Читать книгу The Hour Before the Dawn - W. Somerset Maugham - Страница 3

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She walked across the wide stretch of lawn, with its fine cedars, through a wrought-iron gate in a brick wall mellow with age, and out into the formal garden. There was a raised terrace that ran along the whole rear of the stately house and it was reached by a flight of steps at the top of which, on each side, was a weather-beaten Italian statue on a pedestal. The garden, rich with the gay flowers of late August, extended from the terrace to a low iron fence that separated it from the great park and prevented the cattle that grazed there from wandering in. She was a young woman with pale brown hair and dark brown eyes, slim and tall, and with that virginal look that many English women strangely retain after years of marriage. She had a straight nose, with delicate nostrils, a candid brow and a well-shaped mouth; the red of her painted lips made her clear white skin look even whiter. In her quiet, almost demure way, she was a very pretty woman, but since there was nothing striking in her appearance, since she dressed very simply, it was not till you talked to her that you were aware of it. Because she was shy she gave many people the impression that she was cold or casual, but the most censorious dowagers in the county admitted in their ponderous, old-fashioned way that though she might be a trifle offhand she was a gentlewoman. It offended them a little that she was obviously quite indifferent to their opinion of her. Without rank, a naval officer’s daughter, and without a penny of her own, she had the unassuming distinction of a well-bred woman who is aware without arrogance of her place in society and makes no claim to be other than what she is.

Her thoughts troubled her and her face had been grave as she walked across the lawn, but a faint smile softened her brown eyes as she saw her mother-in-law, Mrs. Henderson, sitting on the terrace. The table was laid out for tea. A butler and a couple of footmen were in the act of bringing out from the house the urn and the tea-pot, plates of bread and butter, scones and cake. Mrs. Henderson was reading a novel, but she put it down as her daughter-in-law joined her.

“Haven’t you been playing, May?” she asked.

“No. I felt lazy. They’re just finishing a sett and then they’re coming along.”

From the terrace you could hear the voices of the players as they called the score and the ping of the ball against the taut gut of the racket.

“You’re looking rather washed out, dear. D’you think the heat’s too much for you?” asked Mrs. Henderson.

May faintly coloured under Mrs. Henderson’s kindly but shrewd eye.

“Oh, no, I’ll play after tea.”

“I dare say that Roger’ll be glad to have a game.”

Roger was her eldest son and May’s husband. He had arrived from abroad the night before and had telephoned that morning to say that he would drive down in the course of the day. It was Mrs. Henderson’s birthday, her fifty-third, and according to their habit all the family were assembled. There were her two younger sons, Jim who was still at Oxford, and Tommy who was only thirteen and home from school; and there were her daughter Jane and her daughter’s husband Ian Foster. And of course there was her own husband the General. Mrs. Henderson had a suspicion that sometimes they didn’t find it altogether convenient to come from wherever they might be to spend her birthday with her, especially as it was on the last day of August and there was grouse to be shot on the Yorkshire moors, but she liked to have them there, round her, on that one day of the year and though they might come when they would have preferred to be elsewhere only to please her she knew that they made the sacrifice willingly. She accepted it as a proof of their love for her. It was her only selfishness. Roger was a soldier, in the Military Intelligence, and for the last three or four years had been much out of England. He had been in Japan and in the United States, and during the last twelve months, since Munich, he had been in Spain and the Balkans, several times to France and now was just back from Poland. Mrs. Henderson had given up hope that he would be able to spend this birthday with her and it was with joyful surprise that she had heard his voice on the telephone that morning. His arrival would make her happiness complete. She was glad for May’s sake too. May hadn’t seen much of him of late. It was a pity she had no children.

“Here’s Jane,” said Mrs. Henderson, with her ready smile.

