LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

from her lips like crumbs of dry biscuit.

      She closed her eyes. Mr. Dickens took a turn. The feelings of a man had not altogether deserted him, though as you saw him coming towards you, you noticed how one knobbed black boot swung tremulously in front of the other; how there was a shadow between his waistcoat and his trousers; how he leant forward unsteadily, like an old horse who finds himself suddenly out of the shafts drawing no cart. But as Mr. Dickens sucked in the smoke and puffed it out again, the feelings of a man were perceptible in his eyes. He was thinking how Captain Barfoot was now on his way to Mount Pleasant; Captain Barfoot, his master. For at home in the little sitting-room above the mews, with the canary in the window, and the girls at the sewing-machine, and Mrs. Dickens huddled up with the rheumatics—at home where he was made little of, the thought of being in the employ of Captain Barfoot supported him. He liked to think that while he chatted with Mrs. Barfoot on the front, he helped the Captain on his way to Mrs. Flanders. He, a man, was in charge of Mrs. Barfoot, a woman.

      Turning, he saw that she was chatting with Mrs. Rogers. Turning again, he saw that Mrs. Rogers had moved on. So he came back to the bath-chair, and Mrs. Barfoot asked him the time, and he took out his great silver watch and told her the time very obligingly, as if he knew a great deal more about the time and everything than she did. But Mrs. Barfoot knew that Captain Barfoot was on his way to Mrs. Flanders.

      Indeed he was well on his way there, having left the tram, and seeing Dods Hill to the south-east, green against a blue sky that was suffused with dust colour on the horizon. He was marching up the hill. In spite of his lameness there was something military in his approach. Mrs. Jarvis, as she came out of the Rectory gate, saw him coming, and her Newfoundland dog, Nero, slowly swept his tail from side to side.

      “Oh, Captain Barfoot!” Mrs. Jarvis exclaimed.

      “Good-day, Mrs. Jarvis,” said the Captain.

      They walked on together, and when they reached Mrs. Flanders’s gate Captain Barfoot took off his tweed cap, and said, bowing very courteously:

      “Good-day to you, Mrs. Jarvis.”

      And Mrs. Jarvis walked on alone.

      She was going to walk on the moor. Had she again been pacing her lawn late at night? Had she again tapped on the study window and cried: “Look at the moon, look at the moon, Herbert!”

      And Herbert looked at the moon.

      Mrs. Jarvis walked on the moor when she was unhappy, going as far as a certain saucer-shaped hollow, though she always meant to go to a more distant ridge; and there she sat down, and took out the little book hidden beneath her cloak and read a few lines of poetry, and looked about her. She was not very unhappy, and, seeing that she was forty-five, never perhaps would be very unhappy, desperately unhappy that is, and leave her husband, and ruin a good man’s career, as she sometimes threatened.

      Still there is no need to say what risks a clergyman’s wife runs when she walks on the moor. Short, dark, with kindling eyes, a pheasant’s feather in her hat, Mrs. Jarvis was just the sort of woman to lose her faith upon the moors—to confound her God with the universal that is—but she did not lose her faith, did not leave her husband, never read her poem through, and went on walking the moors, looking at the moon behind the elm trees, and feeling as she sat on the grass high above Scarborough … Yes, yes, when the lark soars; when the sheep, moving a step or two onwards, crop the turf, and at the same time set their bells tinkling; when the breeze first blows, then dies down, leaving the cheek kissed; when the ships on the sea below seem to cross each other and pass on as if drawn by an invisible hand; when there are distant concussions in the air and phantom horsemen galloping, ceasing; when the horizon swims blue, green, emotional—then Mrs. Jarvis, heaving a sigh, thinks to herself, “If only someone could give me … if I could give someone. …” But she does not know what she wants to give, nor who could give it her.

      “Mrs. Flanders stepped out only five minutes ago, Captain,” said Rebecca. Captain Barfoot sat him down in the arm-chair to wait. Resting his elbows on the arms, putting one hand over the other, sticking his lame leg straight out, and placing the stick with the rubber ferrule beside it, he sat perfectly still. There was something rigid about him. Did he think? Probably the same thoughts again and again. But were they “nice” thoughts, interesting thoughts? He was a man with a temper; tenacious, faithful. Women would have felt, “Here is law. Here is order. Therefore we must cherish this man. He is on the Bridge at night,” and, handing him his cup, or whatever it might be, would run on to visions of shipwreck and disaster, in which all the passengers come tumbling from their cabins, and there is the captain, buttoned in his pea-jacket, matched with the storm, vanquished by it but by none other. “Yet I have a soul,” Mrs. Jarvis would bethink her, as Captain Barfoot suddenly blew his nose in a great red bandanna handkerchief, “and it’s the man’s stupidity that’s the cause of this, and the storm’s my storm as well as his”… so Mrs. Jarvis would bethink her when the Captain dropped in to see them and found Herbert out, and spent two or three hours, almost silent, sitting in the arm-chair. But Betty Flanders thought nothing of the kind.

      “Oh, Captain,” said Mrs. Flanders, bursting into the drawing-room, “I had to run after Barker’s man … I hope Rebecca … I hope Jacob …”

      She was very much out of breath, yet not at all upset, and as she put down the hearth-brush which she had bought of the oil-man, she said it was hot, flung the window further open, straightened a cover, picked up a book, as if she were very confident, very fond of the Captain, and a great many years younger than he was. Indeed, in her blue apron she did not look more than thirty-five. He was well over fifty.

      She moved her hands about the table; the Captain moved his head from side to side, and made little sounds, as Betty went on chattering, completely at his ease—after twenty years.

      “Well,” he said at length, “I’ve heard from Mr. Polegate.”

      He had heard from Mr. Polegate that he could advise nothing better than to send a boy to one of the universities.

      “Mr. Floyd was at Cambridge … no, at Oxford … well, at one or the other,” said Mrs. Flanders.

      She looked out of the window. Little windows, and the lilac and green of the garden were reflected in her eyes.

      “Archer is doing very well,” she said. “I have a very nice report from Captain Maxwell.”

      “I will leave you the letter to show Jacob,” said the Captain, putting it clumsily back in its envelope.

      “Jacob is after his butterflies as usual,” said Mrs. Flanders irritably, but was surprised by a sudden afterthought, “Cricket begins this week, of course.”

      “Edward Jenkinson has handed in his resignation,” said Captain Barfoot.

      “Then you will stand for the Council?” Mrs. Flanders exclaimed, looking the Captain full in the face.

      “Well, about that,” Captain Barfoot began, settling himself rather deeper in his chair.

      Jacob Flanders, therefore, went up to Cambridge in October, 1906.

      CHAPTER 3

      “This is not a smoking-carriage,” Mrs. Norman protested, nervously but very feebly, as the door swung open and a powerfully built young man jumped in. He seemed not to hear her. The train did not stop before it reached Cambridge, and here she was shut up alone, in a railway carriage, with a young man.

      She touched the spring of her dressing-case, and ascertained that the scent-bottle and a novel from Mudie’s were both handy (the young man was standing up with his back to her, putting his bag in the rack). She would throw the scent-bottle with her right hand, she decided, and tug the communication cord with her left. She was fifty years of age, and had a son at college. Nevertheless, it is a fact that men are dangerous. She read half a column of her newspaper; then stealthily looked over the edge to decide the question of safety by the infallible test of appearance. … She would like to offer him her paper. But do young men read the Morning Post?

Скачать книгу