Читать книгу The Eyes of Love - Warwick Deeping - Страница 3

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A boy who was passing along the Fox Farm road saw the horns and head of a black bull come crashing through the rotten weather-boarding of a cow-house wall. A stout rope had been fastened round the horns of the bull. The boy could hear men shouting in the byre.

“Tom, you muck of a fool, what be ye a’-doing with t’ chain——?”

“Maister Jesse, let t’ rope go! God save us, he’ll tear t’ shed down!”

The bull’s head had disappeared from the hole in the splintered timber, and in the black-fenced cow-yard the figures of men went scattering across the straw. In the byre itself the chain that had held the great beast dangled from the oak manger, and on the straw lay a searing-iron, a red sponge, and a bottle of disinfectant.

Briggs, the “vet,” a hard-faced little man in a green waistcoat, riding-breeches, and yellow gaiters, turned at the yard door with one hand through the latch-hole. Shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows, hands bloody, he still held a scalpel between his teeth, and his eyes were full of furious disgust.

Three men had climbed the high black fence, and were straddling it like banderilleros. The bull had stopped in the centre of the yard, nostrils smoking, horns shaking the rope that trailed behind him across the straw.

The veterinary opened the yard door, dropped the scalpel into a tuft of grass, and turned like a lean, plucky little terrier, his teeth showing in a snarl.

“Get the right side of the fence, Mr. Falconer. The beast’s dangerous.”

A big man in rough brown clothes stood by the byre entry, holding the end of the rope. Huge and impassive, with the head of a Norse giant, and the blue eyes of a dreamer, he stood watching the black bull, a slight smile lifting the corners of a melancholy mouth.

“All right, Briggs, one ought not to lose one’s dignity in the face of a beast.”

The veterinary turned to one of the men straddling the fence.

“Purkiss, you damned fool, what the blazes did you loose that chain for—before I gave the word?”

The man Purkiss grumbled through the scrub of a brown beard.

“T’ staple bruk, Maister Briggs. I be’unt such a fool—sure—as ter—! Sakes alive, Maister Jesse, come up out er t’ yard!”

The bull had swung round so as to face Falconer, who stood holding the rope that had been used by the men to draw the beast to the manger in the byre. The bull advanced a few steps over the straw, tossing his head, and looking at Falconer with ugly eyes. The farmer’s brown face showed no fear. It was the face of a fatalist, of a man who had found life too sorry a business for him to cherish it too jealously.

Briggs bit his moustache.

“Tut-tut, Falconer. Dignity be damned! Don’t play with the black devil.”

Falconer kept his eyes on the bull.

“There is the rope,” he said, “I may as well get it off his horns.”

Briggs gave an expostulatory snarl. But he showed the pluck in him by shutting the yard door, picking up a pitchfork, and advancing across the straw.

Falconer spoke to him, without taking his eyes from the bull.

“Keep away, Briggs. I can manage the beast.”

The bull swung sharply to the right, bucked, lowered his head, and charged the “vet.” Briggs dodged, ran for the fence, and scrambled on to the palings, and sat there biting his moustache and swearing.

The bull went blundering round the yard, Falconer letting the rope run with him and turning much as a ring-master turns with a horse. He drew a claspknife from his pocket, opened it, and glanced for a minute at the farm-house whose red roofs and gables showed above the pollard willows growing about the pond. Someone was watching from one of the gable windows, for a face showed behind the leadlights of the casement.

The bull had come to a standstill in the centre of the yard, and stood staring at Falconer with dull malevolence. The man and the beast faced each other without moving. Then Falconer began to approach the bull, running the rope through his left hand.

“If I leave him a yard on his horns,” he said, “I shan’t waste much.”

The farm-hands were silent. Briggs glanced at the farm-house, and then prepared to jump into the yard to help Falconer if he were attacked.

“That’s a damned silly game to play,” he said, “with your wife watching you at that window!”

Falconer ignored the protest. He went step by step towards the bull, keeping his eyes on the animal’s eyes, and showing no hesitation. The bull stared and stood still. He allowed Falconer to come close to him, cut the rope within a yard of his horns, and retreat across the straw towards the cow-yard door.

Briggs swung himself off the fence.

“Confound it,” he said, “if I were an insurance tout I should keep clear of Fox Farm!”

Briggs washed his hands in a tub of water that stood outside the yard door. Once or twice he looked with an expression of cynical slyness at the window in the gable where Kate Falconer had appeared. He brought a gold ring from his breeches pocket, slipped it on his finger, and then spat with vicious emphasis.

Jesse Falconer had coiled the rope, and passed it to one of the men. Standing with his hands in his pockets, his blue eyes staring into the distance, he let his great shoulders slouch as though they were too heavy for him to carry. Falconer did not hold his head like a man whose instinct is to strike back when struck at. His face was the face of a watcher and a dreamer, sensuous, meditative, and a little weak. If Briggs resembled a snappy, and valiant little terrier, Falconer reminded one of a great, sad-eyed hound.