Jane Foster came through the gateway, up the steps on to the terrace, and sank into a chair. It was odd that Mrs. Henderson should have such a daughter. Mrs. Henderson was a tall, handsome, grey-haired woman, with fine features that gave her a somewhat severe look, but with mild, friendly eyes. She was dressed in black. But Jane wore bright green slacks and a green and yellow tunic with a bold geometrical pattern. On her feet were yellow sandals with enormously thick cork soles. From each sandal protruded a scarlet toenail. She was thirty-four, Mrs. Henderson’s eldest child, a tall, rather gaunt, rather masculine, rather horsey woman. Her naturally dark hair was hennaed and she was as heavily made-up as an actress about to face the footlights. The obvious desire of that big-featured woman to look alluring would have been pathetic if its grotesqueness hadn’t been disarming. She was a joke and you couldn’t but believe that she knew it and saw the fun of it. And to add to the fantastic quality of her appearance she wore in her left eye a rimless monocle without a cord. The dowagers who have just been mentioned were agreed that if you didn’t know all about her you would have said she was dreadfully common. Little escaped the sharp eye behind the monocle, and being perfectly aware of this she took care to give these ladies ample cause for their remarks.

“It’s funny,” they said plaintively, “that men seem to like her.”

It was mortifying that at a dinner party when the men, having finished their port, came into the drawing-room they should gather round Jane and shout with coarse laughter while she aired her views on things in general with a freedom of speech unusual in county society. And her father and mother were such nice people.

Mrs. Henderson, when she took in the details of Jane’s turn-out, raised her eyebrows.

“My poor Jane, are you obliged to make up quite so much on a summer afternoon in the depths of the country?”

“I feel so funny if I haven’t got my face on,” answered Jane, taking out her lipstick and painting lips that were already heavily painted.

“You wouldn’t look so funny if you hadn’t.”

Jane gave a deep throaty laugh.

“Darling, how sweet you are to me, but I love you just the same.”

Mrs. Henderson wasn’t devoid of a sense of humour.

“You’re so vulgar, the neighbours can’t help thinking there must have been a little nonsense between me and one of the gamekeepers and that isn’t very nice for me as I was only nineteen when you were born.”

“And was there, Mother?”

Mrs. Henderson and May burst out laughing.

“You fool, Jane.” Mrs. Henderson ladled spoonfuls of tea into the tea-pot and poured hot water in. “They won’t be long, will they? Who’s playing?”

“Father and Tommy are playing against Dick Murray and Dora.”

“Why doesn’t Jim come along then and have his tea?”

“Why indeed? You don’t suppose he could tear himself away when Dora’s on the court.”

“Don’t be so silly, Jane,” said Mrs. Henderson a trifle tartly.

Jane secured her glass more firmly in her eye.

“Darling, you don’t miss much. I know I can never get away with anything with you. I don’t know if Dora’s in love with Jim, but I know Jim’s so much in love with her he can’t see straight. And you know it too.”

Mrs. Henderson stirred the tea leaves while her daughter and her daughter-in-law looked at her curiously. She gave her shoulders a faint shrug.

“He’s only twenty-one, poor lamb. He’ll forget her when he goes back to Oxford.”

“You wouldn’t like it very much if he went off and married a foreigner, would you?”

“Even foreigners are human, darling,” said Mrs. Henderson, with what for her was considerable acidity. “I’ve noticed that’s something we English are apt to forget.”

Jane sat up in her chair.

“D’you mean to say you wouldn’t mind?”

For a moment Mrs. Henderson was silent and when she spoke it was more as if she were speaking to herself than answering Jane.

“She’s pretty and she’s intelligent. I’m terribly sorry for her. She’s alone in the world. She hasn’t a home and she hasn’t a country. And that nightmare of her father having been done to death in a concentration camp!”

“Still she is a German. If war breaks out you won’t be able to keep her here.”

“Your father says there won’t be a war. He says he knows it for a fact that when it comes to the point Hitler will climb down.”

“Father would hate Jim to marry Dora.”

Mrs. Henderson looked with her mild eyes from Jane to May and then from May to Jane.

“I wonder. May has been married for eight years and she hasn’t any children. You haven’t either, Jane.”

“What do you suggest I should do about it? Get a new chauffeur?” Jane asked.

Mrs. Henderson, going on with her thoughts, took no notice of the flippant remark.

“We’ve had this place for two hundred years. It’s the pride of your father’s heart. I don’t think he’d mind much whom Jim married if only there were children to carry on.”

