Читать книгу Mr Weston's Good Wine - T. F. Powys - Страница 7

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There is very little, unless he notices the rooks and the starlings, that is of much interest to the traveller in a country road in November. And a merchant whose business it is to travel widely in the world wouldn’t be likely to give much heed to the villages that he passed by, or to the little cottage children who ran out of their doors to look at the car and walked in again disappointedly because it wasn’t a larger one.

Mr. Weston noticed one child—a girl—whom, in coming round a sharp corner, he unexpectedly ran over. He looked round to where she lay and bade her pick herself up and run home, which she did, laughing, and appeared no worse for the mishap. This slight incident, however, set Michael a-talking.

‘A human girl-child,’ he said, ‘is a creature set in a dish for time to feed upon. She wears garters, frocks, and petticoats, and later, frills and pink ribbons. She walks out on the seventh day of the week and sighs for the sight of a pair of holiday trousers. They meet and embrace, and amuse themselves as best they may for a few short years, and then they fall sick and go down to the dead.’

‘And what harm is there in that?’ asked Mr. Weston, guiding the car carefully round a corner.

‘None, sir, that I am aware of,’ replied Michael gaily, ‘for mankind is but a changing element, constantly moving, fretted and troubled like the sea, blown upon by all the winds and drawn by all the tides.’

‘Yes,’ said Mr. Weston sadly, ‘I fear they have unfolded a changing affection, but their end was well thought of.’

‘Only the poor agree there,’ said Michael, laughing....

Although Mr. Weston paid very little attention to the churches or the children that he passed, he took a little more notice of the inns, and even gave himself the trouble to ask Michael whether he supposed that every inn had a stable, and Michael replied a little absent-mindedly that he thought they had.

‘I am glad you say so,’ replied Mr. Weston....

Mr. Weston’s car was a very useful one, and though exactly like a great many others, had, however, larger head-lights. But the time to light them was not yet come.

On the whole, Mr. Weston was a careful driver, and it was the fault of the child, who had jumped in his way, that she had been so nearly killed. Mr. Weston certainly drove very fast, yet the car never seemed to be, even when it turned the sharpest corners, in the least danger of overturning.

Hardly any one gives much heed to, or even notices, a plain business car that happens to pass along the highway when the evening is closing in and the rooks are going home. But Mr. Pring of Dodder, who was cracking stones with a hammer near to the turn into the narrow chalk lane that led to Folly Down, did happen, after breaking a large stone with a cunning blow, to look up, and he saw the car coming. It appeared to turn, during the moment that he looked at it, into the lane and was gone.

Mr. Pring laid down his hammer gently upon the stones; he removed his wired glasses, and stepped to the entrance of the lane.

Ten years ago that very day a car that had taken this same corner a little too quickly had overturned into the ditch, killing the driver, whose purse, after the gentleman had been carried away, Mr. Pring was lucky enough to discover in the road. Since then he had always hoped that the same good fortune might come to him again, and as there were two in the car that turned the corner, Mr. Pring hoped for two purses.

He had tried a few sharp flints in the road where he worked, but so far nothing had come of them.

And now, too, instead of a smashed car in the lane, Mr. Pring saw nothing whatever except a lame sheep over the rails that looked as surprised as he.

Mr. Pring rubbed his eyes. He looked at Folly Down hill—the car was already there.

Mr. Pring turned to the stone heap; he put on his glasses and struck a little stone. The stone cracked in half, and Mr. Pring turned and nodded towards Folly Down.

‘If ’tain’t the Devil, ’tis God,’ he said decidedly, and continued to crack a few more stones before he shouldered his hammer and returned to Dodder for his tea....

From the summit of the hill that Mr. Weston’s car had climbed so swiftly, a view presented itself of the village of Folly Down, and though somewhat a dim one—for the November afternoon was soon to turn to a long evening—yet the thatched cottages, the oak tree upon the green, and even the church tower and the inn signboard, could still be seen.

Gaining so swiftly the top of this hill—so that he had even astonished Mr. Pring—Mr. Weston brought his car to a standstill. Here there was a dry patch of soft mossy grass close to a gate that led into a large field, or rather down, where one lonely horse was standing with his head bent sadly as if he had not moved for many hours.

Mr. Weston looked into the valley. Had he created Folly Down and all the people who dwelt there, he could not have looked at the village in a more interested manner.

For a moment or two he appeared to be lost, as he had been at Maidenbridge, in a fit of the deepest meditation. The only living thing upon the hill that had noticed the arrival of the car was the lonely horse, that had been turned out upon the down because it was too lame to be worked. The horse forgot its lameness. It whinnied, and ambled easily to the gate, looking over with ears pricked up. Sometimes it sniffed as if it smelled the sweetest meadow hay, then suddenly it snorted, turned, pranced in terror, kicked, and galloped away.

‘Michael,’ said Mr. Weston, after he had regarded the little hamlet of Folly Down with such intensity that, did we not know how important trade is in a civilised country—or, indeed, in any country—might have been thought unduly curious—‘Michael, would you be so kind as to give me the book?’

No sooner was this command uttered than it was obeyed, for Michael stepped into the interior of the van, moving the curtain sufficiently to allow himself to enter, and presently returned with a book that had the look of an ordinary business man’s ledger, such as any tradesman might carry upon his travels.

‘Before we open the book, Michael,’ observed Mr. Weston, ‘and before we read the names of those whom we hope to trade with, I will stretch my legs for a few moments and walk upon this pleasant hill.’