Читать книгу Petticoat Loose - Rita - Страница 10

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To-night, the half-door of the caravan was open as Brianna approached. She had parted from her escort at the railings, and then run with fleet steps the remaining distance. The lamp was lit, and she could see into the interior. Sally Dunne was leaning over the door, and two voices in angry colloquy reached her ears.

"The like of your impudence, you good-for-nothing, play-acting, ranting, melodramatic ruffian! Leading my niece astray, and cockering her up with notions of independence! I'll have the law of you, see if I don't. Guess things is come to a pretty pass when after bringing up and supporting the girl like as if she was my own child, I'm to see her turn and rend the hand that's fed her, owing to your marplotting. And where is she now? That's what I want to know. I'll put a stop to this gallervanting, as sure as I'm a living woman."

"I'm here, aunt," said Brianna, quietly.

"Oh, indeed; are you?" returned that lady with irate sarcasm. "And what have you to say for yourself? That's what I want to know. You come in straight along this minute, and I'll have it out with you."

"If you dare lay a finger on her, or ill-use her as you've done before in your drunken tantrums, I'll smash your old caravan into firewood, and you along with it, you old harridan," muttered Mickey Croom. "The girl's fit for something better than your tyranny, and she's going to have it, too. Don't you talk about claims in my hearing. I'll have something to tell the magistrates if you ever do bring it into court. You've no proof she is your niece, if it comes to proof. My word's as good as your's, and I'll swear she's mine."

"What!" shrieked Sally Dunne.

"Oh, you needn't yell and be disturbing all your neighbours. If it's going to be a fight I warn you my weapons are ready. Don't you be a fool, Sally Dunne. Why, the girl is a gold mine if you only look at it properly. She'll make hundreds of pounds on the stage. You go up and see the manager to-morrow and hear what he says about her."

Sally Dunne drew back, and the anger died out of her face. She was the last woman to quarrel with her bread and butter, and Mickey's words impressed her greatly. Meanwhile, Brianna quietly ascended the steps, and pushed open the little half-door.

"Come, aunt," she said, "don't let us quarrel. If you had been here I'd have told you; but you weren't, and I had to go without your leave. And I'm going to stick to it. I can act, and I mean to act. I've been offered a place in the company, and payment. It's only £1 a week, but it'll keep me, and you've always been saying I was an expense and a trouble, so you ought to be glad to get rid of both."

"A pound a week, and for acting! You——. Sakes alive, what next!"

Sally positively gasped. She sank back on the bed and surveyed her niece with an expression in which incredulity and amazement were comically mingled.

Brianna made no answer. She closed the door of the caravan, drew the curtain, and then began to remove her hat and dress.

Sally sat there staring and muttering. The variety and novelty of her emotions rendered speech difficult. She launched forth into prophecies and warnings, at which Brianna laughed. Pitfalls and snares had no meaning for her. Her faith in the future was illimitable. To-night all was rose-coloured, beautiful as a dream. It was only when a certain expression of her aunt's pierced the veil of excited fancies that a cold chill touched her heart and set an old wound throbbing.

She had forgotten Pat. Pat, who lay dead in the city beyond. Pat, who had been the first love of her heart. Pat, who had brought into her starved and lonely life all the colour and vitality of his own. She stood quite still, and her face grew white. There was no life or lustre in her tearless eyes.

To-night she had told herself she would go and see him, lay a flower on his pulseless heart, gaze for the last time at the handsome face whose last glance and smile on earth had been hers. To-night; and she had forgotten him entirely. Had flung herself heart and soul into a new excitement, listened to the honeyed praises and flattering homage of new friends, planned out life for herself on a new scale.

A sense of heartlessness and shame swept over her, but yet nothing seemed to waken the old throbbing warmth in her heart. Pat was dead. Her brief love-dream had ended. For the future she would live for fame, for glory, for the splendours of that new, strange, enchanting life on whose threshold she stood waiting.

* * * * * *

Sally Dunne grew weary of talking at last. She yawned, kicked off her boots, made her toilet for the night, and got into bed. Slowly and silently the girl followed. She could not sleep. She only lay there staring at the space of moonlight through the little window, going over her past life with all its sordid squalor and misery, and wondering about her future.

