Читать книгу Imagined Corners - Willa Muir - Страница 17

The sentiment of family reunion that rises in flood over Britain towards the end of every year had always carried John Shand with it, but this year, to his own astonishment, he found himself deliberately surrendering to it long before Christmas. Even in his office he caught himself daydreaming that Lizzie was in Calderwick for Christmas and the New Year. Instead of attending to the papers before him he was conducting Lizzie all over the mill, and she complimented and teased him about the success he had made of it. She stayed with him in the house at Balfour Terrace; they laughed together at breakfast and were still laughing in the evening. They reminded each other, for instance, how they had climbed over their own garden wall and plundered a pear-tree, leading a band of young brigands into their own territory. And finally had to bury half the pears beneath a mound of ivy leaves, after all, although the six of them had eaten and eaten, throwing away larger and larger cores as their appetites began to fail. Not one of the six was left in Calderwick but himself…. On another autumn day they had gathered all the red and yellow leaves they could find because Lizzie swore that she could brew a magic potion out of them. They had brewed it in a silver coffee-pot in the wash-house. She was a little monkey.

He went up one evening to an attic merely to look at an old rocking-chair on which they had once played waves and mermaids, with their legs buttoned into coats and tied up with shawls to resemble fish-tails. The old rocking-chair could still rock valiantly. But Lizzie was – where was she?

Twenty years ago he had torn up her letter and thrown it in the fire. He had sent her a communication through his solicitor, assuring her that an allowance of one hundred and fifty pounds would be paid to her yearly but that her brother wished never to see her again. That allowance had been paid scrupulously, even when he could ill afford it; nobody knew anything about it, not even Mabel. He had insisted on letting Lizzie understand that the money was hers by right, her patrimony, for if she had guessed it was a gift she might have refused it. But she had accepted it. Tom Mitchell sent it to her every quarter. Tom Mitchell must have her address, of course.

He rose from his desk almost in agitation. There was nothing to prevent his writing and inviting Lizzie to come home for Christmas. Nothing, except his own bitter words of twenty years ago, which were vanishing like grains of dust, blown away by the wind of Lizzie’s presence in his imagination.

For an irritable moment or two he caught himself regretting that he had a wife and other responsibilities. How could he explain to Mabel and Aunt Janet that he was going to invite Lizzie? It would set tongues wagging in the town, he knew; and for the first time in his life he wished that he was a vagabond. Could he not shake himself free and set off alone? His imagination, however, which was definite and clear when it played around the familiar scenes of Calderwick, faltered in confusion before the uncertainty of such a journey and the faint suggestion of dishonesty surrounding it. For he would have to pretend that he was going away on business.

His conflicting selves tormented him. But the anguish which contracted his heart when the idea occurrred to him that Lizzie might refuse to see him, or refuse to come, overwhelmed his hesitations. He must see her again; that was all. And he must see her in the most honourable manner, without subterfuge. He would invite her home to Calderwick, let gossip say what it liked, and he would write to her in such a way that if she still cared for him she would not refuse.

He shut himself up in his study for several evenings writing and rewriting the letter: My dear Lizzie. Twenty years ago we were both fools…. That would make her smile; that would make her feel indulgent. But was it not possible that it would only infuriate her? If she had bitterly resented his silence a light and easy attempt to resume their relationship would undoubtedly infuriate her. She might have suffered during these years; she must have suffered; one cannot do wrong with impunity. My dear, dear Lizzie. Will you ever forgive me? But that wouldn’t do; he had been quite right in his attitude; she must have recognized that. Even now he was braving public opinion in asking her home; and his position in Calderwick was now unimpeachable. How impossible it would have been to bring her back twenty years ago! After all, it was she who had been in the wrong, flagrantly in the wrong.

He wished that he knew at least what kind of woman she had become. A hundred and fifty a year must have kept her from sinking into the very gutter, he thought grimly. That, indeed, was why he had settled it upon her. Still, human nature being what it was, as she had taken one wrong step she might have taken many. A woman of ungoverned passions, nearly forty, a coarse licentious figure, his common sense told him, the female counterpart of their father, and, being a woman, ten times worse than their father, that was what he might reasonably expect to find.

