Читать книгу The Secret Sanctuary (Historical Novel) - Warwick Deeping - Страница 8

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It was a still and misty day in December when John Stretton first saw Burnt Heath and the Scots firs of the Hadworth Woods.

A Ford car carried them out of Kingsbury and along the valley of the Weybourne, and, climbing steadily till the willows and the meadow country sank into the silver of the winter haze, lifted them nearer to the veiled sun. The landscape enlarged itself. The down country in the south was banked grey-blue against a dove-grey sky. Wild heaths seemed to smoke, struggling mistily with the sun.

At Willowmaston the road dropped again into beech-woods and deep meadows, a brick and timber place with one or two old red houses looking out from gardens and park lands, English country, very green in the spring of the year. Beyond it the road grew sandier, trailing a pale yellow between thorn hedges and little farmsteads with their fields and orchards, pleasant and secret places where people might live pleasant and secret lives. They came to Ottways, with its limes and its one great cedar tree, and here the car pulled up for a moment, and Carlyon glanced at the little pink and green map he had upon his knee.

"It begins here," he said, "if that is Ottways."

The boy who drove them said that it was Ottways.

"Mr. Copredy's place."

John looked at Ottways with bright eyes. It pleased him.

"Like a red bird in a green nest."

They drove on past the Rising Sun Inn with its two big yew trees where the main road bent eastwards to Hadworth. Here the lane began, with Lydiards on its left and a great ilex hanging like a thundercloud over the red and white farmhouse. A gradual mystery crept over the landscape, a wildness both in detail and outline. The hedges and the grass beside the lane began to fill with the bronze of the wet fern. The ghosts of ragwort and golden rod glimmered in the pale light.

The wildness showed itself in outbreakings of furze and heather, and self-sown birches like fans of lace on sticks of silver. The Hadworth Woods rose in black mystery against the northern sky. And suddenly the lane ended; it seemed to dry up like a stream, or rather to well out of the ground where short turf, heather and furze marked the fringe of Burnt Heath. On the right a white gate in a thorn hedge opened upon a grass-grown track. On the top bar was painted in black letters, "Romans Farm."

Here, where even the lane ended, John took the map from his brother.

"Up there; that's where I want to go. That cottage on the edge of the wood."

"Mascall's Wood."

They left the car and followed a path, a ribbon of turf which went on towards the woods. Burnt Heath stretched like a broken sea to the west, and on their right lay wild banks of gorse and the upland fields of Romans Farm. The farm itself cocked a red ear among the black tangle of its orchard and sheltering trees, but John did not look at the farm. His eyes, bright with a boyish expectancy, watched the woods and the northern sky.

Car glanced at him once or twice with curiosity and doubt. Carlyon was a townsman, a Londoner who took his month in Switzerland or Italy, with an occasional week-end in the country, but his love was never happy unless her shoes were tripping somewhere near Pall Mall or Berkeley Square. The country bored him. He was perfectly frank about it. He was the man of affairs, healthily ambitious, and Burnt Heath struck him as being only a little less dismal and much quieter than the Ypres salient. And here was this brother of his with his stag-like eyes and head, alert, excited, sniffing the air!

Car felt his very modern brain in revolt under its bowler hat.

"A bit lonely, Jack?"

"Well, it is what I want."

There was no doubt about his enthusiasm. When they tumbled upon the cottage, an old red-brick and timber thing standing in its wild garden under the very surge of the firs, John stood stock still and looked at it steadily. There was the shine of some settled purpose in his eyes.

The place was empty. It looked shaggy, derelict, overgrown, its heather thatch slipping down over its eyes. A green and rotting gate hung awry. A big pear tree seemed to fill the little front garden with a blackish mass of unpruned wood. A yew tree brushed one gable with the ends of its green fingers.

Then John walked straight to the crooked gate in the hedge.

"Got the key, Car?"

To his brother it seemed incredible that such a place should have a key.

Carlyon let John explore the place, remaining like a restless dog at the gate, and estimating the probable distances between a dweller in Mascall's Wood and a drink, the sight of a decently dressed woman or a dinner at the Carlton. He gauged Romans Farm to be a quarter of a mile away; its chimney and the outline of its roof were vaguely visible among its trees. Carlyon visualized nothing interesting there. Lydiards was another mile along the lane, and the Rising Sun Inn was a very tarnished luminary.

Ottways?

There might be petticoats at Ottways, but would petticoats be good for John? In fact, could he live without petticoats? But, confound it, this unfortunate brother of his would have to live without petticoats. A man who was not quite responsible ought not to marry.

