“It’s getting much too noisy, sir.”
“I agree with you. All motor-cars and flesh-coloured stockings!”
Next morning he breakfasted at eight, paid his bill, and went off with his suitcase and portfolio to embark in the grey car.
VII
When Farren was away, Iris felt lonely; but it was not loneliness that brought her to the gate of Orchards. For if she had roused something in Tom Wilding, he, too, had stirred elemental things in her.
That was the wonder of it, and to Wilding a reason for exquisite torture and suspense. He was full of fear. Would she come again to the farm on the hill? He would watch for her in his garden, or from under the shadow of one of the wind-blown trees; for she was life, and for years now he had been afraid of life.
But she came. He had strolled down the lane to the gate where the wild of bracken and bramble was separated from the pasture by a stone wall. He opened the gate and passed through, and he was half-way down the hillside when he saw her among the ferns and the furze. He was afraid, most absurdly afraid; his impulse was to turn and run; but she had seen him: she was waving.
He stood and waited for her, and during that moment of suspense he found himself wishing that he could have set the years aside and have met her as he had been before the War. She came swiftly up the hill to him, and he noticed that her black hair hung straight and wet; she was a little flushed and out of breath.
“I’ve been bathing.”
Instinctively he had turned so that the disfigured part of him should be hidden from her, and she noticed it and was touched. She had divined his sensitiveness and his shrinking, and she understood it; but why should he flinch from her? There was nothing about him that made her flinch.
He said: “Isn’t it rather dangerous?”
“Oh, I could swim when I was seven, and I know the currents. I want to dry my hair.”
She smiled at him. There was something elvish about her this morning, a touch of playfulness. She lifted her hair with her hands, and then shook it, and smiled again.
“Let’s sit in the sun.”
He was trembling just as the War, in its most ghastly moments, had made him shake a little at the knees.
“Do you know the Maiden Rock?”
“No.”
“It’s on my bit of cliff. A wonderful place right up against the sky. Last month it was all bluebells and pink thrift.”
“Let’s go. Show me.”
They went, wandering through the young bracken and between banks of furze, and again she noticed that he walked at her right side so that the disfigured half of his face was hidden; and suddenly she was aware of a different feeling towards him. She wanted to see the whole of him, and not the half. She was not afraid of that other part of him, and she wanted him to understand that she was not afraid.
“How I love these cliffs.”
“Do you? So do I.”
There was silence between them till they came to a strip of turf sloping upwards to a pile of rock. It was like a natural tower on the very edge of the cliff, a little grassy platform surrounded by grey battlements, and above and below an illimitable blueness spread itself, the blueness of sea and sky. Gulls sailed to and fro, calling to each other. From below came the sound of the sea.
She stood very still for a moment, gazing, her hands folded over her bosom.
“Wonderful. Almost one feels like one of the gulls.”
“Floating between sea and sky.”
“Yes. Let’s sit on the rocks, right on the very edge.”
“You don’t mind heights?”
“I? No. Why should I?”
Beside him on the grey crags she shook out her wet hair to the sea wind, and watched the gulls, and all that blueness of sea and sky; and Wilding, that man of solitudes and suffering, sat and wondered at her, as though he doubted her reality. On the horizon a steamer trailed a smudge of smoke; and, nearer in, the sails of fishing-boats looked like sharp rocks jutting out of the sea.
For a while she sat there very solemnly and in silence, her eyes at gaze. It was as though she looked from this height at familiar things and found them changed, and was a little troubled and perplexed. The fingers of her right hand stroked the grey surface of the rock. Her eyes had a stillness.
Suddenly she asked a question.
“Why do they call it the Maiden Rock?”
“Some tale about a girl.”
“Tell me.”
“They say that a very long while ago a girl used to watch for the coming of a ship, because her lover was in that ship.”
“Yes.”
“She watched and watched, and the ship never came.”
“And then?”
“One day she threw herself into the sea.”
“Because she was so unhappy?”
“And lonely.”
She was silent for a while, looking down at the sea, and her hair, now that the wind had dried it, was blown about a little. It gave a suggestion of movement to her still face. Her eyes were compassionate.
“It must be terrible—such loneliness. When Daddy goes away, even for three days, I feel quite lost.”
“But then you know that he will come back.”
“Oh, yes.”
Her hand stroked the grey rock.
“Do you come here often?”
“Pretty often.”
“Because you are lonely?”
“Perhaps. And one doesn’t meet people here—people who stare.”
She turned her head quickly and looked at him.
“Does it hurt?”
“It did. I suppose one’s a fool to be so sensitive.”
“But it doesn’t hurt you when I look?”
His hands gripped his knees.
“No, not now. But at first I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“That you would run away, you know, and never come back.”
VIII
A full moon rising in the east laid a track of silver across the open sea. The Sea Horse was running south, far from the land, with a white curve of foam at her prow and her wash like the white scut of a rabbit. The air was light, and the long and lazy heave of the sea was like quicksilver; and of such a night at sea Farren had made many pictures and had shown them to the jerseyed men of St. Gilians.
“How’s that for a full-moon night?”
