Array Коллектив авторов - 30 лучших рассказов британских писателей / 30 Best British Short Stories

I’d been engaged for the ‘heavy work,’ but as the heaviest order I ever heard given there was for a cold ham and chicken, which I had to slip out for to the nearest cook-shop, I must have been chiefly useful from an ornamental point of view.

I’d been there about a fortnight, and was feeling pretty sick of it, when in walked young ‘Kipper.’ I didn’t know him at first, he’d changed so. He was swinging a silver-mounted crutch stick, which was the kind that was fashionable just then, and was dressed in a showy check suit and a white hat. But the thing that struck me most was his gloves. I suppose I hadn’t improved quite so much myself, for he knew me in a moment, and held out his hand.

‘What, ’Enery!’ he says, ‘you’ve moved on, then!’

‘Yes,’ I says, shaking hands with him, ‘and I could move on again from this shop without feeling sad. But you’ve got on a bit?’ I says.

‘So-so,’ he says, ‘I’m a journalist.’

‘Oh,’ I says, ‘what sort?’ for I’d seen a good many of that lot during six months I’d spent at a house in Fleet Street, and their get-up hadn’t sumptuousness about it, so to speak. ‘Kipper’s’ rig-out must have totted up to a tidy little sum. He had a diamond pin in his tie that must have cost somebody fifty quid, if not him.

‘Well,’ he answers, ‘I don’t wind out the confidential advice to old Beaky, and that sort of thing. I do the tips, yer know. ‘Cap’n Kit,’ that’s my name.’

‘What, the Captain Kit?’ I says. O’ course I’d heard of him.’

‘Be’old!’ he says.

‘Oh, it’s easy enough,’ he goes on. ‘Some of ’em’s bound to come out right, and when one does, you take it from me, our paper mentions the fact. And when it is a wrong ’un – well, a man can’t always be shouting about himself, can ’e?’

He ordered a cup of coffee. He said he was waiting for someone, and we got to chatting about old times.

‘How’s Carrots?’ I asked.

‘Miss Caroline Trevelyan,’ he answered, ‘is doing well.’

‘Oh,’ I says, ‘you’ve found out her fam’ly name, then?’

‘We’ve found out one or two things about that lidy,’ he replies. ‘D’yer remember ’er dancing?’

‘I have seen her flinging her petticoats about outside the shop, when the copper wasn’t by, if that’s what you mean,’ I says.

‘That’s what I mean,’ he answers. ‘That’s all the rage now, “skirt-dancing” they calls it. She’s a-coming out at the Oxford to-morrow. It’s ’er I’m waiting for. She’s a-coming on, I tell you she is,’ he says.

‘Shouldn’t wonder,’ says I; ‘that was her disposition.’

‘And there’s another thing we’ve found out about ’er,’ he says. He leant over the table, and whispered it, as if he was afraid that anybody else might hear: ‘she’s got a voice.’

‘Yes,’ I says, ‘some women have.’

‘Ah,’ he says, ‘but ’er voice is the sort of voice yer want to listen to.’

‘Oh,’ I says, ‘that’s its speciality, is it?’

‘That’s it, sonny,’ he replies.

She came in a little later. I’d a’ known her anywhere for her eyes, and her red hair, in spite of her being that clean you might have eaten your dinner out of her hand. And as for her clothes! Well, I’ve mixed a good deal with the toffs in my time, and I’ve seen duchesses dressed more showily and maybe more expensively, but her clothes seemed to be just a framework to show her up. She was a beauty, you can take it from me; and it’s not to be wondered that the La-De-Daswere round her when they did see her, like flies round an open jam tart.

Before three months were up she was the rage of London – leastways of the music-hall part of it – with her portrait in all the shop windows, and interviews with her in half the newspapers. It seems she was the daughter of an officer who had died in India when she was a baby, and the niece of a bishop somewhere in Australia. He was dead too. There didn’t seem to be any of her ancestry as wasn’t dead, but they had all been swells. She had been educated privately, she had, by a relative; and had early displayed an aptitude for dancing, though her friends at first had much opposed her going upon the stage. There was a lot more of it – you know the sort of thing. Of course, she was a connection of one of our best known judges – they all are – and she merely acted in order to support a grandmother, or an invalid sister, I forget which. A wonderful talent for swallowing, these newspaper chaps has, some of ’em!

‘Kipper’ never touched a penny of her money, but if he had been her agent at twenty-five per cent. he couldn’t have worked harder, and he just kept up the hum about her, till if you didn’t want to hear anything more about Caroline Trevelyan, your only chance would have been to lie in bed, and never look at a newspaper. It was Caroline Trevelyan at Home, Caroline Trevelyan at Brighton, Caroline Trevelyan and the Shah of Persia, Caroline Trevelyan and the Old Apple-woman. When it wasn’t Caroline Trevelyan herself it would be Caroline Trevelyan’s dog as would be doing something out of the common, getting himself lost or summoned or drowned – it didn’t matter much what.

I moved from Oxford Street to the new ‘Horseshoe’ that year – it had just been rebuilt – and there I saw a good deal of them, for they came in to lunch there or supper pretty regular. Young ‘Kipper’ – or the ‘Captain’ as everybody called him – gave out that he was her half-brother.

‘I’ad to be some sort of a relation, you see,’ he explained to me. ‘I’d a’ been ’er brother out and out; that would have been simpler, only the family likeness wasn’t strong enough. Our styles o’ beauty ain’t similar.’ They certainly wasn’t.

‘Why don’t you marry her?’ I says, ‘and have done with it?’

He looked thoughtful at that. ‘I did think of it,’ he says, ‘and I know, jolly well, that if I ’ad suggested it ’fore she’d found herself, she’d have agreed, but it don’t seem quite fair now.’

‘How d’ye mean fair?’ I says.

‘Well, not fair to ’er,’ he says. ‘I’ve got on all right, in a small way; but she – well, she can just ’ave ’er pick of the nobs. There’s one on ’em as I’ve made inquiries about. ’E’ll be a dook, if a kid pegs out as is expected to, and anyhow ’e’ll be a markis, and ’e means the straight thing – no errer. It ain’t fair for me to stand in ’er way.’

‘Well,’ I says, ‘you know your own business, but it seems to me she wouldn’t have much way to stand in if it hadn’t been for you.’

‘Oh, that’s all right,’ he says. ‘I’m fond enough of the gell, but I shan’t clamour for a tombstone with wiolets, even if she ain’t ever Mrs. Capt’n Kit. Business is business; and I ain’t going to queer ’er pitch for ’er.’

I’ve often wondered what she’d a’ said, if he’d up and put the case to her plain, for she was a good sort; but, naturally enough, her head was a bit swelled, and she’d read so much rot about herself in the papers that she’d got at last to half believe some of it. The thought of her connection with the well-known judge seemed to hamper her at times, and she wasn’t quite so chummy with ‘Kipper’ as used to be the case in the Mile End Road days, and he wasn’t the sort as is slow to see a thing.

One day when he was having lunch by himself, and I was waiting on him, he says, raising his glass to his lips, ‘Well, ’Enery, here’s luck to yer! I won’t be seeing you agen for some time.’

‘Oh,’ I says. ‘What’s up now?’

‘I am,’ he says, ‘or rather my time is. I’m off to Africa.’

‘Oh,’ I says, ‘and what about–’