Читать книгу Two Black Sheep - Warwick Deeping - Страница 8

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Vane opened his eyes.

The taxi had crossed Trafalgar Square and was sweeping with a torrent of traffic through the Admiralty Arch. The Mall lay before him, and its straightness and breadth were familiar and consoling. The blue of the sky had a tinge of gold, as though the autumn colouring of the trees had spread upwards and stained the atmosphere. Carlton House Terrace towered like a white cliff. Distant buildings were the colour of violet.

The taxi-man dropped him at the bottom of Park Lane, and as Vane paid him he was aware of the old fellow’s cynical blue eyes, bulbous nose and monstrous grey moustache.

“Thank you, sir.”

Vane nodded at him, as though saluting a type that had persisted, and turning away, walked along by the railings until he came to a gate. He saw people sitting on green chairs. There seemed to him to be hundreds of green chairs, and hundreds of figures seated on them in the gentle October sunlight. Mounds of colour glowed down below there among the trees—beds of dahlias and chrysanthemums and autumn asters, and as he strolled the world was like a painted world, the grass an emerald green, the soil of the Row the colour of bronze. He was very conscious of all these colours.

For a minute or two Vane stood leaning against some iron railings watching the cars passing by, and the figures moving under the trees. It was all very vivid to him, and both familiar and strange. The flower-beds in the distance glowed like dishes of piled fruit. The October air had a soft tang, and the fallen leaves a crispness, and these swift impressions tantalized him as though life was a white bird beating its wings in his face. The flurry of the traffic, this world of men and of women, and he was alone. He began to realize his loneliness and its inevitableness; he felt sad.

He strolled on. He walked as far as the Serpentine, and back along the Row, and his feeling of loneliness increased. He was part of the crowd and yet sundered from it by a sensitive self-consciousness that shrank from contact with these other humans. And yet he was aware of life as a little kindling flame within him—hunger, pain, the provocation of a perfume. He wanted to immerse himself in the crowd, sit with it, walk with it, talk with it.

Vane turned aside and sat down in a vacant chair. It was one of a row ranged along the curve of an asphalt path and in the full sunshine. He had an empty chair on either side, and beyond the chair on his right an old man was reading a newspaper. On his left two women were sitting in silence, as though enjoying the sunshine, and Vane noticed that the older woman’s shoes were very shabby. The girl’s shoes looked new, but he noticed that one of her black silk stockings had a small hole in it, and he found himself wondering whether she knew of the existence of that blemish.

He studied the two pairs of feet before raising his eyes momentarily to the two faces. The elder woman was seated next to him, and he had to lean forward slightly to see the girl’s face, and as he did so their eyes met. Her eyelids gave a little flicker, and almost instantly she turned her face away as though she was sensitive to such scrutiny, and Vane, feeling an equal shyness, sat back in his chair with his eyes to the front.

He was aware of the girl changing the position of her feet. She spoke to her companion.

“I ought to be moving in a minute. It’s a quarter to four.”

She opened a vanity-bag that lay in her lap, took out a small mirror and glanced at herself in it, and Vane got the impression that she was feeling nervous about something. He saw the older woman’s hand make a gentle movement and rest for a moment on the girl’s knee.

“Don’t worry.”

“Oh, I’m not worrying, but it’s rather like the five minutes before an exam.”

And then she gave a little self-conscious laugh. She had a pleasant, quiet voice that ended on a poignant note, and to Vane its quality seemed to match her serious, dark gaze. She put the mirror back into her bag, and drew in one foot with a suggestion of restlessness. Her two hands clasped the bag. She looked straight before her.

“Are you coming? Or are you going to stay here?”

“Oh, I think I’ll stay here, dear.”

“Then I’ll come back.”

Elsie Summerhays stood up.

“Well—I think I’ll get it over.”

She bent down and kissed her mother, and walked away under the trees. She was feeling nervous, quite absurdly nervous, for she was taking this interview with characteristic seriousness. What sort of woman was this Mrs. Pym? She chose the broad path going north towards the Marble Arch, and followed it until the new red brick bulk of Grosvenor House came into view. The vastness of the place frightened her; it seemed to tower above her little adventure and make her and her affairs appear so utterly unimportant. Hundreds and hundreds of windows, the eyes of a prosperous and potent world looking down at her insignificance, and for a moment she stood still as though she could not bring herself to challenge all that vastness. But how absurd! She put her chin up and walked on, and crossing the road found herself outside the entrance. She was aware of a porter in livery.

She spoke to him, and her chin quivered.

“I’ve come to see Mrs. Pym.”

The man gave her a cursory glance.

“Better ask at the inquiry office, miss.”

She entered. She stood there for a moment rather like a shy animal hustled into some strange, big building. It seemed so very full of people, and she felt that everyone was looking at her. She stood there, as though she had lost the power of movement.

A boy in livery approached her.

“Excuse me, miss, but are you Miss Bonsor?”

“No—I’m Miss Summerhays. I’ve come to see Mrs. Pym.”

The boy looked amused. He was so much more assured than she was, and wasn’t it funny the way her chin quivered!

“Inquiries over there.”

She found herself addressing a very suave young man in black who seemed to preside over acres of polished wood.

“I have an appointment with Mrs. Pym, please.”

“What name?”

“Summerhays.”

The young man took down a telephone receiver, carried on a brief conversation, and then beckoned to a page.

“Take the lady up to No. 73.”

She went up in a lift with the page-boy and the attendant, and was discharged into a corridor.

“This way, please.”

The boy’s voice seemed to echo in the corridor. It emphasized the solemn, spacious silence. Did anyone ever dare to speak here or ring bells unless they were people of supreme importance? The very carpet said “Hush,” and Elsie, in her thirty-three and eleven black frock, and with a chin that was most absurdly tremulous, began to magnify Mrs. Pym into a moneyed goddess of extreme proportions, a person to whom it would be impossible to say: “I must ask for four guineas a week.” Four guineas, when the very sumptuousness of the place would be shocked by the blurting of such bathos.

The boy knocked at a door. A thin, high-pitched voice that trailed a frayed edge answered from within.

“Come in.”

The boy opened the door.

“Lady to see Mrs. Pym.”