"Goudge, Elizabeth - Eliots of Damerosehay 03 - The Heart of the Family 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goudge Elizabeth)

"There he deceives himself," said Sebastian grimly, yet his face twisted into the grimace which did duty with him for a smile, for this mutual dislike of cod was a point of contact with David Eliot, and as such it had its value. "My Daddy has been in America," said Meg.

Sebastian's smile faded and his expression took on its customary aridity, for he knew that only too well. He had been with her father in America.

"My Daddy is an actor," said Meg.

Sebastian remained silent. This also, to his cost, he knew.

"Mummy went in the car to meet the big boat," said Meg. "They'll be home for tea."

The impact of this glorious fact suddenly smote her afresh, as it had been doing at intervals throughout the day. The first long parting that she and her father had ever known was over and he would be home today. Each time she remembered this it was as though a wave made not of water but of light broke over her head. She was drenched in light, and it had a glowing warmth that reached even to her toes. She looked at the world through it, too, and the world shone and sparkled as though God had suddenly bent down and put a fresh polish upon it just to please her. When this happened she had to stand still for a moment because the light and the glow seemed to hold her so.

The stillness took Sebastian by surprise, for he had expected the sudden jump sideways and the swinging on his hand that he had once been accustomed to in an excited child; he had even braced his gaunt body to hold firm as she swung. He stopped too and for a brief and extraordinary moment there came again that freshness, this time within himself, welling up from that fountain down at the roots of things. What sort of a place was this to which he had come with such reluctance, and yet which twice in an hour had made him feel again this emotion of renewal? He supposed he had once known it, because there was a feeling of familiarity about it, but he had utterly forgotten it.

They had come out from the trees to an open sweep of gravel in front of the house. Here they could feel the wind again, sweeping across the marshes from the sea. Sebastian put down his suitcase and taking off his hat faced it for a moment, feeling its cleanliness reaching through his clothes to the sick body that he carried about with him wherever he went with such extreme distaste. The wind was not cold, only fresh and invigorating. The reeds and rushes of the marsh swept up as far as the stream that bordered the strip of grass edging the drive and rustled beneath the wind.

He turned round again to look at the house. The trees of the walled garden hid the length of it and what he saw was only the gabled east end, yet that attracted him immensely Damerosehay was an eighteenth century house but its irregular roof and gray stone walls were so battered by the gales of a couple of centuries that it looked older. At this end of it Virginia creeper veiled the battered stone, each green leaf already touched with fire, and a climbing rose ran riot over the old porch. There were seats inside the porch and a wide front door with an old-fashioned brass handle. Over the porch was a window, slightly open and with a gay curtain fluttering out from it. Sebastian looked up for a moment. From that window a man would look out over the bending rushes to the silver line of the estuary, with the Island beyond. He would see the ships passing, and the gulls beating up into the wind, and the great skies that are the glory of the flat and marshy lands. He liked that window.

But Meg was inside the porch, struggling with the door handle, and he went to help her. He turned it and preceded by Mouse they went in together. Meg went straight to the stairs, sat down on the bottom steps and began struggling with her boots. "Zelle," she called into the shadows of the house. "Please, Zelle, my boots, and there's a man."

Sebastian did not help with the boots for he doubted his efficiency, and he could not at the moment attend to anything but the house. Hat in hand he stood and attended to it. He was aware at once of that sense of depth and strength that all old houses have. The wide staircase rose only gradually, with shallow worn uncarpeted stairs that gave the impression that they would take you very deeply in to withdrawn and peaceful places. The hall was dark, velvety with shadow and cozily warm. Beneath his feet, under the shabby rug, he could feel uneven flagstones. Meg's soft voice, calling for Zelle, and the sound of Mouse lapping water from a bowl marked DOG no more affected the deep silence of the house than Meg's glowing little figure disturbed the shadows. There was an old settle against the dark paneled wall and a pot of flowers on a table. The house smelled of flowers, furniture polish, baked apples, dog and tobacco. Somewhere in the shadows a grandfather clock struck one, and a cuckoo clock far away upstairs made the same remark.

