Читать книгу Conrad in Quest of His Youth: An Extravagance of Temperament - Merrick Leonard - Страница 4

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She pouted a protest at him, and whisked into the dance. He observed that she had graces, and heaved a sigh for the time when it would have been piquant to brush the pout away. To-night it would be tasteless. "Kissing a cocotte is like eating tinned salmon," said Conrad to himself regretfully, and went to the vestiaire for his overcoat.

The interruption had jarred him, but it was not until the Closerie des Lilas was a hundred yards behind that he knew he had left the hall for the purpose of resuming his reverie in comfort. When he reached the Boulevard Saint-Michel his interest in the projects of five-and-twenty years ago was again so keen that he grieved to think they had been fruitless. Improving on history, he permitted the boys who were boys no more to amass the sovereign that they coveted, and, giving his fancy rein, lived through the glorious day which had never dawned. He tried very hard to be fair to Ted after Mary had welcomed them, though to prevent the conversation becoming a dualogue irked him a good deal. In moments he discovered that he was talking to her rather well for his age, and then he corrected himself with loving artistry. But he could seldom find it in his heart to correct Mary, and she said the prettiest things in the world. He came back to the present, swimming with tenderness for the little maiden of his retrospect. It shocked him to reflect that she must be about thirty-eight if she lived still, and might even have a marriageable daughter. The pathos of the marriageable daughter indeed overwhelmed him, and, taking a seat at the Taverne du Panthéon, he pictured himself waking to realise that he was only twelve years old and that all events subsequent to the epoch had been a dream.

The October air was bleak when he crossed on the morrow, and the deck rolled to meet the splashes of the waves. The idea of revisiting the watering-place—and the idea had germinated—attracted him less forcibly as his chair played see-saw with the taffrail, but he remembered that he had often been advised by advertisements "not to risk infection from foreigners, when he could winter in sunny Sweetbay, the fairest spot in England." The fact that it had a reputation as a winter resort encouraged him somewhat, and by the time he saw the lamps of Charing Cross he felt adventurous again. He also admired a girl on the platform. "There's nothing like an Englishwoman for beauty," he said; and the girl exclaimed: "Oh, I've left my little fur in my grip, right there!"

He fulfilled his programme the next morning. The drowsy station of Sweetbay seemed to him larger than of yore as he glanced about him, but he did not stop to gather information in the matter. His bag was in the fly, and he was rattled to an hotel where the manager appeared surprised to see him. Although his sensations on the boat had left him with no insistent longing for a room with a sea-view, he accepted one without complaint, and learning that luncheon was being served, descended to where three despondent-looking visitors were scattered among an acre of tables. Evidently people continued to go abroad in spite of the advice. However, he had not come to Sweetbay for society.

It was a neat and decorous little town awaiting him when he sallied forth from the hotel. Everything was very clean, very tidy. The pink-paved sidewalks, bordered by trees, glistened like coral; the snug villas, enclosed by euonymus hedges trimmed to precision, had a fresh and wholesome air, an air that made him think of honey soap and good rice puddings. He backed before the walls of the Parish Church. A play-bill of the Rosery Theatre, near by, seemed an anachronism, and even as he recalled Sweetbay it had been content with Assembly Rooms. On a hoarding he saw a poster of the Pier Pavilion—the pavilion was an innovation too. In the High Street photographs of some popular actors had invaded a shop window, and he was struck by the extraordinary resemblance they bore to one another—all wearing on the brow the frown of intellectuality, and carefully disordered hair. The Town Hall was a landmark. He murmured Matthew Arnold's line: "Expressive merely of the impotence of the architect to express anything," but the unparalleled ugliness of the building warmed him with recollections. He branched to the left, as he used to branch to the left when he carried Mary's bathing shoes, and surrendering himself to sentiment unreservedly now swung joyously for Eden.

And from this point landmarks flocked thick and fast. The way began to climb the hill, the hill began to show the boughs, the boughs began to veil the road, the road began to woo the lane, the lane began to near the house, and—like the old woman's pig—Conrad got over the stile.

And "Mowbray Lodge" was still painted on the gate! It was all so wonderfully the same for a moment in the shade behind the fir trees—so wonderfully—that he felt tearful. The scene had stood so still that there seemed something unreal in his returning here a man. Again he saw the slender columns of the long veranda, and the summer-house on which the weather-cock still perched. He looked, and looked wide-eyed, at a faded door—not green, not blue—and knew suddenly that behind that door there should be currant bushes and a tangle of nasturtium, and hens prinking on the path. His soul embraced the scene. And yet—and yet it was not the features which had lived in his mind that moved him most. The magic lay in the pervasive hush, and in a gust of the fir trees' smell, which he had forgotten until it swept him breathless across the years.