The veterinary turned down his shirt sleeves.

“Lucky I’d just finished the job when that chain gave. I’ll run down to-morrow and have a look at the beast. Give him plenty of clean litter.”

Falconer nodded like a preoccupied god.

“Just as you please——”

Briggs’s sharp eyes swept the other man’s face. There was contempt, pity, admiration in the glance. He put on his coat and hat that lay on an old bench.

“I left part of my tackle in yonder. To-morrow will do. I promised Willoughby I would be down at The Pool by six.”

He nodded, smiled, and walked away with the wiry action of a little man who emitted the sparkle of self-confidence. Falconer watched him a moment, gave some orders to the men, and then passed on through the stockyard and behind the old brick stables to the orchard. He paused at the orchard gate, leant his arms upon it, and stared at the horizon.

Fox Farm lay on the ridge of a hill, and east and west the landscape fell away into vague blue distances. It was woodland country, a land of oaks and beeches, with here and there clumps of spruce, larch, and fir rising in darker knolls against the lighter green.

An empty landscape is interesting only to sentimental boys and young poets. The maturer eye seeks the personal, human mood, the significant touches of the hands of man. As for Fox Farm, nothing could have been more human. Wind-blown, bluff-chimneyed, ruinous as to its outbuildings, it stood up against the grey of an English sky with a sullen beauty that haunted the heart. Its tiles and walls were covered with lichen, the colour of verdigris and of old gold. The mortar between the bricks was grey, crumbling, and moss-grown. The casements blinked and chattered when a high wind blew.

Its very beauty was an autumnal beauty, a loveliness that glows with the ecstasy of decay. The roofs of the barns and byres undulated over rotting rafters, and showed many a gap where the tiles had fallen. The gates, green and bare of paint, hung awry and dragged along the ground. The hedges, left uncut for years, had grown into great mysterious galleries where sheep and cattle sheltered. A wood of Scotch firs came close to the house on the northwest, sheltering the orchard from the north winds. In the orchard itself the old trees were twisted, gnarled, cankered and covered with moss and lichen. Weeds abounded, nettles, sheeps-parsley, docks, gout-weed, sorrel, and a hundred more wild flowers smothered the place. There were banks that were all blue and gold in spring, or purple with orchids. Buttercups blazed in the meadows, and the long grass glimmered with great daisies and red sorrel.

In the hedgerows huge thorns spread green canopies and elder trees sent the sad fragrance of their white flowers on the wind. As for the garden in front of the house it was a delicious tangle, a passionate place where half-smothered flowers uttered cries of despair. The walls were grass-grown, the box edges ragged and full of gaps, the roses old and straggling, and full of dead wood. Flowers bloomed as they could, and fought each other and the weeds. A dozen scents contended for the mastery, the scent of stocks, jasmine, honeysuckle, roses, lavender, thyme, box, elder, bay, mint, lilies, and rue.

Jesse Falconer leant upon the orchard gate and watched the woods grow mystical under the light of the setting sun. A kind of languor was in his eyes. The autumn splendour of the oaks and beeches rose into domes of fire. For him the world was a sad, strange world. A man who dreamed, he had learnt to tell himself that nothing mattered.

Contemplate Nature, and she is beautiful; contend with her, and she becomes fierce and relentless. The farmer learns to accept the tempestuous, wayward moods of a power that as a pagan or a Christian he once strove to propitiate with offerings and prayers. Nothing is certain for him, nothing assured. Little wonder that he may become either a drunkard or a fatalist when the perversities of Nature press mockingly upon his senses.

Falconer turned from the orchard and moved with long, slow, melancholy strides up the brick-paved path leading to the back of the farm-house. A thatched porch stood out over the door, and an old yew had made the brick paving uneven with the upthrust of its roots.

Falconer entered the porch without remembering to scrape the byre muck from his boots. A broad, stone-flagged passage led right through the house, its walls distempered a dull brown, showing a few old prints hanging by green blind cord from brass-headed nails. Doors with thumb-latches opened on either side, and that indescribable perfume that clings to old farm-houses met one on the threshold.

There was the sound of steps descending the stairs. A hand came gliding down the rail, and a face looked over into the passage.

“You fool——”

Falconer glanced at his wife, and their eyes met and exchanged a challenge.

“Thanks, Kate.”

She turned at the foot of the stairs with one hand on the newel post, and stood confronting him. A tall, big-bodied woman with a fine bust and broad shoulders, her face had a hard comeliness with its apple cheeks, red-brown eyes, and closely curled black hair. It was the face of a capable and energetic woman, a woman of narrow aims and notions, unemotional in the higher sense, unimaginative, and a little mean.

“What a fool you are! You put me out of all patience.”

Jesse hung his hat on a peg. His movements seemed rendered more slow and lethargic by the presence of his wife.

“What’s the matter, Kate?”

“Matter! Haven’t we worries enough without your playing for a doctor’s bill. Oh, you make me mad.”