She gave a glance at the noble façade of the great house and then her eyes travelled over the formal garden with its Italian fountain, its statues, its grass paths and many-coloured flowers, till they rested on the park beyond. There were trees there as old as the house. Under the shade of a huge oak cows were lying. As far as the eye could reach it was Henderson land. It kept them poor to maintain that vast house and that great estate. But they loved their home, she and her husband, and there was hardly a tenant who didn’t farm the land that his father and grandfather and great-grandfather hadn’t farmed before him. They were prepared to sacrifice themselves to hand down to their successors intact the house and land that they held in trust.

Jane was about to speak when she saw the General stroll through the wrought-iron gate.

“Here they are,” she said.

General Henderson was a tall man, slim and erect, with a lined, bronzed face and white hair, whom you could never have taken for anything but a soldier. Even in tennis things he managed to look well groomed and you might have guessed that he was fussy about his clothes. His manner was brisk and authoritative, but you couldn’t know him long without discovering that this was, as it were, a professional veneer and that at heart he was a kindly, easy-going man; he was brave and honest, but he had the narrowness of his caste and calling, and he had common sense rather than intelligence. He could more easily forgive an injury than a social solecism. You could rely on him to the death, but you couldn’t always rely on him to do the wise thing. He walked up to the terrace accompanied by his two sons, and a moment later Ian Foster, Jane’s husband, appeared with Dick Murray, the General’s agent. Between them was the girl of whom Mrs. Henderson and her daughter had been speaking. Dora Friedberg was twenty. She had very fair hair and large blue intelligent eyes and a honey-coloured skin. She was slender, but with full breasts, and her elegant little head was set proudly on a lovely neck. Notwithstanding the blond and healthy radiance of her youth, there was in the firmness of her chin, in the decision of her mouth and the singular repose in her eyes when she was not speaking, something that suggested a strong will. Jane, who had taken an instinctive dislike to her, had told her husband:

“I wouldn’t trust her a yard. She’d be a demon, that girl, if she was roused.”

But Jane was wrong in saying that Dora was German; she was Austrian. The Hendersons had met her at Kitzbühl in the Austrian Tyrol during the winter that preceded the Anschluss. She was staying with her mother at the same hotel as they were. Frau Friedberg was a woman of distinguished appearance and Mrs. Henderson, who was not indifferent to such things, was not surprised to learn that she was of good family. She spoke little of her husband, a lawyer, and Mrs. Henderson guessed that he was of a class inferior to her own. It was likely enough that after the ruin of Austria she had been glad to marry any man who offered her security. The two boys, Jim and Tommy, took a fancy to the pretty, lively girl and Jim went on long excursions with her. She was a beautiful skier. A year later she wrote to Mrs. Henderson to say that her father had died in a concentration camp and she wanted to come to England to get work. She didn’t mind what it was and she asked Mrs. Henderson to help her to find something. Mrs. Henderson, full of pity, after consulting the General wrote back asking Dora to stay with them while they looked about. But it wasn’t easy to get a job for an Austrian refugee just then. Dora could cook and was quite willing to go into domestic service, but the Hendersons didn’t like the idea of it, and they thought, moreover, that in such a situation her beauty must inevitably expose her to unpleasantness. They begged her to wait till something turned up that was suitable to her education and culture. While she waited she made herself useful. The General was a justice of the peace and chairman of the local county council; and Mrs. Henderson, much occupied with good works, was on a number of committees; they found it very convenient to have at hand a willing and intelligent secretary. With Jim at Oxford and Tommy at school, they were alone for months at a time and the presence of that charming girl brought life to the great, stately house. It was the General’s suggestion that she should stay with them indefinitely. She accepted it with a gratitude that touched them. The Hendersons had taken her out of the kindness that was natural to them, but before long they looked upon her with real affection. She became one of the family. In Mrs. Henderson’s heart she took the place of the two daughters who had come between Roger and Jim and whose death in childhood she still mourned.

Mrs. Henderson began to pour out tea.