Yes, there seemed something unreal in his standing here a man. His spirit was listening—and he knew that it was listening—for calls from children who had grown to middle-age now; his gaze was waiting—even he knew that it was waiting—for the rush of childish figures which the scene should yield.

Presently he sought the space where they had played. But the Field of the Cloth of Gold was transformed. Where the dandelions had spread their splendour for Mary he saw a market-garden, and the sun that had made a halo for Mary glittered on glass. There was a quantity of glass, there were consequential rows of it, all raising money for somebody, all reminding the pilgrim that meadows move with the times. "Well, I suppose it's progress," said Conrad, shaking his head. But he missed the dandelions. He was a Conservative by instinct, though he was a Liberal by reason.

When he loitered back to the view of Mowbray Lodge, a lady of the age which it is gallant to call "uncertain" had come out on the veranda. She had a little shawl over her shoulders, and in her hand she held a pair of scissors with which she was clipping a palm. The placid gaze she lifted to him was not discouraging, and advancing towards her with a bow he said:—

"Pray forgive me for troubling you, but may I ask if Mr. Boultbee lives here now?"

"N—no," answered the lady pensively, "no gentleman lives here. 'Mr. Boultbee'? I'm afraid I don't know the name. Are you sure he is still living in the town?"

"I am sure of nothing," replied Conrad. "It is so long since my last visit that I am even doubtful if he is living at all."

She seemed to reflect again and said: "Perhaps they might be able to tell you at the post-office."

"It really isn't important," he declared, "though I'm obliged by your suggestion. To confess the truth, I am more drawn to the garden than to Mr. Boultbee. Years ago I spent a summer here, and being in the neighbourhood again I couldn't resist the temptation to come and dream over the top rail of your gate."

"Oh—er—would you care to look round the place?" she murmured with a tentative wave of the scissors.

"I should be charmed," said Conrad, "if I am not intruding."

"Of course you don't see it to advantage now. Last month—" She moved across the lawn beside him, telling the falsehoods with which everybody who has a garden always dejects a visitor. He affected that thirst for knowledge with which everybody who is shown a garden always rewards a host.

"It's a long time since you were here, I think you said?" she remarked, pleased by his eagerness.

"It is," said Conrad, in his most Byronic manner, "just a quarter of a century." The lady looked startled, and he continued with a sigh, "Yes, I was then in that exquisitely happy period of life when we just begin to know that we are happy; you may imagine what memories are stirring in me:—

"'I can recall, nay, they are present still,

Parts of myself, the perfume of my mind,

Days that seem farther off than Homer's now

Ere yet the child had loudened to the boy' …

That poem—Lowell's 'The Cathedral'—flashed into my mind as I came upon your parish church awhile ago, and

"'gazed abashed,

Child of an age that lectures, not creates,'

at its old honours. I quoted the best part of a stanza to myself in the street. I'm afraid that is a habit of mine."

"It must be very nice," said the lady apprehensively; "yes, indeed."

It appeared that she was no more acquainted with Lowell than with Mr. Boultbee, so gliding to a subject which lay quite near his heart this afternoon he introduced a third name.

"When I was here last a Dr. Page occupied the villa across the fence," he went on. "He had a daughter. To be prolix, he had several daughters, but to me his family consisted of Miss Mary. We were engaged. I won't ask you if they are there still—something warns me that they are not—but can you, by any chance, give me news of them?"

"I am sorry I cannot," she returned, fluttering. "There has been no Dr. Page in Sweetbay—I am almost certain there has been no Dr. Page in Sweetbay since I settled here. I am positive there is none now—quite positive. There's Dr. Hunt, there's Dr. Tatham—" She recounted laboriously the names of all the medical men practising about the town, while he wondered what she was doing it for.

"I thank you heartily," he said, when she reached the end of the list.

The next moment it became evident that she, in her turn, had a question to put, for her glance was interrogating him already, and at last she faltered:—

"Pardon my asking you, but did I understand you to say that you were—h'm—engaged to the daughter of Dr. Page twenty-five years ago? Surely when you said you were a child then, it was no figure of speech?"

"No," answered Conrad; "but to be frank with you, it was nothing less than the thought of her that lured me back to-day. Let me admit that I wasn't quite ingenuous when I spoke of—of 'being' in the neighbourhood; I came deliberately, in fulfilment of a cherished plan. To me your garden is a tomb—if I may say so without depressing you—it is the tomb of the Used-to-be. We were both children, but there are some things that one never forgets:—

"'I'm not a chicken; I have seen

Full many a chill September,

And though I was a youngster then,

That girl I well remember.'

Holmes wrote 'gale,' not 'girl,' otherwise he might have been speaking for me."

"Such constancy is very beautiful," breathed the lady; "I thought—" She paused, slightly pink.

