Gleanings E-Book

E. Phillips Oppenheim

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

The clamour of crushing boughs and howling wind sank every now and then into insignificance before the roaring of deep-throated guns, whose red fire flashed out across what seemed to be a bottomless abyss. Below, the army of the Turks decimated in numbers, yet still a host, within the walls of Crersa, the defenders of an oppressed and brave country making their last stand in their ancient stronghold.

Leseprobe

Contents

VOLUME ONE

A COMMONPLACE JEST

THE GREAT FORTUNA MINE

THE HUNDREDTH NIGHT

THE LITTLE GREY LADY

THE TWO AMBASSADORS

JOHN GARLAND—THE DELIVERER

THE MONEY-SPIDER

FALSE GODS

THE THREE THIEVES

THE ILL-LAID SCHEME OF MR. AMBROSE WEARE

THE SUBJECTION OF LOUISE

THE TURNING WHEEL

THE SOVEREIGN IN THE GUTTER

MR. HARDROW’S SECRETARY

VOLUME TWO

THE PRINCE OF CRERSA

THE RESTLESS TRAVELLER

ONE LUCKLESS HOUR

QUITS

THE DESERTER

THE OUTCAST

THE PERFIDY OF HENRY MIDGELY

AS FAR AS THEY HAD GOT

THE GIRL FROM MANCHESTER

THE EXPERIMENT OF STEPHEN GLASK, IRONMONGER

THE ROAD TO LIBERTY

A LESSON TO LIONEL CUTTS

VOLUME ONE

A COMMONPLACE JEST

THE hoarse striking of a distant clock broke in upon his meditations. Nine o’clock! His day of slavery had commenced. He laid down the book upon the wooden stall before which it was his custom to linger for a minute or two most mornings. Something had lodged in his throat; it might have been a sob! He had been so absorbed that he had forgotten where he stood, whither he was bound, it all came back to him with such grim yet facile insistence. London Bridge Station, disgorging its crowd of suburban business men, the heavy atmosphere of Bermondsey down the steps below– Bermondsey, with its nauseous odors, its smoke-stained warehouses, in one of which his own stool was awaiting him. It was disillusion, complete, entire–a veritable mud bath after the breath of roses.

For this book had spoken of very different things. It had spoken of heather-crowned hills, of gorse bushes yellow with sprinkled gold, of a west wind, fragrant, melodious in the pines; of flower-wreathed hedges and blossoming trees; of the song of birds and the glad murmuring of insects.

A dull flush stained his sallow cheeks. For once he lost his stoop and stood almost upright. It was the one moment of inspiration which seems to be the heritage even of the very meanest creature who ever walks the earth. The spirit of rebellion leaped up in him like a flame. His way lay, as it had ever done, down those fateful steps. Nine o’clock had struck, and 9 o’clock was his hour. He ignored it. He crossed the station yard and entered the booking hall.

*     *

*

“Then you won’t tell me?”

“Won’t tell you what?”

“Why you come here, in those clothes, and with no luggage. You must have some friends in Lidford.”

He shook his head. “I never heard of the place before,” he assured her. “I picked the name out from the time-table. It sounded like the country, and it was a long way off.”

She looked at him with incredulity plainly written in her sedate, beautiful face. “Of course,” she murmured, making a pretence at rising, “if you don’t want to tell me–”

“Please don’t go!” he interrupted, in alarm. “It is the truth, really! I know no one here. I only wanted to get away.”

“To get away,” she repeated, thoughtfully. “Do you mean that you have been doing something wrong?”

“Something wrong!” He repeated the words vaguely, with his eyes fixed upon her all the time. She had risen and was looking at him seriously. Her eyes were blue–such a wonderful blue, like the sky which he had been watching lazily all the afternoon, lying on his back in the deep cool grass; and her hair–ah! there was nothing which he had seen so beautiful as that! Then, warmed by her obvious gravity, he hastened to reassure her.

“No,” he declared, “I have done nothing wrong. I have run away from my work, that is all. I read in a book this morning of the country, of the, sunshine, and the wind, and the birds, and–all this.” He waved his arm aimlessly about. “I had to come–I couldn’t help it.”

“You have come from London–here?” she exclaimed.

“Yes!”

“And your luggage?”

“I brought none.”

“And your hat?”

“I threw it away. It was a very old, shiny hat, with ink on the bare places. What would have thought of me wandering about the fields in such a thing? It is bad enough as I am.”

