Читать книгу Wakefield's Course - Mazo de la Roche - Страница 6

Table of Contents

The February sunshine was warm over London. The sky was a mild blue and small ethereal clouds were barely moved by the light breeze. People in the streets walked slowly, enjoying the warmth of the sun. The windows of the lumbering buses were open and people peered out, as though expecting to see some palpable sign of spring, such as lambs frisking along Piccadilly or a milkmaid milking a cow in the Green Park. Wakefield stopped to buy a bunch of daffodils from a flower-seller just outside the Admiralty. He felt a new confidence in life and in his ability to make himself a place here in London. It was not only that he had got a part in a West End theatre but that his meeting with Molly Griffith had, in some way, intensified all his feelings. If he were to become suddenly sad or depressed he knew that such emotions would be the more keenly felt because of her, and he felt that this was because of some quality in her rather than in him.

He could scarcely wait for to-morrow when he would meet her again, possibly again take her out to lunch. He could scarcely wait till he got back to Gayfere Street, so that he might tell his brother, Finch, about her. He could scarcely wait till he might sit down in his own room and learn his part. Yet in the midst of his straining forward he found himself loitering in the street to stare at the black Arab steed on which one of the sentries sat immobile in his niche outside the Horse Guards. The man was lean, ruddy, and his eyes looked straight ahead of him into space beyond the people who stood staring. His silver helmet, with its white plume, his silver breastplate, gleamed in the sun. The close-curled sheepskin lay soft on the horse’s muscular back. Its eyes too looked straight ahead and, in their depths, Wakefield thought he saw reflected deserts with waving palm trees and galloping Arab hordes. It stood rigid on its four slender legs, as though carved out of ebony.

He walked on, past the Houses of Parliament, on and on into Smith Square, and turned at last into Gayfere Street. He knocked on the door of one of the smallest houses and it was opened by an enormous elderly woman, with a face that looked too large even for her body. But her hand resting on the side of the door looked massive, beyond proportion, even for that face. She greeted Wakefield with a melancholy smile.

“I ’ope you don’t find the ’eat of this sun too much for you, sir. It does take it out of one when it first opens up in the spring.”

“I think it’s glorious,” said Wakefield. “There can’t be too much of it for me. Will you please put these daffodils in water? Is my brother in?” He entered the narrow hall.

“Yes, sir. ’E’s just done ’is practising. ’E looks tired, poor young man.”

She took the flowers and disappeared into the basement. Wakefield could hear the drag of her heavy cloth skirt from step to step. She was Henriette, the half-Cockney, half-French housekeeper. The brothers had leased the tiny house for a term, Henriette being left in charge. The one room on the ground floor was the sitting-room, an end of which was used as a dining-room, half-drawn curtains dividing it. On the floor above were two bedrooms, and on the next floor, another bedroom and a bathroom, while Henriette had her being in the basement.

Wakefield opened the door of the sitting-room and went in. No sunlight entered here and, for a moment, he did not see Finch. He saw the hired piano, strewn with music, the untidy room. Then he discovered Finch lying face down on the sofa, his fair head pillowed on his arms. He raised his head and turned his long, grey-blue eyes on Wakefield, with a dazed look.

“Hullo,” said the younger. “Did I wake you?”

“No. I was just thinking. Did you get the job?”

“What do you guess?”

“I’ll bet you did, to judge by your face.”

“Yes, I got it. I’ve my part here. We’re to begin rehearsals in a few days. Finch, I’m going to make a success of it. You’ll see. God, how glad I am. The old boy—Ninian Fox, I mean—is a queer egg, but I like him. And I’ve met the producer and the author and the girl who’s going to take the part of Catherine. She’s Welsh. We had lunch together. I want you to meet her. I don’t know when I’ve admired a girl so much. Not since Pauline.”

