Читать книгу Apples of Gold - Warwick Deeping - Страница 3

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Mary Nando's girl had gone to see her mother, who was sick, and Tom Nando was sitting on a stool in front of the kitchen fire, roasting an apple on the point of an old sword. His wife had lit a candle, and was settling herself to a comfortable hour with a couple of sheets and her darning needle, when she thought that she heard the sound of a knock.

She glanced at her husband, who was absorbed in watching the apple sizzling on the point of the sword.

"Did you hear aught, Tom?"

"Nothing," said he, "but what you might count on hearing with the wind as it is."

"I thought I heard a knock."

"A shutter banging, or a tile blown off into the yard."

"Maybe you are right."

She began to spread one of the sheets over her knees, but she was not to get very far with her mending, for the sound came to her again through the bluster of a March night. Her pretty brown head cocked itself questioningly. She had the eyes and the air of a thrush, a brown thrush on a bough, and in their courting days Nando had told her so.

"There it is again! I'll go and see."

She laid the sheet on the table, rose, and taking the candle, went out into the passage between the parlour and the kitchen, leaving her husband by the fire. The door opening into Spaniards Court was barred, and before raising the bar she challenged the possible visitor.

"Is anyone there?"

A voice answered her, a voice that was like a little moan in the crying of the wind:

"Mary—Mary Nando."

There was something else, and Nando's wife undid the door. Her movements were quick and agitated, as though the voice had put her in a flutter. The light of the candle showed her the figure of another woman, and the flicker of the wind-blown light gave to both figures a suggestion of tremulous emotion.

"Mary!"

"Miss Rachel—you!"

"Don't speak; let me come in. O, Mary!"

The door was closed, but a sudden gust had blown out the candle, and in the half-darkness of the passage the two figures seemed to merge as though one of them had put her arms about the other.

"Are you alone, Mary?"

"My man is by the kitchen fire. Come into the parlour. There's no fire lit."

"O, what does that matter!"

"My dear, how you tremble! Hold on to me."

Thomas Nando heard no more than the murmuring voices of the two women. They went into the parlour, and the door was closed; and since his wife was not there to eat the apple he had been roasting for her, he ate it himself. He assumed that a gossip of Mary's had dropped in to borrow something.

The world is always borrowing, and Mary Nando was a giver; nor did Thomas conceive that he had any grievance against his wife because she happened to be generous. She was made that way, and hadn't he married her because she had a soft voice and a warm heart? But there was one thing that she had not given him, and he regretted it, and so did she. Poor Mary! It was the one great bitterness in her life, the feeling that she had failed him; and in thinking of it Nando got up and took his tobacco-box from the dresser, his pipe from the mantelshelf. He sat down again on the stool, lit his pipe with a coal from the fire, and pondered the old problem. He was a smallish man, very well built, with a grave and rather massive face, a man who was given to long silences and sudden sharp humorous sayings. He was a fencing-master, and he kept a fencing school, and he kept it with a dignity which was part of his character. Nando's was the best place of its kind in the kingdom, a school to which gentlemen came to practise sword-play; it was no resort for dissolute youngsters and fashionable bullies—they could go elsewhere, for Thomas Nando would have none of them.

But he wanted a son, a boy who would grow up and join him in teaching gentlemen a craft that every gentleman should know, a son who should be as good a man with the foil or the back-sword as was his father. No, better! Nando had pride.

"What, still talking!"

He was momentarily attentive to the two voices in the parlour, but the unabated murmur of them persuaded him to return to his reflections. He leant forward and stirred the fire with the old sword which he used as a toasting-fork. He did not hear the door softly opened. His wife was in the room before he realized her presence. She watched him with those thrush-like eyes of hers as she crossed to the fire.

"Tom, see what I've got!"

He turned; he stared, the sword held poised in one hand, the clay pipe in the other, for Mary had a baby in her arms.

"Bless us," said he, "some one has been lucky!"

She gave him a look, a look of pain and of veiled reproach, and Nando wished that he had bitten his own tongue.

"A boy?" he asked, just for something to say.

"Yes."

"Who does it belong to?"

She bent her head over the child.

"To us, Tom, if you choose."

He was astonished, caught off his guard. He stood up, took a sort of peeking look at the thing in his wife's arms, and sat down again. She, too, sat down with a curious soft glance at him. Then, she bent her head over the child.

"What is the meaning of it, lass?" he asked her.

She told him, the old, familiar, tragic story of the woman who was waiting in Tom Nando's dark parlour. Her husband's grave face grew graver; he leant his elbows on his knees, and, staring at the fire, puffed hard at his long pipe. Nando came of Puritan stock, but he was kinder and more human than his forbears.

"So, you see, Tom, the poor lady thought of me. I wasn't her maid for five years for nothing. I saw the inside of that great house, and the hardness of the old man—her father. The Glyns are hard, and she was the only soft one among them."

Nando looked grim.

"Who is the father?"

"She will not tell. Do you blame her? But she says that if we will take the child, and keep her secret, she will see that we are not losers by it."

Her husband made a sweeping gesture with his right hand.

"Mary, I do no such thing as this for money. We carry our own heads on our own shoulders. But—I don't know——"

He stole a glance at her. She was bending over the child, and he saw the firelight on her hair, and the tender, caressing look upon her face. It touched him. It brought him a sudden feeling of understanding and compassion, a sense of deeper comradeship with the childless, lovable creature who was his wife.

"Let's look," he said, stretching out a hand.

She made a quick yet gliding movement and showed him the child. It was a very quiet and happy child; one small, red bud of a hand tried to explore Nando's nose.

"Poor little thing!"

He glanced up at her.

"Mary—would you?"

"O, Tom," she said. "I—I have failed you so badly. I'm hungry, man, hungry."

He kissed her, and it was a strong man's kiss.

"Go and tell her we will do it for her. But the boy must be ours, mind you."

His wife's eyes were wet.

"You are a good man, Tom. I'll tell her. She understands that it means giving up. Perhaps you will come and speak to her, Tom."

He went. There was no light in the parlour save from the dimly dispersed glow of the kitchen fire, but there was sufficient light for Nando to see the figure of a woman seated in a chair. She rose with a little shuddering movement as he entered, and then stood still, tensely expectant.

Nando bowed to her.

"Madam," he said, "I ask no questions. But if we keep the child it must be for good."

He felt her eyes on his face. She was nothing but eyes; she hardly seemed to breathe, and her stillness was extraordinary.

"Yes," she said, "yes."

"One cannot chop and change with a child. If I bring him up as I should have brought up my own son I shall give him up to nobody."

She held out a sudden hand to him.

"It is fair. I promise. But—O—Mr. Nando—you will be kind to him?"

He took her hand.

"The boy will be as my own son."

Her hand was very cold. She withdrew it, steadied herself, smothered a spasm of emotion, and became desperately calm.

"I thank you. I cannot say more. Please send your wife to me, Mr. Nando. I wish to——"

He bowed quickly and left her, feeling that she wanted him to go, and that her courage was shaking at the knees. His wife was by the fire, nursing the child.

He gave her one look.

"Quick! Go to her, poor soul."