Читать книгу The Road South - Roderick Stuart Kennedy - Страница 8

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Joan Page helped Brian down the narrow stairs with easy confidence in her strength. It was satisfying to feel his hand heavy on her shoulder, to brace herself to exactly the right resistance at each step, to know that he relied on her enough not to spare her.

If her shoulder had been all he needed, it would have been easy; but he wanted to talk to her! The misunderstanding about going to bed had impressed on her the immensity of her ignorance. She had always known that there were blanks in her social experience, but they had never troubled her before. Her dealings with other men and women were too rare. Her life was limited to the care of the house and an exacting father. In Summer the companionably lonely sea welcomed her for hours of effortful swimming, or quiet dreaming by its shore; in Winter the reading of many books, and the contemplative examination of their people, problems, and places, brought far horizons close to her; and in Summer and Winter there were the empty, wind-swept downs. These brought her all the freedom and scope she ever needed.

Seldom lonely or self-conscious, she carried on the duty left her by her mother, in contentment. She did not look far beyond the immediate present because the future depended on her father's actions, not on hers.

But now the responsibility for pleasing this strange Canadian was hers alone. Her father would not help her. She could not avoid it, and she did not want to. Her desire was strong and deep to be triumphantly successful in this, her first opportunity to give personal, intimate help to one of her country's soldiers. She ought to be as competent in companionship as she was in helping him down stairs.

Her feelings showed in the reserved eagerness of her eyes, as she sat down close to him in the parlour. She had drawn back one of the sliding doors into the dining-room, but only a little way, for although her father did little with his books and papers, and was oblivious to her movements, unusual distractions sometimes made him angry.

If only she knew how to start! The Canadian had been funny about not saying exactly what he wanted, before; or perhaps it had only been the natural thing; perhaps he had thought that she was funny! The sense of lostness oppressed her. She had lived in two strictly separated worlds. In one of them she was serious, reserved, practical,—but a stranger, dealing competently with all the phantom details connected with her father, the village, the neighbours. In the other, her real self—free, frank, gay—lived among significant realities. Here her thoughts and books, and the windy downs and foaming waves, and Joan Page were real. The two worlds often overlapped, but had never mingled until now.

In either of these worlds she could have done something, but hesitating in the void between them she was tongue-tied,—and she did so desperately want to make him pleased and happy. Her imagination wove a tender pattern round him, in which her helpless silence was an ugly flaw. He had come thousands of miles to the war. Chance had brought him here for a few hours—dependent upon her for everything. Tomorrow he would pass on, perhaps to die. This might be the last home he would ever enter. She might be the last woman of his own race with whom he would sit quietly and talk. His friends were outside somewhere, enjoying themselves; he was in here, alone,—for he might just as well have gone to bed for all the use she was!

"It's awfully good of you to put up with me like this," he volunteered at last, when the silence was becoming almost painful.

She felt the lameness of the remark, and the effort it had needed, but it was something that he had spoken. It was as if he had scrambled out of one of the worlds into the emptiness with her. But they couldn't go on like that, it would be awful! With a desperate effort she gained a foothold in her familiar world of frankness and reality. "Mr. Mackell," she said earnestly, ignoring his remark, "please help me to make you enjoy yourself. I know it sounds silly, but I do so terribly want to please you for the short time you're here, and I don't know how. We live so much alone. Talk to me as if you were with your friends, or at home,—whatever will please you most, that's what I want."

"But I don't need pleasing, Miss Page, honestly I don't. You shouldn't feel that way. It's I who should be trying to please you—after being dumped on you this way. What'll please me most is simply to feel that you're pleased to have me, or pretending well enough to fool me!" he added with a propitiating grin.

Joan's spirit unfolded to the clumsy words. She understood perfectly the state of mind which they implied. To a listener their explanations might have seemed to be going round in a circle, but actually they had bridged the gap between two spheres. They stood side by side now, in the same real, and calculable world.

To him the change meant simply a sudden pleasant transition from constraint to ease. To her, whose worlds were so distinct, there was a conscious quickening of the khaki figure into a friendly reality, with hopes and fears and thoughts like her own, and a personality to whom her own thoughts would be as real.

It was the same transformation which she experienced when, after chatting to Polly Dyer at the post office, she crossed the road to the footpath winding up the green downs to the top of Caster Head.

She welcomed this first stranger to pass the bounds of her own private land, with the only greeting which seemed completely expressive of her feelings,—a frank smile. Its radiant loveliness was as little understood by her as the complexities which had caused it. She knew that she was pretty, but she had no valid standards of comparison. She did not really understand that she was beautiful. Nor was she in the least conscious of the sudden, breathtaking enhancement of every loveliness when a smile—a real smile springing from her heart—blossomed in her eyes and lips.

