Читать книгу Two Black Sheep - Warwick Deeping - Страница 10

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Vane sat on his green chair, and felt more and more lonely. He wanted to talk to someone, and being sandwiched between an elderly woman and an old fellow who had the air of retired civil servant, he was piqued by the propinquity of these two people. Here were three humans sitting in a row as mute as three stuffed dolls, while the autumn leaves drifted down and the sun went west, and winter was in the air.

He cast an appraising glance at the creature on his right. The old gentleman had folded up his paper and tucked it between his knees. He had a neat profile, a grey moustache, rather pendulous lower lids, and a polished chin. He would be precise and well informed, a citizen who read his Times conscientiously, and was politically blue. The narrow face was dry and chilly. Life had left no warmth there.

Vane was provoked by a sudden impulse. Why should he not try the effect of his voice on his right-hand neighbour? He did so. He said: “Perfect October day, isn’t it?”

The old gentleman’s chin gave a jerk. He looked at Vane with a kind of oblique, mistrustful hauteur. He scrutinized Vane’s hat, his tie and collar, and his clothes, and then removed the folded paper from between his knees.

“Yes, quite seasonable. Cold as soon as the sun goes down.”

But he had been disturbed. He was uneasy and suspicious. He ran dry fingers over the folded paper, cleared his throat, and prepared for a discreet departure. Funny place, Hyde Park! Yes, you never quite knew who was going to sit down beside you, though, as a rule, you were safer on a twopenny chair than on a free seat. Even the most unlikely people inveigled you into a gossip and then told a tale.

Again there was that dry clearing of the throat.

“It is getting just a little bit chilly.”

Without looking directly at Vane, but keeping him under observation, the old gentleman collected a stick that was reposing against the railings, rose and walked away.

Vane felt snubbed. What a peer, unfriendly world it was, so self-conscious and mistrustful! or was this the old England where people still sat apart in pews, and barricaded themselves behind newspapers in the corners of first-class railway carriages? Had he said to his late neighbour: “I have been an occupant of one of His Majesty’s penal prisons for fifteen years, and I have been at liberty for three whole days,” respectability’s reaction could not have been more chilling. Had such words as outcast, publican, pariah retained a social finality? Was England still afraid of sex and psychology and the shabby person on the seat? Moreover, he was not a shabby person, but just a Wandering Jew wearing trousers cut in Bond Street. His tailor had carried out a very successful improvisation, and without a fitting had delivered him new clothes cut to his pre-War measurements, and in prison one does not put on fat.

Queer world! Murder, penal servitude, the autumn trees scattering crisp gold upon the brilliant grass. Crude ugliness, and beauty, a beauty that hurt, and instinctively he glanced at the face of the woman on his left. She was sitting there quite motionless, her faded eyes either looking into the future or back into the past, and he realized that she was in some sort of dream and utterly unaware of him. He was less than a shadow, or there might have been infinite space between them. He made no attempt to speak to her. She was utterly apart, absorbed in her own little mystery.

The sun was setting, and the green chairs seemed to slip into the shadow. The air grew chilly, and the woman beside him betrayed another sort of carefulness. She was afraid of catching cold, for in her circumstances she could not afford to catch cold. She gave a little twitch of the shoulders, looked at a watch, rose and walked away. Mrs. Summerhays was going to meet her daughter.

Vane sat on. The green chairs emptied and people passed to and fro in front of him—people who were going home, and he knew that his own evening would end in a hotel bedroom. Was there any place more unfriendly and anonymous and frigid than an hotel bedroom?

And then he was aware of the girl with the hole in her stocking approaching along the path. Her feet brushed among the leaves, and the light of the afterglow was on her face. She came to the row of vacant chairs, paused, looked up and down as though it occurred to her that she must have chosen the wrong path or returned to a different row of chairs. She looked confused.

Vane raised his hat.

“Excuse me, if you are looking for your friend, she left here two or three minutes ago.”

Her glance was startled and darkly distant.

“Thank you. Can you tell me—?”

“She went in the direction of Park Lane.”

“Thank you. I must have missed her.”

And without looking at him again she walked rapidly away.