Читать книгу The Road - Warwick Deeping - Страница 14

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That dirty object was a small, rough-haired dog, and on Bonthorn’s face fierceness and pity were in conflict. He looked taller than himself, a bronze figure with one blue and vivid eye.

He spoke.

“Excuse me, have you any water? I found this poor little beggar in the road. A car—of course. The people in it hadn’t stopped”—and quite gently he finished with a “Damn them.”

Was it that he looked intuitively at Rachel, or was it that Rachel being the most sensitive of the six was the first to move? Her eyes were wide open. They had looked at Bonthorn’s face and at the dog, and again at the face of the man. She said nothing. She seemed to glide away into the kitchen, and to return with a saucer of water. The whole room was on its feet, its noisy rag forgotten in this minor tragedy. Only Shelp stood apart, sullen and ironic.

Rachel put her saucer on the floor by one of the windows. She snatched a cushion from a chair.

“O, poor little thing.”

“I’m afraid his back’s broken.”

“How horrible.”

The dog was in extremis, and as Bonthorn knelt and laid the little beast on the cushion, Rachel’s eyes watched his hands.

“O, you’re bleeding.”

“He bit me—when I picked him up. Dogs do sometimes—when they are in anguish. It’s nothing.”

Mrs. Binnie, agitated and shocked, sat down in a chair behind her elder daughter.

“O—I can’t bear to see things suffer.”

The professor made sympathetic noises. Young Tanrock, looking angry, stood and frowned. “The swine, not to stop!” Shelp glowered in the background. Rhoda, her straight black eyebrows rather stern, crossed the room and closed the door.

Rachel, on her knees and trying to persuade the dying dog to drink, became somehow the room’s central figure. Bonthorn was on one knee beside her, like a lean Bayard after a battle. And old Prodgers remembered him. You did not forget a face like Bonthorn’s, the tan and the temper of it made more vivid by the black patch over the empty socket. It was the face of a man who had suffered much, and yet was happy, and in whom some spiritual mystery endured.

Rachel withdrew the saucer.

“He can’t drink.”

“I’m afraid he’s too far gone.”

“Poor—poor poppet.”

Gently she stroked the dog’s dirty coat.

“I don’t think he feels now.”

Her arm touched Bonthorn’s.

“No.”

But someone was out of the picture, the one person in the room who wanted to be in the centre of the picture, always and all the time. That—perhaps—was part of the new morality. Stanley Shelp’s voice was heard, and its sneer was unexpected.

“Can’t you see the dog’s dead?”

And before anyone could respond to the challenge, he had added:

“That’s England all over. Getting sentimental about dogs and daffodils, and not caring a damn——”

Bonthorn seemed to come to his full height in one swift movement.

“I beg your pardon——”

His one urge was a thing of sudden and solitary fierceness. It picked out Shelp instantly and fixed him.

“I don’t think anyone else here agrees with you.”

But the voice and the glance were so final, and Shelp’s sallowness seemed to grow turgid. It was as though he had been thrown quietly and emphatically upon the floor, and had got up hot and raging.

“That’s all right, Bonthorn, it’s my privilege to disagree.”

“Probably—you do.”

Someone laughed, and the sharp, wholesome sound was like a clip across Shelp’s ear. His head went back with a jerk. That flabby and voluble mouth of his began to utter things.

“I don’t want any superior lip from you——”

Rhoda settled him.

“Shut up—Mr. Bolshie.”

The crudeness of Shelp subsided. He found a hat and disappeared, and no one appeared to notice his absence. Bonthorn had forgotten him after those first whipping words, and was down on one knee again, with a hand laid gently on the dog’s body. He nodded.

“All over.”

Rachel was looking at him, and with a suggestion of inevitableness he turned his head and met her eyes, and for a second or two the glance between them held.

She rose. She was aware of Bonthorn picking up the dead dog. He was on his feet, and with a curious, inward smile he seemed to forget them all for a moment. Then he faced Mrs. Binnie.

“Thank you. It was good of you to let me bring the dog in. I hope I haven’t——”

Mrs. Binnie nodded her small head. It was obvious that she liked Mr. Bonthorn and liked him very well.

“I wish we could have done more. I’ve seen you pass my place so often, sir.”

He smiled at Mrs. Binnie.

“This little fellow has introduced us—apparently. I hope he was merry. Sad dogs shouldn’t be. And now—if you will excuse me—I will go and bury him.”

Mrs. Binnie offered her garden for the purpose, but Bonthorn’s whim was for Yew End.

“I have a corner up there. I have a dog and a cat buried in it, and a tame crow who died of swallowing buttons. Thank you, all of you.”

His blue eyes travelled from face to face. He exchanged smiles with Mr. Prodgers of the red van. Young Tanrock went to open the door for him.

“Thank you.”

If necessary, young Tanrock would have opened more doors for him, and when man and dog had disappeared there was a silence, a kind of inward dispersion of the presences that remained. Young Tanrock went and closed the lid of the gramophone. Rachel picked up the saucer and carried it carefully into the kitchen. Rhoda collected the cushion, dusted it, and returned it to its chair. Mr. Samuel re-filled his pipe. Robinia nodded her head approvingly at Rhoda’s lover.

“That’s right, Fred—that’s quite right of you.”

Mr. Prodgers, removing the mouthpiece of his pipe, blew down it.

“Bit of an original—that. And a gentleman. Makes you feel—somehow——”

Rhoda, with a dark straightness of brow and a lift of the head, seemed to reflect for a moment.

“That bladder of lard—Stanley. He hung him up on a hook—all right.”

Young Tanrock gave a little laugh.

“Bladder of lard! Marvellous. That’s it—absolutely it.”