Читать книгу Blind Man's Year - Warwick Deeping - Страница 8

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The blindness of the day continued, and so did Miss Gerard’s own sightless mood. She did not go up to her working room after breakfast, but sat reading Gibson and Harper’s “Riddle of Jutland,” great ships groping for each other in the fog at sea. And perhaps it piqued her to read of the crowd’s illusions, and of the officious strutting of Fleet Street, and the re-elevation of that quiet little man, Genius Unplacarded. Jellicoe and Jutland, newspaper magnates with swollen heads, fog, jealousies, ungenerous gossip, and then, in such a book as this the sun coming out and the truth floating upon the waters.

Sunlight. She looked out of the window and saw the garden suddenly alive. The firs were green upon their hill. Old Will had said that the day might clear about eleven, but that he would not promise her what the afternoon might be. Should she go out and garden, or paint the garden frame that was waiting for her in the Knoll Farm workshop? No, she was not quite in the mood for work with either head or hands; she would take the dog out along the cliff track towards Beacon Hill.

She went. The sun was shining on the gorse, but over yonder a veil of vapour hung down to shroud the sea. The cliff path was the one solitary walk she could enjoy, for she was absurdly sensitive about meeting people, and would turn aside and disappear amid the gorse bushes to avoid the most casual contact. Even the dog had picked up her unsocial prejudices and would growl at any stranger, and fix them with fierce, amber eyes. She had to snap the leash to his collar if any human figure hove in sight.

She saw no one that morning but a farmer’s son out with a gun, and the lad was so absorbed in his own affairs that he did not notice her, nor did Prince challenge him. She climbed Beacon Hill and saw Sussex and its coast hazed in momentary sunlight, but already the fog was beginning to advance again from the sea. There was a faint drift of cold air from the east. She returned, feeling soothed and far less restless, to one of Jane’s omelette and rhubarb tart lunches. It had been one of Mary Spray’s mornings in the house, and on such occasions Jane was apt to be heavy handed with the sugar.

Miss Gerard liked a long chair in the garden after lunch, half an hour’s reading, half an hour’s sleep, and then more work with hands or head. It was always possible for her to find a sheltered, draughtless spot under the stone wall or behind the banks of shrubs. To-day she arranged her chair and garden mattress and cushions in the little loggia she had had built. A glass screen sheltered it from the east, and here, on this April day, she drew the rug over her and felt at peace.

She read, she slept, to wake shortly after three to the sound of the lightship’s complaining. The sea-wrack was drifting in again, and though the garden lay in the thin sunlight the firs on the hill stood like tall ships befogged. It occurred to her that if she climbed the hill she would be able to watch this game of hide and seek between the sea spirit and the land, and leaving her rug and cushions in a tangle, she went out by way of the gate in the stone wall. Half-way up the hillside she became involved in the drifting mist, and felt its cold breath upon her face.

She reached the trees, and stood there watching the landscape being blotted out. Soon she might have been in the middle of a cloud, and twenty yards away the trunks of the firs were scarcely visible. She was on the point of turning to retrace her steps when an unexpected sound came to her from over the sea.

An aeroplane, her particular blatant beast, but in listening to the drone of the machine’s engine she found herself realizing what this fog might mean to the man in the air. Moreover, the sound seemed peculiarly near and not coming from above. She would have said that the sound was travelling to her almost on the level of the trees. She had read of befogged airmen flying blindly into a hillside.

The sound came nearer. She was conscious of a peculiar and intuitive spasm of suspense. The thing must be very low, terribly and dangerously low. Almost she could feel the mist vibrating to that sound. It began to frighten her, rushing nearer like some winged and unseen menace. It seemed to be flying straight towards the trees with a swift and swelling sense of some impending horror. Her impulse was to crouch, but she just stood helplessly and stared into the fog, waiting to see the great shape come sweeping down or over.

A sudden impact, a crash! She felt the actual tremor of the earth. Even the trees seemed to quiver in the fog. She stood for a moment in shocked stillness. Some object whirled and struck one of the firs, and fell to earth close to her. She was conscious of a strange horror, and her impulse was to fly from it. She was half-way down the hillside and running towards the house when scorn of her own crass cowardice seemed to catch at her throat.

She paused, turned about, and with strange pantings reclimbed the hill.

“You miserable funk!”

Some inner voice seemed to be speaking to her as she passed again between the dim trunks of the trees. It was telling her with merciless ferocity that all her life had been cowardice, a shirking of all stark, human issues. She was conscious of replying passionately and yet piteously to that ruthless voice: “Be quiet, be quiet. Oh yes, I know.” The fog and a kind of anguish of self revealment were sufficient for the moment. Where exactly had the aeroplane crashed? Where in this ghost world would she come upon the wreckage?

Her impression was that the machine had struck the ground somewhat below and to the left of the group of firs, and moving in that direction she came suddenly upon four oak trees which stood together with their branches interlocked. The aeroplane had crashed through the tops of these trees like a wasp into a spider’s web, leaving the torn trees a tangle of wreckage. The machine had come to earth beyond the oaks, and she saw its wings dimly through the mist, like the great spread arms of a man lying prone. The ground was a litter of strange wreckage, but the thing that shocked her most vividly was the silence and the stillness of that fallen air bird. No movement, no sound, nothing but the drifting fog. She had ceased to be a creature of hypersensitive shirkings. She had read of smashed planes catching fire, and of the horror of such a human holocaust. She must look, help. The body of the machine discovered itself to her as a tangle of nameless wreckage, but it had a shape. She saw something human there, an arm hanging down, a head in a leather helmet, a face that was all blood. She was conscious of forcing her way through the horror of these crowded impressions. She must get that figure out.

But the business was beyond her. There were straps, his inert and sagging weight, the hollow of the crumpled cockpit. She had tried to climb on the wreckage and get her hands under his arms. His head lolled back, and she had found herself looking into his bloody face. It appeared terribly injured, as though in tearing his way through the trees a splintered bough had struck him in the face. No, it was beyond her strength. She climbed down, stood a moment looking at the wreckage to assure herself that there was no sign of fire. Was that fog or smoke? She bent down, her head close to the trailing arm. No, only the fog. She must get help.