Читать книгу The Guarded Halo - Margaret Pedler - Страница 8

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The Monday fixed for Shirley’s departure came round in due course, and the last breakfast she and Bob shared was somewhat of a melancholy meal. It was the first time since their schooldays that the brother and sister had ever been separated for more than a few days together, and in some vague fashion, hardly realized, the occasion signalized to each of them a great change in their lives, a dividing line betwixt a past which had been mutually shared and a future which would be intrinsically separate and individual. Never again, probably, would they be so close to one another in feeling and outlook as they were now. The mere fact of the unshared experiences which the future would bring to each of them must inevitably create differences in their points of view and their understanding of each other.

Shirley concealed the heart-sickness of which she was conscious by lavish attentions to Mugs, who, although he could not quite understand the unusual indulgence accorded him on this particular morning, entered into the spirit of the thing con amore and made the most of opportunity.

“You’ll keep him, won’t you, Bob, whatever happens?” she said a trifle huskily, stroking the dog’s small rough head.

“We’ll share our last bone together,” replied Bob with conviction. “You needn’t worry about that.”

“I only wondered what you’d do with him if—when you get a job.”

“Well, if it’s a daily one, he’ll have to make the best of things in whatever rooms I have. But if I get what I want, a job as agent on somebody’s country estate, he’ll have the time of his life, rabbiting and so forth—imagine himself back at Fen Wyatt.”

At the mention of Fen Wyatt Shirley felt a sudden constriction of her throat, and rose hastily.

“I’d better go and get ready,” she said. Adding randomly, just for the sake of saying something to cover up her inner perturbation: “You’ll come and see me off, won’t you?”

Bob stared.

“Why, of course——” he began. Then, divining what had prompted the idiotic question, he threw a friendly arm round her shoulders. “Here, buck up, old thing,” he said smilingly. “We’re not saying good-bye for keeps. You’re only off on a two or three months’ trip, remember.”

“I know. But a lot can happen even in two or three months,” she answered soberly.

And then the bustle of departure caught them up, driving away Shirley’s gathering depression, and half an hour later found them at Victoria Station. Here they were met by Drake and Kit Harford, and Bob, after he had made their acquaintance, found an opportunity to whisper to his sister:

“You’re in luck, kiddy. They’re just as nice as you said they were.”

She nodded, and presently he and Drake established the two women comfortably in their seats on the Pullman. Drake knew all about “seeing people off,” Shirley reflected. He had purchased enough newspapers and magazines to keep them amused to Paris and beyond, a beribboned box of chocolates adorned their table, and almost at the last moment he conjured up from somewhere—presumably from the hands of a florist’s errand-boy who stood on the platform below, gazing in pleased bewilderment at the two-shilling tip in his grimy hand—a fragrant sheaf of long-stemmed roses.

A bell rang. Followed the frantic banging of doors and cries of “Stand away, there!” and then the train began to glide slowly along. Shirley, still standing at the window exchanging last words with Simon and Bob, heard a sudden confused shouting, two figures rushed frantically by, and the next moment a man leapt on to the moving train, while a porter flung a suitcase in after him.

“That was a near thing, sir,” remarked the conductor of the Pullman as he preceded the late-comer into the compartment and indicated the seat allotted to him—one facing Shirley but on the opposite side of the car. The man nodded curtly, took his place, and immediately immersed himself in a newspaper, so that when, prompted by a mild curiosity as to who had so nearly missed the train, she glanced across at him, all that was visible was the top of a very dark head and a pair of well-shaped, sunburnt hands that held the newspaper with a certain firmness of grip which a shrewd observer might have marked down as indicative of the man.

Shirley’s glance lingered absently a moment on the hands in question, and then, without the slightest warning, as though becoming all at once aware of her regard, their owner lowered the newspaper and she found herself staring straight into a pair of very blue eyes—eyes that were almost startlingly blue in contrast with the brown, sun-tanned face out of which they looked.

There was an odd concentration in their gaze, something so curiously definite and personal that she was conscious of a trivial sense of shock, such as one receives when the lights are suddenly switched on in a darkened room. Flushing a little, she looked hastily away, picked up a magazine and began to read, and it was not until half an hour later, when she had reached the end of a short story, that she ventured to steal another glance at the man opposite. He was staring abstractedly out of the window, evidently absorbed in a brown study and quite remote from his surroundings, and to judge by the bitter, clouded expression in his blue eyes his thoughts were not particularly pleasant ones.

