"The wood nymph" - читать интересную книгу автора (Balogh Mary)

Chapter 3

It was five days later before Helen was able to return to her private place in the woods, the longest absence she could remember since she had started to go there two years before. It seemed that everything conspired against her.

First of all, she had to play sick for the whole of a glorious midsummer day. She had feigned a headache on the night when Mr. Mainwaring had been invited to dinner, and Helen never had headaches. She had finally convinced the whole family after wandering around the house frowning and clutching her temples for more than an hour and had been packed off to bed with lavender water and vinaigrette, warm milk, and a hot brick for her feet. Mama herself had come to bathe her temples with the lavender water.

"Poor child," she had said. "I do hope you are not going to become a martyr to the migraines as Emily and I are. You lie there and do not worry about a thing. I shall make your excuses to our guests. It is provoking that yet again you will miss Mr. Mainwaring, though. Such a gentlemanly man, and just the person for one of you girls. Of course, I believe he already favors Melissa, but he has not yet met you, child, and you can be quite prettily behaved when you set your mind to it."

Helen moaned and her mother leaned over her and kissed her forehead. "There, there," she said soothingly, "you go to sleep now, child."

Helen had felt very guilty after her mother had left. Mama did not often treat her with such gentleness. It seemed unfair to have won sympathy through a deception. She had sat up in bed and clasped her knees. It was all very pointless anyway, this feigned illness. She would not be able to avoid meeting Mr. Mainwaring forever. Sooner or later he would know that Lady Helen Wade ran around in the woods in rags that barely covered her decently and spent her time doing undignified things like lying on her stomach by a stream, bare legs waving in the air.

Perhaps it would have been easier to have dressed for dinner and met him after all. She could have put on her very best chilly manner, the one she used with that horrid Oswald Pyke, who fancied himself such a ladies' man. Mr. Mainwaring would not dare look at her with contempt if she treated him so. Helen had sighed. Truth to tell, it was not so much the embarrassment of having her identity revealed to Mr. Mainwaring that bothered her. It was more the ending of an intriguing situation that she could not bear to see. She wanted to meet him again in the woods, just to see if her first impression of him was correct. She did not know that he would come ever again, of course, but she was almost sure he would.

Mama insisted on fussing over her all of the next day, too, the day when the weather was so glorious. And she could not even read a book or write in the journal where she kept copious notes on all her thoughts and feelings. Melissa kept tiptoeing into the room and gazing solicitously at her, and asking in a stage whisper if there were anything she could do. It was all very touching and preyed heavily on her conscience.

And then for two whole days it had rained, the sort of fine misty rain that soaked one's clothes and one's hair and seemed to get right through to one's skin and even under the skin. It was the sort of weather in which it was impossible to remain cheerful.

Helen had shut herself into the music room for much of the first day and hammered out a tune on the piano. She knew the piece without the music. She always learned by heart the music that she liked, so that she could then close her eyes to play and learn to feel the melody. She was not content to sit back and listen to the music she produced. She wanted to be inside it. The result was not necessarily what the composer had had in mind when he wrote, but it was marginally satisfying to Helen. Not totally satisfying. She was never quite sure that she was there inside the music. But then, she was not certain that she wanted to be. Perhaps it would lose its fascination if she ever felt that she understood it completely.

That activity was stopped abruptly when her mother appeared in the room and suggested very gently that such violent playing would only bring about a recurrence of her headache. Helen had no choice but to meekly agree.

Sunday came finally and it was necessary to go to church. Helen always looked forward to the outing. She was not at all interested in the bonnet parade, which seemed to be the chief interest of most of the female part of the congregation, or in the game of attracting more admiring male glances than any other young lady present. Helen loved the building and the ritual of the service.