He glanced disparagingly down at his shabby black clothes and dark trousers, frayed at the ends, but carefully pressed and cleaned. She shook her head. She was a little bewildered.

“I am sure that your clothes are very nice.” she said, “and you were wrong to throw away your hat. What are you going to do without one?”

“I have no idea,” he answered. “But, then, I have no Idea what I am going to do with myself, so it really doesn’t matter, does it?”

“I think.” she said, deliberately, “that you are the very queerest person I ever met. Do go on talking to me! Tell me some more about–yourself.”

“There is nothing interesting to tell,” he assured her, a little wearily. “I would rather listen to you. Tell me some more about the birds.”

She shook her head impatiently.

“What is your name, please?” she asked.

“Stephen Marwood,” he answered. “I am an orphan, and a clerk in a warehouse. I get twenty-five shillings a week, and I add up figures and make out invoices from 9 till 6 in a cellar, with the gas burning all the time. I live in a long, ugly street, surrounded by miles of other streets. I am just one of a million. I work and I sleep, and I work again, and all the time my lungs are choked with fog and smoke and bad smells.”

“It doesn’t sound nice,” she admitted.

“It isn’t!” he assured her.

“And yet.” she added, with a little, wistful sigh, “it is London.”

“It is certainly London,” he declared. “It might as well be hell.”

She looked at him wonderingly. After all, he must be a little mad.

“And where,” she asked, reverting once more to the practical, “are you going to sleep?”

“I don’t know.” he answered, dreamily, “and I don’t care, if only I can smell this honeysuckle all night.”

“And your tea and supper?” she asked, scornfully. “Will the scent of the honeysuckle satisfy your hunger as well?”

He closed his eyes for a moment. Removed from all distractions, he was forced to admit that he was hungry. “I shall go down to the inn.” he decided. “I suppose there is an inn here. But you?”

She pointed downward to where the gray smoke rose in a straight, thin line from a red-tiled cottage. “There is no inn,” she told him. “but my aunt will get you some tea, if you like. We often have parties.”

“We will have it together, then?” he begged, eagerly.

“Perhaps,” she answered, laughing.

*     *

*

A month afterward they met almost in the same place.

“Let us climb to the top and watch the reapers,” he begged. “There is a field on the other side where the poppies are all in clusters, like specks of blood in a waving, yellow sea. I was watching them all this morning. By to-morrow they will be gone. The men seem to creep like insects, but all the time the grain falls.”

She sighed. She was dressed in black. She looked thin and there were tears in her eyes. But more wonderful still was the change in him. He carried himself like a man; a healthy tan bad burnt his cheeks, his eyes were bright with health. Even his voice had acquired a new firmnesss. The drudge was no more. The yoke of his servitude was cast aside. To-morrow he might starve. His small savings, in fact, were almost spent. To-day, at least, he was a man.

“What strange fancies you have!” she declared. “The farmers hate the poppies, and these overgrown hedges which you admire so much ought all to be cut down and trimmed.”

He laughed. “Give me the honeysuckle and the creepers,” he declared. “I have seen enough of the ugly and the useful to last me all my life. Come, it is only a few steps further. Give me your hand.”

Breathless, they reached the summit of the hill and the shelter of the little grove of pine trees. She sat down with her back to the trunk of one of them. He threw himself by her side. Below them the slumbering landscape, warm and mellow in the afternoon sunshine, and in their faces th« west wind.

“I believe in heaven,” he murmured. “I have found it.”

A delight, almost a fervor, was in his eyes as they wandered on and on to where the limits of his vision ended in a faint blue mist. She looked at him as one who seeks to read a book written in a strange language.

“I do not understand,” she said. “It is beautiful here. I know, because everyone says so, and it is pleasant to sit and watch it all for a while. But I have sat here all my life, and I am weary of it.”

“Weary!” he repeated, in amazement. “Weary of this country, of this life!”

“Sick to death of it!” she answered, with a vigor which was almost bluntness. “Who can sit and look at one picture all their lives, however beautiful? The fields and the hedges change only from winter to summer, from summer to winter. And the people change never.”

He pointed to the little graveyard away in the valley. “It is not true,” he declared. “They have their joys and their sorrows also. There was merriment enough at the harvest home the other day, and the whole village wept over that last little mound in the churchyard.”

She shook her head impatiently. A strand or two of her hair was loosened; the sun flecked it with gold. He realized then that she was beautiful. She sat there like a self-enthroned goddess.

