Читать книгу Wakefield's Course - Mazo de la Roche - Страница 7

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Finch had felt only misgivings at this proposal by Paris to inspect an unknown horse on Renny’s behalf. He had no confidence in his own opinion and he distrusted Wakefield’s enthusiasms. He liked Paris and believed him to be sincere, but he had heard Cousin Malahide called a sneak, a traitor, and a sponge, as long as he could remember. Yet the thought of going to Ireland came as a lovely surprise. If he went he would throw aside, for a few days, the strain of preparation for his recital. He believed that, in the long run, it would do him good. His eyes, the nerves in his head, were feeling the strain. His sleep was broken. He felt himself nearing one of those periods of despair and bitter doubts of his future. He found himself envying the men working at the side of the road, eating their lunch there in easy contempt of the traffic, joking as they ate their bread and cheese.

He decided to go to Ireland but to make no promises. He would write all details to Renny and let him decide if he would be willing to take such a risk. He felt in himself such a snatching at those few days of respite that they began to seem of vital importance to all his future. Wakefield, Paris, and he could talk of nothing else.

Then, one misty evening, they found themselves in a mud-splashed car bumping along a country road in County Meath, with rooks sailing dark against the sky and the cattle raising their heads, with the young grass tender in their mouths, to see them go by. A rough-haired young man called Leo was driving the car and Paris kept asking him questions about his father and mother.

“How is my mother’s rheumatism, Leo?”

“A bit betther, sor.”

“Is she having any luck with her poultry?”

“Aye. She have forty young pullets as plump as pigeons.”

“Has my father had the drains attended to?”

“No, sor, fur the plumber has been dead this three months and no other dare succeed him, he was so unpopular.”

“Are there any visitors in the house?”

“There was a young lady, a cousin, but she’ve gone. I never heard her name.”

Wakefield’s eyes sparkled at Finch. “I can scarcely bear to wait to see Cousin Malahide,” he whispered. “What a letter I shall write home!”

Paris looked over his shoulder. “Did I hear you say you can scarcely wait to see my father? No wonder. He’s a wonderful man and the best judge of horses in the county. And you should see him jump the tallest hedges at the Hunt and he well past seventy.”

The dark clouds, massed in the western sky, let only a dim shaft of sunlight down to the moist earth. The brown thatch of the cottages by the roadside looked no more than humps of the earth itself. On a rise of ground, with a slow stream encircling it, stood a long low house. A double row of linden trees led to the front door.

A small light in an ancient lantern was hung at the side of the door, and of the long rows of windows only one was lighted. A stone turret at a corner of the house had fallen and lay crumbled. Enough earth had collected among the shattered stones to make a foothold for tall ferns and a graceful fuchsia the size of a tree. The place was enfolded in an air of melancholy and decay. The hollow ringing of a cow-bell on the marshy lands below only increased this. The air was mild and moist, like the kiss of a person in tears.

Paris did not appear depressed by all this. He sprang from the car and ran lightly up the steps. Before he could open the door it was opened from within and an old man-servant poked out a bony bald head.

“Lord bless us, Mr. Paris, ’tis glad I am to see you,” he said, and showed the rest of himself. He wore a mulberry-coloured livery, very faded, and he had not a tooth in his head.

“Hello, Jamesie,” said Paris. “How are things going with you?”

“Ah, I’ve no more than me share of throubles! But we shall all be aisier in our minds for this sight of you.”

“These are cousins from Canada,” said Paris. “They’ve come all the way from London to look at the horse my father has told us of.”

“My God in heaven!” exclaimed Jamesie. “You couldn’t find a lovelier horse in the length and breadth of Ireland. He runs so fast that the shweat dries on him between one shtride and the next. He’s half-way to the goal before the rest of the beasts has left the starting p’int.”

“I believe you,” said Parry. “But we’re standing out in the rain. Are my parents in the drawing-room?”

“Aye. With their eyes fairly dropping out of their sockets with watching for you. Come away in.”

The hall was so large that it made the one at Jalna seem small and cosy in Wakefield’s memory. Two lighted candles on a carved oak chest dimly illumined the panelled walls. From it they went through a small, still dimmer room into the drawing-room. It was lighted by an ornate and ghostly chandelier, the crystals of which were too dim with dust to reflect the light. They hung cold and motionless, like frozen fog. On a gilded sofa, by the side of a small fire, sat two dark figures who rose and came forward eagerly to meet the three young men.

