"Machen, Arthur - A Double Return" - читать интересную книгу автора (Machen Arthur)

A DOUBLE RETURN

Machen's "A Double Return" was one of a number of pieces first published in the "St James
Gazette", in the year 1890. This was the year in which he turned away from tales set in the past,
and began to write more racy fiction set in his own time. "A Double Return" was the most
successful of these pieces; Oscar Wilde, then at the height of his own success, predicted that it
would "flutter the dovecotes". Even today readers may find this a very adult, perhaps a shocking,
story.

The express from the west rushed through Acton with a scream, whirling clouds of
dust around it; and Frank Halswell knocked out the ashes from his pipe and
proceeded to gather from various quarters of the carriage his newspapers, his
hat-box, his handbag, and, chief of all, a large portfolio carefully packed in
brown paper. He looked at his watch, and said to himself: "6.30; we shall be at
Paddington in five minutes; and only five minutes late, for a wonder." But he
congratulated himself and the railway company rather too soon: a few minutes
later and the train began to slacken, the speed grew slower and slower, and at
last came the grinding sound of the brakes and a dead stop. Halswell looked out
of the window over the dreary expanse of Wormwood Scrubbs, and heard someone in
the next carriage explaining the cause of the delay with pardonable pride in his
technical knowledge. "You see, them there signals is against us, and if we was
to go on we should jolly well go to kingdom come, we should." Halswell looked at
his watch again and drummed his heels against the floor, wondering impatiently
when they would be at Paddington, when, with a sudden whirl, a down train swept
by them and the western express once more moved on. Halswell rubbed his eyes; he
had looked up as the down train passed, and in one of the carriages he thought
he had seen his own face. It was only for a second, and he could not be sure.
"It must have been a reflection," he kept on saying, "from the glass of one
window to the other. Still, I fancied I saw a black coat, and mine is light. But
of course it was a reflection."

The express rolled into the terminus with dignity - it was only ten minutes
late, after all; and Frank Halswell bundled himself and his traps into a hansom,
congratulating himself on the paucity of his bags and the absence of his trunks
as he watched the excited mob rushing madly at a Redan of luggage. "153, the
Mall, Kensington!" he shouted to the driver above the hubbub of the platform;
and they were soon threading deftly along the dingy streets that looked so much
dingier than usual after the blue mist upon the sea, the purple heather and the
sunny fields. Frank (he was a very popular artist in those days - a rising man,
indeed) had been on a sketching tour in Devon and Cornwall: he had wandered
along the deep sheltered lanes from hill to hill, by the orchards already red
and gold, by moorland and lowland, by the rocky coast and combes sinking down to
the wondrous sea.

On the Cornish roads he had seen those many ancient crosses, with their weird
interlacing carving, which sometimes stand upon a mound and mark where two ways
meet; and as he put his portfolio beside him he could not help feeling a glow of
pride at its contents. "I fancy I shall make a pretty good show by next spring,"
he thought, Poor fellow! he was never to paint another picture; but he did not