Читать книгу Sackcloth into Silk - Warwick Deeping - Страница 27

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During those last days she was conscious of hating her other sons, those careful cowards, shirking their sacrifice, and leaving it to Karl and to her.

On that last morning she kept the shop closed. They breakfasted together in silence, the silence of a mutual sympathy.

When Karl came downstairs for the last time with great-coat and pack, she met him in the passage with a face that was both ravaged and smiling.

“I’m not going to see you—again—Karl.”

He looked at her mutely for a moment, and then he understood.

“No, mother, just here.”

She held him for a few seconds against her big, warm body.

“Try and be—careful,—Karl.”

“Yes, mother.”

He kissed her with a protective tenderness.

“I’ll write—often.—Do you know, mother,—I somehow feel I’m going to be lucky.”

Then he turned quickly to the street door, opened it, gave her one look and went. She was to remember that look all her life. She leaned against the wall, her head touching it, her hands twisted in her apron, but she made no sound. A tram rumbled past. She felt that he was on that tram.

At two o’clock she opened the shop. She was her solid, pragmatical self, alert and cheerful, perhaps a little more abrupt than usual and not to be persuaded to confer upon prices. She had made her bargain with life, and she was in no mood to allow her sisters to chase bargains at her expense.

“No reductions, my dear. My coats are marked for cash.”

But every time a tram went by she was conscious of an inward tremor.