Читать книгу The Black Cabinet - Dora Amy Elles - Страница 4

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Rose and Chloe shared a bed-sitting room. They had lived together for two years—ever since Chloe left school. And next month Rose was going to Assam with Edward Anderson. Chloe tried not to think too much about next month. She was very fond of Rose, and Maxton wouldn’t be a bit the same without her.

She saw Rose off to the station, and then bicycled up the High Street, past Miss Allardyce’s house, and out upon the Ranbourne road.

It was a grey afternoon, but windless. The Ranbourne road ran straight and level for a couple of miles before it began to dip and turn. On a very fine, clear day you could imagine that the dazzle of blue far away at the edge of the sky was the sea; quite certainly when the wind was from the south-west you could smell sea-weed and feel a hint of salt upon your lips. The country fell away to the marshes, and then rose again where Luttrell met the sea. Ranbourne lay away on the other side. Chloe would have liked going to Ranbourne better if it had lain seawards. She had not really seen the sea since she was eight years old.

Chloe began to think what she should do when Rose was gone.

“If I’d only been to a proper school instead of a genteel survival like the poor old Tank’s, there’d be more chance. As it is, I can sew and I can do housework; that’s about all. Well, something’ll turn up, I suppose. You never know what’s waiting for you round the next corner, so why worry?”

She came to a corner then and there, a corner well sign-posted, with an arm that read “To Ranbourne.” As she swung round it she heard voices—or, to be strictly accurate, a voice—and saw, a dozen yards down the slope, a stranded car with an old lady in it. The voice was the old lady’s voice. As Chloe drew nearer she observed that there was a chauffeur with his head buried in the bonnet of the car. The old lady was very angry with him. She wore an immense fur coat, and clasped a very small Pekinese dog. Whenever she paused to take breath the Pekinese gave a short, angry bark which subsided to a snarl as soon as his mistress resumed.

Chloe had slackened pace a little. She was just passing the car, when the old lady addressed her:

“You—yes, you on the bicycle—come here!”

The Pekinese yapped. Chloe got off her bicycle, and said, “Why?”

“Come here!” repeated the old lady.

The Pekinese yapped again. Chloe came up to the car, hoping that she would never develop a red face, a peacock voice, or a passion for Pekinese dogs.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

It was the chauffeur who answered her question. He lifted his head, cast a restrained glance in her direction, and said briefly:

“Ignition.”

“Disgraceful carelessness!” said the old lady—“disgraceful! It’s all part and parcel of this modern way of scamping everything. No thoroughness. No attention to detail. A smattering of this and a smattering of that. That’s your modern education—just putting ideas into the heads of the lower classes instead of teaching them to order themselves lowly and reverently to all their betters like the Catechism says. Bolsheviks, the whole lot of them! Bolsheviks, and Communists, and upstarts, instead of decent, respectable working folk that learnt a trade and learnt it well, and weren’t too fine to touch their caps when they met you, or to drop a curtsey if it was a woman. No one’s got any manners nowadays!”

“No, they don’t seem to have,” said Chloe sweetly. She wasn’t looking at the chauffeur, but she was aware of a hurried movement on his part. It occurred to her afterwards that he had turned his head aside to hide a grin.

“No manners at all!” said the old lady severely. “Mannerless and incompetent—that’s the present generation. Where we shall all be in fifty years’ time, goodness knows.”

“I know,” said Chloe. “But what about now?”

The old lady fixed her with a pair of small, pale blue eyes.

“Do you know Ranbourne?” she inquired.

“I’m going there—don’t do that!” The last words were addressed to the Pekinese who had just made a vicious snap at her hand.

“Darling angel Toto mustn’t bite,” said the old lady in quite a different voice. One might almost have said that she cooed the words. “Darling angel Toto shall have his tea if he’s a real angel boy, he shall.” She resumed normal speech, and once more addressed Chloe:

“Owing to the chauffeur’s incompetence I have already been stranded here for at least a quarter of an hour.” She consulted a jewelled watch. “It is three o’clock, and if Toto doesn’t get his tea and biscuit at three, he screams—doesn’t ums, a darling angel? He knows the time as well, and once three o’clock has struck, he knows it’s time for his tea, and he screams till he gets it—a precious. And we ought to have been at Ranbourne at least ten minutes ago.”

At this moment Toto’s snarl ran rapidly up the scale and merged into an undoubted scream. The old lady gazed at him with fond pride. Chloe had a fleeting impression of the chauffeur as a large, fair, young man who looked as if he would like to murder Toto. She hoped it was only Toto.

“There!” said the old lady as scream succeeded scream. “He does want his tea—a precious, a clever, darling angel boy.”

Chloe caught the chauffeur’s eye. She looked away again instantly. The eye was an angry one, but behind the anger there had certainly been a twinkle.

“Well, I don’t see what we can do about it,” she said. “I can take a message if you like—I’m going to Ranbourne.”

“Not a message,” said the old lady. “Let Mother speak, a darling angel”—this to Toto. “Not a message, but Toto himself. Take him with you, and ask them to let him have his tea at once—China tea, half milk; and a Marie biscuit; and just one teeny lump of sugar in the tea.”

Chloe began to shake with inward laughter. She bit the corners of her lips to keep them steady.

“Do you mean bicycle with him?”

“Oh, no! Certainly not! How could you think of such a thing? My precious Toto! No, no, you must walk your bicycle of course, and have Toto in the basket in front with his own eiderdown—my precious, darling angel, do hush, just for a minute.”

Chloe felt that, if she stood there any longer, she would say or do something outrageous. She therefore murmured, “All right,” and submitted to endless instructions as to the proper preparation of Toto’s tea, whilst the chauffeur lined her bicycle basket with a purple satin eiderdown. Toto, snarling and screaming, was tucked in and secured with a strap.

“Tell Lady Gresson that I rely on her,” said the old lady. “She’s expecting me—Mrs. Merston Howard. Tell her that I rely on her, and that the tea must be freshly made, and China; not Indian—on no account Indian.”

Chloe had gone about half a dozen yards, when Mrs. Howard called her back.

“Foster, go after her. Tell her to come here. She can back her bicycle. No, a message won’t do.” Then, as Chloe reluctantly backed, “Tell Lady Gresson that a Petit Beurre biscuit will do if she hasn’t a Marie—but Toto likes Maries better. And oh, tell her, on no account more than one lump of sugar—and not a large one.”

Chloe quickened her pace, and breathed more freely when she had turned another corner. As soon as she was out of sight she gave Toto a smart slap, mounted her bicycle, and rode on briskly. Toto, after one enraged yelp, fixed her with green, malignant eyes, and subsided.