Читать книгу Samuel Boyd of Catchpole Square: A Mystery - Farjeon Benjamin Leopold - Страница 5

In the course of the next few days the weather exhibited its vagaries in a more than usually astonishing fashion. On the night of the 1st of March the sobbing and the moaning of the wind continued till early morning, when it pleased the air to become mild and balmy, almost promising the advent of spring. A few bold buds awoke and peeped out of their little brown beds, and over the atmosphere hung a hazy veil of dim, delicious sapphire. On the following day this promise was destroyed, and another change took place; and on the night of the 5th a fog which had been overlooked in the early winter took its revenge for the neglect by enveloping the City of Unrest in a mist so dense that Mrs. Pond, in a conversation with Mrs. Applebee the next day was driven to the use of a familiar illustration.

"If you'll believe me, Mrs. Applebee," she said, "it was that thick you could have cut it with a knife. I could hardly see my hand before me."

"But what took you out in it, my dear?" inquired Mrs. Applebee.

"I couldn't help thinking of Pond," replied Mrs. Pond, a young woman of two and twenty, whose wifely experiences were tame in comparison with those of Mrs. Applebee, the mother of eight, "trapesing up and down in the cold while I was setting before a blazing fire as comfortable as you please. 'A cup of hot coffee 'll put life in him,' says I to myself, and I was soon on my way outside with a bottleful tucked under my cloak. It took me a good hour to get to him."

"And by that time the coffee was cold," Mrs. Applebee remarked.

"No, it was just lukewarm. Thinking of Pond I cuddled it close; but I don't mind confessing I was almost giving him up."

"How did you find him at last, my dear?"

"I'll tell you a secret," said the young wife, with a little blush. Mrs. Applebee, who dearly loved a secret or anything mysterious, pricked up her ears. "When Pond was put on the night beat we agreed upon a signal. It was his idea; he's that clever you wouldn't believe."

"May it ever continue," ejaculated Mrs. Applebee.

"What?"

"Your opinion of him."

"Oh, it will," said Mrs. Pond, nodding her head confidently. "What Pond thinks of is a bird-call, and he buys two, and gives me one. 'If it should chance to happen,' says Pond, 'that you're my way-say about ten o'clock-when I'm on duty, just you give a soft blow. When I hear it out comes my bird-call, and I give a soft blow. Only one, Polly, because it might be noticed and against the regulations.' It does often chance to happen that I'm Pond's way on a dark night," added Mrs. Pond, with a sly look, "and I give a soft blow and he gives another. He says it's like company when he hears it, and he resooms his tread with a light heart. As for me, I go home as happy as happy can be. Thankful I was last night when Pond answered my call, and thankful he was for the coffee. 'Polly,' he says, 'you're a angel.'"

"How many kisses did he give you, my dear?"

"Oh, Mrs. Applebee," said Mrs. Pond, archly, "against the regulations, you know."

"I've heard of it being done," said Mrs. Applebee, pensively, "even by policemen on night duty. It was a dreadful night for our men to be out, but duty's duty and the pay's regular. It's a good thing you got home safe. Is your room let yet?"

"No, the bill's still in the window. Twenty-five pounds is a lot to pay for a house, but Pond says, 'Don't you fret, Polly; we'll soon get a lodger, and there's half the rent paid.' I must run home now in case he wakes up."

Mrs. Applebee's lord and master was at that moment in his bed, dreaming of fogs and shadows. Mrs. Pond's lord and master was also enjoying repose. They lived in adjoining streets, and their husbands being in the Force and at present on the night beat, it was their habit to foregather for a social gossip while their good men were in the arms of Morpheus.

There had been forewarnings of this visitation of the heaviest fog of the season. When people woke up on the morning of March 5th they thought it was the middle of the night. The comfortable illusion being dispelled by a consultation of watches and clocks they found that the sky was not visible, and that they could not distinguish the houses on the opposite side of the way. They crawled to their places of business in a discontented frame of mind, through a white blinding mist which made them uncertain of the direction they were taking. To add to their perplexities the trams and omnibuses were not running, and jubilant cabmen, bent (paradoxically) on making hay while the sun shines, walked at their horses' heads, holding the bridles, and demanded gold instead of silver for taking a fare anywhere. These creeping shadows, the muffled cries that fell upon the ear, and the lighted links which seemed to move through space without the aid of hands, were more like a scene in the infernal regions than a representation of the anxious, throbbing life of our modern Babylon.

