Читать книгу Gentlemen at Gyang Gyang - Miles Franklin - Страница 15

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In the afternoon the hair cascaded over the back of a home-made deck-chair on the western veranda and dried to its unique sheen, which was not silver and not gold but something rarely between, and beyond the appraisement of Gyang Gyang. Fine and silky, it plaited closely, loosed it was a real old-fashioned mermaid head of hair, such as brought a girl of yesterday more admirers than she could cope with—so small a thing can turn the scale in sex attraction.

A woman with long hair today, if she is elderly, is dated and looks as frowsy to her sisters as does a man with a patriarchal beard; but there lingers unextirpated in masculine psychology a sentimentality that makes long hair still bespeak the old-fashioned amenable femininity which supplanted native womanliness. With the foundation of long hair a man can still conjure up a combination of childish innocence and mental deficiency which his particular ego has ever craved and ever tired of with incredible speed.

Spires, like many practising varietists, was incurably sentimental about good pure women unspotted by the world. By a contretemps he returned to camp early. So did Peter because of an accident with his fly-dressing. Peter arrived first and, coming round the corner noiselessly on the carpet of snow-daisies and tussocks under the blossoming trees, was startled to immobility. A crimson flush crept up under his jet-black beard. He felt convicted of a sacrilege to see what he saw. He turned away without a second glance from so intimate and thrilling a spectacle. So much for spontaneous innate delicacy.

He quickened his pace to find some fresh fly-dressing, thence to his horse and back on to the run at a hard gallop to escape. So much for the complexes of experience.

Bernice continued to recline drowsily in the sunlight, her thoughts on the man who at sight of her had taken to his horse. She was wondering what colour would best reproduce the colour of his eyes. It was incredible that they could be so blue as she remembered them, but always in reality they seemed bluer. Could they ever be captured with any justice? They were like the blue of the Swiss lakes, needing to be seen to be believed.

Spires came round the corner just after Peter had disappeared. He stood immobile even as Peter had done, transpierced by a delicious emotion promising better than he had experienced in a considerable time. He wanted to bury his face in those grey-green-gold-silver meshes. No bewilderment here.

He turned quickly in his tracks and approached from the other side. "Oh, excuse me, I see that I intrude," he said, affecting hesitation.

"Not at all," murmured Bernice. "I've only been washing my head in the wonderful rain-water."

"How marvellous to see such a head of hair these days," breathed Spires with greedy glances, and estimating that the woman was young, probably not more than twenty-four or twenty-five. "I think the girls have lost their womanliness by cutting off their hair, and as for the old birds—if they aren't unholy frights!" He and Peter in different ways were both as unmodern as a gridiron.

"I can't see how a woman's womanliness depends on the length of her hair," indifferently responded Bernice. "I retain my locks because I find them useful, but they are a heap of work to keep in proper condition."

She had a long line of neck and shoulder which made her beautiful to sophisticated eyes, even with her hair parted from nape to forehead and coiled in bumps over each ear. It went with her narrow oval face and straight nose. She had found she could achieve distinction by retaining her wealth of peculiar hair. She was a beauty in an unusual way, as attested by fifty amateur and professional studies of her gathering dust in London and Parisian studios; but it took the unsheafing of her hair for Gyang Gyang to suspect something of this.

Spires seated himself on the edge of the veranda and boldly noted that her cheeks had the same sheen as her hair. "Don't you want someone to brush it for you?" he volunteered. "I always do my mother's. I'm an adept."

"Thank you, but you are too late. I must plait it now," she said languidly.

He wanted to look in her eyes, also of rare tint, but she would never glance directly at him. She veiled her eyes with her thick white lids and the long silver-gold lashes which gave a virginal, withdrawn impression. She would not be drawn into talk and Spires sat quietly so that she would not hurry away. He had been following Peter and guessed why he had balked and bolted. He chortled underground. Simple, softy Peter! He would be worshipping from afar. The juxtaposition of Peter and this girl added zest to an idea of Spires's. Peter's humble adoration might prove a lever.

At dinner the men were all very clean, the stench of the wet sheep having made strenuous and complete methods necessary. Peter, Spires, and the Dude shone from their soles to their crowns. Peter was wearing a collar, though ordinarily he depended upon the ambush of his beard and the dim light.

To be sure that the girl was real, he indulged in one of the swift comprehensive glances of men of his training that can discern minute objects at incredible distances. Could it be true that those plaited coils could spray into such a mane as the fabulous and pictured mermaids combed in sea caves? Bernice looked at him repeatedly to be sure of the terrific blue of his eyes. Their glances met. Peter was so startled by this that he early escaped to the murk of the hut to collect himself. There he thought of her on the veranda bowered in hair. He had learnt from a remark dropped by the Cook that Spires had sat and magged to her. He felt instinctively that there was danger in a female who would sit with her hair flowing and be talked to by Spires. He must not think of her at all. The adjacent thought was Spires. He longed to punch that fellow's head. What did the flaming cow want hanging around Gyang Gyang? To bleed him, Peter, of course. Spires was a snaky devil who would to anything from punting to card tricks to get money without working for it. At all events he was not going to get any hundred quid out of him this time...but...then...a hundred pounds might be well spent to get rid of Spires at present. Peter was not going to part up, though, unless he could be sure of being shut of the cow.