They looked each other in the eyes like antagonists who cross swords. The woman’s anger was not the perverse anger of love that has been alarmed.

She glanced along the passage, and then at her husband’s boots.

“Well, I never! Must you always bring your dirt in here? Jenny scrubbed the passage down this morning. You men never give a thought to the work you make. Look at that mess.”

Falconer turned slowly with the large, questioning forbearance of a great dog. Probably he had never realised how exasperating his dreamy fatalism was to this energetic, masterful woman.

“I forgot.”

“Oh, lord! Go and take those filthy boots off in the porch.”

“All right, Kate.”

He marched off down the passage, slouching and swinging his hands. His wife opened the kitchen door, and called to her servant.

“Jenny, bring your brush and pan. The master has messed up the whole passage.”

Falconer sat on the bench in the porch and unlaced his boots. He had ceased to marvel at this strange fact that two people who had once kissed with passion, now angered each other with every trick of body and mind. The pity of the thing moved him no longer. Those impulses toward reconciliation were part of the past. He accepted the tragedy of their marriage even as he accepted the realities of wind and rain.

There were no children at Fox Farm. And as the dusk came down Jesse Falconer sat in the long parlour and stared at the fire. The room was oak-beamed, and paved with brick, and the open fireplace had its ingle-nooks, its jack and chain, its iron fire-back, and dogs. Sparks and flames went upwards into a great chasm. There were oak-doored cupboards on either side of the fireplace, cupboards that sank for three feet into the thickness of the wall. In one of them Falconer kept his pipes and tobacco-jar. He could reach them as he sat in his Windsor chair with his feet resting on the rough brick curb.

The clattering of pans and dishes came from the kitchen, and the busy practical voices of mistress and maid. Yet for the moment the man before the fire sat in a dim atmosphere of meditative and melancholy repose. He lit his pipe and stared at the flames, face impassive, muscles relaxed.

His eyes seemed to reflect the wayward happenings of life, even as they reflected the wayward light of the fire. It was possible to read all manner of experiences into the man’s eyes, the gloom of a wet summer, of ruined hay, drenched crops, and unmet bills. There was no anger, no rebellion, no godwardness in him. Nature had created him in the beginning, and had perfected the creation with the rough touches of her impartial hands. Falconer’s face had a mild, impassive, dreamy radiance. He was learning to be happy in being sad, to steep himself in a species of Oriental nonchalance. There were books in the cupboard where he kept his pipes and tobacco, but there comes a time for a man when books say nothing new to him. They become full of vain repetitions of things that lie like dust over the surface of life.

The kitchen door opened, and Kate Falconer came through into the firelit room. Her presence destroyed its atmosphere of passive contemplation. Antagonisms and a spirit of critical unrest stirred in the air.

“Jenny, bring the lamp.”

Her eyes rested a little scornfully upon her husband.

“I’ll have some of the fire, please. Have you seen to the beasts? Purkiss’s nose might be kept closer to the grindstone.”

Falconer shifted his chair, and the girl came in with the lamp. It was a gaudy thing in coloured glass with a globe that gave out a cold white light. Its glare had much the same effect on the room as Kate Falconer’s presence. She was a woman without mystery, all sharp decided surface, lacking shadow.

“What’s Briggs charging for that job yonder?”

“A guinea.”

“I suppose he wanted the money on the counter.”

“No; I think not.”

The wife took her work-basket from one of the cupboards. She looked at Jesse slouching in his chair, chin on chest, his lips sending out lazy, rhythmic puffs of smoke. An impatient shrug of the shoulders showed how her own active nature clashed with his.

“Can’t you sit as though you had a backbone, Jesse?”

Falconer did not stir in his chair.

“I’m wondering how we are going to meet old Smunk’s bill by Christmas. Do you know where the money’s to come from? I’m not going to put my hand in my own pocket this quarter.”

“I don’t want to take any of your money, Kate.”

“Well, can you pay the bills?”

“Let them lie. They won’t grow less for our worrying over them.”

Kate drew her work-basket towards her, chose a reel of cotton, and unwound a yard or so and snapped it with an irritable jerk of the hand.

“Jesse, no wonder that everything you touch turns out a failure. You want someone behind you with a stick all day, to lay in and shout, ‘Git oop, Noddy, git oop, ye baste.’ It’s a pity you weren’t built smaller. I know little men who could knock the head off you for pluck and go.”

Her hand swept to and fro as she used her needle, and Falconer stared at the fire.

“What is—is,” he said; “it’s no use pushing against fate.”

His wife glanced at him, opened her mouth and closed it again with an air of resigned contempt. Presently she lifted her head and called in her hard, clear voice:

“Jenny, you can bring in supper.”

So the table was laid, and the monotonous meal gone through with by the light of the glaring lamp.

Kate Falconer turned again to the fire, drew a stocking over her left hand, and began to darn it in loud silence. Jesse filled his pipe, loitered a moment with an air of cumbrous indecision, and then went out along the stone-paved passage to the thatched porch, and the black-bosomed yew.