Читать книгу The Weatherhouse - Nan Shepherd - Страница 12
ОглавлениеSnow fell that night, and the night following, and the frost set harder than before. The guests were stamping at the doorstep, knocking off the snow that had frozen in translucent domes upon their heels, shaking their garments free from the glittering particles of ice that hung in them. The children eyed the house with awe, mingled in Stella Dagmar with disdain. ‘It’s a terrible slippery floor, I canna get traivelled,’ she objected in the long, polished lobby. But the glories of the Christmas tree silenced criticism for awhile. Lindsay had made a very pretty thing of it; and when by and by she slipped from the room and Miss Theresa said ostentatiously, ‘She’s away to take a rest—she’s been ill, you see,’ the girl herself was as deliciously excited as any bairn. She giggled with pleasure as she draped an old crimson curtain round her and adjusted her Father Christmas beard. ‘Now what all nonsense shall I say?’ And she said it very well, disguising her voice and playing silly antics.
‘My very toes is laughin’,’ Mrs Hunter declared.
The room grew hot, and Lindsay in her wrappings choked for air. She slid her hand behind the curtain that covered the glass door to the garden. But the door blew open at her touch. The wind and a woman entered together: a woman in the fifties, weathered and sinewy, clad in a rough, patched Lovat tweed and leggings caked with mud and battered snow. On her head sat a piece of curious finery that had been once a hat and from it dangled a trallop of dingy veiling.
‘Bawbie Paterson,’ cried Miss Theresa. ‘Who would have expected that?’
Miss Paterson marched across the room.
‘It’s you I’m seekin’, Barbara Hunter,’ she announced. ‘Will you send for Maggie? There’s my lassie up and left me. The third one running. Will you send for Maggie? Maggie’s the lass for me.’
‘Barbara Paterson,’ said Mrs Hunter, ‘that I will not. Maggie’s in a good place. I’d be black affronted to bid her up and awa’. And mair than that, Miss Barbara, nae lass o’ mine’ll ever be at your beck and ca’. Ye dinna feed your folk, Miss Barbara. I’ve seen my chickens hanging in to the bare wa’s o’ a cabbage as though they hadna seen meat this month an’ mair, and your kitchen deemie, Barbara Paterson, had the same hungry e’e. Ye’ll nae get Maggie.’
‘And what am I to do wanting a kitchen lass?’
‘Ye can tak the road an’ run bits, Miss Barbara.’
‘Since you are in my house, Bawbie Paterson,’ said Miss Theresa, ‘you’d better take a seat.’
‘I’ll not do that, Tris Craigmyle. You’d have me plotted with heat, would you? But I’ll wait a whilie or I go in a lowe. And who might this be?’ And she wheeled round to stare at Lindsay, who had dropped the curtain and was staring hard at her.
‘A likely lass,’ said Miss Barbara; and she clutched at Lindsay, who did not resist, but allowed herself to be drawn closer. ‘And are you seeking a place? Can you cook a tattie? A’ to dross?’
‘Hoots, Miss Barbara,’ cried Mrs Hunter, scandalised. ‘That’s nae a servant lass. That’s Miss Lorimer—Andrew Lorimer the solicitor’s daughter. Ye’re nae at yersel.’
Lindsay’s heart was beating fast. She said nothing, but stared at the great rough face above her. She had a feeling as though some huge elemental mass were towering over her, rock and earth, earthen smelling. Miss Barbara’s tweeds had been sodden so long with the rains and matted with the dusts of her land, that they too seemed elemental. Her face was tufted with coarse black hairs, her naked hands that clutched the fabric of Lindsay’s dress were hard, ingrained with black from wet wood and earth. ‘She’s not like a person, she’s a thing,’ Lindsay thought. The girl felt puny in her grasp, yet quite without fear, possessed instead by a strange exhilaration.
Held thus against Miss Barbara’s person and clothes, the outdoor smell of which came strongly to the heat of the parlour, Lindsay, her senses sharpened by excitement, was keenly aware of an antagonism in the room: as though the fine self-respecting solidity of generations of Lorimers and Craigmyles, the measured and orderly dignity of their lives, won at some cost through centuries from their rude surroundings, resented this intrusion into their midst of an undisciplined and primitive force. The girl waited to hear what Miss Theresa would say, sure that it was Miss Theresa who would act spokesman against this earthy relic of an older age.
