Читать книгу The White Gate - Warwick Deeping - Страница 4

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The girl in the pink linen dress came through the open French window on to the terrace. Pallant, the “Vernors’ ” butler, had preceded her with an air of stolid and sallow detachment. She had looked at Pallant with frightened eyes when he had asked her her name.

“Miss Brent.”

She had to walk the whole length of the terrace before reaching the place where Mrs. Hesketh Power sat chatting in the thick of a group of well-dressed people. A man, sitting on a cushion on the top step of the stairway leading down from the terrace to the garden, glanced around and saw the girl following Pallant’s shadow.

The glance had been a careless one, but it was arrested and held. The pink linen dress would have seemed satisfyingly simple to a man, and cheap to a woman. Otherwise it was a shaft of moving colour sustaining something that was sensitive, and fragile, and afraid. The face, with its full red lips and delicately curved nose and chin, swam in a setting of crisp jet hair. The eyes had a frightened, defensive look, a clouded velvety blackness that made the white skin appear even whiter. The whole figure suggested the image of a pale flame carried forward against an unsympathetic wind.

As the girl passed behind him, the man on the steps turned his head, and was able to watch the group upon his left. Mrs. Hesketh Power was rising from her chair, a tall, fair woman in a biscuit-coloured gown and a huge black hat. She had the happy, gracious poise of the thoroughbred, and though her eyes were often amused, they never mingled their amusement with malice.

She went forward to meet the girl, smiling down at her kindly.

“I am so glad you could come.”

The girl blushed.

“Mother asked me to explain. She has one of her headaches.”

“I’m sorry. Have you brought your racket and shoes?”

“I’m afraid I can’t play tennis.”

“No? Come along; I want to introduce you to some people.”

Mrs. Hesketh Power was the most understanding of women, but, having launched Constance Brent on the little social sea on the terrace of “Vernors,” she had to leave her to greet other guests. And the girl with the frightened eyes, who was suffering from an agony of self-consciousness, found herself placed between two people who did not encourage her to talk. On her left sat Mrs. Gascoyne, a melancholy neurasthenic, whose lined and sallow face suggested a mask of tallow that had melted and run downwards into one long gloom of mouth and chin. On her right a mothy young man in spectacles and a low collar, bent forward, elbows on knees and fingers together, trying to assume that he was absorbed in watching the tennis on the courts below the terrace.

Constance Brent felt herself seated in a little circle of silence. Inwardly she was still in turmoil, too sensitively alive to everything about her, and struggling against a sense of nudity as though she were being stripped and searched.

The man on the terrace steps was still watching her. She met his eyes more than once, and felt angry with him for being so inconsiderate as to stare when she was passing through an ordeal. How could he know that she had faltered and turned back at the front door, and had only been driven back into the porch by a motor arriving and hemming her in with a group of fresh arrivals.

She tried to lose herself in the excitement down yonder, and to fix her eyes upon the moving figures. A stout little man, strenuous, elastic, and eager, flashed a racket on the near side of the net. Her attention concentrated itself upon him, strove to lose itself in his superabundant vitality. His cuts and smashes at the net had glitter and dexterity. The happiness of his round face after a crisp and victorious rally held her interested.

Richard Skelton, seated on the terrace steps, was hidden by the massive corner pillar of the balustraded parapet from two women who had drawn two chairs aside in order to be undisturbed. Skelton was waiting for a set at tennis, his long legs drawn up and his arms wrapped round them, the sleeves of his brown Norfolk showing sinewy wrists. A grey slouch hat shaded his face. He no longer wore a black beard and moustache. His thin, determined chin and the humorous mobility of his mouth were all to his credit.

But he had forgotten the tennis players, first in watching the girl in the pink dress, and then in listening to the conversation of the two women behind the pillar. He knew who they were—old Mrs. Cottle, with her pink face and her air of bland patronage, and Betty Strickson, laced up in her alert reserve, with hard brown eyes that watched and criticised and a mouth that was eternally clever.

“I think tolerance can go too far. That is the one fault I have to find with Philippa. She told me she was going to call on the woman.”