And then his brother came out of the cottage, lighting a pipe and looking as though he had been talking to a pretty woman.

"It's just the thing; full of old beams and queer corners. That pear tree must be a picture."

He threw the match into one of the weedy beds with its tattered box edging. Carlyon was looking at the pear tree; he thought it looked wet and clammy and dead.

"What about water?"

John gave a quick turn of the head.

"There's a well, I expect."

He walked round the cottage and discovered the well close to the yew tree, a mossy oak trapdoor under a sort of penthouse roofed with old tiles. The well delighted him. He came back with an air of triumph.

"Windlass and bucket."

"It ought to be tested, old man."

"Tested? What is there to foul it up here? Better than chlorine water out of a petrol tin."

Carlyon, the man of the city, felt the dreariness of such a prospect stick in the gorge of his conscience. He was very fond of this brother of his; his love of the warm complex life of cities made him shrink from this peasant's shack under the drip of the trees. What a life! To him it seemed impossible, pathetically impossible. Did this brother of his realize it, the loneliness of it, the sordid boredom of it, the dish washing, the lighting of fires?

He felt that John ought to be made to realize it, be compelled to look into its face of clay.

He stood with his back to the rotting gate, resting his elbows on it, and holding the path.

"I say, old man, I know you are in earnest about this, but do you think you can stick it—the loneliness, I mean?"

John's face lost none of its quiet purpose.

"I don't want people."

"Yes, I know; you may feel like that now, but we are changeful beggars, and made of flesh and blood."

"Well, there are people to know."

"A few farmers and the folk who live at Ottways, a doctor and a parson, and the man who keeps the pub. Think of the boredom of it. It isn't as though you had been born to the life."

"Of course—sometimes—I shall be bored."

And then he laughed, the serious laughter of a man facing realities.

"But can you show me any place, old chap, where a man is not liable to be bored?"

"Oh, well, if you look at it in that way!"

"I don't. What I mean is, it is the inside of us that matters. If we are all wrong inside, artificial, mere materialists, boredom is a dead certainty anywhere. I had several alternatives, and I had a good look at them all. For instance, I might have taken up some machine job—flying, car racing, a be-reckless-and-jolly-to-day life, for to-morrow you may die. Or I might have slipped into some other post in town and lived a rackety, fatuous life. But do you think I could get any lasting satisfaction out of dance clubs or having affairs with poor little devils of girls, or meeting somebody in a cinema and then sneaking off to a seedy bedroom in some seedy hotel in a back street? A man has to choose, Car, hasn't he?"

"But hang it, man, life in London isn't like that."

"Of course it isn't; not for the ordinary man who has a settled job and a wife and all that in prospect. But you see, it's obvious, the war has not left me ordinary. I had to face that fact, and Beal helped me to face it."

His pipe had gone out and he relit it, while his brother hung doubtfully upon the gate and looked at the tumbledown cottage.

"Yes, that's true," he said.

He glanced at John, and he was struck by the contrast between the man's almost luminous face and the darkness of the fir woods.

"I'll tell you my secret, Car."

He smiled, showing his white teeth.

"Most of us won't face realities. How many of us liked facing a barrage? We prefer the easy, the make-believe; it is much safer to sit in a trench. But for the last six months I have made myself face realities, and I am finding out all sorts of things. I am not afraid of facing the life here. There is such a force as discipline, isn't there?"

Car looked at him, and the soul of him drew a deep and astonished breath, for suddenly he seemed to see not a younger brother, a boy under a cloud, but a man who somehow had got a grip on some unusual philosophy, a man whose eyes had the shine of a settled purpose. He saw what Rollin Beal had seen, and felt what Rollin Beal had felt.

"I beg your pardon, old chap," he said.

He found himself under the gaze of eyes of affection.

"That's all right. You want me to face the facts, and I have tried to show you that I am facing them. I'll tell you another secret, Car."

His mouth betrayed a twist of humour.

"I have found out that things are much less boring than people—live things, things that grow and live and do their job without a lot of eternal patter. And I have an idea that I am only going to like those people who live and work with things that grow."

Car smiled at him.

"That rules me out, I suppose?"

"Don't be an ass," said his brother.

They filed out of the gateway, and John Stretton loitered a moment as though absorbing a picture of the place with its shaggy thatch dark under the shadows of the trees, its wild garden, and its rough meadow ending in a waste of furze.

"I shall like to plant myself here," he said, as they turned away; "plant myself and grow. Do you see the idea, Car?"

Carlyon saw it well enough, but his fear was that the growth might be stunted and eccentric. Still, all life is a question of taking risks, and the war had left John with a future that was problematical.