But before Miss Theresa could speak, Stella Dagmar, angry at her interrupted play and offended that no one noticed her, began a counting rhyme, running about among the women and slapping each in turn:
I count you out
For a dirty dish-clout.
Miss Theresa’s wiry hands were on the culprit. ‘A clout on the lug, that’s what you would need. Francie hasn’t his sorrow to seek.’
Stella dodged and screamed. The whole room was in an uproar. And suddenly Miss Barbara, loosening her grasp on Lindsay, broke into a bellow of laughter; and in a moment was gone.
Miss Theresa was scarlet in the face from fury.
‘Saw you ever such an affront to put on a body?’ she cried, cudgelling Stella to the rhythms of her anger. ‘Coming into a body’s house at a New Year time a sight like yon. Coming in at all, and her not bidden. And I’m sure you needn’t all be making such a commotion now. You couldn’t tell what’s what nor wha’s Jock’s father.’
They were all talking together. Lindsay stood amazed. The voices became appallingly distinct, resounding in her very head; and the hot, lit room, the excited ladies in their rich apparel, burdened her. She wanted to run after Miss Barbara, to escape; and, picking up her crimson curtain, she said, ‘I’ll put this past.’
‘I kent it was you all the time,’ Stella flung at her. But Lindsay was already gone. She closed the door from the parlour and stood in the cold, still hall. Through the windows poured the light of full moon. And Lindsay had a vision of the white light flooding the world and gleaming on the snow, and of Miss Barbara convulsed with laughter in the middle of the gleam.
She threw the curtain about her, drew on a pair of galoshes, and ran into the night.
The night astonished her, so huge it was. She had the sense of escaping from the lit room into light itself. Light was everywhere: it gleamed from the whole surface of the earth, the moon poured it to the farthest quarters of heaven, round a third of the horizon the sea shimmered. The cold was intense. Lindsay’s breath came quick and gasping. She ran through the spruce plantation and toiled up the field over snow that was matted in grass; and, reaching the crest, saw without interruption to the rims of the world. The matted snow and grass were solid enough beneath her feet, but when she looked beyond she felt that she must topple over into that reverberation of light. Her identity vanished. She was lost in light and space. When she moved on it surprised her that she stumbled with the rough going. She ought to have glided like light over an earth so insubstantial.
Then she saw Miss Barbara.
Miss Barbara Paterson came swinging up the field, treading surely and singing to herself. Her heavy bulk seemed to sail along the frozen surfaces, and when she reached the dyke she vaulted across it with an impatient snort.
‘O wait for me!’ Lindsay cried. She too was by the dyke, and would have leaped it, but was trammelled with her curtain.
‘Wait for me,’ she cried. ‘I want to speak to you.’
But when Miss Barbara turned back, there was nothing she could find to say.
‘Were you wanting over?’ asked Miss Barbara. She leaned across the dyke, lifted the girl in her arms and swung her in the air. ‘You’re like the deil, you’ll never hang, for you’re as light ’s a feather.’
‘Oh, put me down. But I want to go with you. Will you show me Knapperley?’
‘Ca’ awa’ then.’ Miss Barbara, without further ado, made off up the top of a furrow, pushing the girl firmly along by the elbow. Lindsay kept her footing with difficulty, sinking ever and again in the deep snow that levelled the furrows. She wondered what her mother would think. It was like an escapade into space. Her safe and habitual life was leagues away.
Miss Barbara made no attempt to speak. They passed through a woodland and came out by a gap.
‘There’s Knapperley for you,’ its owner said.
Lindsay stared. From every window of the tall narrow house there blazed a lamp. They blazed into the splendour of the night like a spurt of defiance.
‘But the Zepps,’ she gasped.
‘They don’t come this length.’
‘But they do. One did. And anyway, the law.’
‘That’s to learn them to leave honest folks alone.’
A spasm of terror contracted Lindsay’s heart. Miss Barbara had clambered on to the next dyke. She made little use of stile or gate, preferring always to go straight in the direction she desired. She stood there poised, keeping her footing with ease upon the icy stones, and pointed with an outstretched arm at the lights, a menacing figure. Then she bent as though to help Lindsay over.
‘Will she lift me again?’ thought the girl. The insecurity of her adventure rushed upon her.
‘Will she kidnap me and make me her servant girl? But I couldn’t live in a house with lights like that. There would be policemen if there weren’t Zepps.’
She twisted herself out of reach of the descending hand and fled, trailing the scarlet curtain after her across the snow.