Finch had been listening to him only half tolerantly. He was sceptical of Wakefield’s enthusiasms, his eager outpourings. Wakefield was too articulate, as he himself was too reticent. If he had been Wakefield it would have been impossible to speak casually of Pauline. As it was, he could bring himself to utter her name only with difficulty. Yet it was Wakefield who had been engaged to her, who had broken off the engagement because he had made up his mind to enter a monastery, and so been the cause of her entering a convent. The monastery had not lasted. It had been a boy’s impulse, Finch thought scornfully, yet had to admit that Wakefield’s sojourn there had made a man of him. He would never forget how kind Wakefield had been to him when his nerves had gone to pieces. Wakefield had comforted and controlled him. But now, in London, far away from home, their boyhood relations had been more or less re-established: Finch the older, half scornful, half admiring of Wakefield’s ease with himself and with the world; Wakefield pouring out his experiences to Finch, wanting his approval, yet a little contemptuous of Finch’s awkwardness and self-depreciation.

Looking at Finch stretched on the sofa, his head once more pillowed on his arm, the thought came to him, and not for the first time, that perhaps poor old Finch had been a little in love with Pauline himself. God knew she would have been a thousand times better as a wife for him than the one he had chosen—his distant cousin, Sarah Court. She had been a devil, thought Wakefield, and before he could stop himself had exclaimed:

“I wonder where Sarah is!”

Finch shrank almost more from the sound of Sarah’s name than Pauline’s. Pauline’s name brought a tender sadness, a heartache at the thought of her in nun’s robes; but Sarah’s, a picture of what his life with her had been, how her cold, calculating, devouring passion for him had made that life unbearable.

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” he muttered.

Wakefield looked at him speculatively. “Being a Catholic,” he said, “I don’t believe in divorce, but I can’t help wishing you were free of her and might marry again. It would be good for you, I believe.”

“I hate marriage,” broke in Finch. “There isn’t a girl living who would tempt me to it.”

“Perhaps you’re right. I feel pretty shy of it myself, though I’ve had no experience. Still, we can have friends. I’d like to invite this girl—Molly Griffith is her name—to tea here. Do you think it would be all right?”

“I don’t see anything against it excepting that Henriette might frighten her.”

The brothers knew little of the so-called Bohemian life of London, its free-and-easy parties. They had been brought up in a conventional atmosphere. They had few friends in London and generally were content in each other’s company. Finch was to give a series of recitals and the preparation for those took all his energy. But he loved the theatre and often thought he would like to be an actor. Wakefield’s work was a new bond between them. Finch sat up and stretched out his hand.

“Let’s see your part,” he said.

Wakefield gave him the sheets of typescript. He said:

“It’s a good part. I’m lucky to get it. And I was just as glad for the girl as for myself. She looked hard-up, I can tell you. I think I’ll send a line home to tell them the news. There’s a ship sailing to-morrow.”

He sat down at the writing-bureau and began rapidly to cover a sheet of notepaper with his small firm handwriting. He was orderly in his habits and he hated the way Finch had stuffed letters, musical scores, accounts, and newspaper cuttings into the pigeon-holes. He hated the disorder of the room. But he said nothing. He had always had self-control and during his stay in the monastery he had cultivated it.

Finch searched for and found a pair of spectacles he had dropped on the floor, and began to read the typescript. In his college days he had loved play-acting next to music, and he had shown such talent that the producer of the amateur company he had worked with had prophesied a fine future for him. But music had come first. Now, reading Wakefield’s part, the feel of the lines tingled through his nerves and he wanted to do the part himself. The thought came to him that acting might not have, surely would not have, taken such toll of his strength as did music. He was strong enough, he thought, yet surely there must be something wrong with him when he could not practise for five hours, as he had to-day, without feeling exhausted. He did not believe it was the actual practising, but the thought of what it led up to, the cold, waiting lights of the platform, the row upon row of ears—all waiting for him to falter once, waiting to catch the falter of that left hand of his, faintly behind the right. Yet why should this matter so when sometimes he could bring his audience to their feet in the passion of his playing! Still he continued to imagine all the ears as antagonistic to him, straining their drums to catch him in a fault, caring nothing for his passion.

