Читать книгу Silver Slippers - Temple Bailey - Страница 10

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Along the rocks at Granitehead ran a primitive boardwalk. It connected one hotel with another, and between the hotels were small tea-rooms and libraries and all the little places of trade patronized by summer guests and open only during the hot season.

At the end of the boardwalk, however, where it ascended a steep promontory was a shop which was open all the year. A sign above the doorway said:

GILES ARMIGER—RARE BOOKS

In the window of the shop were displayed a few volumes of current fiction, whose gay jackets were in sharp contrast to the dark leather of the old books back of them, and to the dim prints and somber steel engravings.

Set low in the window, as if it modestly refrained from competition with the more aristocratic commodities of letters, was another sign. There was no name on the modest sign. It simply read:

SHOES MENDED

The shoemaker’s shop was reached from the outside by a winding path up from the lower road, or indoors by a flight of stairs down from the bookshop. It clung thus to the side of the rock like the nest of some timid bird. Its windows faced the open sea, and, indeed, the view of the water was so wide and free that one looking out had the sensation of being on the prow of a ship and sailing forward. Within the shop, there was for furniture a cobbler’s bench, a set of shelves on which were set forth shoes to be mended, a table piled with more shoes, and a modern machine for stitching leather. On the outer sills of the windows, beyond the screens, were boxes of growing plants, snapdragons and petunias and painter’s-brush—their pink and white and lavender blurred this morning by the gray slant of the rain which had beaten the waves into stillness and had shut people up in their houses.

The storm had, too, stopped business on the boardwalk, so that it was after ten before the owner of the bookshop arrived. He called a greeting down the stairs and when no answer came he descended them, showing himself in the doorway as rather tall and shapeless in a yellow slicker with an oil-skin hat pulled over his nose.

There was a rustle in a corner and out came an old sea-gull, raising its wings in an ecstasy of welcome. White of breast, keen of eye, it had a sort of wild dignity which made it impressive in spite of the dragging pinion which held it to earth and kept it from the flashing flights of others of its kind who, even in the rain, dipped and rose, or hung suspended above the sullen surface of the sea.

“All alone, Peter?”

Old Peter stretched his neck and seemed to listen. There was a step outside.

“Scripps is coming,” Armiger said, and the door opened.

The man who entered wore no hat or raincoat. He nodded to Armiger and stripped off his worn leather jacket and threw it in a corner. There had been a time when Scripps’ leather jacket had been worn for more spectacular uses—when he had flown high in the air above other seas than this—above war-swept zones. Then one day his wings had been broken by the guns of enemy planes. He had come down, as old Peter had come, to walk henceforth with men who had no wings. To mending shoes, because when the doctors had diagnosed his case they had spoken of nerves and the necessity of doing something with his hands. “No more law books,” the big specialist had said, “it would be wiser to learn a trade if you don’t think it beneath you.”

Scripps had spoken with bitterness. “Beggars can’t be choosers. I’ll mend shoes. My great-grandfather was a cobbler. There were many cobblers in Granitehead, and nobody was ashamed of it.”

Stephen Scripps and Giles Armiger had come from France together. There had been things overseas which had drawn them close. Their asset was now a friendship which touched the skies, their liabilities that they had the strength of only one man between them. Giles always spoke of his own perfect physical condition with a note of apology. “I seemed to bear a charmed life, Scripps. It wasn’t fair when the rest of you had to suffer.”

Yet Giles had fought through four years of it, and he had come back with the marks of it on his soul. Never again would there be the radiance, the youth, the gayety. Never again, perhaps, the hope, the ambition. When his friend, Stephen, had elected to mend shoes, Giles had said: “My grandfather’s library was his pride. He bought rare books, I’ll sell them.”

So here were the two shops, Scripps safely hidden in his, his sign in his friend’s window. Armiger happy among his books. Or as happy as a man can be who through four years has seen horrors.

Scripps said now: “Dilly came over this morning. I met her at the landing. She’ll be up here at lunch time. She has brought a cake. She remembered your birthday.”

“How’s the baby?”

“Much better. That’s why she could come. She left her with William.”

“Nasty weather for her to be out.”

“Dilly doesn’t mind rain any more than a little duck. She said the storm of yesterday blew things about a bit. Carried one of her Plymouth Rocks out to sea, and she had to row to the rescue.”

They laughed at the picture of Dilly in pursuit of her wind-blown biddy, then Giles said: “It was a dreadful storm. It caught me on my way down from Gloucester. I’ve never seen blacker clouds, coming up from the west, with a green tint, like a tornado.”

He seated himself on the edge of the table and swung a foot. “Just as the storm broke a girl appeared on the rocks above me. She was all in white and with that blackness back of her the effect was tremendous ... like something supernatural ... or like that statue, you remember, we saw in France, when the smoke drew away and it stood out against the dark ...”

“I don’t want to remember,” said Scripps. “I don’t want to remember anything, in France.”

“I know,” Giles shelved the dangerous topic and went on with his story. “Well, I saw that the storm was about to break but the girl didn’t, and I waved a warning. She began to run and her white cape billowed up about her like wings ...”

He stopped suddenly and sat staring into space.

Scripps glanced at him and said, drily. “An angel visitant?”

“Yes, something like that. You needn’t try to be funny about it, Scripps.”

“I couldn’t be funny. But I’m not quite sold on angel visitants.”

“You have no poetry in your soul.”

“Well, why should I? I deal in shoes.”

“There’s poetry in shoes—seaman’s boots and slattern’s slippers.”

“There aren’t any slatterns in Granitehead.”

“Oh, well, have your way about it,” Armiger stood up, undisturbed by the argument, “and just for that I’ll leave you to Peter’s company. I’ll be down when Dilly comes. It’s raining hard again, thank heaven. I shall have a peaceful day with no barbarians to bother me.”

