Читать книгу Iron and Smoke - Sheila Kaye-Smith - Страница 19

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Timothy did not stay long at Herringdales. After all, it was not a good place to come to with his special trouble—to stay with the man whom his father had deceived if he had not swindled, in the midst of the country which was haunted by the ghosts of dead iron-masters and dead iron-works. Once he had a dream in which he heard all the thunders—the thunders of Pigstone, and Clappers and Towncreep and Hazards rumbling away in the woods; and looking out he saw the darkness all red with fiery eyes, as the furnaces roared up from the woods to the stars of a Tudor night.

So he went home to Yorkshire, and for a few days Jenny felt anxious and troubled. But soon the impression of his visit wore off. He and she had not had another private talk, at least not on business matters, and her mind eagerly turned itself from the shadow. May had come with a delicious heat, and meadows such as she had never imagined for richness and colour. The Herringdales was warm at last, and the garden sent sweet smells into the house instead of fogs.

Towards the end of the month a little girl was born to Isabel Halnaker at Old Mogador. Jenny drove over to leave cards and flowers; she would have liked to see Isabel, but did not dare ask it. The house lay wrapt in a curious spell of sunshine—it was a silent, enchanted house. Great tubs of scarlet geraniums burned like braziers before it, and the spray of the fountain waved before it like a plume. They were queer, Jenny thought to herself, these old houses of the south country. They seemed to hold so much more than their present occupants, as if everyone who had ever lived in them, lived in them still, bound by a special immortality to the house of their mortal lives and loves. But Mogador was different from the Herringdales. It was not so much a haunted as an enchanted place. In spite of the sunshine and the red geraniums one pictured it living in an eternal moonlight, its columned façade a contrast of gleaming radiance and black shadows, its fountain no longer a plume, but a silver flame—and empty—no friendly ghosts to keep the darkness of it alive.

Jenny found herself longing for a house which is nothing but a home, a place to live and eat and sleep in, a place which like a good dog knows only its masters. She would like to go back for a little while to Slapewath, to her bright little room with its high ceiling, flowery wallpaper, and view of the hills. She wondered if Humphrey would agree to her going for a short while in the Summer, even if he did not come too.

Humphrey was moody and queer that evening. He would not talk, though she tried a variety of subjects. He did not seem interested in Mrs Halnaker’s baby when she told him about her visit of the afternoon.

“I wish she and I could know each other better,” said Jenny. “I like her so much.”

“But I don’t suppose you have much in common.”

“Oh, haven’t we? I should have thought.... Well, of course she’s much cleverer than I am, but then she’s older.”

“Isabel was always exactly like what she is now, even when she was your age.”

“Did you know her when she was my age?”

“Yes, she came here in ’85—she was just nineteen then.”

“I do wish I knew her better.”

Humphrey picked up a newspaper, and Jenny sank into a disappointed silence. It struck her that he was being rather unkind tonight. He might have entered more into her feelings about Mrs Halnaker.

Then suddenly a terrible thought smote her. Perhaps he was vexed and unhappy because though a child had come to Old Mogador, there was not yet even the expectation of one at Herringdales. She knew he wanted an heir, and they had been married over six months. ... Perhaps he was worried about that. She felt her heart sink. Should she ever, she wondered, succeed in doing all that was expected of her? For one dreadful moment she saw herself as a failure, if not as a fraud. Suppose she failed ever to produce an heir, and suppose all her money was lost in the collapse of Bastow, Routh and Partners. What would Humphrey think of her then? Would he love her as much? Had he ever loved her truly for herself alone?

The questions seemed to shower on her like blows, and turning almost sick under them, she sprang up and ran out of the room. Humphrey did not seem to notice her going.