As Paris embraced his mother, Wakefield’s eyes swept the room and the bent figure of Malahide Court. He saw the brocaded upholstery in holes, the pictures dim in their tarnished frames, the piece of embroidery hanging on the wall worn into ribbons by age and damp. If Paris Court was the traditional gay young Irishman, Malahide was the traditional decadent aristocrat. His long, ivory-coloured face was like the face of a mediaeval Spanish portrait. His large dark eyes looked from under arched black brows, but his hair, which he wore rather long, was silvery white. His expression, as he came forward with outstretched hand, seemed to Wakefield both sneering and conciliatory, as though he had forgotten nothing of the past but was determined that his visitors should.

His voice was soft and he had a slight sibilant lisp.

“My dear young cousins, how glad I am to welcome you here. Our son’s letters have been full of his pleasure in meeting you. Having you here brings back to me my visit to Jalna, which was one of the happiest times in my life.”

His hand lay silken and relaxed in Wakefield’s. It was difficult to think of him as controlling a horse or taking a jump, yet Wakefield knew he could do both. He replied with deference to Malahide. He had an air that always drew elderly men to him.

Finch was shaking hands with Mrs. Court. It was easy to see where Paris had got his looks. She was of compact build and quite fifteen years younger than her husband. Her black hair was grey at the temples but her skin was smooth and her blue eyes had a determined and cheerful light in them. There was a wryness to her smile as though many a time her laughter had been inward and bitter. She made the brothers very welcome and sat down with Paris at her side. It was clear that both parents doted on him.

She said to her husband—“These young men have a strong look of the Courts, haven’t they?”

“Especially Wakefield,” answered Malahide. “He bears a certain resemblance to his dear grandmother, though, if I remember rightly, it was Renny who inherited her red hair.” As he said the name “Renny” he gave a smile that was almost a simper.

“Gosh,” thought Finch, “I don’t like that smile! It makes me feel that he has something nasty up his sleeve.”

“When I visited Jalna,” went on Malahide, “the baby of the family was Piers. He was a perfect Whiteoak and a great pet of mine. But I admired Eden even more. I looked on him as the flower of the flock.”

The sudden mention of Eden’s name brought a contraction of the heart to Finch. He drew down his sensitive upper lip and stared at Malahide in silence.

“I quite agree,” said Wakefield. “It has always been a grief to me that Eden died. I feel that he and I would have been such friends.”

“Did he leave any children?” asked Mrs. Court.

“A girl who is being brought up with Renny’s children. She’s a dear little thing.”

“And your uncles?” enquired Malahide. “I hope they flourish. I fagged for Nicholas, as a boy at school in England, and I must say he was pretty hard on me. But Ernest was a charming fellow, a dear man. He married late in life, didn’t he?”

“Yes. We think a lot of our aunt by marriage. She’s an American and so is Renny’s wife.”

“And so am I,” laughed Mrs. Court. “Your family seems to like my countrywomen. But the truth is I’ve lost all connection with America. I’ve never been there since my marriage. I have no relations there. I feel myself Irish, through and through.”

Wakefield noticed then that she spoke with a slight Irish accent, which Malahide did not. Paris held one of his mother’s hands in his and stroked it, and now and again raised it to his lips. Now he spoke to his father.

“Tell the boys about the lovely horse, Dada,” he said. “And we must dress for dinner?”

“No dressing for dinner to-night,” put in Mrs. Court. “It is getting late and you three boys must be very hungry. What sort of crossing did you have?”

“Vile. All our English food is at the bottom of the Irish Sea. We’re starving. Shall I go and urge on the dinner?”

“There is plenty of time,” said Malahide. He proceeded to question Wakefield about his new profession and, once drawn on to talk of that, Wakefield forgot all about food and poured out his London experiences. Something he said led to the discovery of his conversion to Catholicism and his stay in the monastery.

“I’m very sympathetic indeed to that,” said Malahide, “for, though the Courts have always been members of the Church of England, there is much in the Catholic faith that I admire, and I’ve often thought that, with my sensitive nature, I would have found real sanctuary in a monastery.”

His wife and son looked at him and it was impossible to tell what was in their minds. He talked of monasteries in Spain and France as though he were deeply familiar with them. Finch felt dizzy with hunger and fatigue. He wished he had let Wakefield make this visit alone—but no, he could not wish himself back in London. The strange unreality of this house would lift him out of himself—once he was rested. Rest—that was what he needed.

Old Jamesie came in carrying a tray on which were four small glasses, a small decanter half full of sherry, and a silver basket of biscuits.

The sherry slid down Finch’s throat like a burning sweet caress. He took a biscuit. It was flabby as flannel but he ate it. Mrs. Court also took one but she did not touch the sherry. “It gives me a headache,” she explained, but Finch thought she looked longingly at the decanter.

