Читать книгу Two Black Sheep - Warwick Deeping - Страница 11

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Vane sat on. The light was leaving the tops of the trees, and the autumn twilight seemed to take to itself a moist, cold perfume. The grass grew more deeply and intensely green, and then a tinge of greyness began to spread, and those little flakes of yellow light in the fallen leaves, faded into the gradual dusk. Empty chairs, and people hurrying home, and the distant roll of the traffic, and a kind of blue gloom that became flecked with lights. The chill of the dusk seemed to strike inwards, and his feeling of loneliness became acute. He began to wish that he had accepted Blagden’s invitation and gone to dine there. A fire, and lights, and faces. And the eyes of Blagden’s wife, friendly, and perhaps compassionate, and veiling their curiosity. Yes, he was afraid of eyes, and in that cold, clear twilight he felt afraid of many things—life, himself, that hotel bedroom, the faces of the hotel staff, the porter who always seemed to be standing by the glass doors and who watched him enter. This strange, poignant dread of his new world seemed to envelop him like the twilight.

What should he do with himself? Where could he go? He seemed to be sitting there encased in the cold and crystalline shell of his own self-consciousness. Then a movement disturbed him. A young woman in a green coat edged with fur was sitting down in the chair that Mrs. Summerhays had occupied. She wore a little black hat fitting closely to her head, black silk stockings, and black shoes. A yellow silk vanity-bag lay in her lap, and her two hands rested on the bag.

She sat and looked into the distance as though the man on the next chair but one did not exist for her. She had a plump and pallid face, eyes whose brown irises were flecked with little tawny streaks, a cherry-coloured mouth. Almost, she was statuesque; she did not seem to breathe, but to Vane she was suddenly and acutely disturbing. A faint drift of perfume came from her.

He glanced surreptitiously at her profile. She was pretty, but with something of the hardness of white wax. The set of the lips and nostrils was enigmatic. She sat and stared, and yet he suspected her of being fully aware of his scrutiny. Her lashes trembled almost imperceptibly. Abruptly, she unfastened her bag with long fingers, the nails of which were tinted with some reddish pigment. She took out a cigarette case, opened it, and picked out a cigarette. She looked again into her bag. She spoke, but without looking at Vane.

“Excuse me, got a match?”

He produced a box of matches. He felt suddenly and vividly on the edge of an experience. The impact of her voice upon his consciousness was like a clash of sound, vibrant and emotional.

He said: “Rather pleasant out here.”

She tapped the cigarette on the gold case, lit one of his matches and held the flame to the cigarette. Then she returned him his matchbox, and the tips of their fingers touched.

“Ta. Yes, nice and fresh, isn’t it?”

She blew a smoke-ring, and then she offered him her cigarette case.

“Have one.”

He hesitated. She both disturbed and perplexed him. She was all new and polished, and just like dozens of other girls he had passed in the streets and yet there was a meretriciousness, a something. But why should he care, at his age, with his temples growing a little grey? She was a woman. He took one of her cigarettes.

“Thank you.”

She smiled, and when she smiled the angles of her mouth lifted in a queer way, and the retracted upper lip showed a full row of her teeth. Her eyes examined him, his clothes, his age. Yes, he was the profitable age.

“Just watching things, are you?”

“Yes, just watching things.”

“Same here. Idle rich! Not quite. It always amuses me to look at the toffs going out to dine at the Berkeley or to Claridge’s. Suppose you haven’t dined?”

“No.”

It occurred to him to wonder. But how did he know that she was that sort of woman? He was so out of touch with things. Certainly her voice was just a little strident and suggestive.

“I’m staying in London.”

“Up from the country?”

“Yes.”

That too was promising. She appraised him. His clothes were new and well cut.

“Makes you feel a bit lonely—perhaps. All by yourself, I suppose?”

He nodded. He found himself strangely agitated. The human contact was so provocative, the very scent of her, her chin, her neck, even her cherry-coloured mouth.

“Yes, London is lonely. Strange, isn’t it? All these people—”

A green dusk was falling. She moved to the chair next to his. Imperceptibly one of her knees had approached his.

“Yes, makes me feel like that sometimes. Makes you feel you want a friend.”

Friend! The word had a peculiar effect on him. He found himself wondering what the effect on her would be were he to tell her that he had served fifteen years for murder? Friend! He could imagine her flinching and walking quickly away. Yes, even though she might happen to be—

He said: “So you feel like that! Doesn’t it strike you as extraordinary that there should be all these people and no one to talk to?”

She seemed nearer to him.

“Well, what’s the matter? You’re talking to me.”

Her skirt touched him.

“Anything wrong with that?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s all right, isn’t it?”

She gave a little laugh. He met her oblique glance in the dusk. Something trembled in him almost boyishly, something that was more than sex. For, at that moment, she seemed to symbolize life, the tang of this October evening, all that he had lacked and suffered for, the strange and strangled apathy of all those years. He desired her, because she was woman, flesh, a perfume, something intimate and alive.

He looked at her.

“Yes, there is nothing wrong with you.”

She closed her bag with a faint snap.

“Let’s stroll. I’ve got a little place off the Edgware Road.”

She got up with a flick of the skirts and a kind of jocund, rallying glance at him. He went with her.