She settled forward comfortably, her elbows on the little table and her chin on her cupped palms, wondering why he stared with such wide-open eyes. "I don't have to pretend that I'm pleased to have you," she assured him. "I wasn't certain at first, but now that I know that you are so easy to please—of course I'm glad."

"Well—not so easy to please as all that! That wouldn't be such a hot compliment to you—and your father, would it? But I certainly owe the Padre something for putting me here of all places!

"Think of the hundreds of nights I've spent in wooden huts—and mostly raining outside. It gets pretty hard to work up any exhilaration out of letting old Sergeant Brunt loot my pay at Crown and Anchor, I can tell you, or even out of drowning my sorrows in sausages and mashed in the gay lights of a Salvation Army Hut! Not that I'd want to be ungrateful to my old pals, soss and em," he added feelingly, "but you can understand how grand this is in comparison."

She nodded, amused at the affectionate way he had spoken of sausages and mashed, but more interested in the comparison between his lot and hers. "But don't you see," she explained, "that it's even more of a change for me to have you here? I don't mean that I have any hardships like you, but it's just the—routine." She paused, not finding the exact words to express herself. "I mean—well—look!" She turned her eyes to the empty seat in the dining-room across the table from her father, and allowed her left hand to sink away from her chin until it pointed at the work-basket and book. Then when he had turned round again, she explained. "You see? Every evening; much longer than you've been in the army. Reading a lot and sewing a little. I like it, but having somebody interesting from outside that I can really talk to—I mean somebody that isn't just—just like sewing, is—nice."

He seemed surprised. "But surely you must have lots of visitors—friends, neighbours, and so on? You can't sit alone at that table every night!"

He spoke with such assured and smiling certainty that she wondered if she and her father were more different from other people than she had realized. Her reading had shown her that they were peculiar, of course, but it had also shown how many kinds of unusual people the world contained, even if Caster End had none. Probably people were more sociable in Canada.

Nevertheless there was a touch of wistfulness and doubt in her voice when she answered. "But that is just what I do do, Mr. Mackell, though you don't seem to believe it.

"And do you know that you are the only person who has stayed with us for a night since my mother died,—almost a year before we left Smettock? We've been here six years, so that makes seven altogether. Father doesn't like visitors,—and I don't think I do, either." She sat thoughtfully trying to analyse how she would have felt if anyone had come to stay with them, and it struck her now as odd that there had been no one. It emphasized their loneliness, but it did not make her regret it.

"No," she said slowly, "I wouldn't have liked people staying here, I'm sure. It would have been hard."

Her father was uneasy about something. He tapped on the table and glanced at her. She rose quickly, smiling at Brian as she passed. "No, I don't mean that—I meant here," she explained, and pointed to her head.

Mr. Page was sitting, as always, in the old wing-topped armchair, beside the dining-room table, his books on his right, the fireplace and a small stand on his left. On the stand were an empty decanter, a glass, and a jug of water. They had stood beside his armchair almost as long as she could remember. But in her mother's lifetime the decanter had never been more than a third full. Every morning her mother had unlocked a particular pantry cupboard and with her own hands filled it to the exact level. Her father had always emptied it by the time he went to bed, but he had never asked that it be refilled, and as far as Joan knew the question had never been raised between them.

In spite of her ignorance of many social amenities, Joan was profoundly educated,—she was even wise in such lessons as experience and reading could teach. She had understood, even before she could have explained it, what lay behind that strict routine of her mother's. She had even apprehended that the only reason why the question had never been raised was because there was a question.

Gradually she had learnt that her father's reticence on that and many other matters had been abnormal and was growing more so. By ignoring a fact he could almost persuade himself that it did not exist, or at least attain the mental attitude appropriate to its non-existence. And he thought, or hoped—the two processes were indistinguishable now—that if he could feel as though an unpleasantness did not exist, others must feel the same.

And the tearing down of such illusions he resented far more bitterly than the unpleasantness which they veiled, and it was because of that undue, unfairly directed bitterness that Joan knew his state to be not a genuine mental blindness, but a deliberate closing of the eyes.

Until a few years ago the attitude had served him. But facts accumulate, even though they are ignored. When the gently protecting hand of his wife was withdrawn, they overwhelmed him,—quietly, decently, and without scandal, but finally.

His parish of Smettock, at first an easy rural cure, had become little more than a suburb of an encroaching city; his parishioners, shopkeepers, clerks, and factory workers, rather than farmers. Such parishioners have tested the fibre of far wiser priests than the Reverend Hilary Page. They made difficulties, raised questions, laughed at tradition, ignored authority. Chapels sprang up to give those who remained religious something which Mr. Page neither could nor would give.

