LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

black patches where the ash flowers were beaten down, and under great massed clouds of green sycamore. At the sudden curve of the road, near the foot of the hill, I stopped to break off a spray of larch, where the soft cones were heavy as raspberries, and gay like flowers with petals. The shaken bough spattered a heavy shower on my face, of drops so cold that they seemed to sink into my blood and chill it.

      “Hark!” said Lettie, as I was drying my face. There was the quick patter of a motor-car coming downhill. The heavy cart was drawn across the road to rest, and the driver hurried to turn the horse back. It moved with painful slowness, and we stood in the road in suspense. Suddenly, before we knew it, the car was dropping down on us, coming at us in a curve, having rounded the horse and cart. Lettie stood faced with terror. Leslie saw her, and swung round the wheels on the sharp, curving hill-side; looking only to see that he should miss her. The car slid sideways; the mud crackled under the wheels, and the machine went crashing into Nethermere. It caught the edge of the old stone wall with a smash. Then for a few moments I think I was blind. When I saw again, Leslie was lying across the broken hedge, his head hanging down the bank, his face covered with blood; the car rested strangely on the brink of the water, crumpled as if it had sunk down to rest.

      Lettie, with hands shuddering, was wiping the blood from his eyes with a piece of her underskirt. In a moment she said:

      “He is not dead — let us take him home — let us take him quickly.”

      I ran and took the wicket-gate off its hinges and laid him on that. His legs trailed down, but we carried him thus, she at the feet, I at the head. She made me stop and put him down. I thought the weight was too much for her, but it was not that.

      “I can’t bear to see his hand hanging, knocking against the bushes and things.”

      It was not many yards to the house. A maidservant saw us, came running out, and went running back, like the frightened lapwing from the wounded cat.

      We waited until the doctor came. There was a deep graze down the side of the head — serious, but not dangerous; there was a cut across the cheek-bone that would leave a scar; and the collar-bone was broken. I stayed until he had recovered consciousness. “Lettie.” He wanted Lettie, so she had to remain at Highclose all night. I went home to tell my mother.

      When I went to bed I looked across at the lighted windows of Highclose, and the lights trailed mistily towards me across the water. The cedar stood dark guard against the house; bright the windows were, like the stars, covering their torment in brightness. The sky was glittering with sharp lights — they are too far off to take trouble for us, so little, little almost to nothingness. All the great hollow vastness roars overhead, and the stars are only sparks that whirl and spin in the restless space. The earth must listen to us; she covers her face with a thin veil of mist, and is sad; she soaks up our blood tenderly, in the darkness, grieving, and in the light she soothes and reassures us. Here on our earth is sympathy and hope, the heavens have nothing but distances.

      A corn-crake talked to me across the valley, talked and talked endlessly, asking and answering in hoarse tones from the sleeping, mist-hidden meadows. The monotonous voice, that on past summer evenings had had pleasant notes of romance, now was intolerable to me. Its inflexible harshness and cacophony seemed like the voice of fate speaking out its tuneless perseverance in the night.

      In the morning Lettie came home wan, sad-eyed, and self-reproachful. After a short time they came for her, as he wanted her again.

      When in the evening I went to see George, he too was very despondent.

      “It’s no good now,” said I. “You should have insisted and made your own destiny.”

      “Yes — perhaps so,” he drawled in his best reflective manner.

      “I would have had her — she’d have been glad if you’d done as you wanted with her. She won’t leave him till he’s strong, and he’ll marry her before then. You should have had the courage to risk yourself — you’re always too careful of yourself and your own poor feelings — you never could brace yourself up to a shower-bath of contempt and hard usage, so you’ve saved your feelings and lost — not much, I suppose — you couldn’t.”

      “But —” he began, not looking up; and I laughed at him.

      “Go on,” I said.

      “Well — she was engaged to him —

      “Pah — you thought you were too good to be rejected.”

      He was very pale, and when he was pale, the tan on his skin looked sickly. He regarded me with his dark eyes, which were now full of misery and a child’s big despair.

      “And nothing else,” I completed, with which the little, exhausted gunboat of my anger wrecked and sank utterly. Yet no thoughts would spread sail on the sea of my pity: I was like water that heaves with yearning, and is still.

      Leslie was very ill for some time. He had a slight brain fever, and was delirious, insisting that Lettie was leaving him. She stayed most of her days at Highclose.

      One day in June he lay resting on a deck-chair in the shade of the cedar, and she was sitting by him. It was a yellow, sultry day, when all the atmosphere seemed inert, and all things were languid.

      “Don’t you think, dear,” she said, “it would be better for us not to marry?”

      He lifted his head nervously from the cushions; his face was emblazoned with a livid red bar on a field of white, and he looked worn, wistful.

      “Do you mean not yet?” he asked.

      “Yes — and, perhaps — perhaps never.”

      “Ha,” he laughed, sinking down again. “I must be getting like myself again, if you begin to tease me.”

      “But,” she said, struggling valiantly, “I’m not sure I ought to marry you.”

      He laughed again, though a little apprehensively.

      “Are you afraid I shall always be weak in my noddle?” he asked. “But you wait a month.”

      “No, that doesn’t bother me —”

      “Oh, doesn’t it!”

      “Silly boy — no, it’s myself.”

      “I’m sure I’ve made no complaint about you.”

      “Not likely — but I wish you’d let me go.”

      “I’m a strong man to hold you, aren’t I? Look at my muscular paw!”— he held out his hands, frail and white with sickness.

      “You know you hold me — and I want you to let me go. I don’t want to

      “To what?”

      “To get married at all — let me be, let me go.”

      “What for?”

      “Oh — for my sake.”

      “You mean you don’t love me?”

      “Love — love — I don’t know anything about it. But I can’t — we can’t be-don’t you see — oh, what do they say — flesh of one flesh.”

      “Why?” he whispered, like a child that is told some tale of mystery.

      She looked at him, as he lay propped upon his elbow, turning towards hers his white face of fear and perplexity, like a child that cannot understand, and is afraid, and wants to cry. Then slowly tears gathered full in her eyes, and she wept from pity and despair.

      This excited him terribly. He got up from his chair, and the cushions fell on to the grass.

      “What’s the matter, what’s the matter! — Oh, Lettie — is it me? — don’t you want me now? — is that it? — tell me, tell me now, tell me,”— he grasped her wrists, and tried to pull her hands from her face. The tears were running down his cheeks. She felt him trembling, and the sound of his voice alarmed her from herself. She hastily smeared

Скачать книгу