Читать книгу Kitty - Warwick Deeping - Страница 13

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She looked out several boxes for him to choose from, and his eyes remained fixed upon her with a peculiar and questioning intentness. They followed all her movements, and watched both her face and her hands. She had been stared at before with the same kind of hungriness; she was conscious of it, and yet this young man’s hungriness had a quality of its own. He looked pinched and cold. It was as though he had been shivering in a raw wind, and had seen the glow of a fire and had come in to it. His eyes seemed to discover in her a beautiful, human warmness, a glow, a something that was disastrously sweet and poignant and beyond him.

She said—

“What about these—? Taylor’s Navy Cut?”

He nodded, his glance falling suddenly to her hands.

“Thank you. Yes,—they’ll do.”

And she thought—“Yes, most of them drink too much, poor lads.” But her impression of him as a feverish celebrant almost instantly corrected itself. He looked very new and clean, and rather fragile; he was wearing no flashes; and she missed in him that slightly coarsened air, a heaviness that characterized the men who had seen active service. Their faces appeared smudged as though a heavy hand had pressed upon their youthfulness, and rubbed out or blurred the more delicate lines. She had a feeling that this boy with the wide and startled eyes was very new to it all.

He brought out a ten-shilling note, and as he handed it to her she noticed that his fingers communicated a fine tremor to the crisp piece of paper.

“Very cold—still.”

She handed him the change. She said that she thought it was a beautiful day, and he looked at her as though she were mocking him.

“O,—yes,—I suppose so.”

It was April, and to him she seemed a part of April, with her skin like apple-blossom, and her eyes like sloes, and as beautifully tantalizing as the young green of the year. He stood silently staring at a round rubber mat on the counter, as though not knowing how to go or to stay. His face had what she might have described as a naked look. He seemed to loiter as though warming himself at a fire.

“Home on leave?”

Those startled eyes of his met hers.

“Yes. Going out next week.”

“First time?”

“Yes.”

His eyes fell again. He unbuttoned the flap of a pocket and slipped the cigarette box into it, and fumbled at the button. She glanced at his badges. Infantry, yes. She must have known the badges of every regiment in the army. And suddenly she found herself on the edge of a most poignant pity for him, nor had any other man moved her to such compassion. She felt that he was quite unfit for the brutal business out yonder. In that little red and white room behind the shop Kitty had heard men blurt things out. You might be able to talk to a shopgirl as you could not talk to your mother.

Things were apt to happen either very slowly or very suddenly during the war, nor was Kitty Greenwood thistledown. That a strange lad should walk into her mother’s shop at half-past eight on an April morning and rouse such an impulse of pity in her was both extraordinary and natural. Air-raids had brought the incredible to your very doorstep. She did not question the impulse. There was nothing and everything to keep him standing there, and it was obvious to her that he was loth to go.

She picked up a little glass tray full of cigarettes, and held it out to him.

“Had breakfast?”

“O,—yes.”

He glanced at her face before taking a cigarette, nor did the glance question her modesty; it seemed to search below the surface for some deeper solace, a gentle warmth that would breathe near him in the night of his dread.

“Thank you. I have got six days.”

He began to fumble in a pocket, but she was ready with a match before his ineffectual fingers could produce a box.

“Here you are.”

She had very pretty white hands, plump but not too plump, with soft, blunt finger-tips. Men should be wary of pointed fingers. Her head came no higher than his shoulder but her sturdiness made him appear the fragile figure. She offered him the match flame, and as he bent to light the cigarette, she studied his face.

“Thank you.”

His eyes met hers. Not often had she been looked at in that way, with a sensitive, dumb, startled shyness. It changed an impulse into what—was—perhaps—the most deliberate act of her life.

“London’s a lonely place. Hundreds of boys come in here—just to talk. Talking seems to help—.”

She was aware of the surprise in his eyes, and something more than surprise. It was as though she had opened a door to a shivering dog. And she went and opened the door of the divan. She said—“You can smoke that cigarette in there—if you like. My mother will be down in a minute.” He walked into the divan, and she followed from behind the counter, leaving the door open. He stood. He took off his cap. She noticed that he remained standing until she sat down on the red-cushioned sofa. He took one of the chairs, and bending forward, rested his elbows on his knees, but his attitude did not suggest repose. He was very nervous, and his nervousness infected her in a most strange way, for she became conscious of this little red and white room as a place full of ghosts, the ghosts of men who had sat on those cushions, and whose red blood had been spilt over yonder. Dead lads, dust, a few tarnished buttons and rotting khaki! Something cried out in her. She glanced sideways and almost fearfully at the boy beside her. He—too—perhaps?

And suddenly he spoke.

“It’s very peaceful in here—somehow.”