LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

pantry—until these maids and valets appeared. They seemed to him to appear suddenly out of nothing, like slugs after rain, black and rather shiny, sitting about inactively and quietly consuming small matters. He disliked them, and they regarded him without affection or respect.

      Who cared? He indicated his feeling towards them as soon as he was out of the steward’s room by a gesture of the hand and nose venerable only by reason of its antiquity.

      He had things more urgent to think about than strange valets and maids. Thomas had laid hands on him, jeered at him, inflicted shameful indignities on him and he wanted to kill Thomas in some frightful manner. (But if possible unobtrusively.)

      If he had been a little Japanese boy, this would have been an entirely honourable desire. It would have been Bushido and all that sort of thing. In the gardener’s stepson however it is—undesirable. …

      Thomas, on the other hand, having remarked the red light of revenge in Bealby’s eye and being secretly afraid, felt that his honour was concerned in not relaxing his persecutions. He called him “Kicker” and when he did not answer to that name, he called him “Snorter,” “Bleater,” “Snooks,” and finally tweaked his ear. Then he saw fit to assume that Bealby was deaf and that ear-tweaking was the only available method of address. This led on to the convention of a sign language whereby ideas were communicated to Bealby by means of painful but frequently quite ingeniously symbolical freedoms with various parts of his person. Also Thomas affected to discover uncleanliness in Bealby’s head and succeeded after many difficulties in putting it into a sinkful of lukewarm water.

      Meanwhile young Bealby devoted such scanty time as he could give to reflection to debating whether it is better to attack Thomas suddenly with a carving knife or throw a lighted lamp. The large pantry inkpot of pewter might be effective in its way, he thought, but he doubted whether in the event of a charge it had sufficient stopping power. He was also curiously attracted by a long two-pronged toasting-fork that hung at the side of the pantry fireplace. It had reach. …

      Over all these dark thoughts and ill-concealed emotions Mr. Mergleson prevailed, large yet speedy, speedy yet exact, parroting orders and making plump gestures, performing duties and seeing that duties were performed.

      Matters came to a climax late on Saturday night at the end of a trying day, just before Mr. Mergleson went round to lock up and turn out the lights.

      Thomas came into the pantry close behind Bealby, who, greatly belated through his own inefficiency, was carrying a tray of glasses from the steward’s room, applied an ungentle hand to his neck, and ruffled up his back hair in a smart and painful manner. At the same time Thomas remarked, “Burrrrh!”

      Bealby stood still for a moment and then put down his tray on the table and, making peculiar sounds as he did so, resorted very rapidly to the toasting fork. … He got a prong into Thomas’s chin at the first prod.

      How swift are the changes of the human soul! At the moment of his thrust young Bealby was a primordial savage; so soon as he saw this incredible piercing of Thomas’s chin—for all the care that Bealby had taken it might just as well have been Thomas’s eye—he moved swiftly through the ages and became a simple Christian child. He abandoned violence and fled.

      The fork hung for a moment from the visage of Thomas like a twisted beard of brass, and then rattled on the ground.

      Thomas clapped his hand to his chin and discovered blood.

      “You little—!” He never found the right word (which perhaps is just as well); instead he started in pursuit of Bealby.

      Bealby—in his sudden horror of his own act—and Thomas fled headlong into the passage and made straight for the service stairs that went up into a higher world. He had little time to think. Thomas with a red-smeared chin appeared in pursuit. Thomas the avenger. Thomas really roused. Bealby shot through the green baize door and the pursuing footman pulled up only just in time not to follow him.

      Only just in time. He had an instinctive instant anxious fear of great dangers. He heard something, a sound as though the young of some very large animal had squeaked feebly. He had a glimpse of something black and white—and large. …

      Then something, some glass thing, smashed.

      He steadied the green baize door which was wobbling on its brass hinges, controlled his panting breath and listened.

      A low rich voice was—ejaculating. It was not Bealby’s voice, it was the voice of some substantial person being quietly but deeply angry. They were the ejaculations restrained in tone but not in quality of a ripe and well-stored mind—no boy’s thin stuff.

      Then very softly Thomas pushed open the door—just widely enough to see and as instantly let it fall back into place.

      Very gently and yet with an alert rapidity he turned about and stole down the service stairs.

      His superior officer appeared in the passage below.

      “Mr. Mergleson,” he cried, “I say—Mr. Mergleson.”

      “What’s up?” said Mr. Mergleson.

      “He’s gone!”

      “Who?”

      “Bealby.”

      “Home?” This almost hopefully.

      “No.”

      “Where?”

      “Up there! I think he ran against somebody.”

      Mr. Mergleson scrutinized his subordinate’s face for a second. Then he listened intently; both men listened intently.

      “Have to fetch him out of that,” said Mr. Mergleson, suddenly preparing for brisk activity.

      Thomas bent lower over the banisters.

      “The Lord Chancellor!” he whispered with white lips and a sideways gesture of his head.

      “What about ’im?” said Mergleson, arrested by something in the manner of Thomas.

      Thomas’s whisper became so fine that Mr. Mergleson drew nearer to catch it and put up a hand to his ear. Thomas repeated the last remark. “He’s just through there—on the landing—cursing and swearing—‘orrible things—more like a mad turkey than a human being.”

      “Where’s Bealby?”

      “He must almost ’ave run into ’im,” said Thomas after consideration.

      “But now—where is he?”

      Thomas pantomimed infinite perplexity.

      Mr. Mergleson reflected and decided upon his line. He came up the service staircase, lifted his chin and with an air of meek officiousness went through the green door. There was no one now on the landing, there was nothing remarkable on the landing except a broken tumbler, but half-way up the grand staircase stood the Lord Chancellor. Under one arm the great jurist carried a soda water syphon and he grasped a decanter of whisky in his hand. He turned sharply at the sound of the green baize door and bent upon Mr. Mergleson the most terrible eyebrows that ever, surely! adorned a legal visage. He was very red in the face and savage-looking.

      “Was it you,” he said with a threatening gesture of the decanter, and his voice betrayed a noble indignation, “Was it you who slapped me behind?”

      “Slapped you behind, me lord??”

      “Slapped me behind. Don’t I speak—plainly?”

      “I—such a libbuty, me lord!”

      “Idiot! I ask you a plain question—”

      With almost inconceivable alacrity Mr. Mergleson rushed up three steps, leapt forward and caught the syphon as it slipped from his lordship’s arm.

      He caught it, but at a price. He overset and, clasping it in his hands, struck his lordship first with the syphon on the left shin and then butted him with a face that was still earnestly respectful

Скачать книгу