The Adventures of Miss Gregory. Gibbon Perceval
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Название: The Adventures of Miss Gregory
Автор: Gibbon Perceval
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Документальная литература
isbn: 4064066401634
isbn:
"Why, what's the matter?" she cried. "My dear, what's the matter?"
Miss Ducane leaned her forehead on the edge of the chair, and spoke through sobs:
"If it hadn't been—for that revolver—we'd ha' had trouble. I—I—had to fetch it out. I—I couldn't help it. And I've no pockets—an' where else could I carry it?"
Miss Gregory had an impulse to laugh, but she laid a hand on the bowed head. "Come," she said. "Thank goodness you had it. It was splendid. It was the only thing to save us."
"Bub-bub-but—" began Miss Ducane.
"I only wish I had one," said Miss Gregory. "I'll have to see about it when I get ashore."
"You've got pockets," said Miss Ducane.
Miss Gregory smiled over her head. "They're not big enough," she said—"not nearly big enough."
Miss Ducane sat up and wiped her eyes, frankly and without pretense, on her sleeve.
"Well," she said, "if you don't tell the truth, nobody does! I'm a fool, after all; I don't seem to grow out of it, but I've got my modesty, like other people. That's what that feller was hitting at, at dinner-time."
Miss Gregory made soft noises of consolation.
"And it's true enough I'll have to go second-class on the mail-boat," said Miss Duane; "I know that well enough. But there's one thing you can't go back from, Miss Gregory. We was introduced, and you gave me your card."
"I did," said Miss Gregory. "Have you lost it? Do you want another?"
"Lost it!" Miss Ducane uttered a short bark of laughter. "Lost it? Not me. I've got it safe enough—safe as a bank."
"Where?" asked Miss Gregory, with some curiosity.
"In my stock—" Miss Ducane stopped short.
There was no help for it—Miss Gregory had to laugh; the girl's involuntary movement of the hand had betrayed her. She sat motionless till Miss Gregory was silent again.
"Well, it's safe, anyhow," she said, then. "I won't lose it. It'll remind me I met a lady and was friends with her."
Miss Gregory was touched. She was not given to easy emotions, but she leaned forward now.
"It has my address on it, too," she said, "and I always answer letters." The girl's brow was close to her face, and she kissed it.
Miss Ducane sat still for a space of seconds, then rose to her feet. She was very straight and slender in the moonlight; a quality of austerity seemed to enhance the lines of her tall figure.
"If anybody tries to kiss me after this," she said thoughtfully, "God help him."
She went away forthwith, gliding into the darkness of the companion like a tall ghost.
Miss Gregory's diary, of the following day's date, testifies thus:
It is pleasant to get a warm bath again, but the German cooking tries one hard at times. Miss Ducane was hailed, on arriving on board, by an acquaintance in the third-class; I notice she cuts her dead. My friend the deck passenger, who remains nameless, has dropped his acquaintance with me. What a hermit he would have made in an age better suited to his principles than this! Memorandum: To have a pistol-pocket arranged in my tweed skirt.
II. THE ADVENTURE IN THE HOTEL AT BEIRA
THE afternoon sun slanted over Beira and the heat-blur trembled man-high in the sandy streets as Miss Fraser slipped through the door of the German mail-boat offices to the spacious shadows within. She was flushed as if with haste, and her breath came pantingly. The stout, fatherly clerk whose business it was to answer inquiries looked at her with mild rebuke: it is neither safe nor seemly to be energetic in Beira during the hours of the sun's strength.
"Id is very hot outside," he remarked, in his soft, throaty German voice.
"Yes," murmured Miss Fraser, but none the less she shivered as she made her inquiry.
The big blond clerk smiled regretfully and shook his head. He had answered that question many times during the last two days. The offices overlooked the bay, and from his desk he could see through the open door the two big steamers of the line lying over their anchors on the mud-brown water, with shore-boats thronging at the gangway like a litter of young at the teat. They had come in within an hour of each other, the one bound north for Europe, the other south along the Coast. And both were full to the utmost limit of their capacity: not one of the people waiting for them at Beira could be received aboard.
"I am very sorry," he murmured. "Id is most unfortunate. There is nod one blace—nod one. I am very sorry."
Miss Fraser's lips quivered and she stared at him dumbly. She was a small, dark girl, not more than twenty years of age, and there was an almost childish softness in her brown eyes and in the contour of her face. There was about her that freshness which reminds one of cool breezes and country flowers; a year in the tropics had not robbed her of it. The stout clerk was stirred with an impulse of compassion for the girl—she seemed so small and forlorn a thing to be alone in Beira.
"There will be another boat in a fortnight," he assured her. "Id is nod long."
She looked at him rather desperately. She had not money enough for another fortnight in a Beira hotel.
"Then—then I must just wait?" she asked.
He shrugged his big shoulders in amiable impotence. "I am very sorry," he said again.
"Thank you," said Miss Fraser, and tried to smile. She turned away hesitatingly; there was comfort in the soft voice and the grave sympathy of the stout clerk, and she felt the sickness of terror for what awaited her in the hot light of the streets. She hesitated again in the doorway, while the fat man gazed after her doubtfully; he knew many reasons why a girl like Miss Fraser should be eager to get away from Beira.
She went through the stagnant heat with her eyes on the ground, looking neither to the right nor the left. The streets of Beira are mere channels of loose sand lying between the houses; no horse can use them. A narrow trolley line runs along the middle of each, and those who can afford it pass on their way on little trucks with an awning, propelled by sweating Kaffirs. Save for the rumble of these, Beira is a city of stillness: the sand muffles one's footfalls; one treads abroad at noonday as silently as an eavesdropper. The man who came forth from the shade of the doorway where he waited was at her side before she heard him; but it needed not her startled upward glance to tell her who he was; her days had been disfigured by his persistent presence ever since she had arrived in Beira. She knew the lean, slouching figure, the loafer's droop of the shoulders, the ruined face that preserved yet, in its slackness and meanness, the remains of tawdry good looks. Under his black moustache, his mouth was loose and red; it widened to a smile as she looked up.
"No room in the boat, eh?" he said. His voice had a thread of hoarseness in it. "Well, now, did СКАЧАТЬ