Читать книгу Roper's Row - Warwick Deeping - Страница 15

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To the students at “Bennet’s” Hazzard had appeared as one of those mysterious individuals who lack any of the appurtenances and the credentials of the normal male. He just appeared and disappeared. He had had his own reasons for not making friends, and his reasons had been an absurd pride and an equally absurd sensitiveness. He understood the laughter of fools. No one knew where or how he lived, and no one had cared, but with his increasing reputation as a little swat who was carrying off medals and prizes there were young fellow-my-lads who began to take notice.

The unusual and the abnormal may provoke dislike and ridicule, but when the unusual shows signs of singularity in the matter of success it may more seriously begin to offend. Men do not confess to such instigations, but the poison of them is there, and about this time Bullard and one or two more who were Bullard’s suckers began to develop views upon the subject. Youth must have its mischief. Hazzard was to them the little Radical among the Tories, or the atheist in bishopdom, or the fellow who did not go to the inter-hospital rugger matches and shout. He was an outsider, a kind of parasite, a red tie, an offence, and becoming more actively so. He was the dog whose tail asked for the tin.

Bullard, wallowing in a chair in the college common room, and feeling restless and full of live blood, asked a question that was to be like a spark to tinder.

“I say, you chaps, I wonder where the ‘Squit’ lives?”

No one knew, no one had troubled to know, but here was a provocation.

“Bethnal Green,” said someone.

“Billingsgate. Fishy little swine.”

“I say, what a jest! Let’s do a little Sherlock Holmesing. Soames, you’ll be Watson.”

“I’m damned if I will. I’m not such an ass as all that.”

“Oh, aren’t you! Well, anyway, let’s play at Squit-hunting.”

But to begin with they found Christopher strangely elusive. It was as though he had foreseen that some such game might be invented, and just as at Melfont in the old days when he had had his secret ways of reaching home and had varied them in order to baffle those little persecutors who might lay in wait for him, so now he varied his homings to Roper’s Row. Sometimes he struck into Oxford Street and followed it and New Oxford Street as far as Holborn, and then turned north. At other times he traced a kind of zigzag track through Bloomsbury. He doubled and diverged, and on the first two occasions when these bright lads set out to shadow him they found themselves following nothing.

“The little beggar’s fly.”

After two abortive attempts the others became bored, but not so Bullard. He was a persistent animal, the ruthless hunter of women and adventure, and on the third occasion he tracked Christopher to Roper’s Row. He saw Hazzard enter No. 7.

“Got him.”

Bullard went back to Bennet’s and looking sly, laid a finger along that trunk-like nose. He was known to some of his familiars as the “Elephant,” and the name suited him. But he kept the discovery to himself for the time being, and later in the evening he went off again, and finding the Bunce’s shop still open, and Ophelia in charge of it, he took off his hat to her.

“Gentleman of the name of Hazzard live here?”

He had a way with women. He overpowered certain of them with his male perfume.

“Yes, top floor back.”

“Righto, I’ll go up, my dear.”

“But ’e’s out.”

“Don’t worry. I’m from the hospital.”

He went up, and as it happened, Christopher, who had gone to the “Bunch of Grapes,” had left his key in the door. Bullard explored. He opened Kit’s sugar-box cupboards, and saw half a loaf of bread and some cheese, and uncovered the nakedness of the little room and thought it vastly funny. But on emerging he met a girl on the landing, and a damned pretty little bit of goods too—you fellows. He opened the furnace doors upon her.

“Excuse me, I was looking for Hazzard.”

Ruth’s wide eyes held him at gaze.

“He’s not in.”

“So I see.—Doesn’t matter. Friend of his. You’re not Mrs. Hazzard, are you?”

She looked shocked.

“Oh, no.”

And he echoed her cry, laughing and glowing.

“Oh, no! I didn’t think so—really. I didn’t mean to be rude. You’re not quite my idea.”

And then Ruth had one of her panic moments in the presence of the male, and fled into her room and locked the door. Bullard rubbed his nose. Pretty little bit of goods—the sort that cried—“Oh, don’t, please,” and struggled. He descended the stairs, and finding Miss Bunce still in the shop, was gallant to her.

“I say, no need to tell him that anyone’s called. He’s such a nervous chap. Let it alone, my dear.”

Ophelia was not such a fool as she looked.

“Friend of his, are you?”

“Quite so. He owes me something, but don’t you worry him.”

Miss Bunce nodded her tow-coloured head. Her view of the matter was that this red and black fellow had been up to see Miss Avery, and that Hazzard was the excuse. She had been listening at the foot of the stairs and had heard voices. So, Phelia, having a liking for Ruth Avery, said nothing to either of them, and Ruth herself saw no reason why she should speak to Christopher of Bullard’s visit. As a matter of fact she did not see Christopher for the next three days. She heard his footsteps, and listened to them, and was vaguely troubled by them, for they came and went on the edge of her lonely life like the patter of a child’s feet.