Читать книгу Captains of Souls - Edgar Wallace - Страница 7

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"CHILDREN," said Mrs. Colebrook, peering into the saucepan that bubbled and splashed and steamed on the kitchen fire, "are a great responsibility...especially in this neighbourhood where, as you might say, there is nothing but raffle." Sometime in her youth, it is probable that Mrs. Colebrook had to choose between 'rabble' and 'riff-raff' and had found a compromise. "That man Starker who lives up the street, number 39 I think it is...no maybe it's 37—it is the house before the sweep's. Well, I did think he was all right; geraniums in his window, too, and canaries. A very homely man, wouldn't say boo to a goose. He got nine months this morning."

Ambrose Sault, sitting in a wooden chair which was wedged tightly between the kitchen table and the dresser, drummed his fingers absently upon the polished cloth table-cover and nodded. His dark sallow face wore an expression of strained interest. "Evie...well, I'm worried about Evie. She sits and broods—there's no other word for it—by the hour, and she used to be such a bright, cheerful girl. I wonder sometimes if it is through her working at the drug-stores. Being attached to medicines in a manner of speaking, you're bound to hear awful stories...people's insides and all that sort of thing. It is depressing for a young girl. Christina says she talks in her sleep and moans and tosses about. It can't be over a young man, or she'd bring him home. I asked her the other day—I think a girl's best friend is her mother—and all I got was, 'Oh, shut up, mother'. In my young days I wouldn't have dared to speak to my mother like that, but girls have changed. They want to go to business, cashiering and typewriting and such nonsense. I went out to service when I was sixteen and was first parlourmaid before I was twenty. But talk to these girls about going into domestic service and they laugh at you."

A silence followed which Sault felt it was his duty to break. "I suppose they do. Life is very hard on women, even the most favoured of women. I hardly blame them for getting whatever happiness they can."

"Happiness!" scoffed Mrs. Colebrook, shifting the saucepan to the hob, "it all depends on what you call 'happiness.' I don't see much happiness in standing in a draughty shop taking money all day and adding up figures and stamping bills! Besides, look at the temptation. She meets all kinds of people..."

"I think I'll go upstairs to my room, Mrs. Colebrook. I want to do a little work."

"You're a worker," said Mrs. Colebrook admiringly. "I'll call you when supper is ready."

"May I walk in to see Christina?"

He asked permission in the same words every night and received the same answer. "Of course you can; you need never ask, Mr. Sault. She'll be glad to see you."

At the head of the narrow stairway Sault knocked on a door and a cheerful voice bade him come in. It was a small room containing two beds. That which was nearest the window was occupied by a girl whose pallor was made more strangely apparent by a mop of bright red hair. Over her head, and hooked to the wall, was a kerosene lamp of unusual design and brilliance. She had been reading and one white hand lay over the open page of a book by her side. Sault looked up at the lamp, touched the button that controlled the light and peered into the flame. "Working all right?"

"Fine," she said enthusiastically. "You're a brick, Ambrose, to make it. I had no idea you could do anything like that. Mother won't touch it, she thinks it will explode."

"It can't explode," he said, shaking his head. "These vapour gas lamps are safe, unless you fool with them. Have it put outside the door in the morning and I'll fill it. Well, where have you been today, Christina?"

She showed her small white teeth in a smile. "To Etruria," she said solemnly. "It is the country that was old when Rome was young. I went on an exploring expedition. We left Croydon Aerodrome by aeroplane and stayed overnight in Paris. My fiance is a French marquess, and we stayed at his place in the Avenue Kleber. The next morning we went by special train to Rome. I visited the Coliseum by car and saw the temples and the ruins. I spent another day at the Vatican and St. Peters and saw the Pope. Then we went on to Volsinii and Tarquinii and I found a wonderful old tomb full of glorious Etruscan ware. Plates and amphoras and vases. They must have been worth millions. There we met a magician. He lived in an old ruined house on the side of the hill. He had a flock of goats and gave us milk. It was magic milk for suddenly we found ourselves in the midst of an enormous marble city full of beautiful men and women in togas and wonderful robes. The streets were filled with rich chariots drawn by little horses. The chariots shone like gold and were covered with figures of lions and hunters and trees and scrolls...wonderful! And the gardens! They were beautiful. Flowers of every kind, heliotrope, and roses, and big white trumpet lilies, and the marble houses were covered with wisteria...oh, dear!"