After a while he said—“It’s a pretty good part.”

Wakefield turned to face him.

“You can’t imagine how good till you have read the whole play. And I’m going to make it an important part. You’ll see.”

He sealed and stamped his letter.

“You might have read me your letter,” said Finch.

The idea of home was such a living bond to him, though he barely remembered his parents, that the sight of an envelope addressed to Jalna made him want to guess what its effect would be on each member of that circle.

“You would have found it too enthusiastic. You make me shy.”

“Good God! You shy! Let’s have a look at you.”

“I don’t always show my feelings.”

“You dramatise them almost before they’re born.”

“And yours arrive through a sort of Cæsarean operation that devastates you and everyone around you.”

They were angry, and it was relief that Henriette appeared carrying a tray loaded with their tea-things. She said, in her doleful voice:

“It was the best I could do. By the time I ’ad my work done and got to the shop all the best cakes were gone. The market was very poor at Strutton Ground, so I couldn’t get very nice salad stuff for your dinner. I’m afraid you’ll not like it.” She looked at them lugubriously, her huge hands folded on her black cashmere stomach.

“It’s all right,” said Finch, coming to the table.

Wakefield snatched up a small cake filled with custard. “This is just the sort I like!” He put it whole into his mouth. “As for dinner, if we have your good soup, Henriette, it’s all that matters. Everything tastes marvellous to-day.”

Henriette sighed heavily and trailed her skirt down the stairs to the kitchen. She had just reached the bottom when the door-bell rang. They could hear her groan as she began again to climb the stairs.

“I’ll go!” shouted Wakefield. He ran to the door and opened it. A soft rain had begun to fall. His cousin, Paris Court, stood on the threshold. Wakefield swallowed the last of his cake and made him welcome.

“We’re just sitting down to tea,” he said.

“I hope there’s plenty of it,” said Paris. “I’m starving.”

Paris always said he was starving and indeed behaved so, but looked well-nourished. He was so typically the young Irishman of tradition, light-hearted and irresponsible, black-haired, blue-eyed, and fresh-skinned, with a dimple in his cheek, that it made you smile to look at him. He was a distant cousin whom the brothers had met only in the last months but already he seemed a near relation. He understood them very well, their weaknesses, their generosities, and how they had brought the atmosphere of their own home with them. He was about twenty-eight and was the only son of Malahide Court, both friend and enemy to old Adeline Whiteoak. At the end of his resources, Malahide had made a last desperate visit to the Riviera and there become engaged to, and in Paris married, an American girl. He had been convinced that, being an American, she was rich. She had imagined she was marrying an aristocratic Irishman of means. Each had told the other singularly little of the past. When he took her to his dilapidated mansion, where the green moss was encroaching on some of the inner walls, and discovered that she had scarcely a dollar to bless herself with, the fat was indeed in the fire. It was a marvel that they both had survived that scene. But they had survived it and the marriage had turned out better than could have been hoped for. Paris was always talking about his parents. Finch and Wakefield remembered how, at Jalna, his father was generally referred to as “that snake, Malahide.”

Paris had had one position after another in London but was seldom able to do more than keep body and soul together. Body was healthy and soul was cheerful, yet he asked more. He wanted luxury and freedom from care and did not much mind how he got them, so long as he did.

Wakefield could not have asked for a better listener than his cousin. Paris was delighted that he had got a part in the new play at the Preyde Theatre. He was delighted with Wakefield’s imitations of Ninian Fox. He listened, with knit forehead and pouting lips, to Wakefield’s description of Molly Griffith. Finch said little but his nerves relaxed in the careless flow of their talk. He pulled at his pipe, while his large-pupiled eyes rested on them in amusement and envy.

“Let’s hear your part,” said Paris.

