Читать книгу The Salt Of The Earth - Fred M. White - Страница 4

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At last all the guests were gone, the frivolous silken rustles had died away, the mass of inane femininity had departed. Nothing remained but a subtle suggestion of effete perfumes, and the acrid insinuation of tobacco smoke. The flowers were struggling now to come into their kingdom. A cluster of narcissus in an old Ming bowl began to assert itself. With an impatient sigh Adela pulled back the curtains, and flung open the long French windows leading to the lawn. She stood drinking in the fragrance of the evening. The breath of the spring night touched her cheek caressingly. The blackbird in retrospective mood was still whistling softly on his porch. It was practically dark, and a sense of desolation swept over Adela as she turned back into the room again.

"What a fool I am!" she soliloquised. "All the more so, because I am not devoid of intellect like most of the people who have just left. I wonder what they would say if they knew, if they realised that I have actually come to the end of my tether, and have not a five-pound note in the world to call my own. I wonder if this is the end of it? Perhaps the funds are exhausted, for it is scarcely likely that those American people would have written intimating that it was useless to apply to them for further money, and that, in future, Mr. Burton would communicate with me himself. Is it possible that some rich crank has been playing a joke upon me? No, that is hardly credible. I don't think that any man, however rich, would keep up a joke, which, from first to last, has cost him a hundred thousand pounds. I have not long to wait. I shall soon know my fate."

She stopped to gather up the cards which lay on the floor, like the gaudy parti-colored leaves of an autumn forest, and placed them methodically away. She emptied the ash trays, and sprinkled the sitting-room with sanitas so that the flowers in the Prinus jars began to pick up their heads, and the whole atmosphere became sweeter. It was so dark that the purple shadows beyond the French windows were almost menacing. With a shiver of apprehension, Adela closed the shutters and pulled down the blind again. It seemed to her fancy that she heard a footstep on the gravel. With a smile at her cowardice she put the fear from her. As she stood waiting vaguely for something to happen, as one does in moments of nervous tension, she imagined she could hear the bathroom window raised gently and closed again. It came upon her with overpowering force that it was half a mile to the nearest house, that she was alone, and that there was booty enough here to keep a score of burglars in afluence for the rest of their natural lives. Instinctively she walked across the room to where the telephone receiver hung. She had her hand upon it when something touched her arm. All her combative instincts were awake. She was ready for real, palpitating danger. It was only the intangible that frightened her. Her eyes gleamed with anger.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded.

The intruder made no reply for a moment. He pressed his hands to his sides. The panting of his breath filled up the silence of the room. He might have been some fugitive seeking sanctuary. But for a moment his limbs failed him, and he staggered to his fall. There was time for Adela to gaze at him from under her long purple lashes. She had it in her to study him calmly and critically.

Evidently this was no creature to be afraid of. In age he was about sixty, with a mass of white hair, and grey moustache that dropped over the corners of his lips. His face was handsome in its way, though seared and lined. He gave an apprehensive glance over his shoulder which told its own tale. For the rest, he might have been a broken down derelict cast off from some cavalry regiment. He certainly had the air of a man who had seen service—a man who would be at home amongst refined surroundings. His eyes were blue, small eyes, that told of cunning and wickedness, eyes that spoilt what otherwise might have been a benevolent face. He was dressed with some attempt at smartness, though his grey frock-coat was faded and discolored, his patent leather boots were down at heel. Adela knew the type. Doubtless this had been a man of clubs in his time, a man to whom the topography of the West End was as an open book.

Beyond question, this man had come to beg and whine, to plead some pitiful tale, more or less true, and in her indolent way Adela was already feeling in her pocket. A deal of promiscuous charity has its origin in indolence rather than generosity. The man seemed to realise what was passing through the girl's mind, for he raised his hand protestingly. It was a long, slim hand, and Adela saw that the nails were pink and filbert-shaped. She saw, too, what puzzled, and, at the same time, alarmed her. The hard, sly cunning had died from the intruder's blue eyes. His whole face had changed its expression to one of deepest interest, and almost filial affection. Adela would have found it hard to express her feelings at that moment. Disappointment and fear and horror were uppermost.

"What are you doing here?" she repeated.