The church was ridiculously large for such a small village. It was never more than one-third full, though everyone within a five-mile radius came on Sunday mornings, come rain or shine. But to Helen its very size was its attraction. It was a cold stone building, uncomfortably cool even in the height of summer. Its Gothic doorway and stained-glass windows, its high arched ceiling all reached toward heaven. She loved to see the vicar in his vestments. Dull, ordinary Vicar Brayley became in church a figure of great dignity, and his voice, hesitant and monotonous during conversation, took on power and authority when he read from the Bible or chanted a psalm.

On this particular Sunday she was not so eager to go. Mr. Mainwaring was bound to be there. He would see her, and her humiliation would be very public. Miraculously, though, he did not see her, not to recognize, anyway. She wore her bonnet that had lace piled on the crown and she pulled the lace down over her face when they went into the church. He was indeed there but sat at some distance from the earl's family. After the service was over, Helen made an undignified bolt for her father's carriage while the rest of the congregation stood around in groups for fully twenty minutes.

"I was afraid that the sunshine would bring back my headache," she explained feebly when the rest of her family joined her.

"And what on earth were you doing with the lace from your bonnet all down around your face?" Emily asked. "You did look a fright, Helen. You looked as if you were in deep mourning, except that the hat is blue and not black. I was quite mortified to be seen sitting in the same pew as you."

"Mr. Mainwaring must think you quite a freak," Melissa added. "You ran away like a frightened rabbit, Helen. You will have us all thinking that you are afraid to meet the man for some reason." She turned to her older sister. "Mr. Mainwaring has offered to take me driving this afternoon, Emmy."

Helen wished suddenly that she had walked home instead of waiting twenty minutes in a stifling carriage.

And so it was Monday afternoon before Helen finally managed to escape to the woods again'. She changed into her cotton dress, loosened her hair, kicked off her shoes, and pulled off her stockings. She wanted to read; she wanted to write; she wanted to paint. But she would do none of these things. If Mr. Mainwaring came, he would know immediately that she was no village wench if she had a book or a brush in her hand. And she wanted him to come. She had tried to tell herself all morning that she wished to come here merely so that she could be alone and free from the fetters of her life again. But she wanted to see him.

She paced the bank of the stream, dangled her feet in the water, twirled around the trunk of a tree, and finally climbed the branches of the old oak tree, which had been created for that purpose. She wedged herself high up, her back against the sturdy trunk, her knees drawn up, and her feet resting on a branch. She watched and watched for him. And finally she looked up and became absorbed in the pattern the branches and the leaves made against the sky, and in the changing face of the wide blue expanse above her as wisps of cloud scudded across it.

It had not been an easy week for William Mainwaring. He had read and reread the letter from Hetherington, feeling alternately comforted that they still wished to be his friends, and yet hurt to know that they were apparently happy together, that they were expecting a child. The child had probably been born already, in fact. In some ways it might have been better never to have known how their marriage was progressing. He had to feel happy for Elizabeth. After all, he loved her, and love could never be a wholly selfish emotion. And he had known even when he planned to marry her himself that she loved Robert. He was glad for her that her story had had a happy ending at last. But his own pain was not therefore lessened.

He loved her still. The longing only became stronger with time, in fact. He dreamed frequently of what it would be like now to live at Graystone with Elizabeth as his wife. With her perhaps he could enjoy the social life of the neighborhood, which he was finding something.of an ordeal. There were several families here that he could like if only he had her with him to please them with her warm charm and her never-failing ability to converse with even the dullest person.

He had finally written back two days after receiving the letter. It was a reply that accepted unconditionally the renewed offer of friendship and that accepted a full measure of blame for the unpleasantness that had happened in the past. He congratulated them on the expected birth. But the letter was noncommittal about their invitation. He could not yet contemplate the thought of seeing them, of knowing beyond a doubt that he was nothing more than a friend to the Marchioness of Hetherington.