Yes, Farren could sketch the sea; though he did not see it as the Cornishmen saw it: as something fatal and sinister, smudged with scuds of rain, and suddenly grey and ominous. He and the Sea Horse saw it mostly in fairish weather, when a fast boat could travel without swamping herself. He sat in the stern, with a sou’wester pulled down over his eyes, and gleaming in the moonlight rather like a helmet. Sometimes he stood up and scanned the vast, silvery distance. Clock, compass, and the spread of the boat kept him wise as to the Sea Horse’s position.
The moon was half-way towards the zenith when he saw that which he expected to see—the silhouette of a fishing-boat with no sails set, but driven by its auxiliary screw. The boat showed a sudden blinking light on its beam. The Sea Horse headed for it, swept close in, slackened its speed, and glided alongside like a grey-hound running beside a horse.
A voice hailed Farren in French.
“All correct?”
“All correct.”
As the Sea Horse ran level and within a fathom of the boat, a package was thrown into her, and Farren tossed something back.
“Bon voyage!”
“Bon nuit!”
The laconic interview in mid-channel ended there. The Sea Horse sheered off and turned her nose northwards. The fishing-boat plugged on with the chug-chug of her engine growing fainter and fainter. Meanwhile, Farren, with the tiller under one arm, dealt with that package, ripping off the canvas cover and the padding, and stowing away the packages in the sag of his shirt, and under the bulge of his white sweater. He was a big man, and wore his clothes loose and free.
The canvas and packing went overboard. And well b
efore dawn, while St. Gilians was asleep, the motor-boat glided in to her moorings, and the little white dinghy took Farren ashore. If anyone saw him, the eccentric timing of such a cruise was ascribed to the eccentricities of a man who painted pictures and went about without a hat, and had a daughter who was not quite like other women.
There were other things that Farren concealed besides the adventures of the Sea Horse and his expeditions to Town and his meetings with the old lady in black. In the roof of the bungalow of St. Gilians there was an attic reached by a trap-door in the ceiling of Farren’s studio, and beyond the reach of anyone but a tall man standing on the top of a step-ladder. Farren’s ascents into this dark, cobwebby place followed upon a cruise in the Sea Horse, or preceded a journey to Town. He would choose an hour when Mrs. Tregennis had gone shopping and Iris was out on the cliffs.
On this particular morning he set up his step-ladder, ascended it, pushed the wooden trap back on its hinges and disappeared into the dark void. He had a candle and matches with him. He was rummaging about when he heard a voice, Iris’s voice.
“Daddy, what—are—you—doing?”
She had climbed the steps and had managed to get her hands on the edge of the floor-boards above, and was tip-toeing, her dark head visible to her father.
“Hallo!”
He had been putting something away behind a pile of old canvases, for the attic was full of the pictures that Farren had painted and never sold.
“Nothing to see up here, young woman, but dust and spiders.”
He blew out the candle, and then heard the crash of the overturned step-ladder, for Iris, tip-toeing too eagerly, had caused the thing to slant and slide. She was left clinging by hands to the edge of the trap’s opening.
“Oh—pull me up, Daddy!”
Farren got her by the wrists and drew her up until she was able to get her knees against the timber framing and work a foot over the edge.
“Well, Miss Mischief, that’s what comes of spying!”
He was jocular.
“And you have torn a hole in your stocking. And your poor father will have to jump and recover the steps.”
She was gazing about her in the dimness of the attic, for though Farren had blown out the candle, there was light enough for her to see the stacked canvases. The edges and corners of them stuck out of the darkness, while against one wall a dim portrait in a gilded frame peered like a ghostly face.
“Nothing but old pictures, kiddie—a sort of mausoleum.”
“Your pictures, Daddy?”
“I was guilty of painting them years and years ago. Now the spiders spin webs.”
Somehow she looked very grave over all those wasted canvases, the ghosts of her father’s past, while he, letting himself down almost with the suppleness of a boy, swung himself to the floor, set up the step-ladder, and, climbing it, held up his arms.
“Now then; let yourself down: I’ll catch you.”
But she stood above, looking solemn and troubled.
“Why don’t you sell all those pictures, Daddy?”
“Some of them are portraits of your mother, my dear, and bad at that. I painted those pictures when I was very young. Now, down you come.”
She let herself down into his arms, and when he had set her on her feet, he went up and closed the trap-door.
“That’s the way one should treat one’s failures. Shut them up. We are pretty dusty. We had better go and bathe.”
IX
So much solitude should have made Wilding greedy of life when it came to him; but a man who is loth to kill or to take has travelled beyond the little greedinesses of the world’s children. That Farren’s daughter should be drawn to Orchards Farm was both wonderful and yet insufficient, for already he had come to realize the innocence of her, and how different she was from the ruck of humanity. They climbed the cliffs together, and lay in the bracken and watched the gulls. Also there was the farm, and Sally, and the three cows, and Bob, the horse, and the pigs and the chickens and the farm cats. Iris thought the farm adorable. She could say to Wilding, “How you must love it all!”
He did; but now he was loving it differently. He loved it with her and for her, but he was aware of the sly, sour face of Pengelly. He had a question on his lips, and he was not happy until he had asked it.
