CHAPTER IX
'What a blotch!' said the young Mary, as they topped the crest of the hill and looked down
into the valley. Stanton-in-Teesdale lay below them, black with its slate roofs and its
sooty chimneys and its smoke. The moors rose up and rolled away beyond it, bare as far
as the eye could reach. The sun shone, the clouds trailed enormous shadows. 'Our poor
view! It oughtn't to be allowed. It really oughtn't.'
'Every prospect pleases and only man is vile,' quoted her brother George.
The other young man was more practically minded. 'If one could plant a battery
here,' he suggested, 'and drop a few hundred rounds onto the place...'
'It would be a good thing,' said Mary emphatically. 'A really good thing.'
Her approval filled the military young man with happiness. He was desperately in
love. 'Heavy, howitzers,' he added, trying to improve on his suggestion. But George
interrupted him.
'Who the devil is that?' he asked.
The others looked round in the direction he was pointing. A stranger was walking
up the hill towards them.
'No idea,' said Mary, looking at him.
The stranger approached. He was a young man in the early twenties, hook-nosed,
with blue eyes and silky pale hair that blew about in the wind--for he wore no hat. He had
on a Norfolk jacket, ill cut and of cheap material, and a pair of baggy grey flannel
trousers. His tie was red; he walked without a stick.
'Looks as if he wanted to talk to us,' said George.
And indeed, the young man was coming straight towards them. He walked rapidly
and with an air of determination, as though he were on some very important business.
'What an extraordinary face!' thought Mary, as he approached. 'But how ill he
looks! So thin, so pale.' But his eyes forbade her to feel pity. They were bright with
power.
He came to a halt in front of them drawing up his thin body very rigidly, as
though he were on parade. There was defiance in the attitude, an earnest defiance in the
expression of his face. He looked at them fixedly with his bright eyes, turning from one
to the other.
'Good afternoon,' he said. It was costing him an enormous effort to speak. But
speak he must, just because of that insolent unawareness in their blank rich faces.
Mary answered for the others. 'Good afternoon.'
'I'm trespassing here,' said the stranger. 'Do you mind?' The seriousness of his
defiance deepened. He looked at them sombrely. The young men were examining him
from the other side of the bars, from a long way off, from the vantage ground of another
class. They had noticed his clothes. There was hostility and contempt in their eyes. There
was also a kind of fear. 'I'm a trespasser,' he repeated. His voice was rather shrill, but
musical. His accent was of the country.
'One of the local cads,' George had been thinking.
'A trespasser.' It would have been much easier, much pleasanter to sneak out
unobserved. That was why he had to affront them.
There was a silence. The military man turned away. He dissociated himself from
the whole unpleasant business. It had nothing to do with him, after all. The park belonged
to Mary's father. He was only a guest. 'I've gotta motta: Always merry and bright,' he
hummed to himself, as he looked out over the black town in the valley.
It was George who broke the silence.'Do we mind?' he said, repeating the
stranger's words. His face had gone very red.
'How absurd he looks!' thought Mary, as she glanced at him. 'Like a bull calf. A
blushing bull calf.'
'Do we mind?' Damned insolent little bounder! George was working up a
righteous indignation. 'I should just think we do mind. And I'll trouble you to...'
Mary broke out into laughter. 'We don't mind at all,' she said. 'Not in the least.'
Her brother's face became even redder. 'What do you mean, Mary?' he asked
furiously. ('Always merry and bright,' hummed the military man, more starrily detached
than ever.) 'The place is private.'
'But we don't mind a bit,' she said, not looking at her brother, but at the stranger.
'Not a bit, when people come and are frank about it, like you.' She smiled at him; but the
young man's face remained as proudly serious as ever. Looking into those serious bright
eyes, she too suddenly became serious. It was no joke, she saw all at once, no joke. Grave
issues were involved, important issues. But why grave and in what way important she did
not know. She was only obscurely and profoundly aware that it was no joke. 'Good-bye,'
she said in an altered voice, and held out her hand.
The stranger hesitated for a second, then took it. 'Good-bye,' he said. 'I'll get out
of the park as quick as I can.' And turning round, he walked rapidly away.
'What the devil!' George began, turning angrily on his sister.
'Oh, hold your tongue!' she answered impatiently.
'Shaking hands with the fellow,' he went on protesting.
'A bit of a pleb, wasn't he?' put in the military friend.
She looked from one to the other without speaking and walked away. What louts
they were! The two young men followed.
'I wish to God Mary would learn how to behave herself properly,' said George,
still fuming.
The military young man made deprecating noises. He was in love with her; but he
had to admit that she _was_ rather embarrassingly unconventional sometimes. It was her
only defect.
'Shaking that bounder's hand!' George went on grumbling.
That was their first meeting. Mary then was twenty-two and Mark Rampion a year
younger. He had finished his second year at Sheffield University and was back at Stanton
for the summer vacation. His mother lived in one of a row of cottages near the station.
She had a little pension--her husband had been a postman--and made a few extra shillings
by sewing. Mark was a scholarship boy. His younger and less talented brothers were
already at work.
'A very remarkable young man,' the Rector insisted more than once in the course
of his sketch of Mark Rampion's career, some few days later.
The occasion was a church bazaar and charitable garden party at the Rectory.
Some of the Sunday School children had acted a little play in the open air The dramatist
was Mark Rampion.
'Quite unassisted,' the Rector assured the assembled gentry.' And what's more, the
lad can draw. They're a little eccentric perhaps, his pictures, a little...ah..' he hesitated.
'Weird,' suggested his daughter, with an upper middle-class smile, proud of her
incomprehension.
'But full of talent,' the Rector continued. 'The boy's a real cygnet of Tees,' he
added with a selfconscious, almost guilty laugh. He had a weakness for literary allusions.
The gentry smiled perfunctorily.
The prodigy was introduced. Mary recognized the trespasser.
'I've met you before,' she said.
'Poaching your view.'
'You're welcome to it.' The words made him smile, a little ironically it seemed to
her. She blushed, fearful lest she had said something that might have sounded rather
patronizing. 'But I suppose you'd go on poaching whether you were welcome or not,' she
added with a nervous little laugh.
He said nothing, but nodded, still smiling.
Mary's father stepped in with congratulations. His praises went trampling over the
delicate little play like a herd of elephants. Mary writhed. It was all wrong, hopelessly
wrong. She could feel that. But the trouble, as she realized, was that she couldn't have
said anything better herself. The ironic smile still lingered about his lips. 'What fools he
must think us all!' she said to herself.
And now it was her mother's turn. 'Jolly good' was replaced by 'too charming.'
Which was just as bad, just as hopelessly beside the point. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]