Читать книгу Slade - Warwick Deeping - Страница 7

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Southfleet.

Mr. Slade kissed both Ethel and Syd, reached for his bag, said good-bye to mother and father, and opening the door, stepped out on to the platform. Southfleet station was not a beautiful place, but black asphalt, cast iron pillars, glass roof, and liverish-coloured paint. Mr. Slade was struck by its ugliness, the utilitarian ugliness of that most respectable period. He stood there rather like an overgrown schoolboy, clutching his bag, and watching for the master to appear, and though a homeless creature, feeling rather homesick. Mrs. Pomeroy’s compartment was some twenty yards away. She was at the window, and Mr. Slade saw her beckoning to him.

“Slade.”

He turned and walked towards her.

“Open the door. These handles get so dirty.”

“Yes, madam.”

She was wearing new gloves, and her bored fellow travellers had left the train at the previous station. Slade put down his bag, and opened the door for her.

“You can bring the parcels out.”

“Yes, madam.”

“We shall take a cab. You will ride on the box with the cabman.”

Slade seemed to wince.

“Very good, madam.”

So, they passed down Southfleet High Street, Slade on the box, Mrs. Pomeroy where she had every right to be. Southfleet High Street was a medley of the old and the new. New yellow brick shops were sandwiched between more mellow and red brick buildings. Here and there a garden remained. Slade noticed one pleasant old white house with a green veranda standing amid trees. The vista ahead of him ended in sky and sea, with the blunt end of the pier standing up on its long black legs. Ships were passing up and down the estuary. The sunlight shone upon the sails of a schooner.

“That’s pretty,” thought Mr. Slade, and sighed; “she looks like a bird.”

The cab turned the corner by Caroline Terrace, and Mr. Slade saw the pleasant and sunny façade of that Georgian Terrace, with its rows of neat windows, its balconies, and its little front gardens spread like praying-mats. The railings might be green or brown or blue, but each garden was of the same colour and pattern, geraniums, lobelia, white marguerite, calceolaria. The broad, yellowish roadway flowed broad and tranquil towards the setting sun, and on the seaward side the old hollies and laurestinus and Austrian pines of Caroline Gardens sheltered the smaller gardens from the sea wind. A sudden brightness showed in Mr. Slade’s eyes. The pleasantness of the place surprised him.

Slade climbed down and opened the carriage door, and Mrs. Pomeroy got out and told him to carry in the parcels. Slade had an armful of them and was turning towards the central doorway of the hotel when a child came running out of Caroline Gardens, a pretty, fairish child with gentle eyes.

“Mother——”

Mrs. Pomeroy had reached the doorway. She faced about, and saw Slade standing there like a man most strangely and suddenly stricken with palsy. Two of the parcels fell out of his arms. He was staring at the child as though some almost terrible and miraculous presence had risen to dismay him.

“Slade!”

Mrs. Pomeroy’s voice was harsh and quick.

“Yes, madam.”

“Carry in the parcels at once.”

“Yes, madam.”

“Rose, dear—come here. I have a present for you.”

Mrs. Pomeroy put out a hand and took the child’s hand in hers, and Slade, still with that look of amazement and suffering in his face, watched them disappear. Quite half a minute passed before he remembered to pick up the parcels that had fallen.