Mainwaring made an effort to appear agreeable to his neighbors, most of whom had devised some entertainment for his benefit. He had even forced himself to invite Lady Melissa Wade to go driving with him after church on Sunday. It was true that he had been almost maneuvered into doing so when she had answered with alacrity the question he had put to her father about the best direction to take if one wanted to see some attractive countryside. But even so, he did not try to avoid the excursion. He must somehow force himself to live on, he supposed, and the girl at least was willing to do most of the talking with only the occasional prompting from him.

He had still not met the youngest of the earl's daughters. It seemed almost as if she were avoiding him, though he could not imagine why she would do so. A few of his new acquaintances, though, had hinted that the girl was "strange," something of an eccentric. If only she knew how little she had to fear from him.

Always through the week his thoughts came back to the little wood nymph. After a few days it was difficult even to believe that she had been real. How delightful it must be to belong to the lower classes, with nothing to worry about but the day's chores. The girl had seemed so free from care. He constantly felt himself resisting the urge to go back to the woods to see if she was there, and to see if his first impression would remain. Perhaps if he saw her again, she would appear merely dull or vulgar.

He did not wish to go. It would not do to become involved in any way with a girl of a different class. Mainwaring had always frowned heavily on those men – and there were many-who felt that women of a lower class were theirs for the taking, that virtue counted for nothing if the female were not a lady. He had never been able to bring himself to use even a dancer or a prostitute. He could see them too clearly as women, persons, who at some time had been down on their luck and forced to sell the only commodity that was wholly theirs. His little wood nymph should be left alone to enjoy whatever solitary pleasures she gained from her "special place," as she had called it.

Yet he found that by the Monday he could no longer stay away. He needed to be alone, he told himself. It was a beautiful day and a walk would do him good. She would probably not be there anyway. After all, it could not be easy for a girl to get away from home in the middle of the day. But it was a pretty place, her spot by the stream. He would go and see it again.

At first he thought that she was not there. There was no one today leaning over the stream studying the colors and movement of the water. He tried to convince himself that he was not at all disappointed. And then he saw her, perched high up in an oak tree, apparently perfectly relaxed, not clinging for safety by so much as a single hand. She was gazing upward, quite unaware of his presence.

William Mainwaring smiled with genuine amusement. He had to quell the desire to laugh outright.

"Hello, wood nymph," he called. "Are you learning sky today, or is it branches?"

She looked down. "You are mocking me," she said. "If you were up here, you would see that the clouds are moving fast across the sky, but it is not windy here. Is not that extraordinary? Do you imagine there is a gale blowing up there?"

"I can only be thankful that there is no gale down here," he said. "You would be blown out of the tree like a leaf in autumn."

"Nonsense," she replied. "I am perfectly safe. I have climbed this tree a thousand times or more."

"Wood nymph!" he said. His voice was almost a caress. "Would you please humor a poor earth-bound mortal and come down from there?"

He marveled at how surefooted she was as she descended quickly. She must be very used to walking in bare feet, he thought, if she did not hurt them against the bark of the tree. He held up his arms when she reached the lowest branch.

"Let me help you," he said.

"I have jumped it safely a thousand times," she replied, but she put her hands on his shoulders and allowed him to swing her to the ground.

She looked delightfully wild, he thought, with her large, rather dreamy gray eyes and tangled tawny hair and with her faded shabby dress that ended a full inch above her bare ankles. He reached out to take a leaf from her hair.

"Am I disturbing you, Nell?" he asked. "Would you prefer it if I went away again?"

"That seems a strange question to ask when I am the one trespassing on your land," she said, her voice a little breathless. "But no. Come and sit on the bank. I need to wash my feet in the stream."

He watched her settle herself on the grass and dangle her feet over the edge after hitching her skirts almost to the knees. He smiled, crossed to her side, and sat down. She was really very beautiful in her own way. Untamed beauty. He hated to think of anyone trying to force her to be a conventional barmaid or scullery maid or whatever other occupation must be open to her. He hated to think of her drudging over household tasks. She should always be free. The thought passed unbidden into his mind that he had it in his power to free her. He could set her up in comfort if he wished so that she would always be free from any chance of a life of drudgery. He quelled the thought.

