The Nebuly Coat. John Meade Falkner

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СКАЧАТЬ waiting for the bell to be answered, the intermittance and reiteration of the music convinced him that the organist was giving a violin lesson. His first summons remained unanswered, and when a second attempt met with no better success, he gave several testy pulls in quick succession. This time he heard the music cease, and made no doubt that his indignant ringing had attracted the notice of the musicians, and that the organist had gone to tell Miss Joliffe that she was wanted.

      He was ruffled by such want of attention, and when there came at last a knock at his door, was quite prepared to expostulate with his landlady on her remissness. As she entered the room, he began, without turning from his drawings:

      “Never knock, please, when you answer the bell; but I do wish you—”

      Here he broke off, for on looking up he found he was speaking, not to the elder Miss Joliffe, but to her niece Anastasia. The girl was graceful, as he had seen the evening before, and again he noticed the peculiar fineness of her waving brown hair. His annoyance had instantaneously vanished, and he experienced to the full the embarrassment natural to a sensitive mind on finding a servant’s rôle played by a lady, for that Anastasia Joliffe was a lady he had no doubt at all. Instead of blaming her, he seemed to be himself in fault for having somehow brought about an anomalous position.

      She stood with downcast eyes, but his chiding tone had brought a slight flush to her cheeks, and this flush began a discomfiture for Westray, that was turned into a rout when she spoke.

      “I am very sorry, I am afraid I have kept you waiting. I did not hear your bell at first, because I was busy in another part of the house, and then I thought my aunt had answered it. I did not know she was out.”

      It was a low, sweet voice, with more of weariness in it than of humility. If he chose to blame her, she was ready to take the blame; but it was Westray who now stammered some incoherent apologies. Would she kindly tell Miss Joliffe that he would be in for dinner at one o’clock, and that he was quite indifferent as to what was provided for him. The girl showed some relief at his blundering courtesy, and it was not till she had left the room that Westray recollected that he had heard that Cullerne was celebrated for its red mullet; he had meant to order red mullet for dinner. Now that he was mortifying the flesh by drinking only water, he was proportionately particular to please his appetite in eating. Yet he was not sorry that he had forgotten the fish; it would surely have been a bathos to discuss the properties and application of red mullet with a young lady who found herself in so tragically lowly a position.

      After Westray had set out for the church, Anastasia Joliffe went back to Mr Sharnall’s room, for it was she who had been playing the violin. The organist sat at the piano, drumming chords in an impatient and irritated way.

      “Well,” he said, without looking at her as she came in—“well, what does my lord want with my lady? What has he made you run up to the top of the house for now? I wish I could wring his neck for him. Here we are out of breath, as usual, and our hands shaking; we shan’t be able to play even as well as we did before, and that isn’t saying much. Why,” he cried, as he looked at her, “you’re as red as a turkey-cock. I believe he’s been making love to you.”

      “Mr Sharnall,” she retorted quickly, “if you say those things I will never come to your room again. I hate you when you speak like that, and fancy you are not yourself.”

      She took her violin, and putting it under her arm, plucked arpeggi sharply.

      “There,” he said, “don’t take all I say so seriously; it is only because I am out of health and out of temper. Forgive me, child; I know well enough that there’ll be no lovemaking with you till the right man comes, and I hope he never will come, Anastasia—I hope he never will.”

      She did not accept or refuse his excuses, but tuned a string that had gone down.

      “Good heavens!” he said, as she walked to the music-stand to play; “can’t you hear the A’s as flat as a pancake?”

      She tightened the string again without speaking, and began the movement in which they had been interrupted. But her thoughts were not with the music, and mistake followed mistake.

      “What are you doing?” said the organist. “You’re worse than you were when we began five years ago. It’s mere waste of time for you to go on, and for me, too.”

      Then he saw that she was crying in the bitterness of vexation, and swung round on his music-stool without getting up.

      “Anstice, I didn’t mean it, dear. I didn’t mean to be such a brute. You are getting on well—well; and as for wasting my time, why, I haven’t got anything to do, nor anyone to teach except you, and you know I would slave all day and all night, too, if I could give you any pleasure by it. Don’t cry. Why are you crying?”

      She laid the violin on the table, and sitting down in that rush-bottomed chair in which Westray had sat the night before, put her head between her hands and burst into tears.

      “Oh,” she said between her sobs in a strange and uncontrolled voice—“oh, I am so miserable—everything is so miserable. There are father’s debts not paid, not even the undertaker’s bill paid for his funeral, and no money for anything, and poor Aunt Euphemia working herself to death. And now she says she will have to sell the little things we have in the house, and then when there is a chance of a decent lodger, a quiet, gentlemanly man, you go and abuse him, and say these rude things to me, because he rings the bell. How does he know aunt is out? how does he know she won’t let me answer the bell when she’s in? Of course, he thinks we have a servant, and then you make me so sad. I couldn’t sleep last night, because I knew you were drinking. I heard you when we went to bed playing trashy things that you hate except when you are not yourself. It makes me ill to think that you have been with us all these years, and been so kind to me, and now are come to this. Oh, do not do it! Surely we all are wretched enough, without your adding this to our wretchedness.”

      He got up from the stool and took her hand.

      “Don’t, Anstice—don’t! I broke myself of it before, and I will break myself again. It was a woman drove me to it then, and sent me down the hill, and now I didn’t know there was a living soul would care whether old Sharnall drank himself to death or not. If I could only think there was someone who cared; if I could only think you cared.”

      “Of course I care”—and as she felt his hand tighten she drew her own lightly away—“of course we care—poor aunt and I—or she would care, if she knew, only she is so good she doesn’t guess. I hate to see those horrid glasses taken in after your supper. It used to be so different, and I loved to hear the ‘Pastoral’ and ‘Les Adieux’ going when the house was still.”

      It is sad when man’s unhappiness veils from him the smiling face of nature. The promise of the early morning was maintained. The sky was of a translucent blue, broken with islands and continents of clouds, dazzling white like cotton-wool. A soft, warm breeze blew from the west, the birds sang merrily in every garden bush, and Cullerne was a town of gardens, where men could sit each under his own vine and fig-tree. The bees issued forth from their hives, and hummed with cheery droning chorus in the ivy-berries that covered the wall-tops with deep purple. The old vanes on the corner pinnacles of Saint Sepulchre’s tower shone as if they had been regilt. Great flocks of plovers flew wheeling over Cullerne marsh, and flashed with a blinking silver gleam as they changed their course suddenly. Even through the open window of the organist’s room fell a shaft of golden sunlight that lit up the peonies of the faded, threadbare carpet.

      But inside beat two poor human hearts, one unhappy and one hopeless, and saw nothing of the gold vanes, or the purple ivy-berries, or the plovers, or the sunlight, and heard nothing of the birds or the bees.

      “Yes, СКАЧАТЬ