The Broad Highway by Jeffery Farnol (ebook reader with highlight function TXT) 📖

I misdoubt my pen of its task, and fear that, when you shall have read these pages, you shall, at best, have caught but a very imperfect reflection of Charmian as she really is.

Wherefore, I will waste no more time or paper upon so unprofitable a task, but hurry on with my narrative, leaving you to find her out as best you may.

CHAPTER XVI

CONCERNING, AMONG OTHER MATTERS, THE PRICE OF BEEF, AND THE LADY SOPHIA SEFTON OF CAMBOURNE

Charmian sighed, bit the end of her pen, and sighed again. She was deep in her housekeeping accounts, adding and subtracting and, between whiles, regarding the result with a rueful frown.

Her sleeves were rolled up over her round, white arms, and I inwardly wondered if the much vaunted Phryne’s were ever more perfect in their modelling, or of a fairer texture. Had I possessed the genius of a Praxiteles I might have given to the world a masterpiece of beauty to replace his vanished Venus of Cnidus; but, as it happened, I was only a humble blacksmith, and she a fair woman who sighed, and nibbled her pen, and sighed again.

“What is it, Charmian?”

“Compound addition, Peter, and I hate figures I detest, loathe, and abominate them—especially when they won’t balance!”

“Then never mind them,” said I.

“Never mind them, indeed—the idea, Sir! How can I help minding them when living costs so much and we so poor?”

“Are we?” said I.

“Why, of course we are.”

“Yes—to be sure—I suppose we are,” said I dreamily.

Lais was beautiful, Thais was alluring, and Berenice was famous for her beauty, but then, could either of them have shown such arms—so long, so graceful in their every movement, so subtly rounded in their lines, arms which, for all their seeming firmness, must (I thought) be wonderfully soft to the touch, and smooth as ivory, and which found a delicate sheen where the light kissed them?

“We have spent four shillings for meat this week, Peter!” said Charmian, glancing up suddenly.

“Good!” said I.

“Nonsense, sir—four shillings is most extravagant!”

“Oh!—is it, Charmian?”

“Why, of course it is.”

“Oh!” said I; “yes—perhaps it is.”

“Perhaps!” said she, curling her lip at me, “perhaps, indeed!” Having said which, Charmian became absorbed in her accounts again, and I in Charmian.

In Homer we may read that the loveliness of Briseis caused Achilles much sorrow; Ovid tells us that Chione was beautiful enough to inflame two gods, and that Antiope’s beauty drew down from heaven the mighty Jove himself; and yet, was either of them formed and shaped more splendidly than she who sat so near me, frowning at what she had written, and petulantly biting her pen?

“Impossible!” said I, so suddenly that Charmian started and dropped her pen, which I picked up, feeling very like a fool.

“What did you mean by ‘impossible,’ Peter?”

“I was—thinking merely.”

“Then I wish you wouldn’t think so suddenly next time.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Nor be so very emphatic about it.”

“No,” said I, “er—no.” Hereupon, deigning to receive her pen back again, she recommenced her figuring, while I began to fill my pipe.

“Two shillings for tea!”

“Excellent!” said I.

“I do wish,” she sighed, raising her head to shake it reproachfully at me, “that you would be a little more sensible.”

“I’ll try.”

“Tea at twelve shillings a pound is a luxury!”

“Undoubtedly!”

“And to pay two shillings for a luxury when we are so poor—is sinful!”

“Is it, Charmian?”

“Of course it is.”

“Oh!” said I; “and yet, life without tea—more especially as you brew it—would be very stale, flat, and unprofitable, and—”

“Bacon and eggs—one shilling and fourpence!” she went on, consulting her accounts.

“Ah!” said I, not venturing on “good,” this time.

“Butter—one shilling!”

“Hum!” said I cautiously, and with the air of turning this over in my mind.

“Vegetables—tenpence!”

“To be sure,” said I, nodding my head, “tenpence, certainly.”

“And bread, Peter” (this in a voice of tragedy) “—eightpence.”

“Excellent!” said I recklessly, whereat Charmian immediately frowned at me.

“Oh, Peter!” said she, with a sigh of resignation, “you possess absolutely no idea of proportion. Here we pay four shillings for meat, and only eightpence for bread; had we spent less on luxuries and more on necessaries we should have had money in hand instead of—let me see!” and she began adding up the various items before her with soft, quick little pats of her fingers on the table. Presently, having found the total, she leaned back in her chair and, summoning my attention with a tap of her pen, announced:

“We have spent nine shillings and tenpence, Peter!”

“Good, indeed!” said I.

“Leaving exactly—twopence over.”

“A penny for you, and a penny for me.”

“I fear I am a very bad housekeeper, Peter.”

“On the contrary.”

“You earn ten shillings a week.”

“Well?”

“And here is exactly—twopence left—oh, Peter!”

“You are forgetting the tea and the beef, and—and the other luxuries,” said I, struck by the droop of her mouth.

“But you work so very, very hard, and earn so little and that little—”

“I work that I may live, Charmian, and lo! I am alive.”

“And dreadfully poor!”

“And ridiculously happy.”

“I wonder why?” said she, beginning to draw designs on the page before her.

“Indeed, though I have asked myself that question frequently of late, I have as yet found no answer, unless it be my busy, care-free life, with the warm sun about me and the voice of the wind in the trees.”

