ceased watching. At last he came....

Short, thickset, with a bullet head under a tweed cap, he entered alone. He went to the counter and bought a glass of beer from young Steve, the assistant bartender.

All May’s anxiety and suspicion flamed into joyous love at the sight of him. She felt as though her body had become a burning torch inside the dark cupboard, that the blaze of her must shine through into the bar.

Albert absorbed his beer solemnly while he listened to something Steve was saying to Kirke and Lovering who were leaning against the counter together. May rivetted her eye on him and tried to force him to come towards her. But he did not move. Then right beside her window a man’s voice called—“Masters”—and Albert came and stood almost against the glass. May’s eye looked directly on to his ear. “Albert, oh, Albert,” she moaned under her breath. “Oh, my dearie, look round at me. ’Ere I am.”

Cautiously she tried the window to see if it would rise. She slid it up an inch. Her mouth to the crack, she sighed. She sighed again more loudly. She breathed his name. He put his hand behind his shoulder and twiddled his fingers. Oh, what devils men were! But perhaps he guessed it was she.

“Come ’ere,” she said softly.

In a second he had left the window. A moment more and she heard his hand fumbling softly for the handle of the cupboard door. It closed behind him. She had him in her arms, clutched to her breast, kissing him violently, savagely, her own Albert. He struggled feebly, then succumbed.

“My word,” he gasped, “you’re a ’ot ’un.”

“Oh, Albert, my ’usband,” she said chokily, “my own dearie.”

The words went through his body like an electric shock. He tore himself from her grasp. In the pallid light of the frosted window his face showed as a staring disk with distorted features. He looked like the man in the moon.

“Albert, don’t you know me?”

“My Gawd!” He grasped his head between his hands and rocked himself in bewilderment. “You, M’y—you!”

“Yes, me. W’y not? Oh, Albert, don’t be frightened. Did you think I was a ghos’? My goodness, it’s only your own little May come to you! Your nerves are shockin’ bad, ain’t they, dearie?” She wrapped her arms about him again.

“ ’Ow the ’ell did you come ’ere?” he demanded, trying again to extricate himself. She held him to her firmly, her hands clasped between his shoulder blades.

“I couldn’t wait no longer. I reely couldn’t. And I saved—pinched and saved. And there was a guessing contest and I won the prize—five pounds; and I found a stone out of a ring on the street and got a reward—three pounds more—oh, Albert, everything’s been comin’ my w’y! And now I’ve come yours—to st’y, for ever and ever. Say you’re glad.”

“Glad—” he moaned—“ ’ow the ’ell can I be glad! You ’ave made a bloody mess o’ things! Well, you may just as well ’ave it now as any time, M’y! I’m married. Yus. To a gal out ’ere. In this town. ’Ave you got that in yer noddle? I’m married. Now don’t go screamin’ or you’ll ’ave the ’ole bloomin’ bar in ’ere. ’Ang on to yerself. It weren’t my fault. She reg’larly chivied me into it. Now you know.”

Her arms had dropped from him like the antennæ of a devil-fish when the body has been wounded. He breathed more freely and peered through the dimness to see her face. If his had looked like the full moon, hers was now its shrunken, wan, last quarter.

“Married,” she repeated. “You went and got married. And me in England, believin’ you was savin’ for me to come out to you! Me comin’ out, filled with a fool’s pride ’cause I’d saved enough to get me passage and buy a few sticks of furniture for us to begin with! Married! You call that married! I call it adulatory. She ain’t your wife. I’m your wife. You brute. You dirty, low, little brute.”

“Keep yer voice down, for Gawd’s sake! Do you want me arrested? ’Ow! M’y, you don’t understand.”

“Understand! Understand! I understand that you’ve committed bigermy, and I’ll ’ave the law of yer! You miserable, connivin’ little brute.”

“ ’Ow, I know it’s orful for you,” he moaned, “but I didn’t go fer to do it—she chivied me inter it. I wish I’d never seen ’er ugly red ’ead, I do.”

“Red ’ead,” repeated May dully. “I can’t ’ardly believe it. Red ’ead on the piller beside yours.... Wot’s ’er nime?”

“Ader.”

“Ader. Ader wot?”

“Ader Masters.”

“Liar—” screamed May. “It ain’t Masters! She ain’t yer wife. I’m yer wife. I’ll ’ave ’er in the gaol to-morrer!”

Luckily a sudden roar of voices from the bar deadened her scream. Suddenly Albert dropped on his knees before her, clutching her legs and hiding his face in her skirt.

“She’s a regular baggage, she are,” he moaned. “She leads me a life. If you’re crool to me, I’ll just goin’ make w’y wiv myself.” His shoulders began to heave. The smell of the tannery rose to her from his kneeling body. There was no air in the dark little room. She was stifling. Sweat trickled from her forehead and mingled with the tears on her cheeks. The feel of him kneeling there sobbing wrung her heart. Mechanically she began to stroke his head.

“And me eatin’ my ’eart out in old London for you,” she said in a strange, thick voice.

“That’s orl very well in old London.” He wagged his head resentfully. “But it’s another story ’ere. Wot wiv the bloomin’ climate, and the stink of the vats allus in a feller’s nose, ’e ain’t responsible for wot ’e does. As for me, I’m that derbilitated that I’m scared o’ me own shadder.”

“You weren’t scared to tike a second wife.”

“That was just it. I was scared. I took ’er fer peace sike. She wouldn’t let me be. She worked in the jam factory and ’er ’ome was in one o’ them cottages be’ind the hotel and she’d ’ang around no matter wot the weather was and walk to and fro wiv me and twinkle ’er eyes at me in a w’y—ow, you’ve no idear—w’y she arsked me to marry ’er, now I come to think of it!”

“ ’Ad she a reason?”

“Nao. None but ’er own cussedness. She was out to get married and I was the man ’er fawncy lit on.”

“ ’Ow long ago was this?”

“Six months.”

“Six months out of my life she’s taken! And I don’t s’pose she sets half the store on you I did.” She slid to the floor beside him, her back against the wall, trembling from weakness.

His arm slid about her. “She don’t set no store by me at all. ’Er one idear is to get all she can out o’ me. She’s a hard ’un, she is. Talk about bigermy—if she knowed about you she’d ’ave me clapped in gaol before you could say scat—and you’d be disgriced in this bloomin’ country!”

They sat in silence now, two little cockney animals that had crept into this dark burrow out of the storm. His lips sought hers. He stroked her cheek. Like a solemn threnody the voices in the bar surged over them. They might have been at the bottom of the sea.