“Philippa Power is no fool.”

“That is what I said to her, my dear. I said, ‘As a woman of the world, you ought to know that some people are impossible, and that one is not justified——’ ”

“In being kind to the child in spite of the mother.”

“That was her view. The Brent woman is impossible. I think Philippa is the only person who has called. I shall not. I regard tainted people as dangerous. One has to retain some social daintiness.”

“I quite agree with you. A yellow head and a chalked face are apt to arouse prejudice. Besides——”

“My dear, it is not the mere appearances. Everybody knows——”

“What every woman knows by instinct. I think Madame la mère showed some sense in having a headache. And the girl——Philippa is such a good sort.”

“Kindness may be unjustifiable in certain cases. If one lets sentimentality loose——”

“At all events, the daughter is pretty, and looks too frightened to be dangerous.”

“Of course, my dear, I am sorry for the girl, but——”

“She should have been more careful in choosing her parents!”

“I told Philippa Power that, though she might choose to take the lead, no one else in the neighbourhood could follow her. I refuse to know such people. Why should one?”

Skelton glanced at Constance Brent. She was still sitting silently in her chair, her hands clasped in her lap, her dark eyes watching the players on the court below. A flash of understanding and of pity struck across the man’s consciousness. It seemed strangely hard that a circle of circumstances over which the girl had no control should condemn her from the first to this humiliating isolation.

Tea was brought on to the terrace. The tennis players climbed the steps, and the various groups split up and rearranged themselves. Philippa Power, observant and serenely kind, beckoned her husband to her and spoke in an undertone.

“Kethie, go and be kind to the child over there.”

“Which one?”

“The little pink thing—you know.”

Skelton, carrying round plates of bread and butter and cucumber sandwiches, saw this piece of by-play, and looked admiringly at Philippa Power. What a quiet and gracious understanding of life this woman had; how very patient she was even with the bitterest bores; what fine courtesy she showed in her unselfish self-restraint. An aristocrat! In the spirit Skelton bowed down and gave her homage, for such women helped other people to live.

Hesketh Power was a good fellow, but years spent in disciplining and stiffening an extreme self-consciousness had ended in giving him a poise that was altogether too perfect. He was so intelligently dressed that no one noticed what he wore. His clothes effaced themselves, as did his feelings. His slow, drawling voice always seemed to be holding itself in, lest it should run away with itself and say something that was clever.

Skelton, standing with his back to a French window and chatting with Garside, the Roymer doctor, watched these two and saw that they were in distress. Hesketh Power’s poise had frightened the girl into mute awkwardness. He stood at her elbow and dropped a sentence from time to time as though whipping a trout stream and getting nothing in the way of a bite. The girl had had no experience of men, and to her an interesting conversation meant the interchange of enthusiasms, yet instinct warned her that to Hesketh Power enthusiasms were but the gambols of a lamb.

Skelton turned suddenly to Garside.

“Do you know the girl over there—in pink—talking to Power?”

“Miss Brent?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, yes, I know her—and her mother.”

“I wish you would introduce me presently.”

The doctor gave him an interested look.

“Of course I will.”

“Thanks.”

With the moving on of the Chevalier of the Perfect Poise, Constance Brent was left once more in crowded isolation. Garside put his tea cup on a table and glanced at Skelton. The two men made their way to where Constance Brent was sitting.

She had no idea that these two tall men were singling her out till Garside’s figure threw a shadow on the flagstones at her feet. He was built like a blacksmith, with a head covered with crisp, curled, black hair, puzzling dark eyes, an immense throat, and very massive shoulders. A man of big passions and big tendernesses, he could be extraordinarily gentle and playful towards women.

“How do you do, Miss Brent?”

He looked down at her very kindly, and held out a big hand.

“I don’t think you have met Mr. Skelton. I have brought him along to be presented.”

Constance Brent coloured self-consciously. Her eyes met the eyes of the man on the terrace steps—the man of the brown Norfolk jacket and the grey flannel trousers. He was smiling, and there was something about his smile that gave her a sudden sense of protecting friendliness.