The dwindling of his congregation hardened his determination to give them more and more of what kept them away. His piety grew more loftily austere—but to Mr. Page piety signified merely a fanatical devotion to the letter—to all the tenuous, historical and theological minutiae of the Church of England Liturgy.

More of that Liturgy was his answer to obduracy. The number of services increased as the pews emptied, until he was performing from ten to fifteen services a week,—and practically always, except on Sundays, without a single listener.

Almost suddenly there came a time when the atmosphere surrounding the strange, obstinate priest and his empty church underwent a change. The fantastic services began to draw tiny congregations. Sometimes a dozen would be seated far at the back, women chiefly, and from the city, people who whispered to each other during the service and hurried out quickly when it was finished.

They had come for the thrill, just as they would have gone to a murder trial. Mr. Page's defiant benediction brought them the same exciting shudder as the judge's sentence of death.

He had become a "show."

The Bishop intervened. There were conferences and persuasion. Mr. Page was adamant. The Law was the Law, and he abided by its Letter. A small annuity was arranged. Mr. Page "resigned".

As Joan came into the dining-room her father glanced up, then dropped his eyes to his book. His left hand went out to the stand beside him and motioned the decanter an inch towards her. The silence had never been broken: the illusion was rigidly maintained. She took the decanter, went back to the kitchen, and refilled it,—to the top. Mrs. Page's control had died with her. Joan had once tried to re-establish the system of allowance, but it had resulted in such an outbreak—although the offence was never specified—that she had submitted. Duty forced her to make the trial, but reason told her that it must fail.

She guessed that the little scene might have surprised their guest, but she did not allude to it. It was too definitely part of the other world to be worth talking about when she had passed the dividing door again.

She sat down in exactly the same position as before, with her chin on her hands. "Mr. Mackell," she began, "I wish you would tell me about your home in Canada,—I mean the difference between there and England. What I've read seems so contradictory, the terrible winters and yet the peach orchards, and the talk about your joining with the United States and yet the Canadian army coming over to fight for us. I would so like to get it—sort of straightened out, so that I could see a real picture."

"That's a big order," Brian laughed. "Canada's a big place—pretty hard to get all in one picture—unless you're a C.P.R. publicity agent!"

"Well, you try!—please, Mr. Mackell."

He reddened and hesitated, and she wondered if she had asked something embarrassing.

"Sure, I'll try," he said at last. "Anything you say goes. But I wish—my name's Brian, and 'Mr. Mackell' sounds so darned stiff! I'm 'Mac' in the army, and 'Brian' at home, but 'Mr. Mackell' sounds like somebody I've never met!"

He leaned forward persuasively. "Be a sport. Miss Page! And Joan is the prettiest name I know; it would be a shame to waste it!"

She studied him attentively. It had sounded pretty when he said it. She wondered if she ought to be offended. She would have disliked it if Bert Summers, or even Mr. Russell had asked her that, but this boy was so different, so natural and straightforward about it. Doing what he asked would be pleasant, but she would wait a minute, he was so engaging with the humble, apologetic look in his blue eyes.

"I didn't mean to be fresh," he said uneasily, still blushing under her scrutiny. "I thought . . . just for one evening,—and you'll never even see me again."

"I wish you were staying longer," she said wistfully, realizing for the first time since she had begun to like him that he would be gone in a few hours. It would be foolish and wrong to allow anything to dull their enjoyment of this one evening,—yet she was discomforting him by letting him think he had offended her!

She took her hands from her chin and put them down in front of her, palms flat on the table, fingers interlocked, and smiled the kindest smile she could. "You look nice when you're blushing—Brian!" she declared candidly. "I'm afraid I was enjoying seeing you get all confused! I'm sorry. Of course I'll call you Brian, but you don't look much like Brian de Bois Guilbert, and he's the only person I remember with that name."

He picked up the allusion quickly, evidently much relieved. "I know; we read Ivanhoe at school, and the kids used to razz me. My hair was terribly sissy looking,—yellow and curly, you know, and I used to hope I'd grow up into one of those swarthy, black-browed Bois Guilbert fellows,—but I didn't!

"Have you read all those?" He pointed to the row of Walter Scott in the bookcase.

"Most of the Scott's, but some are dull. I haven't read the theology, and that's what all the rest of the books are. Somehow that set of Scott's matches the theology, and nothing else. All my own books are upstairs,—lots of them. I made the shelves myself."