“The people are all very dull and very ignorant,” she said. “Their lives are narrow; they sleep and they eat, and they die–but they do not live. They never live.”

He was alarmed. “Go on,” he said, in a low tone. “You, have something in your mind?”

“It is true,” she admitted. “While aunt was alive, I was a prisoner. Now, I am free. I want to escape.”

“Escape–from here?” he murmured. “Why, this is Paradise!”

She laughed softly, but with her mirth was mingled a subtle note of mockery.

“You are a very foolish person.” she said, “you do not know what ambition is. I do not want to sit upon the bank all my life.”

“There are many who drown,” he murmured.

“I will take the risk,” she answered.

All the joy and freshness seemed to fade away from his face. Something of the old haggard despair came back to him. This was the end, then, of all his dreams.

“Yesterday,” he said, in a low tone, “I walked to Market Deeping. I got a situation with Sheppards’, the auctioneers, and Mrs. Green, in the village, has promised me a room.”

Her lips curled a little. “If it satisfies you–” she began.

He interrupted her. “Don’t mock me!” he cried, roughly. “Nothing satisfies me if you go away. You know that.”

“That is foolish,” she said, “for I am most surely going away.”

“To–London?”

“Yes. I have written to my cousin there.”

“It would have broken your aunt’s heart,” he said.

“While she was alive I obeyed her,” the girl answered, defiantly. “Now she is gone my life, is my own.”

“Yes.” he murmured, “yes. Our lives are all our own. See how the corn falls, Esther… . They have reached the last belt, and all the poppies are gone.”

*     *

*

At first she wrote to him. He carried her letters with him backward and forward, reading them, studying them, always treasuring them. Save only for this one sorrow , the sorrow of her absence and his constant anxiety concerning her, his life had become a joy to him. His work was simple, and he did it better than it had ever been done before. His little office was bright and clean, his window looked out upon a quaint old cobbled market-place. In front was a garden, bright even in these late autumn days with simple flowers. Backward and forward he walked to and from his work, and the wind and rain and sun seemed each in their turn the sweetest things he had known. He grew in stature and in breadth: the latent possibilities of his manhood asserted themselves. In the little village he became a popular person. He attempted gardening, and every one was willing to help him with advice and bulbs, and the promise of seeds. He even ventured to discuss the crops with the farmers whom he met on the way . He remembered that he had once, before the evil days, called himself a Christian, and one Sunday morning he found his way to the village church. He came out with a curious sense of removal from that part of his life which was still something of a nightmare to him. Henceforth the memory of it never troubled him. He had come into real and intimate kinship with these simple folk among whom chance had brought him.

And then her letters ceased. He wrote and wrote again, but there came no reply. He bore it as well as he could, and then, one day, a chance remark brought the stinging color into his cheeks, and his heart for a moment stood still. He applied for leave of absence and went to London.

The address which she had given him was No. 127 West-st., Edgware Road. But when he reached it he felt again for the letter in his pocket. No. 127 was a public house. Yet that was the number at the head of her letter. He pushed open the swing doors and entered.

There was a smell of stale beer and fresh sawdust. An unwholesome looking youth, collarless and unwashed, was cleaning the stains of beer pots from the marble-topped tables. A couple of carmen were wrangling in a corner, a dissolute looking person in seedy black was drinking at the counter and carrying on a desultory conversation with a young person, behind the bar. Marwood addressed himself to her.

“Can you tell me if Miss Day lives here?” he asked. The young person looked at him curiously.

“Used to!” she answered. “She’s gone away now.”

It was true, then. Esther had really lived in a place like this. He looked about him wondering, and back at the young person behind the bar, who seemed undecided whether to resent his scrutiny or to encourage him as a possible admirer.

“Can you tell me–her present address?”, he asked.

The young person jerked her head toward a swing door, leading apparently into an inner bar. “Don’t know,” she said. “I dersay Mrs. Molesworth can tell you. She’s in there.”

Marwood pushed open the swing door. A stout, florid woman stood behind a circular counter flanked with a gorgeous array of mirrors and glasses. She was apparently engaged in the task of turning sundry black bottles upside down and holding them up to the light to estimate their contents.

“I beg your pardon.” he said. “I believe that Miss Day has been staying here. Can you give me her present address?”

The woman set down the particular bottle which she was examining and looked at him fixedly.

“And what might be your business with Miss Day?” she asked.

“My name is Marwood,” he said. “I knew Miss Day down in Somerset.”