“Garside and I always try to out-talk each other, Miss Brent, unless some third party keeps us in order.”

The doctor laughed.

“I’m not argumentative to-day. Besides, I have to make up a four in three minutes. Skelton likes someone who will listen to him. If you let him talk about Japan or California, or heavy oil engines——”

Constance Brent’s eyes cleared, and her face looked happier.

“I don’t know anything about Japan.”

“There’s Skelton’s opportunity!”

“No, my privilege.”

“Or mine?”

A voice hailed the doctor:

“Garside, are you coming?”

“Coming, coming—out of Japan on to the grass!”

They watched him make his way along the terrace. Skelton turned again to the girl.

“Do you know what I call our friend?”

“No.”

Her eyes looked up at him almost gratefully.

“The Oxygen Cylinder.”

“Oh——?”

“Because he is packed so full of vitality.”

“Yes, I have felt that. He can be so very kind.”

“Oh, Garside’s splendid—a sport. What do you say to watching the tennis?”

“I should like to.”

They chose two chairs at the very edge of the terrace, whose red brick retaining wall dropped ten feet to form the backing for a broad herbaceous border. Constance Brent’s face lost some of its reserve. There was something in the man’s personality that made her react to his presence. He was so easy, so flexible, so much the master of his smiling and kindly cleverness, that the shy, proud girl felt the whole atmosphere about her cleared and lightened.

“Aren’t you playing tennis?”

“Sometimes I prefer to talk; especially when I find a stimulating subject.”

“What do you call stimulating?”

“Anything with life in it, that’s not dead or petrified. And I am always ready to listen.”

“In spite of what Dr. Garside said?”

“Some of us can bear being teased.”

No doubt they were very ready to listen to each other, but a knot of very young men, who had seized the deck chairs below the terrace, began to talk as very old men might talk, but don’t. The voices carried a delightful self-assurance, and a suggestion of finality. To sit there and listen was to hear matters intimately discussed by men of the world.

“Monte? Monte’s a rotten place; it bored me stiff. Had an indication? Oh, rather; lots of ’em—but never raked in anything.”

“The bank’s bound to win. I’ll show it you all worked out in probabilities, Bertie. I’d rather have three weeks at St. Moritz.”

“I dare say; but I hate the beastly French.”

“Rotter! St. Moritz isn’t——”

“Don’t put little pins all over the map. Besides, those places are all full of beastly schoolmasters. You try a ride through the South of Spain. That’s a country! You can get some quite decent shooting from Gib.”

“Shootin’! What about Austria? Best sport in Europe; sort of antelope potting, they give you. Have to take ’em on the jump like fleas.”

“Oh, I should go straight to British East Africa if I wanted big gunning. Bertie here was gassing about it, but he won’t think of anything but gear-box grease and sparking plugs.”

“What’s wrong with a chap’s being keen? Think of taking my ‘Hawk’ across and entering her for that French thing. Only I hate the beastly French—and their language.”

“Hire a schoolmaster for the trip.”

“I’d rather take the Penningtons’ French governess.”

Constance Brent was inexperienced enough to be impressed by the slangy self-assurance of these young barbarians, young men who would have had opinions ready upon Athens or Honolulu. People who talked “travel” always humiliated her, perhaps because there is so much conscious egoism in the babblings of idle fools. She wondered how the thing affected the man beside her, and in trying to answer the question she came face to face with the glitter of tolerant humour in his eyes. He was smiling over the young men below, and enjoying them, as they deserved to be enjoyed.

“You can learn a great deal by listening! One has to remember one’s own youth in order to appreciate the innocent priggishness of life. Our friends down below are being such men of the world.”

“Who are they?”

“Three or four boys. You go up like a rocket when you leave school, you know. I remember my self-importance growing up like a gourd. The pumpkin heads one gets! All men over forty are decrepit duffers. You know everything. I only wish I could re-experience that delightful sensation. At twenty I was quite sure I could run the Empire. Now that I am getting towards forty I find a great deal of trouble in running myself.”

Her eyes lit up to his.

“You are not forty yet!”

“Not so very far away.”

“But you look so young.”

