Fancies and Goodnights - Collier John (читать книги онлайн бесплатно полностью без txt) 📗

This young girl was ushered into his presence; the very lackeys who brought her in rolled their eyes till the whites nickered like the Eddystone Lighthouse. She was complete in every particular, and all of the highest quality; she was a picture gallery, an anthology of the poets, a precipitation of all that has ever been dreamed of love: her goodly eyes like Saphyres shining bright, her forehead yvory white, her cheeks lyke apples which the sun hath rudded, her lips lyke cherryes charming men to byte, her brest lyke to a bowle of creame uncrudded, her paps lyke lyllies budded, her snowie neck lyke to a marble towre; and all her body like a pallace fayre, ascending up, with many a stately stayre, to honours seat and chastities sweet bowre.

Her name was Rosie Dixon. Moreover she gained enormously in contrast to her surroundings, by the mere fact of being alive. It was as though a cowslip were to bloom miraculously between the dark and sterile metals of the Underground; as if its scent were wafted to one's nostrils on the nasty, sultry, canned sirocco of that region. It is no exaggeration to say that she was as good as she was beautiful. It is true her pretty face was a little blubbered with tears. «My dear,» said George, taking her hand, «there is no reason for you to cry in that fashion. Don't you know the good old saying, 'Never holler before you're hurt'?»

«Pray, sir,» cried she, having taken a long dewy peep at his monkey-phiz, and seeing a vast amount of good nature there, «Pray, sir,» said she, «tell me only, where am I?»

«Why, in Hell, to be sure,» said he, with a hearty laugh.

«Oh, thank goodness!» cried she, «I thought I was in Buenos Aires.»

«Most of 'em think that,» said our hero, «owing to the liner. But I must say you are the first who has shown any gratification on learning otherwise.»

They had a little more conversation of this sort; he questioned her pretty closely as to how she came to be stowed away on Charon's vessel. It appeared that she was a shop-girl who had been much tormented by her workmates; why, she could not say. However, she had to serve a young man who came in to buy some stockings for his sister. This young man had addressed to her a remark that brought her soul fluttering to her lips. At that very moment, the cruellest of her envious colleagues had manoeuvred to pass behind her, and had bestowed on her a pinch so spiteful, so sudden, and so intensely and laceratingly agonizing, that her poised soul was jolted from its perch. It had spread its wings and borne off her swooning body as a woodcock bears off its young. When she had regained her senses, she was locked in one of the narrow staterooms of a vast ship, stewarded by what she took to be black men, and resounding with the hysterical laughter and screams of captives of her own sex, all of whom seemed to think they were on the way to Buenos Aires.

George was very thorough. He minutely examined what little evidence she had to offer. «There is no doubt,» said he at length, speaking in tones of the greatest sympathy, «that you have received a very cruel pinch. When your tormentor comes into my hands, I myself will repay it a hundredfold.»

«No, no,» said she. «She did not mean so much harm. I'm sore she is a good girl at heart. It is just her little way.»

George was overcome with admiration at this remark, which, however, caused a tremor to pass through the whole of the vast black palace. «Upon my word!» said he. «I can't keep you here. You will bring the whole place crashing about my ears. I dare not put you in one of our punishment cells, for, if I did so against your will, all our system of home rule would be snatched away from us, and we should return to the crude discomforts of primitive times. That would be intolerable. There is a museum over on the mainland that would make your blood run cold.»

«Could you not send me back to earth?» said she.

«No woman has ever left this place alone!» cried he in despair. «My position is so delicate I dare not make an innovation.»

«Do not take on so,» said she. «I cannot bear to think of so kind a gentleman being plunged into fiery torments. I will stay voluntarily, and perhaps then no fuss will be made. I hope it will not be terribly painful.»

«You adorable creature!» cried he. «I must give you a kiss for that I believe you have solved the difficulty.»

She gave him back his kiss, as sweetly and purely as you can possibly imagine. «This is terrible,» he cried in great anguish of spirit. «I cannot bear to think of you undergoing the miseries of this place. My dear, good girl —»

«I don't mind,» she said. «I have worked in a shop in Oxford Street»

He gave her a pat or two, and signed up a form for her: «Remanded in custody at own request»

«It is only temporary, after all,» he said. «Otherwise I would not permit it»

Very well, she kept a stiff upper lip, and was carted off to a hateful box as cruelly equipped as any of the others. For a whole week George kept his head, reading love lyrics to distract his mind. At the end, he could put the matter behind him no longer. «I must go,» said he, «and see how she is getting on.»

In Hell, all the officials travel with incredible speed. In a very few minutes George had passed over a couple of continents, and was tapping at the mean front door of poor Rosie's little habitation. He had not chosen to put on his cap of fern-seed virtue, or perhaps he never thought of it. Anyway, she came to the door with three or four of the imps hanging about her apron-strings, and recognized him at once. He observed that she was wearing the drab and unfashionable garments provided by the authorities, in which her appearance was that of a rose in a jam-pot

What raised an intolerable burden from his heart was the fact that the superfluous hair had obviously failed to take root upon her living flesh. He found on inquiry that she had used it to stuff a pillow with, which she had placed behind the head of the snoring imitation husband who gracelessly sprawled before the fire. She admitted a little tuft flourished on the bruise, where she had been pinched.

«No doubt it will fall off,» said our hero scientifically, «when the tissues resume their normal condition. These things were designed to flourish upon carrion only, whereas you —» and he smacked his lips.

«I hope it will fall off,» said she, «for scissors will not cut it. And since I promised some to the eldest of these toddlers, to make him a false mustache of, no more has arrived.»

«Shall I try to cut it off?» said our hero.

«No, no,» said she, with a blush. «He has stopped crying now. They were all very querulous when first I came here, but now they are improved out of all knowledge.»

While she spoke, she busied her fingers with a succession of little tasks. «You seem to be terribly busy,» complained George.

«Forgive me,» said she, with a smile, «but there is such a terrible lot to do. Still, it makes the time pass.»

«Do you never,» said he, «wish to go to the matinee?»

«That would never do,» she replied. «Supposing he should wake up» (pointing to the imitation husband) «and call for his tea. Besides, I have plenty of entertainment. The people next door seem always to have a party; it does me good to hear them laugh and sing. What's more, when I'm cleaning the windows, as needs doing rather often, I see girls going by, dressed more beautifully than you can possibly imagine. I love to see people in pretty clothes.»

«Your own are not very attractive,» said George in a melancholy tone.

«They are plain enough,» said she, with a laugh. «But I'm far too busy to think about that. All I could wish is that they were of slightly stronger materials. The stockings laddered so often I've had to give up wearing them. And whenever I go out shopping — Still, you don't want to hear all this.»