Читать книгу Roper's Row - Warwick Deeping - Страница 38

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Loitering on the autumnal sea-front at Hastings Ruth had made a friend, a young woman of about her own age, blonde where Ruth was swarthy, and since those early October days were still and sunny, and Ruth’s new friend knew more of life than Ruth did and took the lead, these young things went on expeditions together. They visited Rye and Winchelsea, and Battle Abbey; Sally Sherman made pencil sketches of Rye Church and the Mermaid Inn. She had a high colour, had Sally, and blue eyes that were more like the eyes of a boy, and a rather abrupt and “don’t try the moon-calf game with me” manner. There was a good deal of the opposite sex in Sally, and perhaps that was why she saw through the ordinary man and warned him off, and went her own high-coloured way, which way was that of a young woman who lived with an aunt in a Chelsea back street and was employed in a West-end music shop.

Sally was abrupt.

“O—men——! Do they think we came down here just to be pick-ups? And that’s about all most men think about, my dear.”

Which, of course, was true, and Ruth knew it, but had tried to sentimentalize the crude fact, being the eternal little romanticist, while Sally somehow seemed to scorn sex, perhaps because the fierce young rebel in her feared it. Laughingly she would refer to herself as “A Safety Match.” “I don’t strike on any sort of surface.” Her passion was “Pictures,” and whether or not this obsession had soaked into her because she happened to live in Chelsea, she spent her Saturday afternoons at the Tate Gallery or the Wallace Collection, or in painting little splodgy pictures of her own that had some of the boldness of her blue eyes and the high colour of her face. At her aunt’s in Vane Street she had an attic which she called her studio, a young woman’s playbox, and all that she knew she had taught herself by drawing things and yet more things, dolls, people, animals, houses, odd corners of Vane Street. The urge towards self-expression was in her fingers. When times were slack at the music shop, and even the “Geisha” was not asked for, she would scrawl caricatures of her confrères on bits of paper.

On the last day but one of Ruth’s holiday these two young things took the train to Robertsbridge, and changing there, travelled down the Rother Vale to Bodiam. They were bound for the castle, that black-grey shell floating like an Arthurian idyll on stillness of its moat. Bodiam and water-lilies and a green valley, and swallows skimming; but the swallows had gone, and the day had an autumnal savour.

When Sally saw Bodiam she seemed to grow redder in the face. Her blue eyes stared. Her lips appeared to be sucking the point of a pencil.

“Golly, just look!”

Her expletives might not have satisfied Matthew Arnold, but they were natural. Like a child she was delighted by colour, and effects of light and shadow; she was strangely susceptible to atmosphere.

“I must draw that.”

Obviously. But tea—a cottage tea—had attractions, and a round table set just outside the fence of the caretaker’s cottage, with the green grass going down to the water and the willows, and the black shell of the castle reflected in the moat.

“Just as black as a thundercloud,” said Sally.

And much jam was consumed plastered thick upon country bread and butter, and Sally drank three cups of tea, and got out her sketch-book and a very black pencil, and looking like some fierce and inspired young virgin, dealt with Bodiam in her own fashion. While the other and gentler virgin sat and dreamed, and drifted towards confidential murmurings which Sally answered haphazard.

“Don’t you think it very sad for a man to be lame?”

Sally was blacking in crenellations.

“Which foot——?”

“I think—yes—I think it’s the left.”

“Well, you ought to know. Yes, you’re that sort, my dear. A puppy’s just got to squeal.”

“But he doesn’t squeal.”

“Not to you?”

“He seems so absorbed. And he’s very poor.”

“What—is—he?”

“A medical student.”

“Golly! You be careful. They’re a rowdy lot. And does he get sentimental?”

Ruth looked hurt.

“You are horrid. No, he isn’t, not a bit. He doesn’t seem to think of anything but his work.”

Sally left Bodiam alone for the moment.

“Queer lad. Yes, I suppose there are men like that. A little touched—are you—Ruthie?”

“No, I’m not. But I feel sorry.”

“Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“I don’t suppose he’s sorry for himself. He’s got his job. Sensible sort of lad—I should say. I’m fed up with fools in trousers.”

She licked the point of her pencil.

“You be careful, Ruthie. Seems to me there are two sorts of men, those who want everything and don’t care how they get it, and the sort that wants nothing—in that way. That’s my feeling. But the second sort can’t be very usual. Oh, lord, they’re nearly all fools in trousers.”

They decided to stay to see the sunset, and Sally must needs get into the old boat moored by the bridge and row herself about among the leaves of the water-lilies. She made ripple marks, and leaning over the stern of the boat, watched the level gold of the setting sun playing upon them. It was goblin ground, the enchanted mere, and she, the irresponsible child, was excited by beauty and strangeness and mystery. Ruth stood on the foot-bridge and watched her, a pensive, musing Ruth, who, when the castle itself was attacked, refused to climb the dark, winding stair.

“Oh, I couldn’t.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“You go up, Sally. I’m afraid of heights.”

Sally appeared afraid of nothing, and emerging upon the battlements and choosing the most dangerous of perches, behaved like one of the jackdaws.

“I should love to jump into the moat, Ruthie. I wonder how deep it is.”

“Oh, don’t! Do come down.”

“I say, the sunset’s simply gorgeous. The whole valley looks full of fire. Come up.”

“I can see it quite well here. What time is the train?”

“Any train, my dear, on a day like this.”

The west was a crimson curtain unfurled to touch the hills, and Ruth and Sally, walking with arms linked, each looked at the world and saw it as “My world.” Youth is not impersonal, and Ruth was a mirror reflecting—“My sunset, my grass, my trees.” She would add “My man” to it, and think the little world ready to be complete. Sally was just as personal, but more inclined to be satisfied with “My world and I—and a paint-box.”

But she squeezed Ruth’s arm.

“We’re going to keep this up, aren’t we?”

“Oh, of course.”

“You must come and see my little ‘stoo-jo’ at Chelsea.”