Читать книгу The Times Red Cross Story Book by Famous Novelists Serving in His Majesty's Forces - Various - Страница 10

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George ran down the hill, his heart thumping heavily at his ribs.... She had her back towards him.

“Can I be of any assistance?” he said in his best manner. But she didn’t need to be rich now; there was that little house at Bedford Park.

She turned round.

It was Gertie Morrison!

Silly of him; of course, it wasn’t Miss Morrison; but it was extraordinarily like her. Prettier, though.

“Why, Mr. Crosby!” she said.

It was Gertie Morrison.

“You!” he said angrily.

He was furious that such a trick should have been played upon him at this moment; furious to be reminded suddenly that he was George Crosby of Muswell Hill. Muswell Hill, the boarding-house—Good Lord! Gertie Morrison! Algy Traill’s Gertie.

“Yes, it’s me,” she said, shrinking from him. She saw he was angry with her; she vaguely understood why.

Then George laughed. After all, she hadn’t deliberately put herself in his way. She could hardly be expected to avoid the whole of England (outside Muswell Hill) until she knew exactly where George Crosby proposed to take his walk. What a child he was to be angry with her.

When he laughed, she laughed too—a little nervously.

“Let me help,” he said. He scratched his fingers fearlessly on her behalf. What should he do afterwards? he wondered. His day was spoilt anyhow. He could hardly leave her.

“Oh, you’ve hurt yourself!” she said. She said it very sweetly, in a voice that only faintly reminded him of the Gertie of Muswell Hill.

“It’s nothing,” he answered, as he had answered five years ago.

They stood looking at each other. George was puzzled.

“You are Miss Morrison, aren’t you?” he said. “Somehow you seem different.”

“You’re different from the Mr. Crosby I know.”

“Am I? How?”

“It’s dreadful to see you at the boarding-house.” She looked at him timidly. “You don’t mind my mentioning the boarding-house, do you?”

“Mind? Why should I?” (After all, he still had another week.)

“Well, you want to forget about it when you’re on your holiday.”

Fancy her knowing that.

“And are you on your holiday too?”

She gave a long deep sigh of content.

“Yes,” she said.

He looked at her with more interest. There was colour in her face; her eyes were bright; in her tweed skirt she looked more of a country girl than he would have expected.

“Let’s sit down,” he said. “I thought you always went to Mar—to Cliftonville for your holiday?”

“I always go to my aunt’s there in the summer. It isn’t really a holiday; it’s more to help her; she has a boarding-house too. And it really is Cliftonville—only, of course, it’s silly of mother to mind having it called Margate. Cliftonville’s much worse than Margate really. I hate it.”

(This can’t be Gertie Morrison, thought George. It’s a dream.)

“When did you come here?”

“I’ve been here about ten days. A girl friend of mine lives near here. She asked me suddenly just after you’d gone—I mean about a fortnight ago. Mother thought I wasn’t looking well and ought to go. I’ve been before once or twice. I love it.”

“And do you have to wander about the country by yourself? I mean, doesn’t your friend—I say, I’m asking you an awful lot of questions. I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right. But, of course, I love to go about alone, particularly at this time of year. You understand that.”

Of course he understood it. That was not the amazing thing. The amazing thing was that she understood it.

He took his sandwiches from his pocket.

“Let’s have lunch,” he said. “I’m afraid mine are only beef.”

“Mine are worse,” she smiled. “They’re only mutton.”

A sudden longing to tell her of his great adventure of five years ago came to George. (If you had suggested it to him in March!)

“It’s rather funny,” he said, as he untied his sandwiches—“I was down here five years ago——”

“I know,” she said quietly.

George sat up suddenly and stared at her.

“It was you!” he cried.

“Yes.”

“You. Good Lord!... But your name—you said your name was—wait a moment—that’s it! Rosamund!”

“It is. Gertrude Rosamund. I call myself Rosamund in the country. I like to pretend I’m not the”—she twisted a piece of grass in her hands, and looked away from him over the hill—“the horrible girl of the boarding-house.”

George got on to his knees and leant excitedly over her.

“Tell me, do you hate and loathe and detest Traill and the Fossetts and Ransom as much as I do?”

She hesitated.

“Mr. Ransom has a mother in Folkestone he’s very good to. He’s not really bad, you know.”

“Sorry. Wash out Ransom. Traill and the Fossetts?”

“Yes. Oh yes. Oh yes, yes, yes.” Her cheeks flamed as she cried it, and she clenched her hands.

George was on his knees already, and he had no hat to take off, but he was very humble.

“Will you forgive me?” he said. “I think I’ve misjudged you. I mean,” he stammered—“I mean, I don’t mean—of course, it’s none of my business to judge you—I’m speaking like a prig, I—oh, you know what I mean. I’ve been a brute to you. Will you forgive me?”

She held out her hand, and he shook it. This had struck him, when he had seen it on the stage, as an absurdly dramatic way of making friends, but it seemed quite natural now.

“Let’s have lunch,” she said.

They began to eat in great content.