"Do you know any poetry, Nell?" he asked.

"Poetry, sir?" she asked, looking across at him wide-eyed.

"Probably not," he said, answering his own question. "I must bring some books and read to you. You would like the works of some of the new poets, I believe."

"Why?" she asked.

"I think some of them share your complete absorption with nature," he said. "William Wordsworth, for example. He believes, you know, that there is a spirit behind all of nature. A tree is not just something pretty to look at. It somehow has a spiritual force." He laughed. "You probably do not know what I am talking about, do you?"

"Oh yes, I do!" Helen said eagerly. "Yes, I do, and that is exactly how I feel. Do you too?"

William Mainwaring smiled again into the bright face so close to his. "I admire his poetry and read it quite frequently," he said. "But I must confess that I have not given a great deal of serious thought to his philosophy. But then I have never known the man. I do know you, wood nymph, and I believe your passion might be infectious."

He had not meant it quite the way it sounded when it came out of his mouth. The girl looked intently at him. Her cheeks flushed and her lips parted, but there was nothing coquettish in her manner. Perhaps it was his realization of that fact that made her so irresistible. Mainwaring leaned forward before he had any conception of what he was about to do and kissed her.

He lifted his head almost immediately. She had offered no resistance. Her lips had been warm and soft beneath his. Those rather dreamy eyes of hers were still looking into his.

"I wanted you to do that," she said unexpectedly, and she leaned imperceptibly toward him.

This time he put an arm around her shoulders and turned her to him before kissing her. And he could feel the blood pounding against his temples as her breasts came against his coat and her lips parted beneath his. He threaded his free hand through the loose tangles of her hair and tentatively explored her lips with his tongue. The soft warmth drew him in and soon he was reaching into her opened mouth, touching her tongue with his, stroking the roof of her mouth until she shivered against him. He kissed her closed eyes, her chin, her throat, and finally, her mouth again.

A village girl. Just a poor village girl. What was he doing taking advantage of such innocence? He put her head against his shoulder and held it there while he looked up into the branches of the trees, trying to impose sanity on his mind. Had he completely taken leave of his senses? He had never before allowed himself to be carried away by sheer desire. He had never had a woman. He had kissed only one other. He closed his eyes tightly. Elizabeth! How could he sully his love for her with these feelings of mere desire for a young girl with whom he could have nothing in common beyond a fondness for a wood and a stream?

William Mainwaring put the girl gently away from him and smiled at her. "I should not have done that," he said. "I am sorry, Nell. I do not wish to frighten you into believing that you are no longer safe here. I assure you that it will not happen again."

She gazed seriously back at him. "I am not sorry," she said, "and I am not frightened. Are you going to leave now?"

"Yes," he said, "I think I had better go."

"Will you come again?" she asked. "Will you read me those poems?"

He had stood up. But he stooped down now and put a strand of hair behind her ear. "Yes, wood nymph," he said softly. "I shall come and read to you. There is a whole world of which you must be unaware that I would wish opened to you."

He smiled at her and drew his thumb lightly over her lips before straightening up again and turning to stride away through the trees and quickly out of her sight.

Helen did not immediately leave. She noticed, in something of a daze, that one of her feet was still dangling in the water. She pulled it out and tucked both feet under the hem of her dress, not bothering to dry the wet one first. What a coil she was in! In the past half-hour she had broken just about every rule that should guide her actions as a lady. The first meeting with Mr. Mainwaring could be discounted. She had not expected him then. She could not be expected to feel any guilt about talking to him on that occasion. Mere civility had demanded it, even if not the deception. But this time!

She admitted to herself quite freely that the hope of a meeting with him was what had really brought her there. And she had deliberately invited closeness. She could have stayed in the tree and talked to him from that safe distance. But no. She had descended as fast as her legs would carry her as soon as he had suggested it, and she had invited him to come and sit with her on the bank. She had used feminine wiles that she had not known she possessed. It was most improper to sit on the bank of a stream in the midst of a dense wood with a gentleman, unchaperoned.