“Does your father know you come here?”
“Oh, yes.”
For Farren knew, and had a day of doubt and of jealousy. The thing was so new in the life of Iris the child, and, like a child, she had not concealed it.
“I have been watching the cows being milked, Daddy.”
Farren had realized a pang of jealousy. Who was this Wilding, this man who had come back from the War with half a face, and who lived alone up among those twisted apple trees? What manner of man was he? Farren’s blue eyes stared. But he saw this new happening with the eyes of a man who had lost some of his recklessness and his passion, if not with resignation, with some understanding of heights and precipices. The life at the bungalow could not go on for ever, and into Farren’s consciousness had crept the strange feeling that disaster was not far from him. He had lost some of his nerve. He was worried, suspicious, anxious. He had a feeling that he was being watched.
And if the disastrous thing happened, what then? He could not be blind to the future; he could not take love with him into that dark and mysterious place. Iris was life. He would want her left somewhere in the sunlight, unknowing and unsuspecting, but not alone.
Wilding was scything the rough grass in the orchard when Farren’s resolve took him up the hill to Orchards Farm. Meeting Pengelly in the lane, he stopped and spoke to him.
“Mr. Wilding about?”
Pengelly grinned. So here was the girl’s father arrived with a thick stick!
“He’s in the orchard, mowing.”
Farren walked on. He came to the stone wall of the orchard and saw Wilding in among the trees, swinging his scythe with steady measured rhythm; and Farren stood to watch him. The thing was as old as time; it had a peacefulness and inevitableness; it was like love and the bearing of children, and the fruit of the vine, and harvest. The grass purred to the steel, and Wilding, all unconscious of being watched, swung his strong shoulders and moved forward step by step. He was in his shirt sleeves; his arms were brown; his hat threw a shadow across his face. And the unscarred side of it was towards Farren, and it wore an expression of gentleness, of meditative contentment. The man was at peace with his work, and the work was clean.
A softness came into Farren’s eyes. His lips moved.
“And the mower shall go forth to mow.”
His resolution came to him. It was ripe like the grass.
“Mr. Wilding.”
Wilding had paused to hone the scythe. He turned sharply, the scythe in one hand, the stone in the other. His face was shaded by a tree.
“Good morning. It’s Mr. Farren?”
“Yes.”
“I’m rather glad.”
He hung his scythe in one of the trees, and laid the stone in the fork of the same tree. His movements were easy and deliberate, and Farren the artist knew—as a man knows some things instinctively—that one who could move so easily when surprised at his work was of the same metal as his scythe. Also, that scarred face had a strange attractiveness to the few who were tired of gazing upon the obvious faces of the crowd. It had sent no shudder through Farren’s daughter, and to Farren that was a fact of infinite significance.
They looked at each other, and Wilding put on his coat.
“Do you care to come inside? Or perhaps you like the open.”
“It is good enough here, with the smell of that grass.”
“Yes, that’s one of the good things—not like the stink of motor-bikes. Country smells.”
He raised himself to the top of the stone wall and sat astride it and close to Farren, who leaned with his arms crossed on the stones.
“I’m glad you’ve come, sir. Otherwise I was coming to you. I wondered whethe
r——”
“Oh, yes; I knew.”
“That’s good. I’ve nothing to hide. But wondered whether you knew, and how you felt. You see, she’s as innocent as God’s earth. It makes a man marvel.”
“Yes, she’s that. You found that out.”
He passed a hand over his red hair. How strange it was that he and this other man should be speaking of Iris as though they had known her and each other for years, and with the knowledge of understanding. He felt very near to Wilding, near as man to man.
“It’s a rather precious virtue.”
“Precious, sir, and dangerous. She comes here and runs wild as she pleases. She loves all live things. It’s difficult to say to her——”
“Just what?”
“Just what the world says or might say.”
“Ah, the dirty old sensual world! I’ve thought of that for years. A man does when he has a girl like that. Sex has a sort of horror. Some things hurt, rend one. She’s so utterly clean.”
Wilding seemed to be looking at the mown grass under the apple trees streaked with sunlight.
“You must be rather proud of it. Artist’s work. To have painted such a live picture!”
Farren’s head went up.
“Good Lord!—you understand that! Well, why not? Only most men are such beasts—thoughtless beasts.”
“Well—I’ve suffered. It makes you think. There is nothing that I want to kill or to hurt. And yet one has to kill to eat, and to love—to have children. But that can be clean as the earth is clean, when man’s garbage is left out.”
Farren put out a sudden hand.
“Well—I’m not feeling little. I’m not all the earth. It won’t hurt her to come up here.”
“That’s rather great of you, sir. And may I come across to your place?”
“Of course.”
X
About that time the police raided a dubious house in Elgin Street, Soho, and finding—among other matters—a little store of white snuff, followed up the indication. A little frightened Italian and his wife were tactfully questioned. The woman, a black-browed, obdurate and truculent creature, had more courage than her husband, and glared like a stubborn animal; but the man, a scared monkey, was made to chatter.
The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping Page 52