Читать книгу Sorrell & Son - Warwick Deeping - Страница 14

An incident that occurred about five weeks after Sorrell's arrival at the Angel startled him into a sudden aliveness towards the drift of other people's temperamental whimsies.

It was early in the morning, before the paying part of the hotel had descended to his breakfast, and Sorrell was down on his knees in the lounge cleaning up the spilt contents of one of the ash trays. Someone had knocked it off the table the previous night. The two waitresses were busy in the coffee-room, and one of them, a little sallow girl, with a shock of black, bobbed hair, running out towards the kitchen with a serviette over her arm, saw Sorrell kneeling. He had had glances from the girl; she was always passing him in the passage, but Sorrell was too tired for life's little frills. He had forgotten the fact that he might be attractive to women. Anyhow, the girl slipped the napkin over Sorrell's eyes,– and drawing it tight, bent down till her mop of black hair touched his head.

"Guess who it is–?"

She giggled, but before Sorrell had made any effort to free himself, the napkin was whisked away, and he had a glimpse of Millie's slim legs disappearing urgently down the passage leading to the kitchen. Someone had come down the stairs, and was passing behind him, and glancing round, he saw Florence Palfrey going towards the office.

It was the most trivial of incidents, a mere piece of hoydenish mischief, but when the staff of the Angel sat down to its midday meal Sorrell realized that the little dark girl was not present.

"What's become of Millie?"

The other waitress gave him a sour look.

"You–ought to know."

"But I don't know."

"She–sacked her."

"What for?"

"Romping."

Not much was said, though it was obvious that the other girls felt themselves injured by the peremptory ejection of a comrade, but they were afraid of the Lioness, and they mistrusted Sorrell–the man. He became aware of the mistrust; it made him uncomfortable; moreover he had felt a sudden, sordid tremor of fear.

That which had happened to Millie might happen to him, and he knew that for the boy's sake such a thing must not happen.

The keenness of his own anxiety was a humiliation, and he accepted the humiliation, explaining it to himself quite frankly as though he were explaining the wearing of a shabby suit of clothes. He was alarmed at the possibility of his being pushed out into the street, of losing his thirty shillings, his keep, and his tips. Yet this fear shocked him. That a man should be afraid of being evicted from such a caravanserai! He had not realized how much the Angel Inn had become his "straw," and that he was ready to cling to it with the instinctive terror of a man who feared the unknown.

That afternoon he spent himself in a passion of activity. He went about eagerly looking for work. He made work. He attacked the various slovenlinesses of the place.

He was aware of the constant nearness of the woman. She–too– appeared to be in a restless and active mood. She kept coming out of the office or the "Cubby Hole," going out or up the stairs and returning. She saw Sorrell in all sorts of postures and places, on his knees polishing the "surround" of the lounge, cleaning the glass panels of the doors, carrying out the aspidistras and washing them in the yard. She had one particular glimpse of him doubled up under the big walnut table in the passage, but what he was doing there she did not pretend to know.

Though she passed him a dozen times that afternoon she neither spoke to him nor appeared to look in his direction, but each of them was conscious of the other. The feline intuition of the woman divined Sorrell's fear. He was like some busy thing in a cage, propitiatory, eagerly turning a wheel. Also, she knew that he was cursing her, himself, and his activities.

Captain Sorrell, M.C.!

She was moved to brutal laughter, but her laughter was silent. There were thoughts in her too that purred. She had Sorrell on his knees, and she could tell him to get up or remain there, to come or go. And there were inclinations in her that were whetted by her sense of power.

"Damn the woman! Is she going to–?"

He had a queer feeling that her passings and repassings were not haphazard. They concerned him. She took notice of him by ignoring him; her seeming indifference had an intimate and veiled significance.

He had carried in a pair of steps and was polishing one of the big mirrors in the lounge. He saw himself in it, his anxious, sallow face, the sweep of the hand carrying the wash-leather. He threw silent abuse at his own reflection, that sedulously active and worried creature.