Secure in the fact that he was oblivious of her scrutiny, Shirley quietly observed him. There was something attractive about the lean brown face, despite the fact that on more prolonged inspection the bitterness which showed in his eyes seemed to have stamped itself on the mouth too. There was an unmistakable hardness about it, the clean-shaven lips closing in a reticent, straight line. She mentally decided that he was a man who would not be very easily influenced—that he might even prove stubbornly inflexible in the carrying out of anything upon which he had set his mind, whether it was for good or ill. And then Kit Harford addressed some casual remark to her across the little table which separated them, and the man opposite passed out of her thoughts as completely as she had apparently passed out of his—for he had never once looked in her direction again after that first concentrated gaze which had startled her into an odd consciousness of his presence.

The advent of lunch served still further to occupy her thoughts, and finally came the arrival at Dover, with its attendant bustle of collecting hand-baggage, showing of passports, and scrambling on to the boat. Kit, never a good sailor, had booked a cabin, and made her way thither forthwith.

“I’m going to lie down at once,” she told Shirley, smiling grimly. “If I can get settled before the boat starts moving, I may cross peacefully—with any luck. You’d better go up on deck and get hold of a deck-chair, as I’m sure you won’t want to spend your first Channel crossing cooped up in a cabin.”

So Shirley tucked her up comfortably on a couch and returned to the deck. She herself had no fear of seasickness, having proved her mettle in that respect on many a yachting holiday in the Solent with Uncle Nick, and everything about this first experience of leaving England interested and amused her enormously. The sense of movement, as people hurried hither and thither, shepherded to cabin or deck-chair by cheery members of the crew, the gabble of voices, English and foreign, punctuated now and again by a crisp command from one or other of the ship’s officers—even the big crane swinging quantities of luggage smoothly from the quay into the vessel’s hold carried its own thrill of interest, leading one to speculate whither all the different owners of that luggage were bound, and whether fear of the law, or misery at home, or anticipated happiness with a beloved someone abroad were the driving-force of their going. Probably most of them, Shirley reflected, like herself and Kit, were merely in search of health and recreation.

Presently came a last warning scream from the black-mouthed funnel of the steamer, and a responsive increase of activity on board, while the throb of the engines seemed to run through the boat like a great, eager pulse. She was moving, and Shirley, cosily established in a deck-chair with a rug round her knees, watched the water below go dancing by in the sunlight. Suddenly, without rhyme or reason, the memory of what she had said to Bob flashed back into her mind: “A lot can happen even in two or three months,” and simultaneously a shadow fell across the strip of white deck boarding in front of her. She glanced up instinctively, to find standing beside her the man who had so nearly missed the train at Victoria.

“Excuse me,” he said, “but I think this belongs to you, doesn’t it? I found it on the floor of the Pullman, near where you were sitting.” And he held out for her inspection a small, flat notecase.

Shirley stared at it, the startled colour rushing up into her face. It was hers—she must have let it fall out of her handbag—and it contained every penny she possessed! She gave a little gasp of mingled horror and relief.

“Yes, it’s mine,” she said. “I never even knew I’d dropped it. Do you know”—looking up at the man beside her with a smile—“it contains my whole worldly wealth. So you can imagine how thankful I am you found it.”

He smiled back, an amused, boyish smile which robbed his face of all its harshness. She felt she could imagine what he must have been like, ten years ago possibly, before life had managed to impress that look of bitter reticence on his features—gay, a trifle reckless perhaps, but spontaneously merry and kind-hearted, and eminently likeable.

“Then I’m very glad I found it,” he answered. “It’s a catastrophe to lose all one’s worldly wealth in one fell blow.” And even as he spoke, the shadow came swiftly back into his face, as though something in his own speech had suddenly recalled an ugly memory.

“Well, it’s lucky for me you were an honest person,” said Shirley. “I can’t think”—rather blankly—“what I should have done if you hadn’t been.”

He leaned against the taffrail, looking down at her with a somewhat curious expression.

“Honesty is rather a relative term, isn’t it? You may be quite honest over mere pounds, shillings and pence, but totally dishonest over life itself.”

She regarded him with puzzled eyes.

“How do you mean? I don’t think I understand,” she queried. He had spoken abruptly, as if the remark were the outcome of some sudden thought that had crossed his mind and forced itself into speech.

He jerked himself upright.

“No,” he said. “I don’t suppose you would understand—that.” He paused, then went on lightly: “Anyway, I’m glad I’ve been able to restore your lost property. I couldn’t find you at first, or you should have had it before.”

He bowed rather stiffly and, disregarding her thanks, moved away with a brusque decisiveness that seemed to suggest he regretted having been betrayed even into so brief a conversation with her.

Shirley watched him return to his own deck-chair, nearer the bows of the boat, when he apparently immediately forgot her existence once more, and sat staring out to sea with the same look of brooding dissatisfaction on his face as it had worn during the journey down to Dover.