"They followed me," the man gasped, as a curious dry hard cough seemed to choke him. "They nearly had me outside the station. I was an accursed fool to come back again. I might have known that I was not forgotten. There are a score of men in England to-day who would go a long way to put a spoke in the 'Colonel's' wheel. And now, my dear, how are you? Ha! There is no need to ask that question. If ever I saw anyone with the true air about her, you are she, ruffling it with the very best of them, too. Oh, bless you. I have read all about it in the papers. Laugh, well, I should think so. But, you see—"

A fit of coughing choked the speaker's utterance again. He pressed a dingy handkerchief to his lips, and Adela saw a faint smear of red upon it. She was standing opposite the speaker, breathing quickly and rapidly herself, and unable to overcome a feeling of evil.

"Once more, what do you want?" she demanded. "From what you say, you are flying from justice."

"That is so," the man replied coolly. "I thought you would enjoy the joke, and so you will when you have heard it. How like your mother you are, to be sure!"

Like her mother! The words seemed to be tangled and twisted in Adela's brain, just as a physical pain starts at the touch of a raw and bleeding nerve. Had this degraded wretch known her mother, the mother she did not remember herself, whom she naturally thought of as someone exalted and beautiful? Yet he spoke of her as though they had been on the most familiar terms.

"Did you know her, then?"

"Know her! I fancy I did. Why, there wasn't a man or boy in New York twenty years ago who was not familiar with the name of Sophie Letolle. But people are soon forgotten in these days. Ah, there was a woman for you? Handsome? Handsome's not the word. Daring and ambitious, too. What a queen she would have made! I ought to have married her myself. I should have been in a very different position now if I had. But she never cared for anybody but poor Jake, who was a feeble sort of creature at the best. Ah, my dear, it is not from your father's side that you inherit your brilliant qualities."

"Jake!" Adela repeated the word again and again. It was suggestive of some handsome, degenerate bar-loafer—the type of man who often attracts the admiration of a dashing and clever woman. Yet there was something almost amusing in the suggestion. That man could not be Adela's father. It was incredible that she had had her being in some gorgeous butterfly known to man as Sophie Letolle. Oh, no, surely she had a clean and more refined ancestry than that. Adela had assumed so much from the first. She had known no care, no spoilt darling in Society to-day occupied a better position than she. The whole thing was a mistake. This man had come to the wrong house; he had taken her for someone else. She must put him right at once.

"Stop!" she said. "There is something wrong here. Do you know who I am?"

An absurd, almost senile affection gleamed in her visitor's eyes.

"You are Adela Burton, the adopted daughter of the celebrated Sam Burton, the American millionaire. It is astonishing what the British public will swallow if you only go the right way about it. I could sit down and laugh when I see you in the lap of luxury, with your portrait in all the papers, and ever so many peers at your feet. What would they say if they knew the truth? The paragraphs about you I have read, heaps and heaps of them! The gorgeous things they have said about Sam Burton! And all the while there hasn't been any Sam Burton at all. At least, not in the sense that people suppose. My dear girl, I hope, for your sake, that you are an admirer of Dickens' works."

"I have a great liking for most of them."

"Then you will remember 'Great Expectations?' Do you recall Pip and his wonderful fortune?"

Adela nodded. It was coming to her mind with illuminating flashes. She recollected the story of Pip and his phantom fortune—that memorable scene when Pip's fairy godfather appeared in the shape of the desperate hunted broken-down convict, whom the lad had helped so many years before in the old churchyard on the marshes. And as this picture began to stand out warm and tangible, a dreadful fear gripped Adela by her white throat and held her speechless. The man was mumbling, but a horrible grin overspread his features.

"Don't you see the analogy?" he said. "Pip helped a convict, and in after years the old man helped him. There was a time when you helped me. You were only a tiny tot, and probably the incident has faded from your mind. But your pluck and courage got me out of a tight place, and I've never forgotten it. I was always a sentimentalist at heart. Besides, you were fond of me then. I fancy I can feel those kisses of yours on my lips now!"

The power of speech returned to Adela in an uncontrollable torrent. A thousand questions trembled on her lips, but she kept herself in with an effort. The atmosphere had grown suddenly cooler. She felt cold and shivered from head to foot.

"You had better tell me whom you are."

"So you haven't guessed? Do you mean to tell me that you are in the dark still? Then let me introduce myself. I am the famous millionaire; the only and original Sam Burton."