Читать книгу The Claw - Stockley Cynthia - Страница 10

“I know not where the white road runs,

Nor what the blue hills are;

But a man can have the Sun for his friend,

And for his guide a Star.”

I awoke to the far-off chink of china, a babble of native voices in the back regions of the house, and a glare of sunshine bursting through a small canvas window.

I closed my eyes again, and lay for a long time thinking of the soft, sweet-aired September mornings in Ireland, all grey and misty—trying to believe I was back there in my chintz-curtained bed in my chintz-covered room with the salt sting of the Atlantic coming in through the windows on the faint peat-scented breeze. I made myself believe that the chink of china was the chink of the morning tea-cup on Nora’s tray, as she came in with my letters and a bunch of violets and a soft bright:

“Good-morning to you, Miss Deirdre! I hope it’s not waking you I am.”

At last I opened my eyes and stared about me. Ah! what a glare! Alas! how far off was Ireland, and what a different place this to my rose-chintz room! But what did that matter after all? I could go back when I chose, and in the meantime this was a new and strange land, with fascinations of its own that could not be disputed. Sleep had freed my heart from the paltry vexations of the night, and the spirit of the morning pervaded me once more. I felt nothing but glad to be alive in the gay and buoyant sunshine of which the room was full. It flickered on the bare white walls, and danced upon the pale shining mats that covered the floor. Afterwards I found these to be native mats made by the Mashonas. Every one uses them on their floors, and for verandah blinds. The natives bring them round to the door and one buys them for a shilling apiece. The walls of the room were bare and whitewashed, but they looked soft and powdery, and perhaps that was why there was nothing on them anywhere. The dressing-table was a draped affair, without legs, and so was the wash-hand-stand. A tall strip of unframed mirror stood on the former, leaning against the wall; on the top left-hand side it had a broken corner, over which a lace handkerchief had been arranged. At the foot of the mirror were some silver toilet articles and a poudre de riz box with a faded pink satin puff resting on it. There were no flowers, no pictures, no photographs. My dressing-case stood open on a chair, as I had left it the night before, and my clothes were still hung up on the floor. I sighed.

The little sigh I gave echoed back to me across the room, causing me to turn hastily towards a screen which was placed down the room, dividing it. It was a dull pink screen with golden storks meandering across it, and it might or might not have come from Japan, but seemed out of place in Mashonaland. It did not quite reach from wall to wall, and, to my astonishment, just beyond the top of it I could see Judy’s face lying on a pillow. I had fallen asleep so swiftly the night before that I did not even know I was sharing the room with my sister-in-law.

She was in bed and still asleep. Her fair hair lay in two plaits down the folded sheet. Her lips were pale and slightly apart; her cheeks, faintly tinted, grew rosier towards the nostrils. She was still pretty, but she was losing her complexion, and the peevish lines I had noticed the night before showed more deeply round her babyish mouth. Her hands, resting before her on the quilt, had the calm, complacent look of hands that have grasped their fate and have got it safe. Her fingers were badly manicured, but her broad, gold wedding-ring shone with an assured, defiant glare.

She was a good deal changed from the Judy who had been the prettiest, daintiest girl in Wilts five or six years before. Dick’s heart had been a house of many mansions until the hunting morn when he had first met Judy following the Duke of Beaufort’s pack and had gone down before her grey eyes and pretty, appealing manners. Thereafter no more mansions in his heart, but only a chapel for adoration and prostration. Everything and every one else had gone by the board. I have seen that single-hearted devotion in husbands before, and always in the nicest kind of men; but I have noticed that it does not invariably make the marriage a wild success. The woman usually gets spoilt and selfish, and begins to think she is far too good for her husband. It is rather a sad sight then to see a fine man wasting his heart on some one who despises him for doing it.

For a year or two after their marriage it had been painful to those who loved him to watch Dick making ducks and drakes of his money and chances of a military career under the spell of his adoration for Judy. For her sake he resigned from his regiment when it was ordered abroad, and eventually left the army to have more time to be with her. For her sake he took a lovely house in Mayfair and lived with brilliant extravagance, throwing the dibs to the four winds as Aunt Betty (who has a respect for money) put it, until even his large income began to give out. But Judy (who, as the daughter of a poor baronet, had never been able to indulge her taste for the social life she adored) continued on her merry, expensive way until things got actually desperate with them, and one bright morning Dick was obliged to announce to her that unless he meant to live on his mother (which he didn’t) they must pull stakes for some quiet little place in the country, where inducements to spend money would not be so pressing.