"But it was unfair," he assured her; "men can be quite as constant as women—especially to the women they never won."

"Er—perhaps you would like to see the house?" she inquired; "and you will allow me to offer you some tea before you go?"

"I accept both offers gratefully," said Conrad.

He followed her into the hall, and she conducted him, with little prefatory murmurs, to such of the apartments as a maiden lady might modestly display. Repapered and rearranged they looked quite strange to him, but the knowledge that he was in Mowbray Lodge averted boredom.

"You find them altered," she said, as they went back to the drawing-room.

"Improved," said he.

"And the town," she added; "no doubt you find the town improved too?"

"Altered," said Conrad, thinking of the market garden. "Well, it is certainly bigger."

"The rapid development of Sweetbay can astonish none who bear in mind its remarkable combination of climatic advantages, but the sylvan fairness of the town is not diminished, and it continues to present an unrivalled example of the 'rus in urbe,'" responded the lady with surprising fluency. "Do you take sugar and milk?"

"Ah—thank you," he said.

"Are you making a long stay among us, or——?"

"A very brief one. Indeed, I thought of returning to-morrow."

"Oh!" There was a tinge of disappointment in her "Oh." "I wondered if you meant to stop. If you had meant to pass the winter here—But I daresay you would have preferred an hotel anyhow?"

"I don't understand," he said, sipping. "What is it you were going to be good enough to suggest?"

"It occurred to me that, as the house has so many associations for you, you might have liked to take it for a short term. I am trying to let it furnished during the next few months, and I could leave the servants. My cook has been with me now——"

"You would let this house to me?" exclaimed Conrad, thrilling, and saw such splendid visions that for quite a minute he forgot to attend to her.

"If the rent is too high—?" She was regarding him nervously.

"Not at all," he cried, "not at all. I was simply lost in the effulgent prospect that you've opened to me."

"Really?"

"It was an inspiration. How kind of you to mention it."

She deprecated gratitude. "There would be no children, of course?" she said, her gaze dwelling among her china.

"Four," he answered promptly. "That is, the youngest must be about thirty-five now. I beg your pardon, but I have had an inspiration, too, I'm dazzled by the idea of peopling the house with the men and women who were children here five-and-twenty years ago; I dare swear my relatives have never set foot in Sweetbay since. We'll be comrades all over again—You know how Time loosens these childish ties—in the very place, in the very rooms, where we were such comrades then. Why, it's the most delightful plan that was ever hatched!" He hesitated. "I wonder if they'll come? How about the trains? One of my cousins would have to go up rather often, I expect."

"The railway company has combined with Mother Nature and a spirited Corporation to render Sweetbay attractive to the jaded Londoner. The service is fast and frequent, and well-appointed 'flys' may be chartered at most reasonable fares," replied his hostess without an instant's pause.

"How convenient!" said Conrad. "What more can he want?"

"If you think your friends may need persuasion, I should be pleased to present you with a copy of a little work of mine to send them. It describes all the attractions of the neighbourhood—and it's quite unlike the usual guide-book. It is thorough, but chatty. My aim has been to inform the visitor in a sprightly way."

"An authoress?" he said warmly.

"Of one book only," she murmured, her face suffused by an unbecoming blush.

"But of many readers, I'll be bound! If obstacles arise then, it shall be your pen that conquers them. You overwhelm me with kindnesses. I really think, though, the address will be magnet enough for the friends I want. 'Mowbray Lodge, Sweetbay'—how they'll stare! 'Bring your spades and pails,' I shall write; 'come, and let us all be boys and girls again.' The girls have little girls and boys of their own now. No, don't be afraid of their smashing that soul-stirring Chelsea, my dear madam—I won't have them. That's the essence of the contract, the new generation must be left behind. There must be we four, and nobody else—the four who will find their childhood waiting for them here, just the four who can feel the enchantment of Mowbray Lodge. So it is settled?"

"As far as—" She smoothed her gown.

"Oh, naturally there must be references, and inventories, and all sorts of tiresome details—and with your permission we will get them over as soon as possible. I shall have the pleasure of writing to you to-morrow. To whom——"

"Miss Phipps," she intimated.

"And mine is 'Warrener.' Stay, I have a card. But, by the way, when did you propose to let me come in, Miss Phipps?"

"Would next month suit you?" she asked. "Perhaps you would prefer it to be early in the month?"

"I wouldn't disorder your arrangements for the world, yet I own that 'early' has a musical ring. It would be agreeable to arrive before the colder weather."

"There are places in England where winter's cold blasts seem never to penetrate, and where birds and flowers go on singing and blooming in defiance of the calendar," she rejoined.

"Really?" said Conrad. "Still——"

"And among such places," concluded the lady firmly, "Sweetbay is pre-eminent. … But you will let me give you another cup of tea?"