Читать книгу Mr Weston's Good Wine - T. F. Powys - Страница 12

Table of Contents

Though Mr. Weston’s car had stopped upon the Folly Down hill, yet the lonely down was exactly as still and deathlike as during any other late autumn evening.

Indeed, the car became so lost in the gloom that it was hard to realise that it was in any way connected with the writing upon the sky. The car appeared less real now, and certainly created a great deal less noise than Squire Mumby’s horse and trap, when that gentleman returned, merry, from a market dinner, or else from a convivial evening spent in the company of Mr. Board, the Mayor of Maidenbridge, and Lord Bullman.

But no tradesman, and certainly not our Mr. Weston, whose concerns are very important, can afford—though time appeared, in this case, to lie very lightly upon our travellers’ hands—to remain for ever upon Folly Down hill.

Even his advertisement, that is written upon the skies to inform the folk what his goods are, may not perhaps be noticed by all who dwell in the village, and so, if the advertiser himself had not decided to go down to his customers, his good wine might have remained for ever in his cellar and never be sold.

Mr. Weston had ever had a firm belief in the romance of trade. He had never written better in his own book than when dealing with the subject—whether the matter involved was corn, cattle, a place of burial, a harlot, or a piece of money.

Mr. Weston was romantic himself, as all the best writers are. He had an idea that, in order to increase his sales in a country village, it was best to choose the very properest moment to appear himself and to offer his goods.

He had wisely chosen the evening to visit Folly Down, because he believed—and his experiences in the past went to prove this belief—that most people, at least in country places, are more willing to venture their money and to buy drink after darkness has fallen, than during the lighter hours of the day.

Mr. Weston’s education had been a private one, but he had never ceased to study, during a lifetime that had been a rather unchanging one, all the more complicated machinations of trade.

He was well aware that to enter a village when the evening was come and darkness, was to surround himself and his coming with a glamour that often, in a simple country mind, suggests fear. Mr. Weston knew very well how large a use the gypsies make of fear when these thieving tribes go a-hawking of their wares in country places.

‘We must frighten them for their own good,’ Mr. Weston had once in early days remarked, ‘in order to make them thirsty. We must entertain them in a number of ways in order to make them drink. We must show them signs and wonders, war and earthquake, fire and tempest, plague and famine, and all because we wish to draw their attention to our good wine.

‘But if, after these methods are used, the people omit to buy our goods—they are often as blind as bats and as deaf as adders—we must then set on fire their houses, and bang and bellow with a great cannon into their ears, until they do buy.’

‘We do our best’—Mr. Weston was speaking at a later board meeting—‘to gain their attention. We have sent agents all over the world to shout hell to them and eternal damnation and a fire burning in a lake of fire, naturally supposing that such merry tales ought to make the people drink. We have painted the horror of death, the way of a corpse, the last groans of the sick, so that men may remember our wine. We have taught the bare stones to tell of us and to inform the folk, by their stillness, how once they, too, had the happiness to drink our wine.’

Following the plan of that discourse, though but mildly, Mr. Weston wished to wait for a little upon Folly Down hill, while the light of his advertisement shone above him, and then to descend upon the people before the astonishment of the writing upon the sky had abated.

‘For those who have eyes to see must see that,’ he said amiably, when he saw how successfully Michael had managed the electric current.

‘And why should not we,’ he exclaimed, ‘terrify the people into buying our wine, as the gypsies frighten them into buying their lace and clothes-pegs? We, as well as the gypsies, have a mysterious power over the lives of the people, both for good and evil, and this power, if they shut their doors in our faces, they shall feel the effect of.’

‘The example of Ada Kiddle should be something for them to go by,’ said Michael.

‘Why, yes,’ observed Mr. Weston, ‘and so it should.’

Mr. Weston was thoughtful for a few moments. But soon he said:

‘There are two houses in Folly Down, Michael, where honest drink should at least be tasted, if not ordered in quantity, that I should like to know something of before I enter the village. These two houses are the inn and the rectory. Please describe them to me.’

