Читать книгу Bracken Turning Brown - Pamela Wynne - Страница 3

Table of Contents

The Rectory had large mournful windows. Windows that seemed to stare frowningly down at the beauty that lay spread out in front of them. For the Vale of Castlemere was extremely beautiful. Lying some way away from one of the biggest towns in the Lake District it seemed somehow to escape notice. The roads were too narrow and too steep for motors, and charabancs were definitely forbidden. Some of the bridges were actually not safe for very heavy traffic and no one seemed inclined to have them adapted to meet the new order of things. Once a day, at about five o’clock in the evening, the old-fashioned coaches would come clattering back from their trips round some of the nearer lakes, and the few visitors scattered about in the tiny white farmhouses would come out to the gates of the equally tiny front gardens and gaze up with interest at the people perched up on the high seats. And almost with equal interest at the horses; horses which had become, after years of experience, just as intelligent as their drivers.

But in spite of the isolation of the Vale of Castlemere it had a church. A church with an extremely loud and persistent bell. “Come on,” it seemed to be saying to the people round about, when it rang. “Come on, here’s a church and here’s a Rector and Rector’s wife who plays the harmonium. Come on in, will you!”

But somehow, all the same, very few people did come in. Children came to Sunday school because their parents wanted to get them out of the way for a little while. They were taught by the schoolmistress of the tiny village school, because no one else offered to do it. She was very much higher Church than the Rector and took an awful joy in teaching the children about Feasts and Saints’ Days, and even about the Reservation of the Blesséd Sacrament. They liked it because it meant that they got little brightly-coloured cards from Mowbray’s. They stared at the cards and pocketed them and said “Naw,” in their soft musical North-country voices when the schoolmistress asked them if they remembered what she had told them the Sunday before. But the schoolmistress was not discouraged. To instil the Catholic Faith into the minds of these little ones was, to her, a sacred duty. The Rector would not do it, nor would the Rector’s wife. But as Miss Simmons would, this did not matter as the Rector very rarely came to the Sunday school at all, and the Rector’s wife did not come because she did not care what was being taught in the Sunday school so long as she didn’t have to teach it. So life went on in the beautiful lonely valley. In the winter it snowed and the mountains that shut it in were white and austere and distant, and the trees that fringed them were frosted and fairy-like. In the early spring it rained; rain that drifted along the valley in perpendicular streaks; mists of rain that filled the becks and turned them into miniature torrents. In the later spring the flowers came out; heavenly flowers, primroses with long, long stalks and violets and celandine, and in between the showers the blue sky showed, more blue than ever against the green of the hills. And then summer came shimmering along and the fields became a glory of white and gold, and with the feathery grasses that waved above them they made everything look vague and drifting and still more fairy-like. And then autumn; the trees a blaze of gold and rust-colour, and the ground all dry and crackling with fallen leaves. And then the winter again.

And it was the winter that made Susan Carpendale feel that if the life she was leading now went on much longer she would go raving mad. The winter was just over; it was nearly March. It was still cold; awfully cold. For the Rectory was a very difficult house to keep warm. The windows were too large and so was the kitchen range. It would have been all right if the Rector was well off, but he wasn’t.

“Rachel, it eats coal,” Mrs. Carpendale was staring at the kitchen range. Her servant, a middle-aged married woman who adored her, was staring at it too.

“It does, Ma’am.”

“What shall we do?”

“Nothing,” said Rachel sensibly, who had heard all this before.

“You always say that, Rachel,” and then Mrs. Carpendale burst into a little bubble of laughter. And then the laughter faded to something very near to tears as she turned and flung her arms round her servant.

“What should I do without you?” she choked.

“Get on very well indeed,” said Rachel stolidly. She detached her mistress’s young clinging hands. “And now about lunch,” she said, “we’ll have to do without meat; that’s very certain. But I have a bit of suet left over from yesterday. The master is out to lunch so we can make it do.”

“Yes, he’s gone to Windermere,” said Mrs. Carpendale. And there was suddenly something gay about her young face. “Do let me have lunch in here with you,” she said. “There’s a pet.”

“It’s not suitable,” said Rachel firmly, but her eyes dwelt with love on the young flushed face.

“It may not be suitable. But it’ll save a lot of coal,” said Susan. “We need not have the dining-room fire, then. Not until Arthur comes in, which won’t be until after tea.”

“Very well,” said Rachel. “And you leave the luncheon to me, Ma’am. I’ll make the pudding and put it on now. And then I’ll come up and help you make the beds. I’ve done the rooms. If you’ll just dust round, that’ll be all I want.”

“All right,” said Susan. She walked out of the kitchen and stood in the hall. Cold ... desperately cold. And so were the stairs cold; she walked up them shivering. And the bedrooms were colder; bleak, barely furnished rooms, with huge windows, thinly curtained. Only the view from them was divine. Suddenly ashamed of her distaste for the old grey stone house, Susan walked across the floor and stared out of them. Yes, it was a divine view. Mrs. Carpendale’s gaze softened.