“Same old sandwiches,” smiled George. “I say, I suppose I needn’t explain why I called myself Geoffrey Carfax.” He blushed a little as he said the name. “I mean, you seem to understand.”

She nodded. “You wanted to get away from George Crosby; I know.”

And then he had a sudden horrible recollection.

“I say, you must have thought me a beast. I brought a terrific lunch out with me the next day, and then I went and lost the place. Did you wait for me?”

Gertie would have pretended she hadn’t turned up herself, but Rosamund said, “Yes, I waited for you. I thought perhaps you had lost the place.”

“I say,” said George, “what lots I’ve got to say to you. When did you recognise me again? Fancy my not knowing you.”

“It was three years, and you’d shaved your moustache.”

“So I had. But I could recognise people just as easily without it.”

She laughed happily. It was the first joke she had heard him make since that day five years ago.

“Besides, we’re both different in the country. I knew you as soon as I heard your voice just now. Never at all at Muswell Hill.”

“By Jove!” said George, “just fancy.” He grinned at her happily.

After lunch they wandered. It was a golden afternoon, the very afternoon they had had five years ago. Once when she was crossing a little stream in front of him, and her foot slipped on a stone, he called out, “Take care, Rosamund,” and thrilled at the words. She let them pass unnoticed; but later on, when they crossed the stream again lower down, he took her hand and she said, “Thank you, Geoffrey.”

They came to an inn for tea. How pretty she looked pouring out the tea for him—not for him, for them; the two of them. She and he! His thoughts became absurd....

Towards the end of the meal something happened. She didn’t know what it was, but it was this. He wanted more jam; she said he’d had enough. Well, then, he wasn’t to have much, and she would help him herself.

He was delighted with her.

She helped him ... and something in that action brought back swiftly and horribly the Gertie Morrison of Muswell Hill, the Gertie who sat next to Algy and helped him to cabbage. He finished his meal in silence.

She was miserable, not knowing what had happened.

He paid the bill and they went outside. In the open air she was Rosamund again, but Rosamund with a difference. He couldn’t bear things like this. As soon as they were well away from the inn he stopped. They leant against a gate and looked down into the valley at the golden sun.

“Tell me,” he said, “I want to know everything. Why are you—what you are, in London?”

And she told him. Her mother had not always kept a boarding-house. While her father was alive they were fairly well off; she lived a happy life in the country as a young girl. Then they came to London. She hated it, but it was necessary for her father’s business. Then her father died, and left nothing.

“So did my father,” said George under his breath.

She touched his hand in sympathy.

“I was afraid that was it.... Well, mother tried keeping a boarding-house. She couldn’t do it by herself. I had to help. That was just before I met you here.... Oh, if you could know how I hated it. The horrible people. It started with two boarders. Then there was one—because I smacked the other one’s face. Mother said that wouldn’t do. Well, of course, it wouldn’t. I tried taking no notice of them. Well, that wouldn’t do either. I had to put up with it; that was my life.... I used to pretend I was on the stage and playing the part of a landlady’s vulgar daughter. You know what I mean; you often see it on the stage. That made it easier—it was really rather fun sometimes. I suppose I overplayed the part—made it more common than it need have been—it’s easy to do that. By-and-by it began to come natural; perhaps I am like that really. We weren’t anybody particular even when father was alive. Then you came—I saw you were different from the rest. I knew you despised me—quite right too. But you really seemed to hate me, I never quite knew why. I hadn’t done you any harm. It made me hate you too.... It made me want to be specially vulgar and common when you were there, just to show you I didn’t mind what you thought about me.... You were so superior.

“I got away in the country sometimes. I just loved that. I think I was really living for it all the time.... I always called myself Rosamund in the country.... I hate men—why are they such beasts to us always?”

“They are beasts,” said George, giving his sex away cheerfully. But he was not thinking of Traill and the Fossetts; he was thinking of himself. “It’s very strange,” he went on; “all the time I thought that the others were just what they seemed to be, and that I alone had a private life of my own which I hid from everybody. And all the time you.... Perhaps Traill is really somebody else sometimes. Even Ransom has his secret—his mother.... What a horrible prig I’ve been!”

“No, no! Oh, but you were!”

“And a coward. I never even tried.... I might have made things much easier for you.”

“You’re not a coward.”

“Yes, I am. I’ve just funked life. It’s too much for me, I’ve said, and I’ve crept into my shell and let it pass over my head.... And I’m still a coward. I can’t face it by myself. Rosamund, will you marry me and help me to be braver?”

“No, no, no,” she cried, and pushed him away and laid her head on her arms and wept.

Saved, George, saved! Now’s your chance. You’ve been rash and impetuous, but she has refused you, and you can withdraw like a gentleman. Just say “I beg your pardon,” and move to Finsbury Park next month ... and go on dreaming about the woman. Not a landlady’s vulgar little daughter, but——

George, George, what are you doing?

He has taken the girl in his arms! He is kissing her eyes and her mouth and her wet cheeks! He is telling her....

I wash my hands of him.