Читать книгу The Road - Warwick Deeping - Страница 8

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Someone blew a horn outside the Mill House as though its walls were the walls of Jericho, and since its voice mimicked the voice of Mr. Prodgers’s red van, he suspected the presence of children.

“One moment, Binnie. That sounds very much like my horn. Someone’s playing a game with it.”

He put down his cup and went to the door, and on that quiet day the flagged space between the house and the white posts and chains was innocent of tables. It staged other surprises, a small, impudent urchin of a car with a silver bonnet and vermilion body, and crowded into it like children in a bath two girls and two men.

“Hallo, Prof! You here?”

He was very much there, or—at least—he thought so. And hadn’t they noticed the red van? Rhoda, at the wheel, was trying to extract a leg and emerge, but the congestion was serious.

“Get out, Fred—I can’t move.”

Fred obeyed her, a long, fair lad with shy eyes and an air of young gravity. The other gentleman was less likeable, and in less of a hurry to dissociate himself from the tangle, perhaps because he had Rachel on his knees. He was not quite new to the professor, who recognized him as one Mr. Stanley Shelp, clerk to the Collector of Taxes at Lignor, a large, heavy, sallow fellow of infinite assurance. He was in no hurry to move. He was the man in possession, holding Rachel round the waist, and looking a good deal too complacent about it.

But if the professor could not say what he would like to have said, Rhoda supplied the abruptness.

“Get out, Stanley.”

“Better tell Rachel to get off my knees.”

“Don’t be an idiot.”

Rhoda used an elbow, and Rachel, with a protesting scuffle, slipped out on a pair of long legs.

“Silly ass.”

Mr. Prodgers thought the phrase worthy of repetition.

“Yes, silly ass.”

And Stanley Shelp looked at him, being the sort of fellow who took life and himself with gross seriousness.