Читать книгу The Road - Warwick Deeping - Страница 13

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The car had returned, with Mrs. Binnie somewhat appeased, and reassured as to youth’s recklessness.

Mrs. Buck, descending at the gate, looked a little blown about but proud.

“Well—we’re car folk.”

Rachel was opening the door of the wagon-shed which the car was to share with the lumbering superfluities of Mrs. Buck’s past. Her daughters complained that she collected everything and shed nothing, and amid the amazing clutter Wilfred came to rest. Here were boxes full of feathers, a derelict mangle, a discarded iron bed-stead, oddments of china, rolls of rusty wire netting, piles of wastepaper, a broken screen, two obsolete gas-stoves and a wheelbarrow that had lost its wheel. Confronted with the contents of the shed Mrs. Buck’s mind equivocated.

“If you throw a thing away you’ll always find you want it to-morrow.”

The key was turned upon the car. The red van had not yet removed itself to “The Chequers” at Lignor. In the tea-room Mr. Prodgers was sitting astride a chair, looking pawky and sly. Shelp had the whole of the fireplace to himself and was straddling a grievance. Young Tanrock was fiddling with the gramophone.

“Well—Mrs. Binnie, broken any records?”

Rhoda betrayed a certain abruptness.

“Hallo, you two still here.”

She looked at young Tanrock, and Tanrock jerked a thumb in the direction of Shelp.

“Stanley’s lecturing us.”

“He would.”

Mrs. Binnie sat down with the air of a woman who had experienced something. Rhoda joined young Tanrock by the gramophone. Rachel, with a glance at Shelp, diverged towards the kitchen door, but with a kind of oily glide, he intercepted her. His right arm was familiar and insinuating, but she edged him off.

“Well—there’s something to be said for wheels.”

Mrs. Binnie removed her hat.

“And in spite of the police one’s not breaking any of the commandments.”

Mr. Prodgers made an alert little movement on his chair.

“Commandments! That’s a coincidence. We’ve been having an argument here. Mr. Shelp’s point of view.”

“What’s that, Sam?”

“Why, that the whole ten of them are obsolete, so to speak. But the joke is——”

Rhoda pirouetted.

“I bet I know. You couldn’t remember them. Own up.”

“Well—not all of them?”

“Not even Stanley——”

“Mr. Shelp was a little vague.”

“O, Mr. Infallible!”

There was no love wasted between Rhoda and Stanley Shelp, and if Rhoda disliked him it was not because he preferred her sister. She understood his preference for Rachel, for Rachel was softer, more like a grape to Rhoda’s more acid sloe. And if Rhoda had a little mocking, bright-eyed devil in her that could refer to the clerk as “Mr. Yelp,” and pinch him until he began to exude his characteristic sour juices—well—that was life.

She turned on the gramophone, and nudged Tanrock.

“Let’s get Stanley yelping.”

In a minute there was clamour, with Mr. Prodgers treating his chair like a rocking-horse, an exultant philosopher. The orator had rushed to the challenge. He lost his temper. Tanrock began to laugh, and like many shy lads—when once his laughter was launched, it became joyous and immoderate. Rhoda did steps in front of Shelp. The gramophone squirled “Blue Eyes.” Mrs. Buck, half shocked, and half amused, exclaimed at intervals: “Well—really!”

Stanley Shelp was on his soap-box.

“I never make a statement unless I am sure of my figures.”

“Well—ten, Stanley, ten. I’ll hear you. Commandment No. 1?”

“He’s forgotten.”

“Something about God, isn’t it?”

Shelp, almost shouting: “God’s an obsolete abstraction. We’ve got rid of Mumbo-Jumbo.”

Mrs. Buck with hands up: “Well—really! Mr. Shelp how can you say such things!”

A fat voice from the gramophone—“Blue Eyes—I call you Blue Eyes——”

Rhoda, still doing steps, irony on its toes, appealed to the professor.

“Stanley’s forgotten most of them. I expect he knows the seventh. What is the second commandment, professor?”

“I’m ashamed to say—I’ve forgotten.”

There was general clamour, with the gramophone shouting—“Blue Eyes, I call you Blue Eyes.” Shelp, very pale and slightly clammy, lost the remnants of his temper. He too began to shout.

“All right, all right, I’ll contradict the lot for you. There is no God. We make a graven image of money. No one keeps the Sabbath; we don’t honour our fathers and mothers. All capitalists steal and commit murder. The police bear false witness——”

The gramophone squawked itself out, and Tanrock, laughing, attended to it. Mrs. Buck covered her ears. Mr. Samuel made exultant movements in his chair.

“Splendid—splendid! Bang go all the Tables of the Law.”

“Really. Mr. Shelp, really! It’s blaspheming.”

And suddenly Shelp’s rage grew sullen.

“O, all right. You people can’t be serious. What I am giving you is the new gospel, and I’m giving it you hot and strong. It’s the gospel of the new world. All the old, middle-class Christian stuff is as dead as the Czar. What about the sexual seventh? We don’t commit adultery these days. We do what’s natural. We’ve got rid of all the nasty, fly-blown humbug about purity. We——”

Mrs. Buck stood up suddenly, looking fluffed and combative like an incensed bird.

“Mr. Shelp—that’s enough! It’s—it’s disgraceful. I won’t have such things said before my girls.”

The professor applauded her, with mischievous and spectacled eyes focusing Shelp.

“The new morality—what!”

But it was Rachel—Rachel darkly in the background—who first saw Nicholas Bonthorn standing in the doorway with something white and dirty in his arms.