The lady nodded her head vigorously. She became, if possible, a little redder in the face.

“Then all I can say is that it’s a great pity you didn’t keep her in Somerset.” she answered. “What’s the use of a girl like her, with scarcely a rag to her back, coming up here with such notions? Wouldn’t do this, and wouldn’t do that–as particular and finicky all the time as you please. Drat the girl, I say, niece or no niece!”

“I am sorry,” Marwood said timidly. “I daresay it was a great change for her up here. Can you tell me where I shall find her?”

“No, I cannot,” the lady answered, as though incensed at the question. “And, what’s more, if I could I wouldn’t, and good-day to you, sir.”

She swung around and disappeared through a door leading to an inner room.

Marwood left the place with hot cheeks. Some shadow of the humiliation which he could well imagine had been her lot seemed also to have fallen upon him. For two days and two nights he sought her in all manner of places and thoroughfares. Then chance befriended him. She was standing beneath a lamp post, and he was in the shadows. There was no one to see the tears which filled his eyes, to hear the sob which rose hot in his throat. She was tall and thin and pale. Her eyes, were larger, there was a pinched look about her features. Her clothes were shabby. He thanked God for that. She was talking with a man–a gentleman, he seemed to be, well dressed, good humored, debonaire. Marwood listened.

“And how does the show go?” the man asked her.

“Oh! I am no judge,” she answered, wearily. “It seems stupid enough from the wings. I am only in the chorus, you know. I have nothing to do, really.”

“We are going to alter all that,” the man said, swinging his cane. “I shall speak to Randall and hammer a small part out of him, somehow. But, by Jove, Miss Day, you look awfully pale!”

Then Marwood saw her stumble for a moment, as though she.were dizzy. She recovered herself almost immediately.

“I am–quite well,” she said. “A little tired, perhaps.”

The man suddenly threw away his cigarette.

“Look here, Miss Day,” he said, “you’ve done a very foolish thing! You’ve missed your luncheon. You girls are always forgetting your meals. I never do. Come along. No, I insist!”

Her faint protestations were of no avail, and Marwood felt the blood run cold in his veins, for he had seen for a second what no one can ever see and mistake–the wolfish gleam of hunger in her eyes, come and gone like a flash, but more eloquent than any spoken words. Then the restaurant doors before which they had been standing opened and they disappeared Inside. Marwood waited. It was an hour before they came out. The transformation in her was amazing. The lines seemed to have been smoothed from her face: there was color in her cheeks and light In her eyes. Marwood, who had been standing on the opposite side of the street, started to cross the way, but he was too late. Somewhat unwillingly, as it seemed to him, her companion hurried her into a hansom, and followed.

Marwood caught a glimpse of the man’s face under the gas-lamp–it was sufficient. When the cab drew up before a row of flats a little west of Pall Mall he was already turning the corner. He saw Esther alight, hold, out her hand: he could see her hesitation, her reluctant footsteps. He caught the man’s eager tone as he bent over her hand–

“For a moment–not more than five minutes. I must show you the little play–and I believe that the part would suit you admirably. We will keep the hansom, it you like. I will send you home.”

Marwood called out, but his voice sounded weak even to himself. The door was closed.

*     *

*

He leaned for a few moments against the palings. He was out of breath, and to him there had been something tragic in the disappearance of those two, the man and the girl, behind that closed door. His imagination ran rife. He saw hideous things. Almost he was ready to creep away–to escape–to forget. Then, as he returned to a more sane state of mind, he saw her as she came first to him, her hands clasped behind, her head. thrown back as she walked blithely through the clover-scented meadows, humming some forgotten tune. With an oath, he trod the flags and rang the bell. A liveried servant let him in and led the way toward the lift.

“Which floor, sir?” he asked.

“I want the gentleman’s rooms who has just come in with the lady,” Marwood answered, his hand in his pocket.

“Mr. Borrodale–fourth floor, sir,” the man remarked, closing the gates of the lift.

The man servant in plain black livery blandly denied Mr. Borrodale’s presence. His coat and hat on the hall table, however, emboldened Marwood. He pushed his way in.

“It’s no use; you can’t see the governor!” the man declared, angrily. “Out you go!”

The veneer of civility had departed. He attempted the bully. Marwood heard a woman’s cry, and he struck the man on the mouth. Then with an oak chair he thundered upon the closed door of the room from which the cry had come. A man swore and a woman sobbed. Marwood sent a panel crashing out of the door, which was suddenly thrown open. He caught one glimpse of her face, pale and terror-stricken, as she flitted by. He would have followed, but master and servant were too many for him. The latter struck him from behind, and he spent the night in a hospital. When he sought her again it was in vain.

