Читать книгу Mr Weston's Good Wine - T. F. Powys - Страница 13
XI
THE ANGEL
ОглавлениеA year after her mother was killed, little Tamar Grobe fell in love with her angel, seeing him new painted, one morning in early spring, upon the inn signboard.
The first sunshine was come after the darkness of winter, and the first lark was singing. Folly Down was so astonished that the sun should shine again in real earnest that Mr. Grunter remarked to Mr. Meek that the day, being so warm and pleasant for the time of year, must have been sent as a warning to the wise, and meant, no doubt, that the end of the world was coming that very night.
Tamar was ten years old. Her frocks were short, and her legs had as much freedom as ever they wished. Since her mother’s death she had been very merry and wild, for no thoughts of love had come to tame her. The little boys of the village she regarded as mere apes of the field. The sun called to her and bade her leap and run and tease some one, and so she escaped her nurse, ran into the garden, and began to throw stones at Mr. Grunter, who was weeding the path.
For a while Mr. Grunter observed her behaviour with equanimity, but when a stone hit the hand that guided the hoe, he followed her with this weapon, with which he intended to beat her. Tamar danced away, climbed through the rectory hedge, disturbing the rat, and ran along the lane towards the inn.
By the green she met Mrs. Vosper. Mrs. Vosper saw her chance. Here was a happy innocent in a naughty mood. She drew Tamar to her and began to fondle her.
‘This is St. Valentine’s Day,’ said Mrs. Vosper, kissing and still holding Tamar, ‘a day when even the youngest maiden can know, if she chooses, her future fortune, for the first young man that you see will be sure to marry you.’
‘And what is being married?’ asked Tamar.
‘Well, now you have asked me something,’ replied Mrs. Vosper, ‘but as I bain’t no liar, I will tell you what marriage be.’
Mrs. Vosper drew Tamar in under the oak tree, and they sat down together upon a mossy root.
‘ ’Tis like this to be married,’ she said. ‘You do come to crack acorns under this pretty tree, and when you be tired you do lie down and do stretch out they bare legs under the green shady leaves. You do shut thee’s eyes as in a cat’s sleep, but all of ’ee may be looked at by any boy who do come by. When you do see woon thee do fancy ’tis best to whistle softly. And then do ’ee look up into tree, move theeself a little and rest pretty, and ’ee may smile. If you do stay so, he will come. ’E won’t do much to you at first, save only to tease and torment ’ee, but when stars do shine thee will be happy. In a month’s time ’tis safest to go to church and to give away bride-cake.
‘Now listen to I, Tamar, for thee be woon of they girls. Do ’ee mind that this be St. Valentine’s Day, and if you look out ’twill be to see him.
‘Nothing is more pleasant than the merry games that ’ee two will have together, and it is always the girl’s business to make the boy begin. Thee must make him suppose that it’s all the merest play. If he can only stay and look at ’ee, or sit still beside ’ee and but hold your hand, thee must tickle his neck with a piece of grass and say that you wish he was Jimmy. He will be sure to catch and hold ’ee then. Thee must struggle, but that will only make him the more venturesome, and then thee may say, “Oh! that bain’t nothing to what our Jimmy do do.” ’
Tamar escaped and ran off. She ran excitedly, she cared not where. She ran to the inn. A young painter, hired by the hour, had, a week or two before, repainted the signboard. He had copied himself when he painted the angel, and had given him a very merry eye, fiery red hair, and a pair of blue trousers.
The first man that Tamar saw—for she believed Mr. Grunter to be a kind of monster and no man—was this painted angel.
Tamar held out her arms to him, and invited him to come down to her. She danced before him, kicking up first one leg and then the other.
‘I am going to lie down under the oak tree,’ she called out. ‘Will you please be so kind as to come and tease me there, and then, when the stars come out, we will be happy and married.’
Tamar kissed both her hands to the angel. She danced for a little longer; she blushed and ran off. She ran to the oak tree, and at once lay down in the mossy bed.
In the hoary boughs of the oak tree a wood-pigeon was cooing, and now and again there was a pleasant flutter of soft wings, which showed that her mate heeded her. Other country sounds came. A cock crew and Mr. Mumby’s bull bellowed joyously. Between the roots of the aged oak the moss, that feels so soon the change of the year, was in flower. Delicate flowers of the most pleasant green tipped each stem.
Little Tamar stroked the moss; she lay, with her hands under her head, and waited. Her heart was full of a delightful sensation. All her body was trembling, but she knew not why. She looked up at the wood-pigeons, her eyes glistened, and she said softly: ‘Oh, I do wish that the angel would come down from the signboard and torment me.’
She stretched, she moved her hands away from her head and held them up towards the boughs. Presently she ran home, with tears in her eyes.
The next morning Tamar ran out, hoping to meet Mrs. Vosper. She saw the lady drawing water at the well and went to greet her. Tamar’s eyes were tearful.
‘You have deceived me,’ she said, ‘you only told me a wicked story. I did exactly as you bid me, and the first man I saw was Mr. Bunce’s angel. I went to the oak tree to lie down, but he never came to tickle me.’
‘Perhaps you covered your knees with your frock and he didn’t see you,’ suggested Mrs. Vosper.
‘Oh, no, I didn’t,’ exclaimed Tamar, who was really crying now; ‘I lay down exactly as you said I was to, and only Mr. Grunter came by, and he never noticed.’
Tamar looked up at Mrs. Vosper.
‘I don’t like you,’ she said, ‘but I love my angel.’ And she ran home in a hurry.
Tamar soon grew to be a wayward, dark thing, with one high ambition that permitted her to love no mortal man. She ranged the countryside, for she never knew when she might not expect to meet her angel in some lonely valley. She knew every shepherd, every path in the fields, and every little hill. Often she would stray away from Folly Down rectory upon moonlight nights, and even during dark winter evenings. Sometimes she would stop and look at her own shadow, that the sun or moon would cast upon the turf. She would look curiously at it—the shadow, the figure of a girl.
Her father was a lonely man. He nursed his sorrow, and he never heeded what Tamar did. A lady, who lived a few miles away from Folly Down, and whose name was Miss Pettifer, would blame Mr. Grobe roundly for neglecting his daughter.
‘You ought to send her to school,’ she said defiantly, ‘where Tamar could play hockey, learn to behave herself, and talk French.’
Miss Pettifer began to breathe quickly, which showed that she was getting angry.
‘If you let her run about these hills in the way she does,’ she told Mr. Grobe, ‘who can say what might not happen! I wouldn’t be in the least surprised to hear that the girl had fallen in love with a hay-trusser—or a badger. Or she might set up housekeeping with an old raven in a tree-top. If a girl is not taught to play hockey, she might be found in a wood, talking to a serpent.’
‘She wouldn’t be the first woman who has done that,’ Mr. Grobe had replied. ‘But now, Miss Pettifer, I have my sermon to write.’
Sometimes, when summer was in Folly Down, Tamar would rise early and run out into the first sweetness of a new day. She would visit the oak tree, drawn there by the cooing of the wood-pigeons.
She would lie down in the bed; she would press her lips against the tree, with an ardour that showed well with what an agony of passion she would receive her lover when he at last came to her.