“How did you play, Tommy?” she smilingly asked the untidy, tousle-haired little boy who was her youngest son, when he sat down at the tea table.

“Like a foot,” he answered in his treble voice. “We only just beat them.”

“If you’d been on your game we shouldn’t have had a look in, I suppose,” said Dick Murray with a grin.

“All right. Pull my leg.”

He stretched out a thin arm and took a big piece of cake.

“Bread and butter first, darling,” said his mother.

“What a life!” he piped. “I thought in the holidays I was supposed to have a little happiness.”

He carefully examined the plate and chose the smallest piece he could find.

“You have a rotten life, old boy, don’t you?” the General smiled.

Mrs. Henderson gave her son a glance of tender amusement. He was by years the youngest of her children and she doted on him. There was in his skinny legs and arms, in that slender body and in that smooth funny little face of his something that wrung her heart-strings. She felt she must be constantly on her guard not to spoil him. But he was growing so fast, he seemed so frail, and he was never still, busy from morning till night with one thing and another, that sometimes she was afraid; she didn’t know what she would do if anything happened to him.

When Dick Murray had come on to the terrace with the others he took a quick look round and then moved as if to sit down in the vacant chair next to May; but she gave him a glance and it may be that it bore a message, for he changed his mind and seated himself by Mrs. Henderson. Jane, puffing a cigarette, noticed it. She looked at him thoughtfully. A fellow of not unpleasing appearance. He was young, four or five years younger than herself, but his hair, thick and wavy, was prematurely grey; and this, with his tanned, unlined skin, was peculiarly attractive; it made his fine blue eyes look even bluer than they were and his lashes darker. His features weren’t particularly good, rather blunt, but when he smiled he showed a set of very white, regular teeth. He was somewhat heavily built, with broad shoulders, and of no more than average height. There was a charming twinkle in his blue eyes and on his face a look of great good humour. Everybody liked him; he had so much vitality, it warmed you to be with him; and if there was something aggressively animal about him, it was so healthy, it was combined with so much friendliness and simplicity of nature, that it was not offensive, but only invigorating.

“A wonderful lover, I should think,” reflected Jane.

With a sardonic smile on her painted lips she now turned her gaze on her husband. Ian Foster sank his huge bulk into a rattan chair and it creaked under his two hundred pounds. He was a huge, red-faced man, with a great booming voice, and his obesity was a disgrace. He took his handkerchief and wiped his brow.

“I don’t know why you should be hot,” Jane said to him tartly. “You haven’t been playing.”

“They all ran about so strenuously it made the sweat drip off me just to look at them. It’s given me such a thirst that unless I have a whisky and soda I shall pass out.”

“You’ll drink tea, Ian,” his wife said firmly. “And if you’d run about a bit more yourself you might get a little of that horrible fat off you.”

“What was it that Solomon said about a nagging woman?”

“Nothing,” Jane retorted. “He said a virtuous wife is above rubies.”

“Considering that you’ve been flagrantly unfaithful to me for years I fail to see how that applies to you, Jane.”

“What did you expect when you married a glamour girl?”

“Idiots,” said Mrs. Henderson, enveloping them both with her affectionate smile.

They were accustomed to hearing Ian and Jane say outrageous things to one another; they sparred all day long and when one got a rise out of the other he chortled with glee. No one knew better than Mrs. Henderson how deeply Jane loved that corpulent, gross, loquacious man and how devoted he was to the plain, gawky creature who by some strange freak of nature was her daughter. Though he was constantly flying into a passion with her, when he would abuse her in language of incredible violence, he was entirely dependent upon her and without her was lost. To him she was the grandest woman in the world, the most amusing and the cleverest and the truest. They were comics, both of them, and theirs was a perfect marriage.

The General looked at his watch.

“Where the devil’s that scoundrel Roger?” he asked. “He ought to be here by now.”

“He won’t be long,” answered Mrs. Henderson. “His secretary phoned from the War Office two hours ago to say he was just starting.”

“You’ll be glad to see him, May, won’t you?” said Jane.

May flushed a little.

“Naturally,” she smiled. “After five months.”

“I suppose he’ll bring all the latest news,” said Dora.