The barbarians were, it may be said, certain of the summer people who haunted the boardwalk. They bought of Giles not because they cared for old books, or fine bindings, or the association with rare minds of other ages, but because they felt that something which must be paid for by checks of three figures should be worth having. Few of them knew the difference between Ben Jonson and the incomparable Samuel; had never read Keats or heard of Fanny Brawne. They stared blankly when one spoke of Pepys, and refused utterly to enthuse over Shelley even while they bought him. Giles, lacking the commercial mind, would have preferred to keep his treasures rather than have them go to those who had no real appreciation of their value. “I have patience with ignorance which seeks knowledge,” he told Scripps, “but not with these literary upstarts who buy books as they would bonds.”

Having doffed his slicker, Giles proceeded to set the shop in order. He worked swiftly and competently, and as he moved about, he gave an impression of strength and vigor exceeding any demands made upon it. One felt he should be now, as he had been in France, in command of men, rather than selling books over a counter. He had a well-knit, slender frame, small hips, broad shoulders. His features were clear-cut, his eyes keen and brown. His small mustache was darker than his hair which was ruffled up on his head and of a reddish-brown.

As he worked, he whistled under his breath. He felt an unusual lightness of spirit. There were days when he was deeply depressed. Days when it was difficult to preserve a cheerful front before Scripps. Which must be done, of course, lest Scripps descend into the depths.

His whistling ceased as a customer entered. He went forward to find a girl in a green raincoat. A small green hat was pulled down over her eyes. She had left outside a dripping umbrella.

“Are you the shoemaker?”

“No. But I look after customers.”

She handed him a parcel, “I want my slippers mended.”

He took off the paper. Silver ones! Small and exquisite. “What’s to be done to them?”

She showed him. “I caught the heel. I was dancing in the woods.”

Dancing in the woods ... and she was all in green ...

He said before he could stop: “You’re not a dryad?”

She drew back a little, her eyes startled. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He laughed, “I’m sorry. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that. But dancing in the woods! Not many people do.”

Her voice was cold. “How silly I must have sounded.”

“You sounded—superlative.”

She hesitated for a second, then found herself smiling. He seemed a gentleman. And his manner was not in the least presumptuous. “It was a heavenly dance,” she confided.

“I am sure of it.”

“Moonlight,” she vouchsafed further.

“And for a partner—a faun ...?”

Another moment’s hesitation, then with a thrill in her voice, “And for a partner—Apollo—”

Oh, could anything be better? To have her meet his thought like that. And who could have expected this out from the boardwalk on a rainy morning? He said with eagerness, “Your silver shoes will shine among Scripps’ seaman’s boots and slattern’s slippers.”

“Scripps?”

“My friend, the cobbler. His shop is downstairs.”

“Oh ... will you tell him then that there’s a torn place on the other shoe? And may I have them by Tuesday night? There’s a dance on then and I’ll need them.”

She would, she continued, call for them. She was at the Wind and Wave and would like the walk. And when she had said that, she glanced around the shop and decided: “While I am here I might as well buy a book.”

She wandered over to the tables and began to read the titles, and it seemed to Giles watching her as if every time she moved a light followed her, like the light in the theatre thrown on the leading lady. He found himself saying things over in his mind, like She walks in beauty ...

The girl held up a popular novel. “How about this?”

He shook his head. “No ... It’s not a book for dryads—it is for satyrs and people with machine minds.”

“How do you know I haven’t a machine mind?”

“One can judge of these things quickly.”

“But you’ve seen me only once.”

“I’ve seen you twice.”

She looked at him in astonishment, “When was the other time?”

“Yesterday in the storm. You were on the rocks near Gloucester.”

“Were you the man in the boat?”

“Yes.”

They stood silent for a moment. Each felt, perhaps subconsciously, the significance of this meeting. Then Giles spoke: “You have no idea how amazing you were against that black sky. With your white cape blowing, and the sea surging up below you. When I was a little boy I had a picture of an angel on a rock. I always liked to look at it.” His eyes as they met hers held a glint of laughter in them which robbed his words of any suggestion of sentimentality.

She smiled back. “Angels on rocks make me think of tombstones.”

“Do they? They make me think of Revelation.”

They talked of the storm after that, and she told him of her flight through the wood and her fears. Then he chose a book for her and wrapped it up. “Before you go, won’t you let me show you one or two things I think you’ll like? I have a copy of a letter from Keats to Fanny Brawne. My grandfather made the copy himself from the original, and I was lucky enough to have it left to me. I wouldn’t sell it for a fortune, but now and then I let somebody look at it.”

He drew out a chair for her, then brought the letter. While she read it, he stood leaning against the table. It was the one beginning, “My sweet girl,” and ending, “Ever yours, my love.” Joan bending above it read with breathless interest. Giles thought her very pretty, with the deep rose of her cheeks, the length of her dark lashes, the brightness of her hair as it showed beneath her green cap.

When she raised her eyes there was a light in them like the glow and shine of candles in a sanctuary. With keen intuition Giles told himself, “She is linking some experience of her own with that letter.”

The thought weighed on him. He had been, perhaps, a fool not to let her go at once when she had bought her book. He knew that when she left, he would still see her sitting there with her lighted eyes in his dark shop. He would dream of her. And who was he to dream of such a woman?

She was saying, “I adore Keats. My father was the editor of a country newspaper and his only really valuable possession was a library of old books. He made me learn pages of poetry. When I began to teach school I found it a great help with the children to pass on to them what I had learned.”

So she was a schoolteacher! He had not thought that. It did not fit in with the expensiveness of the silver slippers and the fact of her sojourn at the big hotel. Yet even country mice have now and then a holiday. And he was glad to know her as not one of the rich barbarians whom he hated.