‘Folly Down rectory,’ answered Michael, ‘is a house that stands alone. It is very gloomy. It has windows that will not open, dark sombre walls stained and discoloured by the salt mists that come from the sea, and a vine that almost hides Tamar’s window, that is very easy to clamber up. In the brick wall beside the front door there is a bell that, however far it is pulled out, will never ring, unless Jenny Bunce, who is the servant there, knocks her brush against it in the kitchen, and then it rings.

‘The rectory has a grand drive that Mr. Grunter weeds with a broken hoe, a lawn that Mr. Grunter mows with a scythe, and an old rat that lives in the garden hedge who has once seen a bishop sneeze. If you wish to reach the inn from the rectory, you find the Folly Down green, and then pass the oak tree, but you must not linger there.’

‘And why not?’ asked Mr. Weston.

‘It wouldn’t be proper for me to say,’ replied Michael. ‘But do not, if you wish to reach the inn, take the turning to the left, for that way leads only down a very muddy lane, at the bottom of which is Mr. Bird’s cottage.

‘The inn is placed upon a little hill. At its entrance is a finely painted signboard of an angel. The inn itself is covered by a good coating of thatch, that is the very best straw in use in this part of the country, and is called “reed.” The thatch keeps the house warm in winter and cool in summer, and the ale that is kept in a narrow passage between the kitchen and the parlour is by no means in a common way a bad beverage.’

‘When nothing better is to be had,’ observed Mr. Weston.

Michael bowed his assent.

‘Beside the cool and, let us hope, open doorway of the inn, there grows a wych-elm that, in times gone by, used to prove a great boon to the farmers, who would tie their horses to a convenient bough, while they rested themselves and took a drink inside the house. From the inn, the rectory, as well as the squire’s house, that is called Oak-tree Farm, can be seen.

‘Oak-tree Farm is the house of the Mumbys. It is a long, low house, sheltered by large elm trees that, though they lean a little, appear never to fall. The house is reached by a steep and stony drive, and often a visitor finds it the easiest to go along a path through the churchyard in order to reach Mr. Mumby’s front door.

‘Mr. Kiddle lives in a pleasant stone house, set back in a pretty meadow that is his own. He also rents this high down where the old horse feeds.

‘From Mr. Kiddle’s meadow the oak tree is easy to be seen—as easily as from Mr. Mumby’s fields—and the sight of the oak tree pleases the young Kiddles and gives them pleasant thoughts when they hang their clothes upon the line.

‘Mr. Meek lives nearer still to the oak tree. His shop is opposite to Mr. Grunter’s cottage, and the situation of his house, being so near to the centre of the village, always gives Mr. Meek the chance to listen to something, though that something may only be sounds from the oak-tree bed.’

‘A pleasant situation,’ said Mr. Weston, ‘and I am already in love with Folly Down. From what I have myself seen, and from what you have told me, no place in the round world provides more peace and joy to its inhabitants than this village. A joy, not too excessive, but tempered, eased, and sobered by the necessity of daily labour. With a little of our wine to drink—and that they could surely afford—no human lives ought to be more happy. For a glass of our mildest and least matured should do much to take away the few blemishes of village life, and leave only pure joy.’

‘One glass—and your written word, sir, your poetic stories,’ murmured Michael.

Mr. Weston softly squeezed his companion’s hand.

‘With one glass, and, as you prettily suggest, with my book in the house, why should not the people here call their Creator good and themselves happy? But has anything in the shape of Folly Down caught your attention, Michael? for I gather, from your knowledge of it, that you must have already visited the village.’

‘Viewed from this very hill in the daytime,’ replied Michael, ‘the lanes of Folly Down, beside which are the cottages, form a cross, and where the head of the crucified Saviour should be, there is the church.’

Mr. Weston laid his hand gently upon Michael’s.

‘I am glad to know whereabouts the church is,’ he said mildly, ‘for I intend to visit it; but in our family we have long ago ceased to mention the Cross, or the dreadful end of Him who was hanged upon it.’

‘Mr. Grobe will not like to hear you say that,’ remarked Michael, ‘for he is never tired of telling of the death of Jesus. He regards this incident in the history of mankind as most important, and it proves to him how unnatural and how cruel must have been the will of the Father to give His only Son to such a death.’

