Читать книгу Roper's Row - Warwick Deeping - Страница 29

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Ruth was packing a portmanteau, a diminutive and very old brown leather contraption with two new straps and four of its corners patched. She had it open on the floor. She sat or knelt upon the floor like a child playing a game, for packing for your one yearly holiday was part of the adventure. Ruth was a little flushed. She was a creature of quick and graceful gestures, and of pretty poses that were unconscious, and of moments of still, dark thought. She could sprawl like a child, and be as natural and as graceful as a child when no one was watching her. Translated into the nude, and with the portmanteau transformed into a little brown forest pool, she could have given to an artist the study of a naiad looking at her dusky self in the brown water.

She patted and smoothed a dress, or tucked a roll of stockings into a corner, or rose and turned on her knees to reach for some article from the bed. At eight o’clock next morning a good fellow who sold evening papers in Bloomsbury was to call at No. 7 Roper’s Row and shoulder Ruth’s portmanteau to Charing Cross Station.

But her absorption in the business of packing was not complete, nor was the prospect of ten days at Hastings so satisfying as it might have been. She was going alone to a bed-sitting room in Prospect Place, a girl friend in the office of Hilton & Stagg in Fenchurch Street having failed her. Also, it was the end of September and cloudy and rather cold, and romantic possibilities seemed absent.

She was about to close the lid of the portmanteau when she heard the opening of Hazzard’s door, and his footsteps crossing the landing. She remained motionless, the feminine creature crouching and expectant, for since the incident of her washing of Hazzard’s coat there had been a friendliness between them. Not that a girl of Ruth’s eyes and colouring was content with friendliness; she wasn’t; in her shy and secret way she had watched and wondered and listened, and looked for sweet significances in life’s little nothings.

Moreover, during the last day or two Christopher’s room had been full of activities. Men in dirty white aprons had carried things up the stairs, and she had heard Hazzard hammering and pulling furniture about. His mother was coming up from Wiltshire for Bennet’s Day, and Ruth, too gentle and too unpossessive to be jealous, had caught herself wishing that the occasion could have arranged itself otherwise.

Hazzard’s footsteps approached her door and paused there. He knocked.

“Miss Avery.”

She rose on her slim legs, and went swiftly to look in her mirror.

“Yes.”

She patted her hair and wished that he would be less formal, and call her Ruth.

“Can I speak to you a moment?”

She crossed the room and opened the door, and stood there with a smile of dark expectancy.

“Sorry to disturb you.”

“Oh, I was packing. I’ve just finished.”

She noticed that his face had a rapt look, also that there was a little blob of white paint on his right temple. Also there were paint stains on his fingers. He had been refreshing the dressing-table and the chest of drawers.

“My mother comes up on the Wednesday. I’m wondering if you would mind——”

His glance examined her room, but not because it was her room and had any perfume and mystery for him, but because it was to be his mother’s room for one notable night.

“I shan’t be back till the Saturday.”

“Would you mind if I altered—things—a little? I’ll put everything back.”

She was a little puzzled, and beginning to be a little piqued.

“In what way?”

“Oh, I daresay it will not be necessary.”

“Will she have much luggage?”

“No.”

“I’ve cleared two of the drawers, and there’s room in the cupboard.”

“Thank you. It’s very good of you to let me. I’ll take care.”

He glanced at her open trunk, and saw something white and neatly folded, a clean nightdress, but he did not see it as a nightdress, nor as a man like Bullard would have seen it. But he had arrived at the end of his mission, and became suddenly shy and diffident, and perhaps he was conscious of a response that was lacking. He felt vaguely dissatisfied with the occasion, not realizing that the impression emanated from her.

“I won’t bother you any more.”

He retreated. He appeared to dwindle away, and she closed the door on him with a sense of happenings unfulfilled. He had not spoken about her holiday, or wished her fair weather and a good time. He had just assumed her absence and shown himself glad and ready to make use of it. And she felt hurt and a little aggrieved, and convinced that he was not at all interested in her or her little affairs, and being a very warm and simple creature, quite exquisitely simple in her way, she reacted like a disregarded child, and sat down on her bed and looked pensive.

Hazzard had not been to the hospital for three days. He had been busy preparing for the great occasion, staging a piece of devoted make-believe for the beguiling of his mother; he had bought a four-pound tin of cream paint and a brush; he had arranged to hire for three nights a carpet, a small sideboard, two leather-seated chairs, four pictures in oils. The hiring of these articles had not been an easy matter, for he had had to remove the scepticism of the owner of the second-hand furniture shop.

“What—three nights! What’s the game, my lad?”

Christopher found that the truth had powers of persuasion.