Wakefield was enjoying himself. He had lived such a sequestered life at Jalna, his one excursion his sojourn in the monastery, that each new experience was an unfolding of vital interest to him. The tiny glasses of sherry had long been emptied when dinner was announced. Malahide led the way with his wife on his arm. His willowy figure, his drooping back, slightly bowed legs, and affected walk, filled Finch with a sudden hilarity. He found himself suffocating a laugh. He dared not meet Wakefield’s eyes. Wakefield so fitted himself into the scene that he might have spent his days in this house. “Damned little play-actor,” muttered Finch to himself.

Their footsteps sounded melancholy on the stone flagging of the hall. The double doors of the dining-room stood open. The table was lighted by six candles.

“There is no need for such an illumination,” said Mrs. Court. She took a heavy silver extinguisher from a drawer and extinguished two of the candles. Finch remembered how he had seen her draw aside a lump of coal, not yet ignited, before they had left the drawing-room. He noticed her small, bony, capable hands and the set of her lips.

The silver on the long table bore a resemblance to the silver at Jalna. Some of it bore the same crest. But there resemblance ended. When Jamesie lifted the heavy silver cover from the platter in front of Malahide, the chicken disclosed was so small that Finch felt he could have eaten it all himself. He remembered the prodigality that weighted the table at Jalna and wished he might have seen the face of the master of Jalna had he been set down to this.

The room was very large, the walls covered by portraits, some too dim to be clear in candlelight. One, a man in armour just behind Malahide, showed a startling resemblance to him.

Malahide took up the carving knife and fork and smiled across the table at his wife. He looked like a dastardly pirate, thought Finch, ready to knife you in the back. But he spoke in his soft voice.

“What part of the bird would you like, my dear?”

“A very thin slice from the breast,” she answered, “and a little of the stuffing. You know I must eat lightly at night.”

But she did not eat lightly of potatoes and artichokes. She mounded her plate with these, drowning them in the watery gravy. Malahide gave Finch and Wakefield a drum-stick each and to his son the neck and the parson’s nose. As he did this he said simperingly:

“Ever since Paris was a little fellow he has firmly demanded these titbits, and now, though it looks childish, I must humour him.”

Paris smiled good-humouredly and he also helped himself liberally to vegetables and gravy.

Now Malahide transferred the remainder of the bird, almost shyly, to his own plate. “It is for me,” he said, “to pick the bones. But it is surprising what can be got from a little carcass like this when there is a will and, I might almost add, necessity.”

One of Finch’s long legs moved beneath the table toward Wakefield. He pressed his brother’s foot with his. Their eyes met. Malahide drew on his guests to talk. Before Finch was aware of it he found himself talking about music. Malahide divided his attention between Finch and his own plate. When the bones were cleaned he wiped his fingers delicately and, while the plates were being changed, talked of great pianists he had heard and of orchestras which had given him pleasure. When he could possibly bring in a kindly remark about one of the family at Jalna he never failed to do so. Wakefield began to think that Malahide had been badly used by the family and that they were unjustly prejudiced against him.

There was a salad of a few limp leaves of lettuce, some spongy radishes and cucumbers. Then came a raspberry flan which Malahide meticulously divided into five equal portions. Then a dish of green apples and pears was placed on the table and flanked by smaller dishes of nuts and raisins. Still, at the end of the meal, Finch felt ravenous. Nerves and weariness always made him hungry, but Wakefield was one of those happy people who can eat little or much, as occasion offers.

The dining-room grew colder and colder. There was a draught through it that toyed with the hair on Wakefield’s forehead. He felt a shiver down his back, yet he was strangely happy and could not understand Finch’s expression of melancholy as he looked across the dimly lighted expanse of table to him.

In the black-panelled hall their heads turned, in one movement, to look at the small portrait of a little girl of eight whose laughing face was clustered about by waves of dark-red hair. Finch exclaimed:

“Why, she’s the image of Adeline! Look, Wake! It might be her portrait.”

“Who is Adeline?” asked Paris.

“She’s my brother Renny’s child. She’s just the age of this one. Lord, it makes me feel strange!”

“This is your grandmother, Adeline Court,” said Malahide. “I’m very fond of the picture. It was given by her father in part payment of a debt to mine. Only part payment, mind you, and that was all my father ever got. Yet, when your grandmother visited here, just before she sailed for Canada,—that was more than eighty years ago,—she took that picture off the wall, after everyone was in bed, and hid it in one of her trunks. She was leaving early the next morning. But my mother discovered the loss and refused to let her take her trunks from the house. I believe that there was quite a scene, for both ladies had violent tempers. Your grandfather offered to pay for the painting but my mother refused. Finally he persuaded your grandmother to return it, but you can imagine the parting. I’m very fond of that portrait. I greatly admired your grandmother.”