"You wretched failure,–you grovelling idiot! Rushing about to create a good impression–"

Suddenly, he saw her figure drift into the mirror. She was standing behind him, looking at him. He fancied that he detected amusement in her eyes, the kind of amusement a lioness might be expected to enjoy if a lioness had a sense of humour.

"Very busy to-day,–Stephen?"

"Yes, madam."

He went on with his polishing, believing that he was going to hear about the silly incident of the morning. He waited. She stood and watched him for fully a minute, and he felt the back of his neck and his ears all flushed. Confound her! What did she want? Why didn't she go away, or stick her claws into him and have done with it?

He reached up to a far corner of the glass, and when next he searched for her reflection, he found that she had gone. He was conscious of relief, but the sense of relief was only partial. He felt her somewhere. Where?

The door of the "Cubby Hole" was wide open, and he could see a part of the interior reflected in the mirror, a strip of green carpet, a red cushion, part of the frame and glass of the window. She was in there, sitting on the sofa, watching him. He saw the gleam of her hair, and two eyes, very dark, like the eyes of a creature watching him from the gloom of a wood. He fancied that she smiled.

He tried to concentrate his senses upon the mere glassy surface of the mirror, and to keep his vision and its accompanying thoughts from passing through to the deeps of it where the woman was, but he could not help focussing her. She remained there, watching him, enigmatic, motionless, like a great tawny cat. Sorrell decided to leave the mirror. He came down the steps, and was folding them up when he heard her voice.

"Stephen–"

"Yes, madam."

"There is a glass in here. It hasn't been touched since–since–"

She laughed as he stood in the doorway with the steps and bucket.

"Since Adam and Eve."

Sorrell obeyed her with an air of great briskness. The mirror was over the mantelpiece, a gilt-framed thing of the "Regency" period, and when he got on the steps he found that the top of the frame was black with dust. Florence Palfrey had picked up a paper that had been lying on the sofa, but instead of reading it she fanned herself with it, for the day was hot.

"Anyone in the lounge?"

"No."

Sorrell came down the steps to dip his leather in the bucket.

"Very warm to-day."

She did not reply, but watched him get to work, and his movements told her that he was nervous. She was satisfied in a part of herself. And then she began to talk to him with an air of casual intimacy, and in a way that she had never talked before. He was both Captain Sorrell, M.C., and her "boots" and porter.

"Rather different from the war, Stephen."

He agreed. He felt strangely alert.

"How did you get your M.C.?"

"I didn't know–"

"Oh,–I know most things. Well? How?"

"Oh, in a trench raid."

"Were you raiding the others?"

"No, madam, the others were raiding us."

He was working hard at the mirror, with his back to her, and somehow he felt he had to keep a distance, though he could not analyze the feeling.

"Well,–what happened? Don't be so dashed modest."

"The Germans came into our trench."

"Yes."

"And they stuck some of our chaps. It's a nasty tool, the bayonet. And there was a bit of a panic. I was in a deuce of a funk."

"That's funny!"

"It wasn't at all funny. But something seemed to go off inside me– and I saw red."

She nodded her head. She was considering him, eyes half closed and fiercely languid.

"So you can see red. Well,–I shouldn't have thought it. It's rather–interesting. You must have been stronger then."

"I was. But it's not mere beef–"

"No. Not bullock's strength. Wounded–I suppose?"

"Twice."

"Badly?"

"A bit of H.E. in the chest–the second time. I had to come home– after that."

He both felt and heard the rustling of the paper as she fanned herself, a disturbing sound, like the rustling of leaves or lace. He had finished cleaning the mirror, and he came down the steps rather hurriedly, folded them up, and grabbed the bucket.

"Anything else, madam?"

She observed him steadily above the rustling paper.

"No. You are an odd fish, Stephen."

He stared, and she laughed.

"Odd as odd. Go and see if you can find anything else to polish."