It was the first time she had spoken. She had a pleasant voice and only a trace of a German accent. The General turned to her with a kindly smile on his thin, weather-beaten face.

“Take my word for it, Dora, you’ve got nothing to be alarmed about. There’s not going to be a war. Chamberlain will keep us out of it as he kept us out last year.”

“It’ll be a bit awkward for you if there’s a war, won’t it, Jim?” asked Jane.

He looked at her coolly.

“Not at all.”

“You’re still a pacifist, aren’t you?”

The General looked down with a slight frown and Mrs. Henderson gave her daughter a glance of annoyance. Jim’s views were a subject that she sought to keep out of the conversation. Jim and his father had already had several arguments upon it and they had said things to one another that would have been better left unsaid. Why couldn’t they understand that he was a boy, only twenty-one, and it was natural at his age to have extravagant opinions? He would change them when he grew older and learnt something about life. His pacifism was like his communism, merely an expression of the natural idealism of youth. Why, you only had to look at him. He was as tall as his father, broad-shouldered and well set up, with a nice-looking sensitive face, more sensitive than Roger’s, but with the same family likeness. There was nothing mawkish or abnormal about him; indeed he was a high-spirited, manly youth. Though a fine athlete who rowed for his college and had played golf for his university, he was a hard worker. He was the only one of her children who cared for books for their own sake. Roger was a great reader too, but he only read what immediately concerned his job; he had a one-track mind: Jim was a boy of wide interests, and, even making allowances for a mother’s partiality, Mrs. Henderson felt herself justified in cherishing high hopes for his future. He had done well at school, he was doing well at Oxford; he was a good speaker and was going to be a lawyer; there was no knowing to what eminence he might not rise. But of course he must be sensible. Mrs. Henderson wanted to hear what answer Jim would make to Jane’s deliberately provocative question. He turned to her gravely; he spoke not with truculence, but with a firmness that was impressive. He looked Jane straight in the eyes.

“Yes, I’m still a pacifist. War settles nothing. It’s not only an iniquitous business, but a stupid business. There are a lot of us at Oxford and if there’s a war we shall refuse to fight.”

“You say that now, old boy,” Ian broke in, with a tolerant grin on his fat red face, “but if war breaks out you’ll change your mind all right. Heaven knows, I don’t want war, but if it does come I’m going to be in on it.”

“Don’t be so silly, Ian,” cried Jane. “You’re too old to fight and much too fat.”

“Will you oblige me by keeping your trap shut, darling?” he retorted.

Mrs. Henderson’s eyes wandered past the formal garden to the park beyond. The late sun bathed it in a golden beauty. The trees, the gnarled oak trees with their dark foliage, the lush green of the meadowland and the sheen of the lake—oh it was lovely. Not a breath of wind stirred the leaves. It gave you the impression of such perfect, such heavenly tranquillity that you felt it must last forever. You had a singular feeling that the moment would never pass, the cows lying under the oak trees never rise to their feet and the night never come. Time, as though tired of his restless wandering, stood still. Mrs. Henderson gave a faint sigh.

“When I went down to the village this morning with everyone so happy and friendly and contented, and when I look at that peaceful scene with all of you here, I can’t bring myself to believe that there’s even a possibility of war.”

But Jim still held Jane fixed with his serious eyes.

“Are there any more questions you want to ask me?” he said.

“No, there aren’t,” said Mrs. Henderson sharply. “Let me have at least this one day without an argument.”

Dick Murray with his good nature and ready tact threw a casual remark into a conversation that was on the point of losing its amenity.

“Lucky Roger was able to make it, Mrs. Henderson. It would have been a disappointment to you if he hadn’t got back in time.”

“It would. It’s dreadfully sentimental and old-fashioned of me, but I’m bound to admit it, it means a great deal to me to have my family round me on my birthday.”

“Let’s hope Roger won’t be so damned secretive as he usually is,” said Ian.

“Well, he’s a sleuth, isn’t he?” Tommy piped in. “If you’re a sleuth you’ve jolly well got to be secretive.”

