Читать книгу The Strange Vanguard - Arnold Bennett - Страница 12

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“Well,” said Lord Furber, returning to the room after an absence of five minutes. “I’ve heard your story; ye’ve heard mine. My offer’s still open, but it won’t be open much longer.”

Miss Perkins was seated.

“And what would my duties be?”

“Ye’ve asked me that once already.”

“I suppose I should be expected to take part in conspiracies. Crimes with violence. And so on.”

“Ye’ve got quite a crazy notion of me.”

At that moment, for Harriet, Lord Furber had the wistful aspect of a child, conscious of having been naughty and trying without much hope of success to defend itself. He seemed absurd, touching, kissable, and pathetically unlike the legend of the London Titan. She was almost inclined to take his side against his wife, her old crony, Maidie, Lady Furber. “What he says is true,” she thought. “He’s bored—and so am I. That’s why we’re both restless, and why we’re both going wrong.”

“Still,” she said judicially. “I’ve been the witness of one crime myself, and a victim of it, too. At any rate it would be a crime in England.”

“The Sutherland business!” his lordship exclaimed in a fierce tone. “It wouldn’t be a crime either in England or anywhere else. I didn’t bring the fellow on board. And I haven’t kept him on board. If he chooses to stay after other folks go, that’s his look-out. I couldn’t be expected to hang about the Bay of Naples till he’s ready to go ashore. People who deliberately flirt in engine-rooms of sea-going yachts have darned well got to accept the consequences. And I could say a lot more for meself. Supposing I accused you and Sutherland of being stowaways? What about that?”

He glanced at her with positive ferocity in his gleaming eyes, and then suddenly he was the erring child again.

“I don’t care what you say,” Harriet persisted. “You’ve abducted Mr. Sutherland, and well you know it.”

“Now listen here, miss. Why can’t women ever stick to the point? Are you going to take on the job I offer ye or aren’t ye? Yes or no. There’s no compulsion.”

“It isn’t true!” Harriet burst out in the most surprising manner.

“What isn’t?”

“You! Me! This yacht! This night! Mr. Sutherland!” The fact was that she had suddenly awakened to the wonder of existence and could scarcely believe that she was not in a dream.

“It’s all a bit of a lark, isn’t it?” said Lord Furber in a lower voice, but brightening sympathetically.

“He understands,” thought she. “And there are moments when he isn’t bored—nor me, either.” And aloud she said, benevolently: “I’ll give my answer to-morrow morning—and not before.”

He hesitated, as if undecided whether to smack her or to kneel at her feet.

“All right. Let’s take a stroll on deck. It’s devilish hot down here.”

“Not hotter than I can stand,” said Harriet.

“I was thinking of meself.”

She rose, and impatiently he flung her wrap on her shoulders.

“You haven’t told me about Mrs. Bumption,” she said.

He grinned.

“Just had a rare fine example of Mrs. B. What d’ye think she wanted me for? It seems Mr. Sutherland has gone to bed in his cabin after ordering various drinks which they couldn’t supply. She told Bumption that I ought to know about it as she hadn’t received orders from me about Sutherland. Fact is, I never did give any orders about Sutherland, and it didn’t occur to me that he’d go to bed. I was waiting for him to ask for me and kick up a row. Bumption, for once in a way, defied his wife. Swore he wouldn’t disturb me for anything—after I’d said I wasn’t to be disturbed. So she decided to disturb me herself. Said she didn’t like strangers going to bed in this yacht without her getting instructions from me about them. Said she’d always supposed she was in charge of all domestic arrangements and if she wasn’t she’d prefer to give notice and Bumption would give notice, too. I had to soothe her. Such is my life on board, miss. Don’t ye think I need a lady-secretary?”

Miss Perkins laughed a long, quiet laugh, which died very slowly.

“So, Mr. Sutherland has gone to bed.” The laugh was resuscitated.

“That’s the news of the night.”

“Without seeing me again! What a shame!”

“Not so much in love with ye as ye thought,” said Lord Furber like lightning. There was malice in his tone. “Shaken ye up, his going to bed without consulting ye, miss!”

“And hasn’t it shaken you up? He’s a great man, Mr. Sutherland is, and I adore him. His going to bed is the most marvellous example of self-control I ever heard of. The poor man’s abducted, and he just goes quietly off to bed, while you’re waiting for him to come to you and make a row. Don’t you wish you’d never got him on board? Aren’t you afraid of him?”

“There’s only two people in this yacht that I’m afraid of.”

“Who are they?”

“Mrs. Bumption.”

“And——”

“Come along! They say it’s a grand night on deck.”

Harriet Perkins followed the wistful, naughty child, who was now gloomy and now gay, who wanted her and didn’t want her, and who was ready either to do her a violence or embrace her feet.

It was indeed a grand night. Moonshine on a smooth sea. Shore lights twinkling. The jagged shape of Capri on the port quarter. Astern the flank of huge Vesuvius no longer lighted by its electric string, rising dimly against the dark velvet sky. Vibration of twin propellers. Warm freshness of the Mediterranean evening, and yet not a breath of air—for the wind, the zephyr, was dead aft.

The pair walked side by side along the deck, past the long range of the deck-houses. The tramping of the navigating officers unseen on the bridge could be faintly heard.

Suddenly came a new sound through the open window of a cabin. Mr. Sutherland’s cabin. A steady, not unmusical snore. Mr. Sutherland’s snore. Mr. Sutherland, like many persons considering themselves to be the martyrised victims of insomnia, had been mistaken as to his entire wakefulness. There was something at once grotesque, comic and formidable about the noise of that snore from the nose of Harriet’s admirer. Harriet tried to master her sensations, failed, screamed, and finally yielded herself, not without hysteria, to something which she had thought would be laughter, but which seemed, even to her own ears, most curiously to resemble sobbing.