Читать книгу The Great House - Stanley John Weyman - Страница 12

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Mary laughed with him, but she was not comfortable. What she had seen of the stranger, a man plain in feature and ordinary in figure, one whom the eye would not have remarked in a crowd, did not especially commend him. And certainly he had not shown himself equal to a difficult situation. But the effort he had made to come to her help appealed to her generosity, and she was not sure how far she formed a part of the comedy. So her laughter was from the lips only, and brief. Then, "My uncle's nephew?" she asked thoughtfully.

"His wife's nephew. Your uncle married a Basset."

"But why did he send him to meet me?"

"For a simple reason--I should say that he had no one else to send. Your uncle is not a man of many friends."

"I understood that some one would meet the boat in London," she said. "But I expected a woman."

"I fancy the woman would be to seek," he replied. "And Basset is a kind of tame cat at the Gatehouse. He lives there a part of the year, though he has an old place of his own up the country. He's a Staffordshire man born and bred, and I dare say a good fellow in his way, but a dull dog! a dull dog! Are you sure that the wind does not catch you?"

She said that she was very comfortable, and they were silent awhile, listening to the monotonous slapping of a rope against the mast and the wash of the waves as they surged past the beam. A single light at the end of the breakwater shone in the darkness behind them. She marked the light grow smaller and more distant, and her thoughts went back to the convent school, to her father, to the third-floor where for a time they had been together, to his care for her--feeble and inefficient, to his illness. And a lump rose in her throat, her hands gripped one another as she strove to hide her feelings. In her heart she whispered a farewell. She was turning her back on her father's grave. The last tendril which bound her to the old life was breaking.

The light vanished, and gradually the girl's reflections sought a new channel. They turned from the past to the present, and dwelt on the man beside her, who had not only thought of her comfort, who had not only saved her from some hours of loneliness, but had probably wrought this change in her life. This was the third time only that she had seen him. Once, some days after that memorable evening, he had called at the Hôtel Lambert, and her employer had sent for her. He had greeted her courteously in the Princess's presence, had asked her kindly if she had heard from England, and had led her to believe that she would hear. And she remembered with a blush that the Princess had looked from one to the other with a smile, and afterwards had had another manner for her.

Meanwhile the man wondered what she was thinking, and waited for her to give him the clue. But she was so long silent that his patience wore thin. It was not for this, it was not to sit silent beside her, that he had taken a night journey and secured these cosey seats.

"Well?" he said at last.

She turned to him, her eyes wet with tears. "It seems so strange," she murmured, "to be leaving all and going into a world in which I know no one."

"Except the head of your family."

"Except you! I suppose that I owe it to you that I am here?"

"I should be happy if I thought so," he replied, with careful reticence. "But we set a stone rolling, we do not know where it falls. You will soon learn--Basset will tell you, if I don't--that your uncle and I are not on good terms. Therefore it is unlikely that he was moved by what I said."

"But you said something?"

"If I did," he answered, smiling, "it was against the grain--who likes to put his finger between the door and the jamb? And let me caution you. Your uncle will not suffer meddling on my part, still less a reminder of it. Therefore, as you are going to owe all to him, you will do well to be silent about me."

She was sure that she owed all to him, and she might have said so, but at that moment the boat changed its course and the full force of the wind struck them. The salt spray whipped and stung their faces. Her cloak flew out like a balloon, her scarf pennon-wise, the tarpaulin flapped like some huge bird. He had to spring to the screen, to adjust it to the new course, to secure and tuck in her cloak--and all in haste, with exclamations and laughter, while Mary, sharing the joy of the struggle, and braced by the sting of the salt wind, felt her heart rise. How kind he was, and how strong. How he towered above ordinary men. How safe she felt in his care.

When they were settled anew, she asked him to tell her something about the Gatehouse.

"It's a lonely place," he said. "It is quite out of the world. I don't know, indeed, how you will exist after the life you have led."

"The life I have led!" she protested. "But that is absurd! Though you saw me in the Princess's salon, you know that my life had nothing in common with hers. I was downstairs no more than three or four times, and then merely to interpret. My life was spent between whitewashed walls, on bare floors. I slept in a room with twenty children, ate with forty--onion soup and thick tartines. The evening I saw you I wore shoes which the maid lent me. And with all that I was thankful, most thankful, to have such a refuge. The great people who met at the Princess's----"

"And who thought that they were making history!" he laughed. "Did you know that? Did you know that the Princess was looking to them to save the last morsel of Poland?"

"No," she said. "I did not know. I am very ignorant. But if I were a man, I should love to do things like that."

"I believe you would!" he replied. "Well, there are crusades in England. Only I fear that you will not be in the way of them."

"And I am not a princess! But tell me, please, what are they?"

"You will not be long before you come upon one," he replied, a hint of derision in his tone. "You will see a placard in the streets, 'Shall the people's bread be taxed?' Not quite so romantic as the independence of Poland? But I can tell you that heads are quite as likely to be broken over it."

