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

‘Let it alone, son! Don’t you bother about it!’ urged Uncle Oscar. But it was as if the boy couldn’t really hear what his uncle was saying.

‘I’ve got to know for the Derby! I’ve got to know for the Derby!’ the child reiterated, his big blue eyes blazing with a sort of madness.

His mother noticed how overwrought he was.

‘You’d better go to the seaside. Wouldn’t you like to go now to the seaside, instead of waiting? I think you’d better,’ she said, looking down at him anxiously, her heart curiously heavy because of him.

But the child lifted his uncanny blue eyes.

‘I couldn’t possibly go before the Derby, mother!’ he said. ‘I couldn’t possibly!’

‘Why not?’ she said, her voice becoming heavy when she was opposed. ‘Why not? You can still go from the seaside to see the Derby with your Uncle Oscar, if that’s what you wish. No need for you to wait here. Besides, I think you care too much about these races. It’s a bad sign. My family has been a gambling family, and you won’t know till you grow up how much damage it has done. But it has done damage. I shall have to send Bassett away, and ask Uncle Oscar not to talk racing to you, unless you promise to be reasonable about it: go away to the seaside and forget it. You’re all nerves!’

‘I’ll do what you like, mother, so long as you don’t send me away till after the Derby,’ the boy said.

‘Send you away from where? Just from this house?’

‘Yes,’ he said, gazing at her.

‘Why, you curious child, what makes you care about this house so much, suddenly? I never knew you loved it!’

He gazed at her without speaking. He had a secret within a secret, something he had not divulged, even to Bassett or to his Uncle Oscar.

But his mother, after standing undecided and a little bit sullen for some moments, said:

‘Very well, then! Don’t go to the seaside till after the Derby, if you don’t wish it. But promise me you won’t let your nerves go to pieces! Promise you won’t think so much about horse-racing and events, as you call them!’

‘Oh no!’ said the boy, casually. ‘I won’t think much about them, mother. You needn’t worry. I wouldn’t worry, mother, if I were you.’

‘If you were me and I were you,’ said his mother, ‘I wonder what we should do!’

‘But you know you needn’t worry, mother, don’t you?’ the boy repeated.

‘I should be awfully glad to know it,’ she said wearily.

‘Oh, well, you can, you know. I mean you ought to know you needn’t worry!’ he insisted.

‘Ought I? Then I’ll see about it,’ she said.

Paul’s secret of secrets was his wooden horse, that which had no name. Since he was emancipated from a nurse and a nursery governess, he had had his rocking-horse removed to his own bedroom at the top of the house.

‘Surely you’re too big for a rocking-horse!’ his mother had remonstrated.

‘Well, you see, mother, till I can have a real horse, I like to have some sort of animal about,’ had been his quaint answer.

‘Do you feel he keeps you company?’ she laughed.

‘Oh yes! He’s very good, he always keeps me company, when I’m there,’ said Paul.

So the horse, rather shabby, stood in an arrested prance in the boy’s bedroom.

The Derby was drawing near, and the boy grew more and more tense. He hardly heard what was spoken to him, he was very frail, and his eyes were really uncanny. His mother had sudden strange seizures of uneasiness about him. Sometimes, for half an hour, she would feel a sudden anxiety about him that was almost anguish. She wanted to rush to him at once, and know he was safe.

Two nights before the Derby, she was at a big party in town, when one of her rushes of anxiety about her boy, her first-born, gripped her heart till she could hardly speak. She fought with the feeling, might and main, for she believed in common-sense. But it was too strong. She had to leave the dance and go downstairs to telephone to the country. The children’s nursery governess was terribly surprised and startled at being rung up in the night.

‘Are the children all right, Miss Wilmot?’

‘Oh yes, they are quite all right.’

‘Master Paul? Is he all right?’

‘He went to bed as right as a trivet. Shall I run up and look at him?’

‘No!’ said Paul’s mother reluctantly. ‘No! Don’t trouble. It’s all right. Don’t sit up. We shall be home fairly soon.’ She did not want her son’s privacy intruded upon.

‘Very good,’ said the governess.

It was about one o’clock when Paul’s mother and father drove up to their house. All was still. Paul’s mother went to her room and slipped off her white fur cloak. She had told her maid not to wait up for her. She heard her husband downstairs, mixing a whisky-and-soda.

And then, because of the strange anxiety at her heart, she stole upstairs to her son’s room. Noiselessly she went along the upper corridor. Was there a faint noise? What was it?

She stood, with arrested muscles, outside his door, listening. There was a strange, heavy, and yet not loud noise. Her heart stood still. It was a soundless noise, yet rushing and powerful. Something huge, in violent, hushed motion. What was it? What in God’s Name was it? She ought to know. She felt that she knew the noise. She knew what it was.

Yet she could not place it. She couldn’t say what it was. And on and on it went, like a madness.

Softly, frozen with anxiety and fear, she turned the door-handle.

The room was dark. Yet in the space near the window, she heard and saw something plunging to and fro. She gazed in fear and amazement.

Then suddenly she switched on the light, and saw her son, in his green pyjamas, madly surging on his rocking-horse. The blaze of light suddenly lit him up, as he urged the wooden horse, and lit her up, as she stood, blonde, in her dress of pale green and crystal, in the doorway.

‘Paul!’ she cried. ‘Whatever are you doing?’

‘It’s Malabar!’ he screamed, in a powerful, strange voice. ‘It’s Malabar!’

His eyes blazed at her for one strange and senseless second, as he ceased urging his wooden horse. Then he fell with a crash to the ground, and she, all her tormented motherhood flooding upon her, rushed to gather him up.

But he was unconscious, and unconscious he remained, with some brain-fever. He talked and tossed, and his mother sat stonily by his side.

‘Malabar! It’s Malabar! Bassett, Bassett, I know: it’s Malabar!’

So the child cried, trying to get up and urge the rocking-horse that gave him his inspiration.

‘What does he mean by Malabar?’ asked the heart-frozen mother.

‘I don’t know,’ said the father, stonily.

‘What does he mean by Malabar?’ she asked her brother Oscar.

‘It’s one of the horses running for the Derby,’ was the answer.

And, in spite of himself, Oscar Cresswell spoke to Bassett, and himself put a thousand on Malabar: at fourteen to one.

The third day of the illness was critical: they were watching for a change. The boy, with his rather long, curly hair, was tossing ceaselessly on the pillow. He neither slept nor regained consciousness, and his eyes were like blue stones. His mother sat, feeling her heart had gone, turned actually into a stone.

In the evening, Oscar Cresswell did not come, but Bassett sent a message, saying could he come up for one moment, just one moment? Paul’s mother was very angry at the intrusion, but on second thoughts she agreed. The boy was the same. Perhaps Bassett might bring him to consciousness.

The gardener, a shortish fellow with a little brown moustache and sharp little brown eyes, tiptoed into the room, touched his imaginary cap to Paul’s mother, and stole to the bedside, staring with glittering, smallish eyes at the tossing, dying child.