Читать книгу Roper's Row - Warwick Deeping - Страница 36

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Rarely is the expectation of life’s events matched by the reality, and had Mary Hazzard remained upon Sisbury Hill and imagined Christopher’s great day she might have shot her arrow very close to the target. But then she would not have met Moorhouse, nor listened to the old soldier’s simple credo, nor would she have felt for and with her son. She was to have her triumph, but not without wounds. She was to carry home with her a portrait of that most successful man, Sir Dighton Fanshawe.

The medals and prizes were presented. The Dean, standing beside a table upon which were books and leather cases, called out the names of the prizemen.

“Garside—Gurney Adams Prize.”

The little old soldier, standing behind the table, smiled, snapped out a few kind words, and shook a hand. The prizemen, gathered below, filed past one by one to collect books, medals, envelopes containing precious cheques. There was applause, shouts from the more boisterous, “Good old Bunty!”

Christopher’s turn came.

“Hazzard—Angus Sandeman Prize.”

And there was silence, a silence that was made more obvious by a tentative and faint clapping from other men’s mothers and sisters and aunts. They clapped politely just as they would have murmured the responses in church. Moorhouse had his head down, and his hands were still. Mary Hazzard, watching her son with dark deep eyes, felt the chill of that hostile stillness.

Said a girl’s voice somewhere behind her, “Who’s that funny little man?”

A young man’s voice enlightened her.

“Oh, that’s Squit Hazzard. Horrid little outsider.”

Moorhouse’s head rose with a jerk. His blue eyes lost that look of indolent good nature. His lips moved.

“Smug swine.”

But his scorn was voiceless. He was too conscious of Christopher’s mother sitting beside him, very pale and very proud.