"You must be very learned! I don't mean making shelves! Are all your books as solid looking as these?"

She laughed. "Just the opposite. They look more like a flower garden than a church. I've been awfully lucky about books, because I have so much time for reading, and it would be difficult to get them if Miss Brador wasn't so nice about them."

"Do you share, or what?"

"Oh no, I couldn't afford to buy books like that. Mr. Russell has a little library for his Sunday school, and Lady Brador passes all her books on there when she's done with them, but Miss Brador gives me any of them that I want,—to keep. You see, hardly anyone uses the library much, and they get a box of books from London every week at the Hall. Lady Brador reads them all very fast, and forgets them, Miss Brador says, but doesn't care for the servants to read them—some of them anyhow—although she seems to feel they'll be all right for the Sunday school! I think that's funny."

"I should say! They sound like a dangerous collection!"

Joan wondered if she had given the wrong impression. "I didn't mean that there was anything wrong about them; most of them are very moral—I think. But the Bradors like things to go along smoothly,—it's hard to explain, but you'd understand if you lived in England,—they don't like conventions being broken, not so much because they're right or wrong, but because—well, I suppose they don't know where it would stop, and things would get mixed, and they want them to stay as they are."

She wished she was surer of exactly what she meant. Even now she hadn't explained what was in her mind. "It wasn't exactly conventions that I was thinking of, it was more the politics—the poor and the rich, and Socialism, and things like that. You know how authors like Wells and Shaw poke fun at people like the Bradors and make you want to change things. The Bradors would be uncomfortable if their servants and the village people felt like that, though I don't think Miss Brador would mind."

"I guess you and she are pretty good friends, aren't you? There can't be many girls to mix with in such a small place."

"Oh no! She is very nice, and she's kind about the books, but—." She wondered if he could understand, or were Canadians like Americans, with everybody on the same level as everybody else? "—but you know, in a village like this, there is quite a gap between the Bradors and us. It isn't snobbish, it's just the way things are, and I expect we'd be uncomfortable if they were different.

"Suppose I were being asked to dinner at the Hall all the time; where should I get the clothes? And how could we afford to entertain them? And what would we talk about, when we don't hunt or shoot or travel or spend the season in town, or do any of the things they do? It would be silly!"

She saw that her father was getting ready to go to bed. It must be eleven. He turned the lamp down to a slip of flame, put his book under his arm, and went out to light his candle. The presence of a guest had not changed his silent routine.

He swayed a little as he started upstairs. She felt a little troubled; he had been drinking more than usual since his interview with Mr. Russell a few days ago. Hitherto there had never been anything external to show he drank at all,—unless it were increasing self-absorption. She was sure that nobody in the village suspected. They only thought of him as cantankerous and absent-minded and immersed in some tremendously important book he was writing. She had fostered that idea, and it had not been too far from the truth when they first came to Caster End. Only she could know that what had once been a state of deep if somewhat rambling thought, was now almost the very negation of thought,—a perpetual musing which avoided the exertion of real thought like the plague.

A slight movement of Brian's, as if he were going to rise, reminded her that her father's ways might seem strange to him. "Don't bother about Father," she said. "He doesn't expect to say good-night. He's too absorbed to remember us just now. He isn't very well, and Mr. Russell was here the other day asking him to take over the parish duties for a time, if the Bishop agreed, and I think it's worrying him."

"What's the matter with Mr. Russell doing his own duties?" Brian asked.

His tone was critical. She wondered why. She would have liked to study his face again as she had been doing during most of their talk, but now that the dining-room lamp was turned down, the parlour was almost dark.

"Mr. Russell feels that he is not doing his bit here, I think. He wants to go to the front as a chaplain. He has an uncle or somebody at the War Office, and it can all be arranged, but the Bishop insists that he find somebody to take over the parish while he's away. That's what Mr. Russell told us, but I have an idea the Bishop isn't very anxious that he should go, and Mr. Russell wants to—tremendously."

"The Bishop's right,—the boys have got enough troubles in France already! And say, I wonder if he notified anybody about me being here? I don't know when we start tomorrow, or anything. If it's early, and nobody knocks me up, I might get left,—I'd get one happy strafing then!"

Joan considered the point soberly. "I'll get up early; then if there is any parade, I'll hear it. Would they be so very hard on you were you left behind?"

"You don't get up early for me, Joan! Not a chance! I should worry if they're mad,—it's somebody else's responsibility anyway, getting me my orders; that's one beauty of the army. I'd chance a heavy strafe anyhow—"

He did not finish the sentence. Joan smiled at him and rose to help him up. "Thank you," she said, "but I don't want you to get into trouble. I always wake early."