Читать книгу The Man on the White Horse - Warwick Deeping - Страница 11

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Rual, his major-domo, met him there, a bland and bald old man with a white beard. Rual held his lord's bridle. His white tunic was fresh from the wash, his forehead as peaceful as the sunset. Old Rual was of the ancient world. One might say that nothing untoward could happen in his presence.

"What news, Rual?"

According to Rual there was no news, and Geraint dismounted and passed through the gate. The house was built round a courtyard which Geraint's mother had turned into a garden. Vines and roses were trained to the balusters of the ambulatory. Round the basin of a fountain wild flowers had been planted—bluebells and dog-violets and wild musk.

Rual, who had left the horse with a groom, hurried with a haste that was decent to bow his lord into the vestibule.

"Where is my lady?"

Geraint had turned into the atrium, where a worker in mosaic had laid a fair pavement, and in the centre of it—Venus was rising from the sea. Geraint, unbuckling his sword, stood upon the face of the goddess, which was ungallant, but the face of Venus had suffered from many feet, and her countenance was growing dim. Rual, waiting to take Geraint's sword, observed how his master's feet had come to rest upon the face of the goddess. Assuredly, it was an omen, and on occasions Rual could be a little deaf.

Geraint repeated his question.

"My lady?"

Rual took the sword.

"At her prayers, sir; they call them vespers, now, I understand."

"Have the sword cleaned. I had to use it."

Geraint passed through the atrium and the tablinum. There was a passage here running between the cloister walk and the herb-garden, and Geraint took this passage. The oak door leading into the herb-garden was open, and at the end of a grass walk Geraint saw his wife's chapel very white and new against the trees of the orchard. He had had the chapel built for Placida less than three years ago. As Cornelia would have phrased it, the wife of Gerontius had got religion rather badly and was so busy saving her precious soul that nothing else was worth saving. But Geraint was still in the passage when he saw the chapel door open and a man wearing a brown cloak slip out. The man glanced sharply in the direction of the house and then turned north along the orchard hedge and with a certain sedulous and unseemly haste disappeared through the gate in the wattle fence.

Geraint's face darkened. So that damned priest had been here again. These Christians seemed to be very careful in cultivating the women, and especially rich women. Geraint, standing in the doorway, saw the brown figure going hard uphill towards the woods; probably the mission-priest had left his horse up there—for he was a gentleman who rode from place to place and got his belly filled at most of them. But why this secretiveness, this shirking of a confrontation? Neither a god nor his servant should flit by back ways.

Geraint crossed the garden. There was a hedge of Gallic roses on either side of the grass path, and in three weeks the first red buds would be bursting. The door of the chapel faced the west, and the evening sunlight shone in and showed to Geraint the feet and figure of a woman kneeling at the little altar table. The walls of the chapel were painted blue and gold, but Placida's gown was grey. She had her back to her husband, and with hands clasped and eyes closed she adored in a kind of ecstasy the sweet savour of her own soul.

Geraint stood in the doorway; his body cut off the sunlight, but since his wife's eyes were closed, she was not aware of his shadow. Placida was so unaware of many things, and Geraint stood in the doorway and waited. Placida on her knees, adoring what? Herself, her new god, the poignant mystery of things? They had been man and wife ten years, and at the end of a year Geraint had realized the essential silliness of the woman he had married. He had been gentle with Placida, but silliness in the bud may become a little rank in the full flower.

His wife rose, turned, and saw him. She was a short-legged, long-backed little woman, with a small Roman nose and a receding chin. She was growing plump, and plumpness did not become her. Like many silly women, she was supremely sure of herself. Her smile came perilously near a smirk.

"My dear lord, welcome."

She stood like a little white candle before that smouldering torch of a man. She had given Geraint no children, and she was ceasing to give him her body, though Geraint no longer desired her. But Placida the Christian was concerned with her new prejudices and passions. She took her husband's hand.

"Will you not kneel with me, my dear?"

Her voice went tweet-tweet. She was so full of her saintliness—obstinately so—that she made love to her lord's soul. She—Placida—had seen the light, and it made her feel opulent and important. She exaggerated her meekness, but meek she was not. She lacked those secret prides; she gossiped. She let her small world know that through her, her lord would turn to the new god. Besides, was not the new god now the respectable and official deity?

Geraint looked at his wife as he would have looked at an importunate and unwise child. But had she been the child he had married—! Behind her on the wall the Chi Rho in gold caught a fragment of sunlight.—He was thinking of Guinevra. What did a man ask for, a piece of sanctified wax, or a creature who blew to him like fire?

He smiled at his wife. He neither refused nor explained, but drew back from the doorway, and she, with an assumption of sweet patience, made the sign of the cross and closed the chapel door.

"I pray for you daily, my lord."

And suddenly he looked weary. Did she not know that there were other things? Of what use was a candle in wild and windy weather?

He said: "I am hungry."

Oh, carnal man; and she kept her fasts and was becoming self-consciously prudish about things of the flesh! She walked with him mincingly to the house, hands together, eyes confronting the sunset, but within her burned a little obstinate, pale flame. She would subdue the carnal man in Geraint, perhaps because the secret woman in her knew that the carnal man had ceased to care. She would instruct, convert—rule. Good women can fiddle at men and things with interfering fingers.

At supper he told her of the day's happenings and of Guinevra. He did not tell her because he and Placida were of one mind in such matters, but because he knew that she would hear of the girl from the servants. He did not wish Placida to hear of her in that way. She listened brightly, her little nose in the air, complacently purblind. She asked questions.

"A goldsmith's daughter.—And soldiers, too! How—disgraceful! Poor thing.—And you left her with Cornelia."

"She is safe with Cornelia."

Placida twittered.

"You said the girl was of my faith?"

"I believe so."

"You should not have left her with that terrible old woman. You should have brought her here."

And Geraint looked strangely at his wife. Assuredly, Placida was a fool.