Judy was broken-hearted at the thought of going back to the life from which she hoped she had escaped for ever, but she consoled herself by choosing Surrey as her future home. In fact, she consoled herself so well that in a few months the financial position was worse than ever, and it really came at last to a question of Dick’s taking the remains of his fortune to try for a fresh throw of the dice in some other country. Africa was chosen and they departed, Judy weeping and reproaching every one but herself. Dick had bought an ostrich-farm ready stocked, in the Free State, and for a time all went well; Judy said she adored the life of riding and driving and they made many friends in the capital which was close at hand. Then suddenly the ostriches, afflicted by some mysterious malady, began to die by scores. In a few months poor Dick was thousands of pounds to the bad, and the horizon scowled once more. Judy did her best to persuade him to let mother help him out of his difficulties, a course he had hitherto resisted with all his might, though my mother’s heart and purse were always open to him. Judy wrote and begged me to use my influence with him, and I did, but while things were still unsettled my mother died suddenly, and almost directly afterwards came the American Bank crash, reducing us all to comparative poverty, and making poor Dick’s horizon darker than ever.

But there was not much American respect for money in Dick. He was all Saurin and happy-go-lucky Celt, and I believe that except for Judy’s sake he did not in the least mind being in deep waters. I gathered, too, that he was rather pleased if anything to break away from ostrich farming, which, he wrote me in confidence, was but a dull dog’s life. The next I heard was that he had left Judy in Cape Town, and joined the pioneers who were to open up Mr Rhodes’s new country in the north. Before many months Judy had joined him; and in love with the country and the men who had found it, he ventured the last of his capital in land near Salisbury. With the intention of making his permanent home there, he had started upon what promised to be a prosperous future in farming and horse-raising.

They had one little son, whom they had left in Durban, and who was to be brought up to them as soon as the trouble with the Matabele was finally adjusted.

I sighed once more as I looked at my own slim fingers. I had been too tired to take off my rings, and an opal and a diamond or two winked wickedly at me. I wondered if my hands would be like Judy’s some day—calm and complacent and badly manicured! Just because some good man would come along and admire them and kiss them and think them the most beautiful hands in the world, and thereafter fold them in his breast while he himself took the wheel and did all the guiding through stormy seas, and all the hard work on land of fighting and gripping and parrying for place and position and money! It seemed to me that it would be rather hard on the good man if one didn’t keep the hands just as fair and alive and beautiful as when they first attracted him: and rather mean to let them grow plump and complacent and gripless and neglected.

Of course, Dick was my brother, my wild, gay-hearted brother, and the handsomest boy in Ireland, and Judy was only my sister-in-law. And of course, no one ever thinks their sister-in-law quite nice enough for their brother. I wished to be quite just. Anyway, early morning reflections are always a mistake, so I gave them up.

I hopped softly out of bed, tipped up the canvas window, and peered out at the little township. Wattle-and-daub houses everywhere, some of them beehive shape, like kaffir huts, some of them barn-shape like the one I was in: but all with thatched roofs and some with verandahs, stuck here and there with apparent aimlessness, but not without a certain picturesque effect. Streets that were merely wide stretches of grass with a foot-path in the middle and wheel-ruts at the sides. A bush or a wild tree growing casually before a door. A porch made of packing-cases and clambered over by grenadilla, or a clematis-wreathed verandah, struck an individual note here and there. A plant with an enormous leaf and a floppy, sulphur-coloured flower seemed very popular and prolific. I afterwards discovered it to be the ubiquitous pumpkin.

There were many waggons about, all of them piled up with things, as though ready for departure.

I rather especially noticed a square-built hut, the walls of which rose no higher than about three feet, and from thence were open to the high-pitched thatched roof, except for native mats let down here and there in narrow rolls like blinds. It was rather like a primitive Japanese tea-house, and I thought how lovely it must be to sleep there at nights with all the mats rolled up and the stars peeping in. Evidently it belonged to a man, for just before its door sat a ring of black boys jabbering and cleaning a man’s boots and a man’s stirrups and other articles of riding-kit, whilst another boy was rubbing down a jolly chestnut mare with the same hissing noise grooms make at “home” when they are grooming. At a second glance I recognised the handsome head, the long graceful flanks, and the white hoofs of “Belle.” So her master was here, and lived in this glorified tea-house!