"Surely," she said, "there can be only one answer to that."

"Just so," he replied dryly. "But what is the answer? The land claims high prices that it may thrive; the towns claim cheap bread that they may live. Each says that the country depends upon it. 'England self-supporting!' says one. 'England the workshop of the world!' says the other."

"I begin to see."

"'The land is the strength of the country,' argues the squire. 'Down with monopoly,' cries the cotton lord. Then each arms himself with a sword lately forged and called 'Philanthropy,' and with that he searches for chinks in the other's armor. 'See how factories work the babes, drive the women underground, ruin the race,' shout the squires. 'Vote for the land and starvation wages,' shout the mill-owners."

"But does no one try to find the answer?" she asked timidly. "Try to find out what is best for the people?"

"Ah!" he rejoined, "if by the people you mean the lower classes, they cry, 'Give us not bread, but votes!' And the squires say that that is what the traders who have just got votes don't mean to give them; and so, to divert their attention, dangle cheap bread before their noses!"

Mary sighed. "I am afraid that I must give it up," she said. "I am so ignorant."

"Well," he replied thoughtfully. "Many are puzzled which side to take, and are waiting to see how the cat jumps. In the meantime every fence is placarded with 'Speed the Plough!' on one side, and 'The Big Loaf!' on the other. The first man you meet thinks the landlord a devourer of widows' houses; to the next the mill-owner is an ogre grinding men's bones to make his bread. Even at the Gatehouse I doubt if you will escape the excitement, though there is not a field of wheat within a mile of it!"

"To me it is like a new world," she said.

"Then, when you are in the new world," he replied, smiling as he rose, "do not forget Columbus! But here is the lad to tell you that your tea is ready."

He repented when Mary had left him that he had not made better use of his time. It had been his purpose to make such an impression on the girl as might be of use in the future, and he wondered why he had not devoted himself more singly to this; why he had allowed minutes which might have been given to intimate subjects to be wasted in a dry discussion. But there was a quality in Mary that did not lightly invite to gallantry--a gravity and a balance that, had he looked closely into the matter, might have explained his laches.

And in fact he had builded better than he knew, for while he reproached himself, Mary, safe within the tiny bathing machine which the packet company called a cabin, was giving much thought to him. The dip-candle, set within a horn lantern, threw its light on the one comfortable object, the tea-tray, seated beside which she reviewed what had happened, and found it all interesting; his meeting with her, his thought for her, the glimpses he had given her of things beyond the horizon of the convent school, even his diversion into politics. He was not on good terms with her uncle, and it was unlikely that she would see more of him. But she was sure that she would always remember his appearance on the threshold of her new life, that she would always recall with gratitude this crossing and the kindness which had lapped her about and saved her from loneliness.

In her eyes he figured as one of the brilliant circle of the Hôtel Lambert. For her he played a part in great movements and high enterprises such as those which he had revealed to her. His light treatment of them, his air of detachment, had, indeed, chilled her at times; but these were perhaps natural in one who viewed from above and from a distance the ills which it was his task to treat. How ignorant he must think her! How remote from the plane on which he lived, the standards by which he judged, the objects at which he aimed! Yet he had stooped to explain things to her and to make them clear.

She spent an hour deep in thought, and, strange as the life of the ship was to her, she was deaf to the creaking of the timbers, and the surge of the waves as they swept past the beam. At intervals hoarse orders, a rush of feet across the deck, the more regular tramp of rare passengers, caught her attention, only to lose it as quickly. It was late when she roused herself. She saw that the candle was burning low, and she began to make her arrangements for the night.

Midway in them she paused, and colored, aware that she knew his tread from the many that had passed. The footstep ceased. A hand tapped at her door. "Yes?" she said.

"We shall be in the river by daybreak," Audley announced. "I thought that you might like to come on deck early. You ought not to miss the river from the Nore to the Pool."

"Thank you," she answered.

"You shouldn't miss it," he persisted. "Greenwich especially!"

"I shall be there," she replied. "It is very good of you. Good-night."

He went away. After all, he was the only man on board shod like a gentleman; it had been odd if she had not known his step! And for going on deck early, why should she not? Was she to miss Greenwich because Lord Audley went to a good bootmaker?

So when Peter Basset, still pale and qualmish, came on deck in the early morning, a little below the Pool, the first person he saw was the girl whom he had come to escort. She was standing high above him on the captain's bridge, her hands clasping the rail, her hair blown about and shining golden in the sunshine. Lord Audley's stately form towered above her. He was pointing out this and that, and they were talking gaily; and now and again the captain spoke to them, and many were looking at them. She did not see Basset; he was on the deck below, standing amid the common crowd, and so he was free to look at her as he pleased. He might be said not to have seen her before, and what he saw now bewildered, nay, staggered him. Unwillingly, and to please his uncle, he had come to meet a girl of whom they knew no more than this, that, rescued from some backwater of Paris life, into which a weak and shiftless father had plunged her, she had earned her living, if she had earned it at all, in a dependent capacity. He had looked to find her one of two things; either flashy and underbred, with every fault an Englishman might consider French, or a nice mixture of craft and servility. He had not been able to decide which he would prefer.

