Читать книгу Roper's Row - Warwick Deeping - Страница 18

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Ruth had been sitting up late, typing a short story that a shy young man had brought into Mrs. Bunce’s shop. Her window was open, for the night was hot and oppressive, and between the trees of Red Lion Square and the trees of Gray’s Inn, Roper’s Row stretched like a narrow, stagnant, stuffy vicolo in Venice. Ruth was tired, and the shy young man’s notions of literature were as shy as his blond head. Everybody else was in bed, and in the warm stillness of the night the clatter of the typewriter’s keys and the ping of its bell were sounds that seemed enormous, threatening to keep the whole Row awake. People would complain. The Row complained easily and forcibly, and Ruth was expecting some voice to cry out in the stillness of the night, “Stop that damned clatter.” She stopped it. She covered the machine with a piece of black cloth, and gathering up the sheets, put them away in a drawer. Turning the gas low, and raising the blind, she stood at the open window, for though she was tired she was tired to the point of restlessness, and she foresaw one of those nights when she would lie awake and think of all the worrying things that might happen, sickness—and the loss of her work, and starvings and ignominies.

Roper’s Row was deserted. Not a footstep trickled through it, and in those days when life was quieter and the taxi had not ousted the hansom, London could sleep and be silent. The clap-clap of a horse’s hoofs came and went in Lamb’s Conduit Street. Someone opened a window, but such sounds were no more than the fall of an apple in the virginal stillness of the deep country. Ruth had the feeling that she was the only person awake in London, a little lonely watcher of stars and roofs and chimney-pots in a world that snored and was sunk in a terrifying indifference. For at times London at night did terrify her, especially in winter when rain was falling, or the street lamps seemed to be smothering in yellow fog.

She was about to let down the blind and shut out the dim windows opposite when she heard footsteps coming along Roper’s Row. They associated themselves at once with the person of Christopher Hazzard. Lub-dup, lub-dup. Her heart quickened its rhythm. For, always, her loneliness was aware of that other loneliness across the landing, and reached out to it, and felt compassionate.

She heard his footsteps come to a pause outside No. 7, and the turning of a key in a lock. The door closed very gently. And then a sudden impulse moved her to open her own door, and to turn up the gas-jet on the landing. The last person to go to bed was responsible for turning out the gas, and usually that person was Hazzard.

She leaned over the banisters. He was coming up, and he did not know that she was there. He emerged slowly into the light, and she had her glimpse of him before he was aware of her presence. His hat had a gash in it; he was holding something under his arm, something that looked broken. His figure had a strange smeariness, a blotched, stained appearance.

“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Hazzard——”

He was startled, profoundly so. He stopped on the stairs with a quick, upward look of anger and impatience. His pride was a bruised pulp, but not too bruised to feel.

“I suppose so.”

She realized that something strange had happened to him. She became a little breathless.

“I was awake—and I heard your steps. I thought the gas was out—and that you wouldn’t be able to see.”

He seemed to force himself up the last three steps, and she saw that he was carrying a broken violin. His coat suggested a wetness, patches of some sticky substance. His face looked so white and hard and brittle that she could imagine it cracking like china.

She had to say something. She was confused into saying something.

“You’ve broken your violin.”

He looked at her almost with hatred.

“Some of my dear friends. What you call a rag.”

“The beasts——! Oh—I’m so sorry.”

And suddenly the hardness went out of his eyes. He stood and looked at her with a kind of wounded smile, rather like a child determined to be brave.

“You see—I’m an outsider. I don’t live on my mother and father. I’m—I’m what you call an enthusiast. You get hated. Funny, isn’t it? To be hated just because you are keen.”

Her eyelids flickered.

“How beastly! Did they——?”

“Oh, it’s just a game to them.”

He looked exhausted, a little unsteady on his feet, and suddenly she put out a hand and touched his coat.

“What’s that——? You’re all——”

He laughed, though with the appearance of laughter no sound came.

“Plum juice. I’ve been pilloried. They pelted me. But damn them—they shan’t stop me——”

She held out both hands. Her face was the face of Ruth.

“Do give me your coat. I’ll sponge it. It will be dry in the morning. No—I’m not tired—and you are. And I don’t feel sleepy. Yes, leave it with me.”

He looked at her strangely with his still, deep eyes.

“Yes, I’m about finished—for to-night. But you——”

Her hands remained out, and putting down his broken violin, he took off his coat and let her have it.

“Thank you, Miss Avery. I don’t know why——”

“Oh, I’d like to. One does sometimes. Good night.”

But she turned in her doorway and saw him still looking at her.

“I’ll hang the coat on the handle of your door.”

“Thank you.”

She went in with a queer little feeling of exultation, and hanging the coat on the back of a chair, poured out water into the bowl, and used her own face-sponge upon the stains.