He took up a candle from the chest near by and held it close to the smiling child face.

“What a skin!” he said. “I wonder if it was as milky white as that!”

“I’m sure of it,” said Wakefield, “for little Adeline’s is just the same. Finch, wouldn’t Renny love to have this picture?”

“I’m afraid you would never part with it,” Finch said to Malahide.

Malahide’s hand, so nearly the colour of the candle-wax that they seemed one, began to tremble.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he said. “The day your brother buys the horse I’m interested in, I’ll send him the portrait as a token of friendship, as a charm to bring good luck.”

“He would be delighted,” said Wakefield. “When shall we see the horse?”

“The first thing after breakfast.”

Finch did not speak. He was wrapped in the strangeness of life that had turned that red-lipped child, with the flower-like flesh, into the old, old woman he had called grandmother, who had left him her fortune, now all disappeared. He lingered behind the others, fascinated by the picture.

“And this was you, Gran,” he muttered.

As they sat over coffee in the drawing-room Malahide told them of the horse. It had been bred and was now owned by a Mr. Madigan, who was in dire straits financially and would take a low price for the horse.

“He has little idea,” said Malahide, “of its glorious potentialities. He knows it can run, and run fast, for that has been proved. But I can see deeper than he can and I warn you that, if your brother missed this opportunity, he would miss the greatest in his life so far as racing is concerned.”

“How much do you think Mr. Madigan is asking for the horse?” asked Wakefield.

“I believe,” said Malahide solemnly, “that he would take as little as five hundred guineas for him. You probably have some idea of what he will be worth when he has won the Grand National.”

Wakefield drew a deep sigh. He knew that such a sum would be very hard for Renny to lay hands on. Then there would be the training of the horse and his keep. And always there was the chance of failure. He looked anxiously at Finch.

“I don’t think we ought to do it,” said Finch.

“There is no need to decide in a hurry,” said Malahide. “When you have seen the horse, write to your brother. Get him to come over to Ireland and see for himself. There’d be no harm in that, surely. We’ll have photographs taken and sent to him. Come now, let us put it out of our minds till the morning. There is so much to talk over.”

“It is a great joy,” said Mrs. Court, “to have you three young people here. It makes us believe that spring has come.”

They asked Finch to play for them and half reluctantly he went across to the piano seat. He had practised so much in the past weeks that he shrank from the very voice of the piano, yet the potent attraction of the keyboard drew him. He longed to put his hands on it as a man might long to touch a loved one. There was a violin lying on the piano. The sight of it brought back the memory of Sarah and the summer when he had first met her. Far clearer and more real than the moment he was living in came the recollection of those days in Devon when they had played Chopin and Brahms together. He could see her standing by the piano, her white still face slanting across the violin, her chin holding it close as though inexorably. He could see her narrow green eyes and the glossy braids of her black hair encircling her small head which he afterward came to think of as snake-like. And those pale hands, with their unguessed strength! The sweetness of her kisses, her warm sweet breath on his face! This dim, moist landscape beyond the windows became for him the sunny Devon fields, the rolling moors. Surely their first love had been the happiest time of his life! Yet, before the honeymoon, he was afraid of something in her. And after—her all-possessing passion for him, that left him no freedom, had sickened him, thrown a sickly light over all they did. Yet—now he wondered if the fault were not in himself. He knew he was not the sort of man Sarah should have loved. She should have loved a man like Renny. Indeed she had once said to him that, if she did not so hate Renny, she could have loved him. Certainly she had no attraction for Renny. Finch laid his hand on the violin to feel its vibrant smoothness. He heard Wakefield’s voice.

“He’s dreaming. But I believe he is in the mood to play. He’s good, I can tell you.”

That roused him and he sat down on the faded yellow velvet seat. He began softly to play—not the pieces he was preparing for his recital but some of those he had played with Sarah. As he played he kept looking at the violin and he fancied that it would speak to him. It seemed in some delicate and subtle fashion to respond to the vibration of the piano beneath it. The figures in the room became more and more dreamlike. He had a glimpse of Cousin Malahide’s ivory hand shielding his face, as though something in the music had made it vulnerable. He saw Mrs. Court, still as a statue, the candlelight shining on her forehead and in her fixed blue gaze. There was Paris, his face no longer laughing and gay but drawn together, as though he were searching his mind for something lost there. Wakefield sat with bent head and arms folded, his darkness not sparkling and rich-hued now, but sombre. Of what did he dream? “Oh, my darling Sarah,” thought Finch, over and over, “why did I drive you away from me? Why did my love turn to hate?”