How swiftly one event had followed another. How important these days had been to her. She remembered how reluctantly she had come to Cork. How hard Pat had found it to persuade her to watch him in that fatal race which was to have been a glorious triumph, and had held instead a tragedy so awful. And now the desire of her heart was given her. Without struggle or effort on her part Fate had laid this chance at her feet. Of drawbacks and sufferings, of toil and hardship, enmity and rivalry she never thought. To-night had won for her a victory so easy that she could not believe any future might come in which she would have to face failure, or disapprobation from less kindly critics.

All the glamour and glory of that life which from the first days of "sock and buskin" has possessed a charm irresistible for its followers, shone about the path of this untutored girl. She was lifted into a new world, and there her imagination and her hopes held revel, during which time Sally Dunne snored and grunted the long hours through, and vented in dreams the wrath of her honest soul.

With dawn the girl fell asleep, wearied with thought and exhausted by so many varied emotions. It was broad daylight when she awoke. For a moment or two she lay there passive, trying to collect her thoughts, to piece together the incidents that had marked a bygone day and night. Then a thrill of delight ran through her. She remembered all. She sprang up and tossed back the thick bright waves of hair from her brow, and, for the first time in her life, felt that life was to be lived—was to become a thing of action and struggle, full to the brim with energy and endeavour, offering wondrous prizes and stimulating hope into active existence at last. It was glorious. It made the blood rush like quicksilver through her veins. It set every pulse leaping and throbbing. It set imagination afire with ineffable aspirations.

The narrow boundary of the caravan seemed like a prison. She opened the upper half of the door, and the cool, soft air, damp with transient showers, stole in like a whispered welcome. Afar off the hills held passing rain-shadows, but above this caravanserai of life and hubub all was blue and bright and golden. The girl drank in the fragrance and sunlight with thirsting breath. Then, with swift fingers, she dressed herself, and stole out to the arms of Nature for the consolation and sympathy she had never found in humanity.

Under the trees all was still and peaceful. The rhythmical flow of the river, the movement of a passing boat, the beat of a paddle-wheel carrying a sea-bound freight, alone swelled the harmony without disturbing it. How beautiful seemed life, how beautiful this world around. She snatched off her hat and lifted her face to the kiss of the sweet air, the caress of the glad warm sunlight. Pity it is that kiss or caress less pure should ever touch the lips or brow of youth.

Her fleet feet broke into a run. She flew along the deserted Marina as a laywing skims the ground. Nothing mattered, nothing troubled her. It was supreme joy just to live and to be. Her swift flight came to a sudden pause as she almost ran into an advancing cyclist. She stopped abruptly, her face aglow, the short uneven breaths coming through her parted lips in little panting gasps.

The man swung himself off his "wheel," and stood facing her. She saw he was the strange-looking individual who had been one of the supper-party the previous night.

"Well met," he said, as he lifted his cap. "You are out early. Did you dream of last night's triumph, or are you meditating on the future?"

She drew back. Some of the glow and warmth faded out of her face. The mockery in his voice was to her like a foreign language, and his strange eyes had the same curious repellent effect as on the occasion of their first meeting.

"I have been to the Long Rock for a swim," he went on. "I, too, felt the need of the morning air. It is the only real elixir vitae, if we were wise enough to believe it. Nature offers us a draught of new life with every dawn, and we poor fools of civilisation close our eyes and roll up our stupid bodies in blankets, and leave the beauty and magic of the potion to the birds and beasts, and the tillers of the soil. I am glad to recognise in you a wisdom kindred to my own. To share a common virtue is almost, if not quite as gratifying, as to acknowledge a common vice. May I share your walk, or shall I disturb it?"

"I don't know," she said, bluntly. "You see, sir, you are very clever, and I am only a poor girl, brought up anyhow, and not used to people who talk as you do."

"You are one of Nature's divinities, and a pupil of the immortals," he said, in the same mock-serious tone. "Who am I to quarrel with such companionship? In the world behind us I can have as much artificiality as I desire, as much sport with the puppets of Fashion as my leisure or inclination demand. But is is not every day that one finds a coin fresh from Nature's mint among the hanselled pieces the world passes to and fro. I should like to hold that coin a little while before it is sent out for circulation."

