Читать книгу The Strange Boarders of Palace Crescent - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 8

Table of Contents

Roger Ferrison knocked timidly on the second door up the passage. Almost immediately he was bidden to enter. He advanced with some hesitation towards the couch where Flora Quayne was lying. She turned her head and welcomed him with a smile. There was no doubt whatever about her fatigue being genuine. There were dark lines under her eyes. The veins in the hand which drooped over the side of the couch almost to the carpet were painfully apparent.

“So you have come,” she murmured. “I had no message. I have not heard from you all day.”

He came up to the side of the couch and stood looking down at her.

“But, my dear Miss Quayne,” he protested, “I had no idea that you were not well. I was looking forward to seeing you at dinner this evening. I was astonished when I heard that you were ill.”

She tossed out her long slim leg pettishly. It was revealed to his unwilling perceptions that she was wearing the thinnest of fur-edged negligees over her night clothes.

“You should have known,” she complained. “You should at any rate have enquired. You know that if I am not exactly delicate I am nervous.”

“I am afraid I don’t know nearly so much about you as you seem to think,” he told her good-humouredly. “I left the house at half-past eight to earn my living. I returned at seven o’clock—barely time to have a good wash, put on my last clean collar and present myself for dinner. I looked across the room at once towards your table. I was sorry to find that you were not there.”

She looked down at her leg pensively. Perhaps she was admiring, as he ought to have been, the beautiful silk-clad outline.

“Well, you’re here now,” she said, with a sigh of content. “Will you sit quite close to me, please, and hold my hands, and will you let me feel your arms wrapped around me again? I seem to need strength to-night. And will you please presently read to me? I will show you what—some quite simple poetry.”

“But to-night,” he told her clumsily, although he moved his chair slightly nearer to the couch, “I cannot do any of these things. You will laugh at me after what I said the other night, but it is a fact, all the same. I am taking a young woman to the cinema.”

She seemed for a moment to become absolutely rigid. Her lips opened and closed again. Only her eyes held this.

“It is not in the least like last time,” he continued. “We shall take a bus as far as we can for a penny, we are going in the one-and-sixpenny places at the cinema, and we shall walk home. No programmes, no luxuries of any sort. The total agreed sum of expenditure is three shillings and twopence!”

“Who is the—person?” she asked.

“Some one who did me a good turn to-day,” he explained. “I have something I am anxious to sell. She is employed at Mallory’s and she helped me to get an audience with the buyer. He gave me an order—almost the first, certainly the best I have ever had.”

Her finger nails seemed to be digging into the side of the couch.

“That is how I always suffer,” she said. “I lie here and other people steal things from me. Who is she?”

“Her name is Audrey Packe,” he continued. “And believe me, she wouldn’t steal anything. She is perfectly honest.”

“I know her,” Flora Quayne reflected. “She is what Mrs. Dewar calls third class. She has one of the smallest rooms, no extras, and has to pay her account to the day or out she must go. So you have made friends while I have been lying here!”

“A very useful friend.”

“And you are taking her to the cinema?”

“If I could afford it,” he said stoutly, “I’d take her out to dinner. She deserves it.”

She raised her head. There was a note of anger in her tone.

“Then what are you doing here?” she demanded. “You have no right to come and talk to me if you are going—to take—”

The words seemed to die away on her lips. For a moment he was afraid she was going to be ill. He rose and moved towards the bell. Her white hand called him feverishly back.

“Wait,” she faltered.

He yielded to the appeal of her imploring gesture and resumed his seat. She lay perfectly still for several moments. When she spoke again her tone sounded perfectly natural.

“I am being foolish,” she confessed. “It is one of my bad days. How much time have you?”

“Five minutes,” he declared ruthlessly.

She raised herself on the couch.

“Put your arm around my back,” she begged. “Your other hand under my knees—you know how. Now, carry me round the room. Don’t say a word. Just carry me round and bring me back again.”

He obeyed. The task was no more than carrying his empty kit bag, yet he found himself with his teeth clenched as he set her down again.

“I like that,” she said simply. “You are the strongest man who has ever carried me. Pour me out some more coffee, please.”

He did as she asked. He noticed that there was a second cup.

“Help yourself, if you have time,” she invited. “I ordered coffee in here. I thought you might be able to stay.”

“I’d like some,” he told her.

“Please help yourself.”

She watched him anxiously. Her hand sought his and he held it almost tenderly.

“There’s something in your eyes that frightens me to-night,” she said. “You are pitying me. I will not be pitied. Do you hear? I say—I will not be pitied.”

“I was doing nothing of the sort,” he denied halfheartedly.

“You think I am a poor, crippled, disabled creature,” she said, her bosom rising and falling quickly. “I am not. Give me your hand.”

He yielded it at once.

“Lean over,” she insisted, guiding his hand to her arm. “You feel that—it is a woman’s arm?”

“Of course it is,” he assented. “I never doubted it.”

She laid his hand upon her leg.

“That is, at any rate, a girl’s leg,” she pointed out. “There are no protruding bones—or anything of that sort. It is softer than anything you have ever touched before? Now the other one. No, I insist.”

The colour mounted to his forehead. He felt his hand shaking.