As the day wore on the fog lifted a little, but at night it became worse. Theatrical managers were sad and low-spirited, for their patrons were not disposed to leave their firesides in such weather, and the actors performed their ghostly parts to indistinct and scanty audiences, upon whom the brightest flashes of comedy fell with depressing effect. The fairies in the pantomimes which were still running were shorn of bright fancies, and even the bad spirits derived no pleasure from the perpetration of evil deeds. The few monomaniacs who believed that the end of the world was coming, were on their knees, waiting for the blast of Michael's trumpet. Topers standing at the bars of their favourite publichouses drank their liquor with a distinct absence of conviviality, and the verbal and visual inanities between barmaids and their admirers were shorn of that vacuous vivacity which generally distinguishes the intercourse of those parties. Dejection and dulness reigned in all the waking world.

In no part of the city were matters quite so bad as in the vicinity of Catchpole Square, North district, where, an hour after midnight, Constable Pond was cautiously feeling his way towards the border-line of his beat, hoping there to meet with human companionship in the person of Constable Applebee, who, himself animated by a similar hope in respect of Constable Pond, was advancing from an opposite direction. On this miserable night one crumb of comfort-oh, but it was more than a crumb; it might have been called a whole loaf-had fallen to the share of Constable Pond. He had not thought it likely that his wife would have ventured from the house, nor, lonely as he was, did he wish it; but when, an hour or so before midnight, he heard the familiar bird-call, he joyfully responded.

"Why, Polly, Polly!" he exclaimed, passing his arm around her. "My senses don't deceive me, do they?"

"I hope they don't," said Polly, drawing his arm tighter. "You wouldn't do this to another woman, I'm sure of that."

"You may be, Polly, you may be. Not to Queen Victoria herself with her gold crown on. Well, this is a surprise! Such a surprise, Polly, as makes up for all."

He gave her a great hug. He did not consider the regulations-not he!

"I'm afraid it's cold," said Polly, putting the bottle of coffee into his hand, and paying good interest for the hug. "It was boiling hot when I started."

"What a brick you are!" said Constable Pond, extracting the cork with his teeth, and applying himself to the refreshment. "It's ever so much better than three-star. Here, take a pull yourself." She did. "Polly, you're a angel!"

She laughed, but did not dispute it, and they remained a short time in fond dalliance. A strange hour for Cupid's pranks, but that urchin has no conscience. Polly proposed to walk the beat with her husband all through the night, but this was such an alarming infringement of the regulations that he would not listen to it. So he escorted her to the end of his beat, and would have escorted her farther, but she would not listen to that.

"Can you find your way home?" he asked, in doubt.

"Blindfold," she answered promptly.

"You may as well have the empty bottle," he said. "Hold it by the neck, and if anybody comes up to you give him a crack on the head with it. Another kiss, Polly!"

As she walked away she blew on her bird-call every few yards, to which her husband did not fail to respond; and if desolation did not fall upon him when he could hear it no longer it was because of the impression which Polly's thoughtful love had produced upon him. "Good little woman," he said. "A regular trump, that's what she is." But a couple of hours' loneliness sent his spirits down again, and now he was seeking his brother-constable Applebee to cheer him up with the friendly word. With the advance of the night the fog continued to deepen, and he got into a state of muddle as to his whereabouts. His progress was painfully slow. The white mist blinded and deceived him; his footsteps were noiseless; and but for the striking of the hour from a neighbouring church he might reasonably have fancied that he was traversing a city of the dead.

"Saint Michael's Church," he soliloquised, with a feeling of relief. "I didn't hear it when it struck last. Where could I have been-and where am I now? It can't be fur off, though whether it's to the right of me or the left of me, or before me or behind me, I'll be hanged if I can tell. What street am I in-Riley Street or Silver Street? If it's Riley Street I ought to come upon Applebee in a minute or two, unless he's at the other end of the beat. If it's Silver Street I'll have to tack."

That he should be puzzled was not to be wondered at, for the streets he named were so precisely alike in every detail and feature that they might have been turned out of one mould. Their frontage was the same, their height was the same, their depth was the same, and each had the same number of rooms of exactly the same shape and dimensions, and the same number of chimney pots placed in exactly the same positions. When this mathematical demon of architecture receives its death-blow a joy will be added to existence.

While Constable Pond stood debating whether to tack or creep straight on he saw in the distance what might be likened to a dead star-the misty glimmering of a despondent light; and on the chance of its indicating the presence of Constable Applebee he boldly challenged it.

"Hallo, there!" he cried.

"Hallo, there!" came the echoing answer.

There was little life in their voices; they seemed to linger, as though they had not sufficient power to effectually pierce the thick air.

"Is that you, Applebee?"

"Yes, it's me. Is it Pond?"

"Yes."

"Your voice sounds strange. Come slow."

Each advancing with caution, a friendly grasp of hands presently united them.