‘Does Mr. Grobe say that?’ cried out Mr. Weston, in a tone of astonishment.

‘He says and affirms it,’ replied Michael. ‘For Mr. Grobe cannot believe that a situation so improbable could arise that, in order to give everlasting life to man, the Almighty should send His Son to be so evilly treated. Mr. Grobe felt, more than ever, the injustice of this conduct when his own wife died. But though God went, Jesus lived, and Mr. Grobe believed in Him. He believed Him to be a young man of fine parts, with an imagination that could create an entirely new world, and with so forceful a love that all men could, if they wished, live in this one Man’s love and pity—and die in it too.’

‘Yes,’ said Mr. Weston, with a sigh, ‘He was a great poet.’

‘Almost as great,’ said Michael respectfully, ‘as His Father.’

Mr. Weston looked pleased.

‘Mr. Grobe believes that this Son of Man, who hated all base and mean things, still lives in any heart that will open to Him, and that the heart so wedded to this immortal One, who conquered and subdued death, though it die earthily, will remain His eternally. Mr. Grobe ever speaks of this strange and wonderful Man as though He were his own brother. He comforts and gladdens the sick and the dying, the weary and the sad, with the same Name that was written above the Cross at Golgotha, in Greek, in Latin, and in Hebrew. Mr. Grobe kneels in pity beside the beds of those whose last hour has come, and tells them of a Man—the most loving in all the earth—who died, loving them.’

Mr. Weston bowed his head very low.

‘He tells them,’ continued Michael, ‘how this Man, who was as mortal as they, bore the most dreadful agony in the most praiseworthy manner, praying for His enemies, so that they, too, seeing how He forgave them, might come, though they killed Him, to love Him. No sinner ever dies in Folly Down without the name of Him who loved him so well being spoken and His story being told by his bedside, and no one that Mr. Grobe has ever ministered to has died miserably. And the love that sustains the dying must necessarily give to the dead the rest that can never be taken away.’

‘That may well be so,’ said Mr. Weston, ‘if the last order for wine be placed with the right firm, but even if that has been done, and the wine has been received, the man may be nearly beyond tasting and believe he is drinking vinegar.’

‘No one in Folly Down has ever called it so,’ said Michael, ‘for Mr. Grobe has only been called to minister to the poor and to the simple, who live their lives in a modest manner, and would always believe, even at the last, everything that they are told, and consider anything that they are given to drink as the best.’

‘The very readers for my book,’ said Mr. Weston. ‘I have long wished for such simple readers as you describe. It is impossible, let me tell you, for any one to enjoy good poetry, even if he be created on purpose to praise it, if he find fault with every line that he reads.’

‘Those harmless people,’ said Michael, ‘read nature, too, as if it were a book, and, indeed, it is better than many.’

‘Michael,’ said Mr. Weston, ‘although I know the world had to be before its creation could be described, yet I trust you are not one of those who place nature before art.’

‘Indeed I am not,’ replied Michael.

‘I am glad of it,’ said Mr. Weston; ‘and now that I am in a mood for it, may I not recite to you a short chapter?’

‘You might frighten the old horse if you did,’ observed Michael; ‘and surely it is nearly time for us to go down into the village, for we have a good many visits to pay, and you wish also to see the church.’

‘I have never been inside one before,’ said Mr. Weston.

Michael looked a little surprised.

‘I only like to go,’ remarked Mr. Weston, ‘where my good wine is drunk. In a condemned cell, in a brothel, in the kennels of a vast city, our wine is drunk to the dregs, but in a church they merely sip.’

‘And yet we have had orders,’ said Michael.

‘And if we fulfil them,’ replied Mr. Weston, ‘have the buyers ever been known to pay?’

‘Why, no,’ said Michael, ‘they expect all goods to be given to them.’

‘They won’t get much from us, then,’ said Mr. Weston grimly. ‘And now we had better go.’

Michael attended to the lights, the sky became dark, and the head-lights of the car showed the travellers the way to Folly Down.