Читать книгу The Woman at the Door - Warwick Deeping - Страница 16

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She was one of those foolish creatures who even when a trivial promise has been made, can be worried by the thought of breaking it. Should she go out in such rain? But what if he walked all the way from the tower to find no jug of milk in the sandpit? Poor man, he would have no milk either for his tea or his breakfast. And he would think of her as a bric-a-brac creature who either forgot, or broke a promise if it did not suit her to keep it. She did not want him to think of her in that way.

She looked out of a window. The rain hung like a curtain, blurring out the landscape. But how very beautiful was the wet greenness of this spring world. The grass was lushing up in the paddock, and when the sun shone it would be a cloth of gold. She remembered that her umbrella had two rents in it; she had no money to pay for it to be re-covered.

But, her husband? He was in the waggon-shed overhauling the reaping machine in readiness for the hay harvest; it was an old machine, prone to fail in a crisis, and causing him to rage. The reaper was like her umbrella—a product of penury. Supposing he——? She stood there hesitant, a sensitive creature to whom any deception was somehow repugnant and humiliating. It was her heritage, this over-quick conscience, and she was the victim of it, like one who looks in a mirror and sees more than the reflection of a face. As a child she had suffered from this too-sensitive conscience. It had compelled her to quaint little confessions, self-ordained penances in a white nightgown. Always she had been so afraid of hurting people and of smirching that something in herself by the petty lyings and slynesses that cause cruder children no qualms. She could remember at school an older girl sneering at her. “You—are—a soppy little fool. Or do you think that by sneaking about yourself—you’ll suck up to old Grogan?”

And the sky had been very black over Beech Farm. He was in one of his dumb and deadly moods. Inevitably, she had noticed his bruised face, and had begun to ask him about it. It had been foolish of her, a natural impulse that should have been suppressed. He had snarled at her.—“Mind your own business, damn you.” Incidentally, she had gathered that he had sacked the carter Lovel, and was himself looking after the horses. And this particular mood, bleak and black like some dreadful day in December, was more to be dreaded than his chattering rages.

Had she written her own tragedy? Might not things have been different if she had been a woman of coarser fibre and had scolded back at him? But she was not made to stand up to cruelty. The unreasoning crass brutishness of it seemed to paralyse her. She shook at the knees. She was so ready to take the failure to heart. She was the victim of her own too sensitive-self. That she could have made life good and wonderful for some other man was neither here nor there. She stood looking at the drenched and derelict garden, and even at this moment she was the creature of her conscience. She hesitated where most women would not have thought twice about such an adventure, or would have faced it with a shrug of passionate cynicism. Should she or should she not slip out with that jug of milk?

The jug stood ready on a shelf in the dairy. She had covered it with a paper cap. And suddenly the sensitive balance of her self swung over towards—“I will.” She went quickly into the passage, took down an old black mackintosh from a peg, slipped into it and buttoned it to her chin. She did not bother about a hat, and her umbrella was too shameful. With the jug in her left hand she went out by the back door, and past a pleading dog whom she left gazing dolefully after her at the end of his kennel chain.

But if her sensitiveness was like swansdown on the surface of life she was not alone in feeling ridiculously responsible for the fulfilling of a contract, however trivial it might be. Her crossing of the paddock from the orchard hedge to the field gate under the beech tree might have been a traversing of no man’s land. Would she be seen, shot at? And yet, she did not hurry; something in her refused to hurry. Why should she always be apologizing to her fate? With the milk-jug pressed against her bosom she walked towards the gate as though going upon an errand that no other creature could question, yet during those seconds she was listening for the expected voice. She heard nothing but the sound of the rain upon the beech leaves. She reached the gate, pulled the catch back, and was out in the wet green shelter of the lane.

At the tower Luce was buttoning up a very wet mackintosh. He too was pulled by the same sensitive thread. A little, inward voice had admonished him: “Supposing she should take the trouble to deliver your milk for you, are you going to be so churlish as to leave it untouched?” You did not snub a child or a woman of her sort in that way. So, pulling the door to after him, and with the empty jug in his hand, he went down through the wet woods to the sandpit.

It so happened that she reached the place half a minute or so before he did. She had placed the jug on the ground, and was standing looking at it, and wishing that she had a flat stone to add to the paper cap. There was no wind, but she was wondering whether the rain would soak through the paper cover. She was looking about for something with which to cover the jug when Luce came to the edge of the pit.

Undiscovered for the moment he stood looking down at her. Her very dark hair gleamed wet. Her pale face had a kind of intent, childish innocence. She was looking for something, and in wondering what it was he forgot to ask himself whether he ought not to leave her unconscious of his coming. And then, she seemed to feel some other presence. There was a startled lifting of her head, an upward glance, a sudden stiffening of the thread of her black figure.

Almost, her eyes had a blind, blurred look. And then the breath seemed to escape from her with a little sighing sound.

“O—Mr. Luce.”

She smiled, but her pale lips were poignant. What other figure had she feared to see poised up there amid the gorse bushes? He did not say that it seemed to be his fate to surprise her. She was like a frightened thing who asked to be allowed to smother her tremblings.

“Really, you should not have troubled in this rain.”

He spoke to her like a large, middle-aged person reassuring a shy child, and coming round and down into the sandpit he tried to make the occasion appear pleasantly impersonal. He even attempted a touch of playfulness.

“As a matter of fact I was coming all the way with this jug and then I thought I had better look in here—on the chance.”

She was still as white as the milk.

“But hadn’t I promised?”

“Promises aren’t like the laws of the Medes and Persians when it rains like this.”

He saw her bend suddenly, take the jug and remove the paper cover. Was he a sentimentalist, or were his feelings about her quick and real? She belonged to another man, and possibly there was nothing about the savagery of sex that she did not know. Probably a man like Ballard threw love on the bed and ravished it. And yet——. He was holding his milk-jug and letting her fill it. He looked at her wet black hair and white neck, and was moved by a quality that seemed peculiarly hers. She was gentle. She was like this flowing milk. She might have been a young girl, virginal, sensitively shy, a thing unsoiled. She had a forehead that was shaped to be serene and sweet, lips that were clean and tender.

The rain came down upon them both. And suddenly her wet head was raised. She drew back a little, looked at him and smiled.

“Will that be enough?”

“Plenty. I don’t indulge in milk puddings.”

“Have you anyone to make milk puddings for you?”

“No. And if I had—I should not order them. Some of us—you know—are a little odd.”

She seemed to question that word. Her eyelashes gave a little flicker.

“You like—being alone?”

“I’m afraid I do.”

“Just—with yourself. Yes,—I understand.”

She raised her face to the rain, and looked lost for a moment within herself. Her drenched hair was like a wreath, and Luce stood contemplating her. If they were alone together in the wet woods, that was but the mere chance of the day and of the weather. Two milk-jugs had met and exchanged their contents, that was all. He was going back to that brick tower, and she—to the farm.

He was aware of her face coming out of its dream. He would have said that she had been asleep, and that with her waking consciousness some inward pain had returned. Her wet face looked different, like Eve’s face outside the gate of Eden.—But what a sentimentalist he was! He was aware of her clasping that empty jug against her bosom. She seemed to shirk a direct glance.

“I’m afraid—we are getting so wet.”

His feeling was that she wanted him to go. Well, that was easy. But why did she look so rigid, like some animal whose fear——? He put up a hand, and then remembered that he had come out without a hat.

“You get back home. And if it rains like this to-morrow—please——.”

That last quick glance of hers puzzled him. It seemed to snatch itself away. He stood and watched her walk out of the sandpit, holding the jug between her breasts.