“Mademoiselle, from henceforth I shall be devoted to you! But, really, the rookery down below is rather disturbing. What are they at now—Japan? Bless my soul, what a thing it is to be young and a ubiquitous liar! Have you seen the ‘Vernors’ gardens?”

“No.”

“They are splendid. Let’s go on a pilgrimage.”

“Yes, please take me.”

When Hesketh Power’s father had bought “Vernors,” he had taken to himself the dream of another man’s soul. Moreover, the other man’s dream had matured and mellowed. The Jacobean house was there, proudly placed upon its platform, with brick-faced terraces and flowing stairs. The old, high-walled garden remained, with its box-edged paths running between herbs, fruit trees, and old-fashioned flowers. Some topiarist had left a yew walk, with square-cut walls and great green battlements; and in the Dutch garden were box trees clipped into the shape of peacocks.

But all this was a mere ancient corner, a fine fragment almost lost in the miraculous beauty of the acres of parkland that had been turned into a perfect pleasaunce. Green walks plunged under the stately gloom of cedars of Lebanon, opening out into pools of sunlight, and rushing together again into sudden mystery. There was a great rock-garden, where queer, elvish trees made the miniature landscape look like a land of the dwarfs, and where one thought of secret caves filled with caskets of beaten gold, enchanted swords, and hoards of emeralds and sapphires. Beyond the jardin des roches rose a wood of blue cedars, firs, and black American spruces, and in the midst of it a grassy glade that had a miraculous stillness and the listening awe of some ancient story of enchantment. Brown fir cones lay scattered on the grass for satyrs and dryads to play with. The place was so beautiful that it gave to the heart of the lover of beauty a moment of breathlessness and of pain.

The girl’s face had an awed whiteness.

“It is almost too beautiful!”

Skelton’s eyes shone.

“Beauty hurts—sometimes. But one can bless the man who created it.”

“Yes. The joy and the pain.”

They passed on, and found themselves standing on the edge of the rhododendron valley, filled with the choicest rhododendrons and azaleas, a valley that was an intoxication in the season of its flowering, with the strange perfume of the azaleas giving a pagan scent to the gorgeous flesh tints of a pagan world. The rose garden followed, and here all the rambling and polyantha roses were curtains of colour hung upon the great pergolas and the stumps of old trees. The walks were paved with irregular stones, and rock plants grew in the crevices.

But in wandering through the “Vernors” gardens Skelton had discovered a sensitive plant, a fragile flower that opened its leaves to the sunlight and forgot to be self-conscious and upon its guard. Enthusiasms, that Hesketh Power had terrified, fluttered out and displayed their iridescent wings. An intuitive pity stirred in Skelton. He could visualise the girl’s life in that lonely little white house on the edge of Roymer Heath, with that yellow-headed mother for a companion. Constance Brent looked like a child who had lived through long silences, and who had had to create imaginary people to talk to and to play with. Yet the eyes were not the eyes of a child. They had knowledge, a something that lurked in the conscious background, a something that had to be hidden.

Their pilgrimage ended with a glimpse of the “Vernors” cedars, black against a primrose sky. Dew was falling, and the little gay figures were drifting from the terrace, to be carried away by motors, carriages, and pony carts. Constance Brent would be walking back alone to Roymer Heath, and to Skelton there was a touch of pathos in the thought of that slim, pink-dressed figure, with its flower-like face, passing through the lonely dusk of the Roymer fir woods.

They found themselves in the drive together. Skelton was still thanking Philippa Power in his heart for the smile she had given the girl, and for the calm warmth of her voice. He was wheeling a bicycle with a tennis racket strapped to the handle bars.

“I am going to walk with you as far as the church.”

“But you would be riding——”

She caught the same gleam of protecting kindness in his eyes. He had a quiet insistent way with him, and it suited his lean strength.

“I don’t know that I like cycling. It is one of those things that makes one feel in quite an unnecessary hurry. I can take the path through the woods from the church.”

And when he left her Constance Brent wondered why he had taken so much trouble. Perhaps brothers were like that. She had never had any menfolk to brother her.