Читать книгу The Road - Warwick Deeping - Страница 6

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Monday and washing-day, because the world went back to its work, and the heart of the country was glad.

It was Rachel’s turn to fire the old-fashioned copper and to make a stew of the week’s table-cloths and the household linen, not together, mark you, for the Mill House had a conscience in the matter of a nice cleanliness. And how thoughtless the world was even upon the topic of table-cloths. There were people who slopped tea and spilt jam, and treated clean linen as they treated the face of God’s country. Litter, messes for other people to clean up, stains to be effaced, and without a protest.

Poor Mrs. Binnie would lament: “Seven stained cloths this week, and one with a knife cut in it.”

Rhoda, more combative than her mother and her sister, would have pinned up notices, the texts of a clean-limbed efficiency.

A soiled cloth is a spoilt cloth.

Remember, your carelessness costs other people time and money.

Have a little imagination.

Rachel knew that it was necessary to be gentle with this linen, for it represented capital, precious cash. The impatience of youth had somehow been chastened in her by those glimpses of her mother putting on spectacles and holding linen up to the light. Was it wearing thin?

But on this Monday morning she had all the pink sails spread in the little grassy corner behind the Mill House. They hung in windless peace, and to her came one of those moods of inattention when eyes look beyond the mere moment. She sat down on the grass close to the water. Her consciousness became part of the scene, an immense, soft greenness, blue sky, the placid pool lipping the water-flags and sedges, full of reflections. The chestnut tree rose above the stone roof, and was covered with wax candles. The apple blossom in the little orchard had fallen, but in the bushy hedges of the lane beyond the stream the mayflower was out. A Lombardy poplar glimmered faintly, but the shock-headed willows seemed to catch no wind.

A row of red cottage tulips and forget-me-nots strung along a fence. The grey walls of the Mill House, the old hoist with its rusty wheel, six casements, a blue door. Her glances wandered farther. A strip of meadow full of buttercups, the smooth green hillsides blurred with patches of yellow broom, the woods so vividly and variously green. Those larches up there, exquisite, fairy trees.

She saw a hat passing in the lane, an old brown hat. The head and shoulders of a man became visible for a moment. Mr. Bonthorn, otherwise Old One Eye. But how old was he? Forty? Inevitably he seemed to go by like that, always seen in profile, brown, lean, aloof, a little mysterious. A hawk-man—but somehow not so fierce as a hawk. Never did that one eye seem to diverge towards woman.

She was conscious of a twinge of laughter.

How quaint to be so separative! And so silent! What did he think about? Nothing but flowers? Odd creature, sometimes using a stick that was like a staff, a sort of Aaron’s Rod. Almost he might have come out of the Bible. Attach a beard and he would have possessed the presence of a prophet.

She pulled a grass stem and sucked it. She wondered whether the same swallows would come and build under the eaves? And that flowery frock in a shop-window at Lignor? Her left stocking had a hole in the heel, and she had not had time to mend it. Also, a man? She was not quite sure about that particular man or about herself. She was less sure about things than Rhoda. Stanley Shelp? Shelp? Did the name suggest too much largeness, too much hot self-confidence, something swarthy and a little arrogant?

“Rachel——”

She became aware of her mother standing on that queer timber platform at the back of the mill. It had white posts and rails. A strip of water slid under it.

“Rachel.”

“Hallo!”

“I’ve had a bill for that dress you spilt the milk over.”

Really, how mean? To get a free-clean for a frock, and to send the bill in so soon. A week ago! Just a little milk spilt in the confusion of a crowded Sunday!

But her mother was worried, and long ago it had become obvious to Rachel that her mother was like a woman pursued in a dark lane by some phantom shape. Robinia had the eyes of a hare, and a fearful and busy restlessness. Even her hair fled back from her poor forehead and frightened eyes. A figure that was both futile yet somehow heroic, incapable of accomplishing things, and yet accomplishing them. With her nervous, finicking fingers she had picked up the threads when her husband’s hands had left them in a tangle; she had unravelled them and worked them into a pattern. Rachel could not remember a time when her mother had not been in a hurry, chasing her own tail and yet contriving to elude the world’s judgment of her as a perfect fool.

Rachel gathered herself up.

“Sorry, mumsie. I’ll pay it out of my allowance.”

“O, there’s no need for that.”

“O, yes—I shall.”

Mrs. Binnie disappeared again like a rabbit into a hole. She was a little woman with a stoop, and when she walked she gave one the impression that her head was moving faster than her feet. She would either sag right over like a flaccid stem or fall forward on her nose. She did neither. Her hands might betray a nervous tremor, but they did not drop things.

Rachel crossed over to the clothes-line and felt one of the cloths. The washing was drying well. She heard a char-a-banc thundering over the bridge and the sound of singing. Yes, even on a Monday morning the road could be restless, like a black thread in the new web that was England, and responding to the jerks and tremors of all those other threads. Even the vibrations of Fleet Street were registered at Monks Lacey. Restlessness. There were days when Rachel felt herself troubled by the restlessness of the road, its endless coming and going, its cry of whence and whither. The grey stone building would tremble to the tread of lorries. Speed, adventure. At night, in her attic bedroom, she would hear some fast car come zooming to the bridge, slacken for a moment as though gathering itself for a leap, utter a sharp, strident cry, and rush on.