Читать книгу Sorrell & Son - Warwick Deeping - Страница 8

When Sorrell placed two rashers of bacon on Christopher's plate he found himself reflecting that he and his son were eating this meal on credit, and unless some sort of job was to be discovered in Staunton he might have to visit the sign of the three golden balls.

At the end of the meal he lit his pipe and glanced down the list of the advertisements in a copy of the Staunton Argus. Someone was advertising for a chauffeur; a farmer needed a cowman, and a number of ladies were asking for cooks and housemaids, but Sorrell had to recognize his own limitation. He could not drive a car, or milk a cow, or cook a dinner. Indeed, when he came to consider the question there were very few things that he could do. Before the war he had sat at a desk and helped to conduct a business, but the business had died in 1917, and deny a business man his office chair and he becomes that most helpless of mortals–a gentleman of enforced leisure.

At the top right hand corner of the page Sorrell noticed a paragraph that might have some bearing on his case. It appeared that there was a private Employment Agency in Staunton, conducted by a Miss Hargreaves at No. 13, the High Street. Sorrell tore off the corner of the paper, slipped the notice into his waistcoat pocket, and passed the rest of the paper across the table to Christopher.

"I am going out."

The boy understood.

"I'll be here when you come back."

No. 13 proved to be a stationer's shop, one half of its window brilliant with the wrappers of cheap novels. Its doorway looked across the road into the arched entry of the "Angel" yard, and Miss Hargreaves, from the moment when she pulled up her blind in the morning till she pulled it down at night, lived in the gilded presence of the inn's angelic figurehead. Sorrell entered the shop. It was long and rambling and dark, and on dull days a light was needed in the far corner where the circulating library lived in a tall recess. There were no customers in the shop, and the young woman behind the counter, turning a pair of myopic eyes on Sorrell, moved instinctively towards where the daily papers were kept.

"Daily Mail?"

That was the sound she expected Sorrell to make, but he surprised her by uttering other words.

"I believe you run an employment agency."

"Yes," said the girl, "that's so."

She glanced in the direction of a kind of desk or cage at the back of the shop where a woman's head was visible.

"You had better see Miss Hargreaves–there."

As Sorrell approached the desk Miss Hargreaves raised her head, showing him the face of a woman of five and forty. She was thin and wiry, with brown eyes of a hungry hardness, and her nose marked out a little red triangle with its congested tip and network of minute blood-vessels.

"Good morning."

He was a stranger, and to this woman all strange men were interesting, yet as Sorrell looked into her brown eyes he felt himself growing inarticulate.

"I want to consult you–"

"You are wanting a servant?"

"No,–the fact is–"

But at this moment they were interrupted by the rush of a vital presence into the shop, something highly scented and with the suggestion of the soft friction of silks. Its movements were large and easy and swift, and bringing with them a sense of disturbing and adventurous liveness. It was at Sorrell's elbow, compelling him to glance over his shoulder. He saw the mass of tawny hair, the broad and handsome face, the red mouth, the blue of the eyes. There was something brutal in the face, a vivacity, a sensual energy. He felt as though a gust of wind had blown into the dark shop, and that this large, blonde creature was stifling his courage, overlaying it as though it were a feeble infant. He turned to the cage, only to find that Miss Hargreaves was all eyes for the newcomer.

The thin woman was smiling. Her face suggested some inward excitement.

"Morning–Flo–dear–. How are you?"

"Do I look ill?"

There was some element of sympathy between these two women, contrasts though they were, but the lady of the tawny head was studying Sorrell. She stood aside, leaning easily against the wainscoting, her blue knitted coat vivid against the old brown wood.

"This gentleman–first. Mine's not business."

Sorrell wished her with the devil. He felt her eyes upon him, and had he followed the line of least resistance he would have bolted from the shop. To stand there and blurt out his shabby business while she embarrassed him and made him acutely self-conscious!

"Damn!" he thought, "haven't I decided to plunge?"

Miss Hargreaves was fingering the leaves of a ledger, and waiting upon his silence.

"You said you wished to engage–"

"I want a situation."

"Oh–? For yourself? I'm sorry,–but–only domestic service–you know."

"Of course," said Sorrell, stiff as a frightened cat, "that's what I mean; a place as valet, or footman or something of that sort."

He felt that the two women despised him, especially that big, blonde creature with her blueness and her hard world-wise eyes. Why couldn't she clear out and leave him to the thin woman in the cage?

Miss Hargreaves pretended to glance through the entries in her ledger.

"I'm afraid I have nothing of that sort–nothing at all."

"I see."

"Why not try the Labour Exchange?"

"I might. Thank you. Sorry to have troubled you. Good morning."

He turned abruptly, his back to the blonde woman and made for the doorway. He noticed how the worn boards of the floor squeaked under his feet, an uncomfortable sound caused by a discomfited man. He arrived at the doorway. A voice reached after him like a restraining hand.

"Hallo–one moment–"

Sorrell turned in the doorway, and saw the blonde woman sailing down the shop, and he stood aside to let her pass, thinking that his necessity was, no concern of hers, but she paused by a revolving stand of picture postcards, and taking one at random, gave Sorrell the full stare of her blue eyes.

"Serious?" she asked.

He looked at her rather blankly.

"I beg your pardon?"

Her smile puzzled him.

"Well–if you are–come across to the 'Angel' in a quarter of an hour. There's a job–vacant."

She passed out, almost brushing against him, and he watched her cross the road and enter the arched gateway of the Angel Inn. She turned to the left towards a doorway, but she did not look back, and he wondered why she had left him with a feeling of having been crushed against a wall. She had suggested immense strength, a brutal and laughing vitality.

Sorrell went back suddenly into the shop, and along its dark length to the woman in the cage.

"Excuse me–would you mind telling me–?"

She caught his meaning.

"That's Mrs. Palfrey, she runs the 'Angel.'"

"Oh. Have you any idea–"

Miss Hargreaves looked at him queerly.

"They want an odd man–for the luggage and the boots and things–"

He stared at her thin face.

"Well,–why didn't you–"

"Because I didn't know," she said tartly. "If it is any use to you–well–there it is."