“I wish I could get into the Intelligence Department,” Ian went on. “It’s just the sort of job that would suit me.”

“What in Heaven’s name makes you think that, Ian?” Jane cried, fixing him with her monocle. “They want brains for that, my boy, brains.”

He gave a great guffaw. She had given him an opening and he promptly took it.

“I suppose you think if I’d had a spark of intelligence I wouldn’t have married you and I’m not sure that you’re not damned well right.”

But before Jane could think of a crushing retort Mrs. Henderson gave a cry.

“Roger.”

He was standing in front of one of the open french windows that led from the great hall of the house on to the terrace. He had come in as quietly as was his habit and was watching them with an amused smile. He came forward and taking his mother in his arms kissed her warmly. Tommy jumped up and flung his arms round him.

“You’re not too old to kiss yet, are you, old boy?” said Roger, giving him a fond embrace.

Then he turned to his wife. She had risen on seeing him and put her hand to her heart as though to stay its beating. Her pale face had gone paler still. When he kissed her she slightly turned her mouth away so that his lips only touched her cheek.

“Hulloa, May. You’re looking grand.”

“Have a nice journey, Roger?” she asked.

“Not so bad. A bit bumpy.”

He greeted the rest of them and then his eyes fell on a stranger.

“This is Dora Friedberg,” said Mrs. Henderson. “I forgot, you haven’t been down here since she’s been living with us. She’s been a great help.”

“May wrote and said you had a friend staying with you.”

“The General and Mrs. Henderson have been wonderfully kind to me,” said Dora with a little smile.

“Nonsense, my dear,” said the General. “I don’t know what we should have done without you in this great barn with no one but my wife and me to live in it.”

Roger turned back to his mother and fished out of his pocket a small box.

“I’ve brought you a present from Warsaw, darling. Many happy returns.”

He kissed her again. It was an antique brooch and Mrs. Henderson, flushing with pleasure, put it on. Roger was her eldest and best-loved son. He was the heir to the property. She looked at him now as he drank his tea and ate cake, talking the while easily, and thought with pride that he was a fine figure of a man. He too was tall, broad-shouldered and well-knit, but his face was stronger than his father’s or Jim’s; there was decision, even sternness in his well-marked features, and his eyes were keen and observant. Now and then they rested for an instant on Dora and Mrs. Henderson knew he was taking her measure. When he had done eating she asked whether he wouldn’t like to go and put on something cooler, for he was wearing a blue serge suit.

“You and May have got your usual rooms.”

“I don’t mind giving you a tennis lesson after you’ve changed,” said Tommy, with a grin.

“That’s awfully good of you, old boy,” smiled Roger. “I’m afraid I can’t stay, Mother. I must get back to town after dinner.”

“Oh, Roger.”

“I didn’t want to miss your birthday altogether, darling, but I’m up to my eyes in work at the War Office.”

The General pushed back his chair and rose to his feet.

“Come into the library with me, Roger,” he said. “I want to have a chat.”

“Oh, George, he wants to talk to May,” said Mrs. Henderson. “He hasn’t seen her for so long.”

“Let me have him for half an hour, May. You shall have him for as long as you like after that.”

“Of course,” she answered.

When the General and Roger had left them Dick Murray got up and announced that he must go.

“Aren’t you going to play any more tennis?” cried Tommy.

“I’m afraid I can’t. I’ve got a job to do in the village.”

“You might take a note for me,” said May. “I’ll go and get it. I’ll bring it out to your car.”

She went in to the house. Dick was at the wheel when she came out of the front door with an envelope in her hand.

“You look awfully white, dear,” he said, in a low voice, as she gave it to him.

“I’m nervous, that’s only natural.”

“I wish I could be with you.”

“I must do it alone.”

There was a troubled look on his good-natured sunburnt face, and his fine blue eyes, with their dark lashes, were harassed. She smiled.

“Don’t look so worried. I shall manage. You’d better be going.”

As he started the car he glanced at the envelope she had given him. He saw his own name scribbled on it. When he got out of the park gates he stopped the car and opened the letter. There was a sheet of note-paper inside and on it written in pencil only three words.

I love you.