A little wave of gladness trembled through me, I knew not why. A good way off I could see the glint of galvanised-iron roofs—evidently the shops; and in the centre of the township was a big brisk building with a tall conning-tower rising from it, and a high-walled yard beyond. I recognised the post-office where the coach had drawn up the night before.

A dear little ridiculous, consequential place, I said to myself, and laughed with a heart as light as a feather, for the air that came in at the window was like champagne. Nevertheless, I still had post-cart ache, and decided that a day in bed would be the only real cure for my utter bone weariness. I slipped back amongst my pillows.

Judy suddenly woke up, yawned, looked at her hands, drew one of them up to carefully examine a spot on it, then let her eyes travel round the room until in the course of time they encountered me. Then she gave a great start and put up her hands to her hair.

“Oh, Deirdre, how you startled me! I had quite forgotten about your arriving.”

“Merci, ma chérie,” I laughed, “but I hope your cook has not. One thing Africa has done for me is to provide me with a perpetual appetite. I don’t know yet whether it is a good thing or not.”

Having hidden her hands under the counterpane my sister-in-law regained her complacency.

“My dear child, it is a very bad thing; it is simply mockery, like all the other favours Africa bestows, for there is nothing here to appease your good appetite. I hope you will not expect buttered eggs and grilled ham, etc, or you will be terribly disappointed. Reimptje never gives us anything but mealie-meal porridge, and eggs boiled as hard as stones.”

“I met those luxuries on the journey up.”

“They are all any one ever has for breakfast in Mashonaland.”

“In that case I shall go to sleep again for a week,” I said, and turned my face to the wall.

“Oh! how unkind of you, Deirdre, when I am longing to hear all the news about everybody.”

So we gossiped awhile, and I told her all the home news, and she explained to me how she came to be in Fort George and away from Dick. It appeared that a slight epidemic of typhoid fever had broken out in Salisbury, and every one had become very much alarmed, as its origin could not be discovered. The hospital sisters were coping well with cases, but many men had decided to send their wives away for a while until the reason of the outbreak had been discovered. As several other ladies were starting for Fort George Dick had persuaded Judy that it might be a good thing for her also to get a little change.

“We came down by waggon with an escort of men, and it was awfully jolly and amusing at first,” said Judy. “But we are all rather sick of it, and would like to go back. At least I would. I don’t think Mrs Valetta cares very much, for she has an awful husband and is delighted to be away from him. Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, though she pretends to adore her wretched little Monty, is not at all in a hurry to go back to him. She and Anna Cleeve are living in a tent together and affect to be enormous friends, calling each other by pet names, but they will have a terrible quarrel one of these days. Mrs Valetta lives in the hut next door, but there is an entrance from it into this, and she has her meals with me and is obliged to come in here to dress, as her hut has no looking-glass. I hope you won’t mind her coming. Of course she must see herself.”

I did not recognise any such necessity on the part of so wicked-looking a face, but I said nothing, and presently, after Judy had dressed and gone to make some inquiries on the subject of breakfast, Mrs Valetta, swathed in an ashen-blue kimono that matched her eyes, came wearily in and stood before the dressing-table. She began to take hold of some curls that were lying about on her forehead and to fluff them up with a hairpin. In the meantime she looked in the mirror at me, examining me carefully.

“Aren’t you going to get up?” she asked. “Your sister-in-law promised to take you round to the tennis-court this afternoon. Every one is very anxious to see you.”

“How kind of them,” I said, “but I really am too tired, Mrs Valetta. The thought of tennis in my present state makes my spirit faint.”

She considered me thoughtfully, still through the mirror.

“I think you will be foolish not to come. Mrs Skeffington-Smythe will tell all the men that it is because you are so burnt and blistered. They will get quite a wrong impression of you.”

I answered cheerfully: “They can get a fresh one when they see me. But do their impressions matter?”

This, for no earthly reason, annoyed her. She cast me a look of mingled irritation and curiosity which I received calmly. At twenty-one one can bear with a prepared heart the piercing scrutiny of “something over thirty.”

