Читать книгу White Narcissus - Raymond Knister - Страница 5

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He had washed the grime from hands and face in the kitchen, wiped on a prickly towel, and was sitting at the supper table where Mrs. Hymerson, who insisted that they should not wait, was pouring tea, before the farmer came in, breathing audibly. Calves from a neighbouring farm had broken through the line fence; he had seen them afar off browsing on his oats, and chased them.

'Well, we'll go and call on him after supper, you and I,' he announced to Milne.

'Are they from the Lethen side?' asked the latter.

'Certainly they're from Lethen's. That old man's past farming, if he ever was any good at it. Can't even keep up his fences. Why he ever stays on—But then you must remember. Bet he'd seem as old when you were a kid as he does now.'

'I remember how impressive he appeared, with his young brown face and his white hair. I hadn't seen anyone like him; and when I got to know him a little better he never quite became commonplace.'

'Quite a character.' Mrs. Hymerson smiled, as though she knew and wished to take the flavour from what her husband was about to express. 'And you know, he knows more than you'd think, too. They say he was well educated when he was young....'

'Appear distinguished, I guess he does, appear,' burst in the rapid accents of Carson Hymerson. 'That's all he does, is appear, the old fraud, don't I know him, know him like a book! I guess I ought to, hmph!' The man drew up his right shoulder and twisted his head aside in a grimace of cynic humour. 'Why, when I and he was on the school-board, there never was any peace, but he'd be thinking up ideas. And you couldn't do anything with him, once he got an idea in his head. Crazy, that's what he is, crazy, and he don't know it.' The last few swift words came in a lower tone, for he was not unaware of Richard Milne's reception of them, a hardening of the mouth.

'I am sorry to hear that. Mr. Lethen must have changed. It seemed to me that he was the kind of man who, if he could make out to live in the country at all, would be of invaluable service.' The younger man spoke with a deliberation which spoke of long-weighed conclusions, and a disposition to regard only politeness in listening to whatever might be said on the subject. Carson Hymerson heard him with impatient snorts, scarcely able to keep from interrupting, but, perhaps because of the still regard of his wife, less acrid in tone when he did rattle:

'You might think so. It's quite a while since you had much to do with old Lethen, ain't it? Well! You ask the neighbours when you want to find out about a man! You can ask....' He mumbled, then went on with greater heat. 'Invaluable use, why that's just what he ain't, is useful.'

'Yes, of course, it must be kind of past his time for working very hard.' Mrs. Hymerson, Richard Milne's amusement noted, had preserved a sense for affable adjustment which her husband might never have possessed. The latter was not going to let her smooth things over.

'Why look at the way he's always lived with that woman of his. That's enough for me, never speaking! And take his daughter....'

'Yes...?' began Richard, so quickly that the woman at once struck in, high-pitched.

'All I say is ... all I say is, we can't ever know, don't you see, what may be at the bottom of these things. Everyone has their cross to bear, and we can't always understand, so it behoves us not to judge others.' Mrs. Hymerson's voice became more even as she went on, despite the snort of Carson, as though she were reciting a well-remembered scriptural lesson. Milne, too grateful now that a moment of rage had passed not to abet her irrelevance, turned to her.

'Is Arvin not at home now, Mrs. Hymerson? I hope you'll pardon my not inquiring before; I missed him at once, of course.'

'Arvin, he went out in the country to-day to look for a cow. Kind of running out of good cows, some going dry, going to fat a couple for beef. So I thought I'd give the boy a chance, let him use his own head this time and buy one without me near. I hope he don't get beat,' he added grimly.

Richard Milne could not forbear a smile, which only belatedly he reflected might be taken as derogatory to the young man, twenty-six at the time of his last visit, but schooled—better, dragooned—by his father's impatience daily.

'That's fine.' The remark hearty and sincere. 'I don't think they'll get ahead of Arvin in a deal.'

