Bezill by John Symonds

Author:John Symonds [Symonds, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781954321656
Google: CdtOzwEACAAJ
Publisher: Valancourt Books
Published: 2022-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

18

No, I was quite wrong in thinking she’s afraid of death. It is not a matter of death at all, but of love and hate. She “loves” Gayfere—yes, even Gayfere—because Gayfere touches a chord in her heart, as it were, which neither her husband nor her father could touch. He, alas, was in the same boat with Captain Shakeshaft of the Blues and Sir Roger Noakes. That was why, Pellerin concluded, she is always so cold to me, as cold as an ice lolly.

He imagined her head carved out of pink ice—the pinkness of her lovely complexion—and himself as a hungry child with a tongue long enough for any story of the Grimm brothers. And then she began to cry tears as big as village ponds, melting away her lovely complexion . . .

Suddenly Herbert interrupted his silence with:

“Last night an owl cried in Beatrice’s window. It woke me; it terrified her. And when she told me that it had screeched into her window, I was terrified too. She sleeps with the window wide open, you know, two hot water bottles, and a vast heap of blankets.”

“Why?” demanded Pellerin. “Why should you be?”

He had not heard the owl himself, but then his window faced the other side of the house.

“There is a superstition in these parts that when a barn owl screeches into a window, the person inside will soon die.”

“You don’t believe that, do you?”

Herbert shrugged his shoulders. “I think it a bad omen,” he said.

Pellerin was disturbed. “But that’s absurd,” he said. He cast a searching glance at his pupil. “She’s a healthy young woman—bursting with health, in fact.”

Herbert looked down at Charlie.

They were standing on the path at the back of the house, below the very window on the sill of which the barn owl had alighted and screech­ed, screeched, and screeched, until Chauncy’s erstwhile mistress awoke from her heavy sleep, and with a fearful cry tumbled from her bed.

“She’ll die,” said Herbert simply.

“Are you a visionary?” Pellerin asked. Perhaps epilepsy and the capacity to see into the future went hand in hand. It used to be thought a blessed disease.

Herbert blushed. Without vision—of death, of life—the poet perishes. He couldn’t help it. He didn’t want her to die. Heaven forbid! But some are born to endless night.

Pellerin wondered if he should mention the matter to his employer, Mrs Shakeshaft. “Your son has visions of death. I felt I should tell you.” But what would be the use of it? There were other things he felt like mentioning to her too, but he knew he wouldn’t mention any of them. She was as she was: she rode to hounds; she very largely ignored her sensitive and ailing son; she hovered over the flabby but alert figure of her sombre companion, Gayfere . . . (What was at the bottom of their sterile relationship?)

Pellerin was afraid that during the course of a lesson Herbert would start up, stammer a Greek word or two and fall down, foaming at the mouth and biting away at his tongue.

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