They walked back to the car, and found the lad talking to an oldish man who was leaning over the white gate at the end of the lane leading to Romans Farm. John had a glimpse of a pair of shrewd blue eyes, a brown face deep with wrinkles, a grey moustache still tawny in the centre. The man's face pleased him, attracted him. It was as restful as looking at a landscape or a tree.

The lad jerked a thumb.

"This is Mr. Viner of Romans, sir."

They talked with Mr. Viner, or rather, Car talked and the farmer said "Ay, ay," at intervals, and looked at the sky, the heath, the top of his own gate, Car's boots and John's face, with the wondering yet quite unrestless look of a man who lives his life in the open, and whose observation is acute yet almost unconscious. Sometimes his eyes lit up. They were kind eyes, humorous, quietly wise.

John was fascinated by the wrinkles on his forehead. There were four of them running horizontally and four others crossing them, and joining grizzled hair to grizzled eyebrows. The farmer's nose was broad, like a good human, humorous life, neither too fastidious nor too fleshly.

Car was always frank and the farmer appeared to understand his frankness. Did Mr. Viner know that the Burnt Heath estate was for sale by private treaty? Yes, Mr. Viner knew it very well. No; he had no intention of trying to buy his farm. His lease had several years to run, and he was content to let it stay at that. The estate was a very sound proposition, as sound as anything could be in these restless days. There was going to be a slump in land? Oh, probably.

Car asked if they might take a cursory look at the house and buildings, and Mr. Viner opened the gate. His eyes smiled at John. The younger man's eyes liked him, and the impression was mutual.

"Are you gentlemen acting for a purchaser?"

"In a sense, yes," said Car.

John, walking close to old Viner and looking at him, hid nothing.

"I want to live here, up there in that cottage. You see, I got rather messed up in the war."

Whatever Mr. Viner may have thought, he was not a man who pushed pins into bladders. He gave John one very direct and observant stare.

"A man might do worse." But all the same he wondered what the devil the man meant to do there.

So John had his first look at Romans Farm. It lay in a slight hollow, an indentation in the green cushion of the gently sloping hillside. He saw old thorn hedges, a white fence, a stretch of grass with a file of white ducks trooping across it, a pond, a group of farm buildings in old brick and roofed with thatch or heavy red tiles, the bow and shafts of an old blue wagon protruding from a wagon shed, a carter leading a horse to be watered.

The house itself, long and low, its red brick mellowed to a rich rust colour, stood back in the arms of its orchard. Its northern hedge was full of sheltering trees. Two stout chimney stacks rose above the roof. The deep porch was thatched with heather. In one warm corner of the garden John saw beehives ranged in a row.

Viner nodded at the house.

"Solid," he said; "they made good bricks in those days. A little worm in the roof, but nothing to speak of."

His eyes met John's.

"Perhaps you gentlemen would take a glass of ale."

They went in with him, following the direct and friendly breadth of his figure. The living-room was long and low, full of old furniture, and its windows looked out over the garden to the blue-grey haziness of the distant chalk hills. A woman with grey hair and a placid face who was sewing by the fire looked up and smiled at them.

"Mrs. Viner, gentlemen."

Car was nearest to her.

"Please don't get up. Mr. Viner was so kind as to ask us in."

No one explained why they were there, and Mary Viner seemed to expect no explanations. She was one of those comfortable women who accept things. Car had spoken to her, but it was at his brother that she looked; her eyes were drawn to him, for John Stretton attracted women. And he, for some reason or other, crossed over and sat near her.

"I have just been telling Mr. Viner that I want to live down here."

He was aware of a slight hardening of her placid eyes.

"No; I have no designs on your farm. The fact is, we think of buying the estate, and I may take on that cottage up by the wood."

The woman in the chair was absorbing her impression of him, his clothes, his atmosphere of frank reality, his firmly set mouth and the slight sadness in his eyes. He was unusual. His suggestion that he might live in that tumbledown place up yonder was unusual.

And then three glasses of ale arrived, called for by old Viner and brought in by a little woman with a snub nose and eyes that were both bold and apologetic. There was some casual conversation before Car glanced at his wrist-watch.

John rose.

"We have got to see Lydiards."

He held out a hand to the woman in the chair.

"Thank you. Perhaps—"

She smiled at him.

"We are very quiet up here, Mr.—"

"Stretton."

"Very quiet; but then, you see—"

"I want to be quiet," he said to her; "not like France. Good-bye."

She watched him steadily as he went out of the door.