“Yes, perhaps that is it.”

“And yet I don’t know,” I went on thoughtfully, “for now I come to think of it, my life has always been busy and care-free, and I have always loved the sun and the sound of wind in trees—yet, like Horace, have asked ‘What is Happiness?’ and looked for it in vain; and now, here—in this out-of-the-world spot, working as a village smith, it has come to me all unbidden and unsought—which is very strange!”

“Yes, Peter,” said Charmian, still busy with her pen.

“Upon consideration I think my thanks are due to my uncle for dying and leaving me penniless.”

“Do you mean that he disinherited you?”

“In a way, yes; he left me his whole fortune provided that I married a certain lady within the year.”

“A certain lady?”

“The Lady Sophia Sefton, of Cambourne,” said I.

Charmian’s pen stopped in the very middle of a letter, and she bent down to examine what she had been writing.

“Oh!” said she very softly, “the Lady Sophia Sefton of Cambourne?”

“Yes,” said I.

“And—your cousin—Sir Maurice—were the conditions the same in his case?”

“Precisely!”

“Oh!” said Charmian, just as softly as before, “and this lady —she will not—marry you?”

“No,” I answered.

“Are you quite—sure?”

“Certain!—you see, I never intend to ask her.”

Charmian suddenly raised her head and looked at me,

“Why not, Peter?”

“Because, should I ever marry—a remote contingency, and most improbable—I am sufficiently self-willed to prefer to exert my own choice in the matter; moreover, this lady is a celebrated toast, and it would be most repugnant to me that my wife’s name should ever have been bandied from mouth to mouth, and hiccoughed out over slopping wineglasses—”

The pen slipped from Charmian’s fingers to the floor, and before I could pick it up she had forestalled me, so that when she raised her head she was flushed with stooping.

“Have you ever seen this lady, Peter?”

“Never, but I have heard of her—who has not?”

“What have you heard?”

“That she galloped her horse up and down the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral, for one thing.”

“What more?”

“That she is proud, and passionate, and sudden of temper—in a word, a virago!”

“Virago!” said Charmian, flinging up her head.

“Virago!” I nodded, “though she is handsome, I understand—in a strapping way—and I have it on very excellent authority that she is a black-browed goddess, a peach, and a veritable plum.”

“‘Strapping’ is a hateful word, Peter!”

“But very descriptive.”

“And—doesn’t she interest you—a little, Peter?”.

“Not in the least,” said I.

“And, pray, why not?”

“Because I care very little for either peaches or plums.”

“Or black-browed goddesses, Peter?”

“Not if she is big and strapping, and possesses a temper.”

“I suppose—to such a philosopher as you—a woman or a goddess, black-browed or not, can scarcely compare with, or hope to rival an old book, can she, sir?”

“Why, that depends, Charmian.”

“On what?”

“On the book!” said I.

Charmian rested her round elbows upon the table, and, setting her chin in her hands, stared squarely at me.

“Peter,” said she.

“Yes, Charmian?”

“If ever you did meet this lady—I think—”

“Well?”

“I know—”

“What?”

“That you would fall a very easy victim!”

“I think not,” said I.

“You would be her slave in—a month—three weeks—or much less—”

“Preposterous!” I exclaimed.

“If she set herself to make you!”

“That would be very immodest!” said I; “besides, no woman can make a man love her.”

“Do your books teach you that, Peter?” Here, finding I did not answer, she laughed and nodded her head at me. “You would be head over ears in love before you knew it!”

“I think not,” said I, smiling.

“You are the kind of man who would grow sick with love, and never know what ailed him.”

“Any man in such a condition would be a pitiful ass!” said I.

Charmian only laughed at me again, and went back to her scribbling.

“Then, if this lady married you,” said she suddenly, “you would be a gentleman of good position and standing?”

“Yes, I suppose so—and probably miserable.”

“And rich, Peter?”

“I should have more than enough.”

“Instead of being a village blacksmith—”

“With just enough, and absurdly happy and content,” I added, “which is far more desirable—at least I think so.”

“Do you mean to say that you would rather—exist here, and make horseshoes all your life, than—live, respected, and rich.”

“And married to—”

“And married to the Lady Sophia?”

“Infinitely!” said I.

“Then your cousin, so far as you are concerned, is free to woo and win her and your uncle’s fortune?”

“And I wish him well of his bargain!” I nodded. “As for me, I shall probably continue to live here, and make horseshoes —wifeless and content.”

“Is marriage so hateful to you?”

“In the abstract—no; for in my mind there exists a woman whom I think I could love—very greatly; but, in the actual—yes, because there is no woman in all the world that is like this woman of my mind.”

“Is she so flawlessly perfect—this imaginary woman?”

“She is one whom I would respect for her intellect.”

“Yes.”

“Whom I would honor for her proud virtue.”

“Yes, Peter.”

“Whom I would worship for her broad charity, her gentleness, and spotless purity.”

“Yes, Peter.”

“And love with all my strength, for her warm, sweet womanhood—in a word, she is the epitome of all that is true and womanly!”

“That is to say—as you understand such things, sir, and all your knowledge of woman, and her virtues and failings, you have learned from your books, therefore, misrepresented by history, and distorted by romance, it is utterly false and unreal. And, of course, this imaginary