Читать книгу Petticoat Loose - Rita - Страница 5

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The girl first broke the silence. She drew her hands away from the firm yet gentle clasp that half-unconsciously imprisoned them.

"I must be going home," she said. "Aunt will be angry if I'm late."

"It's my way, too," he said. "May I walk with you?"

The calm scrutiny of her eyes swept his face in wonder.

"It's not for me to say no, sir," she answered. "But you're a gentleman, and I'm only a poor girl. You must please yourself."

"That means 'yes,' to my question, Brianna," he said, lightly. "But tell me, how is it you speak so well? You have the soft southern accent, but none of the idioms and expressions of the people about here."

"Oh, that's Mickey," she said. "He has taught me a great deal. Do you know he can repeat almost any play of Shakespeare, and he made me learn them too. It's saying over those grand words, I think, that's made me speak correctly. I know all Romeo and Juliet, and part of Hamlet, and The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, and The Tempest, and Much Ado About Nothing, and ever so many bits out of other plays. Sometimes Mickey and I act them." Her eyes sparkled, her whole face changed. "I love that," she said, "and sometimes he takes me to the theatre. Then I feel as if I want to act myself. Oh, the life seems splendid. To play to all those people, to make them forget you are you, and only see what you make them see. All the sorrow and the joy and the pain of it. Ah, that would be life indeed!"

Her bosom heaved, her large eyes shone like stars through the cloud of her loosened hair. The colour of a damask rose was on her warm cheeks and parted lips. The young man looked at her with something of wonder. Then a thought came to him and impulsively he spoke out on the strength of it.

"If you really wish to go on the stage, it could be easily managed," he said.

She stopped abruptly, and looked at him as if doubting what she had heard.

"Wish it! Of course I wish it. But Mickey says it's awfully hard. One has so much to learn, and for years and years you are kept back, and only allowed a line or two to speak, and you can't get the parts you feel you can act, and no manager cares to put on a play of Shakespere unless a big star is coming out in it."

"Mickey isn't far wrong," said Max Lorrimer, "and certainly if tragedy is your line, you'll have a hard tussle to get to the front. The public taste has altered since the days of Siddons, Helen Faucit, Kemble, Kean, Vestris, Macready—all that galaxy of genius which makes theatrical history now. People like comedy, burlesque, opéra-bouffe. Can you sing at all?"

"Oh, yes," she said, tranquilly. "I have a voice. But, of course, it's not like the singing one hears at concerts. I've been to them, too. Mickey took me."

"Mickey seems to have stood your friend and counsellor in most ways."

"Yes," she said, simply. "He has been very good. And he has had such a hard life himself. Oh, cruel! People think because he's deformed that they can abuse and despise him. But if they only knew him——"

She broke off abruptly.

"It's hard, isn't it?" she went on presently. "Hard to be ugly and ill-favoured, and yet have a beautiful soul that wants to live and be loved, and do great things."

"Yes," agreed the young man. "It must be very hard. And is Mickey like that?"

"He is, indeed. But I suppose no one knows him as I do. Most people think he's surly and disagreeable—and then he does drink sometimes. He's awful then. Like a raging lunatic. And Aunt Sal and he quarrel dreadfully, and I get frightened."

"What a life for you, Brianna."

"Oh! I don't mind it so very much. There's the going about, and one sees so many people and places, and Aunt is kind in her way, and after all it's better than the life I had in Cork before father and mother died, and I do get food, and no one beats me now."

His heart gave a sudden, quick throb.

"Beats you! I should hope not. Who'd dare?"

"Oh! Aunt often threatens it," she said, simply. "But Mickey won't allow that. Besides, I'm big and strong now. I can take care of myself."

He looked at the splendid young form, the proudly-balanced head, the firm, lithe grace of movement, the flash and brilliance of the beautiful eyes. Nature had been prodigal of gifts, yet Fate had frowned on circumstances that might have doubled their value. A sense of pity and helplessness came over him as he walked beside her. A man can do so little after all for a woman, and that little is always liable to misconstruction, if the woman is poor and friendless, and beautiful, and young.

"Tell me more," he entreated. "I like to hear you speak. I wish I could help you. I think I might, if you would let me. But you would have to give up this wandering life. To come over to my country. I suppose you would never do that?"

She looked at him doubtfully.

"Do you mean I might earn my living over there, be independent? Oh, it would be grand. But then I'm so ignorant. I know so little. I'm afraid I'm only fit for the life you know of. You'll think so yourself when you compare me with others."

He checked some words of recklessness, and for some moments they walked on in silence.

"I'm afraid it's very late," said Brianna, suddenly. "I hope Aunt won't have gone to bed and locked up the caravan. She's very queer in her temper sometimes."

"But surely she wouldn't lock you out?" exclaimed the Englishman. "That would be disgraceful."

She laughed somewhat constrainedly.

"Oh, Aunt Sal doesn't pick and choose when her temper's up."

"Well, you'll be out of breath long before you get within speaking distance," laughed the young man as he quickened his pace to keep up with her hurrying footsteps.

