Читать книгу Iron and Smoke - Sheila Kaye-Smith - Страница 8

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It was nearly twelve o’clock before Humphrey found himself in his room. He went over to the window and pulled aside the rich velvet curtains that shut out the night. The moon was high and the whole sky silvered, so that the fantastic outline of the hills showed clear against it with a white bloom on their slopes. The gleam of a pond among some dark trees reminded him of a night over at Yockletts when he had risen and looked out towards Sole Street, where a pond lies, and the warm hop-scented breath of the Kentish night had been part of the warm sweetness of his own joy and of Isabel’s breathing as she lay asleep in the darkness behind him.

Oh, Isabel....

Suddenly she seemed to call him from the room behind as she had called him then, and he turned back, as he had turned then, but this time not to her and to the darkness, but to the glare of gas showered down upon the frills and satins of a huge empty bed. He threw himself on his knees beside it, covering his face. In the darkness that he thus made another vision rose, also in moonlight—Old Mogador as he had pictured it when he came towards Jenny on the terrace, its temple-like façade gleaming in the white radiance, the fountain like a spray of stars. Then the lighting changed, but not the scene—green and red and blue and white was the garden frontage of Old Mogador in the Summer of a year ago, and he and Isabel were standing there in the clear shade behind the pillars. And she was saying—

“My dear, we must end it now. There’s nothing else.”

He had protested that there was something else—everything else—anything else. But she had continued—

“No, Humphrey, be honest and look at this. Let’s end it while it’s good.”

Again he had protested.

“It will always be good.”

“No, it won’t. If I saw that”—it was characteristic of Isabel to “see” things instead of “think” or “feel” them—“if I saw that I’d go on—for ever.”

“But why shouldn’t we go on for ever? We’ve loved each other four years now—we’d have changed already if it hadn’t been meant to last.”

“Four years isn’t so very long, Humphrey, and we have changed. At first you loved me more than everything—Herringdales and Yockletts simply didn’t count. But lately I can see that these things do count, that they’re worrying you badly, and the time will come when they will count more than me and it’s I who will worry you badly.”

“Isabel.”

“It’s true. Do look at it. If I loved you a little less I could bear it—I could bear to play second string in your life, or I could bear to think that I’d been able to keep you from what you really wanted more than me. Oh, don’t start denying it. You’ve always cared for your land and your family more than for me, or else you’d have cut the knot and run away with me at the beginning.”

“You know that I asked you, and that you wouldn’t come because of the children.”

“I don’t know how long the children would have kept me from you if I’d seen that you’d always want me. But, perhaps ... well, anyhow, we can’t marry each other. I can’t forsake the children and you can’t forsake Herringdales—so let’s leave it at that. All I want to say is that I’m not going to stand in your way any longer. While you and I remain lovers you’ve got to see your land failing and your family dying out. At present you don’t hate me for it, but the day’s coming when you will, and then I’ll hate myself.”

“Are you suggesting that I should marry a rich woman, who’ll pay off my debts and present me with an heir?”

That had been apparently exactly what Isabel was suggesting, and they had quarrelled over it long and bitterly. But now in the end here he was, about to marry a rich woman who would finally pay off his debts, and speedily, he hoped, present him with an heir.

Isabel had been right, or as she herself would have put it, she had “seen clear.” Their affair, which had seemed to soar so high, had swooped earthward, and she had seen the turn of the wings. After all, he had had many other affairs and at first he had thought this was just one of them, part of the everlasting game of life, but remote from its real concerns. When it had taken on a different quality, and asserted itself in the mid stream of things, he had at first been glad and welcomed something new. But before very long he had seen it differently. It was indeed in the mid stream, but running contrary to it, a dangerous tide. He feared that it might sweep all away—all his landmarks—Herringdales and Yockletts and the fields he loved and the ancient house of which he was so proud and of which he was the last heir. And in his heart he knew that it was a tide which would one day ebb and fail—he could not allow it first to sweep him out of his course, so that when he came to himself he would have lost everything save Isabel, who one day might not matter very much. ... Oh, God! How he hated himself for seeing that, and it was little comfort to know that Isabel saw it too—had seen it before him—and that it was her clearer vision which had saved them from it.

But he bore her no ill will—that sickness was over now. Love and hate had died together into a regretful friendship. Or was that friendship less their death than the shroud in which they lay awaiting their resurrection? The thought seemed to blow in on him with the sharpness of the northern summer night. Ridiculously he found himself rising to close the window on it.

Then he sat down to write to Isabel. He addressed the envelope first:—

Mrs Halnaker,

Old Mogador,

Rushlake Green,

Nr. Heathfield,

Sussex.

Then he sat for long minutes biting the end of the silver pen that Slapewath Grange provided for its guests. After all, her husband had not come between them, so why should his wife? They neither of them had felt any treachery towards Claude Halnaker, who went his own way. Would Jenny in time go her own way?—not yet, but later? He glanced sharply up towards the window. But the night was gone. The big gold plush curtains hung over it, shutting him into artificial day. He began to write.

Dear Isabel,

I am writing this to tell you that I have at last done the only thing that can save the Herringdales. I am going to marry Jenny Bastow. Of course you probably knew I would when I told you how I had met her and had fished for an invitation to stay with her people. From the moment I first saw her I knew I could be very fond of her, and it did not want my promise to you to keep me from ever marrying a girl I didn’t love. Of course this puts us apart for ever....

He had no thought now of Jenny “going her own way,” for he knew that she never would. Sweet, loving little thing, she would give him her utmost loyalty, and he could not give her any less. Besides, Isabel would tolerate no betrayals, and she had once said, “I’m not just setting you free so that you can marry someone else, but so that you can love someone else. You’re not hypocrite or fool enough to tell me that’s impossible.” He had not told her so even though he might have thought it. But now he knew that Jenny had touched his heart—he saw her finding a place in it and warming that empty house ... he would love her and be a good husband to her, and Isabel would stand outside, a respected, respectful ghost.

“For ever,” he wrote again, not knowing that he had already written it once.

But I agree now that it is best to have this quick, clean ending. Now we can be real friends, our love all in the past. It will always be a joy to me to know that through this I have kept Yockletts, the place where we have been so happy. But for this I should have had to sell it, and I feel that if I had I should have sold something of our love. Now I feel that our love lives on there in the Kentish fields under the old roof ...

He had not meant to write like that. The silver pen seemed to have run away with him ... perhaps he was too tired to write tonight—his heart too full. Perhaps he had better put it off, and write more sensibly tomorrow morning. He tore the letter in pieces, and burned it in the empty grate.