He was strolling beside her, wheeling his bicycle with easy grace with one hand, and glancing at her puzzled face from time to time as the light words fell from his lips. What an interesting study she was! How utterly natural and simple and unspoilt, and yet what gifts of genius were locked away in that unopened casket of her soul.

"You act again to-night, do you not?" he asked presently.

"I? Oh, yes. They offered me the part for the rest of the tour, you know."

"For once," he said satirically, "the natural obtuseness of a theatrical manager has found its exception to the rule. They are making a good bargain, I have no doubt. But everything must have a beginning. Even this great glorious world was once only an atom whirling in clouds of chaos, if we are to believe scientific explanation. At present, my child of genius, you are an atom, and chaos is represented by the obstacles and rivalries of a glorious and most unvirtuous profession. Poor atom! How will it emerge, I wonder? Transformed, no doubt. Are your ambitions speakable as yet, or do they lie awaiting a birth-struggle in that sleep-bound nature of yours? For ignorance is the sleep of youth, and you are very young, sweet Jessica."

She flushed to her very temples. His mocking voice, his strange glances troubled and perplexed her. No one had over spoken to her as this man spoke! or looked at her with eyes that seemed to read her very soul.

"I know I am young," she said at last. "But yet I have never felt young. The poor have no playtime. From the moment I could run alone I have had to work."

"Your playtime will come," he answered. "And then you can look on while others work for you. Believe me, that is the height of physical enjoyment. The butterfly has laughed at the ant from the days of Eden onwards. Not that you will ever be a butterfly." And again his strange glance plunged into her earnest eyes. "No, you will want to live, and feel, and enjoy, and triumph, and all these things you will do. Let us sit down on this seat and talk. The day is ours and Nature's. Let us enjoy it. We can only be spendthrifts of leisure when we are young. I was young once, Jessica. It was long ago, centuries, I think. You make me remember and regret it—all in one."

"Why do you call me that?" she asked, colouring shyly, as she took the seat he indicated.

"Because you are 'Jessica' to me. That was my introduction to you. You will never know what that first glimpse of you meant. The embodiment of a creation, a vision, a living poem, a sudden human ecstasy. For you were genius as I have pictured it. A fresh, pure, untrammelled soul spreading its wings to the ether of existence as a bird in its fight heavenwards. I wish you could remain as you are. But that is impossible. It is the one thing that spoils all life—the passing of the moment. For no other can be quite the same. If we try to make it the same we only succeed in a poor imitation, and imitation is insincere and ineffective, No, all things, however beautiful and divine, are ruled by the law of change. Do you understand? Yes, your soul is comprehensive, though it lacks expression yet."

"I think I understand," she said. "But I find it hard to speak."

"That is what makes you such a divine listener. Soul and body are like two antagonisms chained together, for ever at warfare, and for ever apart. When speech enters one channel the other is closed. I prefer to speak to you through the channel that is perforce dumb. It cannot answer. I master it: I hold it. It is mine. There will be plenty of others to force that other channel, and it will be responsive, and learn, too, all the sex's arts of subterfuge and fence. Yes, Jessica, that, too, will be your lot, and so I have spoken to you first, and forget you cannot. For that with which you have listened is the spirit in touch with mine. Do you hear me? Are you listening? To the world at large, to those fishermen yonder, we are only two human personalities. A man and a woman. The prose of the situation embraces your sailor hat and my modern machine yonder. But the poetry and the spirit of it concern us alone, and you will remember and I shall remember. For centuries ago we knew and met and—loved. Yes, Jessica, we loved, and through the ages I hear a voice stealing back to me through the echoes of your own, and it tells of suffering and of joy, of division and of death! Can you hear it? You shake your head. Your eyes are full of wonder and perplexity. But you will hear it, Jessica; you will. Fate has spoken, and its voice cannot lie!"

He rose. She sat there dumb and spell-bound, and all the music and glory of the morning seemed like a dim, discordant sound. She saw him lift his cap. Then he sprang lightly to the saddle-bar, and with a wave of his hand flashed down the path and was out of sight in a moment.