The girl seemed anxious and nervous now. A feeling of constraint crept between them. It struck her for the first time that betwixt her life and his there was a "great gulf fixed." She wondered at the ease and familiarity with which she had treated him. He was a gentleman, and she only a poor working-girl. She knew nothing of this world, and he would shrink with disgust from hers, did he but know it as she knew it.

If her soul had found wings and longed to soar beyond the sordid cares and common round of her daily life, yet none the less had that life its claims and duties and exactions. To cut herself adrift from them was a harder task than he imagined. Her heart was warm and loving, and full of generous impulse, but she had no opportunity of expending its powers save in that brief love-dream whose birth and death a month might date and embrace. It was love idealised and made beautiful on her side. She had yet to learn how little value it had held for her lover. She was pure and noble herself, and nothing less appealed to her. In the time before her she would perhaps suffer for that ideal, see it dethroned, abased; but as yet she believed in it and was ready to sacrifice all for it.

"I'm afraid you're coming far out of your way, sir," she said at last to her companion, as the trees of the Marina came into sight.

"Oh, no!" he said, lightly. "I can get to the Imperial this way, and indeed it's pleasanter than the Blackrock road. If my jarvey hadn't played me false I'd have been driving home. As it was, I felt an irresistible inclination to interview the Castle in the moonlight, and so found—you."

"It's good of you to make no favour of your company," she said, earnestly. "But, indeed, I feel it an honour. Maybe I should not have walked with you. I haven't my hat, and 'tis only working girls and such-like that wear shawls now."

"They are very picturesque," he said, "and, if I may say so, suit the wearers as a rule far better than hats."

"Pat liked me in a hat," she said, with sudden quivering lips.

"No doubt," he said, shortly. It was hard to be met with such an argument in defence of a taste that was strictly opposed to the picturesque. "But then I'm not Pat, so you must excuse my bad taste."

Something in his voice and manner hurt her. She was silent, and a dim uncomfortable feeling stole over her previous content. She paused under the trees. A pathway to the left ran under a sort of tunnel, and by it she could reach the caravan.

"My way's there, sir," she said, pointing in its direction. "And thank you kindly for your company."

He laughed softly.

"Oh, Brianna!" he said. "Has the blight of conventionality touched even you? Well, good-night, child. I shall see you to-morrow, perhaps; somewhere about the course, eh?"

"I don't know," she said. "It seems to me I shall never want to look at a race again."

"I—I beg your pardon, I forgot," he said, with quick compunction. "Well, good-bye for to-night. We shall meet again if Fate wills. Do you believe in Fate, child? I do."

A quick pressure of the hand and then he had turned and left her, walking city-wards along the broad avenue, while the moon gleamed through the trees, and the lights of the town were like beacons in the beckoning distance.

Brianna threaded her way swiftly through the motley crowd of vehicles and stands, and travelling shows that the Races had attracted to a temporary resting place. As she neared the spot where her aunt's caravan stood she saw it was all in darkness. Sitting on the bottom step of the vehicle was the hunchback. He rose as he saw her.

"So, it's you at last," he said, gruffly. "Do you know how late it is? Where have you been?"

"Down to the Castle," she answered wearily. "Where's Aunt Sal?"

"Gone to bed long ago," he said. "She was in a fine rage, too. Said she'd stop your gallivanting tricks for good and all. Has locked the door, too. Had taken a little drop; that accounts for it. What'll you do to-night?"

The girl shrugged her shapely shoulders.

"Sit out here," she said, coolly. "It won't harm me. I've got my shawl."

"Nonsense," he answered. "You must go into the studio. These mists and dews aren't good for you. You'll be quite safe. Leave Tim outside."

Tim was one of the ragged Irish terriers, who were the guardians of the caravan.

"You're very good, Mickey," said the girl, gratefully. "But what will you do yourself?"

"Oh, I'm all right," he said, gruffly. "It's not the first time I've slept under the stars, if need be. But I've a friend here. He'll give me a corner. Now, to bed, Brianna. It's past midnight—the witching hour when churchyards yawn, and graves give up their dead. Get thee gone, girl. Take thy share of curtained sleep. Farewell."

He waved his hand, and turned abruptly away.

Brianna slipped into the little canvas structure, called by courtesy the studio. It was littered with pails and bowls, and bottles of chemicals. A wooden truckle-bed in a corner, a straw-mattrass and an old horse rug were thrown upon it. Brianna looked at the bed, and a little shudder of distaste ran through her tired limbs. In some things she was fastidious, and through all her weariness of body and mind to-night this instinct was ungovernable.

She sat down on the edge of the rough couch, and rested her elbows on her knees, and her face on her hands. A dull stupor seized her. A belt of iron seemed about her heart, and her brain ached with thoughts impossible. She felt at war with her surroundings as if she had gazed through the chink of an open door into a new world. She longed to make further acquaintance with it, and yet she knew herself a captive, held fast by chains of obligation and of circumstance.

Gradually numbness and exhaustion stole over her. Her limbs relaxed. Unconscious of what she did, she fell back on the wretched bed and sleep took her in its warm embrace and comforted her.