Читать книгу Two Black Sheep - Warwick Deeping - Страница 18

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Mrs. Summerhays did not go to the station. She saw Elsie and her luggage into the taxi which drew up in front of the green motor van into which men wearing aprons and bowler hats were packing the Summerhays’ possessions. She carried a bright and courageous face, and when they kissed each other her lips were colder and less tremulous than her daughter’s.

“You have plenty of time. It will quite amuse me—watching the men. Send me a card from Paris.”

She closed the door, and as the cab drew out from the kerb Mrs. Mary had a momentary glimpse of Elsie’s face, and it reminded her of the face of Elsie the child. She stood for a moment watching the taxi and then turned to the green iron gate and mounted the three steps for which neither she nor Elsie would be responsible any longer. She was glad of that. Also, she was glad that the parting was over, for though at sixty you might not feel things so acutely, there was a finality about them, and the bones of your soul grew brittle.

“Excuse me, ma’am.”

The doorway was occluded by a large person to whose posterior was attached a chest of drawers, and Mrs. Summerhays retreated down the steps and stood aside to let the procession pass. She was reminded of a somewhat similar procession, poor Jordan being carried out shut up in an oak box, and unable to exhibit himself on that last social occasion. Her pale lips pressed themselves together. She looked up and down the street as though compelling herself to accept its emptiness. She noticed that a blind in the house opposite had been carelessly pulled up and left awry. She went up the three steps and into a house that was full of an unfriendly and revolutionary disorder. A bowler hat with a dent in it hung on the knob of the terminal post of the banisters. The knob was completely concealed, like the head of a small child extinguished by such monstrous headgear.