Wakefield eagerly unfolded the typescript and sketched the outline of the play. He read bits of his part aloud. Paris was enthusiastic.

“It’s a grand part,” he said, “and I envy you doing it with the girl you describe. I’d like to meet her. So far I can’t think that English girls compare well with the Irish.”

“Wait till you see Molly Griffith.” He began once more to rave over her.

Finch yawned. “I’m going for a walk,” he said. “Do you mind, Parry? I’ve got to have air.”

“It’s raining.”

“I like the rain.” Finch rose to his long, loosely-made length.

“Sure I don’t mind,” answered Paris. “Wake will put up with me for a bit.”

“I want the rain on my face. I’m going to walk by the river.”

“I dare say I’ll still be here when you come back.”

“Good.” Finch touched his cousin’s shoulder affectionately in passing.

When he had left the house Paris remarked:

“I always feel that Finch is unhappy, even though he’s so talented. Do you think maybe he still hankers after that wife of his?”

“You don’t know Finch. He’d run the other way if she appeared on the scene. He hates her and fears her too.”

“Well,” Paris spoke musingly, “that doesn’t mean that he may not hanker after her. She may have done something to him that he can’t get over.”

“I believe that’s true. I mean that she did something to him—just as you say. But no power on earth could make him go back to her. What Finch has always wanted is peace, and somehow the poor devil has never been able to get it.”

“I wish I’d had his chance with that rich cousin of ours. To think of a Court having money! And such masses of money! It’s incredible. I can’t tell you how poor my family is. I can tell you we’ve nearly reached the point of bringing the family skeleton out of the cupboard and putting him in the pot for the juice that may still be in him.”

Wakefield’s mind flew back to the stories he had heard at home of how Malahide Court had come to visit at Jalna and stayed so long he had had to be ejected almost by force. He said:

“You’ll do something for the family fortunes some day. I’m certain of that, Parry.”

Paris turned his blue gaze ingenuously on Wakefield. “Please God, I shall,” he said solemnly. He drew his chair confidentially closer. “I’ve just had a letter from my father. In it he tells me of a beautiful young horse he can buy at a great bargain. He says that it has no end of possibilities as a racer. It’s a rare beauty on the track. My father knows that your brother Renny has had the ambition to win the Grand National and he says there isn’t a likelier horse in these islands than this one. And I myself say that there isn’t a finer judge of horseflesh in these islands than my father. Now he says that he could buy this horse for your brother, have him trained, and your brother could come over for the glorious finish of it and reap the profits. After this horse has won the Grand National he’ll be worth his weight in gold, mind you.”

Wakefield’s eyes shone. If only such a triumph could be achieved for that eldest brother who had done so much for him and who had had so much hard luck!

“Renny did train a horse for the Grand National,” he said, “when I wasn’t much more than a baby. But it never ran. It got killed. Young as I was I can still remember the excitement and how wild Renny looked and how he got drunk and came into the house singing.”

“Poor man,” said Paris. “But this would be different. This horse wouldn’t get killed and my father says it can win any race it’s put into. He says he’s willing to back it with all he has, and that’s saying a good deal for a man of his age.”

Wakefield was swept along by the idea. He walked eagerly up and down the room.

“I’ve just been writing to Renny,” he exclaimed. “I’ll open the letter and put in another sheet telling him about the horse. You must give me all the details you can.”

Paris shook his head. “I don’t think that’s the way to go about it. What my father wants you to do is to come straight over to Ireland and see the horse for yourself. Then, when you’ve got an eyeful, you can write and tell your brother what you think. He mightn’t take my father’s word for it, and I expect you couldn’t grow up at Jalna without knowing a good deal about horses.”

“I’ll do it,” said Wakefield. “Could we go to-morrow? Rehearsals are to begin in a few days. Then it will be impossible to get away. I wonder what Finch will say.”

“Don’t let him stand in your way,” said Paris.