*     *

*

So Marwood returned to his country life and his routine work. One day, old Mr. Sheppard, his employer, called him into his private office.

“Marwood.” he said bluntly. “I am getting on in years, and I want a rest. I have saved a little and I have only my daughter to think of. Will you take the business–and marry her?”

Marwood sat still and thought. He watched the dusty floor specked into gold by a long shaft of sunlight, and he saw things there which the four walls of that room had never held. Presently he looked up.

“I want a month’s holiday,” he said. “When I return I will answer you.”

The old man grunted, but gave his consent. Once more Marwood travelled up to London, and renewed his search. This time he succeeded very easily. Esther Day was well known now. Her name and her pictures were in all the papers. She was acting at the Frivolity, and she had made a “hit.”

He called upon her, and he felt his courage oozing away. He felt the slow dissipation of the one romance of his life as they talked together. She was well dressed, prosperous, more beautiful than ever, with all the light smartness of the modern Londoner. To their last strange meeting she made no allusion. She gave him tea, and showed him her new poodle. She talked of theatrical matters as one in the know–and to him it was jargon. When he stood up to go, he made one effort to break down the barriers which seemed to have grown up between them.

“And you have, found,” he asked, holding her hand for a moment, “the things you sought for?”

She laughed.

“I have learned wisdom,” she answered. “I have learned how much to expect.”

He fancied that she hurried him away. As he left the door a brougham drove up, and a young man alighted–a young man of the type he knew nothing of–immaculate in dress and person, good-looking, languid. Marwood went back to the country that night.

Yet he delayed his answer, though old Sheppard grew more and more impatient every day. Marwood passed through a curious phase of his emotional life. Mary Sheppard was pretty in her way, and waited only for him to speak. Yet he hung back with something of the feeling of a man called upon to sign his own death warrant. An impending sense of the finality of life seemed to him to be inevitably coupled with the decision which the old man and the girl were now awaiting with almost obvious eagerness. He had no great aspirations, nothing which could rank as ambitions. Yet behind the trend of his daily life, his ordinary, well-performed tasks and simple pleasures, he felt at times the dim, unrealized presence of greater things, a more quickening and satisfying life. Sometimes, in the night, he sat up in bed and stretched out his arms–for what he scarcely knew. He wandered up on to the hilltop and watched the reapers. Some shadow of a far distant, impossible dream seemed to still torment him with intangible and unsatisfying longings. And all the time the old man and the girl waited. In the end they had their way.

*     *

*

She came into his little office–a curiously incongruous presence in her fashionable clothes, bringing with her the subtle air of the city and of all those nameless things, the presence of which had so estranged him on his last visit to her. But this time he had no consciousness of them, for she looked into his eyes and it was the look for which he had prayed so often.

“My friend.” she murmured, “you were right. I am weary of it all. When you came to me I was brutal. I owe you so much, and I wanted to escape the debt. I have come to pay it, if I can.”

Her hands had stolen into his. It was, after all, like a dream–a beautiful dream poignant with unutterable bitterness.

“Come out with me.” she murmured. “I want you to take me through the meadows and up to the hill where we watched the reapers. Will you come?”

He let fall her hands, and a great sob rose to his throat.

“I cannot!” he said.

A fear stole Into her eyes.

“Don’t tell me that you have changed!” she pleaded.

“I have never changed,” he answered gravely; “but I am married to Mary Sheppard. It was her father’s last wish, and it seemed to matter so little.”

She laughed–a curious, dry, mirthless laugh.

“I hope that you will be happy,” she said. “Somehow, I never thought of this. And, after all, my coming was only a whim. I must act to-night, and to-morrow night–and all the days of my life.”

He heard the rustling of her gown as she left him. He heard the office door swing to and close. He sat on his hard chair, and once more he looked steadily with fixed, sightless eyes into that long shaft of golden dust. Then his head sank lower and lower–into his hands. He leaned forward upon the desk. Before him stretched the long, level vista of weary days–the treadmill of an unlived life. Some one shouted to him from the top of the stairs. It was like the sentence of his doom–

“Stephen, are you coming up to dinner or are you not?. Everything will be cold!”

He rose slowly and ascended the stairs.

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollst?ndigen Ausgabe!