'And how is your—work progressing?' asked Mrs. Hymerson, beaming. 'I've heard a lot about your books. They happen around here. Two of them, you've written, haven't you?'

Three had been published, Richard told her. 'Things are going well enough that I'm taking a holiday.' He chuckled. 'Keeping in the office, where most of my work with the advertising agency is done, gets pretty tiresome, especially at this season of the year.'

'Get you fellows out in the hay-field,' was Hymerson's jocular amenity. 'Find out it was hot enough there, too.'

The young man did not reply to this, reflecting almost with dismay that he had forgotten the terms of intercourse in the country, by which it was necessary that he should be able to 'give as good as was sent.' Doing that, in fact, was one of the chief roads to respect—one certainly blocked to him, even if the restraint caused him to appear morose.

'Our work,' he proceeded, 'is interesting; so we are told by people who don't know it. And certainly it has a fascination. It's fun to know that you are writing for a million readers, from the start.' This was a rough effort at approximation to which he felt that a response could be sought. Nothing tried him more than talking of his good work, his creative books, to curious or indifferent people, and he valued the topic of advertising in proportion to the lack of immediacy it had for him. From the time of his rural upbringing he retained a sense that no one but other craftsmen really could be concerned in such matters.

He listened idly to the exclamations of his hostess and the dubious questions of Carson Hymerson really in swelling restiveness. He fancied that the shadow of the cross-piece of the screen-door crept across the kitchen floor with a surreptitious spurt. The evening would be upon him.

The meal was finished, and he had relished the potatoes fried in butter, the cold boiled pork, home-made bread, and rhubarb sauce. Carson Hymerson was in no haste now to rise, but drank a third cup of tea. At a remark upon the return of Bill Burnstile with a family, he sucked his lips and said complacently:

'Yes, rolling stone, Bill. Expect he'll be pulling out of here, even, one of these times, eh? Yes, he did collect a family, all right. Guess his woman's a pretty fair woman to help get along too, or he wouldn't be able to make a payment on a place like he has.' He made the pronouncement with an unwavering, as it were a significant gaze of the little blue eyes in the direction of his wife, and Richard Milne turned to her. He would have to look up Bill while he was here.

'All the old neighbours,' she assented, while Carson rapidly demanded how long he intended to stay. 'Most of them are here yet. Not many have moved away.'

'A few days, perhaps longer,' Richard said, with an assumption of certainty surprising to himself, adding, 'I think I'll take a stroll down the road this evening.'

Carson seemed to be replying to his wife. 'Good riddance if some would get out, let their land be farmed right.' A thought seemed to strike him. 'You wouldn't be going to Lethen's to-night, would you?'

'Yes,' agreed Richard Milne candidly. 'I'll probably call there.' He paid no more attention to the anxious, almost signalling look of the woman than Carson Hymerson himself did. The latter seemed to regard him with stupefaction, which merged into an awkward grin of mocking badinage.

'Oh, I see! There's attraction over there, come to think of it. Not that I blame you. Now that I remember, you did use to kind of shine around Ada when you was a young gaffer. That's all right!'

They had risen from the table by this time, and a slow-mounting annoyance approaching anger had modified Richard Milne's haste to get away. 'That's pleasant,' he asserted. He secured his hat and went outside, to the accompaniment of the housewife's expressed wish that he remember her to Mrs. Lethen; but Carson was still beside him, hands comfortably stuck in deep overall pockets.

'Kind of looks as though I wasn't going to have you help me see to them calves after all, eh? Unless you go that way through the fields with me. Maybe I'll see you over there, anyway. Ha! Ha! But, of course, you wouldn't be coming away with me yet so early. Well, I'll see the door's left unlocked for you.'

Milne thanked him with a grave smile, as one willing to accept all this as well-intentioned jocosity, and hurried down the lane to the road. His chief feeling was one of haste.

'Well, don't go 'way mad, looks like it was going to freeze, don't it,' was the parting sally, which his mind repeated to his hurried steps down the dry road.