Читать книгу Sorrell & Son - Warwick Deeping - Страница 33

Ex-Sergeant-Major Buck arrived at the Pelican in the station bus. He wore a bowler hat and a blue overcoat with a velvet collar, and he travelled with a solid leather suitcase and a steamer trunk.

Sorrell had gone out to meet the bus, and he stood momentarily staring, watching an immense blue back emerging from the bus doorway. The figure separated itself, and turning showed a face that was like an uncooked round of beef, with two blue pebbles for eyes.

"Catch hold, my lad."

The man was holding out his suitcase, and Sorrell, coming suddenly out of his trance, took the suitcase.

"Are you Mr. Buck?"

"I am. Suppose you're the chap–under me."

Sorrell nodded. He was conscious of a sort of nausea. "Under me!" Yes, it seemed to him that those two words exactly expressed the situation. The man was all that his fears had pictured him to be, the big, raw-faced creature, all belly, voice, and blonde moustache.

"You might fetch that trunk down."

"All right."

Buck's eyes rested on him consideringly for a moment, for he had divined in Sorrell something of that sulkiness that the private soldier's hatred had struggled to express without daring actual utterance. For Buck was less heavy in the uptake than he looked. "Dumb saucy! You are that sort, are you? We'll see about it." And then Thomas Roland appeared, and Buck clicked the heels of his brown boots and gave a guardsman's salute, his big hand quivering.

"Come to report, sir."

Roland was smiling. He held out a hand.

"I'm glad to see you. Quite like old times, Buck. We have another ex-service man here in Sorrell."

Sorrell was struggling with the ex-sergeant-major's trunk, and loathing it as he had never loathed any other piece of luggage. He was aware of Buck watching him.

"Can you manage it?"

"Yes, thanks."

"You don't look as though you could," said the blue eyes. "Weedy sort of chap."

He went in with Mr. Roland.