Читать книгу The Road - Warwick Deeping - Страница 24

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Afterwards, Nicholas Bonthorn remembered that summer evening because of the poignancy and vividness of the contrasts that it carried. The smell of the green lane, and a primrose sky, and the cedars of Stella Lacey, and Mrs. Gurney’s far-away smile.

The car should have come for her, but it did not arrive, and thinking that the chauffeur might be waiting at the end of the lane, she and Bonthorn and the Californian walked down to the bridge at Monks Lacey. Mr. Cripps, very conscious of this world of willows and flowering grasses and idle water, had the air of a man quoting poetry to himself. Immemorial elms, Elizabethan windows, sunsets, the sound of water falling at the weir!

But there were other sounds, voices and laughter, and looking over the hedge and across a strip of meadow and the stream the Californian saw youth at play, two young women in short skirts and bright jumpers, and three young men in pull-overs and plus-fours. On that piece of grass where the Mill House hung out its table-cloths someone had rigged up a couple of beansticks and a piece of string. The five were enjoying a jumping-match, the girls against the men.

Mr. Cripps paused.

“That’s almost Greek. Strip them and they might be Spartans.”

Mrs. Gurney looked amused.

“O—those young women——!”

The three of them stood to watch, unnoticed as yet by the young things on the other side of the stream. One of the lads was adjusting the string. He was something of a wag, but a nice wag, with his buttered head and laughing eyes.

“Now then—Jerry. Atta-boy!”

Jerry, a heavy young man whose fat calves curved backwards, mooched into position, charged, took off with the wrong foot, and bungled it badly. The beanrods shook. There was a chorus of derision.

“Mere man——!”

“I say—you’re letting the sex down.”

“Come on, Rachel. Show him the way.”

The girl shook her hair and laughed.

“Rhoda’s turn.”

“No, it isn’t. No refusing. Come on.”

She chose her distance, took a look at a readjusted string, ran, fluttered on quick feet, and slanting sideways like a man, went up and over. In the air she seemed poised like a bird. Landing, she shook her hair again and laughed.

Mr. Cripps was delighted.

“Now, wasn’t that lovely? Just like a young animal. Good for the gods.”

His enthusiasm had to applaud even in the face of possible indiscretion. He clapped his hands, and the unawareness of the moment was past. The young men stared. Rhoda looked sharply across as though annoyed. Rachel, turning suddenly, saw those three faces, but Bonthorn’s face was the most vivid to her. Her sudden stillness was the self-conscious poise of the nymph surprised by the philosopher, and somehow resenting it. She gave a little flick of the head and showed Bonthorn her back.

The three went on to the bridge, but of the five who were left on the grass, four only were playful. Rachel sucked a grass stem and sat down on the bank, and looked like Cassandra.

“Come on, Rache. Have another shot.”

“Don’t be put out of your stride.”

She shrugged temperamental shoulders.

“I beat Jerry; that’s good enough.”

“I say, who were the three interesting strangers?”

Rhoda was studying the back of her sister’s neck.

“Innocence is bliss. Mrs. Gloriana Gurney of Stella Lacey.”

“O, the duchess! I wonder what she thought of Rachel’s effort? Shocking! And the Old Silver fellow with the black eye-shade. Some buccaneer?”

“Mr. Bonthorn.”

“What, the flower johnnie? Bit of an oddity, isn’t he?”

“O, possibly.”

The Stella Lacey car had not arrived, and Mrs. Gloriana proposed to Mr. Cripps that they should walk up through the park. She explained that she had forgotten to tell Lambert, her chauffeur, to be at the bridge a quarter of an hour before she would need him. Lambert was one of those pleasant persons who are smilingly and inveterately unpunctual. Bonthorn was ready to walk with them.

“Supposing the car turns up?”

“Lambert will smoke a cigarette or go to sleep.”

“Shall I ask someone at the Mill House to tell him?”

“You might. Yes, please do.”

Bonthorn went in and found Mrs. Binnie putting cakes away in a tin. He had removed his hat. The prevailing crowd was either hatless or entered hatted.

“Good evening, Mrs. Buck. I wonder if you or one of your daughters would do something for us?”

Robinia, liking him very well, held a cake poised as though she was about to offer it to him.

“Certainly—Mr. Bonthorn.”

“Mrs. Gurney’s car hasn’t turned up. It was to meet her at the bridge. We’re walking. If the car comes would you tell the chauffeur to go back?”

“Of course, Mr. Bonthorn. To the house?”

“Yes.”

They smiled at each other, and Bonthorn returned to the road.

Mr. Cripps’s appreciation of beauty, genius and joy continued to flutter about the flower of the world’s youth. How much affectation and silliness had passed away with the trailing skirt and the tight corset. Yes, youth was much more free, and more pleasant to watch, healthier, cleaner, better looking. That girl leaping was a symbolical figure, surely? A young Atalanta. And what had been the meaning of the apple?

Mrs. Georgiana was gently amused.

“That—too—was symbolical, Mr. Cripps. Man could not let woman outpace him. And yet—perhaps it was not man.”

The Californian’s quick mind caught her meaning.

“Old Nature. The apple of sex. Yes, that ties a woman to earth. Our idea of change——”

“Very relative, isn’t it? I really can remember school treats and parties many years ago when young women ran races. Certainly—they did not jump—because just then the social prejudice in the matter of dress——”

She caught Bonthorn’s blue eye and was surprised to find it so serious. Was he thinking of those smashed larkspurs, or were there in him mysterious deeps of disapproval?

They came to the grass of the park. Mr. Cripps paused to estimate the height and girth of a Scotch pine.

“Now—what would be the age of that tree?”

Bonthorn’s eye climbed the trunk.

“O, about eighty, I should think. Trees are much more calculable creatures. Sappy spring wood—and tough autumn.”

He heard Mrs. Gurney’s gentle little laugh.

“Does that apply to humans? Yes, spring is ravishing and restless, sappy and sad. It is so sudden with its beauty, so elusive, and with our passion for putting self into nature—we yearn to hold it back. Stay with us, stay in the young leaf and the apple blossom. Yes, the spring used to hurt me—but not now.”

Both the men looked at her. It was the Californian who found the gracious phrase.

“You, madam, have a sort of immortality.”

She laughed.

“O, no, I have set my autumn wood, that’s all. I’m tougher. I just react to the seasons without dreaming that anything is going to be very different. There may be a little more rain or frost, or even a little more sun. And our civilization is just like that. We may collect more plants and produce delightful hybrids, but the climate remains the same. We are just the same humans, just as cruel on occasions, just as splendid, just as silly and self important.”

Mr. Cripps reflected.

He replied: “It is only in an old country that such things can be thought and said.”