Читать книгу The Window - Alice Grant Rosman - Страница 4

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When from the windows of the boat train Christopher Royle saw England again, he felt himself suddenly a creature of melodrama and the quest which he had imposed upon himself an anomaly.

It was perhaps, he thought, the trim, cultivated beauty running past him, the little fields, luxuriant and snugly hedged, the woods, pale with an enchanting loveliness in the soft, ambient air, while here and there behind them rose the gray towers of some old manor with its attendant village and flock of cozy farms about it, that gave one this illusion of a world far removed from the rough passions of men. For illusion it was, he knew, passion being after all the force that moves the world like an electric, secret current ... moves it to tragedy or glory, to enterprise, exile, life, ruin or death. Yes, it would be moving here as elsewhere, this current, but decorously and not with the violence of the untamed places from which he had come home.

Christopher fingered the packet of diamonds, which for safety he carried on his person, and thought of the man whose strange gift they were, a man he had known only in the last hours of his life.

He could see him yet as he had come lurching into his camp that night, flushed with fever, marked by Death and worse, yet about him still a certain charm, a quality; and charm one may suspect in a man, but quality goes deeper. It was there in the hands, calloused but slender and strong; in the unshaven, ravished face with the thin, sensitive nostrils and eyes set wide apart and slightly tilted so that they looked out at one with a young impudent dare-deviltry that would never grow old, and yet could blaze or smile appealingly.

Christopher had never seen him before, didn't know him from Adam, yet afterwards when he had heard everything Hatherley had to tell about him ... or all that he could not prevent his telling ... he still felt he knew the poor chap better than that.

"A weak, reckless young waster, Jim Robertson," had been Hatherley's bitter summing up, but Christopher could have written a book on the making of prodigals, knowing how much of blind Fate and the insensibility of men may go to it, and Hatherley himself already stood accused by the few conscious words of a dying man.

"I'm done, old boy," he had gasped, with that queer smile of his, as Christopher helped him to lie down and brought him a drink. Then fumbling in his belt he had produced the packet of diamonds and an old wallet and thrust them into his hands.

"Keep 'em.... I give 'em to you," he said. "Only swear you won't let that swine Hatherley lay his hands upon them."

Christopher, instinctively agreeing with this description of the other man, had promised, but to a poor chap already too far gone to hear him or heed.

Towards dawn, when his guest would wake no more, he had opened the packet and stared in amazement at its contents. He knew nothing of the value of such things, but guessed it to be considerable. Pitiful, he thought, to die like that out here in the wilds with riches in your hand. Then, remembering his promise, he had stuffed them away in safety, for Hatherley being nabob of the district must be informed of Robertson's death. There would be formalities; and of the gems and the wallet he must get no hint.

Christopher had opened the wallet more reluctantly, feeling it indecent somehow with their owner lying there, then smiled at the folly of the thought. For this too had been a gift and must contain therefore no secrets that he should not see.

It contained indeed little enough, he found ... a chit or two, some rough accounts, a bundle of newspaper cuttings relating to ivory, and a letter old and worn with much folding. He glanced at this, then hid it away with the diamonds, for here at least was something. It had been written by a girl in November, 1918, to a man at the front and it began "Dear Terry."