The farmer walked with them to the white gate, and stood there while the lad cranked up the engine and the Strettons climbed into the car. He was still standing there, gazing out over the heath, when the car turned the corner lower down the lane, for John looked back and saw him. It seemed to him that old Viner's figure had grown strangely familiar, part of a well-known landscape, and this in the short passing of half an hour.

"Nice old boy that," said his brother.

John hardly troubled to agree. It was not a question of old Viner being likeable; he was more than that, though John could not have explained the significance this country figure had for him. Perhaps it was a human symbol, for men persist in setting up symbols.

In five minutes they were at Lydiards, but the folk who dwelt in this other farm were not of the Viner calibre. A lean, peevish, earthy-faced man in a hard felt hat listened to them with evident interest. To get a glimpse of Lydiards, Car had to produce the agents' order, and the earthy-faced man went with them everywhere, watching with the cold eyes of an unenlightened selfishness.

On the Willowmaston road they pulled up outside the red wall of Ottways and took a peep through the iron gates. The place looked well kept, and most solidly English. A gardener was sweeping up the dead leaves on the drive.

"No problems there," thought Car; "Ottways people refuse to recognize problems."

And then a flash of colour contradicted him, the eternal torch carried forcefully against the wind. His eyes cried "Hallo!" The eyes of the girl said, "Men! Young men! What in the name of mischief are you doing here?"

She had steered her bicycle round the tail of the car and had dismounted within a yard of the younger Stretton's elbow. She wore a grass-green jumper and scarf and a little black straw Quaker bonnet. Her hair was red. It was her colouring which struck Carlyon Stretton; it blazed at you vividly from cheeks and lips, beautifully hard and healthy. Her blue eyes had a tinge of green.

She looked at both men with a casual quick stare, a look that both questioned and ignored. Next moment she had pushed open one of the iron gates and was remounted and riding up the drive. They saw the flick of her neat black ankles.

"All right; drive on."

The lad drove on, but neither men made any reference to the girl.

John and his brother were putting up at The Moon at Kingsbury, and they dined in the coffee-room on the first floor with its Georgian windows and iron-railed balconies overlooking the street. Kingsbury was very quiet, and The Moon was at the quiet end of the town. To Carlyon the only audible sounds were the shuffling feet and the stertorous breathing of a very fat and ancient waiter whose thumbnail showed a black half-moon when he held a plate or a dish.

They were alone until a couple of commercial travellers came in and drank tea with their meat. This and the waiter's black thumbnail seemed to depress Car.

"I can't stand these places. They make me think that every fly in England has left his signature somewhere."

Afterwards they sat and smoked in the smoking-room until the commercial travellers followed them there, and Car began a series of fastidious yawns. He did not mind people being plain, but he could not stand them greasy.

"What about bed?"

As they climbed the stairs John could not resist a dig at his brother.

"Isn't there something in my theory that things are less boring than people?"

"Oh, those bagmen? Poor devils! But I can't say that I was fascinated by the hotel spoons."

They arrived at a landing, and here a table and a platoon of brass candlesticks reminded them that there was neither gas nor electric light in The Moon's bedrooms.

"Good lord!" said Car. "I suppose they used to supply slippers."

He was feeling for his matches when a chambermaid appeared from somewhere and proceeded to light the candles. She was young and pretty, and though she kept her lashes lowered she radiated playfulness, the delight of being slyly irresponsible.

"A candle, sir."

She looked at Car, and Car in looking back at her thought better of The Moon.

"Thanks. I rather like this idea."

The girl gave John a candle and the same mischievous look which she had given his brother, but John's eyes were full of something else. He simply did not see her.

"Good night, Jack."

"What's your number?"

"Seven. Next door. There ought to be luck in that. Good night."

Car was standing in front of his dressing-table mirror and untying his tie when he heard his brother put his boots outside in the passage and close and lock his door. The incident set Car's thoughts moving in a certain direction, and traversing such questions as self-suppression, celibacy, loneliness and locked doors. It occurred to him that Miss Isobel Copredy of Ottways was not a young woman who believed in locked doors.

Yes; Car had taken the trouble to ask their driver who she was, but not while his brother was about. Car had a nice appreciation of women. He appreciated Miss Copredy's colour, even the very brilliant and provoking hardness of her, and so suggestible are a man's moods that Carlyon thought better of the country for having seen her. Burnt Heath had become sacred.

"What a flamboyant wench!"

His thoughts digressed to John and John's passion for the wilderness, but to Car it was a wilderness no longer.

"Hasn't Jack left women out of the scheme? Now if I tried playing John the Baptist within a mile of that complexion and that mouth—oh, get along to bed, you silly ass! Doesn't a man ever grow up?"