“Oh, yes: you will find that they matter. One has rather a bad time in this country if the men don’t like one.”

I could have told her that men always liked me, but it seemed brutal to inflict unnecessary pain.

“Really?”

“For one thing they have all the horses, and there is very little to do if one doesn’t ride. But, of course, that won’t affect you.”

“Oh, why?” said I, opening my eyes wide. “I’ve brought a habit with me and I adore riding.”

I thought of “Belle’s” white feet and my own tingled to be in the stirrups.

“Ah! but your vanity will take you much further than any Mashonaland horse,” said she, and loafed wearily from the room.

Really, that was très drôle! I couldn’t help laughing, first at her cross-patchiness and secondly at the idea of my being vain. For, of course, I am not vain at all, only these antagonistic women aroused my dormant cat, and made me want to say arrogant things. I felt sure that if I did not they would walk all over me, and that is a thing I never allow any one to do. It is bad for them.

The sense of disappointment I had felt the night before returned to me, but it was accompanied by the spirit of fight. If these women wanted battle, well they should have it, and I would fight them with their own weapons. However, it behooved me first to put mine in order. I presently arose and from my dressing-case secured a hand-glass and a pot of common or garden hazeline, which I had found to prove a more useful friend in time of need than all the Oriental creams that were ever buried with Persian princesses and rooted out again by the owners of beauty-parlours in Bond Street and Fifth Avenue. Having retired to my bed once more I fell to studying my appearance with an earnestness I had never before given the subject.

The old tragic look was peeping out of my gay face as usual. I jibed at it as always: but really I believe that without it I should not have been so charming and original looking.

My mother could never watch me long without tears coming into her eyes. She would say:

“Oh, Deirdre, what puts that look into the back of your eyes?”

And I would answer:

“Darling, what look? I was just thinking of a book, or a ride, or a new gown—nothing sad at all.”

“Well, it must mean something, Deirdre!” she would declare. “I fear for you. I believe you are predestined to some terrible suffering or sorrow, and your soul knows about it and is afraid.”

“Nonsense, darling,” I always told her. “I’ll never let anything make me unhappy. No one shall turn me into a tragedy. I know too much about the joy of living.”

“Oh, Deirdre, don’t talk like that. It sounds as if you were daring Fate.”

So I was. I had always thought of Fate as she had been represented to me in a queer book of fancies and fables by a sardonic old French author.

“Fate is an old hag with a basket full of painted apples. She hands you out one, and you are so foolish as to take it, and when you bite it and find it rotten she smiles grimly and says, ‘I told you so’ (though she had not). And when you don’t like the taste of the paint she says, ‘But you must eat it to the core. Perhaps it will taste better there.’ (But it does not.)”

A Fate like that ought to be defied, and I felt sure that if every one did so she could never harm them. Tragedy is in us, and not in externals: Emerson says so. I refused to be a tragedy.

I laughed at Fate, and considered my complexion. Like everything about me it was unusual. It had a rich cream tint that blended perfectly with my wallflower eyes and hair. My mother arranged my colouring for me before I was born. She had a passion for reds and browns and ambers, and ardently desired to have a daughter with such colouring, so for all the months before I was born she used to have her rooms heaped with marigolds and wallflowers and nasturtiums and sit amongst them. People said she was a crazy American woman, full of eccentric ideas and notions, and perhaps she was; but she got what she wanted. For the velvet reds and browns and ambers of those simple but lovely flowers did reproduce themselves in my eyes and hair—at least every one said so—and the tint was in my skin, too, in an indescribable sort of way, and the effect was not at all unbecoming to my small, narrow, and extremely retroussé face. Did I ever say that every single thing about me turns upwards?—my chin, nose, cheekbones, lips—all have that curly, odd, rather fascinating upward tilt, and every single hair on my head turns up at the ends. Yes, I am very retroussé. Of course, I don’t say that it is pretty; but it is rather original I think.

After all, the sun had not done my skin so much harm as I thought. Indeed, I had often been in worse case after a week on the river, or a day’s hunting in hard weather, and thought nothing of it. As for my eyes and hair, “Time with her cold wing” might some day wither them, but Africa had certainly done them no harm so far. However, I decided to anoint myself in a royal manner with cold cream, and take a full day’s rest. Incidentally, I unpacked my war-paint and plumes, and shook the creases from my coats of mail.