Instead he saw a girl tall, slender, and slow of movement, with eyes set under a fine width of brow and grave when they smiled, a chin fuller than perfect beauty required, a mouth a little large, a perfect nose. Auburn hair, thick and waving, drooped over each temple, and framed a face as calm as it was fair. "Surely a pearl found on a midden!" he thought. And as the thought passed through his mind, Mary looked down. Her eyes roved for a moment over the crowded deck, where some, like Basset, returned her gaze with interest, while others sought their baggage or bawled for missing companions. He was not a man, it has been said, to stand out in a crowd, and her eyes travelled over him without seeing him. Audley spoke to her, she lifted her eyes, she looked ashore again. But the unheeding glance which had not deigned to know him stung Basset! He dubbed her, with all her beauty, proud and hard. Still--to be such and to have sprung from such a life! It was marvellous.

He knew nothing of the convent school with its hourly discipline lasting through years. He did not guess that the obstinacy which had been weakness in the father was strength in the child. Much less could he divine that the improvidence of that father had become a beacon, warning the daughter off the rocks which had been fatal to him! Mary was no miracle, but neither was she proud or hard.

They had passed Erith, and Greenwich with its stately pile and formal gardens glittering in the sunshine of an April morning. The ripple of a westerly wind, meeting the flood, silvered the turbid surface. A hundred wherries skimmed like water-flies hither and thither, long lines of colliers fringed the wharves, tall China clippers forged slowly up under a scrap of foresail, dumb barges deep laden with hay or Barclay's Entire, moved mysteriously with the tide. On all sides hoarse voices bawled orders or objurgations. Charmed with the gayety, the movement, the color, Mary could not take her eyes from the scene. The sunshine, the leap of life, the pulse of spring, moved in her blood and put to flight the fears that had weighed on her at nightfall. She told herself with elation that this was England, this was her native land, this was her home.

Meanwhile Audley's mind took another direction. He reflected that in a few minutes he must part from the girl, and must trust henceforth to the impression he had made. For some hours he had scarcely given a thought to Basset, but he recalled him now, and he searched for him in the throng below. He found him at last, pressed against the rail between a fat woman with a basket and a crying child. Their eyes met. My lord glanced away, but he could not refrain from a smile as he pictured the poor affair the other had made of his errand. And Basset saw the smile and read its meaning, and though he was not self--assertive, though he was, indeed, backward to a fault, anger ran through his veins. To have travelled three hundred miles in order to meet this girl, to have found her happy in another's company, and to have accepted the second place--the position had vexed him even under the qualms of illness. This morning, and since he had seen her, it stirred in him an unwonted resentment. He d--d Audley under his breath, disengaged himself from the basket which the fat woman was thrusting into his ribs, lifted the child aside. He escaped below to collect his effects.

But in a short time he recovered his temper. When the boat began to go about in the crowded Pool and Mary reluctantly withdrew her eyes from the White Tower, darkened by the smoke and the tragedies of twenty generations, she found him awaiting them at the foot of the ladder. He was still pale, and the girl's conscience smote her. For many hours she had not given him a thought. "I hope you are better," she said gently.

"Horrid thing, mal de mer!" remarked my lord, with a gleam of humor in his eye.

"Thank you, I am quite right this morning," Basset answered.

"You go from Euston Grove, I suppose?"

"Yes. The morning train starts in a little over an hour."

No more was said, and they went ashore together. Audley, an old traveller, and one whose height and presence gave weight to his orders, saw to Mary's safety in the crowd, shielded her from touts and tide-waiters, took the upper hand. He watched the aproned porters disappearing with the baggage in the direction of the Custom House, and a thought struck him. "I am sorry that my servant is not here," he said. "He would see our things through without troubling us." His eyes met Basset's.

Basset disdained to refuse. "I will do it," he said. He received the keys and followed the baggage.

Audley looked at Mary and laughed. "I think you'll find him useful," he said. "Takes a hint and is not too forward."

"For shame!" she cried. "It is very good of him to go." But she could not refrain from a smile.

"Well trained," Audley continued in a whimsical tone, "fetches and carries, barks at the name of Peel and growls at the name of Cobden, gives up a stick when required, could be taught to beg--by the right person."

She laughed--she could not resist his manner. "But you are not very kind," she said. "Please to call a--whatever we need. He shall not do everything."

"Everything?" Lord Audley echoed. "He should do nothing," in a lower tone, "if I had my way."

Mary blushed.