Aliens. William McFee

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ heart. Really, for a moment I had a mad apprehension that in some occult way, some freak of hypnotic suggestion, I had actually wrought the child harm. I stood there breathlessly triumphant and wondering whether it was now my business to rush in and scalp the defenceless prisoners. I became aware of a head and a stick above the stump.

      "Bang!" said the garrison. Obviously I was shot. I fell, desperately wounded, and endeavoured to drag myself away into the forest of dwarf oaks, when the garrison hailed me.

      "Surrender!" he called, presenting his piece. I put up my hands. He climbed down nimbly.

      "Now you help me bring in the dead and wounded," he ordered, and together we, the victorious garrison, dragged the slain warrior into the shadow of the stump. All at once he became alive, jumped up and danced gleefully.

      "Say, that's bully!" he chanted. "You play some Indian!"

      I looked down modestly and blushed I fear, for I knew that the grinning heads were still at the studio window.

      "Well," I said, picking the thistle burrs off my trousers, "let us sit down for a spell, shall we?" To my surprise, they consented. We went round to the stoop and I took a big rocker. For a moment they stared, as though considering me in the new light of a perfect "hostile."

      "Say," began Beppo, "what you doin' in there?" and he pointed to the house.

      "What do you want to know for?" I retorted, humorously, stroking his dark head. I am fond of children in a way, especially boys. He twisted his head away, but without ill-temper, and looked at me gravely.

      "Don't you work?" he demanded.

      "A little, sometimes," I replied earnestly, feeling for my cigarettes.

      "What sort of work?" said Benvenuto, standing in front of me.

      "We make pictures," I said, evasively. I have a silly reluctance to talk of literature as work.

      "Huh!" they remarked, and surveyed me afresh.

      "What does your father work at?" I asked, cautiously.

      "He's at sea," said Beppo.

      And that was all they knew. I tried the question in many ways, but they had no other answer. Evidently they had grown up with that phrase in their ears, "at sea," and were satisfied.

      "Don't you want to see him?" I suggested. They "supposed so." I left that subject.

      "How old are you?"

      "Seven," said Beppo. "Ben's six."

      "You are very precocious," I remarked, to myself chiefly.

      "How?"

      "Precocious," I repeated, rising to meet the postman. He handed me several business letters and one for Bill with an English stamp, a fat package.

      "Who's that from?" asked Beppo, and I was pulling his ear gently as Bill came out with a rush. The postman went along to the next house.

      At this moment my perceptions became blurred. I remember handing the letters to Bill and Mac. I remember the quick scuffle of the two children as they hastened toward their own home. All this is blurred. What stands out sharply in my memory is the figure of Mrs. Carville, her waist pressed hard against the fence, a long envelope in her hand, gesticulating to the children as they went towards her. I saw her wave them peremptorily indoors and then remain by the fence, regarding me with profound distrust. I made a step forward to speak, for I should have had to shout at that distance, but she turned and swung up the steps of her porch and slammed the door.

      "A letter from Cecil," said Bill as I took my seat, a little downcast at the encounter. Cecil is the painter-cousin, at Wigborough, Essex, England.

      "What does he say?" I inquired.

      "Read it to us," said she, and handed me a dozen sheets of tracing paper pinned together.

      I began to read.

CHAPTER III

       Table of Contents

A Letter from Wigborough

       Table of Contents

      DEAR BILL—At last I find myself with an hour or so to spare, so here goes! How are you all? Well, I hope. I received your little present on the anniversary. Many thanks, old girl. How on earth do you remember the date of everybody's birthday? Honestly, I should have let it pass without noticing if that wee book had not arrived two days before. So you see, you are of some use in the world after all! (This is a joke.) How's Mac getting on with the etching? Tell him I've taken to using only forty per cent. nitric acid in distilled water. This gives very good results for all ordinary work, much more certain than the nitrous, and doesn't make such a stink. There's no demand just now for modern work, in England at any rate. I can hardly believe what you say about the shows in New York. London's dead for etchers. Every dealer is clamorous for copies of the old masters. The rotten thing is that it pays better than doing original work, you know. I have a job on now—twenty plates at £50 a plate, simply copying Girtins and Bartolozzis. I shall do four plates a year. I take things pretty easily, work in the morning, potter round the garden in the afternoon, tennis and cycling when the weather permits. This has been a terrible summer. English weather gets worse, I believe. We had rain for a solid week in July. I was out on a tramp through the midlands and got caught in it, which reminds me of a most remarkable chap I met at the time. I really must tell you about him, because I don't remember anyone who has so impressed his personality upon me as this man did.

      "It was this way. I had been sketching round about Market Overton, and getting rather sick of the incessant rain, so I packed up my knapsack and started home. It really is much more jolly walking in the rain than sitting in a stuffy inn parlour waiting for it to stop. Well, at Peterboro' I heard the country eastward was flooded and farmers ruined. Of course, my road lay through March and Ely to Newmarket and Colchester, and I wouldn't believe the boys who called to me that I'd be stopped; but sure enough, not two miles east of Peterboro' the road slid under water and people were punting themselves about on doors, and cooking their grub upstairs. In the fields the hay-cocks and corn-ricks were just showing themselves above the water. It made one's heart ache for the farmers. Well, I turned back, of course, and took the London road to Huntingdon, which runs high all the way to Alconbury. I was getting jolly tired and wondering if I should find a decent bed before I reached Huntingdon, when I came to Saxon Cross. At the cross-roads stands a fine inn all by itself, and to judge by the names and addresses in the visitors' book, it is nearly as well known in America as in England. The Saxon Cross Hotel is not really a hotel at all, being a hunting inn. But it is very comfortable, with brushes hung all round the walls and fine old engravings of sporting scenes in all the rooms.

      "At first I only went into the bar-parlour to get a drink. It was rather dark in there, for it was very near sunset and the windows were small, and I had slipped off my knapsack and dropped into a big comfortable chair before I noticed a clean-shaven man with a big hooked nose and gleaming eyes seated in the far corner. It was like the beak of a bird, that nose, and I was so fascinated by it that I didn't answer the landlord when he came in and said 'Good evening.' The man opposite said 'Good evening' too, so I suppose СКАЧАТЬ