He leaned his head on his hands, shutting his eyes. And once again the delight of Lizzie’s presence enveloped him; he could have sworn that she was somewhere in the house, and that they were going to have a vivacious evening together. While his eyes were shut he felt it impossible that Lizzie should have become anything but just Lizzie.

He suddenly realized that her address would be some kind of a clue to her circumstances, and decided to ask Tom Mitchell for the address before writing the letter. This decision somewhat restored his cheerfulness and carried him to the lawyer’s office early next day.

Tom Mitchell had never seen the big man so embarrassed. The childlike look in his eyes was more evident than ever. He stood behind the chair offered to him, refusing to sit down, as if he feared to be drawn into explanations. The lawyer, a small rosy-cheeked old man who was a walking graveyard of family secrets, pulled out a drawer.

‘Ay, weel,’ he said, in an affectedly broad accent, ‘it just happens that Miss Lizzie sent me a letter for you some months syne, with positive instructions that it was not to be given to you unless you speired after her. Man, she must have jaloused that you were going to do it. Or else you must have jaloused that the letter was here. There’s queerer things happens than that.’

John Shand made a step forward.

‘Bide a wee, bide a wee; I’ll find it in a minute. Here we are. To John Shand, Esquire.’

He held out a thin bluish envelope, larger than those usually seen in Calderwick. The same handwriting, said John to himself, as he eagerly snatched the letter. Lizzie always printed her capitals instead of writing them.

‘When did this come, Tom?’ he asked in a casual voice.

‘Nineteenth of July.’

‘And where is she now?’

‘South of France. The address will be inside. Sit down, man, and read it.’

John put the letter in his pocket. As jealous as if it were from his lass, Tom Mitchell remarked to himself. He could feel it there all the way down the street. Dear, dear Lizzie. He had been an unconscionably long time in jalousing the message. Nineteenth of July. And this was the twenty-eighth of November. She might have been in great trouble; it might even be too late now.

He stopped on the pavement, his heart in his mouth, plucked the letter out of the envelope, and read it, standing on the kerb.

‘My dear John, – This is to let you know that I am now made an honest woman of – much against my will, but the man is dying and wouldn’t take no. It’s not Fritz, by the way; I shed Fritz long ago; but it’s another German, a friend of mine for years. I am now Frau Doktor Mütze, which is to say Mrs Doctor Bonnet, so you see although I threw my bonnet over the mill it has come back like a boomerang. I don’t think he can live for more than a month or so. We did it last week. I can’t explain it all now, but I feel that I ought at least to tell you, for I know how much importance you attach to getting married and things like that. But I don’t want you to think I’m proud of it. I don’t want to tell you either, unless you are feeling friendly towards me, so I’ll instruct Tom Mitchell accordingly. Anyhow, there it is. Love from Lizzie. Villa Soleil, Menton.’

John laughed as he crammed the letter back into his pocket without folding it. Mrs Doctor Bonnet. Love from Lizzie. The same old sixpence, he said to himself in glee; the same old sixpence!

In his first exuberance he wrote her the letter of invitation and gummed down the flap of the envelope before he rememberd that her new-made husband might be dead by this time. He checked himself. It was indecent to be so overjoyed if Lizzie were a widow. Yet he could not feel grief-stricken; her being a widow was the best thing that could happen; it would set her free to come home. He tore up that letter, however, and wrote another. When that was in its envelope he took it out at the last minute and added as a postscript: ‘Do come.’ Then he went out to post it himself. Before he slid it into the letterbox he looked again at the superscription, ‘Frau Doktor Mütze’, and grinned like a boy.

Now that the letter was posted he realized how much of himself had gone into it. His heart had not stirred in such secret delight since Lizzie’s disappearance – not even on his wedding-day. Something hidden very deep seemed to have come alive again. He felt like whistling, and he had not whistled for fifteen years, he dared say, yes, fifteen years at least.

I must have been growing old, thought John. That was what growing old meant, saving up one’s energy, no whistling or running or jumping. There was a flight of stone steps leading up to his own front door; he took them in two strides and paused at the top to reflect that Lizzie would certainly push him down again if she were there. What were steps for!