Then the silence was broken by the light steps of a girl running down to them, and the roars of an angry baby left in the lurch upstairs. A door opened at the back of the hall, letting in light, and a woman came through it, a country body of immense size and immense charm. She advanced with a stately swaying motion, shifting her great weight from one foot to the other with a patient humorous determination that did not quite mask her great fatigue. Her white apron billowed before her and her bright pink knitted cardigan, buttoned up over her bosom to her chin, strained at all its buttons with desperation but success, holding fast but showing spotless white petticoat at all the interstices. Her scanty gray hair was strained back as tightly as possible and skewered with a couple of hairpins at the, back of her head. Her face was round and red and shone with selflessness and lathered soap; for Mrs. Wilkes, when she washed anything, including herself, washed with a sort of religious devotion that could be satisfied by nothing less than a really supreme lather. Her sleeves were rolled to the elbow and her large red capable hands, with the wedding ring nearly imbedded in flesh on the left one, were slightly flecked with lather now. She dried them on her apron as she considered Sebastian.

Zelle, expertly peeling Meg, also considered him. Zelle was twenty-six years old, petite and dainty in her gay flowered overall. With her thin face and sallow skin she was not strictly pretty, but her little head, covered with short dark curls, was beautifully shaped, and she had a fine air of distinction. Just at the moment she was both tired and cross, but that she was one of those women born to care for children was obvious in her handling of Meg. Buttons flew in and out of their appropriate holes at the touch of her fingers, and when she removed the obliterating hat and saw Meg's nose, her loving outcry had a tenderness that made Sebastian wince. And there was something else about her that made him wince, a tautness across the cheekbones and a hard sadness in the eyes that he had seen so often in the faces of the young who have suffered much at an age when they should have known nothing but joy.

"Mon petit chou, quel dommage!"

Meg made no complaint. Upon her face had dawned that look of placid peace that children's faces wear when they give themselves into hands whose skill they know and trust. Her nose no longer mattered. Zelle would see to it.

"It's not so bad as it looks, mademoiselle," Sebastian reassured her. "The child tripped in a puddle and fell and bumped it and it bled a little. That's all." He spoke hesitantly, for the roars of the angry baby upstairs, who was apparently being murdered but to whom neither woman paid the slightest attention, were confusing him a little.

"I'll take her upstairs and put some Dettol on it," said Zelle. Her English was good, and charming with its foreign inflection, and she spoke French in moments of emotion only.

"Now wait, Zelle," said Mrs. Wilkes. "The gentleman- 'e can't be left stood there. Yes, sir?"

Zelle turned round, Meg's hand in hers, and once more considered Sebastian, this time with the astonishment and slight dismay to which he was only too well accustomed.

"You're not expecting me?" he asked. Both women shook their heads.

Sebastian, suddenly exhausted beyond endurance, sat down on the settle. Now once again he would have to explain himself. He was always explaining himself. In fresh situations, always difficult, to new people, mostly without understanding, he was perpetually explaining himself. What a senseless affair it all was. Why did God, if there was a God, demand the continued existence in time and space of such disconnected items as himself? There should be a celestial bonfire once a year to burn up all extraneous humanity. War should do it but did not. War only created more of the rubbish. And here they were preparing for a new war with the remaining heaps of it left over from the last war not yet sorted out. Abruptly he pulled himself together to explain himself yet once again. "I am Mr. Eliot's secretary," he said. "Mr. Collins?" inquired Zelle.

"No, not Collins. He left Mr. Eliot in America and went to Hollywood. I took, his place. I gather Mr. Eliot's secre taries follow each other in rather quick succession."

The moment the words were out of his mouth he could have kicked himself for the bitterness with which he had spoken. Eliot had, according to his lights, been kind. What sort of creature had he become that he could not even be loyal to a man who employed him in the presence of that employer's female servants? No, servants was the wrong word, for servants had vanished now, like loyalty. He had last visited England in the days of nannies and butlers. The little French girl and the enormous kindly soul were, he supposed, the modern equivalents, but he did not know how to describe them. Yet whatever they were they were loyal, for he could feel the disapproval that his remark had immediately brought into their consideration of himself. "I am wrong. It's not dead yet," he said. The disapproval faded into bewilderment.

"Loyalty," he said.

Bewilderment became apprehension. Even Meg, who had at first accepted him with equanimity, had her thumb in her mouth. He supposed he was talking to himself again. They must think him mad. So he probably still was at times. He pulled himself together once more.