As the three young men went along an upstairs corridor to their rooms, Paris held a hand curved about the candle he carried, yet the draught almost blew it out.

“It’s at this corner,” he said, “where the bit of wall is fallen down.”

Finch could see a jagged aperture at the corner and the wall all green and discoloured.

“It doesn’t trouble us at all,” said Paris, “except in the worst weather and then we hang a blanket over it.”

“Have you no electric light?” asked Wakefield. “For my own part I love the candlelight, but I was just wondering.”

“We did have electricity,” said Paris, “but my mother found that the servants wasted it, so she had it turned off at the main. Well, here we are, and if you’re anything like I am, you’re ready to tumble into bed at once.” He laid his hand on Finch’s arm. “Good Lord, I wish I could play like you! It wrings the heart out of one. Now, is there anything you want? Would you like some food on a tray? You might be hungry in the night.”

There was something unconvincing in this invitation and both brothers declared they could take nothing more till breakfast. Then they found themselves alone. Wakefield faced Finch with a little laugh.

“What a house!” he exclaimed. “And what people! Yet in some curious way I feel very near them. Of course, I’m very fond of Parry. His mother is an enigma but I like her. And I can’t help thinking that Cousin Malahide has been maligned by the family. You know, I can’t keep my eyes off him. He’s beautiful in an unholy sort of way. What do you feel about buying that horse, Finch? They’ve given you by far the better room. Mine is little and bare but I don’t mind. It takes me back to the monastery. Look at your bed hangings. Be careful they don’t fall down in the night and smother you.”

Finch answered him in monosyllables. He was tired and Wakefield’s manner of leaping from one subject to another always made him close up. He went to see Wakefield’s room to be rid of him, and so was.

As he shut his own door behind him he drew a deep breath of relief. He wanted to be alone. He took off his jacket and hung it up, stretched his arms and lighted a last cigarette. The casement was open and a musical drip of rain came from an eave. It was so damp he thought he would close the casement but found he could not because ivy had so strongly entwined itself about the hinges that they would not move. As he turned away he faced his own reflection in a tall pier-glass whose tarnished gilt frame was topped by an eagle. He stood motionless, straining every nerve to discover what it was in the room that made him feel uneasy, as though he were not alone. He thought:

“It’s exactly the setting for a ghost story. All that is needed is a headless monk or something of the sort to come from that cupboard.”

The thought had barely come into his mind when the door of the cupboard actually did move. He felt a creeping down his spine. He felt sick with fright. He riveted his eyes, brilliant with fright, on the moving door. It opened softly and his wife stepped into the room.

So often his imaginings had been fantastic that he did not for a moment think of her as real. He just stared at her, awaiting what might happen next.

But her voice, when it came, dispelled all thoughts of the supernatural. He had thought that Sarah must be dead and her spirit come to reproach him, but that voice, sweeter than any he had ever heard, with the sweetness of the muted notes of a violin, was warm and vibrant with life.

“Finch,” she said, “don’t be angry! I had to see you—just for a moment. I did not go down to dinner because I was afraid it would anger you. I hid here to have the joy of being near you for one little moment. Don’t be angry, Finch. Say you don’t hate me!”

“Sarah!” He said her name in a voice not his own but like the voice of a sleep-walker. “Was that your violin I saw?”

“Yes. I forgot to hide it.”

“I felt that you were near. But—not in the flesh.”

“Finch, my little one, say you don’t hate me.”

“I think—I’m not sure—but—oh, Sarah, I could not get you out of my mind.”

“You wanted me!” She gave a cry of delight and glided to him. How familiar was that gliding walk, in which the legs seemed scarcely to move but the whole body to swim forward.

Without his volition his arms were raised. He closed his eyes, then felt the weight of her against his breast. He felt the sweetness of her breath on his mouth. Strength surged into his body and a delirious wildness into his soul. He carried her to the four-poster, with its tattered brocade canopy, and laid her on it and knelt beside her.

“Finch,” she whispered, “say that we are to be united again. Oh, if you knew what an abyss of loneliness I have been through! Oh, your lovely eyes—let me kiss them!” She drew down his head and laid her lips first on one eyelid, then on another.

The door handle turned softly and Wakefield stood silhouetted against the light in the corridor.

“Did you call me, Finch?” he asked. “I thought I heard your voice.” He peered toward the bed and saw Finch kneeling there.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” he said. “Finch, you are praying and I interrupted you! God bless you, Finch.” He closed the door gently and was gone.

In his own room he stood motionless, his dark head bent in thought. What a queer fellow Finch was! He never seemed to be religious—not outwardly—but in his heart he must be deeply so.