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LARK ASCENDING
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA • MADRAS
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO
DALLAS • ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
OF CANADA, LIMITED
TORONTO
LARK ASCENDING
BY
MAZO DE LA ROCHE
COPYRIGHT
FOR
EMILY WATERS
REMEMBERING A LUCKY VOYAGE
FROM NAPLES TO LONDON
CHAPTER I
THE wind rushed through the street with the savage playfulness peculiar to a wind from the sea. It swept between the wooden buildings of the seaside resort as though in search of some definite damage it might do to prove its malice. But the weather-beaten boards were inured to its attacks, the wicket gates accustomed to be shaken almost off their hinges, and all loose and fragile projections had long ago been blown away. So there was little for it to do but whip the shirts and long drawers that writhed on the lines, whirl sheets of newspaper along the deserted road, and blow the picture young Diego Palmas was painting off its easel. It fell paint side down on the long grass that grew between sidewalk and road, and, when he picked it up, he found a dusty nettle plastered across the glimpse of tossing sea, between two pinkish yellow houses, that was its subject.
He looked at it ruefully. His face was of that strongly marked, swarthy variety which so lends itself to the expression of emotion that a look of annoyance is translated into a forbidding scowl, a rueful glance into an expression of dark despair. So now an observer would have felt real pity for him, when all he was thinking was—“Oh, hell, I’ll get stung!”
He gingerly caught the rough stem of the nettle between finger and thumb and drew it off the canvas, drawing with it a blue door, a yellow hitching post and a green wave. He cast all these together into the dust of the road, and put his finger in his mouth. The stinging sensation made him pull his mouth down at the corners, enlarge his eyes and draw his eyebrows up on his forehead. Instantly his expression became one of tragedy. The imaginary observer might now be almost moved to tears.
But no one saw him. He folded up his easel, wiped his brushes on a bit of rag and collected the other implements of his art. Then he crossed the road and turned into the deserted main street, all his movements being of such extreme indolence that it seemed doubtful if he had an objective, and, if he had, whether he would ever reach it. He was strongly built; he was nineteen years old; he wore a black beret, a grey sweater coat over a faded shirt, open at the throat, and dirty white duck trousers on which there were stains of paint.
The main street bore evidence that the tourist season was over. The shop where souvenirs were sold was already closed. The shop that advertised clam chowder, lobster salad and blueberry pie, was closing. The last waitress stood in the doorway, her short skirt blown above her knees, inhaling the salt air with a feeling of vagabond freedom. She had an eye for the young artist as he slouched past her, and he returned her look with a glance half humorous, half surly. He moved on, looking in every window as he passed, though he could have told you, with his eyes shut, what was in each of them. The sausages, the round steaks, the boiling pieces that had lately taken the place of sirloin roasts, lamb chops and chickens, in the butcher’s window. The bathing-suits, bathing-caps, berets and sweaters that had been rejected by the summer colony, in the drygoods store. The picture post cards, the brightly coloured magazines, the boxes of chocolates, now noticeably specked by flies, in the stationer’s. Saltport, which lent herself but grudgingly to her summer season, was now withdrawing into her natural state of reserve and suspicion toward the outside world, preparing for her long winter of icy gales without, and conversations in slow nasal voices, beside red-hot stoves, within.
Those who looked out through the open doors of their stores and saw young Diego Palmas go by, did not look after him with resentment as a belated summer artist but with an intense and possessive interest, for he was one of them, in spite of his name, his foreign face and his beret, and they wondered what he and that mother of his would do next, now that his father was gone.
He was conscious in every nerve of the eyes watching him from shop doors and from between the curtains of windows above the shops. All Saltport was watching him and his mother. They were the only people of real interest in the place. He threw a glance of proud suspicion at the windows as he passed beneath.
At a corner where the street descended steeply to the beach there stood a tea-house painted black and orange, outside which a row of little tables were set. He remembered how, only a few weeks ago, the tables were crowded with people at this hour, and how many heads had turned to look at him as he slowly passed by, resting his sombre eyes with the same look of proud suspicion on them.
On the corner opposite the gaily painted teahouse stood a shabby weather-beaten building, on the ground floor of which was the one drug store of the little town. The sign, almost illegible, read—Purley Bond, Prescription Druggist. In the window stood two large glass jars containing a green liquid, and, scattered about them, a display of Kodaks, film spools, tins of talcum, rolls of fly-paper, boxes of candy, beach balls and bottles of patent medicine. The window was framed in glaring advertisements of different brands of cigarettes and dentifrice. Inside the store other highly glazed tin and cardboard signs, the bright expanse of a soda fountain, and the glass cases containing cigarettes and chocolates almost obliterated the section given over to drugs which looked, by comparison, dingy and depressing. Yet in this dark and depressing corner the only dignity of the place was exhibited. Between the old-fashioned green bottles in the window and the dark phials on these shelves there was an affinity, a bond of mournful pride in the past when a chemist had not needed to degrade his profession in order to get custom.
Diego, easel and canvas in hand, sauntered in and, finding no one behind the counter, peered into the corner enclosed behind frosted glass where prescriptions were filled. It was so dim in there that he could just make out the figure of a man tilted back in a chair with his feet raised against a paper-littered desk. A blue veil of smoke was stretched above his head, and in one hand he held the bowl of a short, curved pipe.
“Hullo, Diego,” he said, without taking the pipe from his mouth, “what have you been up to? Painting, eh? I should think it was pretty windy.”
“It was,” growled the youth. “It blew the darned picture right off the easel, and it got a nettle on it. Look here,” and he held the picture in front of the man’s face.
“I can’t see it in this light.” He stretched a long arm to reach a switch, and in an instant he was exposed to view in the glare of a strong, unshaded electric lamp. In it his rather coarse hair looked almost white, but in reality there was not a white hair on his untidy head. It was so pale a yellow as to be almost silver, and his rough eyebrows and even his eyelashes were the same. With pale eyes, a delicate skin or weak features, he might have been an anaemic-looking fellow indeed, but he had none of these. His eyes, not large, yet well shaped, were a vivid and flower-like blue; his flat, shaven cheeks, on which a coarse beard was barely subjected, showed a sunburnt sandy colour; his features were strong and well-cut.
He gripped his pipe in his teeth and, with the hand that had held the bowl, took the picture from Diego. He blew out his breath when he saw the devastation caused by the nettle. “It certainly disarranged things,” he said sympathetically. “It’ll take you some time to fix it up.” He now held the picture at arm’s length and knitted his