And that was not all. She had felt the spark of something between them when he had said that he might learn her passion for nature. She had known he was going to kiss her for a full second before she had felt his mouth on hers. And she had done nothing to avert the peril as she could quite easily have done by laughing or breaking eye contact with him or doing any of a hundred and one little things that would have broken the tension of the moment. If she were a lady, she would have done one of those things. And she would have been walking away from there just as fast as her legs would carry her.

Truth was, she had wanted him to kiss her. What a shocking admission! They had not even been formally introduced. And even if she could be excused for that first kiss, about which she had had only a second's warning, there was no excuse at all for the kiss that followed. She even had the uncomfortable feeling that she had invited it. The first one had not been enough, a mere brushing of lips. But the second! She did not know by what instinct she had parted her lips, but she could feel now the intimacy of his open mouth against hers and of his tongue touching her own. She could feel her breasts pressed against the hardness of his chest.

And she had reveled in the feelings. She should have been deeply shocked. She should, in fact, have swooned quite away at having done something she should not even have dreamed of doing outside the marriage bed. But the only fact that made Helen feel guilty was that she did not feel ashamed. The day was brighter for the embrace. She was the happier for it. She lifted her head and gazed at the sky, where the same powerful gale was blowing wisps of white across its surface. She wished she were up there so that she could feel the wind in her hair and on her hot cheeks.

She wondered if she was falling in love. Helen believed very strongly in love. She had always thought it must be the most glorious and sublime feeling of which one could be capable. But she had never expected it to be part of her experience. She had never felt even a mild liking for any of the men she had met since she left the schoolroom. But this could not be love. It had come too suddenly. She hardly knew the man. He I probably be quite different if he knew her real identity. He would then surely be as prosy and as starchy as all the other gentlemen of her acquaintance.

Helen's face suddenly felt hotter than ever. Of course, soon he was bound to find out. There was no way she could escape indefinitely meeting him in public. There was a ball at Lord Graham's house the very next night, and she was bound to meet him there. The ball was being given largely in honor of his arrival in the neighborhood. How would she be able to face him? What would his reaction be when he knew that the girl he had teased and kissed in the woods was really Lady Helen Wade? He would probably feel obliged to do something stupid like offer for her. And how mortifying it would be to receive an offer of marriage for such a reason. Especially when one was beginning to imagine oneself in love with the man.

Helen frowned and rested her chin on her raised knees. Was Mr. Mainwaring a rake? she wondered. Was he out to take her virtue just because he believed her a village wench, someone who did not count? She would hate to think so. Undoubtedly, though, he would not have behaved so had he known that she was a lady. But then, she had behaved so, had she not, knowing that she was a lady? The problem was just too complicated. Anyway, if the man were a rake, he would not have been contented with the kiss they had shared. And he was the one who had ended it. Helen did not like to examine the question of when she would have put an end to the encounter.

Of one thing she was sure. She wanted to see him again before the inevitable exposure of her identity the following evening. She should not, of course. She should not play with fire. But he was going to read her the poems of Mr. Wordsworth. She smiled guiltily and glanced in the direction of the hut. She could have produced her own copy of Lyrical Ballads and read to him. Would he not have been surprisedl

Looking at the hut made her consider another problem. What if she returned tomorrow to find that he was already here? Either he would see her in her everyday clothes and know the truth, or she would have to steal away and miss the chance of a meeting with him. There was only one solution. She would have to take the dress with her and hide it somewhere else so that she would be wearing it already when she arrived.

Ten minutes later Lady Helen Wade emerged from the hut wearing the same riding outfit as she had worn on the previous occasion. She carried the faded cotton dress over her arm. She gazed lingeringly in the direction of the riverbank before walking away toward the western edge of the wood, where she had tethered her horse.