Читать книгу The Strange Vanguard - Arnold Bennett - Страница 13

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Mr. Sutherland, in his scarlet dressing-gown over white pyjamas, framed by an oblong of light in the doorway of the cabin, looked like the devil. He also felt like the devil (not being yet entirely awake). He saw the hand of some sinister male on Harriet’s shoulder; for Lord Furber, fearing that Harriet in reaction, from the stress of the scene below, had lost control of her feminine nerves, had essayed to steady her by a firm masculine touch.

The spectacle presented itself to Mr. Sutherland in such a manner as to raise instincts which, unsuspected by himself, had descended to him through perhaps hundreds of years of ancestry. Mr. Sutherland was transported by the misunderstood spectacle back into the age of chivalry.

All of a sudden he became uplifted, wildly happy, superbly reckless, in the overwhelming consciousness of a great mission in life. In the thousandth part of a second he recalled his athletic youth, and how he used to keep fit for rowing by daily bouts with the gloves against a hanging football or a fellow-oarsman. He jumped forward and, clenching his fists, hit Lord Furber violently under the point of the chin. Lord Furber, quite unprepared for the onset, was not employing his feet properly; he had the wrong stance, and he fell backwards; his head caught the end of a brass belaying-pin which transfixed the yacht’s rail, and the next moment he lay a crumpled, moveless object on the deck, in the full light from Mr. Sutherland’s cabin.

“He loves me!” thought Harriet Perkins, triumphantly reassured. “He may have gone to bed and to sleep without asking my permission, but he loves me and he is magnificent.” And she, too, was uplifted and wildly happy.

For a space both of them forgot Lord Furber.

“What was the fellow trying to do?” Septimius demanded, breathing rather hard.

“Nothing,” said Harriet feebly.

“But you screamed and he had his hand on you!” Septimius drew his dressing-gown about him.

“I—I think he must have thought I was going to faint or something, and he wanted to soothe me.”

“You’re sure you aren’t——”

“Quite, thanks. But I’m very much obliged to you, all the same.”

She was giving another brief sound between a laugh and a cry, but stopped herself.

“But—but,” exclaimed Septimius, bending down a little and coldly gazing at his victim. “Surely this isn’t Lord Furber? This can’t be Lord Furber?”

“Yes, it is.”

“What’s he doing on board this yacht.”

“It’s his yacht,” Harriet answered. “Only that! It isn’t Count Veruda’s yacht at all. It’s Lord Furber’s!”

“All this seems to me somewhat unusual,” observed Septimius placidly. The instincts of the primitive age were withdrawing again into his subconscious self, and he was ceasing to be a knightly defender of dames.

“Now, for goodness’ sake, please don’t be calm,” said Harriet sharply. “Something must be done. If you’ve killed him——!”

“If I’ve killed him, of course, there may be a certain amount of trouble,” replied Septimius. He spoke grimly, not without a mild satisfaction. It occurred to him that his right arm had been actuated partly by an obscure, unrealized desire to revenge himself, upon anybody who chanced to be about, for having been abducted in the yacht.

The deck was silent. Not an officer, not a seaman in sight. Not a sound save the faint reverberation of footsteps on the bridge above. The woman’s scream, the man’s fall, had not been heard. The ends of the deck were dark. Only in the middle thereof was the sheet of light from Mr. Sutherland’s cabin crudely displaying the stricken baron and a bending figure on either side of him. The faces of the two watchers were as pale as that of the victim.

“Anyway, I seem to have knocked him out for the time being. I’d no idea I could do it. But he’s breathing.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Why did you scream?”

“It was your funny snoring.”

“I never snore,” Septimius protested frigidly.

“Don’t you think you’d better do something, Mr. Sutherland?”

“Yes. But what am I to do? I haven’t the least idea. He’ll come round soon. Perhaps we’d better put him on my bed. Will you take his legs?”

In a moment, the body of Lord Furber was lying on Mr. Sutherland’s disordered bed. Neither Septimius nor Harriet noticed a faint trail of red spots on the deck and the floor of the cabin.

“You run and fetch someone,” Mr. Sutherland suggested.

Harriet, herself a little breathless, disappeared to obey. Septimius looked inquiringly at the white, senseless countenance and inert hands. It seemed to him that now he was on the very edge of understanding why he and his luggage had been carried off in the yacht. The name of Count Veruda conveyed naught to him, but the name of Furber, a terrific adventurer in the City of finance, inspired him with all sorts of fearsome notions. Hearing quick footsteps on the deck, he shut and bolted the cabin-door.

“One minute,” he called out when Harriet tried and failed to open the door. “One moment, if you please.”

He had taken off the red dressing-gown, and was summarily putting on a suit over the pyjamas. The fact was that he could not bear any longer to be seen in a dressing-gown. His self-consciousness was stronger than his humanity. The baron might expire from neglect, but Mr. Sutherland’s modesty must be preserved from further outrage. He hastily tied a muffler round his neck and opened the door, praying that he did not look too much like a burglar or a worse criminal.

Bumption, the chief steward, stout and impassive, followed Miss Perkins into the cabin.

“Lord Furber has apparently had a fall and fainted,” Mr. Sutherland blandly explained.

Bumption glanced at his master and instantly his fat cheek blanched. A spot of blood was showing on the pillow to the left of the baron’s head, and it was spreading, spreading. Bumption ran away. In a few moments, Mrs. Bumption sourly appeared. Bumption stood in the doorway behind her. Mrs. Bumption weighed as much as any two other persons present. Her ageing features had for years past been fixed in a permanent expression of hostility to all mankind and all mundane phenomena, for owing to a slothful liver she flourished on grievances, which she would create faster than kind fate could destroy. Even Bumption’s perverse passion for her was a grievance.

“What’s this, miss? What is this, sir?” she asked.

“His lordship’s had a fall. He fell on the back of his head. Cut himself on something.” This from a laconic Septimius.

“His lordship must have fallen on his chin too,” said Mrs. Bumption acidly.

The baron’s chin showed an excrescence, which seemed magically to grow larger and darker every second. Mrs. Bumption, who had resource, took a spent match from the ash-tray by the bedside and with it tickled the baron’s nostrils. The baron unclosed his eyes and beheld Mrs. Bumption’s stupendous bust heaving above him.

“Good Lord!” he murmured faintly, and closed his eyes again.