"Etruria?" repeated Sault thoughtfully. "Older than Rome? Of course, there must have been people before the Romans, the sort of ancient Britons of Rome..."

Her eyes, fixed on his, were gleaming with merriment. "Of course. I told you about the marvellous trip I had to China? When I was the lovely concubine of Yang-Kuei-Fee? And how the eunuchs strangled me? That was long after Rome, but China was two thousand years old then."

"I remember," he said soberly, "you went to China once before then..."

His glance fell on the pages of the book, and he picked it up, turning its meaningless leaves. "It is all about Etruria," she said. "Evie borrowed it from the store. They have a circulating library at the store. Have you seen Evie?"

He shook his head. "Not for weeks," he said. "I am usually in my room when she comes home." Christina Colebrook, invalid and visionary, puckered her smooth brows into a frown. She had emerged from her world of dreams and make- belief and was facing the ugliness of life that eddied about her bed. "Evie is changed quite a lot," she said. "She is quieter and dresses more carefully. Not in the way you would notice. She always had good taste, but especially in the way of underclothes. All girls adore swagger underclothes. They live in dread that one day they will be knocked down by a motor-bus and taken in hospital wearing a shabby camisole! But Evie...she's collecting all sorts of things. You might think she was getting together a trousseau. Has she ever spoken to you about anybody called 'Ronnie'?"

"No—she never speaks to me." said Ambrose.

"You know nobody called 'Ronnie'?" He signified his ignorance. At the moment he did not associate the name.

"She talks in her sleep." Christina went on slowly, "and she's spoken that name lots of times. I haven't told mother; what would be the good with her heart as it is? 'Ronnie' is the man who is worrying her. I think she is in love with him or what she thinks is love. And he is somebody in a good station of life because once she called out in the middle of the night. 'Ronnie, take me in your car.'"

Sault was silent. This was the first time Christina had ever spoken to him about the girl.

"There is only one thing that can happen," said she wisely, "and that would break mother's heart. Mother has very narrow views. The people of our class have. I should feel that way myself if I hadn't seen the world," she patted the book by her side. "Perhaps mother's view is right. She is respectable and the old Roman Emperor Constantine, when he classified the nobility, made the 'respectable' much superior to the 'honourable'."

"What do you mean...about Evie?"

"I mean that she'll come to me one night and tell me that she is in trouble. And then I shall have to get mother into a philosophical mood and try to make her see that it is better for a child to be illegitimate than not to be born at all."

"Good gracious!" said Ambrose, startled. "But it may be...just a friendship."

"Rats!" said Christina contemptuously. "Friendships between attractive shop-girls and well-to-do young men! I've heard about 'em—platonic. Have you ever heard of Archianassa? She was Plato's mistress. He didn't even practice the kind of love that is named after him. Evie is a good girl and has really fine principles. I shock her awfully at times; I wish I didn't. I don't mean I wish I didn't say things that make her shocked, but that she wouldn't be shocked at all. You have to have a funny kink in your mind before you take offence at the woman and man facts. If you blush easily, you fall easily. I wish to God Evie wasn't so pretty. And she's a dear, too, Ambrose. She has great schemes for getting me away to a country where my peculiar ailment will dissolve under uninterrupted sunlight. Poor darling. It would be better if she thought more of her own dangerous sickness..."

"Ronald Morelle," said Ambrose suddenly, "but it wouldn't be he."

"Who is Ronald Morelle?"

"He is the only Ronald I know. I don't even know him. He's a friend of a...a friend of mine."

"Rich—where does he live?"

"In Knightsbridge somewhere."

Christina whistled. "Glory be! Evie's shop is in Knightsbridge!"

At eleven o'clock that night Evie Colebrook came into the room, and, as she stooped over the bed to kiss her sister, Christina saw something. "You've been crying, Evie."

Evie turned away quickly and began to unfasten her skirt. "I...I twisted my ankle...slipped off the sidewalk...I was a baby to cry!"

Christina watched her as she undressed rapidly. "You haven't said your prayers, Evie."

"Damn my prayers!" There was a little choke at the end. "Put out the light, Christina, I'm awfully tired."

Christina reached up for the dangling chain that Ambrose Sault had fixed to the lamp, but she did not immediately pull it. "Mr. Sault was talking about people he knew tonight," she said carelessly. "Have you ever heard of a man called Ronald Morelle?"

There was no answer, then..."Good night, Christina." Christina pulled the chain and the light went out.