Читать книгу The Painted Cliff - Alex Philip - Страница 3

CHAPTER I.

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HE GIRL’S gasping cry of alarm was drowned by the piercing shriek of the big car’s siren. With a muttered curse the liveried chauffeur set the brakes and spun the wheel. Pale-faced and shaking, a young man arose from the dust of the pavement and continued on his unsteady way, oblivious of the fact that he had been the near-victim of a tragedy.

“Just brushed him, miss. He’s drunk,” said the driver, as he released the brakes.

The girl’s eyes were fixed on the tottering young man, who had reached the curb and stood clinging weakly to a lamp-post. Her look of disgust gave place to one of pity as she saw deep lines of suffering on his haggard face. She spoke quickly to the driver and before the car had ceased its motion, sprang to the sidewalk.

Food is nothing to you unless you are hungry. If you are hungry and can’t get food it becomes of enormous importance.

The odour of frying steak, wafted to the youth’s nostrils from the open door of a restaurant, nearly maddened him. Releasing his hold on the post, he moved to the window, which was piled high with pyramids of oysters, steaks and fish. The sight of food increased his craving, and a wave of intense sickness swept over him. A drumming set up in his ears.

The girl stepped before him. “You are ill,” she said gently.

He saw her lips move, but heard no sound. To his befogged senses she appeared to be inside the plate glass window; a head detached and floating in mid-air. As though through a haze he saw a pale and beautiful face surrounded by an aureole of dark brown hair that showed a tinge of gold in the bright sunlight; eyes that were filled with a sweet compassion as they met his; eyes that were sea-blue wells; wells so deep and clear that he felt that he was being submerged. The buzzing in his head grew so intense that he was hard set to keep from groaning aloud. The bony hands at his sides shook violently. He felt his knees sag under him; struggled to right himself, felt a sharp jar; then the world went black.

As he returned to semi-consciousness he saw a big whiskered face above him. Powerful hands wrapped ’round him under his arms, heaved, and he was set upon unsteady feet.

“Can’t walk, ol’ sport?” As though from a great distance he heard a voice. “All right, boy. I’ll hold you up.”

“A drunk,” said a second voice, “better call a cop.”

“Drunk! Hell! You damn fools, can’t you see the boy’s sick?” The voice was louder now. “Get out of my way! I’ll take care of him!”

The young man felt a muscular arm about his shoulders and his legs moved woodenly under him. Presently he was in a warm dimness and something soft was placed under his head. Again he saw the big whiskered face suspended strangely in the air; heard the sound of running water, and winced under the shock of cold on his face. He gasped and opened his eyes only to close them tight again and shut out what was indisputably the delusion of a mind deranged. The angel’s face floated above him again.

“Drink this, please.” The voice was sweet and low and muffled as though far away. Something touched his lips and the delectable odour of a rich broth was strong on the air. Long fingers clutched the bowl eagerly and he drank the steaming fluid in great gulps.

“Poor fellow. He’s starved!” The soft voice trembled with deep pity. The youth’s leaden lids flickered slowly open. He saw the angel’s face close to his, the blue depths shiny and wet with tears. The warm flow of hot food seemed to fill his every vein. A soft cool hand rested on his brow. He sighed contentedly and fell into sweet oblivion.

Two hours later he awoke with a start and stared about him with puzzled eyes. He found himself, fully clothed, lying on a wide bed with a comforter thrown over him. The room was large, with two beds, and three big windows through which came the hum of city traffic and the faint smell of burning gasoline. He yawned drowsily as he stretched long emaciated arms above his head. The yawn was cut short by a sudden fit of coughing; a cough that turned his face a deep crimson and brought his breath in rasping gasps from tortured lungs. The spasm of coughing ceased. He fell back weakly to the pillow and gave himself over to a period of gloomy retrospection.

Before his enlistment for service in France he had held a secretarial position with a London importing house of which his father was president and chief stockholder; a firm that went into bankruptcy during the first frenzied weeks of war—a shock from which his elderly father never recovered; dying a few months before his son’s return from the trenches.

His lungs seared by German gas, followed by an attack of pneumonia, had kept him in a London hospital for six months after his return from France.

“Fresh air, sunshine and good food,” the doctor had told him. “Your condition will not permit you to return to office work again. Go to the mountains. I would suggest the bracing climate of Canada.”

His mother having died shortly after his birth, the young man found himself alone in the world save for a few distant relatives with whom he had never been intimate. Therefore the sick boy decided to accept his doctor’s advice, and a month later he stepped to the platform of the Canadian Pacific Depot in Vancouver—the Western Gateway to the British Empire.

Owing to the mild climate on the coast of British Columbia, men from all parts of the Dominion flock to Vancouver during the winter months. Hordes of workers who have garnered the huge crops of wheat on the prairies; prospectors driven from the mountains by the deep snows; loggers from camps that have closed temporarily, and soft-handed hoboes, swell the ranks of jobless men.

To the young Englishman the past week had been a horrible nightmare. Too proud to ask for assistance at the many soldiers’ organizations, he pinned his service button inside the lapel of his coat and trudged the streets in search of employment.

“T.B., poor devil,” people said commiseratingly; and he had turned away with a heart full of bitterness. Twice he had been given a job through pity. For two days he pushed a truck in a wholesale house on Water Street, but on the third morning collapsed. Again he was employed by a hardware firm, but his weakness overcame him and he fainted dead away the first day.

The pension allotted to him by a paternal government had sufficed to keep body and soul together. It had been days of frugal living; a cheap room, and meals in a ten-cent coffee-house.

For two days he had not eaten. Lacking in sophistication, he had been touched by the hard-luck story of a professional “panhandler”, bought him a meal and allowed him to sleep on the floor of his room. Sometime during the night the stranger departed, taking with him the last few dollars that stood between his benefactor and absolute want.

“Fresh air, sunshine and good food,” he muttered sarcastically as he lowered his long legs to the floor and came weakly to his feet. The room whirled dizzily and he seized the dresser with both hands to keep from falling. Pain that threatened to rend his head asunder played before his eyes in blinding flashes. Faint and nauseated he clung to the support until the haze cleared away. He opened his eyes to gaze directly at his reflection in the mirror.

Critically he examined the tall figure with the broad but painfully thin shoulders; the tousled mop of reddish-brown hair standing high above a broad brow; the blue, blood-shot eyes surrounded by dark rings and the square jaw covered with a stubble of beard.

The emaciation of him had left a rawboned frame that testified to the fact that he had once been a splendid specimen of manhood. At college his prowess as swimmer, sculler and all-round athlete had won him national fame.

For a long interval the sick boy stared at the shadow of his former self; a wry smile twisting his lips. A duller red flowed to the hectic spots on his thin cheeks.

“Say, old man,” he apostrophized himself disgustedly, “buck up! You used to be a real he-man. Let’s see if there is one more good kick left in the frame that was once Peter Welton.”

Reluctantly he removed his hands from the dresser and essayed to leave the room, but again a sudden attack of vertigo assailed him. Reaching the bed he pulled the comforter over him and buried his aching head in the cool pillow.