Читать книгу Mr Weston's Good Wine - T. F. Powys - Страница 4

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Miss Nancy Gipps, walking up the High Street on her way to the apartment-house where she lodged, and coming from Miss Willcox’s school where she taught the young ladies, was curiously conscious when she approached him that she felt a strange interest and almost an affection for the driver of the Ford car, though she saw him for the first time in her life.

Miss Gipps was a lady whose manners were loving ones. She was one of the pure in heart, and she had never, since she had first met him—at the Town Hall at a lecture upon botany, where he made a short speech about the growing of hops—given up the hope that one day she might marry Mr. Board, the Mayor of the town.

Even at the lecture, when she saw Mr. Board stagger upon the platform, clutch at the lecturer and fall to the ground, she felt that he was a man to be pitied.

Mr. Board was very rich. He was a partner in the town brewery, and he had no wife to help him to give away his money to the poor rather than employ it, as he was now doing, in drinking himself to death.

Miss Gipps hoped that she might be the means of preventing this sad end, for she had an idea that it is in the power of any good woman to make a man happy without the drink.

And, in order to do so, when she married him, she meant to purchase the largest cracker, stuffed with toys, that his money could buy, so that he could pull it with her, give the toys away, and forget his glass.

Miss Gipps had noticed the children as well as the Ford car and its occupant, and she feared—knowing the habits of the young—that the children did not wait there for any good, but intended either to rob or to make a mock of the driver.

Miss Gipps couldn’t take her eyes off him—and gracious, loving eyes they were—for she felt him to be a man made in the same mould as Mr. Board—a man to be pitied and loved.

No lady had ever wished for a husband more than Miss Gipps, who, although she had lost the kittenish merriment of a young girl, possessed all the matured and loving ways of a really kind woman.

Miss Gipps was dark; she was affectionate and forgiving, and her hair curled. About one thing she felt quite sure; she was certain that she could make any man who wasn’t too young for the process—a sinner though he might be—round off his life in quiet harmony and die lovingly. But, alas! Miss Gipps possessed no money, and no gentleman had taken her hand asking to be comforted. However, she didn’t despair, and she always believed that Mr. Board was exactly the man she wanted.

After the lecture at the Town Hall, Miss Gipps had discovered him trying, with a grim and determined look, to put on her cloak. She found his overcoat and helped him on with it, for which kindness he certainly thanked her, though he need not have called her Lily, for that was not her name.

But, even following this little incident to its natural conclusion, Miss Gipps was able more than ever to nurse in her heart the hope that, with a husband who could so easily mistake her—Miss Nancy Gipps—for the barmaid at the Rod and Lion, she might, having all his money in her charge, make all the poor in the town happy by sending to each household a generous supply of the best loaded crackers for Christmas.

Miss Gipps’s faith—and as soon as she saw the driver of the Ford car she believed—now caused her to be more sure than ever that what she longed for, and asked for in her prayers, would come to pass.

It often happens that a common and ordinary appearance, be it but a business conveyance or a lonely wheelbarrow, may have a very strange effect upon the human mind, and Miss Gipps discovered, as she stepped with her nicely blacked shoes upon the pavement, that she was trembling.

She had almost stopped, being surprised at her feelings, and then she gave a little gasp, for another man, a tall one, was standing beside the car and evidently intending to get in.

‘Oh, these dear men,’ sighed Miss Gipps, ‘they do appear suddenly. But how foolish of me to be frightened, for I might have known that it couldn’t have been Mr. Board, because he never comes unexpectedly.’

Even with Mr. Weston’s companion now arrived, it was at Mr. Weston that Miss Gipps still looked.

She noticed that He wore a rather heavy overcoat, of a greenish material, that was unbuttoned and opened. She couldn’t keep her eyes off him as she came nearer, and a curious fancy arose in her heart that all her life—even from the early days when her mother would pray beside her cot—some one as fat, as happy, and as kindly had been looking at and loving her.

She sighed for Mr. Board.

And all the time that she had been walking up that street, that she knew as well as the rather nasty little passage, with three steps to go down, at her lodging-house, Mr. Weston’s look had been saying to her: ‘If you only buy what I can sell to you, Miss Nancy Gipps, you will be everlastingly happy.’

But however much Miss Gipps wished to wait in front of the car now that she was so near to it, yet she felt it to be necessary, when she came to it, to go by.

Miss Gipps did go by, but she looked at the side of the car as she passed, and read—having a quicker eye for words than the rude children—‘Mr. Weston’s Good Wine.’

Miss Gipps sighed.

‘Could ever Mr. Board,’ she wondered, ‘look at her and think of her as if she were as good as Mr. Weston’s good wine?’

‘I believe he will,’ said Miss Gipps.

Miss Gipps walked lightly on. She felt differently; she was a happy woman. The very reading of the word ‘wine’ had renewed her hopes—they had been sobered a little when she was called Lily—in a wonderful manner. She believed that in a few weeks, in time to give away thousands of Christmas crackers, she would be Mrs. Board.

Miss Gipps, from her youth upward, had been fond of crackers. These toys gave, she felt, all that should be given to make any one happy. Everything about a cracker, she knew, could give pleasure. The wrappings, the coloured paper, the dunce’s cap, the painted whistle, the child’s jewelled ring, could always bring such joy to the young, and carry past thoughts and remembrances to the old, as well as present pleasure. No cowslip, that Miss Gipps knew of, ever culled in May, could feed the heart with such abundant feelings as a cracker—as cheap a one as you wish—when pulled at Christmas. One can cry or laugh then; but, of course, one laughs.

Miss Gipps had all her life—beginning with her own younger sisters—taught children to do their lessons, and very soon, she hoped, she would only be telling them to be happy and to play. She would give the plain town of Maidenbridge a high holiday. There would be Christmas trees, hung with red crackers, in every poor man’s house.

As she neared her home, Miss Gipps saw a new vision of life, happy and joyous, all love and no shame, with malice and meanness and envy departed for ever.

And she saw herself the happy wife of Mr. Board.