Джозеф Джефферсон Фарджон – Тринадцать гостей / Thirteen Guests (страница 4)
“I saw one of Pratt’s pictures last May. I thought it was clever, but—well—”
“Horrible?”
“Struck me that way. What’s this latest masterpiece? Is he painting anybody here?”
“The Honourable Anne,” answered Taverley. Both men were silent for a few seconds. Then Taverley continued: “The other was Mr. Rowe. You won’t have heard of him, but you may have breakfasted with him. Pratt—who has a cynical name for everybody—calls him the Man Behind the Sausage. When he paints Mr. Rowe, as he’s bound to do one day—Rowe is rolling in it—he’ll elongate his head just enough to let everybody know but Mr. Rowe. That’s his devilish art. He finds your weakness, and paints round it.”
“I don’t think I’m going to like Mr. Pratt,” mused John.
“Take my advice and try to,” responded Taverley. “Well, that’s four of us. Five—the large lady with impressive glasses. Have you read
“I’ll do my best,” promised John.
“Six, Mrs. Rowe. Seven, Ruth Rowe—daughter. There isn’t really much to say about them, except that Ruth will be much happier when—if ever—she escapes from the sausage influence. Let’s see—yes, that’s the lot of who are here. But Number Eight is coming by car—Sir James Earnshaw, Liberal, wondering whether to turn Right or Left—and there will be four more on the next train. Zena Wilding—”
“The actress?”
“Yes. And Lionel Bultin. Bultin will write us all up in his gossip column. His method in print is rather like Pratt’s on canvas. He says what he likes and what others don’t. Who are the last two? Oh, the Chaters. Mr. and Mrs. I don’t know anything about them. Well—that’s the dozen.”
“And I make the thirteenth,” remarked John as Taverley rose.
“I hope that doesn’t worry you?”
“Not superstitious.”
“That’s fortunate, although, even if you were, you’d be clear. The bad luck would come, wouldn’t it, to the thirteenth guest who passes in through that door?… Well, I must be moving. See you later.”
Before going up, Taverley waited while the pretty maid with the flushed cheeks—they were still a little flushed—came down. John turned his head to watch the Sussex cricketer depart. A sudden gasp from the maid brought his head round again.
She had vanished, but he was just in time to glimpse a form flashing by the window.
Chapter III. At the Black Stag
The brilliant amber of the day had gone. The sun had changed into a dull red disc and had dropped below the fringe of Greyshot Heath. Already the nip in the air had lost its pleasantness, and the sly old fox at Mile Bottom was opening its eyes in its earthy den to ponder on pheasants and mice and rabbits. One day the sly old fox would itself be hunted, and only for this reason had it escaped sharing the excommunication of the pole-cat. It was too good a runner to waste its agility in the north.
In a little wood half a mile from Bragley Court a cock pheasant fluttered heavily to his roosting place. He had no fear. Death, that odd, incomprehensible thing, came to others; but
The doctor’s brass plate had ceased to glow. It was now merely a cold flatness surrounded by vines. The sentinel dog outside the Cricketers’ Arms had risen, shaken itself, and gone inside. A lamp had appeared in the uncurtained window of the Black Stag overlooking Flensham station, and the gravelly railway station itself was a length of grey shadows broken by the occasional dim lights of platform lamps and of an inadequate waiting-room. Somewhere to the south loomed a large black hole that was a tunnel. You were conscious of the hole, but you could no longer see it, for its blackness had merged into the blackness of the hill through which it bored and of the sky above the hill.
A man sat at the uncurtained window of the Black Stag, staring with moody eyes at the deserted smudge of platform. He had arrived that morning on the 12.10. He had partaken of an unpalatable lunch, and had spent the early afternoon strolling about in a purposeless way, smoking incessantly, and almost as incessantly consulting his watch. He had returned to the inn at three o’clock, and had sat at the window till the 3.28 had drawn in. He had watched the two passengers alight, and had witnessed the accident. It had not interested him particularly, because his interest was centred in one thing, and one thing only; every event outside that one thing, every circumstance that bore no direct relation to it, was as unreal and shadowy as the platform at which he now stared. Had the man who had tumbled been seriously hurt? It did not matter. What was the lady doing? It did not matter. The scene was being enacted within a short distance of him, but for all the effect it produced upon his emotions it might have occurred in Siam. When it was over, and the train had gone, and the platform had become once more deserted, he had taken another purposeless stroll, again smoking incessantly, again incessantly consulting his watch. And now he was back again, and a large, heavily-breathing woman had brought in a lamp.
“You’ll be wanting tea?” asked the woman.
He was a rum one, this one was, but even rum ones took tea.
“The next train’s 5.56, isn’t it?” replied the man.
She told him that it was. She had told him the same thing three times already. Then she repeated her question about tea.
“Eh? Yes, I’ll have some tea,” he replied, without interest.
“What would you like with it? Just bread and butter? Or we’ve got some nice seed cake.”
“Anything. Yes. Whatever you’ve got.”
The woman evaporated, and appeared ten minutes later with a tray. She placed the tray on a sideboard, covered a stained table with a scarcely less stained cloth, and moved the tray to the table. The seed cake presided with dejected majesty on a tall, glass-pedestaled dish. Its mission appeared to be to make thick slices of bread and butter look appetising by comparison.
“Excuse me, sir,” said the woman, lingering. “But will you be staying the night?”
“What?” replied the man.
“Will you be staying the night?” repeated the woman. “If so, I could have your bag taken up—”
“Don’t touch my bag!” cried the man, interested at last. (“You’d have thought some one had trod on his toe,” the woman recounted later.) Then the man added: “I’m not sure. Yes, perhaps. I’ll let you know presently.”
The bag, a black one, was on a chair. When the woman had gone, the man went to it, opened it, looked inside, closed it, locked it, and moved it, for no reason that he could have explained, to another chair. Then he returned to the table and began his tea.
From the bar across the passage came suddenly the sound of raucous music. Some one had put a penny in a grotesque piece of machinery, and was receiving his money’s worth. The man plugged his ears with his fingers and glared at his teacup while the music ground on. After a minute he removed his fingers, then hastily shoved them back again. His forehead throbbed. His head seemed on the point of bursting. A poor man’s pleasure was filling his heart with hate.
“God above!” he shouted.
But nobody heard him. The music across the passage was even louder.
When at last the music ended, he found himself laughing. He did not remember beginning to laugh. He stopped abruptly.
“This won’t do,” he muttered. “This won’t do.”
He finished his tea quietly and returned to the window.
Chapter IV. Over the Yellow Cups
The teacups at the Black Stag were thick and white. At Bragley Court they were thin and yellow, and they began their clinking in the drawing-room, a long, lofty room of pink and cream, and then followed the guests to their various locations. If you disliked pink and cream and a preponderance of elderly feminine society, you stayed away from the official headquarters, confident that the yellow cups would find out where you were and come to you. Mohammed, at Bragley Court, would not have been put to the trouble of going to his mountain.
John’s cup came to him at exactly five o’clock, on a brightly-polished mahogany tray. It was brought and deposited on a small, low table by the pretty maid, and John watched her with interest to discover whether she still bore any traces of her recent agitation. Outwardly, she was now quite calm again, and because of her pleasant friendly quality he hoped that her appearance reflected the truth.
“Is your foot better, sir?” she asked.
“I am sure this interest is unconstitutional,” thought John, “but it’s nice.” So he did not discourage it. He told her that his foot was very much better. The lie did not impress itself on him at the moment.