“My mother is coming up from the country.”

“Mother! Now—you don’t tell me——”

“That is just what I am telling you. You can go and make inquiries. Mrs. Bunce—my landlady knows——”

“Mrs. Bunce of No. 7. Yes, I’ve done business with her.”

“I’ll pay in advance—if you prefer it.”

“That’s my motto; money down.”

With the arrival of the stage properties, displacements and concealments became necessary. Christopher’s two sugar-boxes were hidden away under the bed. Two decrepit chairs were given temporary standing room on the landing. There was the catering to be considered, and Mrs. Bunce agreed to board mother and son during Mrs. Mary’s visit. Ophelia would wait on them.

“I don’t want my mother to know, Mrs. Bunce.”

“Bless your heart,” said the lady, “I—can—keep a secret—sometimes.”

When Ruth Avery’s portmanteau had been carried downstairs, and she herself had followed it, Hazzard remained master of the whole top floor of No. 7. Ruth’s door was shut, and he crossed the landing, and opening her door, went in. She had turned down the bed for the sheets to be changed, and in her basin was the water she had used, and the towels were neatly folded on the white rails. The room had a clean simplicity, and he stood there thinking that it would be just the room for his mother.

It may be that he did not hear footsteps on the stairs, or if he heard them he assumed them to be the footsteps of the Bunce girl coming up to do the room. He was bending over the bed, pressing a hand into the mattress to test the springs, for Mary Hazzard was not a good sleeper, and being the child of his mother he was a creature of quaint thoroughness and forethought.

“Oh——!”

He turned as sharply as the exclamation. He saw Ruth in the doorway, a Ruth with wide dark eyes and a vivid face, a figure of haste, breathlessness, and confusion.

He reddened.

“I’m sorry. I thought——”

She seemed to waver. There was something in her eyes that perplexed him. She seemed to glow with a sudden self-conscious radiance.

“I forgot my purse. So silly. I had to run all the way back from Conduit Street.”

She was all colour and breathlessness. She crossed quickly to the chest of drawers, and opened a top drawer.

“There! Fancy my forgetting!”

He had betaken himself to the door, and he drew aside to let her pass.

“You won’t miss your train?”

“I shall just manage it.”

“I hope you’ll have a good time.”

Her eyes, confusedly, bright, met his.

“Of course. I’m so glad your mother is sleeping here. Good-bye.”

She held out a hand and he took it, and was aware of the warmth and the faint pressure of her fingers.

“Good-bye.”

She turned at the top of the stairs and smiled and nodded, and he saw the whiteness of her neck under the brim of her black hat as she went down the stairs. He remained for a moment staring at the dingy wallpaper. He had thought the white V of her neck rather pretty, but in two minutes he had forgotten all about it. He had so many other things to do.

On the morning of the great day Christopher Hazzard rose at five. He was in a hurry, and not a little excited; he cut himself while shaving, and spoilt a clean collar and solved the problem by appearing in Roper’s Row without a collar, and with a wad of blood-stained cotton-wool adhering to his cheek. But Roper’s Row was supremely his, empty and silent, with the rising sun shining down it, and the green of the plane trees closing each end of it like a curtain. He felt adventurous and exultant, like a small boy setting forth in the freshness of the dawn to rob an orchard or climb some distant and mysterious hill.

He was bound for Covent Garden market. Inevitably his mother would arrive with a bunch of flowers, but he wanted her to find flowers in her room. He bought bronze-red and white chrysanthemums; he spent two and sixpence on the flowers, and was back in Roper’s Row about the time that blinds were going up, and an occasional door opening like a sleepy, yawning mouth. In the passage of No. 7 he met Ophelia with her hair in curl-papers, and bearing the white milk-jug that was to be left on the doorstep ready for the milkman.

“Lor’, Mr. Hazzard, ain’t you early.”

Christopher felt absurdly happy, and in love with everything and everybody. The sun was shining; even Ophelia’s fringe of curl-papers suggested a halo.

“Don’t forget, I shall need milk for two.”

“I’ve got it ready, see.”

She had a piece of paper with “Four pints” scrawled on it, to be tucked under the jug.

“That’s forethought, Mr. Hazzard.”

He extracted a red chrysanthemum and presented it to her.

“A red-letter day, Ophelia. You wear that for good luck.”

Miss Bunce tucked the flower into her blue-and-white striped flannel blouse, and placed the milk-jug outside the door.

Hazzard had gone on to climb the stairs.

“Lawks!” was her reflection, “you’d think ’e ’ad a gal comin’ up from the country, and not ’is ma. ’E’s a queer un, and no mistake.”