“My dear—”

“Be quiet! Do as I tell you. Leave your hand in mine. You feel my knee? It is like other people’s knees, isn’t it? My legs. Is there any difference?”

“Of course there’s not.”

“Come here! My ribs. There’s flesh on them, isn’t there? My bosoms—they’re the bosoms of a child, perhaps. That’s fashionable nowadays! They’re there all right, though. Then what is the matter with me?” she cried, suddenly flinging his hand away and stretching out her own arms. “What is the matter with me, Roger Ferrison? Why do you pity me? Because I limp? It was not my fault. It was the cruelty of others.”

The breathing seemed to die away within her. Feelings such as he had never dreamed of had swept over him. He felt the moisture in his own eyes as he looked into hers.

“My dear,” he assured her, “you are all wrong. I am a poor clumsy fellow who’s lived in the backwoods. I don’t know how to express myself but I think you are beautiful. If you belonged to me—if you were my sister—”

“Or wife,” she interrupted.

“My wife—anything,” he went on, “I should be proud of you. I should not pity you at all. I cannot say more than that.”

“Then why don’t you feel more for me?” she demanded.

“My God!” he cried. “I’ve not known you a week!”

“You have not known that little cat you are taking out to the eighteen-penny cinema for twenty-four hours!”

“You are not to be compared,” he said soothingly. “She did me a good turn. Heavens, it isn’t much I am doing for her in recompense, is it?”

“But you want to take her,” she urged. “I should like you to be thinking of nothing but me—me—me—all the time. I should like you to have asked to have had your dinner outside my room and listened, in case there was anything I wanted. I should like you to have asked to sleep there on my mat! ... Poor darling, are you so frightened of me? You need not be.”

She seemed to crumple up again—gracefully and humanly this time, so that he had no fears. He sat by her side in silence, leaving his hand in hers. Anything was better than another outburst. The minutes ticked away. There came a knock at the door. To Roger the sound was like music.

“Come in!” he invited.

It was Mrs. Dewar who entered. She closed the door immediately behind her.

“I must apologise for hurrying you, Mr. Ferrison,” she said, “but your partner wishes to speak to you on the telephone and Miss Packe is waiting for you.”

He rose to his feet, ignoring the feverish grip of those hot fingers.

“I’m sorry,” he said mendaciously. “I think that Miss Quayne has fallen asleep. I didn’t like to disturb her. She seems to be very tired. Perhaps you will know what is best to be done.”

He crossed the room, tiptoeing his way clumsily across the thick carpet. There came no sound from the figure on the couch. He slipped past Mrs. Dewar and closed the door into the passage and heard the green baize door swing to behind him with a sense of immeasurable relief. In the hall Audrey Packe was waiting, after he had finished telephoning.

“Forgive me,” he cried eagerly. “No, I have my key. Let’s go off at once. I very seldom wear a hat—mine isn’t fit to look at, anyway.”

He strode down the hall. She looked up at him in amazement.

“You’ve not been committing a murder or anything, have you?” she asked.

“I have been doing and saying everything that was stupid and clumsy, I think,” he confessed, as he gulped down a long breath of the fresh air. “Anyway, we’re off now. I say, I’m awfully sorry to have kept you waiting.”

“You are fined a penny,” she told him gaily. “I don’t want to miss the start of the film and I’m not going to arrive breathless. The busses are empty this hour of the evening and we should be up there in no time.”

Roger Ferrison grinned. A sense of humour which had lain dormant in the backwoods of Canada was beginning to struggle up into the light.

“The girl I took out last week,” he complained, “stood me a good deal more than a penny bus.”

Behind them, as they scrambled laughing on to their omnibus, events in the lounge of the Palace Crescent Boarding House shaped themselves very much as usual. After a certain amount of desultory conversation, the guests who were going out made their way to their rooms and descended presently, waving casual good nights as they passed towards the front door. Before taking their departure, however, each one paid a visit to the dark alcove adjoining the cloakroom at the corner of the lounge and helped themselves to their latchkeys. First of all came Reginald Barstowe, neatly attired for the evening, as usual, and following him Maurice Bernascon, less trim but more imposing, in his heavy overcoat and slouch hat; Mr. Padgham, a dashing middle-aged man with something of the Victorian dandy in his black moustaches and sideways tilt of the hat, followed a few minutes later. After that there was a lull. Miss Susannah and Miss Amelia Clewes, with Mrs. Padgham and a fourth, settled down to bridge, and Freda Medlincott, having rung up two or three acquaintances and being offered no agreeable diversion, yawned and took her book up to bed. Mr. Luke, about ten minutes later, with the air of one who had suddenly made up his mind, rose to his feet, fetched his coat and hat from the cloakroom, secured his latchkey and left the house. An hour or so later, the bridge party having broken up and such of the other guests as had lingered in the lounge having made their way upstairs, Joseph, according to custom, made his appearance, dragged the hall table into the lounge, placed upon it a jug of water, half a dozen tumblers, two syphons of soda water and three bottles of whisky with labels attached on which were written the names of the fortunate owners. After that the lights were turned out and Palace Crescent indulged in its first spell of sleep.